From grog at lemis.com Thu Oct 13 12:00:24 2011 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:00:24 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] Death of dmr Message-ID: <20111013020024.GB20411@dereel.lemis.com> For those of you who haven't heard yet, dmr died on Sunday. Rob Pike announced it at https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP I don't know what to say. A *real* giant is dead. And almost the saddest thing is that nobody has paid any attention. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft MUA reports problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Thu Oct 13 12:05:39 2011 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:05:39 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Dennis Ritchie...rip? Message-ID: wikipedia is listing that Dennis Ritchie just passed.. If that is so, then it really is a sad week to lose such a visionary. I wish I had some real details, but Rob Pike has it mentioned on his google+ account.... https://plus.google.com/u/0/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP?hl=en From wkt at tuhs.org Thu Oct 13 13:37:32 2011 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:37:32 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] dmr has passed away Message-ID: <20111013033732.GA10136@minnie.tuhs.org> https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP?hl=en I just heard that, after a long illness, Dennis Ritchie (dmr) died at home this weekend. I have no more information. I trust there are people here who will appreciate the reach of his contributions and mourn his passing appropriately. He was a quiet and mostly private man, but he was also my friend, colleague, and collaborator, and the world has lost a truly great mind. - Pob Pike With great thanks and appreciation to him, Warren From randy.belk at gmail.com Thu Oct 13 14:33:04 2011 From: randy.belk at gmail.com (Randy Belk) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:33:04 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Death of dmr In-Reply-To: <20111013020024.GB20411@dereel.lemis.com> References: <20111013020024.GB20411@dereel.lemis.com> Message-ID: I just post my response I put on Rob Pike's Google+ Page. I meet Dennis once, maybe talked to him 5 minutes. But he left a lasting impression on me about his love for simplicity and UNIX. Another one of my hero's is dead. My deepest condolences go out to his family and to the UNIX community. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkt at tuhs.org Thu Oct 13 14:57:36 2011 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:57:36 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror for http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ Message-ID: <20111013045736.GA15834@minnie.tuhs.org> All, I've taken a mirror of http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ and placed it at http://minnie.tuhs.org/dmr/ Feel free to mirror from minnie, in case the Labs' server gets overloaded. It's 112 Megs. Cheers, Warren From lm at bitmover.com Thu Oct 13 15:12:05 2011 From: lm at bitmover.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:12:05 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Death of dmr In-Reply-To: <20111013020024.GB20411@dereel.lemis.com> References: <20111013020024.GB20411@dereel.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20111013051205.GC2598@bitmover.com> Another hero gone. Dennis and I spoke a few times, did a lot more in email, and none of that was because he knew me or who I was (I wasn't anyone except someone who liked Unix). Rather go on and on about what little interaction I had with Dennis, I'll give you my Unix "aha" moment. You'll probably think it is stupid but it was an epiphany for me. A long time ago, I was ...!uwvax!lm and the University of Wisconsin had a VAX 11/750 called slovax. slovax had the 4.x BSD source code on it and somehow I wangled an account there. I spent a _lot_ of hours reading the source. One day I was reading libc source and got to popen(). Holy shit, popen() forks a sub process! What a cool way to do it (not that I had in mind any other way to do it, it just never occurred to me that you'd create a new process in a library routine). I was expecting some magic that I just wouldn't understand (having spent a bunch of time looking at context switch assembly, I was just prepared for something like that). The simplicity of popen() was an aha moment for me, there have been a bunch of others, that was the first. Thank you Dennis and Brian and Ken and Joe and Doug and all the others who not only built this stuff but also took the time to document it so well. And thanks for the smallness: work:/home/unix/v7 find . -name '*.[chly]' | xargs cat | wc -l 168881 168K lines of code for a kernel, a compiler, assembler, debugger, profiler, awk, make, cron, roff (I love roff), diff, grep, ed, f77, lex, lint, yacc, m4, tar, even uucp. Are you kidding me? All that in 168K lines? We make a source management system, a good one, but it's bigger than that. The Unix guys kick our butts. RIP, Dennis, a very nice man as well as gifted. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com From wkt at tuhs.org Thu Oct 13 15:58:34 2011 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:58:34 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror for http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ In-Reply-To: References: <20111013045736.GA15834@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <20111013055834.GA18362@minnie.tuhs.org> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:02:08PM -0700, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > >Feel free to mirror from minnie, in case the Labs' server gets overloaded. > >It's 112 Megs. > > A tarball, perhaps? Of course. ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/misc/dmr_cm.bell-labs_mirror.tar.gz 90M Cheers, Warren From wkt at tuhs.org Thu Oct 13 17:36:48 2011 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:36:48 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror for http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ In-Reply-To: References: <20111013045736.GA15834@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <4798ee6c-c14a-405c-acb1-f22b788e3511@email.android.com> True. I had to mirror via ftp as the robots.txt stopped the http mirroring. It should be possible to fix the mirror in the tarball. I'll see what I can do. Thanks, Warren -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Hans Ottevanger wrote: On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Warren Toomey wrote: > All, I've taken a mirror of http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ > and placed it at http://minnie.tuhs.org/dmr/ > > Feel free to mirror from minnie, in case the Labs' server gets overloaded. > It's 112 Megs. > Warren, Thanks for this excellent action, but your links are still absolute, i.e. point to the original content on the Bell Labs website. If that content disappears for whatever reason you will have a lot of links to convert. Kind regards, Hans Ottevanger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernyg at ntlworld.com Fri Oct 14 00:23:01 2011 From: bernyg at ntlworld.com (Berny G) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:23:01 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Message-ID: Thank you Dennis. None of us would be here without you. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. Berny From jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es Fri Oct 14 04:32:58 2011 From: jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es (Jose R. Valverde) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:32:58 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Message-ID: <20111013203258.4ec56e57@cnb.csic.es> We could set up a web site inmemoriamdmr.org maybe initially as a wiki and ask people to add their contribution and then maybe we could try to collect there his works or add a blog with articles about him that could be commented... Just an idea, I am in the middle of a Congress, seated in the front row and trying to listen to speakers through my consternation, and can do very little now. j -- EMBnet/CNB Scientific Computing Service Solving all your computer needs for Scientific Research. http://bioportal.cnb.csic.es http://www.es.embnet.org From jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es Fri Oct 14 04:24:10 2011 From: jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es (Jose R. Valverde) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:24:10 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] dmr has passed away Message-ID: <20111013202410.3ddb9aa9@cnb.csic.es> Truly a great loss. I just saw this (I have traveling to some international meetings). I wonder if we could come up with a way to pay hommage to him all together to acknowledge his legacy. Don't know what could be best, but I am sure there are people here who knew him and through their consternation can give us an idea of what would be the best way to publicly honor him. Can we all get together to do something jointly for him? I guess a global collaborative initiative would be most in his spirit and philosophy of life. Dunno, maybe create web site to celebrate him. Where everybody can leave a testimony of how his work has affected our lives. j -- EMBnet/CNB Scientific Computing Service Solving all your computer needs for Scientific Research. http://bioportal.cnb.csic.es http://www.es.embnet.org From jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es Fri Oct 14 04:37:27 2011 From: jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es (Jose R. Valverde) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:37:27 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link Message-ID: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> Just for the record. The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. -- EMBnet/CNB Scientific Computing Service Solving all your computer needs for Scientific Research. http://bioportal.cnb.csic.es http://www.es.embnet.org From lm at bitmover.com Fri Oct 14 04:43:37 2011 From: lm at bitmover.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:43:37 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link In-Reply-To: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> References: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> Message-ID: <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 08:37:27PM +0200, Jose R. Valverde wrote: > Just for the record. > > The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is > > wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL > > Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. Wouldn't it be nice if it were wget --mirror URL ? -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com From BHuntsman at mail2.cu-portland.edu Fri Oct 14 04:44:47 2011 From: BHuntsman at mail2.cu-portland.edu (Benjamin Huntsman) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:44:47 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis In-Reply-To: <20111013203258.4ec56e57@cnb.csic.es> References: <20111013203258.4ec56e57@cnb.csic.es> Message-ID: <5782C16A7C920E469B74E11B5608B8E709263C3A@Kriegler.ntdom.cupdx> Might be nice to ask Novell if they'd amend the Ancient UNIX License in tribute, so that his contributions to 8th, 9th, and 10th Edition UNIX could be appreciated... I had the pleasure of exchanging a few e-mails with dmr over the years too. Always a kind and helpful guy. Its sad to see your heroes pass on. From spedraja at gmail.com Fri Oct 14 04:53:55 2011 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:53:55 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link In-Reply-To: <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> References: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> Message-ID: Computing woudln't be the same :-) -- Saludos - Greetings - Freundliche Grüße - Salutations Sergio Pedraja twitter: @sergio_pedraja http://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiopedraja http://www.quora.com/Sergio-Pedraja ----- 2011/10/13 Larry McVoy > On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 08:37:27PM +0200, Jose R. Valverde wrote: > > Just for the record. > > > > The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is > > > > wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL > > > > Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. > > Wouldn't it be nice if it were > > wget --mirror URL > > ? > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com > http://www.bitkeeper.com > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tim.newsham at gmail.com Fri Oct 14 05:22:01 2011 From: tim.newsham at gmail.com (Tim Newsham) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:22:01 -1000 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis In-Reply-To: <5782C16A7C920E469B74E11B5608B8E709263C3A@Kriegler.ntdom.cupdx> References: <20111013203258.4ec56e57@cnb.csic.es> <5782C16A7C920E469B74E11B5608B8E709263C3A@Kriegler.ntdom.cupdx> Message-ID: seconded. On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Benjamin Huntsman wrote: > Might be nice to ask Novell if they'd amend the Ancient UNIX License in tribute, so that his contributions to 8th, 9th, and 10th Edition UNIX > could be appreciated... > > I had the pleasure of exchanging a few e-mails with dmr over the years too.  Always a kind and helpful guy.  Its sad to see your heroes pass > on. > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > -- Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Fri Oct 14 05:35:09 2011 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:35:09 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link In-Reply-To: <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> References: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 08:37:27PM +0200, Jose R. Valverde wrote: >> Just for the record. >> >> The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is >> >>       wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL >> >> Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. > > Wouldn't it be nice if it were > >        wget --mirror URL for a complete mirror, yes. but if you want to make sure that you don't download any malware: wget --mirror --evil=false From lorddoomicus at mac.com Fri Oct 14 04:51:30 2011 From: lorddoomicus at mac.com (Derrik Walker) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:51:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link In-Reply-To: <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> Message-ID: <9cf6b0a5-0ee5-ea9d-edf0-9db82d060562@me.com> I like shell scripts for hard to remember things like that. Call it wget_mirror.sh or something like that: #!/bin/bash if [ $# -ne 1 ] ; then echo ERRR; exit 1 ; else url=$1 ; fi wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off $url ( that was off the top of my head and has NOT been tested ... it might have a typo or two :) - Derrik On Oct 13, 2011, at 02:43 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 08:37:27PM +0200, Jose R. Valverde wrote: > > Just for the record. > > > > The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is > > > > wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL > > > > Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. > > Wouldn't it be nice if it were > > wget --mirror URL > > ? > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wes.parish at paradise.net.nz Fri Oct 14 18:59:25 2011 From: wes.parish at paradise.net.nz (Wesley Parish) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:59:25 +1300 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis In-Reply-To: References: <20111013203258.4ec56e57@cnb.csic.es> <5782C16A7C920E469B74E11B5608B8E709263C3A@Kriegler.ntdom.cupdx> Message-ID: Agreed! On 14/10/2011, at 8:22 AM, Tim Newsham wrote: > seconded. > > On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Benjamin Huntsman > wrote: >> Might be nice to ask Novell if they'd amend the Ancient UNIX >> License in tribute, so that his contributions to 8th, 9th, and >> 10th Edition UNIX >> could be appreciated... >> >> I had the pleasure of exchanging a few e-mails with dmr over the >> years too. Always a kind and helpful guy. Its sad to see your >> heroes pass >> on. >> _______________________________________________ >> TUHS mailing list >> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs >> > > > > -- > Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 00:52:21 2011 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:52:21 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? Message-ID: Hi, In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the archive? Thank you, A. P. Garcia From lorddoomicus at mac.com Sat Oct 15 01:34:00 2011 From: lorddoomicus at mac.com (Derrik Walker) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:34:00 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Many, many eons ago, in the early '90's, there was an implementation of B for Linux ( I believe it was written in C, ironically enough ). I think it was part of a bigger collection of "ancient" software for Linux that use to be around in the early Slackware days. Alas, I have searched for it in the recent past, as I was thinking about porting it to OS X for kicks, but it seems to have vanished. Having an B, implemented in a modern language for a modern OS would be cool. - Derrik On Oct 14, 2011, at 10:52 AM, "A. P. Garcia" wrote: > Hi, > > In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: > http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html > > It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like > ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the > archive? > > > Thank you, > A. P. Garcia > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 01:53:53 2011 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:53:53 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Derrik Walker wrote: > Many, many eons ago, in the early '90's, there was an implementation of B > for Linux ( I believe it was written in C, ironically enough ).  I think it > was part of a bigger collection of "ancient" software for Linux that use to > be around in the early Slackware days. > > Alas, I have searched for it in the recent past, as I was thinking about > porting it to OS X for kicks, but it seems to have vanished. > > Having an B, implemented in a modern language for a modern OS would be cool. > > - Derrik > > On Oct 14, 2011, at 10:52 AM, "A. P. Garcia" > wrote: > > Hi, > > In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: > http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html > > It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like > ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the > archive? > > > Thank you, > A. P. Garcia > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > > Hello! How early a time period for the Slackware Linux group? (Which is what I run.) There's a repository of older distributions on the Ibib site, and a more comprehensive one situated on a mirror in the UK. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es Sat Oct 15 01:59:53 2011 From: jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es (Jose R. Valverde) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:59:53 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Mirror with link In-Reply-To: <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> References: <20111013203727.7f33a67d@cnb.csic.es> <20111013184337.GA23950@bitmover.com> Message-ID: <20111014175953.2b02bde2@cnb.csic.es> That is already included: -m == --mirror But --mirror (or -m) does not include -k (convert links to local after the transfer) nor -np (do not follow links upwards the parent directory), nor an instruction to ignore 'robots.txt'. The magic incantation I submitted will only download down the hierarchy, in spite of robots.txt and fixing links, all three problems reported in the thread. Of course it is not polite to ignore robots.txt, but sometimes it may be justified. j On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:43:37 -0700 Larry McVoy wrote: > On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 08:37:27PM +0200, Jose R. Valverde wrote: > > Just for the record. > > > > The correct way to mirror a site with links corrected is > > > > wget -c -m -k -np -e robots=off URL > > > > Seems most people have problem remembering this incantation. > > Wouldn't it be nice if it were > > wget --mirror URL > > ? > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com -- EMBnet/CNB Scientific Computing Service Solving all your computer needs for Scientific Research. http://bioportal.cnb.csic.es http://www.es.embnet.org From lorddoomicus at mac.com Sat Oct 15 02:35:36 2011 From: lorddoomicus at mac.com (Derrik Walker) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:35:36 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20f40872-5f45-e7bd-eb11-aaa29a80e5c3@me.com> On Oct 14, 2011, at 11:53 AM, Gregg Levine wrote: > On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Derrik Walker wrote: > > Many, many eons ago, in the early '90's, there was an implementation of B > > for Linux ( I believe it was written in C, ironically enough ). I think it > > was part of a bigger collection of "ancient" software for Linux that use to > > be around in the early Slackware days. > > > > Alas, I have searched for it in the recent past, as I was thinking about > > porting it to OS X for kicks, but it seems to have vanished. > > > > Having an B, implemented in a modern language for a modern OS would be cool. > > > > > Hello! > How early a time period for the Slackware Linux group? (Which is what > I run.) There's a repository of older distributions on the Ibib site, > and a more comprehensive one situated on a mirror in the UK. It would have been around '92 or '93, back when Slackware really only provided a very basic boot system, gcc, some fancy scripts, and a crap load of tarballs to compile everything. I'm not even sure it was part of the Slackware collection, it might have been something someone added to the server - I didn't build that computer. It was an experimental system at CSU, where I was going to school at the time - and the first actually Linux computer I ever had an account on. One of the older professors had a bunch of B code he got from someplace and put the compiler on there to see if he could get it to build. I remember he also put f2c on there too as he had a tape full of Fortran code he wanted to compile. But, for all I know, he may have written the B compiler himself, but I seem to remember him telling me about this collection of ancient software for Linux that someone else had written, and he had gotten it up and running on the experimental Linux system. Just not sure how faulty my memory is. I just remember looking at B, and asking why he just doesn't covert it to C? Funny thing was, some of the younger professors were complaining saying the preferred their "REAL UNIX". Unfortunately, he as long since retired. And that Computer was retired when they moved the main Student system from HPUX to Redhat in the late '90's. - Derrik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tim.newsham at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 04:06:42 2011 From: tim.newsham at gmail.com (Tim Newsham) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:06:42 -1000 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like > ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the > archive? I don't know of any, but I do know there are some very early versions of the C compiler dating back to around 1972 that you can find source for and actually run. They're quite a bit different from modern C. (Even the C present in 6th ed unix feels a bit odd to a modern C programmer like myself, 7th ed starts feeling more "normal"). > Thank you, > A. P. Garcia > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > -- Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Sat Oct 15 04:23:23 2011 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:23:23 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? Message-ID: I didn't see it as immeditaly obvious on slackware 1.0 ... or SLS .. it very well may have been some addon or something somehwere.... If anyone knew it's filename that'd go a long long way! :) -----Original Message----- From: Derrik Walker [mailto:lorddoomicus at mac.com] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 12:36 PM To: Gregg Levine Cc: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? On Oct 14, 2011, at 11:53 AM, Gregg Levine wrote: > On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Derrik Walker wrote: > > Many, many eons ago, in the early '90's, there was an implementation of B > > for Linux ( I believe it was written in C, ironically enough ). I think it > > was part of a bigger collection of "ancient" software for Linux that use to > > be around in the early Slackware days. > > > > Alas, I have searched for it in the recent past, as I was thinking about > > porting it to OS X for kicks, but it seems to have vanished. > > > > Having an B, implemented in a modern language for a modern OS would be cool. > > > > > Hello! > How early a time period for the Slackware Linux group? (Which is what > I run.) There's a repository of older distributions on the Ibib site, > and a more comprehensive one situated on a mirror in the UK. It would have been around '92 or '93, back when Slackware really only provided a very basic boot system, gcc, some fancy scripts, and a crap load of tarballs to compile everything. I'm not even sure it was part of the Slackware collection, it might have been something someone added to the server - I didn't build that computer. It was an experimental system at CSU, where I was going to school at the time - and the first actually Linux computer I ever had an account on. One of the older professors had a bunch of B code he got from someplace and put the compiler on there to see if he could get it to build. I remember he also put f2c on there too as he had a tape full of Fortran code he wanted to compile. But, for all I know, he may have written the B compiler himself, but I seem to remember him telling me about this collection of ancient software for Linux that someone else had written, and he had gotten it up and running on the experimental Linux system. Just not sure how faulty my memory is. I just remember looking at B, and asking why he just doesn't covert it to C? Funny thing was, some of the younger professors were complaining saying the preferred their "REAL UNIX". Unfortunately, he as long since retired. And that Computer was retired when they moved the main Student system from HPUX to Redhat in the late '90's. - Derrik From reed at reedmedia.net Sat Oct 15 05:17:51 2011 From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:17:51 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: <20f40872-5f45-e7bd-eb11-aaa29a80e5c3@me.com> References: <20f40872-5f45-e7bd-eb11-aaa29a80e5c3@me.com> Message-ID: I saw that the 4.3BSD distribution of the User Contributed Software contained the B progamming language & environment from Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam. It is "the Mark1C implementation of B for Unix(c) systems." But now I see that is not the same B: B is a simple but powerful new programming language, designed for use in personal computing. (Note: the name ``B'' is only a temporary working title, and the new language bears no relation to the predecessor of C.) From cowan at mercury.ccil.org Sat Oct 15 06:08:28 2011 From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:08:28 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20111014200827.GB3033@mercury.ccil.org> Derrik Walker scripsit: > Many, many eons ago, in the early '90's, there was an implementation > of B for Linux ( I believe it was written in C, ironically enough ). > I think it was part of a bigger collection of "ancient" software for > Linux that use to be around in the early Slackware days. The Retrocomputing Museum at http://www.catb.org/retro/ has what purports to be a B-to-C translator at http://www.catb.org/retro/ , but looking at it, it appears to be about BCPL rather than B proper. In any case, it has missing files and won't build. -- John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.org Lope de Vega: "It wonders me I can speak at all. Some caitiff rogue did rudely yerk me on the knob, wherefrom my wits yet wander." An Englishman: "Ay, belike a filchman to the nab'll leave you crank for a spell." --Harry Turtledove, Ruled Britannia From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 13:57:37 2011 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:57:37 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia wrote: > > In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: > http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html > > It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like > ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the > archive? What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual machines traces its roots back to the following source: James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations typically—in particular for B—act on a simple stack machine. Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and porting those already in B. The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were using this technique some three years before most of the computing world knew about it!? From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Sat Oct 15 14:20:34 2011 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:20:34 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? Message-ID: Wasn't the other 'advantage' of threaded/pcode that it'd be smaller than a native executable? I know it's out of left field, but building Dungeon on RT-11, you have to use the treaded compiler, and I assume it was a space thing.. Just as on MS-DOS (Yeah I know...) a save for fitting stuff in 64kb for the later compilers was to compile to p-code.. Wikipedia gives p-code for Pascal a timeframe of the 'early 70's and attribes the whole interpeted code as O-Code for BCPL .... I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... -----Original Message----- From: A. P. Garcia [mailto:a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:58 PM To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia wrote: > > In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: > http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html > > It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like > ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the > archive? What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual machines traces its roots back to the following source: James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations typically-in particular for B-act on a simple stack machine. Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and porting those already in B. The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were using this technique some three years before most of the computing world knew about it!? _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 14:37:20 2011 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:37:20 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Jason Stevens wrote: > Wasn't the other 'advantage' of threaded/pcode that it'd be smaller than a > native executable? > > I know it's out of left field, but building Dungeon on RT-11, you have to > use the treaded compiler, and I assume it was a space thing.. Just as on > MS-DOS (Yeah I know...) a save for fitting stuff in 64kb for the later > compilers was to compile to p-code.. > > Wikipedia gives p-code for Pascal a timeframe of the 'early 70's and > attribes the whole interpeted code as O-Code for BCPL .... > > I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... > > -----Original Message----- > From: A. P. Garcia [mailto:a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:58 PM > To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? > > > On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: >> >> In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: >> http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html >> >> It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like >> ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the >> archive? > > What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an > abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly > contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems > this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's > possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it > was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual > machines traces its roots back to the following source: > > James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), > 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 > http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 > > Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: > > The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but > instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the > compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code > fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations > typically-in particular for B-act on a simple stack machine. > > Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in > print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: > > By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able > to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of > its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk > arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique > required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a > simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first > interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our > PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson > recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly > language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest > PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny > space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version > was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by > enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. > Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after > transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and > porting those already in B. > > The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference > to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were > using this technique some three years before most of the computing > world knew about it!? Hello! This discussion is beginning to strike a heck of a lot of chords. Jason what is this TripOS you are describing here about? And did you actually get Dungeon to work? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From luvisi at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 14:57:35 2011 From: luvisi at gmail.com (Andru Luvisi) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:57:35 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 8:57 PM, A. P. Garcia wrote: > What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an > abstract machine running as an interpreter. For what it's worth, an abstract machine based implementation for Algol 60 was published in 1964 in the book "Algol 60 Implementation" by Randell and Russell. It gives flowcharts, not source code. I seem to recall the book saying that a couple of different implementations has been built from the same set of flowcharts. If you're willing to count abstract machines meant for human use, rather than as a compiler target, there was a floating point "interpretive routine" for the EDSAC by 1951. See the first edition of "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer" by Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill (though I think I remember seeing somewhere that they had it by 1949, but I can't find the reference right now). The idea being that you would run the "interpretive routine" and it would run a bunch of instructions for a virtual machine that had floating point support. Andru From grog at lemis.com Sat Oct 15 16:20:48 2011 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:20:48 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20111015062048.GA83230@dereel.lemis.com> On Friday, 14 October 2011 at 9:52:21 -0500, A. P. Garcia wrote: > Hi, > > In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: > http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html This paper is interesting not only for the evolution of C, but also for the evolution of Unix. I've learnt a lot. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft MUA reports problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From michael_davidson at pacbell.net Sat Oct 15 18:44:07 2011 From: michael_davidson at pacbell.net (Michael Davidson) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:44:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1318668247.51352.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 10/14/11, Jason Stevens wrote: I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... Martin Richards still has links to some Tripos stuff here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/Archive.html and lots of other things (including, of course, BCPL) on his home page here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/ Michael Davidson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michael_davidson at pacbell.net Sat Oct 15 18:54:59 2011 From: michael_davidson at pacbell.net (Michael Davidson) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:54:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1318668899.92444.YahooMailClassic@web82407.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 10/14/11, A. P. Garcia wrote: What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it was done at all. Not sure if anyone ever interpreted ocode - by the time I encountered BCPL in the mid 1970's the "porting kit" consisted of the BCPL compiler along with an ocode to intcode translator, a reference intcode interpreter written in BCPL and of course, the intcode for the compiler. To bootstrap on a new machine you implemented an intcode interpreter - probably in assembler and, initially, ran the intcode version of the compiler until you had implemented an ocode to machine code translator for your system. All of this is described in the Richards / Whitby-Strevens book. Michael Davidson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 00:12:36 2011 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:12:36 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: <1318668899.92444.YahooMailClassic@web82407.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1318668899.92444.YahooMailClassic@web82407.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 4:54 AM, Michael Davidson wrote: > > --- On Fri, 10/14/11, A. P. Garcia wrote: > > What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an > abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly > contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems > this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's > possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it > was done at all. > > Not sure if anyone ever interpreted ocode - by the time I encountered BCPL in the mid 1970's the "porting kit" consisted of the BCPL compiler along with an ocode to intcode translator, a reference intcode interpreter written in BCPL and of course, the intcode for the compiler. To bootstrap on a new machine you implemented an intcode interpreter - probably in assembler and, initially, ran the intcode version of the compiler until you had implemented an ocode to machine code translator for your system. > > All of this is described in the Richards / Whitby-Strevens book. > > Michael Davidson > > > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > Hello! I just ran a Google search (naturally) using the term BCPL, and found an interesting set of pages. The Wikipedia page on it contains some darned interesting things. Take for example the TX0 and TX1 computers. The PDP-1 descends from one of them. The first MUD was written using BCPL, which I suspect would be right down a certain correspondent's alley. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Sun Oct 16 02:14:51 2011 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:14:51 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? Message-ID: Yep, dungeon runs great on RT-11 ... I've docuemnted the experence here... http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=169 Building the fortran compiler was... an adventure onto its own, but luckily I found some documentation @ bitsavers, and could ask on the PDP11 lists for help... I'm amazed it compiled and runs! .. Oh and TripOS is the BCPL based OS that ran on all kinds of machines, it was very portable, the best known port would be AmigaDOS for the Commodore Amiga. I wonder if it was licensing fees and BCPL/TripOS being based in the UK what seperated them from C/Unix... I guess we'd be living in the B++, B# and ObjectiveB world if it wasn't for DMR's wonderful world of C .. :) -----Original Message----- From: Gregg Levine [mailto:gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 12:37 AM To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org Cc: Jason Stevens Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Jason Stevens wrote: > Wasn't the other 'advantage' of threaded/pcode that it'd be smaller than a > native executable? > > I know it's out of left field, but building Dungeon on RT-11, you have to > use the treaded compiler, and I assume it was a space thing.. Just as on > MS-DOS (Yeah I know...) a save for fitting stuff in 64kb for the later > compilers was to compile to p-code.. > > Wikipedia gives p-code for Pascal a timeframe of the 'early 70's and > attribes the whole interpeted code as O-Code for BCPL .... > > I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... > > -----Original Message----- > From: A. P. Garcia [mailto:a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:58 PM > To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? > > > On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: >> >> In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: >> http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html >> >> It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like >> ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the >> archive? > > What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an > abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly > contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems > this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's > possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it > was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual > machines traces its roots back to the following source: > > James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), > 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 > http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 > > Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: > > The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but > instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the > compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code > fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations > typically-in particular for B-act on a simple stack machine. > > Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in > print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: > > By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able > to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of > its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk > arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique > required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a > simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first > interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our > PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson > recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly > language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest > PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny > space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version > was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by > enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. > Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after > transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and > porting those already in B. > > The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference > to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were > using this technique some three years before most of the computing > world knew about it!? Hello! This discussion is beginning to strike a heck of a lot of chords. Jason what is this TripOS you are describing here about? And did you actually get Dungeon to work? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 02:41:27 2011 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:41:27 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Jason Stevens wrote: > Yep, dungeon runs great on RT-11 ... I've docuemnted the experence here... > > http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=169 > > Building the fortran compiler was... an adventure onto its own, but luckily > I found some documentation @ bitsavers, and could ask on the PDP11 lists for > help... I'm amazed it compiled and runs! .. > > Oh and TripOS is the BCPL based OS that ran on all kinds of machines, it was > very portable, the best known port would be AmigaDOS for the Commodore > Amiga.  I wonder if it was licensing fees and BCPL/TripOS being based in the > UK what seperated them from C/Unix... I guess we'd be living in the B++, B# > and ObjectiveB world if it wasn't for DMR's wonderful world of C .. :) > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Gregg Levine [mailto:gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com] > Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 12:37 AM > To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Cc: Jason Stevens > Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? > > > On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Jason Stevens > wrote: >> Wasn't the other 'advantage' of threaded/pcode that it'd be smaller than a >> native executable? >> >> I know it's out of left field, but building Dungeon on RT-11, you have to >> use the treaded compiler, and I assume it was a space thing.. Just as on >> MS-DOS (Yeah I know...) a save for fitting stuff in 64kb for the later >> compilers was to compile to p-code.. >> >> Wikipedia gives p-code for Pascal a timeframe of the 'early 70's and >> attribes the whole interpeted code as O-Code for BCPL .... >> >> I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: A. P. Garcia [mailto:a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com] >> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:58 PM >> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org >> Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? >> >> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia >> wrote: >>> >>> In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: >>> http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html >>> >>> It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like >>> ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the >>> archive? >> >> What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an >> abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly >> contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems >> this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's >> possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it >> was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual >> machines traces its roots back to the following source: >> >> James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), >> 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 >> http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 >> >> Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: >> >> The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but >> instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the >> compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code >> fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations >> typically-in particular for B-act on a simple stack machine. >> >> Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in >> print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: >> >> By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able >> to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of >> its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk >> arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique >> required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a >> simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first >> interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our >> PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson >> recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly >> language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest >> PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny >> space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version >> was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by >> enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. >> Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after >> transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and >> porting those already in B. >> >> The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference >> to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were >> using this technique some three years before most of the computing >> world knew about it!? > > Hello! > This discussion is beginning to strike a heck of a lot of chords. > Jason what is this TripOS you are describing here about? And did you > actually get Dungeon to work? > > ----- > Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com > "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." > Hello! Well as it happens I looked up BCPL via Google and got this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPL That one lead to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2 which of course goes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-0 that one mentions how the PDP-1 came about. The TX-0 is the direct ancestor to the PDP-1. With today's FPGA technology someone should revive the TX-0 and the TX-1 that way...... ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Oct 18 02:18:49 2011 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:18:49 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4E9C5569.6090202@bitsavers.org> On 10/15/11 9:41 AM, Gregg Levine wrote: > With today's FPGA technology someone should revive the TX-0 and the > TX-1 that way...... > I assume you meant TX-2. There was never a TX-1. TX-0 simulation was working in MESS, there is code around for TX-0 including a couple of games. TX-2 was a moving target. The instruction set changed quite a bit during its lifetime and little code is available. There has been interest in the past for trying to revive Sketchpad, but Ivan Sutherland isn't interested in releasing the code when I've talked to him about it. One of the more interesting east to west coast connections is the TX-2 BCPL compiler was the basis for the BCPL on the Xerox Alto. From hansolofalcon at att.net Tue Oct 18 02:29:54 2011 From: hansolofalcon at att.net (Gregg C Levine) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:29:54 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: <4E9C5569.6090202@bitsavers.org> References: <4E9C5569.6090202@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <009301cc8cea$0143d3c0$03cb7b40$@net> Hello! Okay with that in mind, what about someone (or something) creating an FPGA based Xerox Alto? --- Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at att.net "This signature is not the same one. Move along! Move along!" > -----Original Message----- > From: tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] On > Behalf Of Al Kossow > Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 12:19 PM > To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? > > On 10/15/11 9:41 AM, Gregg Levine wrote: > > > With today's FPGA technology someone should revive the TX-0 and the > > TX-1 that way...... > > > > I assume you meant TX-2. There was never a TX-1. > TX-0 simulation was working in MESS, there is code around for TX-0 > including a couple of games. > TX-2 was a moving target. The instruction set changed quite a bit during > its lifetime and little code is available. There has been interest in the > past for trying to revive Sketchpad, but Ivan Sutherland isn't interested > in releasing the code when I've talked to him about it. > One of the more interesting east to west coast connections is the TX-2 > BCPL compiler was the basis for the BCPL on the Xerox Alto. > > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs From new_zmkm at hotmail.com Sat Oct 22 22:09:25 2011 From: new_zmkm at hotmail.com (zmkm zmkm) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:09:25 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you very much denis for making the best operating system ever a reality not a mere dream pipe . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: