[9fans] the old floppy set

[9fans] the old floppy set

[John Floren]

Looking at the very old mailing list archives, I noticed something
about a 3-disk (or was it 4-disk?) floppy-based distribution of the
earliest PC dist. Is that still available in some form? I just came
into possession of a stack of floppies and a pair of 486s and I'm
ready to dare to be stupid.


John
--
"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Anthony Sorace]

that was for 2nd edition. it's now horribly outdated.

it is also only available under an older, for-pay license that i'm not
sure it's actually possible to buy any more.

you don't actually want that set unless you're doing archeology.

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[John Floren]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Anthony Sorace<anothy@gmail.com> wrote:
> that was for 2nd edition. it's now horribly outdated.
>
> it is also only available under an older, for-pay license that i'm not
> sure it's actually possible to buy any more.
>
> you don't actually want that set unless you're doing archeology.
>
>

I was under the impression that it was a sort of evaluation thing, and
then I guess you bought the license which gave you source and other
stuff. I'm probably wrong.

And yes, I basically am doing archaeology--I don't expect much, I just
want to poke around at the old system

John
--
"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> I was under the impression that it was a sort of evaluation thing, and
> then I guess you bought the license which gave you source and other
> stuff. I'm probably wrong.

You bought the book set from Prentice Hall. It came with a set of
floppies, a CDROM, and a hardcopy of the license (which precludes
distributing any of the software to non-lincencees).

Sadly, while I still have the floppies, the license paperwork vanished
long ago, and the CD got lost during a move.

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Anthony Sorace]

the floppies were available without the book+cd; at least as late as
1996 i remember downloading them from at&t's web site. they
represented a fairly minimal system. i don't remember specifically,
but it seems likely that there were license terms specific to the
download.

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Steve Simon]

As Anthony says it is very very old, but I might
be fun if you had the time on your hands. The 2nd edition
books/cdrom are nolonger available but you might find
a set seccond hand (abebooks.com etc).

The floppys are here:
/n/sources/contrib/steve/historic/2nd-edition/pcdist/

I found a complete mirror of the old 2nd edition site
and I think uriel has copied it to cat-v.org.

You will need 16Mb to install and 8Mb to run a terminal
though It will work at 640x480x1 resolution.

The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
(say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).

-Steve

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[erik quanstrom]

>
> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).
>

i got a couple of 64mb via terminals a few years ago.
they were fine for normal work, compiling the kernel,
even with the giant myricom driver, even with 64mb.
cpu(1) plays its traditional role with that terminal.

- erik

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Uriel]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Steve Simon<steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> As Anthony says it is very very old, but I might
> be fun if you had the time on your hands. The 2nd edition
> books/cdrom are nolonger available but you might find
> a set seccond hand (abebooks.com etc).
>
> The floppys are here:
> /n/sources/contrib/steve/historic/2nd-edition/pcdist/
>
> I found a complete mirror of the old 2nd edition site
> and I think uriel has copied it to cat-v.org.

Yes, you can find a mirror of the 2nd ed site at
http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/plan9.att.com/

And the floppy is available at
http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/plan9.att.com/pcdist/ but I
have not tested it, if you do I would love to hear about it.

Enjoy

uriel

> You will need 16Mb to install and 8Mb to run a terminal
> though It will work at 640x480x1 resolution.
>
> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).
>
> -Steve
>
>

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Benjamin Huntsman]

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>And the floppy is available at
>http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/2nd_edition/plan9.att.com/pcdist/ but I
>have not tested it, if you do I would love to hear about it.

I had found that about a year ago, and was able to get the floppy set
up and running in Virtual PC without much trouble.  It'll only work at
800x600x1, but otherwise, it wasn't terribly difficult...  I've still
got the VPC image, but it hasn't been fired up in some time.

-Ben


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Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[lucio]

> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).

All versions of Plan 9 need an FPU (awk usually caught me out) so
beware of 486SX chips.

++L

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[John Floren]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Steve Simon<steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> As Anthony says it is very very old, but I might
> be fun if you had the time on your hands. The 2nd edition
> books/cdrom are nolonger available but you might find
> a set seccond hand (abebooks.com etc).
>
> The floppys are here:
> /n/sources/contrib/steve/historic/2nd-edition/pcdist/
>
> I found a complete mirror of the old 2nd edition site
> and I think uriel has copied it to cat-v.org.
>
> You will need 16Mb to install and 8Mb to run a terminal
> though It will work at 640x480x1 resolution.
>
> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).
>
> -Steve
>
>

With a little help from FreeDOS, I am now successfully running 2e on a
66MHz 486 with 32 MB of RAM and little bitty hard drive (< 300 MB).
It's fun; on the surface, it's not a lot different, although 800x600x1
makes things interesting (I like it, actually... rio hacking time?).

I'd kill for the full CD, which I guess would have to go on my other
486, since I seem to recall that the full system needs 500 MB.
However, given licensing, I suppose it's out of reach for the time
being--anybody with experience in this sort of thing, is there a point
in time when it could be distributed freely, or will it be stuck in
the "You can't have 2e without a license, and you can't have a
license" state forever?



John
--
"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Anthony Sorace]

the CD includes sources to the kernel on platforms which required NDAs
to get the information to do the port. part of the NDA, as i
understand it, required the sorts of restrictions on redistribution in
the commercial license. people have tried to get at least some bits of
that opened up, and at least one vendor has given a definitive "no".
so i don't think the CD, per se, will ever be available without a
license.

CDs with licenses do, every so often, come up for sale. after my
original copy got lost in a move, i bought one off someone here about
two years ago. but i think at this point, it's a good bet that no new
licenses for the CD will be generated.

i believe it would, theoretically, be possible for the Labs to offer
the CD contents, minus the restricted platforms, under the current
licensing terms, but i wouldn't hold out too much hope that anyone
with the authority to do so will find 2e worth the time.

on the chance i'm wrong: if anyone with such authority can give the
OK, i'm more than happy to do the legwork: prune the tree of
restricted stuff (which i understand to be the SGI, MIPS, and NeXT
kernel and boot loader bits, /sys/src/9/(chm indigo3k indigo4k next
power) and /sys/src/boot/(indigo magnum)) and stick either the tree or
a .tgz up somewhere.

failing that, i think you're left to ebay. sorry.

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[ron minnich]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Anthony Sorace<anothy@gmail.com> wrote:
> the CD includes sources to the kernel on platforms which required NDAs
> to get the information to do the port. part of the NDA, as i
> understand it, required the sorts of restrictions on redistribution in
> the commercial license. people have tried to get at least some bits of
> that opened up, and at least one vendor has given a definitive "no".
> so i don't think the CD, per se, will ever be available without a
> license.


I wonder how many of the companies involved still exist :-)

ron

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Anthony Sorace]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:45, ron minnich<rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder how many of the companies involved still exist :-)

i suspect ron knows all this already; this is intended for anyone else
who comes along and thinks this might make getting 2e CDs out easier
(instead of harder). again, this is all from my memory, mostly from
discussions on 9fans. various people with more first-hand knowledge of
the situation have spoken on the subject in the past; check the
archives if you want a more definitive answer.

the relevant companies were Sun, NeXT, SGI, and MIPS.

One way or another, the Sun sources are available; i think, but am not
certain, that Sun was asked and said okay (but maybe the original NDA
just never had that sort of restriction). see extra/sun.tgz for the
results.

NeXT was acquired by Apple, who in legal terms became a successor
entity (while I haven't seen the NDAs in question, that or similar is
pretty standard language). While I was still at the Labs, word was
that someone in 1127 (named at the time, but I don't remember now)
with a good relationship with higher-up types there asked and was
summarily denied.

SGI bought MIPS, then spun them out again, but kept parts. No clear
successor organization, which makes it likely that it'd be far more
work on the part of SGI and/or MIPS to figure out who can even say
"yes". even if there is a clear answer, neither company seems like
they've got a lot of spare personnel to devote the the question.

SGI's own NDA is almost certainly with SGI (sorry: sgi). that's
probably the easiest of the three to deal with, if someone were
really, really inclined.

but really: don't be. these are kernels for very, very outdated
platforms, some of which even eBay has trouble turning up. cobbling
together a 2e-supported pc would no doubt be faster and cheaper - and
you could likely get beefier results out of the deal. none of the
described platforms even have modern equivalents in their line. sun
was probably the closest here, and we've got that already.

anyway, to ron's question, for those keeping score:
Sun: released their stuff; recently acquired by Oracle.
NeXT: acquired by Apple, ate it from within.
MIPS: acquired by SGI. a smaller MIPS was then spit out when SGI
realized Itanium was their future (oops).
SGI: went backrupt, twice, then acquired by Rackable before the whole
shebang was renamed sgi.
i was going to say that having Plan 9 ported to your platform seemed
like a bad omen for your company, but equally valid is the observation
that being a platform vender (other than Apple) is bad for your
company.

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[erik quanstrom]

> i was going to say that having Plan 9 ported to your platform seemed
> like a bad omen for your company, but equally valid is the observation
> that being a platform vender (other than Apple) is bad for your
> company.

ibm seems to be doing ok.  but sequent, the original
home of ken's fs kernels, is not, having been
swallowed by the aforementioned ibm.

another platform vendor to fail recently which has
been mentioned here is sicortex, the guys who made
the low-power supercomputers.

- erik

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Benjamin Huntsman]

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>anyway, to ron's question, for those keeping score:
>Sun: released their stuff; recently acquired by Oracle.
>NeXT: acquired by Apple, ate it from within.
>MIPS: acquired by SGI. a smaller MIPS was then spit out when SGI
>realized Itanium was their future (oops).
>SGI: went backrupt, twice, then acquired by Rackable before the whole
>shebang was renamed sgi.
>i was going to say that having Plan 9 ported to your platform seemed
>like a bad omen for your company, but equally valid is the observation
>that being a platform vender (other than Apple) is bad for your
>company.

Last I had read, Rob Pike had tried several times to get SGI to allow the
release of their stuff, but they always said no.  I don't think any attempt
has been made since Rackable acquired SGI.  It still might be interesting
to see someday, since I thought I had heard that Bell Labs still has an SGI
Power Challenge running a 4th Edition kernel whose release is also barred
by the 2e NDA... Maybe it's been turned off for good by now, though...

-Ben

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Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Tim Newsham]

> probably the easiest of the three to deal with, if someone were
> really, really inclined.
>
> but really: don't be. these are kernels for very, very outdated
> platforms, some of which even eBay has trouble turning up. cobbling

That's besides the point.  This stuff should be saved for
posterity, and hopefully at some point, shared for its educational
and historic value.  The legal issues will probably lead to
the software being lost sooner or later, if not resolved...

If someone is really, really inclined, please DO...  There are
lots of us who would be very grateful.

Tim Newsham
http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Uriel]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:49 AM, John Floren<slawmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Steve Simon<steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>> As Anthony says it is very very old, but I might
>> be fun if you had the time on your hands. The 2nd edition
>> books/cdrom are nolonger available but you might find
>> a set seccond hand (abebooks.com etc).
>>
>> The floppys are here:
>> /n/sources/contrib/steve/historic/2nd-edition/pcdist/
>>
>> I found a complete mirror of the old 2nd edition site
>> and I think uriel has copied it to cat-v.org.
>>
>> You will need 16Mb to install and 8Mb to run a terminal
>> though It will work at 640x480x1 resolution.
>>
>> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
>> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).
>>
>> -Steve
>>
>>
>
> With a little help from FreeDOS, I am now successfully running 2e on a
> 66MHz 486 with 32 MB of RAM and little bitty hard drive (< 300 MB).
> It's fun; on the surface, it's not a lot different, although 800x600x1
> makes things interesting (I like it, actually... rio hacking time?).
>
> I'd kill for the full CD, which I guess would have to go on my other
> 486, since I seem to recall that the full system needs 500 MB.
> However, given licensing, I suppose it's out of reach for the time
> being--anybody with experience in this sort of thing, is there a point
> in time when it could be distributed freely, or will it be stuck in
> the "You can't have 2e without a license, and you can't have a
> license" state forever?

If you follow the insane rules of copyright, you will have to wait at
least 90 years or so before it falls into the public domain. And by
then they probably will have expanded copyright terms by another extra
hundred years, so 'forever' seems about right.

uriel

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[michael block]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 23:49, John Floren<slawmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
> With a little help from FreeDOS, I am now successfully running 2e

i can't get past the first disk. it seems there is no "suitable" fat
partition. no amount of partitioning and formatting under freedos or
freebsd results in anything disk one will put files on. so what
exactly constitutes a "suitable" fat partition?

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[John Floren]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:11 AM, michael block<michaelmuffin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 23:49, John Floren<slawmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
>> With a little help from FreeDOS, I am now successfully running 2e
>
> i can't get past the first disk. it seems there is no "suitable" fat
> partition. no amount of partitioning and formatting under freedos or
> freebsd results in anything disk one will put files on. so what
> exactly constitutes a "suitable" fat partition?
>
>

Ok, first note that I didn't have any luck with QEMU, I had to install
on an actual 486.

I booted the FreeDOS disk and created a small partition (something
like 50 MB) on the hard disk, leaving the rest unpartitioned. Then I
installed FreeDOS to the small partition and started the Plan 9
installation.

John
--
"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[erik quanstrom]

> I booted the FreeDOS disk and created a small partition (something
> like 50 MB) on the hard disk, leaving the rest unpartitioned. Then I
> installed FreeDOS to the small partition and started the Plan 9
> installation.

i don't have the 2e sources so i'm guessing.  (apologies.)i don't know
what versions of fat 2e supported, but i would imagine restricting
oneself to fat16 (and not fat16 lba) would be safest.

- erik

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[michael block]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:23, John Floren<slawmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, first note that I didn't have any luck with QEMU, I had to install
> on an actual 486.

i have the same error with both qemu and period hardware. i'm running
qemu-8.2.0 and a pentium 266MHz laptop. on the laptop both my freedos
partition and space for 2e are near the end of a 20G disk. same for
qemu but with a 200M hda file. was your qemu problem similar to mine?

> I booted the FreeDOS disk and created a small partition (something
> like 50 MB) on the hard disk, leaving the rest unpartitioned. Then I
> installed FreeDOS to the small partition and started the Plan 9
> installation.

yep, did the same


On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:26, erik quanstrom<quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> i don't know
> what versions of fat 2e supported, but i would imagine restricting
> oneself to fat16 (and not fat16 lba) would be safest.

i used fat16, i think lba. i figured plan 9 would be smart enough to
deal with lba and large disks, but wikipedia tells me that 1995 was
sort of a chs-lba transition period, so perhaps i was wrong. i won't
be able to experiment with chs on the laptop as it has a large disk
with freebsd filling it except for the very end

Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[erik quanstrom]

> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:26, erik quanstrom<quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> > i don't know
> > what versions of fat 2e supported, but i would imagine restricting
> > oneself to fat16 (and not fat16 lba) would be safest.
>
> i used fat16, i think lba. i figured plan 9 would be smart enough to
> deal with lba and large disks, but wikipedia tells me that 1995 was
> sort of a chs-lba transition period, so perhaps i was wrong. i won't
> be able to experiment with chs on the laptop as it has a large disk
> with freebsd filling it except for the very end

even the current 9load won't deal with fat16 lba or fat32 lba.
9load-e820 does, though.

- erik