[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Rhys Weatherley]

Hi,

I've been lurking here for a week or two, reading the
archives on porting v7 to x86, etc.

On a lark, I downloaded the v7 sources and started to
"upgrade" them so the userland can build and run on top
of modern OS kernels such as Linux.  The bulk of libc
is the same (warts and all), with the "sys" layer replaced
with modern syscalls.

Perhaps it is a bit "sacrilegious", but I believe it makes
the code more accessible for experimentation, and it
should solve the "how do we get a PDP-11 compiler"
problem: we use the original hosted on top of a modern
kernel as a cross-compiler.

Check it out and let me know what you think.  Most of
the libraries have been upgraded, with a handful of the
simpler command-line utilities.

http://www.southern-storm.com.au/v7upgrade.html

Cheers,

Rhys.

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Warren Toomey]

In article by Rhys Weatherley:
> On a lark, I downloaded the v7 sources and started to
> "upgrade" them so the userland can build and run on top
> of modern OS kernels such as Linux.  The bulk of libc
> is the same (warts and all), with the "sys" layer replaced
> with modern syscalls.
> 
> Perhaps it is a bit "sacrilegious", but I believe it makes
> the code more accessible for experimentation, and it
> should solve the "how do we get a PDP-11 compiler"
> problem: we use the original hosted on top of a modern
> kernel as a cross-compiler.

Hi Rhys, just looked at your page. I liked the comment:

  Using these libraries, it is possible to port and run the old v7 command-line
  utilities. Eventually, it should be possible to run the original PDP-11
  toolchain as a cross-compiler and hence be able to build an original v7
  system without needing to use a PDP-11 emulator to run the old binaries.

Strangely enough, I took a slightly different tack than you did to obtain
the same result. Have a look at Apout at
ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout/README

8-)
	Warren

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Rhys Weatherley]

Warren Toomey wrote:

> Strangely enough, I took a slightly different tack than you did to obtain
> the same result. Have a look at Apout at
> ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout/README

Nice.  Both approaches have their uses.

I'm interested in how upgrading the code will make it more
accessible to people wishing to study OS design, by enabling
it to compile natively for modern hardware.  It's difficult to
"fiddle" with the code when running via emulation.

I forgot to mention in my previous message that I've also
got the userland compiling with bcc (Bruce's C Compiler),
outputting 8086 binaries.  This should help those who want
to port v7 to 8086.

Besides, it's fun to mess with this old code.  I'm quite
impressed that there's been very few problems upgrading
the userland to run on 32-bit CPU's.

Cheers,

Rhys.

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Mirian Crzig Lennox]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2002 14:06:28 +1000, Rhys Weatherley <rweather at zip.com.au> wrote:
>
>I've been lurking here for a week or two, reading the
>archives on porting v7 to x86, etc.
>
>Perhaps it is a bit "sacrilegious", but I believe it makes
>the code more accessible for experimentation, and it
>should solve the "how do we get a PDP-11 compiler"
>problem: we use the original hosted on top of a modern
>kernel as a cross-compiler.

I don't believe it is sacrilegious at all.  The triumph of UNIX has
always been that it's the software that really matters, not the
hardware.

--Mirian

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Al Kossow]

There were ports of PCC to the 8086, Z8000, and 68000 done by
MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. This might be a more
historically correct place to start.

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[M E Leypold @ labnet]

Al Kossow writes:
 > 
 > There were ports of PCC to the 8086, Z8000, and 68000 done by
 > MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. This might be a more
 > historically correct place to start.


I alway wondered, wether the source of these ports is available
somewhere. I bet it isn't.

Regards -- Markus

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Mike Haertel]

I'm fairly sure I once saw the MIT 68k port of PCC
on a Usenix tape.  No idea which one, but probably
around 1982 or so.

[TUHS] v7 upgrade

[Warren Toomey]

In article by Mike Haertel:
> I'm fairly sure I once saw the MIT 68k port of PCC
> on a Usenix tape.  No idea which one, but probably
> around 1982 or so.

I just looked in the Usenix tapes in the Unix Archive, no luck. The closest
I could find is the directory delaware/cwru.v7/pcc in the file
Applications/Spencer_Tapes/del.tar.gz, but this looks like a PDP-11
version and not a port.

	Warren