[TUHS] Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[TUHS] Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Warren Toomey via TUHS]

All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they contained
Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't contain
Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.

Anyway, Angelo Papenhoff asked for any old tapes from the Labs that might
contain fragments of B source code or B binaries. I passed the extra tapes
on to him, and he has found some very interesting nuggets from the time
period when B -> NB -> C.

So, to help provide the context around Angelo's work, I've decided to put
all the tapes that Dennis gave me here:

https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/

Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Warren Toomey wrote:
> I passed the extra tapes on to him, and he has found some very
> interesting nuggets from the time period when B -> NB -> C.

Very exciting!  I can't wait to read about what he found, and how.

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Sebastien F4GRX]

Hi,

Thank you for this. The letters in the DMR2 folder are extremely 
interesting.

lett9 is to M. Carpenter (unknown to me) at the european CERN !


What can be shared about these on social media? Are these tapes 
considered private data, or public domain, or something else?


Sebastien

Le 11/07/2023 à 02:44, Warren Toomey via TUHS a écrit :
> All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
> put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they contained
> Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't contain
> Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.
>
> Anyway, Angelo Papenhoff asked for any old tapes from the Labs that might
> contain fragments of B source code or B binaries. I passed the extra tapes
> on to him, and he has found some very interesting nuggets from the time
> period when B -> NB -> C.
>
> So, to help provide the context around Angelo's work, I've decided to put
> all the tapes that Dennis gave me here:
>
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/
>
> Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Sebastien F4GRX wrote:
> lett9 is to M. Carpenter (unknown to me) at the european CERN !

Seems to be Brian Carpenter.  I'll let him know about this.

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Henry Bent]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 742 bytes --]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2023 at 20:44, Warren Toomey via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
> put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they
> contained
> Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't
> contain
> Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.
>
>
I see that this archive contains code for pricing out 11/40 and 11/45
systems, plus options.  This reminds me that I've found several references
to the 11/45 that Research purchased (late 1972/early 1973?) but no
specific details about its configuration.  I presume that it had an RK05 of
some sort but I'm curious about other peripherals and the amount of memory.

-Henry

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1069 bytes --]

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Angelo Papenhoff]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3188 bytes --]

I have attached the extracted e-pi and dmr tapes.

While calculating e and pi is certainly interesting (ken will be able to
say something about that), what I found particularly cool are the unused
block after the e-pi tape!
They contain a bunch of binaries, some of which I was able to identify,
see the e-pi_salvaged directory.

While trying to restore these files I made some observations:
- the programs written in B were compiled with a newer compiler
	than the files from the s2 tape. In particular they have
	the strings at the end of the respective object file and
	not inline where they appear (not in the .data section however)
- the B shell script mentioned in the man page that runs bc and ba is
	in there
- the man shell script is in there
- su has a different password (^S^Y^S)
- mail uses the file 'mbox' not 'mail', consistent with a change in the
	manual from v1 to v2
- some programs appeared to be written in a threaded code similar to B:
	echo, size, fc

The last point was of course most fascinating to me. So I disassembled
the echo binary and found something I would have never expected to
find: a C-like language compiled to threaded code.
My immediate guess was that this must be NB, mentioned in dmr's c
history paper [1], however ken said that NB was always compiled and that
dmr first developed it on the honeywell mainframe.
Now dmr himself in that same paper said one main difference between NB and
early C was the way that vectors/arrays were handled, but this is
clearly not the case because the last1120c compiler treats arrays the
same way as B does. My point is that what exactly NB was seems to be a
bit uncertain.
What we actually have is:
	B implemented in threaded code
	a C-like language with byte types implemented in threaded code
	C implemented in machine code
My personal theory is that this intermediate step is exactly what NB is.
Of course dmr also developed a machine code generator for B on the honeywell
machine, even if it is lost. But how that relates to NB and the PDP-11
exactly I cannot say, so take all that with a grain of salt.
I hope the people who were there and can say more will say something
about this :)

In any case we have this (to me) totally surprising intermediate step
between B and C. I have put some (sloppily commented) disassembled
and/or restored files here [2].
What's very cool is that the dmr tape has a file fc.b, which is clearly
not written in B! My guess is that compiled it will match the fc binary
more or less exactly (I haven't decompiled this one yet).

Also of great interest in this context is the cgd directory on the dmr
tape. I'm not sure how finished this program actually is (I suspect it
is not), but it claims to be a fortran code generator and it has a
structure quite similar to the second pass of the C compiler, with a
difference: The C compiler builds a tree for every expression in the
first pass and dumps that into a file to be picked up by the second
pass. This program builds the tree in the second pass.
Interestingly this is much like I think the B assembler (ba) would have
worked.


Cheers,
Angelo

[1] https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html
[2] http://squoze.net/NB/

[-- Attachment #2: dmr_tapes2.tgz --]
[-- Type: application/x-gtar-compressed, Size: 118220 bytes --]

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Angelo Papenhoff]

On 11/07/23, Angelo Papenhoff wrote:
> - some programs appeared to be written in a threaded code similar to B:
> 	echo, size, fc

What I forgot: size and fc on the s2 tape are written in the same
language (in fact the size binary is the same, haven't checked fc).
It was right under our eyes the whole time!

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[segaloco via TUHS]

> > - some programs appeared to be written in a threaded code similar to B:
> > echo, size, fc
> 
> 
> What I forgot: size and fc on the s2 tape are written in the same
> language (in fact the size binary is the same, haven't checked fc).
> It was right under our eyes the whole time!

This is all great stuff Angelo, glad to see more light being shed on this stuff.  If you need any extra fingers on disassembly just let me know, it's one of my oldest hobbies!

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[KenUnix]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 816 bytes --]

If interested this fellow has for sale among other things DEC Tape
canisters.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/cleaning-house.1239509/

Ken




On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 2:25 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> > > - some programs appeared to be written in a threaded code similar to B:
> > > echo, size, fc
> >
> >
> > What I forgot: size and fc on the s2 tape are written in the same
> > language (in fact the size binary is the same, haven't checked fc).
> > It was right under our eyes the whole time!
>
> This is all great stuff Angelo, glad to see more light being shed on this
> stuff.  If you need any extra fingers on disassembly just let me know, it's
> one of my oldest hobbies!
>
> - Matt G.
>


-- 
End of line
JOB TERMINATED -->> Okey Dokey, OK Boss

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1512 bytes --]

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Jonathan Gray]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 10:39:25AM +0200, Sebastien F4GRX wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for this. The letters in the DMR2 folder are extremely
> interesting.
> 
> lett9 is to M. Carpenter (unknown to me) at the european CERN !

The fed/form names in ken/tp/distr/form.m dated Jun 28 1975
mostly match the names and numbers used in
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Usenix/Early_Newsletters/19750730-unix-news-n1.pdf
"The integer part of the sequence number of the first line corresponds
to a list of licenses that Ken Thompson keeps.  The fractional part
designates multiple installations under a single license."

nmrc output from v6 fed on the name strings:

name-1:
Professor Cyrus Levinthal
Department of Biological Sciences
Schermerhorn Hall
Columbia University
New York, New York 10027


name-1a:
Mr. Reidar Bornholdt
Dept. of Biological Science
653 Scherm Ext.
Columbia University
New York, N. Y. 10027


name-2:
Prof. T. A. Marsland
Department of Computing Science
The University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada


name-3:
Mr. Bill Mayhew
The Children's Museum
The Jamaicaway
Boston, Massachusetts 02130


name-4:
Prof. Bruce W. Arden
Department of Electrical Engineering
Brackett Hall, Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey 08540


name-5:
Mr. E. J. Desautels
The University of Wisconsin
Computer Science Department
1210 West Dayton Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53706


name-6:
Mr. A. J. Lindstrom
Sponsored Research Administrator
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California 91109


name-7:
Mr. Gary M. Goins
Department of Biometry
Wearn Research Building
Case Western University
Cleveland, Ohio 44106


name-8:
Prof. W. H. Huggins
Department of Electrical Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland 21218


name-9:
Mr. Brent Byer
Aiken Computation Lab
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138


name-10:
Dr. Vladimir Slamecka
Computer Center
School of Information and Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia 30332


name-11:
Dr. Kenneth King
Office of the Dean for Computer Systems
535 East 80th Street
New York, New York 10021


name-11a:
Prof. Melvin Ferentz
Physics Dept.
Brooklyn College of CUNY
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11210


name-12:
James P. Lewis, Director
Computer Center
Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons
630 West 168th Street
New York, N. Y. 10032


name-13:
Mr. Rusty Whitney
Director of Computing
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
4015 S.W. Canyon Road
Portland, Oregon 97221


name-14:
Mr. Gideon Yuval
Computer Science Department
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel


name-15:
Mr. Stanley C. Bateman
University of California
Contracts and Grants Office
San Francisco, California 94143


name-16:
Prof. D. A. Michalopoulos
Department of Quantitative Methods
The California State University
Fullerton, California 92634


name-17:
Prof. N. Marcuvitz
Polytechnic Institute of New York
Long Island Center
Route 110
Farmingdale, New York 11735


name-18:
Prof. R. W. Peebles
Computer Communications Network Group
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1


name-19:
Mr. Martin E. Newell
The University of Utah
College of Engineering
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112


name-20:
Prof. D. A. Jardine
Dept. of Computing Science
Queen's University at Kingston
Kingston, Ontario
Canada


name-21:
Prof. Ralph H. Bjork
Science Building
Saint Olaf College
Northfield, Minnesota 55057


name-22:
Prof C. Frank Starmer
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina 27710


name-23:
Prof. R. S. Fabry
Evans Hall
University of California
Berkeley, Calif 94720


name-24:
Dr. M. S. Cole
Queen Mary College
University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS, England


name-25:
Mr. John E. Ecklund
Yale University
10 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, Connecticut  06520


name-26:
Dr. P. Weiner
Information Sciences Dept.
The Rand Corporation
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, California 90406


name-26a:
Ms. Lois H. Heiser
Information Sciences Dept.
The Rand Corporation
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, California 90406


name-27:
Prof. D. B. Gillies
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois 61801


name-27a:
Greg Chesson
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois 61801


name-28:
Mr John Vanderford
Institute for Physical Sciences
The University of Texas at Dallas
PO Box 688
Richardson, Texas 75080


name-29:
Prof. E. Milgrom
Faculte des Sciences Appliquees
Unite D'Informatique
Universite Catholique de Louvain
Chenin Du Cyclotron 2
1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgique


name-30:
Prof C.J. Karzmark
Dept of Radiology
Stanford University School of Medicine
300 Pasteur Drive
Stanford, California 94305


name-31:
Mr. Travis Wood
University of Alabama in Birmingham
522 Spain, UAB
University Station
Birmingham, Alabama 35294


name-32:
Mr. William C. Ripperger
Knox College Computer Center
Knox College
Galesburg, Ill 61401


name-33:
Mr. J. Tansley
Medical Computing Group
Medical School
University of Edinbourgh
Teviot Place
Edinburgh EH8 9A6, Scotland


name-34:
Mr. Belton E. Allen
Instructor of Computer Science
Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, California 93940


name-35:
Prof. James D. Foley
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
New West Hall
Chapel Hill, North Carolina


name-36:
Mr. Dustin H. Heuston
The Spence School
22 E. 91st St.
New York, New York 10028


name-37:
Mr. T. C. Stevens
Computer Research Dept
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A1


name-38:
R. M. Kavanaugh
Dept of Computational Science
University of Sakatchewan
Saskatoon, S7N 0W0 Canada


name-39:
D. R. McNeil
Statistical Computing Lab
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08540


name-40:
H. L. Counts, Jr.
Purchasing
Denison University
P.O. Box 119
Granville, Ohio 43023


name-41:
H. Bellmar
Minuteman Regional Vocational
High School District
758 Merrett Road
Lexington, Mass 02173


name-42:
James Curry
IASSA
2361 Laxenburg
Vienna, Austria


name-43:
Carl Henry
Computer Center
Carleton College
Northfield, Minn 55057


name-44:
D. W. de Bakker
Dept. of Computer Science
Foundation Mathematisch Centrum
2e Boerhaavestraar 49
Amsterdam 1005, The Netherlands


name-45:
S. Grodstein
East Brunswick High School
22 Milltown Rd.
East Brunswick, NJ 08816


name-46:
C. W. Tan
Division of Engineering
The Cooper Union
Cooper Square
New York, NY 10003


name-47:
H. S. Eisenstein
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208


name-48:
R. Whitfeld
University of New South Wales
PO Box 1
Kensington, NSW Austrialia 2D33


name-49:
J. van den Bas
Katholieke Universiteit, Toernooiveld
Nijmegen, The Netherlands


name-50:
P. L. De Souza
Dept of Elictrical Engineering
Heriot-Watt University
31-35 Grassmarket
Edinburgh EH12H5 Scotland


name-51:
R. J. Collins
Dept of Computer Science
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T2N2

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Lars Brinkhoff]

> Sebastien F4GRX wrote:
>> lett9 is to M. Carpenter (unknown to me) at the european CERN !
> Seems to be Brian Carpenter.  I'll let him know about this.

He wrote back with a short essay about this: "A Letter from Ritchie"

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/LetterFromRitchie.pdf

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Sebastien F4GRX]

Hi,

Le 13/07/2023 à 06:42, Lars Brinkhoff a écrit :
>> Sebastien F4GRX wrote:
>>> lett9 is to M. Carpenter (unknown to me) at the european CERN !
>> Seems to be Brian Carpenter.  I'll let him know about this.
> He wrote back with a short essay about this: "A Letter from Ritchie"
>
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/LetterFromRitchie.pdf

That was fascinating to read! Thank you for reporting!

Sebastien

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Jonathan Gray]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 10:44:33AM +1000, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote:
> All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
> put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they contained
> Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't contain
> Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.
> 
> Anyway, Angelo Papenhoff asked for any old tapes from the Labs that might
> contain fragments of B source code or B binaries. I passed the extra tapes
> on to him, and he has found some very interesting nuggets from the time
> period when B -> NB -> C.
> 
> So, to help provide the context around Angelo's work, I've decided to put
> all the tapes that Dennis gave me here:
> 
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/
> 
> Cheers, Warren

Thank-you to all involved.

Interesting that this has a version of
"The UNIX Time-Sharing System" paper with timestamps close to the
SOSP presentation.

UnixEditionZero-Threshold_OCR.pdf 1971 draft

Symposium on Operating System Principles, October 15-17 1973
proceedings only have an abstract

dmr_tapes/dmr2/tp/paper/p1 Nov 1973
"about 20 installations have been put into service"
(same number given in fourth edition manual also dated Nov 1973)
"Files are named by sequences of eight or fewer characters"

tuhs/Documentation/Papers/unix_cacm74.pdf July 1974
"about 40 installations have been put into service"
"Files are named by sequences of 14 or fewer characters"

tuhs/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz unix/p1 Jun 1975
"about 100 installations have been put into service"

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Jonathan Gray]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 02:57:06AM +1000, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 10:44:33AM +1000, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote:
> > All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
> > put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they contained
> > Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't contain
> > Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.
> > 
> > Anyway, Angelo Papenhoff asked for any old tapes from the Labs that might
> > contain fragments of B source code or B binaries. I passed the extra tapes
> > on to him, and he has found some very interesting nuggets from the time
> > period when B -> NB -> C.
> > 
> > So, to help provide the context around Angelo's work, I've decided to put
> > all the tapes that Dennis gave me here:
> > 
> > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/
> > 
> > Cheers, Warren
> 
> Thank-you to all involved.
> 
> Interesting that this has a version of
> "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" paper with timestamps close to the
> SOSP presentation.
> 
> UnixEditionZero-Threshold_OCR.pdf 1971 draft
> 
> Symposium on Operating System Principles, October 15-17 1973
> proceedings only have an abstract

The ACM online archive only has the abstract
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800009.808045
but google books shows fragments of more in searches
https://books.google.com/books?id=TxNRAQAAIAAJ

> 
> dmr_tapes/dmr2/tp/paper/p1 Nov 1973
> "about 20 installations have been put into service"
> (same number given in fourth edition manual also dated Nov 1973)
> "Files are named by sequences of eight or fewer characters"
> 
> tuhs/Documentation/Papers/unix_cacm74.pdf July 1974
> "about 40 installations have been put into service"
> "Files are named by sequences of 14 or fewer characters"
> 
> tuhs/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz unix/p1 Jun 1975
> "about 100 installations have been put into service"

DECUS: Proceedings of the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society
1977: Vol 3 Iss 5
https://archive.org/details/sim_digital-equipment-computer-users-society-transactions_1977_3_5
"about 250 installations have been put into service"

tuhs/Documentation/Papers/BSTJ/bstj57-6-1905.pdf July/Aug 1978
"over 600 installations have been put into service"

tuhs/Distributions/Research/Henry_Spencer_v7/v7.tar.gz
usr/doc/cacm Jan 1979
"over 600 installations have been put into service"

[TUHS] Re: Some old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie

[Phil Budne]

On July 11th, Warren wrote:
> All, way back when, Dennis sent me some DECtape images to look after. I've
> put some of them in the Unix Archive (the s1 and s2 tapes) as they contained
> Unix source code or binaries. The others I kept aside as they didn't contain
> Unix code, or they were potentially sensitive.
>
> .... I've decided to put
> all the tapes that Dennis gave me here:
>
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/

In https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/README

Are notes (apparently written by DMR):
    dmr
            Random stuff from my directory.  Most probable dates: 1972.
            ....
            pig.b is an interesting artifact:  it is a B program
            that echoes what you type in Pig latin.  (Incidentally,
            there is a translation of this program into C, dated 1978,
            in a subdirectory that still spins on a disk attached to
            the Unix machine where I get my mail.)

This jiggled a nerve in my brain, that FINALLY connected.

The TMG manual in the Multics System-Programmer's Manual by Robert
R. Fenichel and M. D. Mcilroy, pub. April 17, 1967 has a sample TMG
program to translate english to Pig Latin.

https://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/Multics-Documents/MSPM/bn-4-02.670417.tmgl-reference.pdf#page=31

    It appears (in translation) as a test to a port of PDP-11 TMG:
    https://github.com/amakukha/tmg/blob/master/test/086_pig_latin/pig_latin.t

I haven't yet compared pig.b to the program in the TMG manual.