* [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes @ 2019-03-10 7:31 Mike Haertel 2019-03-09 23:24 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-10 8:20 ` arnold 0 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-10 7:31 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society I noticed that the TUHS archive does not include a 4.1BSD distribution. Also, while poking around the net, I've found a number of purported tape images of 4.1BSD dated 7/10/1981 that look to me to a little sketchy, since most contain files dated well into 1982. So it appears to me that 4.1BSD is semi-lost. While googling all this, I discovered that the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin has an online archive catalog which lists a couple of 4.1BSD distribution tapes in the "John Gabriel Byrne Computer Science Collection". https://scss.tcd.ie/SCSSTreasuresCatalog/ Perhaps someone from TUHS who lives near Dublin could investigate and see if images can be made of these tapes? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 7:31 [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-09 23:24 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-10 11:18 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-10 8:20 ` arnold 1 sibling, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-09 23:24 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 6:52 PM Mike Haertel <tuhs@ducky.net> wrote: > Also, while poking around the net, I've found a number of purported > tape images of 4.1BSD dated 7/10/1981 that look to me to a little sketchy, > since most contain files dated well into 1982. Thanks Mike, you've raised an interesting question as to whether there is an original (untainted) 1981 4.1BSD release available? I see that the easily found distribution has modifications running into 1982. Berkeley 4.1 VAX/UNIX (Amnesia-Vax) login: root Last login: Sun Jan 21 18:57:55 on console Welcome to Berkeley Vax/UNIX (4.1bsd revised 1 Sept. 1981) Erase is delete Kill is control-U # ls -l / total 795 -rw-r--r-- 1 root 57 Mar 18 1981 .cshrc -rw-r--r-- 1 root 90 Mar 21 1981 .login -rw-r--r-- 1 root 99 Apr 30 1981 .profile drwxr-xr-x 2 root 32 Mar 15 1981 arch drwxrwxrwx 2 root 160 May 10 1982 bill ...elided... On this page: http://gunkies.org/wiki/4.1_BSD the file references http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/UCB_CSRG/4.1_BSD_19810710.zip and that has files from Feb-1982. The Trinity College appears to be cataloguing many interesting software artefacts. I would be interested in some of the other items they show on their web-page. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-09 23:24 ` Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-10 11:18 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-10 20:55 ` Warner Losh 0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2019-03-10 11:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Nigel Williams; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society Nigel Williams wrote: > Mike Haertel wrote: >> Also, while poking around the net, I've found a number of purported >> tape images of 4.1BSD dated 7/10/1981 that look to me to a little sketchy > http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/UCB_CSRG/4.1_BSD_19810710.zip That's what I have been using for testing the MIT Chaosnet patches. If it's no good, I'd like to know. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 11:18 ` Lars Brinkhoff @ 2019-03-10 20:55 ` Warner Losh 2019-03-10 22:53 ` Mike Haertel 0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Warner Losh @ 2019-03-10 20:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Lars Brinkhoff; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 573 bytes --] On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 5:49 AM Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> wrote: > Nigel Williams wrote: > > Mike Haertel wrote: > >> Also, while poking around the net, I've found a number of purported > >> tape images of 4.1BSD dated 7/10/1981 that look to me to a little > sketchy > > http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/UCB_CSRG/4.1_BSD_19810710.zip > > That's what I have been using for testing the MIT Chaosnet patches. > If it's no good, I'd like to know. > There's also http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I just noticed... Warner [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1245 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 20:55 ` Warner Losh @ 2019-03-10 22:53 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow 2019-03-23 17:50 ` reed 0 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-10 22:53 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society Warner Losh writes: >There's also >http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I >just noticed... > >Warner That tape image is has 3 files in it: The first consists of a bunch of 1024-byte records followed by a single 512-byte record. It may be a boot loader. The second is a file system dump. I haven't attempted to examine its contents yet. The third is a tar of /usr, with absolute pathnames for all files in it. The tar archive truncates abruptly in the middle of a Franz Lisp manual source file, which it is trying to extract somewhere under /usr/tape1/. Some of the directories in the tar archive have modification times in 1982, but all of the files in the tar archive are 1981 or earlier. If you ignore /usr/tape1/* and look only at the earlier files in the tar archive, it appears it might be a legitimate copy of 4.1BSD as of Aug 31, 1981. In particular, there is a large cluster of files with modification times of 7/9/1981, and fewer than 25 files newer than that. The newest file (excluding the /usr/tape1 material) is 8/31/1981. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 22:53 ` Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow 2019-03-11 1:15 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-23 17:50 ` reed 1 sibling, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Al Kossow @ 2019-03-11 0:25 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs On 3/10/19 3:53 PM, Mike Haertel wrote: > Warner Losh writes: >> There's also >> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I >> just noticed... Likely a Memorex sticky tape that stripped its oxide when I tried to read it. These were read a long time before I had a tape oven. I've not dug back into what I still have from the 4BSD days, or in the CHM archives since I thought Kirk had this all covered. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow @ 2019-03-11 1:15 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 1:15 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society Al Kossow writes: > On 3/10/19 3:53 PM, Mike Haertel wrote: > > Warner Losh writes: > >> There's also > >> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I > >> just noticed... > > Likely a Memorex sticky tape that stripped its oxide when I tried to read it. > > These were read a long time before I had a tape oven. > > I've not dug back into what I still have from the 4BSD days, or in the CHM > archives since I thought Kirk had this all covered. I've double-checked, and disk1/4.1 from Kirk's archive is definitely 4.0, (with the addition of a 4.0.upgrade directory taken from a 4.1 distribution). As far as online 4.1 tape images are concerned, I did a bit more investigating: AFAICT this file: http://bitsavers.org/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz appears to be the closest online thing to a 7/10/1981 version of 4.1. This file: http://bitsavers.org/bits/UCB_CSRG/41bsd_7-10-81.tap contains files with modification times up through June 1982. Neither of these include the corresponding /usr/doc or /usr/ingres (which would have been on the distribution tape #2). Those seem to be missing altogether. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow 2019-03-11 1:15 ` Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-11 17:28 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 21:47 ` Al Kossow 1 sibling, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-03-11 5:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs, Al Kossow [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1562 bytes --] I'm not blaming anyone, as a matter of fact I'm super grateful for all the hard work that is done to preserve what is there on these old tapes, but it's super frustrating that we don't have good historical artifacts. And that tapes are so seemingly useless. I'm 100% out of my element, but is there a kyrolux like device for tapes? It seems so many 'cut short' and yet I image there is most certainly more tape on the spool. I'm just a n00b, and apologize if it's a dumb thing to ask. I linked to the bitsaver stuff when writing on the 4.1 stuff as they booted in simh and gave a seemingly working system, but clearly they are missing stuff. I guess I need to figure out the sccs and how to find the latest date on a tape and work from that date based on the CD archive. But thanks again, Al for your bits that has me hooked on looking at the latest digital artifacts!! I still have hope that more of TripOS eventually surfaces On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 8:26 AM +0800, "Al Kossow" <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote: On 3/10/19 3:53 PM, Mike Haertel wrote: > Warner Losh writes: >> There's also >> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I >> just noticed... Likely a Memorex sticky tape that stripped its oxide when I tried to read it. These were read a long time before I had a tape oven. I've not dug back into what I still have from the 4BSD days, or in the CHM archives since I thought Kirk had this all covered. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2646 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens @ 2019-03-11 17:28 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy 2019-03-11 21:47 ` Al Kossow 1 sibling, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 17:28 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society I contacted Kirk. He was surprised to learn that the copy of 4.1 in his CSRG archive is not, in fact, 4.1. Also he says that the contents of the existing CSRG archive disks are all he has; apparently the dumps of old distribution tapes to disk were hastily done on the way out the door as CSRG was being shut down. He suggested I inquire with TUHS for a copy, so evidently he does not read this list. His other suggestion was to reconstruct from SCCS files. I think at this point the preservation community has essentially all the bits from tape 1 of the 7/10/81 release (in somewhat scattered form needing to be reassembled into a usable distribution tape image). The contents of tape 2 seem to be altogether lost (unless someone is able to recover it from surviving media). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 17:28 ` Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy 2019-03-11 18:33 ` Lars Brinkhoff ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2019-03-11 17:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mike Haertel; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1, it wasn't a great release (even though Masscomp did their changes to 4.1c if I remember correctly. Clem?). 4.2 was the first release that I remember being pretty solid and 4.3 improved on that. On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 10:28:23AM -0700, Mike Haertel wrote: > I contacted Kirk. He was surprised to learn that the copy of 4.1 in > his CSRG archive is not, in fact, 4.1. > > Also he says that the contents of the existing CSRG archive disks > are all he has; apparently the dumps of old distribution tapes to > disk were hastily done on the way out the door as CSRG was being > shut down. > > He suggested I inquire with TUHS for a copy, so evidently he does not > read this list. His other suggestion was to reconstruct from SCCS files. > > I think at this point the preservation community has essentially all > the bits from tape 1 of the 7/10/81 release (in somewhat scattered > form needing to be reassembled into a usable distribution tape image). > > The contents of tape 2 seem to be altogether lost (unless someone is > able to recover it from surviving media). -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy @ 2019-03-11 18:33 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-11 18:41 ` Clem Cole ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2019-03-11 18:33 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society Larry McVoy wrote: > Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1, it wasn't > a great release It may have some value if you want to have 4BSD networked through Chaosnet. MIT's Chaosnet patch applies on top of 4.1. I haven't checked 4.2. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy 2019-03-11 18:33 ` Lars Brinkhoff @ 2019-03-11 18:41 ` Clem Cole 2019-03-12 6:21 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-12 12:44 ` arnold 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2019-03-11 18:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6186 bytes --] I think I have a true 4.1 tape in my archives but ... I'm not sure it's on 3M (Scotch media). Those are in sealed 3M tape boxes in the basement 10 tapes to a box, and difficult to get too. They have been kept reasonable dry and mostly stable climate, which is why I keep them there not the attic. So far every tape, I have pulled from there we have succeeded in reading .. but I have not tried in a while because my triple density drive has load issues which I have not had the time to chase. I also do not have a tape oven [@Alan K . - I assume you made one. I'd love to hear your experiences with it]. As for BSD 4.1 kernel really was 4.0 plus a ton of small changes #ifdef FASTVAX [4.5 stuff is a little different than was reported the other day -- close but not quite]. This was the work wnj did to demonstrate that UNIX was within epsilon of VMS from a performance standpoint (i.e. the beginning of the UCB/Stanford war of what was going to be the supported system for Arpa). I'm 99.999% sure that the user level APIs are the same, the difference is he dropped into assembler in places, rewrote a number of internal routines etc. Basically, it tuned the c**p out of the 4.0 release to prove to DARPA that UNIX was just as fast or faster than VMS. Note that the userspace code between the two released were different because time had marched on and more and more stuff was available and had been placed in /usr/ucb; plus more and more of the original v7 commands had been hacked/expanded. There really was not a lot of control of the userspace at this point and CSRG did not yet exist. As a for instance, the compilers and libraries had been hacked a great deal by a lot different people so even if the foo.c was the same chances are the /bin/foo was different binaries between the two systems [hey I wasn't a compiler person and I had hacked on libc to fix a stdio bug was causing my thesis to go in the toilet]. That said, 4.1BSD was the first really stable Vax code base and what a lot of people ran. It was formal release a lot of people outside of BSD had it both universities and commercial. There were copies at MIT, CMU, Standford, Harvard, much less some of the big public school likes Michigan, Wisconson, and Purdue. For instance, this is the kernel George Goble hacked on to create the Purdue Dual processor Vax. We had it a Tektronix, I know HP and IBM had it, and the original Marx brothers machines at AT&T Whippany ran it. Dale's folks in Columbus had and I think ihnp4 [Indian Hill New Products group] was a BSD 4.1 system. Plus, of course by the time I was at Masscomp, that was what they had had. [Sun did too, but I don't think they ever shipped anything with 4.1 BSD base. The original Sun OS was done for them by Asa Romberger's folks and was based on V7/System III. Joy had not come there yet]. As was reported the follow on to 4.1 BSD was to be supposed to 5.0 etc.... the naming stuff was described correctly in earlier email here. But all of that was >>post<< 4.1BSD. Post 4.1BSD shipping, CSRG had been formalized and now a project from the DARPA to support UNIX on new Vax hardware and to add extensions. As was described they ended up using a different naming scheme. Remember until that time, there was no formal CSRG project. It was like ever other University, a group of people hacking and swapping code changes with the reset of the Unix community. So when the became a project and started to release things for DARPA is when formal tracking started. CSRG's Alpha's [or release candidates in today's terms] for these were called 4.1A, 4.1B, and 4.1C. 4.1A was pretty stable, but IIRC was not quite as radical is 4.1B (their's were signals got hacked and a number of new system calls added). 4.1B was not particularly stable and as Larry suggested 4.1C actually was usable and did not crash every day. IIRC The actual 4.2 BSD release took about a 9-12 months after 4.1C before Sam finally pushed it out the door [and I think wnj had left for Sun by then]. As Larry's comments about Masscomp, the original RTU 1.0 used a 4.1BSD kernel with a bunch of System III as the base (which really was an Alpha release for MSCP). It shipped to a handful of customers, but it was easy to crash (But we got it out the door and people loved it actually). The first version that actually was fairly stable was RTU 1.0A which was a mash-up of the earlier work using 4.1 plus tjt and I applying a lot of 4.1C to it (as I had brought 4.1C with me from UCB). RTU 1.1 or maybe 1.2 was when 4.2BSD was finally added. I created conditional symbolic links before that because we used them to create the Universe stuff and I've forgotten when that shipped. Clem ᐧ On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 1:39 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1, it wasn't > a great release (even though Masscomp did their changes to 4.1c if I > remember correctly. Clem?). 4.2 was the first release that I remember > being pretty solid and 4.3 improved on that. > > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 10:28:23AM -0700, Mike Haertel wrote: > > I contacted Kirk. He was surprised to learn that the copy of 4.1 in > > his CSRG archive is not, in fact, 4.1. > > > > Also he says that the contents of the existing CSRG archive disks > > are all he has; apparently the dumps of old distribution tapes to > > disk were hastily done on the way out the door as CSRG was being > > shut down. > > > > He suggested I inquire with TUHS for a copy, so evidently he does not > > read this list. His other suggestion was to reconstruct from SCCS files. > > > > I think at this point the preservation community has essentially all > > the bits from tape 1 of the 7/10/81 release (in somewhat scattered > > form needing to be reassembled into a usable distribution tape image). > > > > The contents of tape 2 seem to be altogether lost (unless someone is > > able to recover it from surviving media). > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8483 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy 2019-03-11 18:33 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-11 18:41 ` Clem Cole @ 2019-03-12 6:21 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-12 6:32 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-12 12:44 ` arnold 3 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-12 6:21 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 4:39 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1 On the history side, I found having 4.1 BSD important when we were recovering the build of a programming language on this version. As we had the binary we wanted to be sure that when we re-compiled we could confirm that the result was identical to the original. This was to ensure that we had recovered the build environment as it was originally. For that reason, I would urge preservationists to always try to recover as many incremental versions as possible. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-12 6:21 ` Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-12 6:32 ` Jason Stevens 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-03-12 6:32 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society, Nigel Williams [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1257 bytes --] I would also add that 4.1 also ties into research UNIX v8. On the VAX (via SIMH) its bootstrapped from a 4.1 system. David du Colombier's guide uses the 4.1 image I found and modified with some 4.2 to get running on SIMH http://9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/simh/v8 Not having 4.1 would have made this far more involved. 4.2 is no doubt a major Internet milestone on the way to SunOS & 4.3 while 4.0/4.1 are important in a pre-tcpip focused world. Naturally I'm biased into thinking they are all important, but I know resources /time are limited. On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 2:22 PM +0800, "Nigel Williams" <nw@retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 4:39 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1 On the history side, I found having 4.1 BSD important when we were recovering the build of a programming language on this version. As we had the binary we wanted to be sure that when we re-compiled we could confirm that the result was identical to the original. This was to ensure that we had recovered the build environment as it was originally. For that reason, I would urge preservationists to always try to recover as many incremental versions as possible. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2477 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2019-03-12 6:21 ` Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-12 12:44 ` arnold 3 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: arnold @ 2019-03-12 12:44 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs, lm; +Cc: tuhs Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote: > Other than for history's sake, I don't see the value of 4.1, it wasn't > a great release (even though Masscomp did their changes to 4.1c if I > remember correctly. Clem?). 4.2 was the first release that I remember > being pretty solid and 4.3 improved on that. I'm with Clem; we ran 4.1 at Georgia Tech and it was pretty solid. The big changes in 4.2 were the fast file system, the networking, and how signals worked. The fast file system used more space on the disk for its metadata; people who had nearly full disks on 4.1 didn't have enough room to restore their filesystems with the change to 4.2! Later on I ran two vaxen at the Emory U computing center with 4.2; they were heavily (over)loaded. When 4.3 came out it had a huge amount of fixes and performance tuning; when we switched to 4.3 + NFS from Mt. Xinu we saw a big drop in the load. To this day I am convinced that the move to 4.3 kept us from having to buy more hardware. Arnold ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-11 17:28 ` Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-11 21:47 ` Al Kossow 1 sibling, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Al Kossow @ 2019-03-11 21:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs On 3/10/19 10:46 PM, Jason Stevens wrote: > is there a kyrolux like device for tapes? The problem is dropouts from either tape surface contamination or oxide loss, tape skew, and tape stretch. I've been working off and on with Len Shustek on analog digitization and recovery of 7 and 9 track tape https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape to try to deal with tape that has signal degradation He and I use Saleae Pro Logic 16 USB 16-channel USB setups connected to the read amps of a tape drive I have a Linux box set up with 128gb of memory for data capture. It is a time-consuming process, and I only resort to that for high-value problem children. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 22:53 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow @ 2019-03-23 17:50 ` reed 2019-03-24 4:19 ` Lars Brinkhoff 1 sibling, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: reed @ 2019-03-23 17:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mike Haertel; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society On Sun, 10 Mar 2019, Mike Haertel wrote: > >http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I > >just noticed... > That tape image is has 3 files in it: ... What tool did you use to extract or look at this tape image? (I tried a v6 ar, and a modern NetBSD ar, cpio, tar, and restore. Maybe I need an ar or tar from ~1981 ... file(1) reports it as a Maple help database.) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-23 17:50 ` reed @ 2019-03-24 4:19 ` Lars Brinkhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Lars Brinkhoff @ 2019-03-24 4:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: reed; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society reed wrote: > Mike Haertel wrote: >> >http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/BSD/BSD4.1_bootable.tap.gz which I >> >just noticed... >> That tape image is has 3 files in it: > > What tool did you use to extract or look at this tape image? "taperead" in http://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils can extract files from a tape image. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 7:31 [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes Mike Haertel 2019-03-09 23:24 ` Nigel Williams @ 2019-03-10 8:20 ` arnold 2019-03-10 15:50 ` Mike Haertel 1 sibling, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: arnold @ 2019-03-10 8:20 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs, tuhs Isn't 4.1 on Kirk McKusick's disks? Mike Haertel <tuhs@ducky.net> wrote: > I noticed that the TUHS archive does not include a 4.1BSD distribution. > > Also, while poking around the net, I've found a number of purported > tape images of 4.1BSD dated 7/10/1981 that look to me to a little sketchy, > since most contain files dated well into 1982. > > So it appears to me that 4.1BSD is semi-lost. > > While googling all this, I discovered that the School of Computer Science > and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin has an online archive catalog > which lists a couple of 4.1BSD distribution tapes in the "John Gabriel Byrne > Computer Science Collection". > > https://scss.tcd.ie/SCSSTreasuresCatalog/ > > Perhaps someone from TUHS who lives near Dublin could investigate and > see if images can be made of these tapes? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 8:20 ` arnold @ 2019-03-10 15:50 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-10 19:54 ` arnold 0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-10 15:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: The Unix Heritage Society arnold@skeeve.com writes: > Isn't 4.1 on Kirk McKusick's disks? McKusick's disks look sketchy to me too: # cd /mnt/CSRG/disk1 # diff --exclude=.MAP -r 4.0 4.1 | grep -v 'not a regular file or directory' Only in 4.0: 4.0.boot.Z Only in 4.1: 4.0.upgrade Only in 4.1: TAPE Only in 4.1: boot.file Only in 4.0/dev: cua0 Only in 4.0/dev: cua1 Only in 4.1/tmp: x.f Only in 4.1/tmp: x.s Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RANDOM.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RANG4.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: READ4.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: READ8.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: READC.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: READE.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: READLN.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELEQ.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELNE.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELSGE.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELSGT.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELSLE.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELSLT.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELTGE.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELTGT.c Only in 4.0/usr/src/lib/libpc: RELTLE.c So it appears to me the only 4.1 material in his 4.1 tree is under the 4.1/4.0.upgrade directory. The 4.0 and 4.1 trees on his disks are otherwise basically the same, except for a handful of /usr/src/lib/libpc/*.c source files that appear only in the 4.0 tree. Or, perhaps the 4.0 tree is misidentified and is really a 4.1 tree, and what is lost is 4.0? Anyway, there definitely seems to be a missing link somewhere. Mike ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 15:50 ` Mike Haertel @ 2019-03-10 19:54 ` arnold 2019-03-10 20:33 ` Warner Losh 0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread From: arnold @ 2019-03-10 19:54 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs, tuhs Mike Haertel <tuhs@ducky.net> wrote: > arnold@skeeve.com writes: > > Isn't 4.1 on Kirk McKusick's disks? > > McKusick's disks look sketchy to me too: So can "someone" ping Kirk about this? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes 2019-03-10 19:54 ` arnold @ 2019-03-10 20:33 ` Warner Losh 0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread From: Warner Losh @ 2019-03-10 20:33 UTC (permalink / raw) To: arnold; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1993 bytes --] On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 1:55 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: > Mike Haertel <tuhs@ducky.net> wrote: > > > arnold@skeeve.com writes: > > > Isn't 4.1 on Kirk McKusick's disks? > > > > McKusick's disks look sketchy to me too: > > So can "someone" ping Kirk about this? > Keep in mind that BSD didn't really have releases. When you called up for a tape, it wasn't made from some master tape, but rolled off from a system that had right version on it. I know Kirk told me this once when I was chatting with him about tapes, RMS and other things. Thje version control wasn't quite as strict as things are today, so I'm not surprised there's some variance in images from place to place around the net. We have SCCS, and multiple images. I think the best we may be able to do is to do the this was copied from that with these changes and produce a tree of inheritance... IIRC, SCCS has issues with moved and removed files that makes it hard to reconstruct things exactly with it. I know RCS and CVS had these issues. The historical unix git repo has remotes/origin/BSD-4-Snapshot-Development remotes/origin/BSD-4_1_snap-Snapshot-Development remotes/origin/BSD-4_1c_2-Snapshot-Development branches. Also, version numbering was kinda hazy. Kirk has a big listing in his house of 4.5 BSD. This is post the first 4BSD release, but not the 5BSD release. They had thought they'd do a 5BSD, but they had all these contracts with 4BSD in them, so they were basically forced to do 4.1BSD instead, so the "4.5BSD" thing is basically an early version of what we know know as 4.1BSD.... So between these two quirks, I'm not surprised there's not an 'untainted' version of 4.1BSD around... I'm guessing the tape that has the July 1981 date on it was made in early 1982 and the extra files with the weird dates are just an artifact of when the tape was made and that people had used the 'master image' system in the mean time, if for nothing else than logging into and running the make tape script :) Warner [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2642 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes
@ 2019-03-25 17:19 Richard Tobin
0 siblings, 0 replies; 23+ messages in thread
From: Richard Tobin @ 2019-03-25 17:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Lars Brinkhoff, reed; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society
> "taperead" in http://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils can extract files
> from a tape image.
The format is very simple: a 32-bit little-endian record length,
followed by that many bytes, followed by the length again for
integrity checking. A record length of zero is a file mark.
-- Richard
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2019-03-25 17:53 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 23+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2019-03-10 7:31 [TUHS] a possible source for 4.1BSD tapes Mike Haertel 2019-03-09 23:24 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-10 11:18 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-10 20:55 ` Warner Losh 2019-03-10 22:53 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 0:25 ` Al Kossow 2019-03-11 1:15 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 5:46 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-11 17:28 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-11 17:38 ` Larry McVoy 2019-03-11 18:33 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-11 18:41 ` Clem Cole 2019-03-12 6:21 ` Nigel Williams 2019-03-12 6:32 ` Jason Stevens 2019-03-12 12:44 ` arnold 2019-03-11 21:47 ` Al Kossow 2019-03-23 17:50 ` reed 2019-03-24 4:19 ` Lars Brinkhoff 2019-03-10 8:20 ` arnold 2019-03-10 15:50 ` Mike Haertel 2019-03-10 19:54 ` arnold 2019-03-10 20:33 ` Warner Losh 2019-03-25 17:19 Richard Tobin
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