The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: BSD talk program?
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 10:14:06 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MwCwuMmdwS1kZkDFyStOZoUL4f+XxsLRBs-Q0=c+G2iQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W6rQwxQLg_SVTUc5_zNX8oprnhfQ=gj0MdjY2cWKt2j6A@mail.gmail.com>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2277 bytes --]

Yes -- I can give this history.
Kipp wrote an early version for 4.1BSD - but it is not the version in the
releases. It ran on Ernie and did not do as much.
I had used a different program on the PDP-10's and the ARPANET and I
started over when Joy added sockets for 4.1A. I also made the infamous use
of vax integers instead of network integers (and I knew better - but really
did not think about until a few years later when I was at Masscomp and
compiled it for the 68000 -- ugh).  That version still had a couple of bugs
in it (i.e. hung in the 4.1A networking code occasionally), but worked well
enough on the CAD systems.  I went away to a USENIX conference and while I
was gone, my officemate  Peter (Moore) took my code and fixed the problem,
plus he put it into  RCS.  I gave that to Sam and that's the version that
went out in 4.1C and beyond.

Clem


ᐧ
ᐧ

On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 9:29 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm curious if anyone has any history they can share about the BSD
> "talk" program.
>
> I was fond of this back when it was still (relatively) common, but
> given the way it's architected I definitely see why it fell out of use
> as the Internet grew. Still, does anybody know what the history behind
> it is?  Initially, I thought it was written by Mike Karels, but that
> was just my speculation from SCCS spelunking, and looking at the
> sources from 4.2, I see RCS header strings that indicate it was
> written by "moore" (Peter Moore?).  talk.c says, "Written by Kipp
> Hickman".
>
> It seems to have arrived pretty early on with respect to the
> introduction of TCP/IP in BSD: the README alludes to some things
> coming up in 4.1c. Clem, you seem to have had a hand in it, and are
> credited (along with Peter Moore) for making it work on 4.1a.
>
> So I guess the question is, what was the motivation? Was it just to
> have a more pleasing user-to-user communications experience, or was
> discussion across the network an explicit goal? There's a note in
> talk.c ("Modified to run between hosts by Peter Moore, 8/19/82") that
> suggests this wasn't the original intent. Who thought up the
> character-at-a-time display mode?
>
> Thanks for any insights.
>
>         - Dan C.
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3858 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2024-12-13 15:14 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2024-12-13 14:28 [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2024-12-13 15:14 ` Clem Cole [this message]
2024-12-13 15:22   ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2024-12-13 15:53     ` Larry McVoy
2024-12-13 16:00       ` Warner Losh
2024-12-13 16:04       ` Rich Salz
2024-12-13 16:58       ` Ronald Natalie
2024-12-14 18:04       ` arnold
2024-12-14 19:26         ` Warner Losh
2024-12-14 19:16       ` Marc Donner
2024-12-14  7:20 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2024-12-14 16:46   ` Dan Cross
2024-12-14 20:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CAC20D2MwCwuMmdwS1kZkDFyStOZoUL4f+XxsLRBs-Q0=c+G2iQ@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=clemc@ccc.com \
    --cc=crossd@gmail.com \
    --cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).