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From: Marc Donner <marc.donner@gmail.com>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Cc: TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: BSD talk program?
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:16:13 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALQ0xCCzAwZFOiW=F4g1-Sie+a0EdhHYk5THPbGdxg64A+OwdQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20241213155336.GV11590@mcvoy.com>

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Egad!  Back in the day all of the /dev/tty entries were world writable.

I used to troll CMU CS Rogue players (when I wasn't playing) from time to
time by sending a string to their tty that grabbed the cursor, moved it to
where the messages appeared (upper left corner?) and typing "The dangling
modifier struck!"

That's all it did.  I got a lot of pleasure when I overheard two faculty
members comparing notes on their experiences with the dangling modifier.

Best,

Marc
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>


On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:53 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I loved talk when CS was running BSD on a VAX.  You could see who was on
> and talk them.  Very handy and it was sort of social.
>
> It's crazy how things were back then, open ports listening for all sorts
> of things.  I think we were pretty unaware of how nasty the internet would
> get.
>
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:22:22AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > As for the motivation -- it was simple.  UCB is on a hill.  I lived at
> the
> > base of hill and I only wanted to walk up it once a day.   Our office
> was a
> > big pool of about 20 of us next to the CAD machine room on the second
> floor
> > of Cory Hall.  Somebody was usually in the office most nights, but not
> > everyone.   We all had modems and terminals at home, but only one phone
> > line.  We had 3 Vaxes in the CAD group, plus my Array Processor.   So I
> > wanted to be able to ask someone like Peter or TQ to reset the AP for me
> if
> > I hosed it when I was working from home when I was debugging it. Plus
> > the obvious social aspects -- "hey you want go get a Pizza/Beer etc..."
> > But since we might be working on a different system, Kipps' hack was
> > useless.
> > ???
> > ???
> > ???
> > ???
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:14???AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 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
> > >
> > >
> > > ???
> > > ???
> > >
> > > 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.
> > >>
> > >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2024-12-14 19:16 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 ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2024-12-13 15:22   ` 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 [this message]
2024-12-14  7:20 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2024-12-14 16:46   ` Dan Cross
2024-12-14 20:41   ` Lars Brinkhoff

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