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* [TUHS] Historical application software
@ 2022-05-27 11:57 Paul Ruizendaal
  2022-05-27 17:00 ` [TUHS] " Grant Taylor via TUHS
  2022-05-28 22:06 ` [TUHS] Anyone have an interest in really old analog multimeters and a vacuum tube tested circa 1960s or 1950s? Kenneth Goodwin
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Paul Ruizendaal @ 2022-05-27 11:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

I came across a website that discusses reviving an old binary for Lotus 1-2-3 for SysV Unix (386 COFF), on the way to making it run on Linux:

https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html

The audience here may enjoy the read, and maybe it is of use when reviving other old application software for 1980’s and 1990’s Unix.

The key part I think is this:

Quote:

"Yikes - it’s an original unstripped object file from 1-2-3. There are nearly 20,000 symbols including private symbols and debug information.

Why would Lotus ship this? It’s so big it must have required them to phyiscally ship an extra disk to every customer? Could it have been a mistake, accidentally left on the final release image?

I had so many questions, but I’m not old enough to have any experience with SysV, so I asked the greybeards on alt.folklore.computers if they had seen this before and why this might have happened.

The answer was that this is probably deliberate - dlopen() was not widely available on UNIX in the early 90s, so there was no easy way to load native plugins or extensions. To solve this, vendors would ship a bunch of partially linked object files with a script to relink them with your extensions – Clever!"

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-06-03  2:10 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-05-27 11:57 [TUHS] Historical application software Paul Ruizendaal
2022-05-27 17:00 ` [TUHS] " Grant Taylor via TUHS
2022-05-27 17:29   ` Warner Losh
2022-05-28 15:30     ` Paul Winalski
2022-05-29  0:57       ` Warner Losh
2022-05-29  9:43         ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-06-03  2:00         ` Chris Hanson
2022-06-03  2:09           ` Warner Losh
2022-06-03  2:02       ` Chris Hanson
2022-05-28 22:06 ` [TUHS] Anyone have an interest in really old analog multimeters and a vacuum tube tested circa 1960s or 1950s? Kenneth Goodwin
2022-05-28 22:09   ` [TUHS] " Kenneth Goodwin
2022-05-28 23:31     ` Ed Cashin
2022-05-28 23:45       ` Clem Cole
2022-05-29  2:11         ` Kenneth Goodwin
2022-05-29  2:18           ` Kenneth Goodwin
     [not found]             ` <99E8871E-035C-4A58-8091-189EDE4689BA@common-sense.com>
     [not found]               ` <CAMQbRb2uPTaqCrZCnVQuBtHhnFZWPpyZ_fHxs-4h8WGoOCrGJQ@mail.gmail.com>
2022-05-29 13:05                 ` Kenneth Goodwin
2022-05-29  2:08       ` Kenneth Goodwin
2022-05-29  2:10       ` Kenneth Goodwin

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