From: dave@horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Subject: [TUHS] Unix v5 and beyond
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:02:20 +1000 (EST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1407131449140.61582@aneurin.horsfall.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADxT5N7ELO-ObVnrG_C=2S1cpiv5cUGm6iW3ud6DesCEUL+Lxg@mail.gmail.com>
On Sun, 13 Jul 2014, Mark Longridge wrote:
> I'm interested in comparing notes with C programmers who have written
> programs for Unix v5, v6 and v7.
I'll try and remember, but this was about 40 years ago...
> Also I'm interested to know if there's anything similar to the scanf
> function for unix v5. Stdio and iolib I know well enough to do file IO
> but v5 predates iolib.
Not a chance; about all it had were the system calls. Portable I/O came
with either Edition 6 or PWB, then Standard I/O replaced it. I could be
wrong, of course... Ed5 may have had getc()/putc() - I dunno.
> Back in 1988 I tried to write a universal rubik's cube program which I
> called unirubik and after discovering TUHS I tried to backport it to v7
> (which was easy) and v6 (which was a bit harder) and now I'm trying to
> backport it to v5. The v5 version currently doesn't have the any file IO
> capability as yet. Here are a few links to the various versions:
>
> http://www.maxhost.org/other/unirubik.c.v7
> http://www.maxhost.org/other/unirubik.c.v6
> http://www.maxhost.org/other/unirubik.c.v5
Hmmm... I must have a peek at them, and for laughs port the v7 one to
BSD/Linux/Mac.
[...]
> My initial impression of Unix v5 was that it was a primitive and almost
> unusable version of Unix but now that I understand it a bit better it
> seems a fairly complete system. I'm a bit foggy on what the memory
> limits are with v5 and v6. Unix v7 seems to run under simh emulating a
> PDP-11/70 with 2 megabytes of ram (any more than that and the kernel
> panics).
Well, complete for the day... Memory limits were basically 64kw for each
space (I'm not even sure whether Ed5 had sep/id space). The irony of the
PDP-11 was that it could support virtual memory in theory, but simply
didn't have enough address registers. Or am I thinking of some other box?
> Also I'd be interested in seeing the source code for Ken Thompson's APL
> interpreter for Unix v5. I know it does exist as it is referenced in the
> Unix v5 manual. The earliest version I could find was dated Oct 1976 and
> I've written some notes on it here:
>
> http://apl.maxhost.org/getting-apl-11-1976-to-work.txt
Gawd; I'd love to see APL again! I used it on the IBM-360.
> Ok, that's about it for now. Is there any chance of going further back
> to v4, v3, v2 etc?
Very little; Ed5 was the first public release, so unless an old-timer has
them squirreled away somewhere...
-- Dave
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-07-13 5:02 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-07-13 4:36 Mark Longridge
2014-07-13 5:02 ` Dave Horsfall [this message]
2014-07-13 6:00 ` Warren Toomey
2014-07-13 6:04 ` Warren Toomey
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