[TUHS] Need your help for 2019

[dugo@xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)]

On 2017-03-04 04:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
> - these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via a
>   terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems

Getting Arpanet back up is tricky. I think only KLH10 has decent IMP
support. Not much of UNIX history runs on that.

There is the H316 emulator in simh, but its IMP-host interface would
need to be fleshed out and the corresponding host cards do not exist
yet in the simh VAX/PDP emulators.

> - emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are
>   plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
> 
> - Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
>   protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
>   systems networked together

On 2017-03-04 09:21, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:
> Maybe Google, Facebook and other "internet" companies are willing
> to throw their weight behind some commemoration if it can be made
> relevant to a wider audience.

Archive.org maybe? Like they have done with piles of games? What
Jason Scott pushed was the emscripten port of MESS/MAME into JSMESS.

> Perhaps emulators for these old systems that can run in a browser
> (or as an app) with instructions clear enough for today's web
> developer is a good way to pay homage.
> 
> It would be a big job though, probably to big to do in 2.5 years.

Yes, they can run in the browser, the whole TUHS archive should
run in the browser, interconnected. There are several routes open.

Simh can be ported to emscripten or PNaCl, I vaguely remember
getting it to boot in the browser with one of those. Subsequent
fixing of the terminal output and websockification of the network
interfaces was way over my head though, so I tossed that route.

There is jor1k and v86, these are javascript emulators capable of
running Linux complete with networking over websockets. You can run
simh in these. I ran into some speed issues and chrome now throttling
it, but the concept works.

Bring a fast machine, recent browser in a separate window and a lot
of patience and watch paint dry, eh, v6 install at
http://oldbsd.org/unixv6install.html  I'll try same with pdp7-unix
and a faux KSR-33 to hide the speed issues.

The 3 modern BSDs can boot up in v86, I didn't try the 08./0.9/1.0
versions and daddy 386BSD yet but it looks doable.

Thanks to websockproxy ethernet over websockets is a thing and makes
it possible to tie everything together.

For UUCP style networking there is a modem cable emulator kernel,
module for Linux (nmdm in FreeBSD) that can bridge simh serial devices
to TCPSER. TCPSER then looks like a modem to simh. You can map phone
numbers to sockets where another TCPSER is listening for inbound
"calls".

To develop cool disk images from the material in TUHS there is EXPECT/
SEND in current simh. What's very nice about this, is that it can be
used to make reproducible installations. An EXPECT/SEND simh ini file
fits nicely into your favourite version control software and you don't
have to keep many blobs around.

Another route would be implementing emulators in javascript. I have
seen a few PDP-11/PDP-8 implementations, PCjs is now adding the -10,
but that sounds like a big job indeed.