From: "Ronald Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com>
To: "Larry McVoy" <lm@mcvoy.com>, "Clem Cole" <clemc@ccc.com>
Cc: TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: BSD talk program?
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 16:58:22 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <em32eac705-b353-42ec-bf2d-cccaa0707b3c@9454b35a.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20241213155336.GV11590@mcvoy.com>
Anybody remember jtalk? It was a hacked version of talk that ran your
input through the “jive filter”.
Slap ma fro!
------ Original Message ------
From "Larry McVoy" <lm@mcvoy.com>
To "Clem Cole" <clemc@ccc.com>
Cc "TUHS" <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Date 12/13/2024 10:53:36 AM
Subject [TUHS] Re: BSD talk program?
>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
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-12-13 16:58 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 [this message]
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
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