From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu May 1 00:06:37 2025 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 10:06:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Any Interdata war stories? Message-ID: <20250430140637.C00DA18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Arnold Robbins > CCI made the Tahoe that 4.4 ran on, but I'm guessing it's a different > architecture than the Interdata? I think so. Almost all documentation on the Tahoe has been lost in the mists of time (if ANYONE retains ANY hardcopies of ANY hardware documentation for the Tahoe, PLEASE let me know), but I recently managed to work out a bit about it from the instruction decoding/printing routines in the debuggers from 4.3 BSD Tahoe: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Power_6/32 and it seems to be fairly different from the Interdata: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/interdata/32bit/29-365R01_32BitRefMan_Jun74.pdf Also, 'CCI' is 'Computer Consoles Incorporated', not "Concurrent Computer Corp". Noel From jsg at jsg.id.au Thu May 1 00:07:41 2025 From: jsg at jsg.id.au (Jonathan Gray) Date: Thu, 1 May 2025 00:07:41 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?) In-Reply-To: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 09:11:35AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Clem Cole > > > Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John Romkey > > may have done it, as he was the primary person behind PCIP > > I decided to poke around in the 'MIT-CSR' dump, since that was the machine > the PC/IP project started on, to see what I could find. Hoo boy! What an > adventure! > > In the PC/IP area, I found a 'c86' directory - but it was almost empty. It > did have a shell file, 'grab', which contained: > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > and a 'graball' file which called 'grab' for the list of compiler source > files. ('xx' was MIT-XX, the TOPS-20 main time-sharing machint of LCS.) > > So I did a Web search for Wayne Gramlich (with whom I hadn't communicated in > many decades), and he popped right up. (Amazing thing, this Internet thingy. > Who'd have ever thought, back in the day, that it would turn into what it > did? Well, probably John Brunner, whom I (sadly) never met, who was there > before any of us.) > > I took a chance, and called his number, and he was there, and we had a long > chat. He absolutely didn't do it, although he wrote the loader the project > used ('l68', the source for which I did find.) He's virtually certain Romkey > didn't (which would have been my guess too; Romkey was like a sophmore when > the project started). His best (_very_ faded) memory was that they started off > with a commercial compiler. (But see below.) > > That leaves several mysteries. 1) Why would a commercial compiler not come > with a linker? 2) Why did people who wanted to work with the PC/IP source > need a Bell license? > > > I did some more poking, and the list of files for the 86 compiler, from > 'graball': > > trees.c optim.c pftn.c code.c local.c scan.c xdefs.c > table.c reader.c local2.c order.c match.c allo.c comm1.c > manifest mfile1 common macdefs mfile2 mac2defs > > matched the file names from 'pcc', as given in "A Tour Through the Portable C > Compiler": > > https://maibriz.de/unix/ultrix/_root/porttour.pdf > > (in section "The Source Files"). So whether the 86 compiler was done at MIT > (by someone in RTS), or at a company, it was definitely a 'pcc' descendant. > > (Possibly adding to the confusion, we had some other C compilers for various > ISA's in that project [building networking software for various > micro-computers], including an 8080 C compiler from Whitesmiths, Ltd, which I > have also found. It's possible that Wayne's vague memory of a commercial > compiler is of that one?) > > I really should reach out to Romkey and Bridgham, to see what they remember. > Later today. > > Whether the main motivation for keeping the compiler source on XX was i) > because disk space was short on CSR (we had only a hand-me-down pair of > CalComp Model 215 drives - capacity 58 Mbytes per drive!); ii) to prevent > version skew; or iii) because it was a commercial compiler, and we had to > protect the source (e.g. we didn't have the source to the 8080 compiler, only > the object modules), I have no idea. > > > > Anyway the MIT RTS folks made hardware and PCC back ends for the 68K, > > Z8000 and 8086. I believe that each had separate assemblers, tjt who > > sometimes reads this list might know more, as he wrote the 68K assembler. > > There is an 'a86' directory on CSR, but it too is empty, except for a 'grab' > command file. That contains only: > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > I have no memory of who 'novick' might have been. A Web search for 'novick > mit lcs' didn' turn anything up. (I wonder if it might have been Carol > Novitsky; she was in our group at LCS, and I have a vague memory of her being > associated with the networking software for micro-computers project.) > > Anyway, it probably doesn't matter; the c86 'grab' referred to Wayne, but he > didn't write c86; 'novick' might not have written a86. > > Something else to ask Romkey and Bridgham about. > > Noel "a version of the portable C Compiler that was modified by Chris Terman to produce code for an 8086 microprocessor was ported from the RTS VAX/780 to the CSR PDP-11/45." https://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/bookcases/RFCs/csr-rfc-225.pdf "If you think that you need the source code, you should realize that a prerequisite to compiling the PC/IP programs is that you must have imported Chris Terman's 8086 version of the UNIX Portable C compiler and associated loader and assember systems. That importation in turn requires a UNIX system, a current UNIX license, and negotiation with Chris Terman." https://web.mit.edu/saltzer/www/publications/pcmemo.pdf From woods at robohack.ca Thu May 1 07:17:46 2025 From: woods at robohack.ca (Greg A. Woods) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:17:46 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Any Interdata war stories? In-Reply-To: <202504290655.53T6t5Sj1009885@freefriends.org> References: <202504290655.53T6t5Sj1009885@freefriends.org> Message-ID: At Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:55:05 -0600, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: Subject: [TUHS] Any Interdata war stories? > > > From: Tom Lyon > > > > I was pleased to learn that the first port of S to UNIX was on the > > Interdata 8/32, which I had my part in enabling. > > I would love to hear more about the Interdata port and what > happened with it afterwards. Interdata seems to have disappeared > into the dustbin of history. And Unix on it apparently never > got out of Bell Labs; In about 1981 or 1982 the chemistry (IIRC) department at University of Calgary had an Interdata 8/32 that was, at least for some time around then, running Unix. I remember poking around on it briefly, but I don't remember much more than that about it. -- Greg A. Woods Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack Planix, Inc. Avoncote Farms From clemc at ccc.com Thu May 1 12:36:01 2025 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 22:36:01 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?) In-Reply-To: References: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: So did Chris compiler go back to the Nu project? And thank you to Al for the Trix sources. As I said. It was national 16032 not z8000. FYI I had the whitesmith compiler at one point also. It generated code for a funky assembler called “anat” for “a natural assembler” which PJ conjured up for writing the compiler. It was was sort of a mix between an IL and 8080 assembler if my memory is correct. I’d love to see that distribution both the doc and the compiler again to May with on SIMH. I suspect I might appreciate it more than I did in those days. I hated it then but as I learned more about compilers and architectures PJ might have been on to something. Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM Jonathan Gray wrote: > On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 09:11:35AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > > From: Clem Cole > > > > > Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John > Romkey > > > may have done it, as he was the primary person behind PCIP > > > > I decided to poke around in the 'MIT-CSR' dump, since that was the > machine > > the PC/IP project started on, to see what I could find. Hoo boy! What an > > adventure! > > > > In the PC/IP area, I found a 'c86' directory - but it was almost empty. > It > > did have a shell file, 'grab', which contained: > > > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > > > and a 'graball' file which called 'grab' for the list of compiler source > > files. ('xx' was MIT-XX, the TOPS-20 main time-sharing machint of LCS.) > > > > So I did a Web search for Wayne Gramlich (with whom I hadn't > communicated in > > many decades), and he popped right up. (Amazing thing, this Internet > thingy. > > Who'd have ever thought, back in the day, that it would turn into what it > > did? Well, probably John Brunner, whom I (sadly) never met, who was there > > before any of us.) > > > > I took a chance, and called his number, and he was there, and we had a > long > > chat. He absolutely didn't do it, although he wrote the loader the > project > > used ('l68', the source for which I did find.) He's virtually certain > Romkey > > didn't (which would have been my guess too; Romkey was like a sophmore > when > > the project started). His best (_very_ faded) memory was that they > started off > > with a commercial compiler. (But see below.) > > > > That leaves several mysteries. 1) Why would a commercial compiler not > come > > with a linker? 2) Why did people who wanted to work with the PC/IP source > > need a Bell license? > > > > > > I did some more poking, and the list of files for the 86 compiler, from > > 'graball': > > > > trees.c optim.c pftn.c code.c local.c scan.c xdefs.c > > table.c reader.c local2.c order.c match.c allo.c comm1.c > > manifest mfile1 common macdefs mfile2 mac2defs > > > > matched the file names from 'pcc', as given in "A Tour Through the > Portable C > > Compiler": > > > > https://maibriz.de/unix/ultrix/_root/porttour.pdf > > > > (in section "The Source Files"). So whether the 86 compiler was done at > MIT > > (by someone in RTS), or at a company, it was definitely a 'pcc' > descendant. > > > > (Possibly adding to the confusion, we had some other C compilers for > various > > ISA's in that project [building networking software for various > > micro-computers], including an 8080 C compiler from Whitesmiths, Ltd, > which I > > have also found. It's possible that Wayne's vague memory of a commercial > > compiler is of that one?) > > > > I really should reach out to Romkey and Bridgham, to see what they > remember. > > Later today. > > > > Whether the main motivation for keeping the compiler source on XX was i) > > because disk space was short on CSR (we had only a hand-me-down pair of > > CalComp Model 215 drives - capacity 58 Mbytes per drive!); ii) to prevent > > version skew; or iii) because it was a commercial compiler, and we had to > > protect the source (e.g. we didn't have the source to the 8080 compiler, > only > > the object modules), I have no idea. > > > > > > > Anyway the MIT RTS folks made hardware and PCC back ends for the > 68K, > > > Z8000 and 8086. I believe that each had separate assemblers, tjt > who > > > sometimes reads this list might know more, as he wrote the 68K > assembler. > > > > There is an 'a86' directory on CSR, but it too is empty, except for a > 'grab' > > command file. That contains only: > > > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > > > I have no memory of who 'novick' might have been. A Web search for > 'novick > > mit lcs' didn' turn anything up. (I wonder if it might have been Carol > > Novitsky; she was in our group at LCS, and I have a vague memory of her > being > > associated with the networking software for micro-computers project.) > > > > Anyway, it probably doesn't matter; the c86 'grab' referred to Wayne, > but he > > didn't write c86; 'novick' might not have written a86. > > > > Something else to ask Romkey and Bridgham about. > > > > Noel > > "a version of the portable C Compiler that was modified by Chris Terman > to produce code for an 8086 microprocessor was ported from the RTS VAX/780 > to the CSR PDP-11/45." > > https://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/bookcases/RFCs/csr-rfc-225.pdf > > "If you think that you need the source code, you should realize that a > prerequisite to compiling the PC/IP programs is that you must have > imported Chris Terman's 8086 version of the UNIX Portable C compiler and > associated loader and assember systems. That importation in turn requires > a UNIX system, a current UNIX license, and negotiation with Chris Terman." > https://web.mit.edu/saltzer/www/publications/pcmemo.pdf > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jsg at jsg.id.au Thu May 1 13:38:10 2025 From: jsg at jsg.id.au (Jonathan Gray) Date: Thu, 1 May 2025 13:38:10 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?) In-Reply-To: References: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: Chris was part of the Nu project. "Was a principal developer of the NuMachine" "developed a family of portable C compilers for the (then) newly available microprocessors. These compilers were widely distributed as the first C implementations for the x86 and 68K processors." https://people.csail.mit.edu/cjt/resume.html On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 10:36:01PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote: > So did Chris compiler go back to the Nu project? And thank you to Al for > the Trix sources. As I said. It was national 16032 not z8000. > > > FYI I had the whitesmith compiler at one point also. It generated code for > a funky assembler called “anat” for “a natural assembler” which PJ conjured > up for writing the compiler. It was was sort of a mix between an IL and > 8080 assembler if my memory is correct. I’d love to see that > distribution both the doc and the compiler again to May with on SIMH. I > suspect I might appreciate it more than I did in those days. I hated it > then but as I learned more about compilers and architectures PJ might have > been on to something. > > Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual > > > On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM Jonathan Gray wrote: > > > On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 09:11:35AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > > > From: Clem Cole > > > > > > > Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John > > Romkey > > > > may have done it, as he was the primary person behind PCIP > > > > > > I decided to poke around in the 'MIT-CSR' dump, since that was the > > machine > > > the PC/IP project started on, to see what I could find. Hoo boy! What an > > > adventure! > > > > > > In the PC/IP area, I found a 'c86' directory - but it was almost empty. > > It > > > did have a shell file, 'grab', which contained: > > > > > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > > > > > and a 'graball' file which called 'grab' for the list of compiler source > > > files. ('xx' was MIT-XX, the TOPS-20 main time-sharing machint of LCS.) > > > > > > So I did a Web search for Wayne Gramlich (with whom I hadn't > > communicated in > > > many decades), and he popped right up. (Amazing thing, this Internet > > thingy. > > > Who'd have ever thought, back in the day, that it would turn into what it > > > did? Well, probably John Brunner, whom I (sadly) never met, who was there > > > before any of us.) > > > > > > I took a chance, and called his number, and he was there, and we had a > > long > > > chat. He absolutely didn't do it, although he wrote the loader the > > project > > > used ('l68', the source for which I did find.) He's virtually certain > > Romkey > > > didn't (which would have been my guess too; Romkey was like a sophmore > > when > > > the project started). His best (_very_ faded) memory was that they > > started off > > > with a commercial compiler. (But see below.) > > > > > > That leaves several mysteries. 1) Why would a commercial compiler not > > come > > > with a linker? 2) Why did people who wanted to work with the PC/IP source > > > need a Bell license? > > > > > > > > > I did some more poking, and the list of files for the 86 compiler, from > > > 'graball': > > > > > > trees.c optim.c pftn.c code.c local.c scan.c xdefs.c > > > table.c reader.c local2.c order.c match.c allo.c comm1.c > > > manifest mfile1 common macdefs mfile2 mac2defs > > > > > > matched the file names from 'pcc', as given in "A Tour Through the > > Portable C > > > Compiler": > > > > > > https://maibriz.de/unix/ultrix/_root/porttour.pdf > > > > > > (in section "The Source Files"). So whether the 86 compiler was done at > > MIT > > > (by someone in RTS), or at a company, it was definitely a 'pcc' > > descendant. > > > > > > (Possibly adding to the confusion, we had some other C compilers for > > various > > > ISA's in that project [building networking software for various > > > micro-computers], including an 8080 C compiler from Whitesmiths, Ltd, > > which I > > > have also found. It's possible that Wayne's vague memory of a commercial > > > compiler is of that one?) > > > > > > I really should reach out to Romkey and Bridgham, to see what they > > remember. > > > Later today. > > > > > > Whether the main motivation for keeping the compiler source on XX was i) > > > because disk space was short on CSR (we had only a hand-me-down pair of > > > CalComp Model 215 drives - capacity 58 Mbytes per drive!); ii) to prevent > > > version skew; or iii) because it was a commercial compiler, and we had to > > > protect the source (e.g. we didn't have the source to the 8080 compiler, > > only > > > the object modules), I have no idea. > > > > > > > > > > Anyway the MIT RTS folks made hardware and PCC back ends for the > > 68K, > > > > Z8000 and 8086. I believe that each had separate assemblers, tjt > > who > > > > sometimes reads this list might know more, as he wrote the 68K > > assembler. > > > > > > There is an 'a86' directory on CSR, but it too is empty, except for a > > 'grab' > > > command file. That contains only: > > > > > > tftp -g $1 xx "PS:$1" > > > > > > I have no memory of who 'novick' might have been. A Web search for > > 'novick > > > mit lcs' didn' turn anything up. (I wonder if it might have been Carol > > > Novitsky; she was in our group at LCS, and I have a vague memory of her > > being > > > associated with the networking software for micro-computers project.) > > > > > > Anyway, it probably doesn't matter; the c86 'grab' referred to Wayne, > > but he > > > didn't write c86; 'novick' might not have written a86. > > > > > > Something else to ask Romkey and Bridgham about. > > > > > > Noel > > > > "a version of the portable C Compiler that was modified by Chris Terman > > to produce code for an 8086 microprocessor was ported from the RTS VAX/780 > > to the CSR PDP-11/45." > > > > https://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/bookcases/RFCs/csr-rfc-225.pdf > > > > "If you think that you need the source code, you should realize that a > > prerequisite to compiling the PC/IP programs is that you must have > > imported Chris Terman's 8086 version of the UNIX Portable C compiler and > > associated loader and assember systems. That importation in turn requires > > a UNIX system, a current UNIX license, and negotiation with Chris Terman." > > https://web.mit.edu/saltzer/www/publications/pcmemo.pdf > > From aek at bitsavers.org Thu May 1 14:20:56 2025 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:20:56 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?) In-Reply-To: References: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On 4/30/25 8:38 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote: > Chris was part of the Nu project. > > "Was a principal developer of the NuMachine" > > "developed a family of portable C compilers for the (then) newly > available microprocessors. These compilers were widely distributed as > the first C implementations for the x86 and 68K processors." > > https://people.csail.mit.edu/cjt/resume.html I found most of the yearly LCS reports have been digitized to DTIC which answered a bunch of my questions about who was doing what at that time I've archived them at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/lcs/progress_reports From pugs78 at gmail.com Thu May 1 14:44:50 2025 From: pugs78 at gmail.com (Tom Lyon) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:44:50 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Any Interdata war stories? In-Reply-To: <202504290655.53T6t5Sj1009885@freefriends.org> References: <202504290655.53T6t5Sj1009885@freefriends.org> Message-ID: I found this USENIX paper from Steve Johnson that has a lot of detail about the Interdata port (postscript format): "C and the AT&T Unix Port--A Personal History" https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix98/invited_talks/johnson.ps On Mon, Apr 28, 2025 at 11:55 PM wrote: > > From: Tom Lyon > > > > I was pleased to learn that the first port of S to UNIX was on the > > Interdata 8/32, which I had my part in enabling. > > I would love to hear more about the Interdata port and what > happened with it afterwards. Interdata seems to have disappeared > into the dustbin of history. And Unix on it apparently never > got out of Bell Labs; I don't think the code for it is in the > TUHS archives. > > Was the Interdata system in use at Bell Labs for actual work once > the port was complete? > > ISTR there was a meeting with Interdata about changes in the architecture > that Bell Labs wanted, that Interdata didn't want to make. What > was the full story? > > Any other info would be welcome. > > Thanks, > > Arnold > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tuhs at tuhs.org Fri May 2 07:01:27 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS) Date: Thu, 01 May 2025 21:01:27 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Surviving System V/VME Artifacts? Message-ID: <7N1hwohRijCD-e1YXNS-rsFj85Vj_lDQks3yc6Y31gK14djLTtRMRBw_3JsTZphiPBt34_ZEP9q2xRoKmKf7RDeRAqUvo8ANQCc3dShM1B4=@protonmail.com> So part of Western Electric/AT&Ts developer support for the WE32x00 CPU line was the WE321SB VME-bus single-board computer. The official operating system for this was UNIX System V/VME. This version is referenced in several document catalogues and literature surrounding this VME module. I was curious if anyone on list happens to know of any surviving System V/VME artifacts floating around out there. All I've been able to find are references to the system in other WE32x00 and UNIX documentation. Thanks for any info! - Matt G. From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Fri May 2 07:07:46 2025 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Thu, 1 May 2025 14:07:46 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Surviving System V/VME Artifacts? In-Reply-To: <7N1hwohRijCD-e1YXNS-rsFj85Vj_lDQks3yc6Y31gK14djLTtRMRBw_3JsTZphiPBt34_ZEP9q2xRoKmKf7RDeRAqUvo8ANQCc3dShM1B4=@protonmail.com> References: <7N1hwohRijCD-e1YXNS-rsFj85Vj_lDQks3yc6Y31gK14djLTtRMRBw_3JsTZphiPBt34_ZEP9q2xRoKmKf7RDeRAqUvo8ANQCc3dShM1B4=@protonmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 2:01 PM segaloco via TUHS wrote: > > So part of Western Electric/AT&Ts developer support for the WE32x00 CPU line was > the WE321SB VME-bus single-board computer. The official operating system for > this was UNIX System V/VME. This version is referenced in several document > catalogues and literature surrounding this VME module. I was curious if anyone > on list happens to know of any surviving System V/VME artifacts floating around > out there. All I've been able to find are references to the system in other > WE32x00 and UNIX documentation. I would also be interested if anyone has ever seen that hardware. VME stuff tends to be durable because it is used in machinery with long lifetimes so it doesn't usually go the way of commercial computer disappearing. > Thanks for any info! > > - Matt G. From tuhs at tuhs.org Fri May 2 07:35:40 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS) Date: Thu, 01 May 2025 21:35:40 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Surviving System V/VME Artifacts? In-Reply-To: References: <7N1hwohRijCD-e1YXNS-rsFj85Vj_lDQks3yc6Y31gK14djLTtRMRBw_3JsTZphiPBt34_ZEP9q2xRoKmKf7RDeRAqUvo8ANQCc3dShM1B4=@protonmail.com> Message-ID: On Thursday, May 1st, 2025 at 2:08 PM, Kevin Bowling wrote: > On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 2:01 PM segaloco via TUHS tuhs at tuhs.org wrote: > > > So part of Western Electric/AT&Ts developer support for the WE32x00 CPU line was > > the WE321SB VME-bus single-board computer. The official operating system for > > this was UNIX System V/VME. This version is referenced in several document > > catalogues and literature surrounding this VME module. I was curious if anyone > > on list happens to know of any surviving System V/VME artifacts floating around > > out there. All I've been able to find are references to the system in other > > WE32x00 and UNIX documentation. > > > I would also be interested if anyone has ever seen that hardware. VME > stuff tends to be durable because it is used in machinery with long > lifetimes so it doesn't usually go the way of commercial computer > disappearing. > > > Thanks for any info! > > > > - Matt G. Details about the module can be found here: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_westernEleocessorsandPeripheralsAug87_47936355/page/n467/mode/2up In addition other WECo/ATTIS publications from the mid 80s describe this and other bits like the WE321EB eval board and WE321AP analysis pod. - Matt G. From arnold at skeeve.com Fri May 2 22:21:09 2025 From: arnold at skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) Date: Fri, 02 May 2025 15:21:09 +0300 Subject: [TUHS] Off topic: Books on Unix security? Message-ID: Hi All. In a book I'm updating, I have the following references for Unix security. 1. Practical UNIX & Internet Security, 3rd edition, by Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford, and Alan Schwartz, O’Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA, USA, 2003. ISBN-10: 0-596-00323-4, ISBN-13: 978-0596003234. 2. Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way, by John Viega and Gary McGraw. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, USA, 2001. ISBN- 10: 0-201-72152-X, ISBN-13: 978-0201721522. 3. “Setuid Demystified,” by Hao Chen, David Wagner, and Drew Dean. Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Security Symposium, August 5–9, 2002. http://www.cs.berkeley. edu/~daw/papers/setuid-usenix02.pdf. One of my reviewers asked if these weren't "dusty references". So, before I just refer to them as "classics", can anyone recommend more recent books? Feel free to answer in private. Thanks, Arnold From tjteixeira at earthlink.net Sat May 3 00:56:58 2025 From: tjteixeira at earthlink.net (Tom Teixeira) Date: Fri, 2 May 2025 10:56:58 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] PC/IP In-Reply-To: References: <20250430131135.B8A3E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <4140ce42-1ef4-4e57-8f76-3881735d33e4@earthlink.net> On 5/1/25 12:20 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > On 4/30/25 8:38 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote: >> Chris was part of the Nu project. >> >> "Was a principal developer of the NuMachine" >> >> "developed a family of portable C compilers for the (then) newly >> available microprocessors. These compilers were widely distributed as >> the first C implementations for the x86 and 68K processors." >> >> https://people.csail.mit.edu/cjt/resume.html > > I found most of the yearly LCS reports have been digitized to DTIC > which answered a bunch of my questions about who was doing what at > that time > > I've archived them at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/lcs/progress_reports > > > Some background, though the MIT LCS progress reports should cover much of this. I won't attempt to put any dates. Chris Terman was one of the graduate students in the RTS group. Since VT-52 terminals were relatively scarce, he designed and built his own with a larger screen - something like 40 lines by maybe 120 or 132 characters, called the "Termanal". I don't remember if it used an 8080 to handle the control sequences in the data stream or something else. He then got interested in designing a terminal that could display bit map graphics, to be comparable to the graphics used on the Lisp Machines just being built by the MIT-AI lab. I had stumbled across one of the LCS progress reports that credits Professor Steve Ward and one of the undergraduate staff, Rae McClellan in assisting the design of this bit graph which was named the "Nu Terminal" (I don't think it was the "Nu Termanal"). This used an 8086. A couple of these were built. One of the undergraduate students, Jon Sieber, had been a member of an Explorer Post in Murray Hill where Dennis Ritchie was the advisor. Jon would regularly bring UNIX tapes from the Research Lab and included things like early versions of the Portable C Compiler and the Circuit Design Aids. Chris used the Circuit Design Aids to design wire-wrap boards for the Nu Terminal and the RTS lab got a semi-automatic wire wrap machine. Some students and staff took turns doing the actual wire wrapping. My contribution was writing some simple software that simulated a paper tape reader for the wire wrap machine. An undergraduate student, Mike Patrick, did his bachelor's thesis writing a table driven assembler and constructed tables for the 8086 and I think an 8080. Later there were drivers for the Zylog Z8000, the National Semiconductor NS16000 and the Motorola 68000. I contributed a small bit of code for doing optimal choice of short vs long branches (to branch to an address more than +/- 127 bytes, you had to branch around a longer jump instruction). Chris Terman did the work of modifying the Portable C Compiler to generate code for the 8086, the Z8000, NS16000 and MC68000. I think we may have built one machine with the Z8000, but quickly settled on using the MC68000, primarily because of the 32-bit support (one progress report says that Zenith was supposed to build multiple Z8000 based machines, but I don't remember those. The NS16000 had better memory management, but I don't think we ever actually received any CPU chips. Anyway, these compilers were what was distributed, and the MC68000 compiler in particular was used by almost all the companies that came out the MC68000-based Unix machines. Apollo was a notable exception, but Apollo wrote their own operating system from scratch rather than Unix. Side note: Bill Poduska came to visit Steve Ward and before the visit Steve was all excited, but was disappointed that Bill was not going to use Unix. Before the RTS group used Unix, they had written a small timesharing system for the PDP-11/45 that was used in the 6.031 introductory computer science course taught by Mike Dertouzos. Chris was involved in maintaining that, though I think Steve Ward was probably the main implementor. Chris had also spent too many hours changing address jumpers on Unibus and other controllers as well as tweaking Unix mkconf files, and thought that while the 4BSD autoconfiguration was an improvement, there should be a better way. Chris and Steve designed the Nu bus, and the Nu Bus was used in the MC68000 boards. Eventually it was picked up by Apple. Chris was one of many students who took the Mead/Conway LSI design course and ended up abandoning his research on portable compilers in favor of simulating LSI designs. He was also a co-founder of Symbolics and designed the controller for their laser printer before returning to MIT as a Lecturer and sponsored research staff. There were also proposed follow-on software projects related to the Nu terminal. One was Trix. Steve Ward said he didn't know what an "ics" was, but Multics clearly had too many, and Unix had too few, hence Trix. Jack Test was hired to do a lot of the development. Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of Trix, as far as I remember, but I had left RTS to join Masscomp in late 1981/early 1982, and I know Jack Test was an early employee of Alliant Computer so he left Trix probably in 1982.