17 May
1998
17 May
'98
5:02 p.m.
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)latrobe.edu.au
Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479
1999
La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"
Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html 
17 May
17 May
5:27 p.m.
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
Huw -- I agree with your assertion. I remember seeing this in
Don Libes book -- Life With Unix... (Prentice-Hall?)
Also in a number of references in the Edition 7 docs.
Unix was written in assembler for a PDP-7 (I thought 1970 for the First
Edition ).
Bill
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill/Carolyn Pechter | 17 Meredith Drive | Tinton Falls, New Jersey 07724 |
| 908-389-3592 | Save computing history, give an old geek old hardware. |
| pechter(a)shell.monmouth.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)latrobe.edu.au
Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479
1999
La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"
Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html 
5:52 p.m.
My timeline I sent earlier illustrates the development dates. The faq listed is
definitely wrong. Take a look at Kernighan & Pike's book on the Unix OS for more
details.
Dan
Bill/Carolyn Pechter wrote:
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
Huw -- I agree with your assertion. I remember seeing this in
Don Libes book -- Life With Unix... (Prentice-Hall?)
Also in a number of references in the Edition 7 docs.
Unix was written in assembler for a PDP-7 (I thought 1970 for the First
Edition ).
Bill
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill/Carolyn Pechter | 17 Meredith Drive | Tinton Falls, New Jersey 07724 |
| 908-389-3592 | Save computing history, give an old geek old hardware. |
| pechter(a)shell.monmouth.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)latrobe.edu.au
Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479
1999
La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"
Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html 
5:44 p.m.
On Mon, 18 May 1998, Huw Davies wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home.
To be fair, the author does say
<<
Unix history goes back to 1969 and the famous "little-used PDP-7 in a
corner" on which Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie (the R in K&R) and others
started work on what was to become Unix. The name "Unix" was intended as a
pun on Multics (and was written "Unics" at first - UNiplexed Information
and Computing System).
>
And then goes on to list signifcant versions, including something called
V1 that was written on an PDP-11 in '71. So, perhaps V0 was written in
'69 on a PDP-7? (DMR was a zero-based kinda guy, after all.)
-- Doug
8:17 p.m.
On Mon, 18 May 1998, Huw Davies wrote:
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
Ok, now we have two opposing consensus' (consensi?) going. Was it a PDP-7
in 1974 as I originally stated or a (what was that?) in 1968?
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 05/11/98]
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home. Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html 
10:18 p.m.
After watching this go on for a while without resolving itself I pulled
out my copy of _A Quarter Century of UNIX_ by Peter H. Salus. According
to Salus, Thompson started work on what was to become Unix in the summer
of 1969 on a PDP-7. Within a month the basic system had been developed
including and assembler, editor, and a shell. The PDP-11/20 arrived in
the summer of 1970 without a disk. According to Salus according to
Ritchie:
"We got the PDP-11 very early. It came during the summer of 1970. Only
the processor and memory arrived, there was no disc. It was all paper
tape software, you loaded things with paper tape, there was no operating
system as such. The first Unix for it was written cross-assembling
from the PDP-7 using the PDP-7 assembler that was written in B."
There is a list on p.43 listing the 10 AT&T Bell Laboratories editions of
the Unix Programmer's Manual:
First Edition November 3, 1971
Second Edition June 12, 1972
Third Edition February 1973
Fourth Edition November 1973
Fifth Edition June 1974
Sixth Edition May 1975
Seventh Edition January 1979
Eighth Edition February 1985
Ninth Edition September 1986
Tenth Edition October 1989
All typos are mine.
To sum up: it all started in the summer of 1969. The first edition of
unix was produced in 1971.
Also Dennis Ritchie has a home page with a link to a document on the
early development of Unix at:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr
Look for `The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System,'.
_A Quarter Century of UNIX_ is very good. I recommend it highly to anyone
who wants to know more about the history of Unix.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Antique Computer Collection: http://www.wco.com/~pcoad/machines.html
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
On Mon, 18 May 1998, Huw Davies wrote:
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
Ok, now we have two opposing consensus' (consensi?) going. Was it a PDP-7
in 1974 as I originally stated or a (what was that?) in 1968?
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home. Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html 
18 May
18 May
8:14 a.m.
On 18 May 98 at 12:02, Huw Davies wrote:
At 02:44 PM 17-05-98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote:
Well this thread drove me to my back-issues of Electronics and Byte. Cost me
an afternoon since it immersed me in too many interesting articles including
the Byte same issue review of the Lisa and Apple IIe releases.
In an article Byte 6/81, Robert Greenberg MS Xenix product mgr. wrote :
" The UNIX os was originally developed at Bell Laboratories by Ken Thompson,
- - - - - With access to an abandoned DEC PDP-7 computer that had no
software, Thompson decided in 1969 to write a set of programs that would aid
him in software research. Over a period of several years, and with the help of
fellow researcher Dennis Ritchie, this set of programs evolved into a full
operating system. By 1972, it was recoded for the DEC PDP-11 computer in a
newly designed high-level language, called C. "
Incidentally in one of the other issues it was mentioned that Interactive was
the 1st commercial company to license it with software and hardware support.
BTW is " Bzzt " the print representation of a Bronx cheer ?
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Well I don't care how nicely formatted the page is, it's wrong. Unix was
definitely originally written in assembler for the PDP-7. I'm sure I've got
the reference at home.
Huw Davies Bzzt. Unix was created in 1974 at Bell Labs on a
PDP-7.
Proof by assertion *and* buzzer is my favorite kind of proof. At least
the guy that wrote the UNIX FAQ disagrees with you, but I'm sure your
buzzer is bigger than his :-)
http://www.ee.byu.edu/unix-faq/subsection3_8_2.html
9563
days inactive
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6 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
adept＠mcs.com -
dastar＠wco.com -
H.Davies＠latrobe.edu.au -
lwalker＠mail.interlog.com -
pcoad＠wco.com -
pechter＠shell.monmouth.com -
yowza＠yowza.com