

Restoration of 1st Edition Unix kernel sources - tolini
http://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/

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mycroftiv
Anyone interested in this should definitely read the description of a lot
related work of recovery in the excellent paper by Warren Toomey on the
restoration of early UNIX artifacts. There was a lot more involved than just
doing an OCR scan of old documents, it is really impressive.
[http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toome...](http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf)

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StephenFalken
Back in April 2006, the great Al Kossow of Bitsavers uncovered some unknown
papers and documented his findings on The Unix Heritage Society mailing list:

"Preliminary Relase of UNIX Implentation Document" ->
<http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2006-April/001367.html>

The files -> <http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/bellLabs/unix/>

For as strange as it may sound, this amazing finding went unnoticed for 2
years. Nobody paid any attention to this precious paper...until April 2008.
That's when the whole restoration process really started:

"Whence 1st Edition Unix Kernel Assembly?" ->
<http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2008-April/001695.html>

There was a mailing list specially dedicated to the whole restauration
process:

"The Unix-jun72 Archives" -> <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/unix-jun72/>

It was really an impressive effort for bringing back to life the first edition
of the operating system that forever changed the computer world.

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SoftwareMaven
What a really great example of Vinge's software archeology! I've felt that way
on some projects, but obviously nothing like this.

~~~
cpeterso
Another Vernor Vinge concept I love is the "software midden heap", layers of
software standing on the shoulders of and papering over the bugs of earlier
software. Will anyone be able to excise rotting middle layers without breaking
software compatibility?

For example, Vinge's A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY describes a software system
thousands of years in the future that still uses the _time_t_ epoch (and none
of the system's space-faring users know the significance of 01970-01-01).

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p4bl0
Also of interest: <http://www.tuhs.org/>

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tibbon
Link to the Caldera license doesn't seem to work. Otherwise, very cool!

~~~
binarycrusader
It's posted at groklaw here:

[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040224035032...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040224035032116)

And here:

<http://www.mckusick.com/csrg/calder-lic.pdf>

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gord
Would be nice if this ran in the browser, if only to avoid bitrot.

~~~
caf
The (long, long) pre-standard C that it's written in isn't even understood by
modern C compilers - bitrot is pretty much a given at this point.

~~~
sliverstorm
They recovered a working compiler, and the darn thing was recovered from a
_printout_ \- it's not that long. Portable, perhaps?

~~~
caf
I meant "long pre-standard" as in it pre-dates the C standard by a long time.

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petegrif
Fabulous!

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uriel
For anyone interested in this kind of archaeology I have put together a web
interface for the 1st Edition manual pages:

<http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/>

