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Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball

⁨389⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sundray@lemmus.org⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/21/020235/bell-labs-unix-tape-from-1974-successfully-dumped-to-a-tarball

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  • xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I downloaded the tarball and had a look through it. Almost everything has source code included, which is pretty cool to see.

    There’s an entire C compiler from 1972, bootstrapped to be written in C. There was also a SNOBOL III compiler written in C, and some Fortran stuff.

    Unsurprisingly grep was written in assembly, but it’s source is there.

    There’s also a games folder, but unfortunately these look like they’re just binaries: bj, chess, cubic, moo, ttt, wump I’ll have to load up a pdp11 emulator later to see what they are.

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    • coolmojo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Thank you for sharing the insights. I heard bj is a good game.

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      • nomecks@lemmy.wtf ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Your mom loves it

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      • koella@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Nancy Reagan still has the high score

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    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Hunt the Wumpus! A true classic.

      (I’m serious. Try it. It’s fun. I think it’s in the bsdgames package.)

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    • HamsterRage@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Wow. SNOBOL was one of the coolest, Stange languages.

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  • truthfultemporarily@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They wrote this without googling anything.

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    • bigfondue@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you had a question about C, you would just consult K&R, but not the book

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    • mech@feddit.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

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      • Nanook@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

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    • xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Hello World in 1974: echo.c

      main(argc, argv)
      int argc;
      char *argv[];
      {
      	int i;
      
      	argc--;
      	for(i=1; i<=argc; i++)
      		printf("%s%c", argv[i], i==argc? '\n': ' ');
      }
      
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      • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Bloat, they wasted an extra integer operation with argc–.

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    • bigfondue@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s actually really easy when you get to make everything up as you go along.

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      • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The modern world was born in NJ

        * looks at modern world *

        Yeah, that tracks.

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  • AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    my grandmother was a programmer at bell in the early 60s and 70s. really curious if she had hands on any of this. wish she was still around to ask lol.

    you only realize how cool your grandparents were after they’re gone.

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  • eleijeep@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Tape image: https://archive.org/details/utah_unix_v4_raw

    Extracted filesystem: http://squoze.net/UNIX/v4/README

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  • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

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    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Its been though several hands and the latest ones love floating bug the fuck out of you ads. I used to have a button on for decades to disable ads due to me being a regular contributor. The latest owners took that away.

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  • solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is Unix v4 I think. The programs mentioned were also on later versions and I thought not hard to find. V6 sources are all online somewhere. I also expect some of those v4 programs may have been in assembler rather than C.

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