8 ms·
Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)
- jamesy0ung 3y agoThat is very cool, is there a writeup on how it was done?
- mzi 3y agohttps://github.com/rsc/unix/ https://github.com/rsc/unix/
- baudaux 3y agohttps://www.exaequos.com https://www.exaequos.com
- ilaksh 3y agoI'm not able to log in on my phone. The login prompt doesn't echo any characters when I typed and I don't get a prompt for password.
- grose 3y agoTry clicking the tty1-8 buttons, it should pop up a keyboard (but will scroll you to a weird place). I just sent a patch that should fix the scrolling behavior after a tty switch: https://github.com/rsc/unix/pull/1 https://github.com/rsc/unix/pull/1 If you have a different problem, post your OS/browser so we can try debugging it.
- ilaksh 3y agoOf course I clicked the buttons. It's an inexpensive Android phone on Chrome 118 and Android 11.
- grose 3y agoOK, thanks. I was able to reproduce it on an Android 11 emulator. I'll take a look. I brought up the tty thing because on iOS it scrolls everything offscreen but input works.
- grose 3y agoSent a PR with a fix. The problem is that it was relying on the keydown event which Android Chrome doesn't send. Tweaked it to also handle the event input and it seems to work.
- TMWNN 3y agoSixth Edition is from 1975. Let's consider its contemporary large-scale multiuser OS environments: * PLATO at UIUC. Much more sophisticated graphics and extensive support for multiuser gaming, but requires custom (and expensive) terminals. Homegrown mainframe, then CDC hardware. * Michigan Terminal System at University of Michigan and elsewhere. Runs on IBM mainframes. * Multics, ITS, TOPS-10, and who knows what else at MIT. (Not Unix.) Mostly DEC hardware. * Stanford's WAITS, a descendant of ITS. DEC hardware. * Last but definitely not least, DTSS at Dartmouth, running on GE/Honeywell systems. Of these, DTSS is by far the most widely used. Every Dartmouth undergraduate student is required to, at some point, write and debug a BASIC program. Terminals are everywhere on campus and almost everyone uses them for work (homework, research, and homegrown applications for registration and asset management for employees) and fun (games, email). Dartmouth's later BlitzMail is a natural extension of this mindset once things are decentralized to micros. PLATO is widely available at UIUC but it is not proactively forced upon all students like DTSS. Based on The Friendly Orange Glow, some classes require its use but otherwise most seem to discover it from some unused terminal in the basement. No use by university employees. From what little I know of MTS I think this is somewhere in between DTSS and PLATO in terms of adoption, at least at Michigan. Possibly more widespread/proactive at some other installations? Stanford and MIT's systems are not for the masses, in the sense that students at large are not expected to use them. I don't think we're yet at the point where, for several years, anyone (affiliated with the university or not) can go to an MIT terminal (or connect remotely) and get an account. If not, you probably need to know someone in Course 6 or works at LCS. I think Stanford requires SAIL affiliation. If Walter Bright reads this, he can tell us what Caltech is like. Most other universities have computers by this time, of course, but almost always just batch-card systems. Note that Unix is not listed above. I don't believe any university has students using it. Over the next decade there will be an explosion in multiuser, mostly driven by DEC hardware and, at first, DEC software, with Unix slowly, then suddenly, taking market share from DEC's own OSs despite outrage from DEC staff. DTSS, as widely used as it is, remains stuck in BASIC; in 1984 Dartmouth moves heavily into micros by becoming an early Macintosh adopter. PLATO remains isolated at UIUC; the ambitious CDC attempt to commercialize it almost kills the company, and anyway never goes beyond "drill and practice"-type software that wastes the graphical and social features. As mentioned, MIT is not a place where most students get exposure to computers, or otherwise an early pioneer in Unix. This suddenly changes in 1983 with Project Athena; within a few years MIT produces X and Kerberos.
- gboyegaebenezer 3y ago[flagged]
- swagempire 3y agoI love all the comments. But I have no idea what I can do after I login. Anyone know a place I could read up on this version, or provide a small description of its capabilities and limitations compared to modern Linux?
- mseepgood 3y agoExplore the file system via chdir and ls (or ls -l), see what programs there are under /bin. Compile a C program (e.g. from ken's home directory) with cc and run it. Read the v6 man pages: https://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/ https://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/ Learn ed and write your own C program.
- swagempire 3y agoOK -- thanks:)
- swagempire 3y agoIt even lacks man pages btw
- mseepgood 3y agoI don't know why the man command is missing, because the pages themselves are there under /usr/man.
- mimotomo2009 3y agoYou can use roff to show the manpages. e.g. roff -Tman who.1
- swagempire 3y agoCool-- thanks :)
- jasoneckert 3y agoI'm intrigued by the /LICENSE.txt file. How did Caldera International obtain the rights to distribute Research Unix 1-7e and 32V? Was it through their acquisition of SCO, and if so, how did SCO receive those rights?
- rst 3y agoAT&T sold its Unix-related IP to Novell, which then relicensed some of it to SCO. Whether Novell transferred enough to provide a basis for the lawsuits is itself a question that was argued in court -- and ultimately not decided in SCO's favor. Summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
- mlyle 3y agoIt dies when you run bc. Can't even switch between ttys. "fatal error: sync: unlock of unlocked mutex" shows up on the javascript console.
- chubot 3y agoWhy a simulated PDP-11 CPU rather than compiling to wasm? I guess because wasm is pure computation with no interrupts and so forth? Also no access to the stack Also it’s probably a lot more work to retarget the existing compilers to new back ends Although if this is a new Go implementation, it’s probably a lot of work anyway
- rst 3y agoNontrivial amounts of the source are PDP-11 assembly -- a lot of it in the kernel, but also bits of userland.
- yencabulator 3y agoDid v6 have control-C? It doesn't seem to do anything. C-\ crashes the wasm with `panic: qsav`. Try running just `cat`.