Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball - Slashdot
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Archive.org now has a page with "the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum's Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek's readtape tool." A Berlin-based...
  • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
    3 months

    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 a Fortran interpreter in C (only 462 lines!), and every unix command like ls,cd,echo,cat,grep,etc…

    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.

        • bstix@feddit.dkEnglish
          3 months

          They also used the classic they knew what they were doing shortcut.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
      3 months

      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': ' ');
}
        • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
          3 months

          I think it’s actually quite elegant. No matter what it has to skip over argument 0 which will be the executable name echo.
          If the subtraction was removed and the loop changed to <, it would then need to do an addition or subtraction inside the loop to check if it’s the last argument.

          • palordrolap@fedia.io
            3 months

            The real question might be whether the compiler was smart enough to change var++ and var-- into ++var and --var when the initial values aren’t needed.

            As compiler optimisations go, it’s a fairly obvious one, but it was 1974 and putting checks like that in the compiler would increase its size and slow it down when both space and time were at a premium.

  • AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3 months

    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.

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3 months

    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 would have been in assembler rather than C.

    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 months

      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.