Linux like original Unix [video] | Hacker News Reader

Linux like original Unix [video]

youtube.com

52 pointsmariuz8 comments

To get the real experience of 3rd Edition Unix, they should have used the port of the earliest C compiler to 32-bit x86 Linux:

https://github.com/vegesm/c72

...and a teletype instead of a newfangled luxurious glass terminal, of course :)

I first learned about the tty command about 25 years ago, and had always assumed that an actual teletype was a screen and a keyboard from the very beginning. Today I learned that Ken and Dennis were actually typing into a roll of paper, and getting printed paper back.

I have very early memories of using a teletype with a paper tape reader. I was probably six years old. I don't even remember what it was interfacing with, but I remember it was annoying because the feed would always screw up and mangle the tape.

I first learned to program on a Teletype that dialed in to a General Electric timesharing system. Dial-up time was very expensive, so I punched my program on a paper tape, printed and reviewed it, then dialed in, immediately ran the tape through the reader, and hung up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24405603

Even better, they predated digital computers by a long way, yet were an early application of digital data. A descendant of the original 5-bit Baudot code is still used today in RTTY applications.

Automated teleprinter networks developed, with TWX and Telex [0] coming into service in the 1930s. In 1963, AT&T upgraded TWX to use 7-bit ASCII instead of Baudot code. But TWX and Telex stagnated and were far outstripped by later dialup modems, let alone ISDN, DSL, or cable modems.

The TWX network in North America piggybacked on the telephone network, with special area codes designated for TWX service (now returned to use as voice area codes). Eventually, the courts took a dim view of TWX and forced it to be divested to Western Union.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex

Hence the terseness of ed(1).

An experience that could be replicated in MS-DOS via edlin.

Part of our computer typing skills exam at technical school, an experience I don't miss.

There is a story told by Ken Thompson about how, in effort to bootstrap a compiler on a new system, Douglas McIlroy wrote out a compiler for TMG, in assembly, by hand on paper, because the teletype was busy or just slow; He then "fed the paper into the paper" which compiled the compiler, on paper, and then McIlroy typed this output into the teletype directly where it could be executed in memory on their new PDP-7, thus giving them a compiler for the TMG compiler language, which is a recursive compiler-compiler, which could be used to port everything else to the new PDP-7.

I heard this described, either by Ken or someone else who saw this, as the most impressive single feat of human intellect they had ever witnessed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com