this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball (tech.slashdot.org)
submitted 3 days ago by sundray@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 112 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 46 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf 45 points 3 days ago

Your mom loves it

[–] koella@lemmy.zip 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Nancy Reagan still has the high score

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

The word is that Julia Roberts took the title in the 90s

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Monica Lewinsky is right on her heels.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hunt the Wumpus! A true classic.

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

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't accidentally get the bdsmgames package instead, that's for a different kind of game.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

That one's sadly missing from most distros' repositories.

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

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