this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
457 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

77904 readers
2389 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
457
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
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 33 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 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 20 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours 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.

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 93 points 3 days ago (5 children)

They wrote this without googling anything.

[–] mech@feddit.org 56 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 13 points 3 days ago

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

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It's actually really easy when you get to make everything up as you go along. Like the transistor, and C, and Unix. That place was something else. The modern world was born in NJ

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The modern world was born in NJ

* looks at modern world *

Yeah, that tracks.

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yea I thought about having 'for better for worse' in the post, but I lived in NJ so I'll let them have a little glory for once

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 26 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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': ' ');
}
[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 7 points 3 days ago

Well, good news, the source code is right there. Someone can go check (it probably won't be me)

[–] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I was going to guess the same regarding the time period.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Or they just drop the =

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If you had a question about C, you would just consult K&R, and I don't mean the book

[–] ylph@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I worked at Bell Labs in the 90s, on wireless stuff, but we were still using the "in house" cfront compiler at the time, and would e-mail the compiler group, which included Bjarne Stroustrup, with issues sometimes. I learned C++ from his book before I joined Bell Labs, so that was a bit of a holy shit moment for sure for me then.

Kernighan, Ritchie and Thompson all still worked at Bell Labs as well at the time, but the company was huge then, and they were all in a different location from my team, so I never had any opportunities to meet them.

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Have you read Unix: A History and a Memoir? I only started it, but the first chapter or two is just Kernighan talking about Bell Labs.

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

They were chatting with ELIZA and vibe coded the whole thing

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 37 points 3 days 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.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 17 points 3 days ago

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

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

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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 would have been in assembler rather than C.

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

TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days 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.