Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦 (lkundrak@metalhead.club)'s status on Monday, 12-May-2025 01:58:44 JST HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦

   Richard Miller's "The First #Unix Port" [1] paper (not to be confused with similarly named article of his colleague, Mr. Reinsfeld) tells a story that's pretty damn wild.

   Task: Port Unix from PDP-11 to their new Interdata 7/32 computer
   Travel budget: three round-trips to New South Wales uni, the closest UNIX installation on a PDP-11

   Robert has no C compiler. Learns C by reading the PDP-11 compiler source printout, ports it to Interdata completely off line. Two visits to to New South Wales, runs the port through UNIX C compiler, feeds it itself, debugs a little, returns with Interdata assembly of a working compiler.

   [1] https://archive.org/details/the-first-unix-port

   [1/2]

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦 (lkundrak@metalhead.club)'s status on Monday, 12-May-2025 01:59:40 JST HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     Story of Mr. Robert, the bad ass #Unix porter, gets no less amusing afterwards.

     There's a working self-hosting C compiler, various utilities also get ported to the Interdata operating system. But also -- parts of the kernel. The computer is in use during the day, so rebooting to test out a kernel is not an option! Towards the end of the development, Robert needs to test kernels at night.

     They eventually switch to UNIX and call the Bell Labs about their port, and their collective jaws dropped -- they were also doing a port for an Interdata machine. But needless to say, had an actual UNIX computer!

     Oh, and Robert didn't use that third round-trip! 🧠🪓

     [2/2]

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.