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

Technology

84769 readers
5108 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
450
Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball (tech.slashdot.org)
submitted 4 months ago by sundray@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
all 32 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 107 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months 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 47 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf 46 points 4 months ago

Your mom loves it

[–] koella@lemmy.zip 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Nancy Reagan still has the high score

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

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

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Monica Lewinsky is right on her heels.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months 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 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

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

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago

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

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 90 points 4 months ago (5 children)

They wrote this without googling anything.

[–] mech@feddit.org 55 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 32 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 12 points 4 months ago

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 27 points 4 months 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 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 11 points 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months ago

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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Or they just drop the =

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

They were chatting with ELIZA and vibe coded the whole thing

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 37 points 4 months 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 4 months ago

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

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

[–] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months 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.