Subject: A Paper for Usenix '09

From: Warren Toomey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:48:26 +1000

Hi Dennis, merry Christmas to you and your family! I wanted to let you know
that my paper on the restoration of 1st Edition UNIX has been accepted by
the IEEE Annals of Computing History, with some minor changes.

I have also been busy writing a paper also on UNIX software restoration for
the main Usenix 2009 conference. The paper is due Jan 9, and as I mention your
help several times in the paper, I thought I should send you a draft for
consideration and vetting.

In particular, I wanted to let the reader know that you passed on several
DECtape images to me over a period of time, and not in one big hit. Here is
how I describe it:

   Although Dennis Ritchie was in possession of the recovered DECtape images,
   these were divulged to the TUHS slowly over a period of about two years,
   primarily due to legal issues surrounding the release of the material.

I'm very happy to change this in any way that you think is suitable, because
in the text I'm really just guessing :-)

Anyway, please give the paper a quick read if you get a chance, and let me
know of any content you feel could be altered or reworded.

Many thanks for all your help! Cheers,
	Warren

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From: Warren Toomey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:00:08 +1000

> the IEEE Annals of Computing History, with some minor changes.

Dennis, I am still working on the changes (work and other things have
impeded me so far). I have a question about 1st Edition UNIX, if you have
the time.

During the restoration of the assembly kernel, we took out some code which
converted uppercase letters to lowercase. I assume this was needed to deal
with the uppercase-only ASR-33s that you had. Question: if all uppercase
was converted to lowercase, how did the patent typists enter uppercase
into roff?

> consideration and vetting.

The paper was accepted as a short paper, so I had to trim things here and

>    primarily due to legal issues surrounding the release of the material.

was removed.

Will you be coming to the Usenix 2009 conference in June? If so, I look
forward to finally meeting up with you!

Thanks again for all your help,
	Warren