Subject: Re: MicroVAX 10th edition? (fwd)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 02:53:59 -0500

To recapitulate the situation:

The 8th edition material does exist in coherent form from
tapes, and I have it: two tapes in tar format.  It's clean
in that it has virtually nothing from outside.  The only
issue would be whether Caldera can be induced to
think about it.  I don't see a problem with compressing
it and making it available to you.

There are two parts: one is the main system and its
software (34MB uncompressed) and the jerq/blit
material (18MB).   I could compress it and make it
available to you.

9th, 10th stuff is not sorted out.  Norman collected some
sort of snapshot circa the 10th edition manual, but
we don't have it in coherent form; it never was a distribution
as such.

I do have the contents of much of the source, but as Norman observes,
there is a lot in what we've both got that would have
to be gone through.  (bowell.src.fs weighs in at 369MB).

	Dennis

Subject: Re: MicroVAX 10th edition? (fwd)
From: Warren Toomey <[email-masked]>
To: Dennis Ritchie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 14:59:35 +1100 (EST)

Dennis,
	I'm trying to persuade Norman to let me take an off-site archive
of his 10th Edition setup, just so that we have a preserve of bits now,
pending any developments on the legal front. He's amenable, but he also
asked if I had contacted you about the 8th Edition tapes. Could I do the
same with any 8th or 9th Edition tapes that you have? I am already sitting
on a pile of sensitive things which I promise never to release until
it's legally feasible.

Thanks,
	Warren

----- Forwarded message from Norman Wilson -----
From: Norman Wilson <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: MicroVAX 10th edition?
Date: Thu,  6 Dec 2001 12:07:49 -0500

Good point re off-site backups of the original snapshot.  There
is some cleanup that had better be done even of that to remove
third-party licensed stuff that happened to be kept in /usr/src,
e.g. there is an old copy of Matlab and probably one of
Macsyma; none of it has anything to do with UNIX anyway.
But that (possibly plus spinning an old tape to make sure I am
starting from a pristine and complete snapshot) shouldn't take
more than an afternoon to do once I'm back home, and now
is probably the best time in ages for me to get around to it.

I propose that you nag me about it in about Monday week or
thereabouts, by which time it will likely be possible for me
just to sit down and do it.

I wish I had a copy of the V8 tape handy too.  Have you asked
Dennis about that?  There's a small chance that I can find one
elsewhere in Toronto (the guy who would know now lives in
Oakland CA, and in fact is here at LISA), but only a small
chance.  I'll try to remembere to poke him tomorrow.
----- End of forwarded message from Norman Wilson -----

---

From: Norman Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 11:02:32 -0500

There actually was a sort of V9 tape that I was reminded of
a few days ago because I encountered Geoff Collyer at LISA:
the V9-for-Sun tape done by someone in a neighboring group,
not 1127.  (The number 1122 and the name Dave Kapilow come
to mind, but the memories are faint.)  Geoff got a copy of that
during his later days at U of T; he thinks he knows where there
is still a copy.  I plan to follow that lead when I'm back in town
(in a week), both because it seems worth preserving and
because I am now curious to see just what was on it. I am
pretty sure it was done just prior to the big device driver reorg
that inspired me to change the system to print `9Vr2' at boot
time (partly as a tactic to nudge others into doing an honest
10/e manual; it worked, though I don't take full credit by any
means).

My snapshot was taken somewhat after the manual was issued,
but the system didn't change much.  I do still have a copy of
the pristine snapshot (sans all the changes I've made to the
system since); I don't think it would be too hard to expunge the
outside bits, though I can now state fairly confidently that parts
of /usr/src/cmd just won't compile or won't work after they have
been compiled even after pruning.  But if we want to preserve
history complete with warts (and I want to do that), there it is.