this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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463
Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball (tech.slashdot.org)
submitted 2 months ago by sundray@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 114 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 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 48 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf 48 points 2 months ago

Your mom loves it

[–] koella@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Nancy Reagan still has the high score

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

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

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

Monica Lewinsky is right on her heels.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 14 points 2 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 2 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 2 months ago

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

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

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

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 95 points 2 months ago (5 children)

They wrote this without googling anything.

[–] mech@feddit.org 56 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 13 points 2 months ago

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

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The modern world was born in NJ

* looks at modern world *

Yeah, that tracks.

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 27 points 2 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 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 11 points 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 months ago

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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Or they just drop the =

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

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

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

They were chatting with ELIZA and vibe coded the whole thing

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 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.

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 17 points 2 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 2 months ago (1 children)

TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 11 points 2 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.