Interesting quote from here:

The first two bytes of every VAX Unix program were zero (a register save mask saying not to save anything). As a result, a null all-zero pointer was always valid, and if a C program used a null value as a string pointer, the zero byte at location zero was treated as a null string. As a result, a generation of Unix programs in the 1980s contained hard-to-find bugs involving null pointers, and for many years, Unix ports to other architectures provided a zero byte at location zero because it was easier than finding and fixing all the null pointer bugs.

I am learning c.

Why is c not used more on the web?

Anyone comment?

It seem if you built up many small programs to help you c would be great for the web.....

For those interested in vintage computing, I put some rare DEC reference material that I found during a cleanup up on EBay. I'm more of a 3B2 gal when it comes to tinkering with the older stuff, so I will never use these, but they're invaluable for anyone who likes the old DEC machines. Auctions end next Thursday, go take a look.

I have received permission from Dr. Heinz Lycklama, the author of LSX, to release the disk images to the PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society archive. I have written to the maintainer of the archive, Dr. Warren Toomey; meanwhile, they are here: http://www.mailcom.com/lsx/

LSX - the smallest UNIX - is alive!!!

I have successfully recreated the correct contents of the LSX floppies - long feared lost - from incomplete octal dumps, and I now have the system working under the SIMH simulator. I am not sure about the copyright status of LSX vs Mini-Unix that is currently released, so I'll refrain from publishing the floppy images for now.

Here's how it works: ( Read more...Collapse )

I successfully installed 2.11BSD on PDP-11/44 using SIMH emulator. You can give it a try: just download a disk image and run SIMH with it.

Is it true that most admins or roots prefer dark beer or even stouts?
I like Guinness myself.

Hi!

I am trying to find the smallest UNIX there was - LSX - that used 8 kb for the kernel and 12 kb for the user space, according to
http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html . So far I was able to find Mini-UNIX that uses 12 and 16 kb respectively, but it would be nice to find the record-holder and to make it available.  Does anyone have any pointers? (I've contacted the author, Dr. Lycklama. He does not have it).

...if anyone here is running any hardware that's significantly older than what I've got in my closet, and for some reason you couldn't give up the UNIX you had back in the day, well, remember to update your machines...

'cause somebody reported a Seventh Edition bug last Monday, if I'm to believe the timestamp on this.

Peace,

--me

History of environment variables in UNIX