this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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466
Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball (tech.slashdot.org)
submitted 1 month ago by sundray@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
32 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 114 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf 48 points 1 month ago

Your mom loves it

[–] koella@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nancy Reagan still has the high score

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

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

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Monica Lewinsky is right on her heels.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month 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 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

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

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

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

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 95 points 1 month ago (5 children)

They wrote this without googling anything.

[–] mech@feddit.org 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 13 points 1 month ago

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

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago (1 children)

The modern world was born in NJ

* looks at modern world *

Yeah, that tracks.

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

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 11 points 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago

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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Or they just drop the =

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago

They were chatting with ELIZA and vibe coded the whole thing

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 month 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 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago (1 children)

TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month 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.