this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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391
Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball (tech.slashdot.org)
submitted 19 hours ago by sundray@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 89 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours 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 33 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf 30 points 14 hours ago

Your mom loves it

[–] koella@lemmy.zip 13 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Nancy Reagan still has the high score

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

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

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Monica Lewinsky is right on her heels.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 12 points 13 hours ago

Hunt the Wumpus! A true classic.

(I'm serious. Try it. It's fun. I think it's in the bsdgames package.)

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 15 hours ago

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

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 84 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

They wrote this without googling anything.

[–] mech@feddit.org 50 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

They wrote this without autocompletion or syntax highlighting.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 28 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

They had PAPER NOTEBOOKS cheats

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 9 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 30 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours 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 17 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The modern world was born in NJ

* looks at modern world *

Yeah, that tracks.

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours 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 26 points 15 hours 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 15 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 9 points 15 hours 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 15 hours 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 14 hours 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 11 hours ago

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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

Or they just drop the =

[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

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

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 38 minutes ago

They were chatting with ELIZA and vibe coded the whole thing

[–] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 27 points 10 hours 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.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 14 points 12 hours 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 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

TIL that slashdot is still around. XD

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 8 points 11 hours 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.