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Run ancient UNIX on modern hardware

124 points by doener

by retrac

1 subcomments

Robert Nordier's port of v7 to x86 probably didn't get the attention it deserves.
It's what it sounds like: v7 Unix ported to x86. Unix v7 was portable enough and the PDP-11 architecturally similar enough to x86 that almost all the code works without change. (Many of the changes from v6 to v7 were to make Unix more portable; it was already running on at least 4 different architectures by 1980.)
I wonder if the obscurity is because the x86 v7 source was an archive inside an archive? Seems a minor thing but not having it to browse online is likely to be an off-ramp for most.
https://www.nordier.com/v7x86/v7x86-0.8a-all.tar.xz has releases/v7x86-0.8a.tar.bz2 (you'll want to use a -C prefix it explodes in the current directory). Source is in usr/sys and usr/src like normal for v7 Unix.
And yes, your modern Linux system's GNU tar is reading the ancient v7 tar format just fine. Neat, eh?
You might find the modern "file" command can still recognize the v7 a.out binary format too:
```
    $ file usr/bin/compress  
    usr/bin/compress: a.out little-endian 32-bit executable not stripped
```
Unix version 7 remains a sort of lowest common denominator almost half a century later.

by leoc

2 subcomments

xv6 the MIT 'spiritual port' (so to speak) of Version 6 Unix probably deserves to be mentioned there as well, as while it's not actually a historic Bell Labs Unix it will better meet some people's needs. https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2025/xv6.html

by actionfromafar

1 subcomments

I can't pick up the caper (due to the customary backlog of insane projects), but IMHO someone™ should port RetroBSD¹ to more microcontrollers. There's even a C compiler² running on device!
There's a UNIX shape void in the embedded world. Todays microcontrollers routinely come with several megabytes of RAM.
1: https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd
2: https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd/tree/master/src/cmd/sma...

by hn_acc1

4 subcomments

At work at the time (I was an intern), in 1993, we ran SCO Unix on a 25 MHz 386sx with 8 MB and another 6 MB on an add-in card on the ISA bus. And while the compilation with Motif was a bear (1 hour for a 1 MB executable), the actual app was reasonably snappy.
I can't imagine how FAST that system would feel with modern hardware.

by blankx32

1 subcomments

simh deserves the credit here

by cortesoft

7 subcomments

Is 'ancient UNIX' a term of art, or should I be offended?