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While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973

Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_E…

We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum

#retrocomputing

An old reel to reel magnetic tape. It has a label, in Jay Lepreau's handwriting, proclaiming it to be "UNIX Original from Bell Labs v4 (see manual for fmt)"

UNIX Fourth Edition - Computer History Wiki

gunkies.org
#retrocomputing #unix
in reply to Rob Ricci

Space Catitude 🚀
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Space Catitude 🚀
• •

Wow. I hope they will copy it!

It's getting harder to find drives for those old tapes.

in reply to Rob Ricci

Kevin Russell
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Kevin Russell
• •

Wow! Congrats on all fronts, storing, finding, identifying, understanding, being responsible with our history.

Congrats up and down the lists of "golly humans are wonderful creatures"

I admire your group, tip.my hat.

#linux #unix #history

#history #linux #unix
in reply to Rob Ricci

clew
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clew
• •

“See manual for format”!

@ricci

@Rob Ricci
in reply to clew

adb
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adb
• •
@clew Unix was the peak of the lost culture in which you got manuals with stuff.
@clew
in reply to adb

clew
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clew
• •

I was around for the switch from print to CD documentation

I think I remember a… 1990s mainframe? that came with a bookcase to hold the manuals. Same paint as on the mainframe.

@adb @ricci

@Rob Ricci @adb
in reply to clew

Garrett Wollman
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Garrett Wollman
• •
@clew @adb DEC machines of the late 1980s, and probably other vendors' big iron as well, came on two pallets, one or more for the chassis and a whole separate pallet of documentation. Along with the classic empty filler boxes to adjust the weight distribution.
@clew @adb
in reply to Garrett Wollman

Rob Hooft
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Rob Hooft
• •
@wollman @clew @adb “The orange wall”, with some version upgrade (was it VMS5 ) became a “grey wall”. I can still feel the binders in my hands…
@Garrett Wollman @clew @adb
in reply to Rob Ricci

Dale Hagglund
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Dale Hagglund
• •
Wow, this is an amazing find! I'm looking forward to seeing what the CHM is able to do with it.
in reply to Rob Ricci

JohnMashey
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JohnMashey
• •
So cool, I hope it’s readable!
I arrived at Bell Labs Piscataway, into Rudd Canaday’s PWB/UNIX department October 1973, same week our PDP-11/45 got installed, 2nd one in BTL after ken+dmr’s. We ran UNIX V4 of course, first one whose kernel was in C.
We even got documentation besides man pages: the CACM article & ~20-page C reference, which i still have.
My car celebrates UNIX every day:
Image of UNIX license (plate, not the university agreement that basically said as is, no support)
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