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52 Year old data tape could contain Unix history

(www.theregister.com)
128 points rbanffy | 2 comments | 08 Nov 25 16:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.422s | source
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gxd ◴[08 Nov 25 17:07 UTC] No.45858194[source]▶
This is an incredible find. It would be amazingly cool if we could create an emulated environment for compiling and running Unix v4 from these sources.
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ndiddy ◴[08 Nov 25 17:21 UTC] No.45858292[source]▶
SIMH emulates the PDP-11 (along with a ton of other early mini/microcomputers). It should be possible to run whatever's extracted from the tapes on SIMH. For example, the members of the TUHS mailing list were able to get an even earlier set of UNIX sources from 1972 running again, see here for more info: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72
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1. larsbrinkhoff ◴[08 Nov 25 18:09 UTC] No.45858645[source]▶
They were able to get an even earlier set of UNIX sources running on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator. SEVEN.
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2. bodyfour ◴[08 Nov 25 18:46 UTC] No.45858925[source]▶
It's really easy to run for yourself: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/pdp7-unix/

Don't expect it to do much, but it's fascinating if you're interested in OS history.