PDP-7 UNIX
UNIX (very briefly Unics, as a pun on 'Multics') on the PDP-7 was the first version of UNIX. (The name was coined later by Brian Kernighan.) After Bell Laboratories' withdrawal from the Multics project, Ken Thompson was able to find a little-used PDP-7 with a Graphic II display system to work on, and it was on this machine that UNIX (albeit in a very primitive version) was born.
It was written by Thompson in 1969, initially to experiment with his ideas on file systems, notably his idea on separating the naming function (directories) from the actual storage of data (in files); the UNIX file system was the first to completely separate these two. It was also used to support his Space Travel game.
The PDP-7 version was written entirely in assembly language. It was heavily influenced by Multics, and also by the Berkeley Timesharing System, which Thompson had worked on.
Recently, an old listing was discovered, and the system has been recovered from that, and made to run on a simulator. (CTSS and the IMP code, among others, were retrieved in the same way.)
External links
- PDP-7 Unix - recovered source listings
- Readme - covers contents
- The UNIX Time-Sharing System - covers the PDP-7 and earliest PDP-11 UNIX systems
- PDP-7 Unix - source code on GitHub
- Dennis M. Ritchie - see section "Unix papers and writings, approximately chronological"
- An Oral History of Unix - Lengthy interviews with Thompson, Ritchie, McIlroy, etc
- Unix: An Oral History - much detail on the PDP-7 version, especially about the management environment in which it was allowed to flourish
