From tuhs at tuhs.org  Tue Sep  1 15:03:46 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Warner Losh via TUHS)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:03:46 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] 32V-x86
Message-ID: <CANCZdfqWiAeGn-R54pM=p9Xhd+BJ31SrgTG11frGMQCuKJhx5A@mail.gmail.com>

Greetings,

Going through the old archives, I found references to 32V being ported to
x86 in 2003 by Pat Villani and Wesley Parish.

The latest I can find is this:
> Latest is 32v-031102-01.tar.gz.  Available via anonymous ftp at
sever.opensourcedepot.com.

opensourcedepot.com is parked for sale at $800.

There's a reference by Larry McVoy to 32vi.bkbits.net.

But work seems to have trailed off in early 2004.

So was this effort saved?

This effort is unrelated to Robert Nordier's v7x86. When he released it,
Pat popped up and reported on his efforts..., but I couldn't find anything
else.

Anybody save / have a copy?

Warner

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Tue Sep  1 15:37:01 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Wesley Parish via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 17:37:01 +1200
Subject: [TUHS] 32V-x86
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfqWiAeGn-R54pM=p9Xhd+BJ31SrgTG11frGMQCuKJhx5A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CANCZdfqWiAeGn-R54pM=p9Xhd+BJ31SrgTG11frGMQCuKJhx5A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6034fb7d-e72e-4c55-b0a7-304602224eec@gmail.com>

Hi all

The last traces of my part of it are on a hard drive that I haven't 
accessed since 2012. I remember compiling some of the user-level 
utilities, which proved that gcc could compile source as old as that. 
But I hadn't done much after that, and I don't think Pat Villani took it 
any further - he would've been the guy working on the x86-specific stuff.

Wesley Parish

On 01/09/2026 17:03, Warner Losh via TUHS wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Going through the old archives, I found references to 32V being ported to
> x86 in 2003 by Pat Villani and Wesley Parish.
>
> The latest I can find is this:
>> Latest is 32v-031102-01.tar.gz.  Available via anonymous ftp at
> sever.opensourcedepot.com.
>
> opensourcedepot.com is parked for sale at $800.
>
> There's a reference by Larry McVoy to 32vi.bkbits.net.
>
> But work seems to have trailed off in early 2004.
>
> So was this effort saved?
>
> This effort is unrelated to Robert Nordier's v7x86. When he released it,
> Pat popped up and reported on his efforts..., but I couldn't find anything
> else.
>
> Anybody save / have a copy?
>
> Warner

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 05:15:39 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (andrew--- via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 12:15:39 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
Message-ID: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>

during a belated round of cleanup around the house, i have come across 3 mag tapes:

1) 2400’ reel: cpio 5281x512 blocks, 800 BPI
2) 2400’ reel: cpio -oc 32b, 1600BPI
3) 600(or maybe 800)’ reel: unknown

i would REALLY like to get the info of tape 1.
all tapes were made around 1980, and have been stored in good residential temp/humidity.

where might i be able to process these tapes?
or pointers to other places i might ask?

	andrew hume


From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 06:42:06 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Ron Natalie via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:42:06 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
In-Reply-To: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
References: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
Message-ID: <emd74cfaba-7e87-468d-8ca1-46c7bbd8a2b0@ronnatalie.com>

Obviously, getting it off the physical media is key.   Once you have the 
raw records decoding the CPIO is pretty trivial.   Hell, my Mac even has 
cpio on it (haven’t used that in years).
Alas, I no gave up all my old collection of tape drives (9 track, QIC, 
DAT, Exabyte, etc….).    The sad truth is that tape is not a long-lived 
storage format.   The fact that this stuff is low density may help.    I 
don’t know who does recovery.   I  did recover some old real-to-real 
audio tapes and the company had to “bake” them to make sure they’d 
unwind.



------ Original Message ------
>From "andrew--- via TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
To "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Date 9/1/2026 3:15:39 PM
Subject [TUHS] mag tapes

>during a belated round of cleanup around the house, i have come across 3 mag tapes:
>
>1) 2400’ reel: cpio 5281x512 blocks, 800 BPI
>2) 2400’ reel: cpio -oc 32b, 1600BPI
>3) 600(or maybe 800)’ reel: unknown
>
>i would REALLY like to get the info of tape 1.
>all tapes were made around 1980, and have been stored in good residential temp/humidity.
>
>where might i be able to process these tapes?
>or pointers to other places i might ask?
>
>	andrew hume
>

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 06:42:08 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Ron Natalie via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:42:08 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
In-Reply-To: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
References: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
Message-ID: <em4a36e140-334c-4e14-9893-3001082486fc@ronnatalie.com>




------ Original Message ------
>From "andrew--- via TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
To "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Date 9/1/2026 3:15:39 PM
Subject [TUHS] mag tapes

>during a belated round of cleanup around the house, i have come across 3 mag tapes:
>
>1) 2400’ reel: cpio 5281x512 blocks, 800 BPI
>2) 2400’ reel: cpio -oc 32b, 1600BPI
>3) 600(or maybe 800)’ reel: unknown
>
>i would REALLY like to get the info of tape 1.
>all tapes were made around 1980, and have been stored in good residential temp/humidity.
>
>where might i be able to process these tapes?
>or pointers to other places i might ask?
>
>	andrew hume
>

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 10:08:24 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (andrew--- via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 17:08:24 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
In-Reply-To: <20260901151122.1d83f588@TheHughesLogcabin.net>
References: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
 <20260901151122.1d83f588@TheHughesLogcabin.net>
Message-ID: <37F377B1-51B7-4F1B-94CE-5539423730D4@humeweb.com>

i am in southern california.

> On Sep 1, 2026, at 1:11 PM, Michael Hughes <tuhs at thehugheslogcabin.net> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 1 Sep 2026 12:15:39 -0700
> andrew--- via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
>> during a belated round of cleanup around the house, i have come
>> across 3 mag tapes:
>> 
>> 1) 2400’ reel: cpio 5281x512 blocks, 800 BPI
>> 2) 2400’ reel: cpio -oc 32b, 1600BPI
>> 3) 600(or maybe 800)’ reel: unknown
>> 
>> i would REALLY like to get the info of tape 1.
>> all tapes were made around 1980, and have been stored in good
>> residential temp/humidity.
>> 
>> where might i be able to process these tapes?
>> or pointers to other places i might ask?
>> 
>> 	andrew hume
>> 
>> 
> 
> I have two tape drives, one is connected to a VAX 3800 and the other is
> an HP SCIS drive that I connect to a FreeBSD system.
> 
> I have pulled data of tapes for other people in the past with the HP
> drive.
> 
> Where are you located?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Michael D Hughes


From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 11:21:44 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Will Senn via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 20:21:44 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Regex archaeology
Message-ID: <c99f2143-819a-49df-823b-87b769a91e37@gmail.com>

All,

I've been doing some experimentation to test my language, aiki, a small 
interpreted language. Most of my pressure tests have begun to move 
toward emulation because emulating machines is challenging in an 
interpreter (can you say sllllloooooowwwww?). Anyhow, when I had the 
regex implemented by my outsourced team (claude & chatgpt), I lacked any 
comprehension of how it actually worked beyond textbook level (which is 
to say, names of things that I didn't truly comprehend). So, I went 
looking to primary sources, as I usually do and I came across a sweet 
little regex implementation by none other than Ken Thompson, in his well 
known article, Regular Expression Search Algorithm, CACM v. 11, No. 6, 
June 1968. I found a decent copy and transcribed it so I could use it's 
examples more directly. It's a piece of work - an Algol 60 three stage 
program that emits IBM 7094 machine code that processes a string and 
produces signals.

What I really appreciate is that the code "works", it's not a fragment, 
not partial implementation, but serious work, the core third stage. 
Anyhow, I wrote a small 7094 processor (only enough instructions to 
execute thompson's search) in aiki, and tried it out and it's glorious 
(to me) running the machine code it generates and producing expected 
results (as provided in this exceptional article).

This like all shiny objects took me down a rabbit trail. My language is 
interpreted remember? I have been thinking about compilers - didn't 
think I wanted one originally, but man slow is so not me, but not just 
any implementation. My language is grammar bound, I already have an IR 
in the AST output, it's closed and therefore, I can prolly just emit it 
or better yet, follow Thompson with a bytecode emit (something for a go 
vm, for example). Anyhow, I started wondering, what about algol 60, it's 
always popping up in any serious language discussion and that took to 
Randell & Russell's 1964 Algol 60 implementation where translation is 
discussed, confirming my suspicion on how I might do the compiler for 
Aiki and preserve it's exact semantic representation and profiling 
capabilities dtrace style. Then I came back to Thompson, and that's 
hopefully where y'all come in... Do any of you know what implementation 
of algol-60 he might have used on the 7094? BC Algol is out in the wild 
and could be right, but I'm really jazzing to implement the search on an 
emulated 7094 using an actual algol and preferably the one he was using.

I know, on topic? maybe a little stretch for folks only interested in 
bandying about in the userland/kernel, but regex and it's implementation 
in ed and elsewhere were surely influenced by this exact work.

Thanks!

Will


From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 12:44:49 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Clem Cole via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 22:44:49 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Regex archaeology
In-Reply-To: <c99f2143-819a-49df-823b-87b769a91e37@gmail.com>
References: <c99f2143-819a-49df-823b-87b769a91e37@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Nosz9tuB+eDNHOF28jgoz4bis0R7N5Fnz86iFh_V=n5w@mail.gmail.com>

Will, CCing COFF and SIMH which is really where this question belongs and
BCC: TUHS.org

On Tue, Sep 1, 2026 at 9:21 PM Will Senn via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> All,
>
> I've been doing some experimentation to test my language, aiki, a small
> interpreted language. Most of my pressure tests have begun to move
> toward emulation because emulating machines is challenging in an
> interpreter (can you say sllllloooooowwwww?). Anyhow, when I had the
> regex implemented by my outsourced team (claude & chatgpt), I lacked any
> comprehension of how it actually worked beyond textbook level (which is
> to say, names of things that I didn't truly comprehend). So, I went
> looking to primary sources, as I usually do and I came across a sweet
> little regex implementation by none other than Ken Thompson, in his well
> known article, Regular Expression Search Algorithm, CACM v. 11, No. 6,
> June 1968. I found a decent copy and transcribed it so I could use it's
> examples more directly. It's a piece of work - an Algol 60 three stage
> program that emits IBM 7094 machine code that processes a string and
> produces signals.
>
> What I really appreciate is that the code "works", it's not a fragment,
> not partial implementation, but serious work, the core third stage.
> Anyhow, I wrote a small 7094 processor (only enough instructions to
> execute thompson's search) in aiki, and tried it out and it's glorious
> (to me) running the machine code it generates and producing expected
> results (as provided in this exceptional article).
>
> This like all shiny objects took me down a rabbit trail. My language is
> interpreted remember? I have been thinking about compilers - didn't
> think I wanted one originally, but man slow is so not me, but not just
> any implementation. My language is grammar bound, I already have an IR
> in the AST output, it's closed and therefore, I can prolly just emit it
> or better yet, follow Thompson with a bytecode emit (something for a go
> vm, for example). Anyhow, I started wondering, what about algol 60, it's
> always popping up in any serious language discussion and that took to
> Randell & Russell's 1964 Algol 60 implementation where translation is
> discussed, confirming my suspicion on how I might do the compiler for
> Aiki and preserve it's exact semantic representation and profiling
> capabilities dtrace style. Then I came back to Thompson, and that's
> hopefully where y'all come in... Do any of you know what implementation
> of algol-60 he might have used on the 7094? BC Algol is out in the wild
> and could be right, but I'm really jazzing to implement the search on an
> emulated 7094 using an actual algol and preferably the one he was using.
>

As I understand it, there are at least three:

   - IBM ALGOL 60 (System Monitor Compiler) for the IBSYS operating system
   - SHARE ALGOL 60 Translator  targeting the IBM 709/7090/7094 hardware and
   I thought could run on CTSS
   - ALCOR ALGOL 60 European-American consortium dedicated to standardized
   ALGOL deployment for the for the 7090/7094

You might ask Ken what he remembers.   I haven't read the paper inm a
few years,
did he say which OS he was using that might help you track it down.  Google
tells me that ALCOR-Illinois 7090/7094 compiler project has some influence
in CTSS.   But it also says:

*"**While standard ALGOL 60 dialects like ALCOR existed on the hardware,
they were not the primary way people wrote algorithmic code on CTSS
day-to-day. CTSS users heavily favored two deeply related "ALGOL-cousin"
systems. ... MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder - ALGOL 58, and compiled
unbelievably fast): was one of the most popular high-level languages on
CTSS ...  AED (Algol Extended for Design): created at MIT, AED was an
explicit, major extension of ALGOL 60 designed specifically to run under
CTSS."*


> I know, on topic? maybe a little stretch for folks only interested in
> bandying about in the userland/kernel, but regex and it's implementation
> in ed and elsewhere were surely influenced by this exact work.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Will
>
>

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 13:27:58 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Lars Brinkhoff via TUHS)
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2026 03:27:58 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
In-Reply-To: <emd74cfaba-7e87-468d-8ca1-46c7bbd8a2b0@ronnatalie.com> (Ron
 Natalie via TUHS's message of "Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:42:06 +0000")
References: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
 <emd74cfaba-7e87-468d-8ca1-46c7bbd8a2b0@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <7wwlt449j5.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Ron Natalie wrote:
> Once you have the raw records decoding the CPIO is pretty trivial.

You'd think so.  But I have come across several cpio tapes that wouldn't
decode with a regular modern cpio.  So I wrote this.

https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/tools-for-unusual-tape-formats/blob/master/cpio.c

From tuhs at tuhs.org  Wed Sep  2 21:19:08 2026
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Dan Cross via TUHS)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:19:08 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] mag tapes
In-Reply-To: <emd74cfaba-7e87-468d-8ca1-46c7bbd8a2b0@ronnatalie.com>
References: <1C4B4889-E1C9-4249-8DDB-0F11CB55E561@humeweb.com>
 <emd74cfaba-7e87-468d-8ca1-46c7bbd8a2b0@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W7yOvH6Wf9hwaO+HZ4c=ixdtFVjZ3c0mbW2Xt9CrCJ67A@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Sep 1, 2026 at 4:50 PM Ron Natalie via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> Obviously, getting it off the physical media is key.   Once you have the
> raw records decoding the CPIO is pretty trivial.   Hell, my Mac even has
> cpio on it (haven’t used that in years).
> [snip]

cpio remains surprisingly relevant in the modern age; I believe the
Linux initramfs is a cpio archive, and I know for sure that Oxide
machines read a compressed cpio archive out of flash containing the
kernel image that initializes our machines (I know because I wrote the
code that reads the archive, loads and maps the kernel, and jumps into
it to initialize the world; we pull a ramdisk image for the root
filesystem off of an NVMe device once we've initialized the PCIe
subsystem and kicked off link training and so forth).

        - Dan C.

