I wonder if since then there has been any progress on this.
Some time ago, and I'm talking many years, there was discussion and
debate about obtaining the full source code of the AT&T 3B1. I believe
at the time, there were far too many restriction and, AFAIK, the topic
was dropped.
I wonder if since then there has been any progress on this.
I'm not entirely sure what we could actually "do" with it these days, to
be honest. There is a 3B1 emulator project that is slowly coming along,
but short of porting it over to another architecture (nobody is going to
do that), it may be useless.
I personally miss the simple MGR windowing system, I thought it was
pretty neat for what it was.
I personally miss the simple MGR windowing system, I thought it was
pretty neat for what it was.
So, I guess this entire thread brings up a very interesting question...
HAS the source code indeed been hacked, and therefore indeed obtained,
by those noble among us (Phil Pemberton, Jesse Booth, Aharon Robbins &
others I have inadvertently neglected to mention) who have created,
developed and continue to improve this emulator?
I imagine all of these companies reserve their various source codes for posterity in some archival format, somewhere.
3b1 source code I expect would have been under the control of Convergent, who was later purchased by Unisys. Then to further complicate matters, I assume UNIX portions were licensed from AT&T... So doubtful that Unisys would want to release the codedue to the former licensing involved.
I put a feeler out to Unisys.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 3B1 source code is MIA and/or otherwise sitting on media that's been stored, in a box forever in someone's
basement :)
Other than nostalgia, I'm not sure what we would "do" with the code if
we were to obtain it. I admit to liking the stock text-based menu
system; it was useful for certain purposes. But the rest of the system
has long since been deprecated.
Alas, nostalgia is powerful, too.
_Fdue to the former licensing involved.
On 2/26/21 12:11 PM, J Booth wrote:
3b1 source code I expect would have been under the control of Convergent, who was later purchased by Unisys. Then to further complicate matters, I assume UNIX portions were licensed from AT&T... So doubtful that Unisys would want to release the code
Sysop: | Keyop |
---|---|
Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
Users: | 296 |
Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
Uptime: | 71:20:38 |
Calls: | 6,656 |
Calls today: | 2 |
Files: | 12,201 |
Messages: | 5,332,223 |
Posted today: | 1 |