{"id":45490,"date":"2025-12-21T03:40:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T03:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/?p=45490"},"modified":"2025-12-21T03:40:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T03:40:33","slug":"bell-labs-unix-tape-from-1974-successfully-dumped-to-a-tarballutm_sourcerss1-0mainlinkanonutm_mediumfeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/2025\/12\/21\/bell-labs-unix-tape-from-1974-successfully-dumped-to-a-tarballutm_sourcerss1-0mainlinkanonutm_mediumfeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Bell Labs &#8216;Unix&#8217; Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"fhbody-180431873\">\n<div id=\"text-180431873\" class=\"p\">\n<p>\t\t\t\tArchive.org now has a page with &#8220;the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum&#8217;s Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek&#8217;s readtape tool.&#8221; A Berlin-based retrocomputing enthusiast has created a page with the contents of the tape ready for bootstrapping, &#8220;including a tar file of the filesystem,&#8221; and instructions on dumping an RK05 disk image from tape to disk (and what to do next).<\/p>\n<p>Research professor Rob Ricci at the University of Utah&#8217;s school of computing posted pictures and video of the tape-reading process, along with several updates.  (&#8220;So far some of our folks think they have found <em>Hunt The Wumpus<\/em> and the C code for a Snobol interpreter.&#8221;)<br \/>\nUniversity researcher Mike Hibler noted the code predates the famous comment &#8220;You are not expected to understand this&#8221; \u2014 and found part of the C compiler with a copyright of 1972.<\/p>\n<p>The version of Unix recovered seems to have some (but not all) of the commands that later appeared in Unix v5, according to discussion on social media.  &#8220;UNIX wasn&#8217;t versioned as we know it today,&#8221; explains University of Utah PhD student Thalia Archibald, who researched early Unix history (including the tape) and also worked on its upload. &#8220;In the early days, when you wanted to cut a tape, you&#8217;d ask Ken if it was a good day \u2014 whether the system was relatively bug-free \u2014 and copy off the research machine&#8230;  I&#8217;ve been saying It&#8217;s probably V5 minus a tiny bit, which turned out to be quite true.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Africa tv video display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1669381584671856\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3579572842\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\">\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n#Bell #Labs #Unix #Tape #Successfully #Dumped #Tarball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archive.org now has a page with &#8220;the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mzansi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45492,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45490\/revisions\/45492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eduzim.co.zw\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}