They were able to get an even earlier set of UNIX sources running on the SIMH PDP-7 emulator. SEVEN.

SIMH emulates the PDP-11 (along with a ton of other early mini&#x2F;microcomputers). It should be possible to run whatever&#x27;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: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;DoctorWkt&#x2F;unix-jun72" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;DoctorWkt&#x2F;unix-jun72</a>

Or even worse, what if they vibe coded it?

This will be the linchpin that proves SCO was right all along.

Wild if we found out these early versions were rife with spyware and ads.

For the same reason one visits a museum. If that doesn&#x27;t make sense to you, then doing this won&#x27;t either.

For nostalgia sake. It&#x27;s from the computing period when there was a great influx of good idea&#x27;s but still a huge shortage in memory and storage.

For me, it&#x27;s a chance to experience what it was like to use and develop software on these systems back in the day. For example, lately I&#x27;ve been writing some small apps and adding new kernel features using a variant of V6 Unix running on my PDP-11&#x2F;05. It&#x27;s humbling to see what it really took to be productive on these systems.

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.

I’ve learned this is not the case. Bryan Cantrill taught me in the talk about tail -f (and about how it was “treasuring up” data in buffers

Old software like Unix tends to be some of the best-written software ever. Saving these systems gives us a valuable learning resource.

You never know what will be important to people in the future.I just listened to a great new episode (podcast) of The Truth (audio drama anthology series, they’re fantastic). It was called “The Joke.” Basically this archivist finds an old hard drive with a dumb pun joke - turns out she didn’t even understand it because jokes were no longer allowed in society. Kind of has an Equilibrium vibe but more bureaucratic and less “killing people for feeling.” Anyway the joke itself takes on great importance as a result. Bit of a dramatic comparison, but you see what I’m having at.

I have mixed feelings.On one side I think we need to preserve this relic as we did with Homer&#x27;s poetry. Because it just deserves.On another side I think we won&#x27;t (and should not) try to preserve in an infinite present whatever has been written by humanity. For what purpose?

52 Year old data tape could contain Unix history