I've got a growing collection of old Unix systems on period hardware that closely resemble the systems I ran in the '80s and '90s. Over the last year or so I've put together this article discussing what I've got, why I've got it, and what I hope to do with it. The document is available on all my systems for users to read.
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December 24, 2010
Welcome to Wyvern Technologies!
Introduction
Wyvern Technologies is a set of public access Unix systems
featuring the Unix Operating System in a variety of old fla-
vors, running on period hardware. If you were a user or own-
er of an old public access Unix system, Wyvern Technologies
should be a very familiar environment.
Our systems provide a rich set of communications, entertain-
ment, software development, text processing, and utility ap-
plications, along with a large archive of historical UNIX
information in the form of text and pdf files.
This document describes the still-evolving systems environ-
ment we've built for our users and our own enjoyment. What
started out as a single system representing the final stage
of development of the old Wyvern Public Access Unix system,
has more recently become the embodiment of AT&T Unix evolu-
tion, with every major commercially available system ac-
counted for and implemented on real hardware for anyone to
use. We started with System V Release 4, and now have Sys-
tem V Release 2, System V Release 3 and 4.3BSD. We are still
missing System III, but I think we can come up with that in
the future.
The original Wyvern system was opened to the public in 1987,
using the original Microport System V/286. Over the next
five years, Wyvern upgraded to SVR3.1&2, and SVR4.1&2. It
ceased operations as such in 1992 and became an Internet
Service Provider, continuing to provide Unix shell accounts
for several years thereafter, until users were only inter-
ested in PPP connectivity. During those years, Wyvern ran
SunOS, Solaris, DEC Unix, and Linux systems.
Physically, there are five systems today:
o System V Release 2 - wyvern2 is a slightly odd SVR2
system: A/UX, implemented on a Mac Quadra 800, a Mo-
torola 68040 system. The Quadra has 40MB of main memo-
ry, a SCSI CD-ROM drive, and a single 540MB SCSI disk
drive. A/UX contains a SVR2.2 kernel, TCP/IP, and a
number of other BSD extensions. It has a very complete
development environment with C, f77, snobol, and oth-
ers. Also included are earlier versions of nroff/troff
and all the familiar macro packages. In fact, this sys-
tem seems to have the full DWB installed. wyvern2 is
available via telnet from any of the other wyvern sys-
tems.
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o System V Release 3.2 - 3batt is an AT&T 3B2/1000 run-
ning a pure version of AT&T System V Release 3.2, It
doesn't get any more official and basic than this.
3batt is a large, deskside super-micro with 64MB of
RAM, two we32200 processors running at 24MHz, a pair of
330MB SCSI drives, and a 120MB SCSI tape drive. It
comes complete with a number of software enhancements,
including a full K&R C compiler suite and much more.
3batt also has a large complement of serial ports so
that I may someday set up either a modem or a console
server to provide outside access. When fully configured
and up on the net, this will be the highlight of the
Wyvern Network.
o System V Release 4 - wyvern is a SVR4.2 system imple-
mented with Pentium server and Novell UnixWare 2.0. It
has all the bells and whistles, including a full suite
of GNU utilities and development products, games, and
much more. It also serves as a repository for a lot of
historical Unix documentation.
o SunOS 4.1.4 - sparky is a 4.3BSD system running on a
SparcStation 20 with 96MB of main memory, and the fol-
lowing SCSI devices: a 2GB disk, Sun CD-ROM, Sun DDS2
tape, and Sun Exabyte 8MM tape. Over time this system
will likely expand to a full complement of main memory
(512MB), and a larger drive. If I can make this system
secure, I may elect to dual home it and make it the
gateway to the retro-computer network. At present it
has only one Ethernet card, but these should be avail-
able for a reasonable amount. Someday I may also add a
second CPU.
o Linux - pitlog is a Linux (CentOS 5) system which acts
as a front end to the rest of the systems. pitlog is
connected to both the public Internet, and the private
wyvern network. It is a reasonably large server with
four processors, 8GB of RAM, and 1TB of RAID storage.
It also has two Gb Ethernet cards. pitlog runs the
thisoldmicro.com web site, email for several domains,
and acts as a gateway to the machines on the private
network. It has a restrictive firewall that accepts
http and email connections, and ssh only from approved
hosts. It silently drops everything else. With permis-
sion, one can ssh into pitlog, and telnet to any of the
other wyvern systems.
The network is fairly simple. A single 24 port managed Gb
router is used to manage traffic on two VLANs, one for the
front end with thisoldmicro.com, the router, and some other
machines on the public network, and one for the private net-
work. The VLANs do not route to each other, but pitlog can
reach both networks. The router is an Apple Airport Extreme
running on the Cox Business Cable network.
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This setup leaves me enough public IP space to handle my
other requirements, and lots of private IP space to play
with on the back end of the network. It also keeps all the
old systems safe from the huns. They are not very secure or
even securable.
Everything about wyvern is as one would expect from a UNIX
system of this vintage, including the fact that it can not
manage present-day dates. Dates on wyvern started in 1988,
and at present are in 1989, ten years in the past.
Wyvern can be used by UNIX neophytes, wizards, and everyone
in between. The operating system provided is historically
accurate and significant: Dating from 1992, AT&T UNIX System
V Release 4 was the last commercially available UNIX dis-
tributed by AT&T, and incorporates both AT&T and Berkeley
tools. We have locally added many of the "period" free soft-
ware, generally delivered in source code form via the
USENET. All of the added software on the system is avail-
able in /usr/local/src/installed.
In addition to the many applications and services wyvern
provides, we also host a growing collection of documentation
and source code, much of it of historical significance.
You can find and browse our document collection in /usr/lo-
cal/doc. All the information there is in plain text format,
so the usual tools will work fine. It's all publicly avail-
able elsewhere, although often hard to find or to format
correctly, so feel free to download it to your home machine.
This information needs to be preserved.
We also keep a cd-rom mounted with many years of USENET
source code archives. Feel free to search, browse or down-
load from /cdrom.
Our directory structure is plain old System V: /bin and
/usr/bin are where the standard system commands are, and
we've added a bunch to /usr/local/bin. Your PATH variable
should have come with these included. /usr/local also con-
tains the doc directory where we've collected a lot of old
documentation, including a fair amount of humor.
Wyvern includes both the standard shell interface, with a
choice of shells (bourne, ksh, bash, csh, tcsh, zsh, ash),
and a custom menu interface locally built with fmli, the
Form and Menu Language Interpreter. fmli is a menu program-
ming language, is quite powerful, and was provided in many
of the later AT&T UNIX systems as the basis for simple sys-
tem administration chores where a UNIX expert was not avail-
able. Although our menu system may never be finished, it is
already quite usable. You can try it by typing "wmenu" at
the command line. You'll need a decent terminal emulator,
and hopefully the menu is self-explanatory.
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If you are interested in trying one of the older Unix sys-
tems (SVR3.2 or SVR2), or 4.3BSD, just send a request to
root.
The following paragraphs describe the various technologies,
tools, and applications available through wyvern.
o Communications
o USENET - USENET is a distributed bulletin board
system. Also know as NetNews, USENET got its start
in the UUCP era back in the '70s. While there were
thousands of news groups in the '80s and '90s,
wyvern supports a small set of groups mostly deal-
ing with retro technology. We're happy to start
groups for other purposes, and are actively seek-
ing USENET partners to swap news with.
Wyvern provides both the nn(1) and tin(1) news
readers. We are happy to build others if there is
need for a different text-based news reader. We
would also consider allowing a small number of
retro enthusiasts to read news directly from our
nntp server if there is a real need. Doing so
would require firewall maintenance for each nntp
user. We are very careful with our firewall.
o Email - Basic email was present in the very first
UNIX release from AT&T in 1969, and has been a ma-
jor feature of both UNIX and the Internet ever
since.
Wyvern provides both local and Internet email, al-
though with less functionality than most Net users
are accustomed to. Our email system is text only,
using a terminal-based interface, so no html
email, no inline pictures, and composing letters
is done through a standard UNIX text editor. We
do, however, provide mime encoded attachments.
We provide the standard UNIX mail(1), along with a
couple of more sophisticated MUA's: pine(1) and
elm(1).
o File transfer - ftp is also one of the older capa-
bilities of networked UNIX systems. ftp allows
two-way data transfer from one UNIX host to anoth-
er, and was the standard way to download files
prior to the WWW.
Wyvern provides the old UNIX ftp(1) and the more
modern ncftp(1).
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o Remote Shell - telnet is another old standard in
the UNIX and the Internet world. Wyvern provides
both the standard telnet(1), and an old version of
ssh(1). Please note that wyvern does not include
an ssh server. The only available access to wyvern
is though telnet from a shell account at thisol-
dmicro.com.
o WWW - we provide the text based web browser, lynx.
While lynx cannot display graphics and other
fanciness, it is quite acceptable for many web
browsing tasks, including google searches and file
downloads.
o Gopher - Gopher is a protocol system, which in ad-
vance of the World Wide Web, allowed server based
text files to be hierarchically organised and eas-
ily viewed by end users who accessed the server
using Gopher applications on remote computers. We
have the old gopher client installed here, but
there are not many gopher servers around. We are
considering installing a local gopher server to
provide access to the over 22GB of archival mate-
rial we have on hand.
o IRC - Wyvern provides a basic, curses-based irc
client called ircii. It seems to work fine, but we
are not IRC experts, so your mileage may vary.
Please let us know if there is a problem.
o Entertainment
We've been busy installing many of the old games here
at wyvern, including a number of classics.
o adventure - This is adventure4, a 660 point expan-
sion of the original. Same primitive interface and
the complete original cave with lots of additions.
o rogue - The mother of all rogue-like games. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike for more
info on the game genre.
o larn - Another rogue-like
o hack - And another early one
o nethack - And another. Nethack is still evolving.
o moria - Not the original moria, but a more modern
(1980's) rewrite.
o trek - Essentially the original Star Trek game
from early BSD.
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o Software Development
o C - If it's UNIX, it has a C compiler! We provide
both AT&T and Gnu compilers. SVR4 also includes
the BSD C compiler and libraries.
o C++ - Once again, we provide both AT&T and Gnu C++
compilers.
o oawk/nawk/gawk - We provide three awk variants,
the original awk from Bell Labs (oawk), the later
AT&T version (nawk), and the Gnu version (gawk).
o perl - Larry Wall's Swiss army knife language. A
kind of mix of awk, sed, grep, and find. Perl was
first introduced to the world while the original
wyvern was in operation, in 1987. We have Version
5.005, which was released in July of 1998.
o snobol 3 - An ancient language indeed, ported from
the System III sources. If anyone can shed some
light on how to use this, let us know!
o fortran 77 - Gnu Fortran. This one is not fin-
ished, but we have good intentions. If you really
need it quickly, let us know (email root) and
we'll put more effort into it.
o basic - bywater basic is a "mostly standard" basic
interpreter, and fairly gw-basic compatible. Docs
are in /usr/local/doc/bwbasic.txt
o lex/flex - The ubiquitous UNIX lexical analyzer
generator. See the full, historical docs in
/usr/local/doc/lex.txt. We provide both the origi-
nal and the Gnu versions.
o yacc/bison - The ubiquitous UNIX compiler compil-
er. See the full, historical docs in /usr/lo-
cal/doc/yacc.txt. We provide both the original and
the Gnu versions.
o libraries - We provide a number of development li-
braries in addition to the standard UNIX suite.
You can find them in /usr/local/lib. Of note, we
have ncurses, gettext, intl and others.
o Document Preparation
The first commercial use of UNIX outside of operating
systems research was document preparation. Perhaps this
was because at least initially, the UNIX team needed to
justify their continuing work on UNIX and for financing
the hardware they were requesting by providing "useful"
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features. AT&T had a huge workload in patent prepara-
tion and writing documentation for its many hardware
and software systems, and some of the first applica-
tions to be used in UNIX were the text editor ed(1),
and roff. We provide a number of both historical and
more modern text processing tools.
o nroff/troff - These were a part of the BSD com-
patability set, though I do not know why. In this
case, troff will only produce output for the Auto-
logic APS-5 typesetter, not particularly useful
for most of us. The UCB document preparation sys-
tem does come with the man, ms, me, and mm macros,
along with the tbl, eqn, pic, refer, and several
other utilities. Check /usr/ucb for a list of the
BSD utilities.
o groff - This more modern version of nroff/troff
resides in /usr/local/bin, and has postprocessors
for a number of other typesetters and formatters,
including Adobe Postscript and HP LaserJet 4 out-
put. In general, this system is much more useful
for modern documents. I have found, that some very
old documents will format correctly using the BSD
applications, while the groff ones will deliver
errors.
o style and diction - These programs were a part of
the AT&T Documenter's Workbench, and are included
more as a matter of historical completeness than
as truly useful applications. Still, they do work
almost identically to the originals and are fun to
use.
o ispell - An interactive spell checker with more
capability than the original spell(1).
o Utility
o Editors - We provide several, although by no means
all. Of course there are vi and emacs. We also
have a couple of more simple, basic editors:
joe(1), and pico(1). Almost as an afterthought, we
also have ed and ex.
o File Managers - We provide Midnight Commander
(mc), and pilot from the Alpine project. Midnight
Commander is more powerful, while pilot is easier
to use. Man pages are available for both.
o Miscellaneous and in no particular order
o autoconf - We included this because some de-
velopers with existing apps use it to config-
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ure their code. From GNU: Autoconf is an ex-
tensible package of M4 macros that produce
shell scripts to automatically configure
software source code packages. These scripts
can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-
like systems without manual user interven-
tion. Autoconf creates a configuration script
for a package from a template file that lists
the operating system features that the pack-
age can use, in the form of M4 macro calls.
o c-kermit - One of the most venerable serial
communications, data transfer, and terminal
emulation tools for UNIX. We included this
specifically as a vehicle to connect to our
AT&T Seventh Edition UNIX system, which is
connected to wyvern via a serial link. If you
are interested in trying out a V7 system,
email root and we'll set you up an account
and tell you how to access it.
o di - A spiffy, modern disk information utili-
ty with lots of options. Like df or the SVR4
specific dfspace, but much more powerful.
This is here because I asked the developer of
the code, Brad Lanam if he wanted to port it
to SVR4. He agreed to give it a try, and the
rest is history. See the man page for di(1)
for more information.
o gzip - You must have this!
o less - And this!
o ssh - ssh works if we remember to turn on the
entropy server.
o pcomm - Another dialup and serial communica-
tions program, similar to the DOS ProComm.
o rzsz - Chuck Forsberg's xmodem and zmodem
programs. Useful in some rare cases here.
o screen - A screen multiplexer. This allows
you to have multiple workspaces in one telnet
session. Great for many things. See the man
page for more info.
o sharutils - shar and unshar. Useful for un-
packing old shar archives from USENET, or
building new ones. These utilities were ren-
dered unnecessary by the advent of binary
file transfer like ftp and http. Included for
historical completeness.
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o uuencode/uudecode - Similar to the above.
These were used to turn binary files (tar
archives, for instance) into text files so
they could be emailed or sent via USENET. In-
cluded for historical completeness.
o smake - An alternative version of make re-
quired by a small number of source packages.
o star - A fast, double buffered tar(1) program
that is useful for saving large amounts of
data to streaming tape drives like our
Archive Viper.
o sudo - A must have.
o texinfo - Came with emacs.
o top - A very early version of top. Looks sim-
ilar to the modern Linux versions.
o unzip - If you have a modern-day zip archive,
this will extract it.
In summary, wyvern is a mostly historically accurate
Public Access UNIX System, modelled after a real system
from the late '80s and early '90s. It uses essentially
identical hardware and software as the original, and
has a very similar "feel".
The system dates to a critical period in UNIX evolu-
tion: the end of the terminal-based interface, and the
beginning of the graphical interface. Although X with
Motif was included with UnixWare 2, we decided not to
install it for several reasons:
o It is not necessary or even desirable for a multi-
user system and would just squander system re-
sources, which were rather more scarce in those
days. While X might have been marginally useful
for system administration, we get along just fine
without it.
o The most important reason I'm not interested in X
is that I am very interested in the UNIX philoso-
phy. My belief is that X was the beginning of its
downfall. I wanted a system where I could exploit
the design innovations in UNIX in a clear and com-
pelling way. X, while making some tasks easier and
while providing compelling graphical capabilites,
spelled the end for much of the UNIX way.
There are certainly many period applications that we've
missed, and if you think of one, please consider let-
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ting us know so we can make it available to all, or
build it yourself and let us know about it.
Cheers!
Tom Manos (root@wyvern)