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Operating Systems Software

Source Code for CTSS released 177

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-what-will-run-it dept.
Mainframes ROCK! writes "The source code for the Compatible Time-Sharing System, CTSS, has been released, and the here is the source code. CTSS was one of the first time-sharing operating systems and a direct ancestor of Linux. Developed at MIT in the 1960's on a specially modified IBM 7094 system.; it was developed at Project MAC at MIT. CTSS was first published, as well as operated in a time-sharing environment, in 1961; in addition, it was the system with the first computerized text formatting utility, and one of the very first to have inter-user electronic mail."
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Source Code for CTSS released More

Source Code for CTSS released

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  • The Slashdot super-code-bowl 2k4 (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <byrdhuntr@hoCOMMAtmail.com minus punct> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:22PM (#10333534)
    Welcome to the first Slashdot Super Code Bowl!

    Hello potential prize winner! Consider using your time to create an entry in this year's Slashdot Super Code Bowl. Prizes will be awarded to anyone who proves their worth by submitting code that fits any of these categories:
    • Rewriting CTSS in under 1k lines of Perl.
    • Porting Perl to CTSS.
    • Successfully submitting a patch to the original author(s) and having it included in an updated release.
    • Creating a 'Proof of Concept' virus, trojan, or worm designed to infect CTSS AND be able to spread to other CTSS machines.
    • Locating SCO IP within CTSS.
    • Adding necessary functions and support to CTSS to allow it to successfully emulate itself.
    • Running CTSS on any appliance that does not normally include a real operating system (Toasters, non-gui remote controls, Gateway PC's)


    Other categories may be added, and bonus prizes for most original, most useless, and most useful code will also be awarded.

  • It's free, but there's a catch (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:23PM (#10333551)
    You have to go to their half day seminar.

  • A BitTorrent of the source file... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <.tom. .at. .thomasleecopeland.com.> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:24PM (#10333571) Homepage
    ...is on RubyForge [rubyforge.org] right here [rubyforge.org].

    It's 400K lines of assembly code... what could be sweeter?
    • And you're gonna need it, cause we've slashdotted the server already.

      Bet they never thought an OS that'll only run on a machine of which there were probably less than a thousand ever made would be so popular...

    • I just downloaded the ctss-listings.zip file with Bit Torrent and have posted it on my school account. You can download it here [gsu.edu]. I don't think that this server can be slashdoted so feel free to use it as much as you want. By the way, I was able to cut down 2 megabytes my switching over to the bz2 format. Nothing was lost here except for some redundancy.

      Here is the shameless plug: my project is here [gsu.edu]. Spread the word.

  • RMS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MikeMacK ( 788889 )
    If I remember correctly, it was CTSS (or a derivative there of) that RMS hacked on at MIT, so it's cool to see it still out there to be hacked on.

  • Revolution OS (Score:3, Informative)

    by bhsx ( 458600 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:25PM (#10333579)
    According to RMS in Revolution OS, this was also the machine that he worked with at MIT. I believe it was the fact the he had access to all the code on the system that lead him down his path, believing that you need source code availability to fix/tweak/hack to your needs.
    • ...and others. The word you are looking for is not "lead". Lead is either the element/metal lead (Pb), to lead someone is to go before them as they follow, and a lead can be a rope or line with which you lead someone. When you lead someone, they are led, not lead. Unless you lead them into your crucible and alchemically make them into the material from which we make bullets.

    • Re:Revolution OS (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      As others have already said, I believe that RMS mentioned the Incompatible Time Sharing system that he worked on. Since this was also started when RMS was only 8, I doubt he had much to do with this one.

    • Re:Revolution OS (Score:3, Informative)

      by pilgrim23 ( 716938 )
      Does anyone recall CALL-OS the similar time share system for the IBM OS/360? At the University of New Mexico back in the 70s some local hackers built a add-on to it called ATS for Aardvark Time Share which allowed many many things including total (and stealth) control of the zero protect key of the mainframe.

  • SCO? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:26PM (#10333592) Homepage Journal
    CTSS was one of the first time-sharing operating systems and a direct ancestor of Linux.

    Does this mean SCO has the code it needs to prove that Linux contains Unix code?

    • No, it just means whoever submitted the article wasn't using "direct ancestor" in the way that most of us would have. I would imagine there's no code from CTSS directly in Linux.
  • It's about time... oh wait.

  • REMINISCENCES ON THE HISTORY OF TIME SHARING (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:28PM (#10333629)
    REMINISCENCES ON THE HISTORY OF TIME SHARING
    John McCarthy, Stanford University

    1983 Winter or Spring

    I remember thinking about time-sharing about the time of my first contact with computers and being surprised that this wasn't the goal of IBM and all the other manufacturers and users of computers. This might have been around 1955.

    By time-sharing, I meant an operating system that permits each user of a computer to behave as though he were in sole control of a computer, not necessarily identical with the machine on which the operating system is running. Christopher Strachey may well have been correct in saying in his letter to Donald Knuth that the term was already in use for time-sharing among programs written to run together. This idea had already been used in the SAGE system. I don't know how this kind of time-sharing was implemented in SAGE. Did each program have to be sure to return to an input polling program or were there interrupts? Who invented interrupts anyway? I thought of them, but I don't believe I mentioned the idea to anyone before I heard of them from other sources.

    My first attempts to do something about time-sharing was in the Fall of 1957 when I came to the M.I.T. Computation Center on a Sloan Foundation fellowship from Dartmouth College. It was immediately clear to me that the time-sharing the IBM 704 would require some kind of interrupt system. I was very shy of proposing hardware modifications, especially as I didn't understand electronics well enough to read the logic diagrams. Therefore, I proposed the minimal hardware modification I could think of. This involved installing a relay so that the 704 could be put into trapping mode by an external signal. It was also proposed to connect the sense switches on the ccnsole in parallel with relays that could be operated by a Flexowriter (a kind of teletype based on an IBM typewriter).

    When the machine went into trapping mode, an interrupt to a fixed location would occur the next time the machine attempted to execute a jump instruction (then called a transfer). The interrupt would occur when the Flexowriter had set up a character in a relay buffer. The interrupt program would then read the character from the sense switches into a buffer, test whether the buffer was full, and if not return to the interrupted program. If the buffer was full, the program would store the current program on the drum and read in a program to deal with the buffer.

    It was agreed (I think I talked to Dean Arden only.) to install the equipment, and I believe that permission was obtained from IBM to modify the computer. The connector to be installed in the computer was obtained.

    However, at this time we heard about the "real time package" for the IBM 704. This RPQ (request for price quotation was IBM jargon for a modification to the computer whose price wasn't guaranteed), which rented for $2,500 per month had been developed at the request of Boeing for the purpose of allowing the 704 to accept information from a wind tunnel. Some element of ordinary time-sharing would have been involved, but we did not seek contact with Boeing. Anyway it was agreed that the real time package, which involved the possibility of interrupting after any instruction, would be much better than merely putting the machine in trapping mode. Therefore we undertook to beg IBM for the real time package. IBM's initial reaction was favorable, but nevertheless it took a long time to get the real time package - perhaps a year, perhaps two.

    It was then agreed that someone, perhaps Arnold Siegel, would design the hardware to connect one Flexowriter to the computer, and later an installation with three would be designed. Siegel designed and build the equipment, the operating system was suitably modified (I don't remember by whom), and demonstration of on-line LISP was held for a meeting of the M.I.T. Industrial Affiliates. This demonstration, which I planned and carried out, had the audience in a fourth floor lecture room and me in the computer room an
    • I may have some information on SAGE... if I remember acronyms correctly, that was the first system developed for NORAD (North American Air Defence Command) by SDC (System Development Corporation). I was an SDC employee in the late 70's to early 80's and I still have the book published by SDC in the early 80's with the company history.

      I do remember there were displays in the SDC buildings about them building the first non-research time sharing system; the first commercial entity to run classes to teach pr

  • Say Whaaat? Direct Ancestor? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:30PM (#10333644) Homepage

    a direct ancestor of Linux

    Direct ancestor? Not by a long shot. Unless you consider that any multi user, multi tasking, time sharing operating system as a direct ancestor.

    • read what Dennis Ritchie says... (Score:5, Informative)

      by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:56PM (#10333998) Journal
      Indeed, calling CTSS a DIRECT ancestor is a bit of a stretch. Dennis Ritchie is about as authoritative as you are going to get on the history of Unix and Unix is the direct ancestor of Linux. Read his article on the history of Unix [2cool4u.ch]. There you will find his quote in section 1.3 on just where CTSS comes into the genisis of Unix....it is a distant ancestor. The Wikipedia article on history of OS'es [worldhistory.com] is strangely lame on this topic.
    • Direct ancestor? Not by a long shot. Unless you consider that any multi user, multi tasking, time sharing operating system as a direct ancestor.

      errr...I think the submitter means that conceptually, Linux is a descendent of CTSS. This was 1961...you couldn't just download a multi-user, timesharing system off the internet and burn a copy on CD. This was one of the first, and no doubt had an influence on other systems that followed, including UNIX. Obviously the Linux codebase doesn't share anything in co

  • INDIRECT ancestor of UNIX (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:31PM (#10333652)
    ken thompson and dennis ritchie both used ctss, and cite it as an inspiration for unix. and we all know unix is linux's father's former roommate. what does that make linux? ...absolutely nothing.
    • ken thompson and dennis ritchie both used ctss, and cite it as an inspiration for unix. and we all know unix is linux's father's former roommate. what does that make linux? ...absolutely nothing. ... which is what SCO is about to become.

  • CTSS Technical Notes (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nostalgia or machinropology, whatever, http://www.lcs.mit.edu/publications/pubs/pdf/MIT-L CS-TR-016.pdf [mit.edu]

  • If there was only a simh of IBM 709x (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dyfet ( 154716 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:32PM (#10333666) Homepage
    But alas there isn't. Actually, projects, like simh (or the hercules 360 emulator) do offer a chance to give new life to historic operating systems.

  • CTSS-ITS (Score:5, Informative)

    by World_Leader ( 635956 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:33PM (#10333677)

    CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System) lent its name to MIT's ITS (Incompatible Time Sharing System) for the PDP-10.

    I'm pretty sure it was ITS that RMS developed Emacs (Editor Macros, or Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping) on but he'd know for sure.

    Also, from SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) we got WAITS which was the West-coast Alternative to ITS.

    MULTICS also grew out of these roots, and Unix of course is a play on "Multics".

    • I believe that is Elvis Masterminds All Computer Science

    • Emacs (Editor Macros, or Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping)

      You got the acronym wrong. It's "EMACS Makes A Computer Slow". HTH.

    • Re:CTSS-ITS (Score:4, Informative)

      by leighklotz ( 192300 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:14PM (#10334860) Homepage
      I suspect that "Eight Megs" refers to the later Unix EMACS versions, because the AI PDP-10 didn't have that much memory. The 256K x 36-bit word Ampex core memory racks were pretty big and I think AI had 758KWords, or 3.375 mega-octets, if you wanted to count it that way, which it didn't.

      E-MACS was a TECO macro package that RMS picked up. There was also T-MACS and R-MACS. When I used E-MACS, it was on v134, I think, and RMS for a couple of years been the only maintainer of it, but a small number of people were still using ^R mode in TECO or one of the other macro packages. When RMS stopped maintaining ITS and Twenex EMACS to start the GNU project, I maintained it for a while, but it was eventually clear that it wasn't the way of the future. By that time, Lisp Machines and the Vax had happened.

      By the way, last time I was at the computer museum in Mountain View, CA, I saw a Lisp Machine whose serial number (CADR 8) I recognized. I figured it was time to leave.

  • What would you bet... (Score:5, Funny)

    by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:40PM (#10333781) Journal
    that this 40 year old code has fewer buffer overrun vulnerabilities than XP, even with SuperPatch2?
    • that this 40 year old code has fewer buffer overrun vulnerabilities than XP, even with SuperPatch2?

      This shouldn't be surprising at all. The larger the codebase, the larger the likely number of bugs: Not only are there more opportunities for error, but there will be more code paths which don't get regularly exercised.

      It has been said that perfection is when there is nothing left to remove; I'd rather say that security is when there's nothing left to remove.

  • CTSS was the first time sharing system (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The first version of what came to be called CTSS ran in 1961 on an IBM 709. See here for more info:

    http://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html [multicians.org]

  • It is? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 )
    CTSS was one of the first time-sharing operating systems and a direct ancestor of Linux

    I thought we were trying to fight Darl et al on the grounds that Linux is completely free of any legacy UNIX code.

    It's a clone, not a descendant.
    • I don't believe UNIX contained any CTSS code, either. I suspect the submitter meant conceptually, not in the sharing code sense.

  • Not direct (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:47PM (#10333879)

    CTSS was one of the first time-sharing operating systems and a direct ancestor of Linux.

    What is the basis for this statement? Linux neither contains CTSS code, nor was modelled upon it, and neither were any of its ancestors. It's an indirect ancestor maybe.

    • Well, as I understand things, Linux is heavily influenced by Unix, whose design was fairly influenced by Multics, whose design was kind-of based on CTSS.

      All of those were openly acknowledged influences, and the primary ones (other than the hardware that the OSs were targeting, and the new features they wanted to add).

  • History of CTSS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sounder40 ( 243087 ) * on Thursday September 23, 2004 @03:47PM (#10333888)
    I have a copy of the paper Melinda Varian did on the history of IBM's operating system called VM/370, VM/SP, VM/ESA and now zVM. I'd call it VM, but that's become a rather generic term. It includes a section on the history of CTSS, and it's very, very interesting. In fact, I would say that this was one of the most influential papers I ever read. Well worth the read.

    I hope Melinda doesn't hunt me down and kill me for causing a /. storm on her web site, but the paper is available at http://pucc.princeton.edu/~melinda/ [princeton.edu].

    Enjoy.

  • "Hackers" (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Huxley_Dunsany ( 659554 )
    There is a wonderful description of the birth of the CTSS (among other things) in Steven Levy's book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution". I've read this book at least a dozen times (mostly in my formative years), and its efforts at conveying the meaning of the "Hacker Ethic" make it required reading for anyone more than slightly interested in how the computer industry came to be.

    Just thought I'd mention.

    Huxley

  • Familiar Tools (Score:1, Informative)

    by b12arr0 ( 3064 ) *
    On the newsgroup, it's stated " You'll have to know
    a little FAP and MAD to understand it. There are even a few programs in AED-0, an Algol variant."

    Thank god, I thought I was going to have to learn something new...er, old to be able to use it!!!

  • Heritage (Score:5, Informative)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:07PM (#10334160) Homepage
    The first mainframe versions of Unix(R) were run on top of a modified version of CTSS. Also CTSS is considered the father of Multics which in turn begat Unix.
    • The first mainframe versions of Unix(R) were run on top of a modified version of CTSS.

      That's not the way I remember it at all... Could provide a link or a little more detail?

      Also CTSS is considered the father of Multics which in turn begat Unix.

      That's sort of like saying that DOS is the father of Windows. Multics was a ground-up design to create an operating using lessons learned from CTSS (among others). One of those lessons was that they didn't want to it to be much like CTSS, IIRC.

      The jum

  • Their server appears to still run on CTSS!

  • email (Score:2, Funny)

    by c++ ( 25427 )
    one of the very first to have inter-user electronic mail

    because intra-user electronic mail wasn't as useful as people had hoped.

  • Just wait a year or two .... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:29PM (#10334422) Homepage Journal
    ... and next thing you know, a company will change management, rename itself, claim they own this ancient technology, try to pretend like source code was never released, and then launch a major lawuit claiming that modern systems infringe upon a variety of vauge intellectual property rights from ancient code.

  • Need an emulator for this machine... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...anyone care to enhance MESS [mess.org]?

  • inter-user email (Score:5, Funny)

    by masouds ( 451077 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:32PM (#10334464) Homepage Journal
    "...and one of the very first to have inter-user electronic mail."

    Apparently, in the previous versions, users were only able to email themselves.
    • That's nothing! In my day, you could only finger yourself - uphill, both ways!

      You could Telnet, but only to the local machine!

      The "Window Manager" was a creepy guy who was always peeking through the lab window!

      Cat was there, but it was always asleep!

      We used IPv1 - 8 bits, and MIT owned the first 7!

      You don't even want to know how "Daemons" got its name!

      Worst of all... We had to use vi!

      You kids and your fancy-shmancy VT100s... bah! You don't know how good you got it now! This email shit blows my mind!

  • Krell amp (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pivot ( 4465 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:18PM (#10334896)
    I have a krell amp that has a mc68hc711 microcontroller in it. Can it be ported to this device? I'd love to be able to set up some unix policies that would prevent my buddy from turning the volume up too much.

  • While I was graduate student in the 1980's there were a bunch of the most powerful Cray supercomputers at Los Alamos running this OS.

    I think there was even a variant, LTSS that was run at Livermore.

    Those were the days of using line editors over 300 baud modems.

    • While I was graduate student in the 1980's there were a bunch of the most powerful Cray supercomputers at Los Alamos running this OS.

      No. They were running the Cray Time Sharing System, as mentioned in this article [nersc.gov]:

      The Center acquired a Cray 1 in 1978 and soon became known as an innovator in the management and operation of supercomputers. We converted our 7600 operating system, utilities, and libraries to the new machine, creating the Cray Time Sharing System (CTSS) -- the first timesharing system for a C

  • Lets change the law so Microsoft has to divulge their source-code for analysis to see how much they have "ripped off" CTSS.

    I'm sure we can find a lot of patents and algorithms in there. for example; FORGET INTERNET CONNECTIVITY, Microsoft; all your networking code r belong to us now, see?

    You'll see them change their stance on copyright and IP law pretty quickly, if you ask me.

    It'b be interesting to watch all their lobbyist and FUD people run around looking for an escape hatch!

    Either way, it's going to h
  • Since CTSS is a distant ancestor of Unix but an ancestor nonetheless and CTSS is now part of Open Source, that means SCO Unix obviously stole from CTSS and thus owes $999.99 to the open source movement per license. I'm sure we can find a few "if"-statements in SCO Unix, which probably also appears in CTSS. J/K.
    • I'm sure we can find a few "if"-statements in SCO Unix, which probably also appears in CTSS. J/K.

      Regretfully, no. CTSS was not written in C. However, we can no doubt fall back on SCO's concept of non-literal copying of CTSS's protected methods.

  • CTSS history (Score:4, Informative)

    by monsterhead78 ( 815842 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @08:17PM (#10336283) Homepage
    In the mid-1960s, the 7094 was one of the biggest, fastest computers available, able to add floating numbers at a speed of about 0.35 MIPS. A standard 7094 had 32K 36-bit words of memory. Its data channels could access memory and run simple channel programs to do I/O once started by the CPU, and the channels could cause a CPU interrupt when the I/O finished. They cost about $3.5 million. Paul Pierce's collection includes a real 709 and 7094.

    MIT got an IBM 7090, replacing the 709, in the spring of 1962, when I was a freshman, and had upgraded the 7090 to a 7094 by 1963. The 7090 and 7094 were operated in batch mode, controlled by the Fortran Monitor System (FMS). Batch jobs on cards were transferred to tape on an auxiliary 1401, and the monitor took one job at a time off the input tape, ran it, and captured the output on another tape for printing and punching by the 1401. Each user job was loaded into core by the BSS loader along with a small monitor routine that terminated jobs that ran over their time estimates. Library routines for arithmetic and I/O were also loaded and linked with the user's program. Thus, each user's job had complete control of the whole 7094, all 32K words of memory, all the data channels, everything.

    IBM had been very generous to MIT in the fifties and sixties, donating its biggest scientific computers. When a new top of the line 36-bit scientific machine came out, MIT expected to get one. In the early sixties, the deal was that MIT got one 8-hour shift, all the other New England colleges and universities got a shift, and the third shift was available to IBM for its own use. One use IBM made of it was yacht handicapping: the president of IBM raced big yachts on Long Island Sound, and these boats were assigned handicap points by a complicated formula. There was a special job deck kept at the MIT Computation Center, and if a request came in to run it, operators were to stop whatever was running on the machine and do the yacht handicapping job immediately.
    Early Time-Sharing

    MIT professors, such as Herb Teager and Marvin Minsky, wanted more access to the machine, like they had had on Whirlwind in the fifties, and quicker return of their results from their FMS jobs. John McCarthy wrote an influential memo titled "A Time Sharing Operator Program for Our Projected IBM 709" dated January 1, 1959, that proposed interactive time-shared debugging. These desires led to time-sharing experiments, such as Teager's "time-stealing system" and "sequence break mode," which allowed an important professor's job to interrupt a running job, roll its core image out to tape, make a quick run, and restore the interrupted job. McCarthy's Reminiscences on the History of Time Sharing describes his and Teager's role in the beginnings of time-sharing. Teager and McCarthy presented a paper titled "Time-Shared Program Testing" at the ACM meeting in August 1959.
    FMS and Batch Processing

    MIT and the University of Michigan were both 7094 owners, and the computation center people were colleagues who traded code back and forth. When I was a freshman in 1961, we used FORTRAN in the elementary course (FORTRAN II was brand new then), but by the time I was a sophomore, MIT had installed Michigan's MAD language, written by Graham, Arden, and Galler, and was using that in most places that a compiler language was needed, especially computer courses. MAD was descended from ALGOL 58: it had block structure and a fast compiler, and if your compilation failed, the compiler used to print out a line printer portrait of Alfred E. Neumann. (MIT took that out to save paper.) Mike Alexander says, "MAD was first developed about 1959 or 1960 on a 704, a machine which makes the 7094 look very powerful indeed." MAD ran under UMES, the University of Michigan Executive System, derived from a 1959 GM Research Center executive for the IBM 701 that was one of the first operating systems.

    Part of the Michigan/MAD code was a replacement for the standard FORTRAN output formatter routine, (IOH). (Programs written

    • Re:CTSS history (Score:3, Informative)

      by thvv ( 92519 )
      This article was written by me, Tom Van Vleck.
      "monsterhead78" has just copied the text from
      http://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html.
      T he original page has some pictures and useful
      links.
  • It was a great (ie better than BASIC) beginner's programming language that ran on CTSS. I think that it originated at Princeton while von Neuman was still there. One version was supplied by a big Fortran program that could support about 50 users. Somebody ought to emulate that bugger on a website.

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