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Oldest version of TECO with source?

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Tim Shoppa

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May 31, 2006, 11:09:54 AM5/31/06
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Al's PDP-1 thread and some of the other recent editor threads got me
thinking:

What's the earliest known version of TECO with machine-readable source?

What's the earliest known version with hardcopy source?

My first thoughts were to look through my archives for the oldest
versions but the oldest PDP-10 version I can find is 1977, which is
hardly old. I know that several regular alt.sys.pdp10 posters were
making their own hot-rodded TECO's before that.

David Gesswein has a PDP-8 version online from 1971 (in the TU56 image
"ps8-focal71-teco-omsi") at www.pdp8.net.

Tim.

John Everett

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May 31, 2006, 3:01:13 PM5/31/06
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On 31 May 2006 08:09:54 -0700, "Tim Shoppa" <sho...@trailing-edge.com>
wrote:

From memory I know it predates 1971. I joined DEC in September 1966.
Soon thereafter a couple of the PDP-6 types went to visit Project Mac
at MIT. When they returned one of them (perhaps Tony Wachs) was waving
a Dectape around and saying something like, "Wait til you see what
we've got here! It's called Teco."

As received from Mac it was described as a screen editor. The text was
displayed on a tube (the 340?) with the current pointer blinking. On a
TTY one had to sort of use one's imagination.

When it was developed at Mac...I'm not sure.

jeverett3<AT>earthlink<DOT>net http://home.earthlink.net/~jeverett3

jmfb...@aol.com

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Jun 1, 2006, 4:51:50 AM6/1/06
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In article <70at729tmuoocpdm1...@4ax.com>,
Brian Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:
<snip>

>[added alt.lang.teco]

It's been a very long time since the last post showed up
in this one. :-)

/BAH

Rich Alderson

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Jun 1, 2006, 2:31:39 PM6/1/06
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Brian Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSW.Invalid> writes:

> On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:54:40 GMT in alt.folklore.computers, Brian
> Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:

>> Rich Alderson maintains MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170), so may have an old version.

No, just the latest three or four.

>> [added alt.lang.teco]

> Some files dating from 1975-77:
> ftp://ftp.its.os.org/its/ai/_teco_.tgz
> ftp://ftp.its.os.org/its/mc/_teco_.tgz

These are far from the earliest TECO, having undergone 10 years' development
beyond the July 1965 PDP-6 TECO described in MIT AILab memo 81 (available from
the CSAIL archives at MIT at http://www.ai.mit.edu/research/publications/).

--
Rich Alderson | /"\ ASCII ribbon |
ne...@alderson.users.panix.com | \ / campaign against |
"You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." | x HTML mail and |
--Death, of the Endless | / \ postings |

doug.qu...@gmail.com

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Jun 5, 2006, 6:15:19 PM6/5/06
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Rich Alderson wrote:
> Brian Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSW.Invalid> writes:
>
> > On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:54:40 GMT in alt.folklore.computers, Brian
> > Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:
>
> >> Rich Alderson maintains MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170), so may have an old version.
>
> No, just the latest three or four.
>
> >> [added alt.lang.teco]
>
> > Some files dating from 1975-77:
> > ftp://ftp.its.os.org/its/ai/_teco_.tgz
> > ftp://ftp.its.os.org/its/mc/_teco_.tgz
>
> These are far from the earliest TECO, having undergone 10 years' development
> beyond the July 1965 PDP-6 TECO described in MIT AILab memo 81 (available from
> the CSAIL archives at MIT at http://www.ai.mit.edu/research/publications/).

Did Project MAC (best known product:Multics) borrow TECO from CTSS?

The Multics version seems to have been written (ported?) by Richard H.
Gumpertz; the earliest remarks from the PL/I source code:

01/23/71 at 0300 by RHG to add the G, :I, X, VW, and ? commands
earlier changes by RHG went unrecorded.

-dq

Larry Kilgallen

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Jun 5, 2006, 10:45:34 PM6/5/06
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In article <1149545719....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, doug.qu...@gmail.com writes:

> Did Project MAC (best known product:Multics) borrow TECO from CTSS?

Dan Murphy wrote the original (Tape Editor and COrrector) for the PDP-1
which was contemporaneous with CTSS.

lars...@nocrew.org

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Sep 30, 2021, 1:43:46 AM9/30/21
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Tim Shoppa wrote:
> What's the earliest known version of TECO with machine-readable source?

Some contenders:
https://saildart.org/TECO%5BCS,SYS%5D
https://sky-visions.com/dec/tops503/src/teco.21a

Ron Pool

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Sep 30, 2021, 9:10:04 AM9/30/21
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If you're looking for the full source (including all headers, unobscured) of older alt.sys.pdp10 postings, someone shared them with archive.org.

As an approx 100MB mbox of alt.sys.pdp10 from 3/5/94 to 1/22/2013: https://archive.org/download/usenet-alt/alt.sys.pdp10.mbox.zip/alt.sys.pdp10.mbox
.zip version of that mbox: https://ia600701.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/3/items/usenet-alt/alt.sys.pdp10.mbox.zip

That alt.sys.pdp10 archive is buried inside of the difficult to find usenet-alt archive found along with 1,018 other usenet group archives at: https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical

There are also archives of newer postings to alt.sys.pdp10 at https://archive.org/download/usenet-alt.sys .

Ron Pool

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Sep 30, 2021, 9:23:00 AM9/30/21
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Sorry for the almost immediate followup, but I just found what appears to be the archive.org collection of many archives of usenet postings. It includes the Usenet Historical Colletion, Giganews Usenet Collection, images of two NetNews Offline archive collections on CD, images of older usenet archive collections sold on CD by Infomagic, and many other archives.

The "Usenet Archive" including all of the above can be found at: https://archive.org/details/usenet
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