Sixth Edition Unix
From Computer History Wiki
This was one of the more popular research versions to leave Bell Labs.
| Unix v6 | |
 Logging into a v6 unix system | |
| Type: | Multitasking, multiuser |
|---|---|
| Creator: | AT&T/Western Electric |
| Architecture: | PDP-11, Interdata 8/32 theoretically portable |
| Current Version: | v6 |
| Year Introduced: | 1975 |
Contents |
Platforms
These are the known platforms to run Unix v6
PDP-11
the PDP-11 was the primary platform which Unix v6 was written on. All other v6's can trace themselves back to this version.
Interdata 8/32
The Interdata 8/32 was the first port to a 32 bit platform outside of Bell Labs.
Intel 80286
There is a port by Szigeti Szabolcs to the Intel 80286 CPU, available in the Unix Archive under Other/V6on286. Requires a copy of MS-DOS to run.
i386
There is a 32bit port to the x86 cpu, called xv6 used by MIT for an OS class. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2006/index.html You can download the source http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2006/src/xv6-rev0.tar.gz
Folk Lore
v6 Unix is perhaps famous because of the "Lions book". John Lions ( bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lions ) wrote up an excellent disection of the unix kernel, and taught it in his OS classes. The book became *the* guide to the unix internals, and was photocopied over & over...
v6 is also important, because it was the first non AT&T port of unix, when it was ported to the Interdata 32b.
Another thing is that v6 included even more documentation that v5, and also included gems like Programming in C -A Tutorial.
Games
The whole game situation didn't improve that much from v5 to v6.
bj chess cubic moo ttt wump
How do I get this to run?!
Well you'll need a tape image, and an emulator or a PDP-11/Interdata 32b... I'd recommend SIMH and you can get v6 by looking for uv6swre.zip and iu6swre.zip, PDP-11 and Interdata versions respectfully.
See also:
There is also a great lecture series involving SIMH and v6 which can be found here:
