m5@lynx.uucp (Mike McNally) (05/10/89)
I really don't know what's possessed me, but I *need* to know this stuff. 1) I remember that on my old 8086-based (yes, 8086; it was an Intel multibus board with a kludge piggyback thing that added some protection or something) Xenix system, a condition would arise in the normal course of doing stuff that would produce the message "One Bell system -- it works". I don't think that anyone at Microsoft would have done this, so I figure it came from Version 7 somewhere. For tonight's star prize, what was that condition? (The neurons that used to hold that in my brain have been killed.) 2) What happened to the old (once again, probably v 7) fortune file? I think the "one Bell system" message was in there, along with the "crazy Eddie" thing. I won't feel confident while talking to Unix people until I know the above pieces of stupid trivia. -- Mike McNally Lynx Real-Time Systems uucp: {voder,athsys}!lynx!m5 phone: 408 370 2233 Where equal mind and contest equal, go.
john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck ) (05/11/89)
In article <5583@lynx.UUCP>, m5@lynx.uucp (Mike McNally) writes: > 1) I remember that on my old 8086-based (yes, 8086; it was an Intel > multibus board with a kludge piggyback thing that added some > protection or something) Xenix system, a condition would arise > in the normal course of doing stuff that would produce the > message "One Bell system -- it works". I don't think that > anyone at Microsoft would have done this, so I figure it came > from Version 7 somewhere. > Mike McNally Lynx Real-Time Systems The message was produced by the "1" command. The idea being (I would guess), that users of "ed" would forget to type "ed file", and, by force of habit, type "1<RETURN>". Rather than have the system print "1: not found", or some such, some wiseguy at Bell decided to make a "1" command. This was standard issue with Unix V7 (for PDP-11's, anyway). The "1" command would also randomly call itself 10 more times. (It used the "random" command to determine when.) I believe there was also a random condition where the "fortune" command would be executed, but, this could have been a local hack. John Buck john@polyof.poly.edu [128.238.10.100] john@polygraf.bitnet