PDP-7 UNIX, 1969, booted from an emulated RB09 disk.
Log in as ken, password ken, in lower case. Then try ls, ls system, date, cat sys.rc. ^C interrupts. more ↗pdp7-unix ↗
UNIX v0 on the cabinet
Thompson and Ritchie's first UNIX, as the pdp7-unix project rebuilt it from the listings, booted the way the Bell Labs machine booted it: a paper-tape bootstrap reads the system off track 180 of an RB09 fixed-head disk. See UNIX v0 for how the disk was emulated.
Log in. Click the teletype paper so it has the keyboard, type ken, Return, and ken again for the password. The prompt is @. Try ls, ls system, date, cat sys.rc. Type in lower case: this keyboard is SIMH's set tti unix, the one the restoration used. The KSR-33 is half duplex, so it prints your password too. ^C sends ALT MODE, UNIX v0's interrupt.
The disk. Files you write stay on the platter when you pull 🔄 and reboot, until you reload the page.
Demo reboots and logs in as ken to look around.
The Bell Labs PDP-7 that UNIX was written on had a Burroughs fixed-head disk, the RB09. The emulator now has one too, ported from Open SIMH, and it boots the pdp7-unix project's rebuilt system from the paper-tape bootstrap to login: in about 60 milliseconds. Files written to the disk survive a reboot.
The same PDP-7 ran UNIX again in 2019 at the Living Computer Museum, on serial number 129. That machine had a Type 340 and a light pen, like PIXIE's. It had no RB09, so Jeff Kaylin built a disk emulator for it, the JK09, and Josh Dersch wrote it a new driver. Serial 129 is now at the Interim Computer Museum. The page below says who to ask for its disk image.
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