Lost Unix V4 Source Code From 1973 Recovered From Decades-Old Magnetic Tape

Lost Unix v4 source code from 1973 recovered from decades-old magnetic tape

Archivist Al Kossow of Bitsavers, who led the technical recovery, described the process as "easy" as such efforts go. The tape, he explained, had "a pretty good chance of being recoverable." It held up well for a medium that relies on a thin, coated film and precise magnetic signal integrity...Read Entire Article

How-To Geek: 52 years later, UNIX V4 has been rediscovered and digitized

How-To Geek: 52 years later, UNIX V4 has been rediscovered and digitized. “For decades, there were no known copies of UNIX Fourth Edition, with only some source code and manuals surviving to the present day. That changed when a nine-track tape reel containing UNIX V4 was discovered in a storage room at the University of Utah’s Kahlert School of Computing. The tape was delivered to the Computer History Museum, and has now been digitized and uploa…

52 years later, only known copy of Unix v4 recovered from randomly found tape, now up and running on a system — first OS version with kernel and core utilities written in C

The only known complete copy of Unix v4 has been recovered from a tape found at the University of Utah.