Author here. I previously built https://unix4.dev (a live UNIXv4 terminal in your browser) which got a bit of attention here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468283) — I’ve now expanded it into a broader platform with 13 vintage operating systems (and growing) for people to check out and explore.
Full OS list (so far): MS BASIC 6502, Unix v1/v4/v5/v7, Slackware 1.0, Debian 1.1, Red Hat 5.2, Damn Small Linux, Alpine 3.0, MINIX 2 and 3, FreeDOS with 32 games.
What’s interesting:
Networked BBS — several of the systems can telnet into a telnet-accessible BBS and post messages that are also visible on the web. Fire up (for example) Red Hat or Debian and run: telnet bbs 23 — leave a message.
Microsoft BASIC for 6502 (1976–78) — one of Microsoft’s earliest BASICs, recently open-sourced from the original code. It’s a great snapshot of that formative era of personal computing.
UNIX v4 (1973) — v4 was thought lost for decades until a tape was discovered at the University of Utah after 50+ years in storage. Widely described as the first Unix with the kernel largely rewritten in C. Runs on an emulated PDP-11/45. (v1, v5 and v7 are available as well)
Period software downloads — some systems can download and install authentic period software. A few do it via native package managers (MINIX3, Alpine, DSL), and a few others use a simple download script I put together in /root (Red Hat, Debian). (Not every OS has this wired up yet.)
Red Hat 5.2 “Apollo” (1998) — a late-90s Linux time capsule from the era when Linux started being taken seriously in business (around the same period as Microsoft’s “Halloween Documents,” which discussed Linux as a competitive threat).
Slackware 1.0 (1993) — the oldest Linux distro still maintained today. Originally shipped on a boatload floppy disks with kernel 0.99pl11-alpha (before Linux 1.0 existed!). Early SUSE releases were Slackware-based. (This one’s a simpler implementation than some of the others so far, but it’s still fun to poke at.)
Fair warning: there might be bugs and rough edges. If you find any, report them in the community forums at vintageterminals.io/bbs (vintage.feedback board) or discuss them here, I'll be reading.
Hey! So I'm actually the builder of UNIXV4.dev (via my company Squiz Software Pty Ltd).
I went to bed last night with a couple of people poking around… woke up to a whole lot more. Appreciate the load test!!
I’ve fixed the rate-limit issues people were hitting. There’s still a global cap of 100 concurrent sessions + per-user limits to keep things stable during spikes.
I’ve also added an “Attributions & Acknowledgements” section.
The backstory is wild: UNIX v4 being recovered from a ~1973 tape at the University of Utah after being effectively “lost” for decades. Reading about the recovery and then poking around in it under SIMH on my PC is what pushed me to wrap it up as a public, browser-based terminal that other people could take a look at - and hopefully get as much out of it as I did.
Have fun exploring it all (especially all the primitive bits — remember: use "chdir" instead of "cd", and "#" is backspace).
Full OS list (so far): MS BASIC 6502, Unix v1/v4/v5/v7, Slackware 1.0, Debian 1.1, Red Hat 5.2, Damn Small Linux, Alpine 3.0, MINIX 2 and 3, FreeDOS with 32 games.
What’s interesting:
Networked BBS — several of the systems can telnet into a telnet-accessible BBS and post messages that are also visible on the web. Fire up (for example) Red Hat or Debian and run: telnet bbs 23 — leave a message.
Microsoft BASIC for 6502 (1976–78) — one of Microsoft’s earliest BASICs, recently open-sourced from the original code. It’s a great snapshot of that formative era of personal computing.
UNIX v4 (1973) — v4 was thought lost for decades until a tape was discovered at the University of Utah after 50+ years in storage. Widely described as the first Unix with the kernel largely rewritten in C. Runs on an emulated PDP-11/45. (v1, v5 and v7 are available as well)
Period software downloads — some systems can download and install authentic period software. A few do it via native package managers (MINIX3, Alpine, DSL), and a few others use a simple download script I put together in /root (Red Hat, Debian). (Not every OS has this wired up yet.)
Red Hat 5.2 “Apollo” (1998) — a late-90s Linux time capsule from the era when Linux started being taken seriously in business (around the same period as Microsoft’s “Halloween Documents,” which discussed Linux as a competitive threat).
Slackware 1.0 (1993) — the oldest Linux distro still maintained today. Originally shipped on a boatload floppy disks with kernel 0.99pl11-alpha (before Linux 1.0 existed!). Early SUSE releases were Slackware-based. (This one’s a simpler implementation than some of the others so far, but it’s still fun to poke at.)
Fair warning: there might be bugs and rough edges. If you find any, report them in the community forums at vintageterminals.io/bbs (vintage.feedback board) or discuss them here, I'll be reading.
Happy to answer questions.
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