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I wonder how those email addresses worked. Who or what is window@athena? Project Athena is from MIT, so maybe window is a shared account for the group or window is a proto newgroup?

Also its so odd to think that the code couldn't be emailed because of size limitations of the time and you'd have to bring a tape. Weird that he didn't ask for a floppy because floppies were common by then too. Lets remember in 1984 you had the original Mac and a year out from the Amiga so not exactly ancient history and both those devices supported the newer 3.5" disks with 5.25" disks being very common by then. I'm guessing the unix big iron culture of the time was primarily tape based.

Also talk about a missed opportunity. I'd love to see a screenshot of this email on the original x. I'm guessing there was no email client for x back then but it could at least be read in a terminal window. I'm assuming x supported a terminal window this early if it had a working windows manager, but maybe vt100 emulation wasn't in the cards just yet. Still, what a neat piece of computer history. Stuff like this always gives me warm feelings, like in a past life I was somehow active in the culture then and feel nostalgia for it.



> I wonder how those email addresses worked. Who or what is window@athena? Project Athena is from MIT, so maybe window is a shared account for the group or window is a proto newgroup?

The history of email standards is interesting, to say the least!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Internet_email_address


The source wouldn't fit on a single floppy disk.


It doesn't mention which kind of tape. I'd be interested to know what they used.

Also it looks like they're referring to the VS100.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAXstation

I never had access to those but I'd conjecture from the post they might've used tape. There at least.


> I'm guessing the unix big iron culture of the time was primarily tape based.

pretty much any 'real' workstation and for sure minis+ had tapes




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