UNIX V4 tape from the University of Utah, received by Martin Newell in June 1974 around when he modeled the Utah Teapot.
This is the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum's Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek's readtape tool.
The tape was found on 28 July 2025 by Aleks Maricq at the University of Utah, among the documents of Jay Lepreau in the storage closet of the Flux Research Group in the Merrill Engineering Building. It was brought to the Computer History Museum by Jon Duerig and Thalia Archibald.
UNIX V4 was made freely available by Caldera International under the BSD 4-Clause license on 23 January 2002.
| Modified | Size | Filename | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-01-23 | 12.0K | LICENSE-CALDERA.pdf | Caldera license for ancient UNIX |
| 2025-04-11 19:36:00 -0700 | 2.8K | LICENSE-CALDERA.txt | Caldera license reformatted as text |
| 2025-12-19 11:04:36 -0800 | 1.1G | v4/v4.sal | Analog data in Saleae Logic format |
| 2025-12-19 11:14:40 -0800 | 1.6G | v4/analog.tbin | Analog data in binary format |
| 2025-12-19 11:14:40 -0800 | 540B | v4/analog.csvtbin.log | Log from csvtbin run |
| 2025-12-19 11:23:08 -0800 | 3.6K | v4/analog.peakstats_deskew.csv | Peak position statistics after deskewing |
| 2025-12-19 11:26:36 -0800 | 2.5M | v4/analog.tap | Digital data in SIMH .tap format |
| 2025-12-19 11:26:36 -0800 | 3.7K | v4/analog.peakstats.csv | Peak position statistics after processing |
| 2025-12-19 11:26:36 -0800 | 5.7K | v4/analog.log | Log from readtape run |
Obverse label (handwritten, probably by Jay Lepreau):
UNIX Original
from Bell Labs V4
(See Manual for format)
Obverse label (printed, color):
Scotch®
BRAND
700
GP
3200 FCI
Outer rim label (embossed, blue with white text, probably from Bell Labs):
UNIX V4 DIST
Reverse label (typed, from tape manufacturer):
97207 04 031 21
Inner rim text (printed, from tape manufacturer):
0495-053