Whew! I just finished porting 2,852 lines of PDP-11 assembly to C by hand over the past week!
This is for form/fed, a form letter editor and generator with template substitutions, introduced in 1971. It's the largest UNIX utility that was never ported to C, and has since been forgotten.
1/6
#unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #reverseengineering
Thalia Archibald
npub1th…lw4nm
2026-10-16 04:38:32 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…udur
Author Public Key
npub1thrmps439tzkcx72uft5deu389rt39pdjxy6uvdrfw035t0jcrdsulw4nmSeen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-10-16 04:38:32 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "8ec6ed6b74f3bedb264c3ac2a9ab29af01d65529c47ee4c1babcaf0bd76aa5a3",
"pubkey": "5dc7b0c2b12ac56c1bcae25746e7913946b8942d9189ae31a34b9f1a2df2c0db",
"created_at": 1792125512,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"339841fedf079ac0e7108ff71af3762b3c3602e6d5bcd4b5ccec9ec384e9b0f4",
"",
"root",
"5dc7b0c2b12ac56c1bcae25746e7913946b8942d9189ae31a34b9f1a2df2c0db"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://discuss.systems/@thalia/117448737571380042",
"web"
],
[
"p",
"5dc7b0c2b12ac56c1bcae25746e7913946b8942d9189ae31a34b9f1a2df2c0db"
],
[
"t",
"reverseengineering"
],
[
"t",
"vintagecomputing"
],
[
"t",
"unix"
],
[
"t",
"retrocomputing"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://discuss.systems/ap/users/115918347060720003/statuses/117448737571380042",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://discuss.systems/ap/users/115918347060720003/statuses/117448737571380042",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "Whew! I just finished porting 2,852 lines of PDP-11 assembly to C by hand over the past week!\n\nThis is for form/fed, a form letter editor and generator with template substitutions, introduced in 1971. It's the largest UNIX utility that was never ported to C, and has since been forgotten.\n\n1/6\n\n#unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #reverseengineering",
"sig": "4bd97eabad5d87322df5aa300686e0f90abb4f80476c054bb3c0fe0cd9cc5f19d6bcfe65f07fe519a72422bad67129e4c46e6ed00eb9177524c27d72e3d011bd"
}