freebee.1

.TH FREEBEE 1 "Feb 13 2021" "" "AT&T 3B1 Emulation"
.SH NAME
freebee \- emulate an AT&T 3B1 personal computer
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B freebee
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I freebee
is an emulator for the AT&T 3B1 personal Unix computer.
There were two models of this system: The Unix PC (also known
as the PC 7300) and the 3B1. The two models differed primarily
in the amount of main memory and disk that the various systems
had; from a software standpoint they were identical.
.PP
.I freebee
provides a system with an MC 68010 processor, 4 megabytes of RAM,
a floppy drive, and up to two hard drives, each of which may be
up to 175 megabytes in size.
.PP
The original software for the 3B1 is available.
It includes the OS, software development tools, document preparation
tools, and advanced editors (notably
.IR vi (1)).
Links to the software are
provided on
.IR freebee\^ 's
home page.
.PP
Considerable third party software is available, some in source form,
some in binary form, from archives that are also linked to from
.IR freebee\^ 's
home page.
.PP
The system more-or-less represents the state of the art in the
Unix world as of about 1985.  The Unix PC and 3B1 were the first
.I personal
Unix systems that were affordable by individuals, as opposed to higher-end
workstations from companies like Sun, DEC, IBM, Tektronix, and Silicon Graphics.
.PP
The kernel is approximately System V Release 2 vintage, with a few
System V Release 3 user-land components.  In particular, the modern-day
user will have to deal with both short filenames (14 characters maximum),
and the lack of job control.
.SH CONFIGURATION
.I freebee
can be configured by creating a file in TOML format containing
appropriate values.
.I freebee
looks first for
.I .freebee.toml
in the current directory, and then
.IR $HOME/.freebee.toml ,
reading the first one it can open and then stopping.
See the file
.I sample.freebee.toml
in the source code for the options that are configurable.
.SH FILES
The following list of files are the defaults
.I freebee
uses if the filenames are not overridden by a configuration
file (see the earlier section
.BR CONFIGURATION ).
.PP
Files are assumed to live in the current directory in which
.I freebee
is run.
.TP
.I roms/*
The ROM image files. Links to them are provided on the
.I freebee
home page.
.TP
.I floppy.img
An optional image of a floppy disk.  By default,
.I freebee
attaches this file when it starts up. Use F11 to unload and
load this file while running (``change the floppy'').
.TP
.I hd.img
An image for the first hard disk.  This disk is mounted at / (the root).
Pre-built images are available from the Internet, or you can
create and install such a disk from scratch.
.TP
.I hd2.img
An optional image for the second hard disk.
This disk is not mounted when the system boots; you can use it
for whatever you want.
.TP
.I serial-pty
A symbolic link to the pseudo-terminal file
.RI ( /dev/pts/? )
which can be used to connect to the 3B1's serial port for user login to
the 3B1, dial-out from it,
or for file transfer. See the file
.I README.serial.md
in the source code directory for more information and concise
instructions on how to use the serial port.
.SH SCALING THE DISPLAY
You can scale the display by setting scale factors in the
.I .freebee.toml
file.
Scale values must be greater than zero and less than or equal to 45. This
facility is useful on large displays.
.SH AUTHORS
Phil Pemberton, with contributions from several others.
.SH BUG REPORTS
Please open an issue on the Github project,
\f(CWhttps://github.com/philpem/freebee\fP.
.SH BUGS
The original 3B1 modem is not emulated.
.PP
To avoid Y2K bugs in the OS, the year in the running system is always 1987.