[metafont] Re: [metapost] TeX and MF: Fast-loading of core image

[Ulrik Vieth]

> A loooong time ago, there used to be dump/undump binaries in the
> Linux distro's, but that was in the a.out era; a prehistoric age
> wherein CPU cycles were more time-expensive then disk I/O.

You can find a complete archive of a TeX 2.95 Unix distribution 
from around 1988 or 1989 at the following site:

ftp://ftp.tug.org/historic/systems/unix/TeX2.95/

You probably would have to look at the file undump.tar.Z 
to find out how it was down for Unix TeX in the 1980s.

If you want to know how it was done at SAIL at Stanford,
you might want to look at the SAILDART archive:

http://z.baumgart.org/saildart/prog/SYS/TEX_SYS/.browser.html
http://z.baumgart.org/saildart/prog/SYS/_MF_SYS/.browser.html

I don't know if there is anything useful about dumping/undumping,
but it's the best resource there is for the really old stuff.

Cheers, Ulrik.