Article 4676 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Donald Tees" <donald@willmack.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: The "Here Is" key
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 15:30:45 -0500
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You are telling me that IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!
Now that I have you attention, I should explain<G>.
Many years ago, a DecSystem-10 was the first
computer that I, personally, was ever responsible
for purchasing. Not that I paid for it out-of-pocket,
but I was the techy who basically made the choice.

It was CPU#14, if I remember rightly, and it was installed
in Toronto ... about the fourth or fifth 10 in Canada and
the first commercial one ... the others were all universities
or government.

After putting it in, the very first program I ended up writing
for it was a program to analyse all that data you put out. If
I remember rightly, it was a total hodge-podge of miscellaneous
figures, each one in a completely different format ... does
that sound about right?
;<)


jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <794d10$6im$1@antiochus.ultra.net>...
>[I'm breaking my personal rule about x-posting...I hope the
>   10 people find the story interesting]
>
>In article <78kj2f$gab$3@strato.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>In article <78khsr$n73$1@news.igs.net>,
>>   "Donald Tees" <donald@willmack.com> wrote:
>>>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <78kff5$9j5$2@strato.ultra.net>...
>>>
>>>>I can assure you that I never, never said "There Went my days'
>>>>work".  It was always appropriately laced with more precise
>>>>expressions.
>>>
>>>
>>>Really?  I always said politely "darn".
>>
>>That word was what I did to socks.
>>
>>>  Then I quietly
>>>rebooted, and did it over again.  Anybody that says
>>>otherwise is a *!@#$%^& liar.
>>>
>>I have a story about that but it is just a tad off topic
>>even though it happened at work.  Wanna hear it?
>
>
>One of my goals (when I went to work for DEC) was to improve the data
>gathering of computer usage so that cross-charging by the bean counters
>didn't require a system's analyst; all the data recorded by TOPS-10
>was in mixed mode--binary, decimal, octal, SIXBIT, ASCII, etc. and
>splathered all through a file(s) non-sequentially.  It took me
>six years to get to the right place at the right time to address
>the problem.
>
>Over those years, DEC's customer forum called DECUS always had a
>session on accounting.  I was the only person in the corporation
>who was willing to do the project.  Now, this was the first (and,
>I believe, the last) time  customers were included in the nitty-gritty
>of the design work.   We invited customers to our brainstorming
>sessions with the developers.
>
>When we finally decided on a design of the data to be captured,
>I was told I had to take it to the customers at a DECUS session
>before any implementation work was to be done.  The project had
>become so emotional that DEC didn't want to spend any time
>implementing a design that would cause more headaches; it was
>willing to live the current one since it was so familiar.  It
>didn't want to have to find new remedies with a new headache.
>
>The project's name was called USAGE.
>
>So I had to prepare and give a talk descibing the design.
>One of the constraints was that I was not allowed
>to swear (another was that I had to wear a dress, ugh!).
>Jim used to brag that my language would put a longshoreman to
>shame.  So, as a consequence, I "practiced" not swearing for
>one month before the talk.  Boy, was that hard!
>
>The week before the talk, our cost center manager and Jim had
>a meeting with me to go over the game plan.  I was worried about
>my propensity for forgetting myself and letting loose (computer
>usage data gathering was one of the most controversial subjects
>that our customers had with us).  The cost
>center manager understood that I had all this pentup excitablility.
>After much discussion, Jim and he came up with a phrase that was
>acceptable.  He gave me permission to use the words, "Sit on it
>and rotate" if I had a real problem with a customer during
>the talk and wanted to use the word f*** in my language. This
>phrase became a source of great humor and kidding for weeks
>after that.
>
>I wore a dress; I gave the talk.  There were a few difficult
>customers including the chairman who was actively not chairing;
>he spent his time attacking the design even though he was one of
>the customer guests at the internal design meetings.
>I gave the most difficult customers nicknames (I have difficulty
>remembering real names for some reason).  One was Springy; he
>kept springing up on his feet with objections and comments about
>every 2 minutes.  One was Greybeard; he had a grey beard and
>seemed to be pretty reasonable but vocal.  Another
>was Blackbeard who had a black beard but was a shithead.  I
>won't mention my name for the chairman.
>
>Oh, yea.  I managed to get through that meeting (and they
>scheduled a second one which is unprecedented for later
>that week) without swearing once, and I didn't even think
>about using the approved phrase.  I did say crap once, though.
>
>The second meeting was scheduled for Friday afternoon, the last
>day of the convention.  I wore pants (but not jeans).  Now,
>the customers were tired (thank the gods); we certainly
>were tired and, although the meeting lasted for an hour and a half,
>the oomph was gone from all the objections.  So Jim Flemming, Don
>Todd, and I finally left.  I drove them from the Cape (Cod) swearing
>a blue streak just to get all that expression out of my system.  Since
>Don and I lived in the same town, our first stop was at Jim's house.
>There was a strange car in the driveway.  Jim went in, came out again,
>and said it was a cousin.  I didn't hear cousin--I heard customer.
>As I crawled back into the car, I said, "Oh, no.  I'm not going to
>deal with any more customers; I'm not all f***ed out yet."  This
>comment had been edited so that customers won't be offended :-).
>That one caused even more hilarity when Jim told the story at work.
>
>Just as a note, a few years later, Springy applied for a job but used his
>real name.  The project leader passed the resume by Jim just as a formality
>asking if Jim knew anything about the guy.  Jim said, "Why that's Springy!"
>The guy didn't get hired.   Springy had demonstrated an odd notion about
>what timesharing should do during my talk.  He wanted all processing
>to stop completely every time data gathering was done and recorded.
>Somehow, we couldn't convince him that data gathering required
>executing instructions; therefore, processing couldn't be stopped.
>
>/BAH
>
>
>
>Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.




Article 4678 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: The "Here Is" key
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: 2 Feb 1999 01:31:02 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University
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Eric Smith (eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com) wrote:
: "Donald Tees" <donald@willmack.com> replied to BAH's story about USAGE:
: > You are telling me that IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!
: [...]
: > After putting it in, the very first program I ended up writing
: > for it was a program to analyse all that data you put out. If
: > I remember rightly, it was a total hodge-podge of miscellaneous
: > figures, each one in a completely different format ... does
: > that sound about right?

: I think you're talking about what existed *before* BAH wrote USAGE.
: In fact, I think that was the very motivation for it.

That's the way I remember it. I do recall being shown a dump from the
old style accounting information showing that "magically" the cty had
migrated to my terminal and that various other unauthorized actions had
occured (in my absence of course :-). I was only a part-time student 
operator and wasn't supposed to understand or use a priviledged account...
--
 Huw Davies                      | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
 Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550  Fax: +61 3 9479 1999
 La Trobe University             | "If God had wanted soccer to be played
 Melbourne Australia 3083        | in the air, the sky would be green" 


Article 4681 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: The "Here Is" key
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 99 11:33:07 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <qh90eh8yed.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
   Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>"Donald Tees" <donald@willmack.com> replied to BAH's story about USAGE:
>> You are telling me that IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!
>[...]
>> After putting it in, the very first program I ended up writing
>> for it was a program to analyse all that data you put out. If
>> I remember rightly, it was a total hodge-podge of miscellaneous
>> figures, each one in a completely different format ... does
>> that sound about right?
>
>I think you're talking about what existed *before* BAH wrote USAGE.
>In fact, I think that was the very motivation for it.

Yup.  Those files were called FACT files.  I got really
good at "fixing" them using FILDDT.  The reason the USAGE
files were so damn controversial is that we switched the data
type to all ASCII.  What a hullaballoo.  See.  In order to
bill computer usage, the computing center had to hire a systems
programmer just to deal with the raw data.  After our implementation,
a COBOL programmer could be hired (at 1/3 the salary) to do the
programming.  The managers of these systems programmers quietly
took us aside and thanked us because the managers would rather
put their systems programmers to better use.

/BAH
 

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 4683 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Donald Tees" <donald@willmack.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: The "Here Is" key
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:09:24 -0500
Organization: IGS - Information Gateway Services
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <796pvk$bdj$3@ligarius.ultra.net>...
>Wow, that was a young one if your serial number recall is correct.
>Can you tell me the customer name?


I do not see why not ... it was Griffith Lab's in Toronto.

>Those were the FACT files and I hope you found the program
>FACTPR that converted the mish-mash into SIXBIT.  You were too
>young (or too old, depending on one's p.o.v.) to have dealt
>with USAGE files (I put all of them in ASCII).  Did you discover
>the trick of "fixing" the data using FILDDT?


Actually, it was so long ago, that I do not remember that much about
it.  I think I wrote a macro-10 program to convert it all to flat ASCII,
then a Cobol program to analyse it.  I seem to remember timestamps
and stuff as 36 bit numbers.  Long time ago, now.





Article 4689 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Emacs-style command line editing in TOPS-20
Date: 5 Feb 1999 22:28:33 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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eric@fudge.uchicago.edu (Eric Fischer) writes:
>In the Spring, 1985 issue of the University of Chicago Computation
>Center Newsletter, there's an announcement of a new TOPS-20 feature
>that keeps a history of recent input and lets you use Emacs-style
>commands to go back to and modify the earlier commands.  Can anyone
>tell me whether this is a local modification or a standard feature?
>I'm also curious at what level this was implemented -- that is, is
>it available in all programs, or only in the EXEC?

I dunno about TOPS-20, but the sort-of-TOPS-10 system at the Stanford
AI Lab had intra-line editing built into the keyboard scanner in the
monitor (so available in all programs), and around 1976 Martin Frost
and I hacked that code into an otherwise normal TOPS-10 system at
L'Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris.


Article 4691 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Bill Westfield <billw@flipper.cisco.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Emacs-style command line editing in TOPS-20
Date: 05 Feb 1999 23:05:57 -0800
Organization: Cisco Systems, Inc.
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IIRC, the "standard" stanford (?) exec extensions included history and the
ability to access the history with emacs-like commands (^P, ^N), but NOT the
ability to do intra-line editing with emacs-like commands.  Trying to mix
intra-line editting (or any kind of single-character wakeup) with COMND%
would have been challanging.  I can think of a few different ways to try it
that I didn't think of last time (my first big tops20 project - port SAIL's
news system to tops20.  NS had this parser where some commands would act on
a single keystroke, while others let you type a whole line (with editting
being desirable.)  I don't think I'd use COMND% at all if I had to do that
again, come to think of it.)

BillW
-- 
(remove spam food from return address)


Article 4694 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Emacs-style command line editing in TOPS-20
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 14:29:15 -0500
Organization: UltraNet Communications , an RCN Company http://www.ultranet.com/
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Bill Westfield wrote:
> 
> IIRC, the "standard" stanford (?) exec extensions included history and the
> ability to access the history with emacs-like commands (^P, ^N), but NOT the
> ability to do intra-line editing with emacs-like commands.  ...

I recall the EXECs at Rutgers had optional editing within single lines (both
EMACS and something else).  So did some other site's EXEC (some doc
differences - possibly a different implementation).  I don't know what site(s)
wrote the code, vs. who were recipients from elsewhere.


>... Trying to mix
> intra-line editting (or any kind of single-character wakeup) with COMND%
> would have been challanging.  I can think of a few different ways to try it
> that I didn't think of last time (my first big tops20 project - port SAIL's
> news system to tops20.  NS had this parser where some commands would act on
> a single keystroke, while others let you type a whole line (with editting
> being desirable.)  I don't think I'd use COMND% at all if I had to do that
> again, come to think of it.)

As I recall, a friend hacked ITS TECO-20 (and therefore MIT EMACS) at DEC
Marlboro to use TEXTI% for input.  Under normal conditions it set the break
mask to anything that wasn't self-inserting, and messed with the control
character output control word (CCOC).  This was partially an experiment to
reduce per-character wakeups of the user code.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 4695 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Emacs-style command line editing in TOPS-20
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 16:01:13 -0500
Organization: UltraNet Communications , an RCN Company http://www.ultranet.com/
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Message-ID: <36BF5099.20513145@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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"Alan H. Martin" wrote:
> 
> Bill Westfield wrote:
> >
> > IIRC, the "standard" stanford (?) exec extensions included history and the
> > ability to access the history with emacs-like commands (^P, ^N), but NOT the
> > ability to do intra-line editing with emacs-like commands.  ...
> 
> I recall the EXECs at Rutgers had optional editing within single lines (both
> EMACS and something else).  So did some other site's EXEC (some doc
> differences - possibly a different implementation).  I don't know what site(s)
> wrote the code, vs. who were recipients from elsewhere.

Ah, here's where at least one version (which supported EMACS and SOS Alter
mode) came from:

"
; New module for the command history stuff.
;
; Copyright (C) 1983, 1984 by Philip Almquist
; All rights reserved
;
;	This module has been created to centralize the expanding mass
; of command history stuff in Clexec.  Some of what appears here has
; been moved from other modules (mostly Execsu), and the editor and
; related stuff are new.  The editor is based on the UTEXAS-20 editor
; by Billy Brown (which in turn claims to be based on the "Yale Exec
; Command Editor" by ???).  The editor has been modified by Vince
; Fuller, Mike Blackwell, and myself.  C2CBUF is a stripped down version
; of a routine used by Chris Ryland's command macro facility.  The rest
; of the code is mine.
"


> >... Trying to mix
> > intra-line editting (or any kind of single-character wakeup) with COMND%
> > would have been challanging.  I can think of a few different ways to try it
> > that I didn't think of last time (my first big tops20 project - port SAIL's
> > news system to tops20.  NS had this parser where some commands would act on
> > a single keystroke, while others let you type a whole line (with editting
> > being desirable.)  I don't think I'd use COMND% at all if I had to do that
> > again, come to think of it.)
> 
> As I recall, a friend hacked ITS TECO-20 (and therefore MIT EMACS) at DEC
> Marlboro to use TEXTI% for input.  Under normal conditions it set the break
> mask to anything that wasn't self-inserting, and messed with the control
> character output control word (CCOC).  This was partially an experiment to
> reduce per-character wakeups of the user code.

I'm told that the TECO work was done at MIT, not DEC, but that it depended on
adding an echo flag to TEXTI's interface.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 4696 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Bill Westfield <billw@flipper.cisco.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Emacs-style command line editing in TOPS-20
Date: 08 Feb 1999 19:57:16 -0800
Organization: Cisco Systems, Inc.
Lines: 14
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    I'm told that the TECO work was done at MIT, not DEC, but that 
    it depended on adding an echo flag to TEXTI's interface.

I think Stanford again (or perhaps also.)  That particular hack (the
stanford version) was one of mine (the trick was not to echo characters
that were in the break set.)

I don't know that we were ever able to tell whether it made much of a
difference - there seemed to be subjective improvement in overall system
performance, but getting stats to prove better performance was difficult.

BillW
-- 
(remove spam food from return address)


Article 4703 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Vasos Panagiotopoulos +1-917-287-8087 Bioengineer-Financier wrote:
> I wonder if there's a web site with all the old DECUS tapes..

Depends on what you call "all".  Certainly, most of the
TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 tapes are available by anonymous
FTP from xkleten.paulallen.com - just cd to PS:<DECUS>
and start browsing!

Be aware that many (most?) Unix- and Windows-based FTP
clients lack support for 36-bit-specific transfers.  Seems
a shame - especially as just a few years ago all the major
FTP sites were PDP-10's.  In addition, some Windows-based
FTP clients won't let you use "<" and ">" as directory
delimiters.

> and any
> emulator software to make that stuff run on PCs..

Can't help you there.

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd                 Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927


Article 4705 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Forbes ASAP picture of LCG machine
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 22:05:41 -0800
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4705

On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Pat Farrell wrote:
> The current Forbes ASAP has an article on big iron, with pictures of
> assorted important stuff. They list the DEC KL-10, but to my
> eyes, the console looks more like a KI than a KL. Mostly
> because the KLs I used didn't have anything but the silly
> 11 ...

Yes, the picture is of a KI10 and not a KL10.  If you look carefully, you
can see the paper tape reader on top of the console!

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.



Article 4714 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!enews.sgi.com!uwvax!uchinews!not-for-mail
From: eric@fudge.uchicago.edu (Eric Fischer)
Subject: Re: Why ^U?
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: fudge.uchicago.edu
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Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:

> Why is ^U the primordial DEC line-kill keystroke, and where did it
> first appear?

I don't know when it first appeared, but it was in use on the PDP-6
by 1966, according to a table in the Proceedings of the Australian
Computer Conference (p. 251) from that year.  Wasn't the PDP-5 the
first DEC computer to use ASCII?

The original (pre-lowercase) ASCII standard defines ^U as "error,"
which makes more sense than the "NAK" that replaced it in the revised
standard.

eric


Article 5083 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 03:42:27 GMT
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
Lines: 67
Message-ID: <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
References: <37427bf1.59778804@news.iol.ie> <3731D03B.203987C6@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <7guich$uo9$1@antiochus.ultra.net> <p98mccabe-0705990749100001@r-103.64.alltel.net> <7h1akj$n81$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <37344E32.C450E8AC@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <7h1kpe$jqt$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h3qda$ns8$3@news5.svr.pol.co.uk> <7h3vli$roa$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h47e0$g84$2@zingo.tninet.se> <3736167e$0$18684@mojo.crosslink.net> <7h6f12$301$1@cubacola.tninet.se> <37370562$0$18685@mojo.crosslink.net>
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"John Gilmer" <gilmer@crosslink.net> wrote:


| 
| Yes it does!  Especially in tech sales, engineers like to think that they
| are working with fellow professionals.   You expect the sales force to be up
| to date, professional, and honest.  When they aren't you stop trusting them.
| 
| In sales, the big deal happens when a company says:  OK, what do I really
| need!   This can be a license to print money.   It happens to ALL sales
| people and groups sometime in their career.   The organization has two
| choices at this time:  1) They can take the money and run and milk the
| current customer for all they can get (this was the DEC approach); or 2)
| they can  look after the customer's interest and find that the customers
| will help them out when times aren't quite so good.

| 
| Come on, DEC got greedy!   I remember looking at the add ons for the UNIX
| workstations they sold.   The disks, etc. were almost 10 times as expensive
| as WinTel stuff.   Nobody was looking more than one year ahead.   I put DEC
| in the same class as Eastern Airlines:  both companies decided to screw over
| their customers and both companies had staff that told customers you are
| lucky we even let you take your money.   They are both history!   God bless
| America.
| 
| JLG
| 
| 
Hmm, I have a rather interesting take on the situation, based on some
experiences that would push things up a level higher than sales.

Mangement - "new" management.

Things didn't seem to go badly wrong for DEC until the Defenestration of Olsen
& Co.

OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing when people were
making off with officially obsolete low-number PDPs as "home computers" but it
was the *new* (then would-be) management that seemed to be behind things like
making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, cutting back research
and development (early kills included Jupiter and the Trilogy consortium after
the initial project turned into the Big Flame) getting the IRS to nuke one of
the company's (and Ken and the Bells') most expensive and wonderful projects -
the original Digital Computer Museum at Marlborough (IRS denied the project
501(c)3 educational not-for-profit status on the grounds it was a company
lobby, rather than the company donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in
time, space and equipment in a situation that only created headaches - I
suspect after an *inside* complaint though I have absolutely no evidence - we
do know that Gordon Bell went soon after the Defenestration, the historic
collection was tossed out of Boston, and both ended up on the Left Coast)

The "old" DEC gave away manuals and created the engine to give away software,
had a multi-platform line with gear to suit everyone's needs (from 12- to
36-bits + modules and industrial controllers) had folks who were ready to drop
anything to provide customers with service and a sense of humor.

The "new" DEC became a better-dressed IBM with a narrower line of products and
customer loyalty to the product.

Sorry, but the God Bless America stuff allowed a few greedy people to destroy
a great company that should have had some protection - and the greedheads
ended up making out best.

					dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 5086 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "David Sallitt" <david.sallitt@mail.tesco.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 20:19:42 +0100
Organization: Tesco ISP
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References: <37427bf1.59778804@news.iol.ie>
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	 <7h1kpe$jqt$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h3qda$ns8$3@news5.svr.pol.co.uk>
	 <7h3vli$roa$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h47e0$g84$2@zingo.tninet.se>
	 <3736167e$0$18684@mojo.crosslink.net> <7h6f12$301$1@cubacola.tninet.se>
	 <37370562$0$18685@mojo.crosslink.net>
	 <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
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I was working for DEC as an engineer on DECsystem10's and 20's for over 9 
nine years through the 80s.

Being a Large Computer Group (LCG) engineer was like being a member of an
elite.  We had to know the software, we had much closer relationships with
the customers and we went to the States to be trained.  We got to see the
museum, both when it was in the Marlboro plant and when it moved to the
wharf in Boston.

After the 10's demise, things went downhill fast in DEC.  The engineer's job
was deskilled to the point where you were just the last link in the
logistics chain, so I moved off into project management and services sales.
Every quarter some new remedy was going to put the company back in shape,
but it never worked.  I eventually left with around 2000 other UK employees
in the April '94 "Night of the long knives".  Worries about the future were
tempered with a great feeling of a weight being lifted.

Alpha was going to save the day, of course.  But nobody seemed to catch on
the fact that customers need more than hot technology.  Unix and NT became
flavours of the month, but a customer is moving from VMS or Tops to Unix or
NT, choosing the box it runs on the one of the least considerations.  The
impression I get is that they still haven't figured that out.  And now
Compaq seems to be going the same way.

I remember when this industry was fun.  It stopped being that way for me the
day the 10s/20s died.
---------------
David P Sallitt
david.sallitt@tesco.net
(who still has his DEC engineer's toolkit...)


Article 5089 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Wed, 12 May 99 09:55:08 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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References: <37344E32.C450E8AC@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <7h1kpe$jqt$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h3qda$ns8$3@news5.svr.pol.co.uk> <7h3vli$roa$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h47e0$g84$2@zingo.tninet.se> <3736167e$0$18684@mojo.crosslink.net> <7h6f12$301$1@cubacola.tninet.se> <37370562$0$18685@mojo.crosslink.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9905101054590.2042-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
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In article 
<Pine.NXT.4.20.9905101054590.2042-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>,
   Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>On Mon, 10 May 1999, John Gilmer wrote:
>> I put DEC
>> in the same class as Eastern Airlines:  both companies 
>> decided to screw over
>> their customers and both companies had staff that told customers you are
>> lucky we even let you take your money.   They are both history!
>
>Yup.  From time to time, a company will refuse to sell the customer what
>the customer wants to buy, and instead presumes to lecture the customer on
>what the customer should buy.  When this happens to a company, it's on its
>way out.
<snip>

There is a juggling act involved with this, though.  There were
many times that a customer would come to us with his "solution"
which wouldn't work for a general distribution.  Most of the
time, a customer was solving a symptom rather than the real
problem.  After all, a particular customer only has the
experience of his site; we had the experience of all sites
(that was our job).

On the other hand, Digital was not selling anything (from
our point of view).  Jim had customers (who knew him from
DECUS) calling him personally and begging him to just point 
them to a salesman that would cut the order.  There wasn't
any other way to buy hardware back then--one had to have
the salesman in those days to initiate paperwork.  We didn't get
orders until the mini sales force were allowed to sell PDP-10s.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5090 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Wed, 12 May 99 10:11:03 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 126
Message-ID: <7hbqd0$b7t$4@antiochus.ultra.net>
References: <37344E32.C450E8AC@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <7h1kpe$jqt$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h3qda$ns8$3@news5.svr.pol.co.uk> <7h3vli$roa$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h47e0$g84$2@zingo.tninet.se> <3736167e$0$18684@mojo.crosslink.net> <7h6f12$301$1@cubacola.tninet.se> <37370562$0$18685@mojo.crosslink.net> <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
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[I wish people would set their margins short of 80 characters
so that prefixing doesn't cause wrap-around...I'm getting tired
of reformatting by hand--that's why I stopped using AOL]

In article <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
   david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>"John Gilmer" <gilmer@crosslink.net> wrote:
>
>
>| 
>| Yes it does!  Especially in tech sales, engineers like to think that 
they
>| are working with fellow professionals.   You expect the sales force to 
be up
>| to date, professional, and honest.  When they aren't you stop trusting 
them.
>| 
>| In sales, the big deal happens when a company says:  OK, what do I 
really
>| need!   This can be a license to print money.   It happens to ALL sales
>| people and groups sometime in their career.   The organization has two
>| choices at this time:  1) They can take the money and run and milk the
>| current customer for all they can get (this was the DEC approach); or 2)
>| they can  look after the customer's interest and find that the customers
>| will help them out when times aren't quite so good.
>
>| 
>| Come on, DEC got greedy!   I remember looking at the add ons for the 
UNIX
>| workstations they sold.   The disks, etc. were almost 10 times as 
expensive
>| as WinTel stuff.   Nobody was looking more than one year ahead.   I put 
DEC
>| in the same class as Eastern Airlines:  both companies decided to screw 
over
>| their customers and both companies had staff that told customers you are
>| lucky we even let you take your money.   They are both history!   God 
bless
>| America.
>| 
>| JLG
>| 
>| 
>Hmm, I have a rather interesting take on the situation, based on some
>experiences that would push things up a level higher than sales.
>
>Mangement - "new" management.
>
>Things didn't seem to go badly wrong for DEC until the 
>Defenestration of Olsen & Co.

Nope.  Things were going badly already.

>
>OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing 
>when people were making off with officially obsolete low-number 
>PDPs as "home computers" but it was the *new* (then would-be) 
>management that seemed to be behind things like
>making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, ...

That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.
 
>cutting back research and development (early kills included 
>Jupiter and the Trilogy consortium after
>the initial project turned into the Big Flame) ...

No.  Those were the last.  Research was cut back in the early 70s
because the number crunchers insisted that it was more competitive
(other companies didn't have as high a percentage of earnings as
DEC did at that time--it was a side effect of being publicly owned).
And the beginnings of cancellations that were a mistake happened
in between 1977 and 1979--both hardware and software.

> ...getting the IRS to nuke one of the company's (and Ken 
>and the Bells') most expensive and wonderful projects -
>the original Digital Computer Museum at Marlborough (IRS 
>denied the project
>501(c)3 educational not-for-profit status on the grounds it was a company
>lobby, rather than the company donating hundreds of thousands of 
>dollars in
>time, space and equipment in a situation that only created headaches - I
>suspect after an *inside* complaint though I have absolutely no evidence - 


I didn't know that the museum went away because of the IRS.  But
I'll tell you, we viewed it as getting our noses rubbed in it.  
All that money being spent on a bloody museums instead of a 
decent CPU, peripherals or software.

>we
>do know that Gordon Bell went soon after the Defenestration, the historic
>collection was tossed out of Boston, and both ended up on the Left Coast)

His leaving was good news for us.  But, by then, it was too late.

>
>The "old" DEC gave away manuals and created the engine to 
>give away software,

I don't remember DEC giving away anything.

>had a multi-platform line with gear to suit everyone's needs (from 12- to
>36-bits + modules and industrial controllers) had folks who were ready to 
drop
>anything to provide customers with service and a sense of humor.

Yup.

>
>The "new" DEC became a better-dressed IBM with a narrower 
>line of products and customer loyalty to the product.

I blame it more on the straight-jacketing due to the MBA
school of thought.  
>
>Sorry, but the God Bless America stuff allowed a few greedy 
>people to destroy a great company that should have had 
>some protection - and the greedheads ended up making out best.

No.  It wasn't greed that started it.  There do exist people
who have to destroy what others build.  If you want to
bring psychology into it, I would say it was jealousy.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5093 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!204.127.161.3!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!wnmaster2!not-for-mail
From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 13:43:07 GMT
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
Lines: 143
Message-ID: <373ad25c.1029604101@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:


| In article <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
|

| >OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing 
| >when people were making off with officially obsolete low-number 
| >PDPs as "home computers" but it was the *new* (then would-be) 
| >management that seemed to be behind things like
| >making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, ...
| 
| That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.

OK, another misquote properly attributed (and thanks, I hate urban legends) -
why he went to Microsoft and why he was working on smaller/faster back in his
CMU days.

|  
| >cutting back research and development (early kills included 
| >Jupiter and the Trilogy consortium after
| >the initial project turned into the Big Flame) ...
| 
| No.  Those were the last.  Research was cut back in the early 70s
| because the number crunchers insisted that it was more competitive
| (other companies didn't have as high a percentage of earnings as
| DEC did at that time--it was a side effect of being publicly owned).
| And the beginnings of cancellations that were a mistake happened
| in between 1977 and 1979--both hardware and software.

Was going too public was the start of the crisis? (as in New York Times Inc.
is public but it'll be another generation before the Ochs/Sulzburger families
lose 51%+ stock ownership)

| 
| > ...getting the IRS to nuke one of the company's (and Ken 
| >and the Bells') most expensive and wonderful projects -
| >the original Digital Computer Museum at Marlborough (IRS 
| >denied the project
| >501(c)3 educational not-for-profit status on the grounds it was a company
| >lobby, rather than the company donating hundreds of thousands of 
| >dollars in
| >time, space and equipment in a situation that only created headaches - I
| >suspect after an *inside* complaint though I have absolutely no evidence - 
| 
| 
| I didn't know that the museum went away because of the IRS.  But
| I'll tell you, we viewed it as getting our noses rubbed in it.  
| All that money being spent on a bloody museums instead of a 
| decent CPU, peripherals or software.

The IRS was told by *someone* with a grudge that the museum should be stripped
of tax-exempt status because it served the benefit of a particular company not
the public good - this is an extremely rare action. I've been a reporter
covering outright charity fraud 501(c) cases for years and I only know of this
happening once, after I proved a guy (through his fund raising companies) was
making something like $100,000 for each 20 cents he turned over to the charity
he was allegedly operating - the charity itself, like the museum, retained
status after it was given to the duped organizers.

To DEC and other right-coast computer fans, the museum was Mecca, a revived
part of the old DEC spirit (see below) why we on the outside loved DEC -
though I can understand how it must have felt from the inside.

| 
| >we
| >do know that Gordon Bell went soon after the Defenestration, the historic
| >collection was tossed out of Boston, and both ended up on the Left Coast)
| 
| His leaving was good news for us.  But, by then, it was too late.

I'm still not sure, as an outsider, whether getting rid of someone with his
flare was a good idea - maybe he should have been sent off in a corner with a
team of his own, but...

| 
| >
| >The "old" DEC gave away manuals and created the engine to 
| >give away software,
| 
| I don't remember DEC giving away anything.

I never paid for a DEC manual until 1972, when the multi-color decsystem-10
software manuals appeared - and even then, company reps were fairly free at
giving them away to students. I had a long shelf of DEC information books
(unfortunately many given away) that were freebies, going back to the original
black hard-bound module catalog/use guide.

DEC was also free with "obsolete" hardware to both non-profits and individuals
through the '80s

DECUS provided the platform for free software distribution, while most basic
DEC software was "free" with the purchase of a machine (compare with IBM's
imfamous licences)

| 
| >had a multi-platform line with gear to suit everyone's needs (from 12- to
| >36-bits + modules and industrial controllers) had folks who were ready to 
| drop
| >anything to provide customers with service and a sense of humor.
| 
| Yup.
| 
| >
| >The "new" DEC became a better-dressed IBM with a narrower 
| >line of products and customer loyalty to the product.
| 
| I blame it more on the straight-jacketing due to the MBA
| school of thought.  

exactly!

| >
| >Sorry, but the God Bless America stuff allowed a few greedy 
| >people to destroy a great company that should have had 
| >some protection - and the greedheads ended up making out best.
| 
| No.  It wasn't greed that started it.  There do exist people
| who have to destroy what others build.  If you want to
| bring psychology into it, I would say it was jealousy.
| 
| /BAH
| 
| Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

OK, as I said, I'm looking at this from an outsider's pov. My first experience
with the "new" DEC came in about 1981, when several DECfolks wanted to give
LIRICS (the LI high school project) a pair of KL-10s that had been sitting in
MR-1 or 2 (the one without the museum) and were about to be decommissioned.

DEC Service, Huntington, NY blew the deal because "the machines had not been
maintained by DEC Service since their installation" and refused to support.

The machines were scrapped because something that large couldn't be made to
fly out the door to a non-nfp like me. (I stood to inherit a KA, something,
which at the time, would have caused me great grief in the long run when my
parents saw the electric bills)

						dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 5094 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Thu, 13 May 99 13:02:40 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <373ad25c.1029604101@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
   david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>| In article <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
>|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>|
>
>| >OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing 
>| >when people were making off with officially obsolete low-number 
>| >PDPs as "home computers" but it was the *new* (then would-be) 
>| >management that seemed to be behind things like
>| >making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, ...
>| 
>| That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.
>
>OK, another misquote properly attributed (and thanks, 
>I hate urban legends) - why he went to Microsoft and why 
>he was working on smaller/faster back in his CMU days.

Well, there's more to the story than just the quote.  Bell
gave a speech that had that phrase in it.  The third and
fourth level of managers heard the speech but only listened
to the phrase and started implementing it.  The first we
(those in Marlboro which was the mainframe building) heard
of it was the decisions getting made based on that phrase.
Our manager got hold of the tape and we listened (or, at
least, I listened) to what Bell actually said.  Putting
the phrase back into the orginal context implied the 
exact opposite of what all those idiots were organizing,
namely, one operating system.  

Bell usually did say things that didn't really have anything
to do with how the business should be run.  However, up until
that time, people were sensible enough not to act on them.

>
>|  
>| >cutting back research and development (early kills included 
>| >Jupiter and the Trilogy consortium after
>| >the initial project turned into the Big Flame) ...
>| 
>| No.  Those were the last.  Research was cut back in the early 70s
>| because the number crunchers insisted that it was more competitive
>| (other companies didn't have as high a percentage of earnings as
>| DEC did at that time--it was a side effect of being publicly owned).
>| And the beginnings of cancellations that were a mistake happened
>| in between 1977 and 1979--both hardware and software.
>
>Was going too public was the start of the crisis? (as 
>in New York Times Inc. is public but it'll be another 
>generation before the Ochs/Sulzburger families
>lose 51%+ stock ownership)

I really don't know.  I still don't understand why limiting
R&D of a company is a big deal with major stockholders--
especially when they don't seem to blink an eyelid when
money is used to gild the lily.  

I don't even know if the stockholders had anything to do with
it; it could have just been the bean counters' rule learned
from idealisms found in text books.

>
>| 
>| > ...getting the IRS to nuke one of the company's (and Ken 
>| >and the Bells') most expensive and wonderful projects -
>| >the original Digital Computer Museum at Marlborough (IRS 
>| >denied the project
>| >501(c)3 educational not-for-profit status on the grounds it was a 
company
>| >lobby, rather than the company donating hundreds of thousands of 
>| >dollars in
>| >time, space and equipment in a situation that only created headaches - 
I
>| >suspect after an *inside* complaint though I have absolutely no 
evidence - 
>| 
>| 
>| I didn't know that the museum went away because of the IRS.  But
>| I'll tell you, we viewed it as getting our noses rubbed in it.  
>| All that money being spent on a bloody museums instead of a 
>| decent CPU, peripherals or software.
>
>The IRS was told by *someone* with a grudge that the museum should be 
stripped
>of tax-exempt status because it served the benefit of a particular company 
not
>the public good - this is an extremely rare action. I've been a reporter
>covering outright charity fraud 501(c) cases for years and I only know of 
this
>happening once, after I proved a guy (through his fund raising companies) 
was
>making something like $100,000 for each 20 cents he turned over to the 
charity
>he was allegedly operating - the charity itself, like the museum, retained
>status after it was given to the duped organizers.
>
>To DEC and other right-coast computer fans, the museum was Mecca, a 
revived
>part of the old DEC spirit (see below) why we on the outside loved DEC -
>though I can understand how it must have felt from the inside.

After they started initiating talks, we didn't mind it (after all,
the museum was the one who brought in Grace Hopper).  And there
wasn't a lot of resentment w.r.t. that funding.  The resentment
got immense when we saw parking lots getting resurfaced that
weren't being used or weren't going to be used.  When Jim
worked in Littleton, he observed that a section of sidewalk was
ripped up and repoured five times...and this was when everybody
was getting laid off due to a need to watch expenditures.

>
>| 
>| >we
>| >do know that Gordon Bell went soon after the Defenestration, the 
historic
>| >collection was tossed out of Boston, and both ended up on the Left 
Coast)
>| 
>| His leaving was good news for us.  But, by then, it was too late.
>
>I'm still not sure, as an outsider, whether getting rid of 
>someone with his flare was a good idea - maybe he should 
>have been sent off in a corner with a team of his own, but...

Yup.  Jim always thought that he shouldn't have been a manager
and should have stayed an engineer.  But that was difficult to
do once personnel got into the act of classifying us.
<snip>

>OK, as I said, I'm looking at this from an outsider's pov. 
>My first experience with the "new" DEC came in about 1981, 
>when several DECfolks wanted to give
>LIRICS (the LI high school project) a pair of KL-10s that 
>had been sitting in MR-1 or 2 (the one without the museum) 
>and were about to be decommissioned.

Ah, those must have been the ones in hardware engineering.

>
>DEC Service, Huntington, NY blew the deal because "the 
>machines had not been maintained by DEC Service since 
>their installation" and refused to support.

Yea, we heard about that.  It went beyond our understanding
because we had the opionion that the engineers who designed
the thing probably knew just a tad more than those FS idiots
about the workings of those KLs (they were the ones who fixed
them).  Something happened to Field Service around 1980 w.r.t.
organization.  We (the PDP10 groups) stopped having a say in
their policies towards particular customers.  Somebody else
who was in the field or in that org can probably say more
about it since my info is based on just rumor and customer 
grumbling I took it as just another hint of where the company 
was going.

>
>The machines were scrapped because something that large 
>couldn't be made to fly out the door to a non-nfp like me. 

I do know that the guys spent time thinking about that idea :-).

>(I stood to inherit a KA, something, which at the time, 
>would have caused me great grief in the long run when my
>parents saw the electric bills)

I used System #2 for all of my stand-alone time when I was
developing the USAGE project.  Those were such nice machines.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5097 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 04:18:03 GMT
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
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On Thu, 13 May 99 13:02:40 GMT,  jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

| In article <373ad25c.1029604101@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
| >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
| >
| >
| >| In article <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
| >|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
| >|
| >
| >| >OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing 
| >| >when people were making off with officially obsolete low-number 
| >| >PDPs as "home computers" but it was the *new* (then would-be) 
| >| >management that seemed to be behind things like
| >| >making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, ...
| >| 
| >| That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.
| >
| >OK, another misquote properly attributed (and thanks, 
| >I hate urban legends) - why he went to Microsoft and why 
| >he was working on smaller/faster back in his CMU days.
| 
| Well, there's more to the story than just the quote.  Bell
| gave a speech that had that phrase in it.  The third and
| fourth level of managers heard the speech but only listened
| to the phrase and started implementing it.  The first we
| (those in Marlboro which was the mainframe building) heard
| of it was the decisions getting made based on that phrase.
| Our manager got hold of the tape and we listened (or, at
| least, I listened) to what Bell actually said.  Putting
| the phrase back into the orginal context implied the 
| exact opposite of what all those idiots were organizing,
| namely, one operating system.  

Confused - I was referring to the who-wants-a-home-computer line attributed to
KO, not the One computer line fits all, which is <imho> just so much crap. And
based on Bell's career work, he should have known it.

It's like the chronic debates in my work environment <a newspaper> over "which
computer system we should buy" meaning all-PC or all-MAC, etc., and having to
explain to the know-nothings that the photo and graphics folks will do better
with graphics-optimized machines like MACs, the writers probably want Wintel
machines because we share lots of MS-Office style files (Word, Access, etc.) +
it seems to be a better platform for net use than anything I've seen built to
run on a Mac, and the servers should be whatever animal works best for
connecting it all together and feeding the insane output devices we have (like
straight-to-litho film beasts)

Pathetic.



| >Was going too public was the start of the crisis? (as 
| >in New York Times Inc. is public but it'll be another 
| >generation before the Ochs/Sulzburger families
| >lose 51%+ stock ownership)
| 
| I really don't know.  I still don't understand why limiting
| R&D of a company is a big deal with major stockholders--
| especially when they don't seem to blink an eyelid when
| money is used to gild the lily.  
| 
| I don't even know if the stockholders had anything to do with
| it; it could have just been the bean counters' rule learned
| from idealisms found in text books.

R&D does not produce guaranteed results, and even when successful, does not
figure in as "income"

Same in my business, the bean counters always look to cut reporters and
editors because all they do is take up the space in the paper that doesn't
generate advertising income. The fact that there would be no advertising
without the stuff that wraps around it is hard to get through their skulls,
along with the idea that the consumers won't read the ads unless they are
packaged between news they need/want.


| >I'm still not sure, as an outsider, whether getting rid of 
| >someone with his flare was a good idea - maybe he should 
| >have been sent off in a corner with a team of his own, but...
| 
| Yup.  Jim always thought that he shouldn't have been a manager
| and should have stayed an engineer.  But that was difficult to
| do once personnel got into the act of classifying us.

agreed.

| 
| Ah, those must have been the ones in hardware engineering.
| 
| >
| >DEC Service, Huntington, NY blew the deal because "the 
| >machines had not been maintained by DEC Service since 
| >their installation" and refused to support.
| 
| Yea, we heard about that.  It went beyond our understanding
| because we had the opionion that the engineers who designed
| the thing probably knew just a tad more than those FS idiots
| about the workings of those KLs (they were the ones who fixed
| them).  Something happened to Field Service around 1980 w.r.t.
| organization.  We (the PDP10 groups) stopped having a say in
| their policies towards particular customers.  Somebody else
| who was in the field or in that org can probably say more
| about it since my info is based on just rumor and customer 
| grumbling I took it as just another hint of where the company 
| was going.

I am very glad to hear that at least someone cared at your end - we would have
given those beasts a good home and the best care possible.

			dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 5098 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Fri, 14 May 99 09:36:35 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <373B162D.FBFDEC35@tnglwood.demon.co.uk>,
   Robert Billing <unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>> >The "old" DEC gave away manuals and created the engine to
>> >give away software,
>> 
>> I don't remember DEC giving away anything.
>
> I've still got the manuals.
>
When I was on the customer side of the biz, there were a limited
amount of manuals that went with the purchase of the mainframe.
After that, the manuals had to be purchased.  In my group, the
number of manuals were so few that only the top level of
programmers got access to them.  Of course, that could have been
a reason [not having enough manuals] given to me to keep me from
learning too much (I hadn't learned to question authority yet).
What they didn't know is that, in order to satisfy my thirst
for knowledge, I had already honed the skill of learning from
snippets of conversation and watching quietly :-).

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5105 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Bill Westfield <billw@flipper.cisco.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: 14 May 1999 14:09:47 -0700
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>> >The "old" DEC gave away manuals and created the engine to
>> >give away software,
>> 
>> I don't remember DEC giving away anything.

I got a relatively complete set of manuals (everything I wanted, more or
less) at Wharton-10 for being somewhere between an operator and "jr systems
programmer."  Maybe they weren't "free", but they couldn't have been "scarce
as hen's teeth and priced like platinum" the way some of the equivilent
manuals were (and are) on other systems.

BillW
-- 
(remove spam food from return address)


Article 5099 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 PPN and ownership
Date: Fri, 14 May 99 09:38:44 GMT
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In article <7hfiju$dd$1@hirame.wwa.com>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7hbov1$b7t$1@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>Sigh!  Well, that was typical of Tony.  Did you try to pass it
>>by Jim?  That may well have been the time when we only had 
>>3 manpower slots and enough work for 20.  They didn't do a lot
>>of things they wanted to do then.
>
>In addition to private conversations with TW, I publicly 
>offered the code to DEC at two seperate DECUS "Jim and 
>Tony Shows". The last time I asked if DEC 
>would be offering group quotas in TOPS-10. TW's answer, 
>"No John, we won't take your code."
>
Well, that was Tony.  He never was very perceptive w.r.t.
the future (remember his comment before moving into 5-3?).
It was Jim's role to look ahead.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5117 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Sun, 16 May 99 09:28:27 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <373da3d7.1083239122@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
   david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>On Thu, 13 May 99 13:02:40 GMT,  jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>| In article <373ad25c.1029604101@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
>|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>| >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>| >
>| >
>| >| In article <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
>| >|    david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>| >|
>| >
>| >| >OK, Ken *should* have realized that the market was changing 
>| >| >when people were making off with officially obsolete low-number 
>| >| >PDPs as "home computers" but it was the *new* (then would-be) 
>| >| >management that seemed to be behind things like
>| >| >making the company a one-computer-line-fits-all outfit, ...
>| >| 
>| >| That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.
>| >
>| >OK, another misquote properly attributed (and thanks, 
>| >I hate urban legends) - why he went to Microsoft and why 
>| >he was working on smaller/faster back in his CMU days.
>| 
>| Well, there's more to the story than just the quote.  Bell
>| gave a speech that had that phrase in it.  The third and
>| fourth level of managers heard the speech but only listened
>| to the phrase and started implementing it.  The first we
>| (those in Marlboro which was the mainframe building) heard
>| of it was the decisions getting made based on that phrase.
>| Our manager got hold of the tape and we listened (or, at
>| least, I listened) to what Bell actually said.  Putting
>| the phrase back into the orginal context implied the 
>| exact opposite of what all those idiots were organizing,
>| namely, one operating system.  
>
>Confused - I was referring to the who-wants-a-home-computer 
>line attributed to KO, not the One computer line fits all, 
>which is <imho> just so much crap. And
>based on Bell's career work, he should have known it.

Yup.  There was that [who wants a home computer] muddled 
thinking going around, too.  It came from people who
didn't use computers for their everyday work.  I think
that a lot of the idiocy had to do with hardware types
not recognizing how computers were used.  I had a
conversation with a hardware type on evening about
SMP.  His opinion was that computers got shut off when
he went home at 17:00 and got turned on again when he
started work at 8:00 (even though those main frames ran
24x7).  I was explaining how the SMP implementation would
allow computer service to continue rather than be terminated.
He did not think that was necessary.  I then asked him if
he would tolerate an interuption of power whenever the
electric company wanted to take a turbine off line or 
put one on line.  I tried to get him to see that our
customers required the same quality of service.  Those
hardware types didn't have a clue about computer usage.
 
<snip>

>| >DEC Service, Huntington, NY blew the deal because "the 
>| >machines had not been maintained by DEC Service since 
>| >their installation" and refused to support.
>| 
>| Yea, we heard about that.  It went beyond our understanding
>| because we had the opionion that the engineers who designed
>| the thing probably knew just a tad more than those FS idiots
>| about the workings of those KLs (they were the ones who fixed
>| them).  Something happened to Field Service around 1980 w.r.t.
>| organization.  We (the PDP10 groups) stopped having a say in
>| their policies towards particular customers.  Somebody else
>| who was in the field or in that org can probably say more
>| about it since my info is based on just rumor and customer 
>| grumbling I took it as just another hint of where the company 
>| was going.
>
>I am very glad to hear that at least someone cared 
>at your end - we would have
>given those beasts a good home and the best care possible.

Even our in-house field service was on your side.  But for
some reason that I never knew were very unwilling to 
delve into out-house field service politics.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5108 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Aron K. Insinga" <AInsingaExciseThis@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 20:42:39 -0400
Organization: Planet Direct
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(I was a software engineer in the LCG diagnostics,
VLSI CAD, and AI groups during these times.  I don't
know from financials.  LCG diagnostics loaned me to
the 11/750 for a few months when Dolphin died.
I was also one of the first few members of The
Computer Museum and a volunteer docent when it was
in Marlborough, and my wife worked in The Computer
Museum store part time.  There're my disclaimers.)

I think DEC was mostly a victim of its own success.
I agree with BAH's comments blaming MBAs and IBM
mimicry.

I don't think that Gordon Bell deserves so much of the
blame; he left relatively early in DEC's death spiral.
I realize that reducing the number of architectures was
an act on a par with mass murder in these circles.

Remember that he started GEEP to get engineers going
for graduate degrees to get an advanced engineering
degree and explicitly to discourage them getting an MBA.
He said that it was the MBAs who turned RCA from an inventor
of TV technology into an importer of Japanese TVs and
then it was left put it out in the cold when the Japanese
manufacturers started marketing TVs under their own names
in the US.  After he had a heart attack, I think he realized
that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life beating
his head against a brick wall trying to get things
done at DEC, so he left to help start Encore.

> > one-computer-line-fits-all
> That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.

How many operating systems and FORTRAN compilers can
one company really afford to maintain?

DEC had 10 architectures, with word lengths of 1 [PDP-14],
8 [Intel 8008 based MPS], 12 [2: PDP-8 & LINC families],
16 [2: PDP-11 & PDP-16 families], 18, 32, and 36
[2: '10 & '20].  All (or almost all) of these were in use
at the same time.  Chaos!

With the 36-bit machines extending the range down and the
16/32-bit machines extending the range up, they started
overlapping a lot.  KS10 or 11/780?  Minnow or 11/730?
If you just want to count widgets in the warehouse,
odds are that it doesn't matter if it is a 36-bit or
32-bit word.

One academic paper on the PDP-11 design mentioned that
the word length for the machine had been chosen for DEC
by IBM to be a multiple of 8 bits -- IBM had convinced
the customers that memory was sold in multiples of 8 bits.
IBM switched from 36 to 32 and got many of the customers
out there to go along with switching to the 360 architecture.
Not all, but most.  There were even 360 architecture
mutation [to fit the specialized job] avionics computers.
And the semiconductor industry was going along with
8-bit-ism.  With today's technology, there wouldn't be a
problem, the whole CPU is on one chip, so it can have
as many bits in a word as you want.  But with
semiconductors in the '70s-'80s making 4-bit and 8-bit
RALUs and RAMs and ROMs and EPROMs, it wasn't easy to build
36-bit systems.  (I spent a lot of time with the KS10
print set; I know about the 40-bit ALU made from 10 4-bit
slices [with 2 spare bits hanging off of each side] so
that each half-word could be clocked separately.)
I have a cousin who works on antique steam cars.  They're
neat, but they just aren't the way the world went, and
not many people want the hassles of driving one to work
today.

The product lines caused proliferation that could be
dealt with as a small company where the customers knew
what they wanted, but (given KO's belief that people
would go manage themselves and do the right thing) (IMHO)
caused chaos in a large company with a very rapidly
growing manufacturing force and sales force and
maintainence force and customer base (and the growth
rate made training all of them difficult, with training
the customer's decision makers being the biggest problem).
DEC got way past the point where MOST of the customers
knew what they wanted to order.  Cost of sales reportedly
increased to the point where they couldn't afford
[maybe that's where the MBAs come into the picture, in part]
to cut a small (<Fortune 500) deal.  They didn't get into
developing microprocessors soon enough and so they lost their
mainstay OEM business when those customers wanted to buy
their computer in a DIP instead of in a rack-mountable
box.  And that's something that one would have hoped
for DEC to have forseen; the whole company grew out
of modules as components, and shrinking system packaging.
Putting SSI DIPs on *small* single-height M-series Flip Chip
boards to emulate what they had done in R, S, etc. series
(e.g. you get a little board with a few NAND gates on it)
is wasting a level of packaging.  That's one of the
reasons the PDP-11 (CPU is a box of large boards;
most of the connections are runs on the boards)
wiped out the PDP-15 (CPU is a cabinet of small boards;
most of the connections are wires on the backplane).]
I think that Gordon Bell wanted to license the PDP-11
architecture to chip companies.  I don't know who opposed
it.  At one point he griped about "our vanity, protected
architectures."

Maybe the company should have broken itself up into
a handful of small companies in the late '70s,
but the ideal then was to be a large, vertically
integrated company like IBM, not a kairetsu/zaibatsu/?.

As someone once said, "Be careful who you choose as
your enemies, for you will become like them."
I (also) think that it was what happened to DEC, once
DEC started competing head-to-head on IBM's turf,
instead of DEC just offering great products
(modules; embeddable systems; time sharing)
that people wanted in a market DEC invented and
largely had to themselves.  IBM (like a gambler in
a casino) could afford to stay in the game until
the tables turned around enough (perhaps by
going through enough management changes until
they found a new CEO that did a good job.)
DEC couldn't.  They only had one chance at new
management, and the company didn't survive long
enough for them to get a CEO that could save
the company (as opposed to just saving 'shareholder
equity') since the new CEO sold us down the river.

As for DEC giving away manuals, I think that one attempt
to do TV ads was scuttled when KO said that it would be
cheaper to send the manual to every potential customer
in the country.  I think another was scuttled when he
was going to be in an ad in front of a DEC desktop,
and the Rainbow, DECmate, and Pro groups fought over
which one it would be (as if you could really tell :-).

As for The Computer Museum, I don't think the IRS did anything
to it.  It was DEC's private collection (started by KO & GB).
When Texas Instruments gave the Advanced Scientific Computer
to the museum, they wanted to also give some money to build the
display around it and conserve it.  Someone in TI's financial
department realized they were cutting a check to a competitor (DEC),
and TI decided they didn't want to do that.  So The Digital
Computer Museum, 501(c)3 was quickly formed, and DEC gave the
museum to it, and TI then gave the ASC and money to it too.
(They did business as The Computer Museum to make DEC's lawyers
happy, but the legal name was The Digital Computer Museum.
It's ambiguous.  I don't know if that was intentional.
In comparison, DEC once had an ad, "Isn't every computer a
Digital computer?" that I heard caused laywers to hit the roof.)

When DEC was going down the tubes and KO left and Bob Palmer's
anti-KO pogrom started, I think that support for the museum went
the way of Christmas Turkeys and the Mill and Digital Press.
Remember that around that time the economy of the whole area was
in the dumps.  A lot of other companies had supported the museum
also, but many of them were no longer able to (if they still existed
at all).  So for whatever reason, after Encore and Stellar/Ardent/Stardent,
Gordon went to work for Microsoft, and Gordon and Gwen took the museum
along.  (Now things are a lot better along Rt. 128, I think, but it's
too late -- the stuff is out there and they're creating a new museum
to take it over and the old computer museum in Boston is going to
connect somehow to the science museum in Boston.)  I do think it is a
real shame to have the collection out in the land of earthquakes
and mud slides and raging fires, where history in general
doesn't seem to count for much (since they don't have very
much history [as if anyplace in the US does, someone from
"The Old World" will say, no doubt] and everyone is so focussed
on the future), but there isn't much I can do about it,
and I guess my feelings are largely because I won't get to see it
much if at all where it is now.

- Aron Insinga


Article 5109 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 14:14:59 GMT
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"Aron K. Insinga" <AInsingaExciseThis@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com> wrote in
part:

| I don't think that Gordon Bell deserves so much of the
| blame; he left relatively early in DEC's death spiral.
| I realize that reducing the number of architectures was
| an act on a par with mass murder in these circles.

| How many operating systems and FORTRAN compilers can
| one company really afford to maintain?
| 
| DEC had 10 architectures, with word lengths of 1 [PDP-14],
| 8 [Intel 8008 based MPS], 12 [2: PDP-8 & LINC families],
| 16 [2: PDP-11 & PDP-16 families], 18, 32, and 36
| [2: '10 & '20].  All (or almost all) of these were in use
| at the same time.  Chaos!

The -14 was dead at that point, replaced by the -16 which doesn't really count
since it was basically a one-off custom product like its predecessor, the MPS
software was off-shelf for the most part, LINC was extinct. PDP-11 and VAX
were fairly identical softwarewise, as were the two 36-bitters.

The 12-bit line was mature and all the code written, and was dying on its own
because of the cheap WIntel products coming on line. The 18-bit was
dead-ending because of the decision to build the PDP-11/VAX line and go
IBM-style.

Bell looked at it this way - architecture and code are not the same thing.

The PDP-7 and PDP-15 were what modern designers would call RISC machines, no
microcode, just separate circuits for each instruction. The PDP-9 used B-212
flipchip cards for almost everything and a box of core ROM microcode. All ran
the same code (with some new instructions introduced in the -15)

Taken to the extreme, this was Bell's theory, you can build a little VAX and a
big VAX that run the same code but have completely different architectures.

BUT

The problem is that code should be optimized to the machine and the
combination optimized to the task - otherwise we're in the "modern" world of
code bloat and the need for gigs of disk space and megs of ram to do the same
job that megs of disk space and k's of core did.

My 1965 PDP-8 with 4K of core plays a mean game of chess, using the MIT crew's
bummed code utilizing all the resources of the machine to the fullest.

If its hardware were rebuilt out of modern high-speed parts using the same
architecture, it could probably run rings around WIntel-environment commercial
chess programs.
| 
| With the 36-bit machines extending the range down and the
| 16/32-bit machines extending the range up, they started
| overlapping a lot.  KS10 or 11/780?  Minnow or 11/730?
| If you just want to count widgets in the warehouse,
| odds are that it doesn't matter if it is a 36-bit or
| 32-bit word.

But the PDP-10 architecture provided incredible I/O bandwidth, the reason it
was the machine of choice for the proto-nets. And the instruction set provided
lots of ways of handling specialized big-bandwidth problems while keeping the
processor relatively load-free.

The PDP-8 was initially the Model T PC, then VolksComputer - everyone who
needed one could have just enough power to get the job done.

The 18-bit line filled in the middle, capable of running everything that
needed a midi.


These designs, at least the smaller word-length machines, were coming to the
end of their life cycles as hardware got cheaper. 
BUT DEC never developed replacements that would have meant a series of
optimized systems

 - My "now-serioudly-outdated" Pentium II -266 will need replacement mainly
because it will not run new commercial apps which do things I don't need or
want them to do, but won't do because the apps are all-or-nothing
general-purpose creations, and alternatives are not available to the current
version of me, who needs a turnkey system and simply does not have the time to
max-tweak a LINUX box.
 
| One academic paper on the PDP-11 design mentioned that
| the word length for the machine had been chosen for DEC
| by IBM to be a multiple of 8 bits -- IBM had convinced
| the customers that memory was sold in multiples of 8 bits.
| IBM switched from 36 to 32 and got many of the customers
| out there to go along with switching to the 360 architecture.
| Not all, but most.  There were even 360 architecture
| mutation [to fit the specialized job] avionics computers.

Variations of the stretch, more AEC than avionics

| And the semiconductor industry was going along with
| 8-bit-ism.  With today's technology, there wouldn't be a
| problem, the whole CPU is on one chip, so it can have
| as many bits in a word as you want.  But with
| semiconductors in the '70s-'80s making 4-bit and 8-bit
| RALUs and RAMs and ROMs and EPROMs, it wasn't easy to build
| 36-bit systems.  (I spent a lot of time with the KS10
| print set; I know about the 40-bit ALU made from 10 4-bit
| slices [with 2 spare bits hanging off of each side] so
| that each half-word could be clocked separately.)
| I have a cousin who works on antique steam cars.  They're
| neat, but they just aren't the way the world went, and
| not many people want the hassles of driving one to work
| today.

Steam cars are inefficient - the optimized DEC systems were efficient for
getting to work, or hauling freight, racing,  or hauling a vacation's worth of
family and family stuff, etc. Same "basic" task, same "basic" system, but I
wouldn't want to run Indy in technology designed for a semi, or haul freight
with a suspension and stearing mechanism designed for racing.

 

| As for The Computer Museum, I don't think the IRS did anything
| to it.

Private conversation with Gwen Bell and museum staff concerning the move to
Museum Wharf. Content: The IRS said if you keep the museum at Marlborough, you
lose 501(c)3 n-f-p status.

|  It was DEC's private collection (started by KO & GB).

More than that - I got to *play* with one of GB's privately owned Enigmas,
which, according to several trusted historian/journalists (including James
Bamford and CBS News) were, at the time, still technically classified top
secret.

| When Texas Instruments gave the Advanced Scientific Computer
| to the museum, they wanted to also give some money to build the
| display around it and conserve it.  Someone in TI's financial
| department realized they were cutting a check to a competitor (DEC),
| and TI decided they didn't want to do that.  So The Digital
| Computer Museum, 501(c)3 was quickly formed, and DEC gave the
| museum to it, and TI then gave the ASC and money to it too.
| (They did business as The Computer Museum to make DEC's lawyers
| happy, but the legal name was The Digital Computer Museum.
| It's ambiguous.  I don't know if that was intentional.
| In comparison, DEC once had an ad, "Isn't every computer a
| Digital computer?" that I heard caused laywers to hit the roof.)
| 
| When DEC was going down the tubes and KO left and Bob Palmer's
| anti-KO pogrom started, I think that support for the museum went
| the way of Christmas Turkeys and the Mill and Digital Press.

Digital Press still exists


| - Aron Insinga


				dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 5106 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: mbg@world.std.com (Megan)
Subject: Re: Linux popularity
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 01:19:18 GMT
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>>said, "If you don't have 36 bits then you aren't playing with a full DEC".

I also have a number of those original shirts...

and the saying was (if *I* can remember it correctly):

	"If your machine doesn't have 36 bits,
	 you're not playing with a full DEC."

There was also a VAXbusters t-shirt...

					Megan Gentry
					Former RT-11 Developer

+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL   | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group |          (home):  mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation    | addresses need '@' in place of '!'  |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43   | URL:     http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | 
| Nashua, NH 03062               | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055                 |  required." - mbg                   |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+



Article 5123 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!news
From: "Chris Ward" <ccw@idt.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Linux popularity
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 12:34:56 -0400
Organization: IDT (Best News In The World)
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <7hms17$cos@nnrp4.farm.idt.net>
References: <373310cc@newsfeed.one.net> <7hh1f0$qqn$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <FBr2C7.28x@world.std.com> <7hmm09$das$1@nntp3.uunet.ca> <7hmmt8$t52$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>
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Derek Peschel wrote in message
<7hmmt8$t52$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>...
>In article <7hmm09$das$1@nntp3.uunet.ca>,
>Don Chiasson <chiasson@trytel.com> wrote:
>
>>I still have mine, in DEC-20 orange, the back of which has the
words,
>>
>>  %DECSYSTEM-20 CONTINUED
>>
>>This was the message users received when the front-end
>>(communications) processor crashed.
>
>I think you mean when it _recovered_ from a crash.  When it
_crashed_,
>surely you didn't see anything.  (I just checked the manual, which
also
>mentions the messages for fatal errors.)
>
>-- Derek

When the KA-10 went down that I used, it would print three bells and
then

%%DECSYSTEM-10 IS DOWN - WAIT PLEASE

Or something similar.  It was actually printed by the PDP-8/I (I
think) front end.  Sort of majestic in a room with 7 Model 35's and
2 model 33 ttys.




Article 5120 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!news
From: "Chris Ward" <ccw@idt.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 10:07:17 -0400
Organization: IDT (Best News In The World)
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Message-ID: <7hmjcb$ea4@nnrp2.farm.idt.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com> <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net> <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com> <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <373c310e.240459472@news.supernews.com> <373f81a6.1205576664@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
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David M. Razler wrote in message
<373f81a6.1205576664@netnews.worldnet.att.net>...
>cpc@mediaone.net (Chris Cebelenski) wrote:
>
>| What would
>| the world be like if the PC's had RT-11 to start with instead of
>| DOS?  (Maybe not much better, given DEC's history...)
>
>Well, DOS is the child of CPM, which was the child of OS/8 in
structure and
>command system.
>
>The PDP-11 OSs, like UNIX were both offspring of the DEC 18-bit
lines (RSX-15,
>Bell Labs B &C, etc)
>


Actually, (having no experince with OS/8) I always thought that CP/M
resembles RT-11 version 2, and MS-DOS (a good part of which was
copied code from CP/M) resembled RT-11 version 3, with some TOPS-10
terminology mixed in.  For instance EXE files - in name only, not
concept - was what the executables were named in later TOPS-10 and
MS-DOS and SAV files (terminology) were used in early TOPS-10, RT-11
and CP/M flavors.




Article 5111 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: 15 May 1999 15:01:20 GMT
Organization: Everett Associates
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <7hk280$ju5$1@hirame.wwa.com>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com> <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net> <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com> <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net>
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In article <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>It was an age-old tradition in TOPS10 (remember that
>we shipped the sources to our customers) that the original
>author of the source could put his/her full name in the
>TITLE statement.  After that, in the SUBTTL statement, anybody
>who modified the source put their initials to document an edit
>trace.  So, it was not unusual for customers to see a long
>string of /XXX/YYY/ZZZ.  Some people yearned to have their
>initials in that line and others played the game of trying
>to guess who's who.  Just about everything that I've done
>at DEC since I started working there was indicated with 
>my initials.  It's a long time habit.

Not quite everyone yearned to have their initials in that SUBTTL line. Very 
few of the sources I mucked about in got a "/JE" appended. I figured it was 
just another way customers could find out who to pester about their favorite 
bugs/dreams.

When I had left DEC and came back as an ADP employee to port TOPS-10 to the 
KS10, I put my initials in every module I touched. I figured as an ADP 
employee I was safe from the entreaties of DEC customers, so I'd make up for 
all those years of hiding my identity. Unfortunately, when the KS10 line of 
development was SOUPed back into the mainstream development sources (perhaps 
by you, Barb?) the person who resolved the conflicts didn't chose to preserve 
my initials. Sigh! ;-)

-- 
jeverett(at)wwa(dot)com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5125 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: 17 May 1999 01:59:37 GMT
Organization: Everett Associates
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <7hnt69$6r1$1@hirame.wwa.com>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com> <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net> <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com> <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hk280$ju5$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7hm8mn$6qq$1@antiochus.ultra.net>
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In article <7hm8mn$6qq$1@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>That's horrible!  Nope.  I didn't do the SOUP--I never 
>did a SOUP.  We could find out by looking at the MCO file
>for the author of the MCO that said "support KS10s".  I've
>got some guesses, though.

Yes, if only the MCO files still existed. They're gone, aren't they? Sure 
would like to confirm if my memory of MCO #1595 is accurate.

-- 
jeverett(at)wwa(dot)com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5128 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: Mon, 17 May 99 10:46:02 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <7hp2bv$a4m$1@antiochus.ultra.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com> <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net> <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com> <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hk280$ju5$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7hm8mn$6qq$1@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hnt69$6r1$1@hirame.wwa.com>
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In article <7hnt69$6r1$1@hirame.wwa.com>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7hm8mn$6qq$1@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>That's horrible!  Nope.  I didn't do the SOUP--I never 
>>did a SOUP.  We could find out by looking at the MCO file
>>for the author of the MCO that said "support KS10s".  I've
>>got some guesses, though.
>
>Yes, if only the MCO files still existed. They're gone, aren't they? Sure 
>would like to confirm if my memory of MCO #1595 is accurate.
>
There were two "sets" of MCOs on disk.  The internal set were
all the MCOs that were written.  The external set were the
MCOs that were shipped on the Monitor tape for the perusal
of the customers.  I would suspect that the "support KS10"
would be one of those that we marked for customer reading.
You would have to find the tape that contains the major 
monitor release after that MCO (I don't remember which one
it would be--either 6.03A or 7.01).  I hadn't really started 
putting my nose into packaging until later.

And, yes, I suspect that those MCO files are gone.  I saw
no evidence of BLKC or BLKB when I said goodbye to the DEC's
last KL.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5129 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: Mon, 17 May 99 10:58:56 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <7hp344$a4m$4@antiochus.ultra.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at>
	 <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com>
	 <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net>
	 <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net>
	 <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com>
	 <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hp20h$7vn$1@ligarius.ultra.net>
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In article <7hp20h$7vn$1@ligarius.ultra.net>,
   "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com> wrote:
>----------
>In article <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>> Nope.  It was an age-old tradition in TOPS10 (remember that
>> we shipped the sources to our customers) that the original
>> author of the source could put his/her full name in the
>> TITLE statement.  After that, in the SUBTTL statement, anybody
>> who modified the source put their initials to document an edit
>> trace.  So, it was not unusual for customers to see a long
>> string of /XXX/YYY/ZZZ.  Some people yearned to have their
>> initials in that line and others played the game of trying
>> to guess who's who.  Just about everything that I've done
>> at DEC since I started working there was indicated with
>> my initials.  It's a long time habit.
>>
>> /BAH
>
>Thanks Barbara, I've been doing this for 30 years now and I almost forgot
>why!  It really is completely automatic.  :)
>
>/lss

'ey, Larry :-).  Yup, it is automatic.  I always initialed my
work when I worked in Tape Prep (that was before your time :-))
and just never stopped.  Initials were probably reinforced
because we called each other by those "names" occasionally.  I
always said "tee-double-ya" when talking to Tony.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5114 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!korova.insync.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!world!mbg
From: mbg@world.std.com (Megan)
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Message-ID: <FBsoAx.Hz3@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 22:11:21 GMT
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com> <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net> <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <373b217a.170935392@news.superne
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 49
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jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>I liked working with RT-11.  It's philosophy was more like TOPS10
>in that it just got the job done with a minimum of fuss and left
>the bells and whistles to the apps.  

We (the RT-11 development group) had some T-shirts made up years
ago which alluded to this philosphy...

	"Who says you can't love something small
	 that finishes fast?"

And yes, having used TOPS-10 first, using RT-11 was familiar...

>Nope.  It was an age-old tradition in TOPS10 (remember that
>we shipped the sources to our customers) that the original
>author of the source could put his/her full name in the
>TITLE statement.  After that, in the SUBTTL statement, anybody
>who modified the source put their initials to document an edit
>trace.  So, it was not unusual for customers to see a long
>string of /XXX/YYY/ZZZ.  Some people yearned to have their
>initials in that line and others played the game of trying
>to guess who's who.  Just about everything that I've done
>at DEC since I started working there was indicated with 
>my initials.  It's a long time habit.

Some of the RT sources had that same sort of convention, though
in comments, not on the .TITLE or .SBTTL lines...

One of our team took it upon himself to document, in the subsystem
he worked on -- SL (single-line editor) -- the initials of all the
team members for any given release, starting, I think, with V4.0.

I maintain a list of all the people that I know about who ever
worked on RT-11 (managers and writers included), along with the
initials that developers used when touching the sources...

					Megan Gentry
					Former RT-11 Developer

+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL   | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group |          (home):  mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation    | addresses need '@' in place of '!'  |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43   | URL:     http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | 
| Nashua, NH 03062               | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055                 |  required." - mbg                   |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+



Article 5135 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!144.212.100.101.MISMATCH!newsfeed.mathworks.com!nntp.abs.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!news.ultranet.com!d11
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...
Date: Tue, 18 May 99 08:48:24 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <7hrfrm$ev9$1@ligarius.ultra.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <ALDERSON.99May17174748@netcom2.netcom.com> <7hr9ec$prs$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5135

In article <7hr9ec$prs$1@shell3.ba.best.com>,
   inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote:
>In article <ALDERSON.99May17174748@netcom2.netcom.com>,
>Richard M. Alderson III <alderson@netcom.com> wrote:
>>In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com>
>>Daniel Seagraves <root@bony.umtec.com> writes:
>>
>>>A few stupid TOPS-10 questions...

These aren't very stupid questions.  Documenting them was
one of the difficult things we had to do every monitor release.

>>
>>>First, how was TOPS-10 installed on a clean KL?

<snip questions & answers>

The documentation that described the steps was called the
Monitor Installation Guide.  To check out the accuracy of
the documentation, a person (whom we called the Token Dummy)
took a set of installation tapes, the documentation, and
usually the writer of the documentation, and followed the
instructions.  I was the first Token Dummy.  We made a big
deal of the Official Token Dummy; one of the benefits of
being one was to get invited to the "Thank the Gods They
Finally Let Us Ship the Damn Thing" party.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5144 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Paul Wexelblat <wex@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: 19 May 1999 20:47:37 PDT
Organization: Concentric Internet Services
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <374385ED.4D56079B@concentric.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at>
		 <373866b7.703033408@news.supernews.com>
		 <7hbsf3$b7t$10@antiochus.ultra.net>
		 <3739aa93.74960537@news.supernews.com> <7hef4n$eic$3@antiochus.ultra.net>
		 <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com>
		 <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hp20h$7vn$1@ligarius.ultra.net>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.folklore.computers:130543 alt.sys.pdp10:5144

Sure, but Bob Clements (RCC) got his own stopcode
RCC - which Bob implimented - was Range Check Chunk (SCNSER)
(He was upset when my rewrite solved the problem, but some yahoo from
support
re-instituted it)

--
WEX

"Larry S. Samberg" wrote:

> ----------
> In article <7hh2ic$qqn$4@antiochus.ultra.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Nope.  It was an age-old tradition in TOPS10 (remember that
> > we shipped the sources to our customers) that the original
> > author of the source could put his/her full name in the
> > TITLE statement.  After that, in the SUBTTL statement, anybody
> > who modified the source put their initials to document an edit
> > trace.  So, it was not unusual for customers to see a long
> > string of /XXX/YYY/ZZZ.  Some people yearned to have their
> > initials in that line and others played the game of trying
> > to guess who's who.  Just about everything that I've done
> > at DEC since I started working there was indicated with
> > my initials.  It's a long time habit.
> >
> > /BAH
>
> Thanks Barbara, I've been doing this for 30 years now and I almost forgot
> why!  It really is completely automatic.  :)
>
> /lss



Article 5143 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Linux popularity
Date: Wed, 19 May 99 13:22:55 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <7hukaj$sv5$1@antiochus.ultra.net>
References: <373310cc@newsfeed.one.net> <7gvmua$r9g$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <7h6f0e$bdr$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> <7hg4qh$4v1@tu228.tus.ssi1.com> <7hh1f0$qqn$3@antiochus.ultra.net> <FBr2C7.28x@world.std.com> <7hmm09$das$1@nntp3.uunet.ca>
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In article <7hmm09$das$1@nntp3.uunet.ca>,
   "Don Chiasson" <chiasson@trytel.com> wrote:
>
>Megan wrote in message ...
>>>>said, "If you don't have 36 bits then you aren't playing with a full
>DEC".
>>
>
>I still have mine, in DEC-20 orange, the back of which has the words,
>
>  %DECSYSTEM-20 CONTINUED
>
>This was the message users received when the front-end
>(communications) processor crashed.

My memory of that t-shirt was that it said "%DECSYSTEM-20
NOT RUNNING".  The -10 monitor group wanted a similar
t-shirt and I fought long and hard to have the words
DECSYSTEM-10 CONTINUED put after the "not running"
phrase.  I wanted to advertise the fact that crashes
and dumps no longer interrupted timesharing.  I finally
won.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5147 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re(12): Living legends
Date: Thu, 20 May 99 11:22:47 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <373c310e.240459472@news.supernews.com>,
   cpc@mediaone.net (Chris Cebelenski) wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>>In article <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com>,
>>   cpc@mediaone.net (Chris Cebelenski) wrote:
>>>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

>I wish companies still shipped source... The last source I got from
>Digital was VMS 4.x, on microfiche.  I bought a reader just to look
>at it.  As some people found out, I was WAY dangerous with source...
>This is why I applaud all of the open source initiaitives that are
>springing up today.  I have nothing against people charging for their
>work, and nothing against copyrights and all that, but just the idea of
>hiding the source like it's something mystical bothers me to no end.  
>Source is PART of the project, the executables are another part.  

<snip>

TOPS10 shipped sources as an integral part; TOPS20 had a source
tape that could be bought for a very high price (there were 
advantages to this but I won't go into them here).  The problem
with splitting the sources and binaries up into two products
was that the sources never built what was shipped on the binary
tapes.  There was always a schism.  Another problem is that
shipping both together made internal source management 
honest.  It just wasn't possible to slip something in the
binaries without having it go through the procedures to
get it into the sources.  That way nothing got lost.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5146 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Re: Living legends
Date: Thu, 20 May 99 11:13:48 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 109
Message-ID: <7i114p$ed3$2@ligarius.ultra.net>
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In article <373e788a.1203243850@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
   david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) wrote:
>"Aron K. Insinga" <AInsingaExciseThis@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com> wrote in
>part:
>
>| I don't think that Gordon Bell deserves so much of the
>| blame; he left relatively early in DEC's death spiral.
>| I realize that reducing the number of architectures was
>| an act on a par with mass murder in these circles.
>
>| How many operating systems and FORTRAN compilers can
>| one company really afford to maintain?
>| 
>| DEC had 10 architectures, with word lengths of 1 [PDP-14],
>| 8 [Intel 8008 based MPS], 12 [2: PDP-8 & LINC families],
>| 16 [2: PDP-11 & PDP-16 families], 18, 32, and 36
>| [2: '10 & '20].  All (or almost all) of these were in use
>| at the same time.  Chaos!
>
>The -14 was dead at that point, replaced by the -16 which 
>doesn't really count since it was basically a one-off 
>custom product like its predecessor, the MPS
>software was off-shelf for the most part, LINC was 
>extinct. PDP-11 and VAX were fairly identical softwarewise, 
>as were the two 36-bitters.

An important note to make is that some of these were 
custom-designed for a particular application--quite
different from a system designed for general use.
<snip>

>
>Bell looked at it this way - architecture and code are not 
>the same thing.

Right.  

>
>The PDP-7 and PDP-15 were what modern designers would call 
>RISC machines, no microcode, just separate circuits for 
>each instruction. The PDP-9 used B-212 flipchip cards 
>for almost everything and a box of core ROM microcode. All ran
>the same code (with some new instructions introduced in the -15)
>
>Taken to the extreme, this was Bell's theory, you can 
>build a little VAX and a big VAX that run the same code 
>but have completely different architectures.

It was a one-size fits all software mentality that was
contrary to our business experience.  Insisting that
customers conform to one was stupid since our customers
didn't want that (that's why they bought DEC equipment
rather than IBM in the old days--they liked to make
their own decisions).  

>
>BUT
>
>The problem is that code should be optimized to the machine and the
>combination optimized to the task - otherwise we're in the "modern" world 
of
>code bloat and the need for gigs of disk space and megs of ram to do the 
same
>job that megs of disk space and k's of core did.
>
>My 1965 PDP-8 with 4K of core plays a mean game of chess, using the MIT 
crew's
>bummed code utilizing all the resources of the machine to the fullest.
>
>If its hardware were rebuilt out of modern high-speed parts using the same
>architecture, it could probably run rings around WIntel-environment 
commercial
>chess programs.
>| 
>| With the 36-bit machines extending the range down and the
>| 16/32-bit machines extending the range up, they started
>| overlapping a lot.  KS10 or 11/780?  Minnow or 11/730?
>| If you just want to count widgets in the warehouse,
>| odds are that it doesn't matter if it is a 36-bit or
>| 32-bit word.
>
>But the PDP-10 architecture provided incredible I/O bandwidth, the reason 
it
>was the machine of choice for the proto-nets. And the instruction set 
provided
>lots of ways of handling specialized big-bandwidth problems while keeping 
the
>processor relatively load-free.
>
>The PDP-8 was initially the Model T PC, then VolksComputer - everyone who
>needed one could have just enough power to get the job done.
>
>The 18-bit line filled in the middle, capable of running everything that
>needed a midi.
>
>
>These designs, at least the smaller word-length machines, were coming to 
the
>end of their life cycles as hardware got cheaper. 
>BUT DEC never developed replacements that would have meant a series of
>optimized systems

The key word here is "systems".  Somehow, that concept got lost.

<snip>

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5145 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Thu, 20 May 99 11:01:16 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 108
Message-ID: <7i10da$ed3$1@ligarius.ultra.net>
References: <37344E32.C450E8AC@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <7h1kpe$jqt$4@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h3qda$ns8$3@news5.svr.pol.co.uk> <7h3vli$roa$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7h47e0$g84$2@zingo.tninet.se> <3736167e$0$18684@mojo.crosslink.net> <7h6f12$301$1@cubacola.tninet.se> <37370562$0$18685@mojo.crosslink.net> <3738a343.820907259@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <7hbqd0$b7t$4@antiochus.ultra.net> <373CC2FF.BE4C820@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com>
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In article <373CC2FF.BE4C820@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com>,
   "Aron K. Insinga" <AInsingaExciseThis@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com> wrote:
>(I was a software engineer in the LCG diagnostics,
>VLSI CAD, and AI groups during these times.  I don't
>know from financials.  LCG diagnostics loaned me to
>the 11/750 for a few months when Dolphin died.
>I was also one of the first few members of The
>Computer Museum and a volunteer docent when it was
>in Marlborough, and my wife worked in The Computer
>Museum store part time.  There're my disclaimers.)
>
>I think DEC was mostly a victim of its own success.
>I agree with BAH's comments blaming MBAs and IBM
>mimicry.
>
>I don't think that Gordon Bell deserves so much of the
>blame; he left relatively early in DEC's death spiral.
>I realize that reducing the number of architectures was
>an act on a par with mass murder in these circles.
>
>Remember that he started GEEP to get engineers going
>for graduate degrees to get an advanced engineering
>degree and explicitly to discourage them getting an MBA.
>He said that it was the MBAs who turned RCA from an inventor
>of TV technology into an importer of Japanese TVs and
>then it was left put it out in the cold when the Japanese
>manufacturers started marketing TVs under their own names
>in the US.  After he had a heart attack, I think he realized
>that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life beating
>his head against a brick wall trying to get things
>done at DEC, so he left to help start Encore.

IMO, the problem with Bell's influence is that he had
no concept of the importance of software in DEC's business.
It was he who got rid of the upper management who knew
software.

>
>> > one-computer-line-fits-all
>> That was Gordon Bell's mantra, by the way.
>
>How many operating systems and FORTRAN compilers can
>one company really afford to maintain?

And you begin to make the same assumptions here.
>
>DEC had 10 architectures, with word lengths of 1 [PDP-14],
>8 [Intel 8008 based MPS], 12 [2: PDP-8 & LINC families],
>16 [2: PDP-11 & PDP-16 families], 18, 32, and 36
>[2: '10 & '20].  All (or almost all) of these were in use
>at the same time.  Chaos!

And here you're mixing up hardware and software.  Note that
you catagorize the -11s as a hardware group but separate 
the 36-bit hardware into two (which was software).

>
>With the 36-bit machines extending the range down and the
>16/32-bit machines extending the range up, they started
>overlapping a lot.  KS10 or 11/780?  Minnow or 11/730?
>If you just want to count widgets in the warehouse,
>odds are that it doesn't matter if it is a 36-bit or
>32-bit word.

It does if one wants to get some work done.


>One academic paper on the PDP-11 design mentioned that
>the word length for the machine had been chosen for DEC
>by IBM to be a multiple of 8 bits -- IBM had convinced
>the customers that memory was sold in multiples of 8 bits.
>IBM switched from 36 to 32 and got many of the customers
>out there to go along with switching to the 360 architecture.

Huh?  This wasn't mentioned in my experience.

<snip>


>As someone once said, "Be careful who you choose as
>your enemies, for you will become like them."
>I (also) think that it was what happened to DEC, once
>DEC started competing head-to-head on IBM's turf,
>instead of DEC just offering great products
>(modules; embeddable systems; time sharing)
>that people wanted in a market DEC invented and
>largely had to themselves.

IME, DEC was already competing with IBM in 1968.

>  IBM (like a gambler in
>a casino) could afford to stay in the game until
>the tables turned around enough (perhaps by
>going through enough management changes until
>they found a new CEO that did a good job.)
>DEC couldn't.  They only had one chance at new
>management, and the company didn't survive long
>enough for them to get a CEO that could save
>the company (as opposed to just saving 'shareholder
>equity') since the new CEO sold us down the river.

That new CEO began stripping down DEC from the very 
beginning.  

<snip>
/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5148 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Don Chiasson" <chiasson@trytel.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Linux popularity
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 18:48:58 -0400
Organization: UUNET Canada News Transport
Lines: 36
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <7hukaj$sv5$1@antiochus.ultra.net>...
>In article <7hmm09$das$1@nntp3.uunet.ca>,
>   "Don Chiasson" <chiasson@trytel.com> wrote:
>>
>>Megan wrote in message ...
>>>>>said, "If you don't have 36 bits then you aren't playing with a full
>>DEC".
>>>

I have my orange shirt in front of me, and it says:
    IF YOUR COMPUTER
    DOESN'T HAVE 36 BITS
    YOU'RE NOT PLAYING
    WITH A FULL DEC....
>>
>>I still have mine, in DEC-20 orange, the back of which has the words,
>>
>>  %DECSYSTEM-20 CONTINUED
>>
>>This was the message users received when the front-end
>>(communications) processor crashed.
>
>My memory of that t-shirt was that it said "%DECSYSTEM-20
>NOT RUNNING".
Mine does indeed say CONTINUED, but it is possible more than one t-shirt
was produced. I think mine comes from the time when users were
pressuring DEC to continue making 36 bit systems going. The computer
line was (hopefully) continued, not just one machine. Given the
COMD% JSYS, command line interpreters would be useful to
a lot more people.

        Don





Article 5153 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Frank da Cruz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: COMND JSYS (was: Linux popularity)
Date: 21 May 1999 13:51:30 GMT
Organization: Columbia University
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In article <7i2449$bk1$1@nntp3.uunet.ca>,
Don Chiasson <chiasson@trytel.com> wrote:
: Given the COMD% JSYS, command line interpreters would be useful to
: a lot more people.
: 
At Columbia University, we decided to switch to UNIX when the DEC-20 was
discontinued.  In migrating, we wanted to port a bunch of our favorite
programs to UNIX, notably MM, and so developed a COMND JSYS library for C
(and an MM program too).  You can find them both at the Columbia
ftp site:

  ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/ccmd/  <-- COMND JSYS for C
  ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/mm/    <-- MM in C

Also, C-Kermit has a COMND-like user interface:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckermit.html

but it uses its own command package rather than ccmd, which adds a few
things that COMND lacked (variables, file lists on ?, etc) and lacks
a few COMND features (e.g. noise words).

Btw, REV (more or less) lives again as a Kermit script:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckscripts.html

MM and CCMD development stopped long ago (MM has some Year-2000 issues,
which is a shame 'cause I still use it, and might have to fix it myself
if nobody else does), but the Kermit Project is still going.

- Frank


Article 5164 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: 23 May 1999 17:34:53 GMT
Organization: Everett Associates
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                 <373b217a.170935392@news.supernews.com>
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In article <374385ED.4D56079B@concentric.net>, wex@concentric.net says...
>
>Sure, but Bob Clements (RCC) got his own stopcode
>RCC - which Bob implimented - was Range Check Chunk (SCNSER)
>(He was upset when my rewrite solved the problem, but some yahoo from
>support
>re-instituted it)

As I've posted here before, Bob Clements had absolutely nothing to do with 
the implementation of the RCC stopcd. It was purely a creation of Don Lewine 
as a "tribute" to Bob, who had recently left the monitor group to return to 
hardware engineering. The name Range Check Chunk was decided upon at a 
Monday Monitor Group meeting at which I was a participant. It was put into 
SCNSER because Bob had been responsible for that module during his tenure in 
the group.

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5195 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 14:07:57 -0400
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John Everett wrote in message <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com>...
>In article <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, gscott@scott.com says...

>
>I had a number of friends working at Defies Logic back in the late '70s,
and
>visited the facility on numerous occasions. What a mess!


System A, a stunning number of ME10s, and the ex-FDC TU30s were in one room.
The big room held the rest of A (SA10A, a couple of 10-8 channels), all of
the comm junk, and all of System B. For some reason the floor was pretty
new, and when I got there the big room was so empty in there that the
operators used to have races on roller skates and indoor hockey.

>The SA-10 panel I've located is not in Brisbane after all, but residing in
>Conway, New Hampshire. Bob Christiansen, the owner, will be in the States
this
>summer (ours) and has promised a picture when he gets to his NH place. This
is
>not the Defies Logic unit (which I didn't know existed), but the one from
Time
>Sharing Limited (TSL) in London. Bob wrote the front panel driver code for
>TOPS-10 and was awarded the front panel when the SA-10s were retired.


Wow, it must be a whole different beast than the one on the SA10A.  It would
have been really cool to have lights somewhere... but since the things
pretty much never broke, you didn't really need them.  Besides,
since the SA10A was so wierd and almost a prototype, I don't think its front
panel was much more than a prototype debugging tool.

That was a cool system, with the FDC TU30s showing flame marks on them, and
two big lines of ME10s facing each other.  Late at night, if I was bored or
waiting for a build or something, you could play "repeat examine next".
Since it was a dual-KA (DECsystem-1055) with 256K (a full 18 bits of
memory), you could go to the OPSER terminal, :SET RUN NO CPU1, walk over to
the slave, press HALT, examine some random location, then select REPEAT and
EXAMINE NEXT.  When the address would get to 777777 it would wrap to zero
and you would just go around and around. The ME10s would flash away,
depending on how they were interleaved. It was fun to watch.  When you are
done, just start the slave at 407 (or was it 403?), then walk over to OPSER
and :SET RUN CPU1

Hey MRO guys! Remember when the tri-SMP 10 in Marlboro (1026/1042/1322) was
running backups, the light show was just awesome? KL1026 was the TOPS-10
development system and it had about one oddball device of everything on it,
whole bunches of all kinds of disks, including a big box of Ampex memory and
two strings of TU70/72/73s.

OBTW, as far as I know 1042 was the last real 10 that ran as KL1026, in NIO.
Even though it was a KL10D (with the big tall cabs), it had 4 meg of
internal KL10E memory and a NIA20 wedged into it. Nice, tidy little package.
At the end, it had something like 4 RP06s on it. It also booted up as gidney
for the random -20 stuff.  Fitting that system would be the last one in
"Engineering". (I know, cause I shut the lights off over there.)

>Bob will probably be surprised to find that another front panel existed.
I'll
>have to try to get in touch with Ben Vaughn to see what he knows about its
>history.


Oh yes Ben worked on that thing, he will remember it. Ben spent many long
nights at Defies Logic keeping that senior hardware running.

One day I came in and System B was down. Ben had diagnosed the problem as a
bad chip on the SA10. Components just plugged in to a wirewrap kinda
backplane, so it ought to be a 10 second job to plug in another chip. The
chip was something like a 16 input NAND gate. Ben looked all around trying
to find this part, which should be common enough. Unfortunately SC had the
world's supply of whatever this rare chip was.  At this time Defies Logic
wasn't paying any SC bills (not paying bills was a way of life there), and
SC wouldn't give us the chip till we had paid for a couple SA10s, the latest
Fred Wright code, and some other stuff.  Meanwhile the main revenue
producing system was DOWN. Finally, Ron wired SC the cash, SC set us a 32
cent chip, and we were back on the air.

That place was nuts, but it was also a lot of fun.

Greg Scott
greg@scott.com




Article 5201 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d14
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Sat, 29 May 99 08:30:32 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
   "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com> wrote:
>John Everett wrote in message <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com>...
>>In article <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, gscott@scott.com says...
>
<snip>

>Hey MRO guys! Remember when the tri-SMP 10 in Marlboro 
>(1026/1042/1322) was
>running backups, the light show was just awesome? 

What light show?


>KL1026 was the TOPS-10 development system and it had about 
>one oddball device of everything on it,
>whole bunches of all kinds of disks, including a big box of 
>Ampex memory and two strings of TU70/72/73s.

We had to have all those oddball devices because we supported
them.  If we supported a piece of hardware, it was a requirement
that we be able to test the software and use them for debugging.
As a matter of fact, we had to keep a 7-track tape drive on
the end of one of those TU70 strings because there was still
a customer who ordered 7-track tapes.  (It would have been
cheaper just to give them a 9-track but managers didn't seem
to know how to count back then.)  And I don't remember having
AMPEX memory.  That was also because of support reasons.  JMF
would have loved to have had AMPEX memory but Digital, in its
infinite wisdom (read that idiocy) insisted that we develop
based on its old technology.  Our 5-CPU customer site did
use AMPEX so that hardware checkout was covered when we did
the software development.  If it weren't for our customers'
cooperation, Digital would have been out of business in 1981.


<snip>

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5192 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!144.212.100.101.MISMATCH!newsfeed.mathworks.com!EU.net!blackbush.xlink.net!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!server3.netnews.ja.net!ulcc.ac.uk!not-for-mail
From: Kevin Ashley <K.Ashley@ulcc.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 22:17:19 +0100
Organization: Posted via ULCC Internet Services
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <374DB65F.86F7B8C8@ulcc.ac.uk>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <373c310e.240459472@news.supernews.com> <7i11lk$ed3$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <3746DBCC.2C127D9C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7ia8ps$ail$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
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Joe Smith wrote:
...
> 
> With TOPS-10, sources and binaries were bundled in with the hardware.
> New sources were delivered automatically to all customers with a software
> maintenance contract.
> 
> With TOPS-20, only binaries were bundled in with the hardware.  As I remember
> it, sources were an additional $60,000 per release. 
 
Absolutely. AFAIR, the only source bits of the monitor that shipped were
the bits that defined static tables (such as job and process tables),
to allow you to build a new monitor tuned to your environment. However,
the FORTRAN compiler shipped with full source (in BLISS-10) and
copies of the EXEC source were widely available in an unofficial
way, which led to the availability of lots of user-written EXEC
extensions. (It also allowed us to build an April Fools Day version
of the EXEC, but that's another story...)
-----
Kevin Ashley     http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/Staff/Kevin+Ashley


Article 5200 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "R. Terry McCutchen" <fbeast@ mail.nwnexus.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 03:16:00 -0400
Organization: WinStar NorthWest Nexus
Lines: 58
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Joe Smith wrote in message <7ia8ps$ail$1@shell3.ba.best.com>...
>In article <3746DBCC.2C127D9C@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> TOPS10 shipped sources as an integral part; TOPS20 had a source
>>> tape that could be bought for a very high price (there were
>>> advantages to this but I won't go into them here).  ...
>>
>>I recall being told that the TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 full source+binary
licenses
>>had identical prices; it was just that you could buy a binary-only TOPS-20
>>license, and no such thing existed for TOPS-10.
>
>No way.
>
>With TOPS-10, sources and binaries were bundled in with the hardware.
>New sources were delivered automatically to all customers with a software
>maintenance contract.
>
>With TOPS-20, only binaries were bundled in with the hardware.  As I
remember
>it, sources were an additional $60,000 per release.  When a new version of
the
>OS came out, the binaries were shipped automatically, but you had to pay
the
>source license fee all over again to get new sources.  (I do not know if
>there was a discount.)
> -Joe
>
>--
>INWAP.COM is Joe Smith, Sally Smith and our cat Murdock.
>  (The O'Hallorans and their cats moved to http://www.tyedye.org/ Nov-98.)

>See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10, "ReBoot", "Shadow Raiders"/"War
Planets"

TOPS-10 was developed by digital;   Tops-20 was BBN TenNex and required the
"BBN PAGE BOX".  Tops-10 had evolved from the KA10 through the KI10 as a
Real Memory (Swap) not a virtual memory (18 bit Address ...). Tops-20 was a
pure virtual memory system.
Around here we realized that the structure on memory access was LOTS more
important than the instruction set (something that Gordon Bell never
realized) {Pls recall that digital had LARGE manufacturing plants at that
time}.

We had always a battle internally for the specification of HOW MUCH memory
would be required.The VAX was originally going to be a variant of the KL10
(as was the ill fated PDP-15KL). On ML5-5 we had a KL-10 (Actually I believe
a KS 10) running TenNex with 32Kw that was a prototype for the follow-up for
the 11/45. The intrent was for RSTS and TOPS to merge into a single
offering.

/s/ Terry





Article 5216 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d1
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel
Date: Sun, 30 May 99 10:23:29 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <7ira1b$hbc$6@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7i4nm3$msg$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <qh90ahfuo8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <37471D12.98C2F010@stoneweb.com> <FC9uux.Hzo@world.std.com> <7ie8c8$ifc$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa <FCIzrM.Ez8@world.std.com>
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In article <FCIzrM.Ez8@world.std.com>, mbg@world.std.com (Megan) wrote:
>p98mccabe@alltel.net (Micheal H. McCabe) writes:
>
>>In article <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>>> We had to have all those oddball devices because we supported
>>> them.
>
>>What a novel concept!
>
>That's what we tried to do in the RT-11 support lab... we had (as much as
>possible) at least one of every device available from DEC... that
>way when an SPR came in, we could test it out on as close to the
>same system config as the customer was using.
>
>This is also part of the reason we didn't *support* non-DEC hardware...

But we did support non-DEC hardware.  One of our biggest selling
points (this was before your time, Megan) was that we could talk
to other manufacturers' hardware.  So customers could have a 
mixed bag of hardware satisfying all their various flavors of
users (especially those IBMers).

What we  (TOPS10) were not prepared to do (and that was done 
by a group known as Computer Special Systems) was schedule our 
developer time to implement that hardware.  That's why so many of our
customers had clever monitor people.  A side effect of "allowing"
our customers to do their own development was that we ended up
with very educated customers.  IMO, that was a plus.  

Another one of our mistakes is that we stopped listening to those
customers.


>we just couldn't have afforded to have one of everything else... so
>we told people that they'd have to reproduce the problem on purely
>DEC equipment before we could accept the problem report (though we
>generally still tried to fix the problem since whatever hardware the
>customer had, it was probably some sort of look-similar for a device
>we *did* have)

This was a maintenance issue that, I believe, was handled badly.
The process that was imposed on us that determined the flavors
of maintenance and our answers to that maintenance was just
a bullshit load of bureuocracy (how do you spell that word?).
The system of rules that we had to follow were never based on
common sense, IME.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5232 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: KL1026/Gidney [was Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)]
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 09:48:57 -0400
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <7j0oca$hu4$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com><7i4nm3$msg$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <qh90ahfuo8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com><37471D12.98C2F010@stoneweb.com> <FC9uux.Hzo@world.std.com><7ie8c8$ifc$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com><7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com><7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <ALDERSON.99May31152727@netcom2.netcom.com>
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Richard M. Alderson III wrote in message ...
>In article <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> "Gregory A. Scott"
><gscott@scott.com> writes:
<snip>

>Hey, Greg, did you know that you left the -20 side un-login-able with the
>security hacks turned on?  I had to hack in through the monitor on the
console,
>to turn off password checking in the LOGIN% JSYS to use the system when I
was
>visiting Dick Greeley to pick up some of the software XKL licensed.


Well I can't take complete credit for making the system unloginable. A lot
of people had their hands on Gidney towards the end. I never visited 1026
(actually 1042) and Gidney after they were exiled to NIO, but I know I
logged in to GSCOTT there. So it probably wasn't me.

On the other hand, if you tried to login to OPERATOR or F-S remotely, you
couldn't have done that for years.

In the glory days, would try to hack Gidney (aka tops20.dec.com) all of the
time. (This was when there was only a handful of systems in DEC that had
access to the internet and there was lots of Corporate Paperwork and
Procedures to go through to justify our connection, which we had from the
days of 2102 and DEC-MARLBORO.)

Jeanne Dusseault had a bunch of programs that would run around and check the
status of EVERY directory on the CFS cluster every night. I think it used to
email her a report as well. We ended up writing some cool spy-on-the-hacker
tools (easy to do, it was kinda like PHOTO but from another terminal), and I
beefed up the ACJ to watch for Unusual Things.

Maybe some well meaning person tightened the security a bit too much at some
point.  In the last couple of years, you hardly needed security on gidney,
because it was only accessible inside DEC and it wasn't running VMS.

>(And going further back, you and I met during the 7.0 field test, when I
was at
>Stanford.)

Oh yes, I remember you Rich.  We also met at one of the Anaheim DECUSes, as
I recall. Thanks for keeping the flame at XKL.

Greg
greg@scott.com




Article 5222 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d5
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Mon, 31 May 99 09:52:26 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <7itsjg$355$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <3746DBCC.2C127D9C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7ia8ps$ail$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7io48e$a5f$1@brokaw.wa.com> <FCKsEp.6tn@world.std.com> <7ithbi$2q8$1@news.latrobe.edu.au>
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In article <7ithbi$2q8$1@news.latrobe.edu.au>,
   cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) wrote:
>Sam Weiner (weiner@world.std.com) wrote:
>
>: TOPS-10 ended up paging though I forget if it was 
>: in 6.0x or not until 7.01.
>: Anyone remember?
>
>I was about to say 6.03 but now I'm not so sure it wasn't 
>7.01. I seem to recall we weren't licenced to run it, just 
>someone built the monitor wrong :-)  We soon moved back 
>to swapping (lots) as the -10 tried to support 70+ users
>on 256KW.

TOPS10's version number went from 5.nn to 6.nn (6.01) with the 
advent of VMSER.MAC which was an unbundled product until
we smushed everything together, simplifying packaging,
licensing, etc.  DEC had managed to unbundle just about 
everything but the kitchen sink by then.  I know that 7.01
was another excuse to get everything back onto one tape.
The VM part of the filename stood for
virtual memory.  That should give you guys a hint about
when things happened.  

I seem to recall that the inhouse attitude w.r.t. PFH
was it eventually was a crock (but I can't remember
why that came about).  But it was developed
on ML5-5 by Peter. So that means that it had to be a
KA to KI or a KI to KA compatibility code.

I just can't seem to remember when I was allowed to 
move PFH.MAC to the Customer Supported Tape (or its
equivalent in those days).  I do know that I argued
long and hard with Magee about where it should go;
it was one of those issues that I had to resort to
going to Jim and have him tell Magee what should be
done.  ...grumble...mumble...My biggest sexual 
discrimination problems were from other women...not men.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5221 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail
From: inwap@best.com (Joe Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: 31 May 1999 01:47:04 -0700
Organization: Chez Inwap
Message-ID: <7itia8$6pk$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <7ia8ps$ail$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7io48e$a5f$1@brokaw.wa.com> <FCKsEp.6tn@world.std.com>
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In article <FCKsEp.6tn@world.std.com>, Sam Weiner <weiner@world.std.com> wrote:
>TOPS-10 ended up paging though I forget if it was in 6.0x or not until 7.01.
>Anyone remember?

603A was the last TOPS-10 Monitor that ran on the KA.
To run an EXE file, the entire file had to be read into physical memory.
If memory was tight, the core image would immediately be paged out to
the swapping disk.  Then individual pages could be paged back in on demand
from swap space.

Anyone remember when PFH.EXE disappeared?
	-Joe
-- 
INWAP.COM is Joe Smith, Sally Smith and our cat Murdock.
  (The O'Hallorans and their cats moved to http://www.tyedye.org/ Nov-98.)
See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10, "ReBoot", "Shadow Raiders"/"War Planets"


Article 5224 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!news
From: "Chris Ward" <ccw@idt.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Living legends
Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 08:22:49 -0400
Organization: IDT (Best News In The World)
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <7itv3s$lk7@nnrp1.farm.idt.net>
References: <fc.1dcede5a616700001dcede5a4acde365.401481a@city.magnet.at> <7ia8ps$ail$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7io48e$a5f$1@brokaw.wa.com> <FCKsEp.6tn@world.std.com> <7itia8$6pk$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
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Joe Smith <inwap@best.com> wrote in message
news:7itia8$6pk$1@shell3.ba.best.com...
> In article <FCKsEp.6tn@world.std.com>, Sam Weiner
<weiner@world.std.com> wrote:
> >TOPS-10 ended up paging though I forget if it was in 6.0x or not
until 7.01.
> >Anyone remember?
>
> 603A was the last TOPS-10 Monitor that ran on the KA.
> To run an EXE file, the entire file had to be read into physical
memory.
> If memory was tight, the core image would immediately be paged out
to
> the swapping disk.  Then individual pages could be paged back in
on demand
> from swap space.
>
> Anyone remember when PFH.EXE disappeared?
> -Joe
> --

Branching out a little, when the KA101 was replaced, I remember that
when we went to a KL, I was working on some crystallographic
programs.  I think the limits were (in general) 30k real and 60k
virtual.  Which meant that a 40k (initial) job might not work if it
needed the to be read in all the time.

What I did (after reading the instructions as to what VM did) was to
write a short segment of code which when the program started
running, I would page out every other page in the lowseg.  This got
the page fault handler running (you needed a page fault to get it
started).  So I might allocate 60meg to a job, it would settle down
eventually to about 40-45k - just the matrix, the least squares calc
and the Fortran.  These things ran in batch for several hours.  And
these jobs would accumulate run time much more quickly than the jobs
the computer center were running at higher priority - they ran in
all physical, and as far as I could tell, would get swapped out much
more often.




Article 5231 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d3
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Tops-10/Tops-20 licensing [was Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: Linux popularity) ]
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 99 10:09:54 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 74
Message-ID: <7j0i0i$5ni$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <373310cc@newsfeed.one.net> <7hu6ll$j8n$3@antiochus.ultra.net>
	<7huao7$j7d@weyl.math.psu.edu> <7hucpm$500$1@antiochus.ultra.net>
	<7hug95$jce@weyl.math.psu.edu> <7i0pip$nrh$1@ligarius.ultra.net>
	<qhzp2xf005.fsf_-_@ruckus.brouhaha.com>
	<7i8msa$u94$1@antiochus.ultra.net> <qhiu9gfvq9.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>
	<ALDERSON.99May26163648@netcom2.netcom.com>
	<qhhfoxn09w.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7io175$6cc$1@brokaw.wa.com> <ALDERSON.99May31154453@netcom2.netcom.com>
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In article <ALDERSON.99May31154453@netcom2.netcom.com>,
   alderson@netcom2.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) wrote:
>In article <qhhfoxn09w.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
><eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> writes:
>
>>OK.  So a typical scenario might have been:
>
>>1)  Buy a PDP-10
>>2)  Obtain a copy of TOPS-10 licensed to run on the PDP-10
>>3)  Buy an SC30
>
>>Question:
>
>>What software do you run on the SC30?
>
>You run the Tops-10 that you obtained with your PDP-10, 
>having added the SC mods to the sources.  You had to call 
>SC rather than DEC/Digital for software
>support if you couldn't fix it yourself; Fred Wright was pretty good.

So was there an SCSER.MAC instead of KLSER.MAC?  

<snip>

>Then, in article <7io175$6cc$1@brokaw.wa.com>, R. Terry McCutchen
>(<fbeast@ mail.nwnexus.com>) wrote:
>
>>What  is an SC30?
>
>It was SC's first model of PDP-10 clone, roughly 2.4 
>times as fast as a KL10 on an average job mix.  It came 
>with an SA channel, an MI channel (Massbuss), a CI
>channel, and an EI channel (NIA-20 workalike, down to the 
>bad design decisions) for I/O; up to 8MW of memory, although 
>they didn't get Tops-20 to use more than
>4MW as long as I had a machine--the changes done 
>by S** G******* were lost in a head crash on an unbacked-up 
>disk on their KI, and no one could re-create them.

<snip>

A similar thing happened when Jim and Dan were doing the KL
code (you didn't know that the KL almost became toast, did you?).
Jim and Dan did their development on the same stand alone pack using
one of the breadboards KLs in hardware engineering.  It was 
usually the habit to "forget" to spin down and remove their
pack...probably because JMF did his work during the 3:00-12:00
shift and Dan would pick up when Jim left off.  

One day, a Person from diagnositics had the system stand alone
to test his "zero the pack" diagnostic.  He saw a pack on the
disk and decided to use it for his test.  His diagnostic worked
so well, he wiped out all of Software Engineering's KL work.
At the time, everybody believed that it was gone since nobody
had put the pack on a regular backup schedule.  Then Jim came
in and was told about the disaster.  One week before the 
Person did his best to scuttle the project, Jim was carrying
the pack through our machine room and saw Dave, the operator.
Just on an impulse he handed the pack to Dave and asked for
a backup to be done if Dave had a spare moment.  Jim being 
Jim did not write out a work request (in those days, 
operators weren't allowed to do "extra" work without a 
work request), so Jim didn't think that Dave got around to
doing the backup.  Everybody had to wait until Dave came in
because there wasn't a record of the backup.  Dave came
in and discovered that he was the most popular guy in the
world that day.  He had done the backup because it was
Jim who had asked him and Software Engineering only lost
one week's worth of work.

/BAH
 

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5242 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d9
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Tops-10/Tops-20 licensing [was Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: Linux popularity) ]
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 99 09:10:43 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <7j32tq$csp$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5242 alt.folklore.computers:131222

In article <qhd7zf6j06.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
   Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>Richard M. Alderson III <alderson@netcom2.netcom.com> wrote:
>> and Digital (it had changed by then) would not license any
>> of the software for non-Digital hardware.
>
>I wrote:
>> OK.  So a typical scenario might have been:
>> 1)  Buy a PDP-10
>> 2)  Obtain a copy of TOPS-10 licensed to run on the PDP-10
>> 3)  Buy an SC30
>> Question:
>> What software do you run on the SC30?
>
>Richard wrote:
>> You run the Tops-10 that you obtained with your PDP-10, 
>
>So you're saying that all of SC's customers violated their license
>agreements with DEC (assuming that they didn't write their own operating
>systems or run ITS)?  If true, why did DEC tolerate this?

I don't see where the violation occurred.  They bought hardware,
got the software and continued to pay maintenance.  What they
actually ran was their business....as long as they didn't 
insist that _we_ fix their problems.  Lots of cash came in,
and we didn't have to spend any money to maintain them.  

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5250 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d4
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 99 09:30:25 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 77
Message-ID: <7j5of4$knj$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7i4nm3$msg$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <qh90ahfuo8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <37471D12.98C2F010@stoneweb.com> <FC9uux.Hzo@world.std.com> <7ie8c8$ifc$1@hirame.wwa.com> <FCIzrM.Ez8@world.std.com> <375642e4.72160390@news.kivex.com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5250

In article <375642e4.72160390@news.kivex.com>,
   nospam-gagner@clark.net (Philip Gagner) wrote:
>>That's what we tried to do in the RT-11 support lab... we had (as much as
>>possible) at least one of every device available from DEC... that
>>way when an SPR came in, we could test it out on as close to the
>>same system config as the customer was using.
>>
>>This is also part of the reason we didn't *support* non-DEC hardware...
>>we just couldn't have afforded to have one of everything else... so
>>we told people that they'd have to reproduce the problem on purely
>>DEC equipment before we could accept the problem report (though we
>>generally still tried to fix the problem since whatever hardware the
>>customer had, it was probably some sort of look-similar for a device
>>we *did* have)
>
>If the problem seemed to involve a design defect in code written by
>DEC, then there was a great deal of interest in fixing it. But if the
>problem was that the code worked for DEC hardware, but not for other
>types, then there wasn't that much interest. This seemed to make
>sense. There was no particular resentment about other manufacturer's
>hardware, but we had enough problems with our own stuff. Still, if
>there was time, we dealt with the problem.

Another criteria was the size of the customer.  ORNL tended to get
a lot of attention.  Jim's first job at DEC involved living in
a hotel room down there for a long time (in his opinion).  From
his stories about that time, the PDP-12 stuff was murder.

>
>As an example, there came a time when the remote station DN8x software
>became completely unmaintainable, so we did an entire rewrite, turning
>all the device block stuff into macros. During that process we
>collected up all the SPR's that had been sent in complaining that if
>we'd done things differently, then customers could add other devices
>more easily. We read through them to determine how to do things
>differently and better. After the rewrite, it was FAR easier to add
>third party hardware. So many of these old SPR's eventually got dealt
>with, although in some cases it took years.

One of the things that Software Engineering did to clean up messes
like that was remastering the CUSP tape to just one physical magtape.
IIRC, there were 21 "updates" which also involved several flavors
of SCAN and WILD.

>
>Warning: Old codger's gripe follows. You may want to skip this part...
>
>We were, at that time (early 70's) learning how to write code that
>could be installed without destroying a running system and then
>maintained. We learned a lot, and sometimes it's discouraging that
>many of these lessons seem to have been forgotten. I just bought a
>program for a Windows environment, and found that it wouldn't install
>properly unless the Windows system directory was located on
>C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM (which it wasn't on this machine). No error message,
>it just didn't work right.
>
>I remember the level of testing that went on before code could slip by
>the release group at LCG... it's clear that nothing like that level of
>work was done with this product, or many of the products that are
>released today.

As the -10 groups did business over the years, we figured out how
to do all that with various source management systems and testing
procedures.  I don't think those would work with a distribution
such as Msoft has.  The SPR aspect of it would just bury us.  All
that backlog of unanswered SPRs was one of the "facts" that was 
used to end the -10 business.  It was "proof" that our code and
systems were not maintainable.

I'm very interested in how this open source business is working...
or not.  Watching how it works is on my list of "things to do
someday".

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5257 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!206.40.72.101.MISMATCH!kiowa!netnews.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d3
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Tops-10/Tops-20 licensing [was Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: Linux
 popularity) ]
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 99 09:21:51 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <7j8cba$ik4$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <qhzp2xf005.fsf_-_@ruckus.brouhaha.com> 	<7i8msa$u94$1@antiochus.ultra.net> <qhiu9gfvq9.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> 	<ALDERSON.99May26163648@netcom2.netcom.com> 	<qhhfoxn09w.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7io175$6cc$1@brokaw.wa.com> <ALDERSON.99May31154453@netcom2.netcom.com> <7j0i0i$5ni$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <qhd7zf6j06.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7j32tq$csp$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <qhso8annn3.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7j5otf$knj$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37574950.42ABB8D@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5257 alt.folklore.computers:131371

In article <37574950.42ABB8D@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> In article <qhso8annn3.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
>>    Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>....
>> >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> >> I don't see where the violation occurred.  They bought hardware,
>> >> got the software and continued to pay maintenance.  What they
>> >> actually ran was their business....as long as they didn't
>> >> insist that _we_ fix their problems.  Lots of cash came in,
>> >> and we didn't have to spend any money to maintain them.
>
>If only they'd priced service to make a profit, eh?

<snip>

Alan, how in the world do you think DEC was profitable?  The PDP-10
product line just didn't get the "credit" because of the way the
books worked.  Software Engineering was a _credit_ center...not
a profit center.  In other words, it "lost" money by design.
JMF always wanted the -10 world to get really separated from the
rest of DEC.  That way, if we sunk, it was because we did it...not
those small computer thinkers doing it to us.


/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5276 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 99 11:02:48 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 116
Message-ID: <7k5ifp$20e$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7i4nm3$msg$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <qh90ahfuo8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <37471D12.98C2F010@stoneweb.com> <FC9uux.Hzo@world.std.com> <7ie8c8$ifc$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iplac$nvq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5276

In article <7iplac$nvq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
   "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com> wrote:
>
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>...
>>>Hey MRO guys! Remember when the tri-SMP 10 in Marlboro
>>>(1026/1042/1322) was
>>>running backups, the light show was just awesome?
>>What light show?
>
>
>Barb, the Ampex may have been installed you left. 

It must have been.

>F-S eventually supported Ampex ARM10 memory,  ...

Damn, it only took them a decade+ to catch up :-).

> and the 
>1026/1042/1322 ran from that one box with 4 meg
>in it. It had a translucent front cover with lots of lights inside.
>
>F-S ditched the old MF10 boxes, which had labels like "S/N PROTO" and "S/N
>BREAD" just after official support was obtained for Ampex.
>
>KL1026 of that era featured RH10/DF10C and RH20s for 
>the RP0x, DX20s talking
>to RP20s and dual ported TX02/03/TU70/72/73s.  The light show was featured
>on the Ampex, on the SELECT A B lights on the drives, and the TU7x drives.

So it must have been similar to the stuff I saw at ORNL.

>
>>We had to have all those oddball devices because we supported
>>them.  If we supported a piece of hardware, it was a requirement
>>that we be able to test the software and use them for debugging.
>
>
>Yeah I remember seeing a card punch on 1026, never mind one of every kinda
>front end, ANF10 included.

You weren't around for that plotter (which never worked).  Well, we
didn't have quite every kinda front end.  DC71s and 72s weren't around
when you were :-).


>
>>As a matter of fact, we had to keep a 7-track tape drive on
>>the end of one of those TU70 strings because there was still
>>a customer who ordered 7-track tapes.  (It would have been
>>cheaper just to give them a 9-track but managers didn't seem
>>to know how to count back then.)
>
>Well the code was a little different for 7 track tapes, so it wasn't
>unreasonable to have one (I think it was designated a TU71, but I may be
>wrong).

Yup.  I think it was TU71; I was going to say it but I'm so bad
with my hardware cybercrud that I didn't want to generate more 
posts just to correct me so I didn't mention it :-).

>
>>And I don't remember having
>>AMPEX memory.  That was also because of support reasons.  JMF
>>would have loved to have had AMPEX memory but Digital, in its
>>infinite wisdom (read that idiocy) insisted that we develop
>>based on its old technology.  Our 5-CPU customer site did
>>use AMPEX so that hardware checkout was covered when we did
>>the software development.
>
>I think that 5 CPU customer was Oak Ridge National Labs.  Five KL10s.

Yup.  I even got to visit those sites.  They had other sites, but
not five KLs' worth.  Dwayne gave Jim a configuration map of the
5-CPU site.  Jim had it on his office wall.  One day, in the
process of moving, he removed them and put them on his desk in
his new office.  The next day, he came in and they were gone.
He came home just absolutely shattered.  Later in the week,
his co-horts presented him with the config nicely framed.
There were two other posters that had also disappeared to
get framed.  He was touched (and very glad that somebody
hadn't stolen his pictures).

>
>We also had ARM20 Ampex memory at Energy Enterprises, and it worked very
>well, once you got the SBUS card timing set properly.
>
>>If it weren't for our customers'
>>cooperation, Digital would have been out of business in 1981.
>
>LCG certainly depended on having loyal customers, that's for sure.  I was
>one of them... when I worked at Energy Enterprises in Denver, I had to
>educate our sales droid on the entire 36 bit product line.  This 
>wouldn't be so bad, cause you would get a free lunch. When it 
>came time to order stuff,
>it helped if you got ahold of the real part numbers then helped the
>salesdummy fill out the paperwork. (You could always call folks in 
>Marlboro to get those numbers.)  The problem really was that all 
>of the good sales people left after they had a bit of experience 
>to work somewhere where they
>were on commission.  I don't blame them, but it could be 
>frustrating putting up with them.

Yea, we had arguments about whether there should be commissions
or not.  The year that they combined the mini sales force with
the mainframe sales force got good results.  One mini sales'
type was so pleased that he could fill his yearly sales quota 
with one PDP-10 sale.  When I heard about that, I had not 
realized that sales departement had become so bad.  Our
theory was that that organization really was a subsidiary
of IBM.

/BAH
 

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5311 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!144.212.100.101.MISMATCH!newsfeed.mathworks.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!netnews.com!chnws02.mediaone.net!24.128.1.101!chnws05.ne.mediaone.net!24.128.44.7!wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net.POSTED!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: simulators vs ... compilers?
References: <54674ky7u5.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> <7kfs97$8f1$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #119
From: werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme)
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <zSfb3.1081$Wr1.38836@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 00:41:03 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.128.109.10
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jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>In article <54674ky7u5.fsf@flipper.cisco.com>,
>   Bill Westfield <billw@flipper.cisco.com> wrote:
>>Has anyone tried to write a COMPILER (and associated libraries) for
>>macro-10/20 (and/or fail, and/or midas)?  It wouldn't be as cool, but
>>it might be a lot easier, and it might be useful.

>Why would you want to do that?  

One of the things that gets lost in the "wouldn't it be neat to have a
PDP-10 emulator" mantra is that many of the things that made
programming and using the -10 still wouldn't be conveniently available
outside of the -10 environment.

One of the most wonderful aspects of MACRO-10 was its macro language.  It
had loops, string variables, you could process items one character at
a time (IRPC).  All these are alien concepts to C programmers, and the
typical Unix assembler is simply woeful.

With MACRO-10, TOPS-10 could build the database for its file systems
at OS build time, the Lexical analysis piece of TULIP I/O Package let
you write lexical analysis "instructions" that were far more readable
than the pseudo-code a macro generated.  Once, as a hack, I wrote something
where I could give a macro a list of keywords and the macro generated a
tree-structured parse table for the names.

I looked a m4 once, wow - about 20 years ago, and wrote it off as
uninteresting.

Microsoft's Z80 assembler had many of the same features (back in those
days Microsoft had a PDP-10).

.SOAPBOX
We're missing the boat here w.r.t many of the things that made the -10
special.  The last month has been very busy, but I hope to prepare some
WWW pages, each highlighting one of my favorite aspects of the -10. I
spent part of an evening in a hotel room typing a TULIP page off the
top of my head.  It's surprising how few things I'll have to check the
source code to get right!

I've thought of writing the macro processing part of MACRO-10 in C, but I
think that will have to wait for retirement!
--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5318 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Daniel B Dobkin" <dbd@abanet.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: simulators vs ... compilers?
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 16:34:45 -0400
Organization: Law Office of Daniel B. Dobkin
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <930083689.015.65@news.remarQ.com>
References: <54674ky7u5.fsf@flipper.cisco.com>
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In article <zSfb3.1081$Wr1.38836@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>, 
werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme) wrote:

> One of the most wonderful aspects of MACRO-10 was its macro language.  It
> had loops, string variables, you could process items one character at
> a time (IRPC).  All these are alien concepts to C programmers, and the
> typical Unix assembler is simply woeful.

It's been a long time since I took up any of this, but I think you've hit
on it exactly.  MACRO-20 was in many ways the easiest of the many languages
I used; when I moved to VMS, one of my projects was adding some new
functionality to a brain-damaged DCL script.  Since the script I was working
from was so bad, I decided to rewrite it structured as a MACRO-20 program.
Skip returns from subroutines and everything.  I was told, years later, that
the new structure made adding the next new feature a snap (which was my
point exactly).  AFAIK it's still in use at a major New York bank.


\dbd

Daniel B Dobkin                               dbd@abanet.org
Attorney at Law                               (516) 466-6969  voice
525 Northern Boulevard                        (516) 466-6958  fax
Great Neck, NY  11021

General Practice & Business Technology Matters



Article 5306 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Reply-To: sarr@umich.edu
Organization: University of Michigan
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
From: sarr@moshpit.rs.itd.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson)
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In article <7kig1d$49t$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>
>BLISS-10 was supported to the extent that fixes were needed in
>order to compile the lanaguages that used it, e.g., FORTRAN-10.
>We did not ship a source tape, IIRC, since we did not want
>to fully support it.  I don't know where it came from.
>Sara would know.

Originally from Bill Wulf's group at CMU.  The book "Design of an Optimizing
Compiler" (or something close to that) by Wulf and a herd of grad students
(at least one of which [Steve Hobbs] ended up at DEC) describes it's
development IIRC.

No, I'm not Sara.

-- 
--------
Sarr Blumson                    sarr@umich.edu
voice: +1 734 764 0253          home: +1 734 665 9591
ITD, University of Michigan     http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/


Article 5309 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 21 Jun 1999 00:09:23 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University
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David M. Razler (david.razler@worldnet.att.net) wrote:

: Not sure, was BLISS-10 a DECUS program or a DEC supported program? I seem to
: recall it was DECUS.

It was on catagory four support from Digital. What this meant was that
you could send in SPRs but there was no guarantee that anything would
happen as a result.
--
 Huw Davies                      | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
 Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550  Fax: +61 3 9479 1999
 La Trobe University             | "If God had wanted soccer to be played
 Melbourne Australia 3083        | in the air, the sky would be green" 


Article 5298 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: bugs@freebsd.netcom.com (Mark Hittinger)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 19 Jun 1999 17:32:19 -0500
Organization: Netcom
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cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) writes:
>In another mailing list that I belong to (the classic computer mailing list)
>there has been a discussion about BLISS-10 and why it was not looked upon
>favorably by Digital. 

MODULE

If my memory serves me right Bliss was developed at CMU and there were
connections between Gordon Bell/CMU/Digital.  

Few things on the 10 were actually written in a high level language, most
stuff was written in Macro-10.  I think the Fortran-77 (the time tested
language of wisdom) compiler was written in Bliss-10.

There was a Bliss-36, a Bliss-16, and a Bliss-32.  Lots of VMS stuff was
written in Bliss-32.  Bliss-11 may have been Decus, but a source license
for Bliss-32 was probably a lot harder to get :-).  Bliss-10 came with
source code in the tradition of 10-ness and was not Decus.

I think Bliss was part of the Gordon Bell strategy to have one single 
basket for everybody.  Instead of having multiple platforms with their
own assembly language development teams they could all convert to Bliss
and everything would be cheaper.  Obviously there was great resistance
internally and from the customer bases using the platforms that were....
huff....going to "disappear".

Later we'd heard that Gordon was working for Bill Gates as an "advisor".
I wonder how much of Windows/NT is written in Bliss?.  I wonder if there
is a Visual Bliss compiler in the dungeons of Redmond? :-)

ELUDOM :-)

Mark Hittinger   (KL1059)
Mindspring/Netcom/Dallas
bugs@freebsd.netcom.com


Article 5299 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Chris Ward" <ccw@idt.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 23:17:52 -0400
Organization: IDT (Best News In The World)
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Mark Hittinger <bugs@freebsd.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com...
> Few things on the 10 were actually written in a high level
language, most
> stuff was written in Macro-10.  I think the Fortran-77 (the time
tested
> language of wisdom) compiler was written in Bliss-10.
>

Before there was Fortran-77, there was Fortran-10 (or F10), and that
compiler (I think) used Bliss, as opposed to Fortran-40 (F40) which
did not.




Article 5308 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: alderson@netcom17.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 20 Jun 1999 22:45:24 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5308

In article <7kigdi$49t$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>In article <7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>,
>   bugs@freebsd.netcom.com (Mark Hittinger) wrote:

>>Few things on the 10 were actually written in a high level language, most
>>stuff was written in Macro-10.  I think the Fortran-77 (the time tested
>>language of wisdom) compiler was written in Bliss-10.

>Nope, FORTRAN-10.  Did we even do a Fortran-77?  The -10 and -20 DECnet was
>done in BLISS-36 (which was worse to package with than BLISS-10).

Yup.  Fortran-10 v. 7 was the first Fortran 77 version of Fortran-10; versions
10 and 11 were improvements thereto.  There was, of course, no Fortran 90...

>>There was a Bliss-36, a Bliss-16, and a Bliss-32.  Lots of VMS stuff was
>>written in Bliss-32.  

>And these were different from BLISS-10 and BLISS-11.

They certainly were.  Bliss-36 cost *lots* of money when it came out as a
product; BLISS-10 was sent out for free with Fortran (and the Tops-20 EXEC,
because there were some extensions written--at CMU, naturally--in BLISS-10).

A couple or four years ago, Digital announced that Bliss-32 was being made
freely available, source and all, to the VMS universe.  Since the Bliss-36
sources were the same (different compilation switches), I convinced the folks
handling licensing for XKL that Bliss-36 should be treated the same way for
PDP-10 customers...
--
Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 5315 of alt.sys.pdp10:
From: "Phil Gagner" <gagner@svg-law.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com><7kigdi$49t$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <ALDERSON.99Jun20154524@netcom17.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
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> >>Few things on the 10 were actually written in a high level language,
most
> >>stuff was written in Macro-10.  I think the Fortran-77 (the time tested
> >>language of wisdom) compiler was written in Bliss-10.
>
> >Nope, FORTRAN-10.  Did we even do a Fortran-77?  The -10 and -20 DECnet
was
> >done in BLISS-36 (which was worse to package with than BLISS-10).
>
There were, of course, various flavors of DECnet. The "native" -10 stuff
(ANF-10) was originally written in pure assembler, but then, as I recall,
rewritten in part in BLISS-10 in the era of the "BLISS is Ignorance" button
days (I still have mine). The VAX/-11 style DECnet was written in part in
BLISS, in a vain hope that it would have been a simple port. It wasn't.

I don't recall this -10 side VAX style DECnet ever being released to
customers, though. Instead, the DN8x front ends mediated between ANF-10
style DECnet and VAX/-11 style DECnet, turning it all into ANF-10 style on
the -10 side. I don't recall that the -10 side code was BLISSed, although I
could well be wrong. I know some of this code was being written in BLISS,
but again, I don't recall it being released that way. Maybe after I left in
1976 this was changed.

I wrote a fair amount of BLISS code, and liked it pretty well. One thing
that kept it from being well received in -10 land was that PDP6/10/20
machine language with appropriate macros was so easy to write. And debugging
was simplicity -- at that time high level debuggers were flawed at best, and
there was no BLISS debugger. So you had to figure out what code the BLISS
compiler would generate, and how it related to the source, then try to trace
it through. Because BLISS was largely stack oriented, that meant taking lots
of time searching up and down the stack for pointers to values. It was
easier just to implement the program in assembler. In fact, much of the
BLISS code that I wrote started out as assembler, and then was hand-coded in
BLISS to try and get the compiler to generate something like what the
assembler did. If -10 machine language had been as awful as, say, 360
assembler, then BLISS would have been a great success throughout LCG.

There is a relevant note from Bill Gosper in HACKMEM, to this effect: The
myth that a language can be machine independant is easily exploded by
considering the simple problem of adding one repeatedly to a variable,
trapping and dismissing any interrupts caused. If the number becomes
negative zero, then it's a two's complement machine. If it becomes negative
one, then it's a one's complement machine. If the machine halts with an
overflow, then it's a machine designed by somebody with a read only mind.

This applies when trying to write operating system code for networking in
higher level languages. The VAX and the -10 were sufficiently different that
deciding which portions had to be assembler coded and then trying to debug
took longer than just assembly coding the whole thing. So that's why it was
assembly language coded and then translated into BLISS, checking that the
compiler didn't screw up too badly and lose the desirable side-effects.
Things are somewhat different now, particularly with sophisticated debuggers
and tools like lint, and now about the only excuse for writing in assembler
is that you need precise control over the timing of events or the sequence
of instruction execution.

I think that the primary lesson to be learned from BLISS-xx is that a good
compiler isn't enough -- you must have debuggers and other support tools.
These were not really available.






Article 5320 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!peerfeed.news.psi.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!world!weiner
From: weiner@world.std.com (Sam Weiner)
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Message-ID: <FDrG78.A1x@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 03:25:49 GMT
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <376ca79c.49856187@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <7kig1d$49t$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <Wscb3.1606$FK.34615@news.itd.umich.edu>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 38
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In article <Wscb3.1606$FK.34615@news.itd.umich.edu>,
Sarr J. Blumson <sarr@umich.edu> wrote:
>In article <7kig1d$49t$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>BLISS-10 was supported to the extent that fixes were needed in
>>order to compile the lanaguages that used it, e.g., FORTRAN-10.
>>We did not ship a source tape, IIRC, since we did not want
>>to fully support it.  I don't know where it came from.
>>Sara would know.
>
>Originally from Bill Wulf's group at CMU.  The book "Design of an Optimizing
>Compiler" (or something close to that) by Wulf and a herd of grad students
>(at least one of which [Steve Hobbs] ended up at DEC) describes it's
>development IIRC.

Very close, just stick "The" in front.  ISBN 0-444-00158-1 (paper) or
0-444-00164-6 (hard) from Elsevier.  This describes BLISS-11 (DECUS
10-213) which came after BLISS-10 and before BLISS-36 and its Common
BLISS siblings.  In addition to better optimization, BLISS-11 improved
the macro facility compared to BLISS-10.  Common BLISS was even better
in these areas.

Even BLISS-10 did some very clever things when you looked at the
generated code.  Since the macro facility was builtin and had some
knowledge of the language elements it was more useful than C's
preprocessor.  Of course, sometimes it was too clever sometimes, like
when I wrote a structure definition which generated a subroutine call
for each reference.  I changed that fast.

As far as source for BLISS-10, I think it was included by DEC.  Of course,
since we used a version straight from CMU which did have source, I wasn't
paying attention to say nothing of it being 25 years ago.  Came in handy
when we had to fix a bug in the compiler.

Sam





Article 5325 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <7kig1d$49t$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <Wscb3.1606$FK.34615@news.itd.umich.edu> <FDrG78.A1x@world.std.com>
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From: wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson)
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5325

In article <FDrG78.A1x@world.std.com>, Sam Weiner <weiner@world.std.com> wrote:
>>Originally from Bill Wulf's group at CMU.  The book "Design of an Optimizing
>>Compiler" (or something close to that) by Wulf and a herd of grad students
>>(at least one of which [Steve Hobbs] ended up at DEC) describes it's
>>development IIRC.
>
>Very close, just stick "The" in front.  ISBN 0-444-00158-1 (paper) or
>0-444-00164-6 (hard) from Elsevier.

FYI, when I got my copy (June '97) it was apparently available only from Books
on Demand.  I felt a little stupid paying $49.90 for a blurry paper-bound
photocopy with some of the pages crooked, but at least it beats being 100%
out of print.  I think I remember something about the old ISBN being NFG now,
but they were able to look it up from the title.  If anyone cares, this was
UMI in Ann Arbor MI, (313) 761-4700.

John Wilson
D Bit


Article 5321 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Nobody_Special@worldnet.att.net
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 04:46:07 GMT
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BLISS was not "not looked upon favorably by Digital".  To the
contrary, BLISS was THE strategic system implementation language at
Digital for many years, as other replies have noted.  Compilers,
operating systems, network software, database systems, you-name-it,
was implemented in BLISS.  I wrote many thousands of lines of BLISS.

BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
36-bitters.  Another reason is that BLISS was really best targeted to
architectures with byte-addressability.  As soon as you needed to keep
36-bit byte-pointers in BLISS, with the funny "@" dereferencing
syntax, things got ugly fast.  BLISS was, I think, originally
developed for the -10, but ironically enough it just never worked very
well there compared to the -11 and the VAX.

Gordon Bell was the Father of the BLISS Strategy at Digital.  Although
he is at Microsoft now, it's a safe bet that there isn't any BLISS in
Windows, especially Windows NT.  Dave Cutler was the Father of Windows
NT, and he hated BLISS with a passion at Digital;  he once demanded
that the DEC VP of Software (Heffner) fire the whole BLISS group, just
because they were the BLISS group and this was by definition a useless
waste of corporate resources;  I have a copy of this memo.

There is much more, but it is not well to dwell too much on the
past.........

--Nobody Special

cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) wrote:

>In another mailing list that I belong to (the classic computer mailing list)
>there has been a discussion about BLISS-10 and why it was not looked upon
>favorably by Digital. 
>
>Would anyone like to comment about this? I'd heard that BLISS wasn't exactly
>flavour of the month, but I'd always assumed that this was a bad case
>of NIH, but perhaps there's more to this than just that.
>
>I should point out that I'm biased, as I believe that there was no better
>systems implementation language, but I could be convinced (I really doubt
>this :-)
>
>--
> Huw Davies                      | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
> Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550  Fax: +61 3 9479 1999
> La Trobe University             | "If God had wanted soccer to be played
> Melbourne Australia 3083        | in the air, the sky would be green" 



Article 5322 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 23:38:20 -0700
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> BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
> of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
> implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
> 36-bitters. 

For a good reason.  Anything written in BLISS was pretty much
unmaintainable by the vast majority of 36-bitters.  Most DEC software
written in BLISS was in BLISS-36, not BLISS-10, meaning that most people
didn't have the compiler.  CMU's PCL extensions for EXEC (which never
worked particularly reliably) were a good example; eventually some nice
person ran BLISS with the "list generated assembly code" option on those
files so we could have proper .MAC files to edit.

As I recall, the code generated by the BLISS compiler was horrible.  Most
C compilers on x86, Alpha, etc. can generate better code than a human can
write assembly by hand.  The situation was the exact opposite on the
PDP-10.

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.




Article 5323 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 99 09:03:50 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article 
<Pine.NXT.4.20.9906222324400.20271-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>,
   Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>> BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
>> of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
>> implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
>> 36-bitters. 
>
>For a good reason.  Anything written in BLISS was pretty much
>unmaintainable by the vast majority of 36-bitters.  Most DEC software
>written in BLISS was in BLISS-36, not BLISS-10, meaning that most people
>didn't have the compiler. 

<snip>

Yup.  Even DEC's PDP-10 people didn't have it.  I had to have one
our developers do incredible cludges just to get the warnings
out of the compiles for packaging purposes.  Any problems with
BLISS-36 that we considered bugs were declared "features" and
not a problem by the idiots up north.  It was a royal PITA and
caused me to heap even further hexes on G. Bell.

/BAH



Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5326 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <37706667.3038342@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906222324400.20271-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
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From: werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme)
Lines: 45
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Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 02:21:36 GMT
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5326

Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:

>> BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
>> of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
>> implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
>> 36-bitters. 

>For a good reason.  Anything written in BLISS was pretty much
>unmaintainable by the vast majority of 36-bitters.

When I was at C-MU, I rewrote some of my BLISS code in MACRO-10.
Between Macro and Tulip, I produced a better results.  Implementation
time was probably greater, but heck, if I wanted something quick, I'd
use SAIL, and Algol-like language from Stanford.

>As I recall, the code generated by the BLISS compiler was horrible.  Most
>C compilers on x86, Alpha, etc. can generate better code than a human can
>write assembly by hand.  The situation was the exact opposite on the
>PDP-10.

I guess I don't remember the code quality.  I do recall keeping tabs
on the object file size - it jumped up if I forgot a "." in front of a
variable.  One problem - BLISS wanted to pass arguments on the stack.
Assembler programmers use registers and on the -10 use certain
registers for pointers to things that needed to be passed to many
routines within a module, so the argument passing cost for them was
zero.

Last summer I rewrote Tru64 Unix's IP checksum routine (it's all assembler).
When I was done, I translated the assembler into C and tried that.  For
the first time in 30 years, a compiler beat my assembler code.  Somewhat
mortified, I looked at the generated code and found the C compiler was
keep different intermediate data that allowed it more latitude scheduling
instructions.  Rewrote my code to do that and finally came up with faster
code thanks to earlier memory fetches than the C compiler thought was safe.

I don't know if my code would have been faster if I started from scratch,
but boy, I sure can't recommend writing Alpha assembler unless you have
good evidence the C code is slow.


--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5327 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d15
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 99 09:16:13 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <7kt3mj$p6p$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <37706667.3038342@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906222324400.20271-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> <QCgc3.2767$Wr1.95137@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>
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In article <QCgc3.2767$Wr1.95137@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>,
   werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme) wrote:
>Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
>
>>> BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
>>> of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
>>> implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
>>> 36-bitters. 
>
>>For a good reason.  Anything written in BLISS was pretty much
>>unmaintainable by the vast majority of 36-bitters.
>
>When I was at C-MU, I rewrote some of my BLISS code in MACRO-10.
>Between Macro and Tulip, I produced a better results.  Implementation
>time was probably greater, but heck, if I wanted something quick, I'd
>use SAIL, and Algol-like language from Stanford.
>
>>As I recall, the code generated by the BLISS compiler was horrible.  Most
>>C compilers on x86, Alpha, etc. can generate better code than a human can
>>write assembly by hand.  The situation was the exact opposite on the
>>PDP-10.
>
>I guess I don't remember the code quality.  I do recall keeping tabs
>on the object file size - it jumped up if I forgot a "." in front of a
>variable.  One problem - BLISS wanted to pass arguments on the stack.
>Assembler programmers use registers and on the -10 use certain
>registers for pointers to things that needed to be passed to many
>routines within a module, so the argument passing cost for them was
>zero.
>
>Last summer I rewrote Tru64 Unix's IP checksum routine (it's all 
assembler).
>When I was done, I translated the assembler into C and tried that.  For
>the first time in 30 years, a compiler beat my assembler code.  Somewhat
>mortified, I looked at the generated code and found the C compiler was
>keep different intermediate data that allowed it more latitude scheduling
>instructions.  Rewrote my code to do that and finally came up with faster
>code thanks to earlier memory fetches than the C compiler thought was 
safe.
>
>I don't know if my code would have been faster if I started from scratch,
>but boy, I sure can't recommend writing Alpha assembler unless you have
>good evidence the C code is slow.
>
JMF would recommend assembler.  He had a hell of a time trying
to program around C bugs that couldn't [actually wouldn't] be
fixed in his implementation time frame.  One of the unsung
advantages of developing base software with assembler, and _not_
with a compiler currently under development, is that one ends
up working with an unchanging base.  It's hard enough to 
schedule OS developement without having to depend on a 
language development schedule.

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5330 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 11:07:11 -0700
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing
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On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> JMF would recommend assembler.  He had a hell of a time trying
> to program around C bugs that couldn't [actually wouldn't] be
> fixed in his implementation time frame.  One of the unsung
> advantages of developing base software with assembler, and _not_
> with a compiler currently under development, is that one ends
> up working with an unchanging base.  It's hard enough to 
> schedule OS developement without having to depend on a 
> language development schedule.

Particularly if you're using a DEC C compiler!!

I've encountered many C compilers which do bizarre things.  I got into the
habit of aggressive prototyping as a result of compilers which will
misframe arguments without precise type-matching.  Nevertheless, even if
bizarre it was still valid compiler behavior.

The only C compilers that I've caught generating bad (as in provably
wrong) code are from DEC, and on multiple occasions.  Some were merely
annoying, such as not allowing addition to the return value from strchr().
But then there were the subtle ones, such the intermittant wrong values of
post-incremented shorts -- it would only do the wrong thing with certain
initial values, not with others.

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.



Article 5332 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: albaugh@agames.com (Mike Albaugh)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 24 Jun 1999 20:52:41 GMT
Organization: Atari Games Corporation
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Mark Crispin (mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU) wrote:
: On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
: > JMF would recommend assembler.  He had a hell of a time trying
: > to program around C bugs that couldn't [actually wouldn't] be
: > fixed in his implementation time frame.

: Particularly if you're using a DEC C compiler!!

: I've encountered many C compilers which do bizarre things.  I got into the
: habit of aggressive prototyping as a result of compilers which will
: misframe arguments without precise type-matching.  Nevertheless, even if
: bizarre it was still valid compiler behavior.

: The only C compilers that I've caught generating bad (as in provably
: wrong) code are from DEC, and on multiple occasions.

	You just haven't used enough C compilers; then :-)
GreenHills (Also sold as Oasys and MicroTec) would occasionally
push a short instead of an int, generally when the parameter was
an expression containing only shorts and constant zeros. We had
some _strange_ #defines to avoid the near-occasion of that one.
Later versions had some dubious notions about const parameters.
Alcyon C (for CP/M 68K and Atari TOS) was "almost, but not quite,
completely unlike C" in its treatment of pointers and arrays.
Whatever C compiler 3DO provided for the ARM would regularly
muff expressions involving arrays of short...

	Of course, Vax-11C was an un-remitting nightmare, but
most of the goblins were in the run-time library (which appeared
to be a "shim" between RMS and stdio, written by someone who
understood neither), rather than the compiler proper. Not that
crappy run-time libraries are all that rare. I always wonder why
I should trust an "all singing, all-dancing multi-lingual message
class" from the same bozos who can muff strtoul() and memcmp() :-)

	Ob. Bliss reference: at least two coin-operated video-games
were writen in Bliss. One giant "attaperson" to the one who can
name them... :-)

						Mike
| albaugh@agames.com, speakingonly for myself


Article 5324 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d15
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 99 09:10:30 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <7kqevg$ehu$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <37706667.3038342@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
   Nobody_Special@worldnet.att.net wrote:

>BLISS was not "not looked upon favorably by Digital".  To the
>contrary, BLISS was THE strategic system implementation language at
>Digital for many years, as other replies have noted.  Compilers,
>operating systems, network software, database systems, you-name-it,
>was implemented in BLISS.  I wrote many thousands of lines of BLISS.
>
>BLISS was never looked upon very favorably in 36-bit-land for a couple
>of reasons.  One is that MACRO was the "true language" of 36-bit
>implementation;  anything done in BLISS was looked at askance by most
>36-bitters.  Another reason is that BLISS was really best targeted to
>architectures with byte-addressability.  As soon as you needed to keep
>36-bit byte-pointers in BLISS, with the funny "@" dereferencing
>syntax, things got ugly fast.  BLISS was, I think, originally
>developed for the -10, but ironically enough it just never worked very
>well there compared to the -11 and the VAX.
>
>Gordon Bell was the Father of the BLISS Strategy at Digital. 
<snip>

Another reason that BLISS was not looked upon favorably by PDP-10ers
is that an edict came down that declared all subsequent developement
and _patches_ to the TOPS10 monitor (I don't know about TOPS20) had
to be done with BLISS.  First of all, one didn't tell the TOPS10
developers how to program; second of all, I still have no idea
how one applies a bliss patch to an EXE with DDT....but that's 
what the suits' specification outlined.  The term "a horse
designed by jackasses producing a camel" comes to mind. 

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5337 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 99 09:15:24 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <7kvo1b$l5q$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <37706667.3038342@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906222324400.20271-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> <QCgc3.2767$Wr1.95137@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net> <7kt3mj$p6p$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906241055470.22648-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
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In article 
<Pine.NXT.4.20.9906241055470.22648-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>,
   Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> JMF would recommend assembler.  He had a hell of a time trying
>> to program around C bugs that couldn't [actually wouldn't] be
>> fixed in his implementation time frame.  One of the unsung
>> advantages of developing base software with assembler, and _not_
>> with a compiler currently under development, is that one ends
>> up working with an unchanging base.  It's hard enough to 
>> schedule OS developement without having to depend on a 
>> language development schedule.
>
>Particularly if you're using a DEC C compiler!!
<snip>

Well, Jim had another disadvantage.  He was known as one
of _those_ TOPS10 guys.  He never did figure out how to
get through the snobbery of VAX/VMS folklore.

He did explain the bug and workaround to me, but I was pretty
sick then and don't remember the details at all.  I'm not
even sure exactly what Alpha work he did.  All I have is
a plaque that had been presented to him for his contribution.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5338 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Goodies in the PRM...
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 20:38:37 -0400
Organization: Sonoma Systems
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com>
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I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a device
called an MK-10. The design was done by Allen Kent, I think. Bob Clements
wrote the Music Player and I am not sure who wrote the compiler. We wrote
dozens of songs. The player just twiddled the low order few bits of AC0 and
the MK10 was connected to the LED drivers on the console. We could program 4
or 6 voices (one for each bit). The device had a pot for each voice so that
we could adjust them independently. We fed it into a stereo.

----------------------------------------------------
Larry Samberg       larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com
Sonoma Systems, Inc.           Marlborough, MA 01752
Phone: 508-481-2215 x342           Fax: 508-861-0261


----------
In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com>, Daniel
Seagraves <root@bony.umtec.com> wrote:


>
> Some stuff from the PRM - This is at Page 5-15, KI10 and KA10 System
> Operations:
>
>  "The margin value specified by bits 30-35 of the output word
>  is translated to a voltage in the range 0-10 volts by a D-A
>  converter, whose output is available at pin 2S0V2.  Running
>  margins requires a slowdown capacitor in the converter. But
>  turning off the margin enable switch cuts out the capacitor,
>  making the converter output suitable for external use, such
>  as operating audio equipment to play Bach or rock or Bacharach."
>
> How nice.  Music from your KI.  Did anyone ever do this?
> (Better still, since it's in the manual, was this supported?
>  Oh, and what's Bacharach?)
>
> Another one, from page F-2, on cleaning your KA:
>
>  "It is alright to use spray cleaner on exposed vertical
>  surfaces, but do not use it around switches, near intake
>  gratings, or near any other openings, because the "guck"
>  can cause severe problems if it gets inside the equipment.
>  The "alright" in this caution applies to the sheetmetal.
>  Whether the carcinogens that come out of aresol cans are
>  alright for your lungs is up to you to decide.  It has never
>  been shown that the presence or absence of fingermarks
>  or other stains has any effect whatsoever on the operation
>  of the system. And anyway, it's probably much healthier to
>  get a little exercise using an ordinary cleaner."
>
> This one's gonna get posted by our servers.  ^_^
> Who let this stuff get printed, anyway?  I thought the management
> types were supposed to remove all the humorous/useful stuff.
>
> Daniel Seagraves | I'm an International Clandestine Arms Dealer!
> "In the name of the moon, will you punish me?" - SMS #104
> "There is nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot." - Dilbert
> SailorMoon Into Eternity! | Usagi's Stormtroopers Local #42 | 36 BITS 4EVER!
> 


Article 5340 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!nuq-peer.news.verio.net!uunet!lax.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!world!mbg
From: mbg@world.std.com (Megan)
Subject: Re: Goodies in the PRM...
Message-ID: <FE2Loo.Fzt@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 03:58:00 GMT
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 45
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"Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com> writes:

>I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a device
>called an MK-10. The design was done by Allen Kent, I think. Bob Clements
>wrote the Music Player and I am not sure who wrote the compiler. We wrote
>dozens of songs. The player just twiddled the low order few bits of AC0 and
>the MK10 was connected to the LED drivers on the console. We could program 4
>or 6 voices (one for each bit). The device had a pot for each voice so that
>we could adjust them independently. We fed it into a stereo.

I remember reading about the MK10.  Back around 1984 or so, a couple
of friends and I also got some of the old music files (I think I still
have them) and a music player...

At the time, I had a pdp-11/10.  The TI Sound Generation Controller
had just come out, and I built a simple circuit to allow the -11/10
to drive it using a DR11C parallel interface.  I tubbed it the MK11-A
as a tip-o-the-hat to the MK10...

A friend of mine saw what I had done and developed something with a
little more guts (as well as probably being more correct as a design
than mine) which allowed control of three SGCs... A couple of us
built them to this design (which we dubbed the MK11-B) and another
friend wrote a series of programs for RT-11 -- one which compiled the
old music files, one which built patch libraries (for MIDI devices)
and a player.

Having some experience in reading music, I entered a number of other
songs which I then shared... One was Scott Joplin's 'Crush Collision Rag'.

I'm pretty sure I could find at least the old song files.  I think I
may still have some documentation for the song compiler input format.

					Megan Gentry
					Former RT-11 Developer

+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL   | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group |          (home):  mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation    | addresses need '@' in place of '!'  |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43   | URL:     http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | 
| Nashua, NH 03062               | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055                 |  required." - mbg                   |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+



Article 5343 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Goodies in the PRM...
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:12:35 -0400
Organization: Sonoma Systems
Lines: 38
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I beg your pardon Barb, but Chuck and I spent hundreds of hours with 
standalone time debugging Galaxy. We had to stop at 3AM when Jim and Tony
came in and took over the machines....   :)

----------------------------------------------------
Larry Samberg       larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com
Sonoma Systems, Inc.           Marlborough, MA 01752
Phone: 508-481-2215 x342           Fax: 508-861-0261


----------
In article <7la9bm$r3i$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:


> In article <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
>    "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com> wrote:
>
>>I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a
> device
>>called an MK-10. The design was done by Allen Kent, I think. Bob Clements
>>wrote the Music Player and I am not sure who wrote the compiler. We wrote
>>dozens of songs. The player just twiddled the low order few bits of AC0
> and
>>the MK10 was connected to the LED drivers on the console. We could program
> 4
>>or 6 voices (one for each bit). The device had a pot for each voice so
> that
>>we could adjust them independently. We fed it into a stereo.
>
> <snip>
>
> Is that what Sandy Libman ran on the KI when he was supposed
> to be running his scripts?  Hmmm...now that I think of it,
> you probably wouldn't know since you were a daytime person :-).
>
> /BAH
>
> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Goodies in the PRM...
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 99 10:55:05 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <7ld3q1$1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com>
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In article <7lc5fp$8ea$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
   "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com> wrote:

>I beg your pardon Barb, but Chuck and I spent hundreds of hours with 
>standalone time debugging Galaxy. We had to stop at 3AM when Jim and Tony
>came in and took over the machines....   :)

Ah, yes.  I'd forgotten about that; I was still sorta owned by
Maynard then and didn't get to watch the creation of the Galaxy.

I remember when Tony would come in at 3AM.  He used to really piss
me off because he would kick everybody off _all_ the machines.
I would come back an hour later to see what he was doing on the
machine I was using, and it would be just dead. grrrrr...
He was a person whose bite was worse than his bark until he
got his coffee infusion. :-) 

>
>----------------------------------------------------
>Larry Samberg       larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com
>Sonoma Systems, Inc.           Marlborough, MA 01752
>Phone: 508-481-2215 x342           Fax: 508-861-0261
>
>
>----------
>In article <7la9bm$r3i$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>> In article <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
>>    "Larry S. Samberg" <larry-samberg@sonoma-systems.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a
>> device
>>>called an MK-10. The design was done by Allen Kent, I think. Bob 
Clements
>>>wrote the Music Player and I am not sure who wrote the compiler. We 
wrote
>>>dozens of songs. The player just twiddled the low order few bits of AC0
>> and
>>>the MK10 was connected to the LED drivers on the console. We could 
program
>> 4
>>>or 6 voices (one for each bit). The device had a pot for each voice so
>> that
>>>we could adjust them independently. We fed it into a stereo.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> Is that what Sandy Libman ran on the KI when he was supposed
>> to be running his scripts?  Hmmm...now that I think of it,
>> you probably wouldn't know since you were a daytime person :-).
>>
>> /BAH
>>
>> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5352 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Goodies in the PRM...
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:43:19 -0400
Lines: 10
Message-ID: <377AD5C7.4E50CE58@MA.UltraNet.Com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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"Larry S. Samberg" wrote:
> 
> I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a device
> called an MK-10.  ...

"Music Kludge-10".  A friend dumped all available music to an audio cassette
shortly before KA-101 went away.  I don't know what's become of the tape.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


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From: "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906010905160.4092-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7l94j5$7nm$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <377AD5C7.4E50CE58@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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I still have the reel tape we made that night.

For those that don't realize, the MK-10 only really worked well when the
program could basically have the whole CPU, so it was not something to run
during normal timesharing service.

- NB

Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote in message
news:377AD5C7.4E50CE58@MA.UltraNet.Com...
> "Larry S. Samberg" wrote:
> >
> > I did something like this in 1972 on the KA-10 at Stevens. We built a
device
> > called an MK-10.  ...
>
> "Music Kludge-10".  A friend dumped all available music to an audio
cassette
> shortly before KA-101 went away.  I don't know what's become of the tape.
> /AHM
> --
> Alan Howard Martin AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com




Article 5356 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Reply-To: sarr@umich.edu
Organization: University of Michigan
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
From: sarr@stick.us.itd.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson)
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <PtMe3.1014$ce5.19829@news.itd.umich.edu>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 16:14:39 GMT
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In article <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906301223560.29451-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>,
Mark Crispin  <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>
>I spent 15 years programming PDP-10 assembly language, and a subsequent 11
>years programming in C.  I would not think of writing in assembly language
>on an Alpha, Pentium, etc.  On the other hand, to this day, I can still
>write a PDP-10 program better in assembly language than in C.

Having ported Ingres (the version that came with BSD 4.1 [?], not the
commercial version) to TOPS-10, the one thing that really bit me was that
there was no good choice for representing (char *) on the 10.  The compiler
I was using stored them as a byte count from 0, which made pointer arithmetic
easy but made dereferencing a pointer, or casting it to a non char pointer,
expensive.  Storing them as byte pointers would have done the opposite.

Of course this was aggravated by the tendency of the original Ingres crew to
declare _all_ pointers as char *.

-- 
--------
Sarr Blumson                    sarr@umich.edu
voice: +1 734 764 0253          home: +1 734 665 9591
ITD, University of Michigan     http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/


Article 5350 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 1 Jul 1999 01:37:26 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University
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Stephen H. Westin (westin*nospam@graphics.cornell.edu) wrote:

I did a fair amount of BLISS-10 code (mainly for recreational purposes) as
well as lots of MACRO-10. At the time the learning curve of BLISS was quite
high (in terms of getting the compiler to generate the code that I wanted
rather than its view) but in the end I was reasonably happy with the
two larger projects I wrote - a user mode version of SYSDPY and a translation
of a BCPL program used to produce cross reference listings of BCPL programs.
The reason for the second program was a project to compare "systems 
programming" languages on the DECsystem-10.

: Anyway, it seems that C succeeded in a big way where BLISS failed. I
: can think of a couple of reasons for that, like the proprietary
: single-vendor nature of BLISS, and that it has largely succeeded on
: 16/32/64-bit byte oriented machines that probably ease the porting
: load.

Anyone who has tried to port c programs from either 16bit systems to 32bits
or 32bits to 64bits will find that many programmers make assumptions about
the size of pointers and integers that aren't true....
--
 Huw Davies                      | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
 Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550  Fax: +61 3 9479 1999
 La Trobe University             | "If God had wanted soccer to be played
 Melbourne Australia 3083        | in the air, the sky would be green" 


Article 5385 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: pfarrell@netcom.com (Pat Farrell)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 03:43:06 GMT
Organization: Netcom
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <7lui3e$123@dfw-ixnews21.ix.netcom.com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>Sometimes I wonder if I was the only person who started a 
>>project in Bliss-36 and was happy.
>Probably :-) none of my guys were happy.  What kind of project was it?

We actually did two.

First, we wrote a DBMS package.
Specifically because System 1022 had a hard stop limit of 18-bits of
records per database. We needed more than that, and we ended up
writing our own. Ended up with 700,000 records filling an RP07.
Wow, that was huge back then.

The second was a client/server application that used DEC-Pro350
(PDP-11) "personal computers" as intellegent programmable terminals
for our KLs. We also had a version that used a Vaxen or multi-user
PDP-11 as an intellegent concentrator for Vt100s. This was 
before "decnet phase 3" made interoperability and/or 
internetworking between DEC product lines feasible :-)

>I more curious about the level of the software, i.e., OS
>level, user mode level, application level, etc. rather than
>the specs of the project.

Gee, That was along time ago, so the specifics are fuzzy.
We were a Tops-20 source site, running the "current" monitors.
We jumped on whatever Tops-20 first had user mode extended
addressing. The hardware were six KL, all of which
ended up as B models, usually 2060s or 2065s.

The code was used as tools for applications, most of which
were written in Cobol with System 1022 as the datastore.

I'm not sure what else you're currious about. Let me know,
and if I remember...

>One of the problems of any flavor of the blisses on the -10
>is that a build almost required a stand-alone -10 that
>didn't crash for 12 hours (that was not our environment).

Funny, We didn't see this problem. Of course, we weren't building
a monitor. But we constantly used the usual edit/compile/debug cycle,
and it was effective for Bliss-36. 

For the crossported stuff, where we had to run Bliss-16 on the KL,
the download and TKB crud from PDP-11 land added tons of time
to the cycle. But I think the inept PDP-11 debugging tools cost
as much as the compilers themselves.

I'm not claiming Bliss-36 was as fast as Macro-20, but it was not
a problem for us.

We didn't run our KLs are grossly overloaded as education sites.
We had users paying for the machines, and they complained about
performance when we had 50 or so users simultaneously.

Pat

Pat Farrell                           pfarrell@netcom.com
PGP key on the usual servers



Article 5387 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d14
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Music of the -10s (and other systems)
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 99 11:52:52 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <7lvls0$ea8$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <cLIf3.2173$el4.87667@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7lkpme$n03$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>>BTW, does there still exist anywhere the text of KO's (in)famous Teddy 
>>Bear 
>>>memo?
>>>
>>Now that tiggles a bit of my memory, but, for the life of me, I
>>can't remember what that was.  Please put this person out
>>of misery and explain, John :-).
>
>Back in the early/mid '60s, there was a Teddy Bear prominently featured in 
>the DEC booth at every trade show. I guess it was to symbolize the "cute 
and 
>fuzzy" nature of DEC as opposed to Big Blue and the seven dwarves. After 
one 
>such show, KO wrote an evaluation of the booth. He was particularly 
critical 
>of the appearance of the bear, and wanted to make sure that someone took 
>responsibility for brushing his fur and making sure his bow-tie (which I 
>seem to recall was plaid) was freshly pressed before each show. Soon 
>thereafter the bear disappeared into the annals of DEC history. 
>

Thanks.  Jim was always chuckling about the bronzed tennis
shoes that [now I can't remember the guy's name] had in his
office.  I think he was a product manager around the time
you showed up smelling of smoke and looking very, very, very
tired.  

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5409 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 10:51:36 -0400
Lines: 8
Message-ID: <37875DF8.E1AC8E3F@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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"Richard M. Alderson III" wrote:

> ...  Bliss-36 cost *lots* of money when it came out as a product; ...

$13,800.00, as I recall.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5407 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 10:45:23 -0400
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
>    "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com> wrote:
...
> >KL1026 was the TOPS-10 development system and it had about
> >one oddball device of everything on it,
> >whole bunches of all kinds of disks, including a big box of
> >Ampex memory and two strings of TU70/72/73s.
> 
> We had to have all those oddball devices because we supported
> them.  If we supported a piece of hardware, it was a requirement
> that we be able to test the software and use them for debugging.
> As a matter of fact, we had to keep a 7-track tape drive on
> the end of one of those TU70 strings because there was still
> a customer who ordered 7-track tapes.  (It would have been
> cheaper just to give them a 9-track but managers didn't seem
> to know how to count back then.)  ...

The 1978 contract for one KL that replaced a KA stipulated that a bunch of the
KA's peripherals would be supported for 5 years.

Then 7-track desupport was announced at DECUS.

Then DEC was reminded of the site's 7-track.

I suspect that something like a modern 9-track was supplied in exchange.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5424 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d1
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: SA10 front panel)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 99 09:40:30 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <7mck1c$k1p$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <p98mccabe-2905990857350001@r-185.197.alltel.net> <7ioqkn$l3v$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7iq0aa$di0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net><7ir9fp$hbc$5@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37875CD4.15305153@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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In article <37875CD4.15305153@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> Oh, yeah.  One of the things that JMF threw in (since they were
>> going to touch just about everything anyway) was to get rid
>> of all those "pseudo-supported" feature test switches and the
>> really, really, really ancient hardware support.
>
>It just wasn't the same without FTDISK and FTLOGIN.

Chuckle.  I remember Jim and Tony doing quite a bit of
head scratching trying to imagine a customer situation
where those were still useful.  Once they got over the hump
of eliminating those (I suspect TW remembered needing them),
the rest was pretty easy.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5430 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.voicenet.com!news3.voicenet.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7i4nm3$msg$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <qh90ahfuo8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <37471D12.98C2F010@stoneweb.com> <FC9uux.Hzo@world.std.com> <7ie8c8$ifc$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Lines: 42
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NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.71.88.147
X-Trace: news3.voicenet.com 931831037 209.71.88.147 (Mon, 12 Jul 1999 21:57:17 EDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 21:57:17 EDT
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5430

No, that old 7-track TU10 (IIRC) was supported for 5 years.  After all, it
would have been quite hard to read the old 7-track tapes people had laying
around on a 9-track drive.  Someone even dug up a few cans of KL blue spray
paint to make the door on the controller rack match the new equipment.

NB

Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote in message
news:37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com...
> jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > In article <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
> >    "Gregory A. Scott" <gscott@scott.com> wrote:
> ...
> > >KL1026 was the TOPS-10 development system and it had about
> > >one oddball device of everything on it,
> > >whole bunches of all kinds of disks, including a big box of
> > >Ampex memory and two strings of TU70/72/73s.
> >
> > We had to have all those oddball devices because we supported
> > them.  If we supported a piece of hardware, it was a requirement
> > that we be able to test the software and use them for debugging.
> > As a matter of fact, we had to keep a 7-track tape drive on
> > the end of one of those TU70 strings because there was still
> > a customer who ordered 7-track tapes.  (It would have been
> > cheaper just to give them a 9-track but managers didn't seem
> > to know how to count back then.)  ...
>
> The 1978 contract for one KL that replaced a KA stipulated that a bunch of
the
> KA's peripherals would be supported for 5 years.
>
> Then 7-track desupport was announced at DECUS.
>
> Then DEC was reminded of the site's 7-track.
>
> I suspect that something like a modern 9-track was supplied in exchange.
> /AHM
> --
> Alan Howard Martin AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com




Article 5433 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: SA10 front panel)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 22:57:24 -0400
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <378AAB14.CF3F6D67@MA.UltraNet.Com>
References: <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <p98mccabe-2905990857350001@r-185.197.alltel.net> <7ioqkn$l3v$1@hirame.wwa.com> <7iq0aa$di0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net><7ir9fp$hbc$5@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37875CD4.15305153@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mck1c$k1p$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <37875CD4.15305153@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>    "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
> >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> >>
> >> Oh, yeah.  One of the things that JMF threw in (since they were
> >> going to touch just about everything anyway) was to get rid
> >> of all those "pseudo-supported" feature test switches and the
> >> really, really, really ancient hardware support.
> >
> >It just wasn't the same without FTDISK and FTLOGIN.
> 
> Chuckle.  I remember Jim and Tony doing quite a bit of
> head scratching trying to imagine a customer situation
> where those were still useful.  Once they got over the hump
> of eliminating those (I suspect TW remembered needing them),
> the rest was pretty easy.

I wish we'd desupported non-random-access .REL input to LINK to get
relocatable psects.  Setting psect origins by hand because we couldn't read
the .REL twice was ridiculous.  I think desupporting overlays would have made
LINK a lot simpler, too.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5436 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!netnews.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.itd.umich.edu!sarr
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Desupporting (was Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: SA10 front panel))
References: <7igtp6$9tm$1@hirame.wwa.com> <37875CD4.15305153@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mck1c$k1p$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <378AAB14.CF3F6D67@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Reply-To: sarr@umich.edu
Organization: University of Michigan
From: sarr@stick.us.itd.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson)
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <3EKi3.242$nB.33061@news.itd.umich.edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 17:25:19 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 141.211.165.85
X-Trace: news.itd.umich.edu 931886719 141.211.165.85 (Tue, 13 Jul 1999 13:25:19 EDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 13:25:19 EDT
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In article <378AAB14.CF3F6D67@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>
>I wish we'd desupported non-random-access .REL input to LINK to get
>relocatable psects.  Setting psect origins by hand because we couldn't read
>the .REL twice was ridiculous.  I think desupporting overlays would have made
>LINK a lot simpler, too.

But customers (ie ADP) continued to charge running programs by memory size
long after it stopped making any sense, so people _used_ overlays all over the
place. Killing actual performance, of course.

-- 
--------
Sarr Blumson                    sarr@umich.edu
voice: +1 734 764 0253          home: +1 734 665 9591
ITD, University of Michigan     http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/


Article 5446 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d6
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 99 09:51:51 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <12xi3.381$x4.47995@news3.voicenet.com> <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5446

In article <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com>,
   inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote:
>In article <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>>Nick Bush wrote:
>>> 
>>> No, that old 7-track TU10 (IIRC) was supported for 5 years.  After all, 
it
>>> would have been quite hard to read the old 7-track tapes people had 
laying
>>> around on a 9-track drive.  ...
>>
>>Agreed; I just couldn't picture the TU10 in the KL room.
>
>The Colorado School of Mines had a TU70, TU71 and three TU72s in the KL
>room.  The 7-track drive and the low-density (200/556/800 bpi) 9-track
>drive were there to read all the old stuff.  Our TU10 and TU20 went
>when the KA went.

Chuckle.  I don't know anybody who wouldn't have dumped a
TU10 and TU20 for TU7x.  As much as I hated magtape, TU7x
were the best in the business.

If there is anybody nostalgic for TU10s, I'd really like
to know about them so I can study them as a very strange 
animal :-).

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5444 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d6
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 99 09:45:55 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 101
Message-ID: <7mht44$ns2$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> <7kigdi$49t$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37890629.71FB82A6@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mcjpe$k1p$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <378AA69B.D8772FC0@MA.UltraNet.Com>
X-Trace: Q2HLqKPxNlJpN8SzF2YtRO8p+ffOPaZIVCjdDKRo7d8=
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NNTP-Posting-Date: 14 Jul 1999 11:43:00 GMT
X-Newsreader:  News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5444

In article <378AA69B.D8772FC0@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> In article <37890629.71FB82A6@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>>    "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>> >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> >>
>> >> In article <7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>,
>> >>    bugs@freebsd.netcom.com (Mark Hittinger) wrote:
>> >....
>> >> >Bliss-11 may have been Decus, but a source license
>> >> >for Bliss-32 was probably a lot harder to get :-).  Bliss-10 came 
with
>> >> >source code in the tradition of 10-ness and was not Decus.
>> >>
>> >> I don't think we shipped the sources.   I'd have to look at the
>> >> SPDs to verify this.  But I don't think there was an SPD for
>> >> BLISS-10, hence the customer couldn't "order" it.
>> >
>> >BLISS-10 sources were definitely available to the field, although it
>> probably
>> >was only supported for building supported products written in BLISS-10.
>> 
>> Alan, think.  One didn't need BLISS-10 sources in order to build
>> products written in BLISS-10.
>
>0.  I entered a couple of dozen DCE edits to Fortran-10 from the Software
>Dispatch while I was in the field.

DCE?  What's that?  Patches to Fortran-10 are not patches to
Bliss.

>
>1.  BLISS-10 sources were definitely available to the field.

I don't remember Magee ever making a Bliss source tape or a 
build of Bliss.  If it got to customers, it wasn't through
the usual channels.
>
>2.  BLISS-10 was probably only supported to build supported products 
written
>in BLISS-10.

Right.  How about shortening your right margin?

>  (Just like PA1050 would only accept bugs encountered while
>running supported compatibility mode cusps).  

>However by 1981, BLISS-10 bugs
>would probably have been dumped in the Fortran group's lap, 

Nope.  There was an official Bliss maintainer but he worked
closely with the Fortran group.

>and we would have
>just issued a permanent restriction w/workaround.  It was a non-goal to 
touch
>a hair on BLISS-10's head.

That's because it was impossible to do a field test and distribution.
Another indicator that the sources were not available.  TW didn't
make that monitor edit so that Bliss could still do illegal things
for nothing.
>
>I once met the last BLISS-10 maintainer, but I can't remember his name...

What do mean once met.  He was at the Fortran meetings quite often.
Eric Magrath.

>
>
>> >  I
>> >can't remember if the BLISS-10 sources initially shipped just with
>> FORTRAN-10
>> >or what.
>> 
>> The _Bliss_ sources weren't shipped on the tape; just the *.EXEs
>> and (I can't remember this) I suspect LIBs, etc.  ...
>
>Quite plausible.  I don't remember how the BLISS-10 sources were available 
to
>the field.

It was probably under the table.

>
>
>>... The Fortran
>> tape was a mess since it also insisted on shipping RELs, UNVs and
>> EXEs that belonged on the CUSP tape.  One of my knockdowns with
>> Sara was to get that stuff off all the language tapes so that
>> there would no longer be any version skews of supported products.
>
>Might have been before my time.

Yup.  

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5449 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!paloalto-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!sniff.shr.dec.com!chuck.enet.dec.com!otoole
From: otoole@chuck.enet.dec.com (Chuck O'Toole)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: 14 Jul 1999 13:43:46 GMT
Organization: Compaq Computer Corporation, Shrewsbury MA.
Lines: 44
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <7mi46i$b2e$1@sniff.shr.dec.com>
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <7kh5pj$fe0@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> <7kigdi$49t$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <37890629.71FB82A6@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mcjpe$k1p$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <378AA69B.D8772FC0@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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In article <378AA69B.D8772FC0@MA.UltraNet.Com>, "Alan H. Martin"
<AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> writes:

  [snip...]

|>2.  BLISS-10 was probably only supported to build supported products
|>written
|>in BLISS-10.  (Just like PA1050 would only accept bugs encountered while
|>running supported compatibility mode cusps).  However by 1981, BLISS-10
|>bugs
|>would probably have been dumped in the Fortran group's lap, and we would
|>have
|>just issued a permanent restriction w/workaround.  It was a non-goal to
|>touch
|>a hair on BLISS-10's head.
|>
  [snip...]

"the horror...the horror..."  [Brando]

Ah, Bliss-10.  In late '75 I inherited MCS-10 (Message Control System
- DEC's answer to transaction processing at the time).  The majority
of the messaging logic was written in Bliss-10, about a 4 inch thick
listing on old 132 column fan fold printer paper.

After I finally got it to work (and ship!), with JMF's help of course,
a new version of Bliss-10 came out and when I compiled MCS with it, MCS
completely stopped working.  Some construct I was using stopped generating
the proper code.  Rather than re-qualify and test that much Bliss code, I
simply started shipping the older Bliss .EXE on the MCS tape.  Ruffled a
few feathers but it was the only way I was ever going to get off the MCS
project, I didn't want that to become my life's work.

That was my only encounter with Bliss, ever.  Scarred me for life.  I stuck
with assembly (-10, -11, VAX) until the mid 80's when I had to learn Pascal
(don't ask)
-- 

/cdo
-----
Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed are my own and
do not necessarily represent those of my employer,
loved ones, or passing acquaintances.


Article 5450 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail
From: inwap@best.com (Joe Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: SA10 front panel)
Date: 14 Jul 1999 14:55:16 -0700
Organization: Chez Inwap
Message-ID: <7mj104$7f$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7iq0aa$di0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ir9fp$hbc$ <qhwvw4ay0t.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>
Lines: 22
NNTP-Posting-Host: shell3.ba.best.com
X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 931989323 219 inwap@206.184.139.134
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5450

In article <qhwvw4ay0t.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
Eric Smith  <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>"Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> writes:
>> It just wasn't the same without FTDISK and FTLOGIN.
>
>What did those do?

If you defined FTLOGIN=0 and rebuilt the monitor, it eliminated the LOGIN
process.  You could simply walk up to any teletype, type Control-C, and
start working.

If you defined FTDISK=0 and rebuilt the monitor, it eliminated all the
disk drivers, making the monitor very very small.  In this case, you would
assign one of the DECtape drives as SYS: and run programs from DECtape.
(There was code in the monitor to test "is SYS: rewinding?" since nothing
else could be done until the DECtape I/O was complete.)
	-Joe

-- 
INWAP.COM is Joe Smith, Sally Smith and our cat Murdock.
  (The O'Hallorans and their cats moved to http://www.tyedye.org/ Nov-98.)
See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10, "ReBoot", "Shadow Raiders"/"War Planets"



The TU7x series were the best tape drives I ever worked with.  Enormously
better then the TU10's and TU20's. We had so much trouble with the TU20's on
the KA, that one of our standard practices upon receiving release tapes from
DEC was to make a copy before doing anything else.  More than once the TU20
would "eat" a tape on a rewind.

When we had our first VAX arrive with a TU45, we felt almost like we were
back in the bad old days of the TU20s.   And apparently lots of other -10
and -20 sites must have complained to DEC about the lack of good tape drives
for VMS, since we got a contract from DEC to develop the device driver for
the TU7x's for VMS - we had the first set of TU7x drives dual ported between
a DECsystem-10 (via a DX10) and a VAX (via a DX20).

- NB
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net...
> In article <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com>,
>    inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote:
> >In article <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
> >Alan H. Martin <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
> >>Nick Bush wrote:
> >>>
> >>> No, that old 7-track TU10 (IIRC) was supported for 5 years.  After
all,
> it
> >>> would have been quite hard to read the old 7-track tapes people had
> laying
> >>> around on a 9-track drive.  ...
> >>
> >>Agreed; I just couldn't picture the TU10 in the KL room.
> >
> >The Colorado School of Mines had a TU70, TU71 and three TU72s in the KL
> >room.  The 7-track drive and the low-density (200/556/800 bpi) 9-track
> >drive were there to read all the old stuff.  Our TU10 and TU20 went
> >when the KA went.
>
> Chuckle.  I don't know anybody who wouldn't have dumped a
> TU10 and TU20 for TU7x.  As much as I hated magtape, TU7x
> were the best in the business.
>
> If there is anybody nostalgic for TU10s, I'd really like
> to know about them so I can study them as a very strange
> animal :-).
>
> /BAH
>
>
> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.




Article 5464 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 99 08:42:05 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 33
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In article <7mketi$82j$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>In article <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>,
>   "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org> wrote:
>>The TU7x series were the best tape drives I ever worked with.  Enormously
>>better then the TU10's and TU20's. We had so much trouble with the TU20's 
>on
>>the KA, that one of our standard practices upon receiving release tapes 
>from
>>DEC was to make a copy before doing anything else.  More than once the 
>TU20
>>would "eat" a tape on a rewind.
>>
>>When we had our first VAX arrive with a TU45, we felt almost like we were
>>back in the bad old days of the TU20s.   And apparently lots of other -10
>>and -20 sites must have complained to DEC about the lack of good tape 
>drives
>>for VMS, since we got a contract from DEC to develop the device driver 
for
>>the TU7x's for VMS - we had the first set of TU7x drives dual ported 
>between
>>a DECsystem-10 (via a DX10) and a VAX (via a DX20).
><snip>
>
>And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart of why DEC failed.

It occurred to me yesterday that this comment could have been
misunderstood.  It was not a commentary on Mr. Bush's ability
to do the work.  It was a commentary of DEC not using its own
experienced personnel.  My apologies, Nick.  

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5470 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail
From: inwap@best.com (Joe Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
Date: 17 Jul 1999 20:54:31 -0700
Organization: Chez Inwap
Message-ID: <7mrj5n$hrj$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>
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In article <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>,
Nick Bush <Bush@A.C.M.org> wrote:
>The TU7x series were the best tape drives I ever worked with.

Thanks to Storage Technology Corporation in Louisville, Colorado.
They made the best IBM-compatible tape drives around.  Very popular
at sites with IBM System/370 and compatible processors

DEC was smart enough to rebrand these tape drives with the Digital logo
and add a working MASSbus to bus-and-tag adapter.
	-Joe
-- 
INWAP.COM is Joe Smith, Sally Smith and our cat Murdock.
  (The O'Hallorans and their cats moved to http://www.tyedye.org/ Nov-98.)
See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10, "ReBoot", "Shadow Raiders"/"War Planets"


Article 5465 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Mark H. Wood" <mhwood@haystack.Bogusnet.IN.US>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 13:53:27 GMT
Organization: La Petite Hackerie
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <FF0p93.EzJ@Ameritech.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <12xi3.381$x4.47995@news3.voicenet.com> <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> Chuckle.  I don't know anybody who wouldn't have dumped a
> TU10 and TU20 for TU7x.  As much as I hated magtape, TU7x
> were the best in the business.

I was our resident tape zealot at IUPUI (wherever that is), and while
I thought the TU78 was a great leap forward from what we had before*,
those IBM 3420 drives just a few steps away were the best transports I
ever saw -- they *never* failed to load, they *never* lost vacuum,
they ran like the wind, and the data were handled quite reliably too.
While using the TU78s I learned a lot of operational tricks you'll
never find in any manual, just to get the work done.

-----------------
* TU45, I think
-- 
-- 
Mark H. Wood, radical centrist     OpenPGP ID 876A8B75     mhwood@ameritech.net
Why do we always draw organization charts upside down?


Article 5469 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.voicenet.com!news2.voicenet.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <12xi3.381$x4.47995@news3.voicenet.com> <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <FF0p93.EzJ@Ameritech.net>
Subject: Re: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...)
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For TU7x, you need to read TU70/71/72, NOT TU77 or TU78.  TU70/71/72 were
actually completely IBM compatible tape drives made by Storage Tech.  The
controller connected to IBM Tag&Bus cables.  DEC built a data
channel/controller called a DX10 (and later a DX20) which interfaced to the
STC controller via Tag&Bus on one side and DEC busses on the other:  the
DX10 connected to the -10's IO & Memory busses; the DX20 was a Massbus
connection.

The TU70/71/72 drives were high-quality, high-duty cycle tape drives that
worked better than any other tape drives DEC ever sold.

- NB

Mark H. Wood <mhwood@haystack.Bogusnet.IN.US> wrote in message
news:FF0p93.EzJ@Ameritech.net...
> jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> > Chuckle.  I don't know anybody who wouldn't have dumped a
> > TU10 and TU20 for TU7x.  As much as I hated magtape, TU7x
> > were the best in the business.
>
> I was our resident tape zealot at IUPUI (wherever that is), and while
> I thought the TU78 was a great leap forward from what we had before*,
> those IBM 3420 drives just a few steps away were the best transports I
> ever saw -- they *never* failed to load, they *never* lost vacuum,
> they ran like the wind, and the data were handled quite reliably too.
> While using the TU78s I learned a lot of operational tricks you'll
> never find in any manual, just to get the work done.
>
> -----------------
> * TU45, I think
> --
> --
> Mark H. Wood, radical centrist     OpenPGP ID 876A8B75
mhwood@ameritech.net
> Why do we always draw organization charts upside down?




Article 5453 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP (was Re: SA10 front panel)
References: <7ii4hd$ef0$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7ijnqt$ksi$1@hirame.wwa.com>
     <7imm1u$ieq$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7iof1c$t08$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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From: werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme)
Lines: 45
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Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 02:05:47 GMT
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5453

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>In article <qhwvw4ay0t.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
>   Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>>"Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> writes:
>>> It just wasn't the same without FTDISK and FTLOGIN.
>>
>>What did those do?

>Once upon a time, in the olden days, a big system had 48K 
>of core.  Some data bases were larger.  One could build
>a monitor that was so small that one could use DECtape
>instead of disk and didn't reserve job slots, taking up
>valuable words of memory.

I got my start on DEC and PDP-10s at Carnegie-Mellon on a 4N50 system.
(That was before the name DECsystem10 or whatever came about.)  Five
DECtapes, 48 Kw of flaky core.  It supported two people quite well.
One sys tape, each user used two DECtapes, alternately as input and output.
Of course, with your source file moving back and forth between the two
tapes, you had to keep it's last location in mind!

I was hired as an operator in 1969 (I had just started my sophomore year).
I remember being intrigued that _one_ program sometimes started without
having to read the SYS tape - TECO.  It had a HISEG file but no LOSEG, and
if the hiseg was still in core, it started immediately.  Pretty impressive!

I had spent some time on the IBM 360/67 using both OS/360 and TSS/360.
One nice thing about the -10 was the lack of frivolous user accessible
configuration stuff.  If you were using the machine, you had to be
doing something useful.  On TSS you could tweak your keyboard map and
do lotsa other stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with productivity.
Sort of like setting Windows' background and screen saver today.

And there's even a BLISS link - compiling BLISS took all 39 K of memory
that was available, so we had to logout everyone.  I broke the build one
day by innocently doing a SYSTAT, forgetting that left me logged in with
SYSTAT's core image still around.

Eventually we got some RM10B (Bryant drums), more memory, RP02 disks,
etc.
--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5461 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: 18-bit support on HSCxx?
Date: 16 Jul 1999 00:15:00 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.99Jul15171501@netcom16.netcom.com>
References: <qhn1wx67oq.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
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NNTP-Posting-User: alderson
In-reply-to: Eric Smith's message of 15 Jul 1999 12:20:53 -0700
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5461

In article <qhn1wx67oq.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
<eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> writes:

>Do any of the HSCxx boxes newer than the HSC50 support 18-bit mode
>(576-byte sectors)?

No.  I asked this question when the HSC70 was first announced, and the reply
was a slightly stunned "Why would anyone want that?"

>Do the disk drives attached to the HSC have to have special support for the
>576-byte sectors, or does the HSC handle blocking and deblocking to a more
>common sector size?

The RA81 HDAs were factory-formatted to 576.  No other drives--uh, check that,
no other Winchester-technology drives--were available that way.

>I've got an opportunity to pick up some HSCs and an SC cheap, but I don't want
>them unless there's some possiblity that they can be used on a KL10 system.
>Of course, I'll also have to find a CI20 to make the stuff useful.

Unless they're HSC50's, don't bother for a KL.
--
Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 5463 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Message-ID: <378EC562.63726174@s054.aone.net.au>
From: "Mark@Ace" <gcsnospam@s054.aone.net.au>
Reply-To: gcsnospam@s054.aone.net.au
Organization: Garetech Computer Solutions
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
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X-Trace: ozemail.com.au 932103405 203.12.186.136 (Fri, 16 Jul 1999 15:36:45 EST)
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Hi Eric,
    There probably is no physical reason the later HSC can't do the job ,
but the CRONIC support for it was only in HSC50 and only
up to what I would call a old version of CRONIC. I think it says so in the
CRONIC release notes when it was removed. I can only find
my doco for later HSC's and you probably find you need certain rev requester
boards. If I dig it up I'll post it. Any one else have this
stuff and can reply ?

        Cheers
                Mark :)



Eric Smith wrote:

> Do any of the HSCxx boxes newer than the HSC50 support 18-bit mode
> (576-byte sectors)?
>
> Do the disk drives attached to the HSC have to have special support
> for the 576-byte sectors, or does the HSC handle blocking and deblocking
> to a more common sector size?
>
> I've got an opportunity to pick up some HSCs and an SC cheap, but I don't
> want them unless there's some possiblity that they can be used on a
> KL10 system.  Of course, I'll also have to find a CI20 to make the stuff
> useful.



Article 5473 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Mark H. Wood" <mhwood@haystack.Bogusnet.IN.US>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 14:13:47 GMT
Organization: La Petite Hackerie
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <FF0q6z.F2z@Ameritech.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <12xi3.381$x4.47995@news3.voicenet.com> <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com> <7mketi$82j$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7mn250$f68$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> In article <7mketi$82j$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>In article <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>,
>>   "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org> wrote:
[snip]
>>>When we had our first VAX arrive with a TU45, we felt almost like we were
>>>back in the bad old days of the TU20s.   And apparently lots of other -10
>>>and -20 sites must have complained to DEC about the lack of good tape 
>>drives
>>>for VMS, since we got a contract from DEC to develop the device driver 
> for
>>>the TU7x's for VMS - we had the first set of TU7x drives dual ported 
>>between
>>>a DECsystem-10 (via a DX10) and a VAX (via a DX20).
>><snip>
>>
>>And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart of why DEC failed.

> It occurred to me yesterday that this comment could have been
> misunderstood.  It was not a commentary on Mr. Bush's ability
> to do the work.  It was a commentary of DEC not using its own
> experienced personnel.  My apologies, Nick.  

I heard what you meant, if that helps.

What struck me about this is that DEC didn't use *anyone* to solve
this problem before customers felt it necessary to complain.
Apparently nobody understood that the TU7x were "real" tape drives and
the rest weren't, or that that was a real problem for shops used to
the kind of work that '10s did.  Someone should have realized that an
industrial-strength removable-storage product was a requirement in
order to be taken seriously in such shops, and made sure that DEC had
one ready to ship.  I know that DEC liked to have the customers lead
the way, and that's one thing I really appreciated in most cases, but
backup and offline storage are really too obvious to require much
leadership, no?
-- 
-- 
Mark H. Wood, radical centrist     OpenPGP ID 876A8B75     mhwood@ameritech.net
Why do we always draw organization charts upside down?


Article 5480 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d2
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 99 09:11:00 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <7mv105$52h$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <37875C83.1D992A8C@MA.UltraNet.Com> <12xi3.381$x4.47995@news3.voicenet.com> <378AA773.9C8BCCA8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com> <7mketi$82j$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7mn250$f68$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <FF0q6z.F2z@Ameritech.net>
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X-Newsreader:  News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5480

In article <FF0q6z.F2z@Ameritech.net>,
   "Mark H. Wood" <mhwood@haystack.Bogusnet.IN.US> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> In article <7mketi$82j$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>>In article <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>,
>>>   "Nick Bush" <Bush@A.C.M.org> wrote:
>[snip]
>>>>When we had our first VAX arrive with a TU45, we felt almost like we 
were
>>>>back in the bad old days of the TU20s.   And apparently lots of other 
-10
>>>>and -20 sites must have complained to DEC about the lack of good tape 
>>>drives
>>>>for VMS, since we got a contract from DEC to develop the device driver 
>> for
>>>>the TU7x's for VMS - we had the first set of TU7x drives dual ported 
>>>between
>>>>a DECsystem-10 (via a DX10) and a VAX (via a DX20).
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart of why DEC failed.
>
>> It occurred to me yesterday that this comment could have been
>> misunderstood.  It was not a commentary on Mr. Bush's ability
>> to do the work.  It was a commentary of DEC not using its own
>> experienced personnel.  My apologies, Nick.  
>
>I heard what you meant, if that helps.
>
>What struck me about this is that DEC didn't use *anyone* to solve
>this problem before customers felt it necessary to complain.
>Apparently nobody understood that the TU7x were "real" tape drives and
>the rest weren't, or that that was a real problem for shops used to
>the kind of work that '10s did.  Someone should have realized that an
>industrial-strength removable-storage product was a requirement in
>order to be taken seriously in such shops, and made sure that DEC had
>one ready to ship.  I know that DEC liked to have the customers lead
>the way, and that's one thing I really appreciated in most cases, but
>backup and offline storage are really too obvious to require much
>leadership, no?

All of this is explained by the fact that VMS people were 
allergic to anything that had to do with PDP-10s.  If the -10
types did something, the original VMS types would go out of
their way to NOT do it.  That's why DEC went down the tubes.
There was a major NIH syndrome up north.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5485 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <7mrj5n$hrj$1@shell3.ba.best.com>, inwap@best.com says...
>
>Thanks to Storage Technology Corporation in Louisville, Colorado.
>They made the best IBM-compatible tape drives around.  Very popular
>at sites with IBM System/370 and compatible processors
>
>DEC was smart enough to rebrand these tape drives with the Digital logo
>and add a working MASSbus to bus-and-tag adapter.

When I was young, foolish, and a bit impulsive, (and also responsible for MTA 
support in TOPS-10) I wrote a somewhat intemperate memo addressed to 
practically anyone who was anyone in 36-bit land. It was about the 
disreputable lack of serious tape products in the -10 product line. It ended 
with (if memory serves), "perhaps the best thing we can do for our customers 
who are serious about tape is give them STC's phone number."

I was told years later that this memo was the catalyst that got DEC talking to 
STC, resulting in the TU70s.

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5477 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: BLISS-10
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 10:14:57 -0400
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <3791E161.2D1D82FE@MA.UltraNet.Com>
References: <7kg08v$iht$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <37706667.3038342@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <Pine.NXT.4.20.9906222324400.20271-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> <3790AE07.5087C480@MA.UltraNet.Com> <7msaq4$mtr$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <3790AE07.5087C480@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>    "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
> >
> >....  (Note the irony: without BLISS-10 to implement FORTRAN-10, I
> >wonder whether there would ever have been an optimizing replacement for
> >F40.  Without an optimizing FORTRAN, there would have been a lot less
> >demand for KL's).
> 
> Why do you think that?

DEC invested money in replacing F40 with FORTRAN-10/20 because the
customers said it was necessary (just like those TU7x's).  The last I
heard, FORTRAN-10/20 had the highest PDP-10 market penetration of any
DEC layered product.

A product like FORTRAN-10/20 couldn't have been developed for nearly the
same cost in people, time and money without some implementation language
like BLISS-10.  What BLISS substitutes were already available on the -10
in the early 70's?
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5488 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <7n4a1k$d0u$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>In article <iXHk3.320$O2.15699@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
>   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>>When I was young, foolish, and a bit impulsive, (and also responsible for 
>MTA 
>>support in TOPS-10) I wrote a somewhat intemperate memo addressed to 
>>practically anyone who was anyone in 36-bit land. 
>>
>Jeez, it certainly took them long enough.  Jim had a chuckle
>because, one day, DEC was talking about a deal with STC in
>one end of the building (MRO) and talking about suing them
>in the other end of the building.

It should be said the the above referenced memo was written while we were 
still in Maynard.

>When the KL was first powered up, it blew the Marlboro
>plant's electric grid.  Is this true?  

I don't recall that this happened. I'm also trying to recall where the KL was 
first powered up, Maynard or Marlboro. I know a lot of the design and 
engineering took place on 5-5 in Maynard, but can't recall where the first 
prototype was built and tested. Anyone? RCC, if you're still lurking perhaps 
you remember.

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5496 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 99 09:19:34 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <zyLl3.125$XM5.3070@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7n6sp8$2l$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>>It should be said the the above referenced memo was written while we 
were 
>>>still in Maynard.
>>
>>Which was pre-1975.  But, if you wrote the memo, it was earlier than
>>that.  Wasn't it?  I don't remember seeing you when the move to
>>Marlboro happened.
>
>But then, Barb, aren't you always complaining about your memory? :-) 

Sigh!  Yup.  And the disease is making it worse in a very weird
way these days.

>I left 
>DEC in September, 1974; at which point we had been in Marlboro almost a 
year. 
>I probably wrote the memo in late 1972 or early 1973.

I don't remember moving the equipment to MRO that early; I always
thought it was '75 or so.  I do remember that the tape of the
20 vs. 10 trivia DECUS session showed that none of the panel
remembered either.  There was quite an argument :-).

Something that very few people know is how that equipment was moved
so quickly and successfully.  The guys in charge, Ed and Marty
(can't remember last names..Gillan and Vochel?) marked each piece
of equipment of all those systems with a "system color".  They
then plotted a unique path for each system to travel.  No one
door in either the Maynard or Marlboro plants had two systems
go through it.  So, if a box had, let's say, a blue color on it,
the blue path was taken from 5-5 out the blue door and into the
blue-marked trailer.  The blue trailer then was driven to the
blue door in Marlboro and the moving people took each blue
piece of equipment and followed the blue path to the blue
spot in the machine room.  

Knock down, transport and rebuilding the systems back up
to the point where they booted successfully took (I think)
less than 48 hours.  I do remember that TW didn't have an
interruption of his S/A time which was one of the criteria
that had to be met.

>
>>>>When the KL was first powered up, it blew the Marlboro
>>>>plant's electric grid.  Is this true?  
>>>
>>>I don't recall that this happened. I'm also trying to recall where the 
KL 
>>was 
>>>first powered up, Maynard or Marlboro. I know a lot of the design and 
>>>engineering took place on 5-5 in Maynard, but can't recall where the 
first 
>>>prototype was built and tested. Anyone? RCC, if you're still lurking 
>>perhaps 
>>>you remember.
>>>
>>
>>Or Jud; or Alan.  But I haven't anything about him for years.
>
>Pommer or Frantz?
>

They might remember, too.  I was thinking about Alan Kotok, though.
We certainly had a lot of Alans in our life back then :-).

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5497 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <7n9j2d$3ms$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>>But then, Barb, aren't you always complaining about your memory? :-) 
>
>Sigh!  Yup.  And the disease is making it worse in a very weird
>way these days.
>
>>I left 
>>DEC in September, 1974; at which point we had been in Marlboro almost a 
>year. 
>>I probably wrote the memo in late 1972 or early 1973.
>
>I don't remember moving the equipment to MRO that early; I always
>thought it was '75 or so.

We definitely moved to Marlboro in '73. I remember because DEC paid for each 
of the members of the Monitor Group to take a "business" trip after the 
successful completion of some release, the version number of which I can't 
recall. TW went to Australia, JMF to Europe, Lewine went to California (I 
think), and I went down south to race. I raced at Talladega and the Charlotte 
Motor Speedway on successive weekends in August 1974, travel courtesy of DEC. 
At that point we had been in Marlboro almost a year. When I got back from the 
trip I had a phone message which lead directly to my leaving DEC for First 
Data in September, 1974.

>>>>>When the KL was first powered up, it blew the Marlboro
>>>>>plant's electric grid.  Is this true?  
>>>>
>>>>I don't recall that this happened. I'm also trying to recall where the 
>KL 
>>>was 
>>>>first powered up, Maynard or Marlboro. I know a lot of the design and 
>>>>engineering took place on 5-5 in Maynard, but can't recall where the 
>first 
>>>>prototype was built and tested. Anyone? RCC, if you're still lurking 
>>>perhaps 
>>>>you remember.

RCC still lurks:


Hi, John,

1)  I had long left DEC when the KL was first turned on.  I left in
    January, 1972.  No KL-s around then.

2)  Everyone was impressed at how much power a KL used.  It was amazing
    that DEC had stayed with linear power regulators at that stage
    of power supply technology.  The power plug was REALLY impressive.

    But even so, a KL system couldn't have sucked much more than
    a few times the power of a KI system.  So it strikes me
    as very unlikely that it took out any of the power system.
    Surely Marlboro had lots of KI's plugged in.

    And specifically, no I never heard of that happening (though, like I
    said, I wasn't there).

/Rcc


-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5505 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d6
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Another good guy is gone
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 99 09:24:10 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <7nes2i$9dt$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <VEtm3.322$XM5.8029@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7nc8ca$d9o$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>I just got mail that Al Blackington died Thursday.  Terry McCutcheon
>>wrote the note.
>
>Too bad. Reminds me of how shocked and saddened I was when upon 
discovering 
>this newsgroup I also learned that TW, JMF, and PFC were gone.
>

Yes.  That generation of TOPS10 people are diminishing.  I only
knew Al to say hi to him after he began working for the Fortran
group in the 80s (or was it late 70s?).  What I do remember
was the time that I convinced TW to go to one of Reed's parties;
getting TW or JMF to go was harder than pulling a very cross lion's
tooth for some reason.  Al was there.  And TW and Al must have
spent 2 hours just setting and quietly talking.  That was good
for TW.  

For some strange reason, I don't remember him when I was
editing the monitor.  He must have been in the background.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5502 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Harris Newman <hsnewman@blkbox.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: MIMIC
Date: 24 Jul 1999 13:28:20 GMT
Organization: The Black Box Internet Access Houston TX 713-638-9983/409-638-1000
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try : http://www.digital.com/DTJN02/DTJN02HM.HTM#tab2

Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
> In article <7n7631$r64$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,  <hsnewman@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >Quoting from Maxwell M. Burnet and Robert M. Supnik:
> >(in their paper on Preserving Computing's Past: Restoration and
> >Simulation)

> Have you got a reference to that paper? Is it available on the Net?

> -- 
> Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
> ------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


Article 5507 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit)
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In article <7nf1it$30s$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>In article <9ztm3.321$XM5.8029@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
>   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>>In article <7nc83i$anu$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>>
>>>>We definitely moved to Marlboro in '73. I remember because DEC paid for 
>>>each 
>>>>of the members of the Monitor Group to take a "business" trip after the 
>>>>successful completion of some release, the version number of which I 
>can't 
>>>>recall. TW went to Australia, JMF to Europe, Lewine went to California 
>(I 
>>>>think), and I went down south to race. I raced at Talladega and the 
>>>Charlotte 
>>>>Motor Speedway on successive weekends in August 1974, travel courtesy of 
>>>DEC. 
>>>
>>>Well, JMF's trip to Europe happened at the same time Nixon resigned.
>>>He had a great story about that since he was in the middle of Italy
>>>during their vacation month and couldn't get anybody to translate
>>>the paper for him.
>>
>>Exactly; I watched Nixon's resignation speach from my room at the 
>Downtowner 
>>Motel in Anniston, Alabama. We had practice and qualifying the next day at 
>>Talladega.
>>
>And you guys were in Marlboro then.

Absolutely!

>Hmmm. everybody was wrong except you :-).

Story of my life. :-)

And I think the Monitor release we were rewarded for was 5.07/6.01. This 
is because I recall the work I did on DAEMON to make DUMP and DCORE work with 
VM. I debugged that stuff in the machine room on the second floor at Marlboro. 
Wasn't that the first release with VM support?

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5509 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <7nhipn$gf8$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>In article <KJVm3.406$XM5.10979@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
>   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>>
>>And I think the Monitor release we were rewarded for was 5.07/6.01. This 
>>is because I recall the work I did on DAEMON to make DUMP and DCORE work 
>with 
>>VM. I debugged that stuff in the machine room on the second floor at 
>Marlboro. 
>>Wasn't that the first release with VM support?
>>
>Yup.  The 6 in version number was the VM indicator.  Did Cliff
>Romash take over the DAEMON work from you?  I do remember he
>was doing a lot of DAEMON stuff but I don't remember what it
>was (boy, do I miss my Black packs...a simple TECO inquiry 
>would answer most of these questions).

I remember Cliff, but I don't recall who took over DAEMON after the 6.01 work.

> Was 5.06 the one with a big disaster in it?

I recall 5.05 wasn't anything to write home about, but I don't recall a big 
disaster in 5.06. In fact I get a "warm and fuzzy" contemplating the number 
5.06.

> Who was the -10 supervisor then?

Good question. PFC was running all of TOPS-10 programming during the time I 
worked in Marlboro. He tried a brief experiment by hiring an outside guy to 
manage the Monitor Group. I can't even remember his name, but he had no 
previous -10 experience at all, and while a nice enough guy wasn't very 
effective. PFC then promoted another guy to run the Monitor Group, yet another 
name I can't remember. I do recall that he was about my height, dark 
complected, and had an annoying habit of invading people's (or at least my) 
personal space. He'd stand with his face about a foot from your's to talk to 
you. I had always treated him with the utmost contempt (even before his 
ascention) and complained bitterly to PFC about having to report to him, so 
Peter made a special deal and I got to report to someone else. Yet another 
name I can't recall. On further reflection, could the personal space invader's 
name have been Corbin?

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5514 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d12
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 99 09:12:12 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <FFJw6v.IJI@world.std.com>,
   bdc@world.std.com (Brian Chase) wrote:
>In article <KJVm3.406$XM5.10979@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
>John Everett <jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com> wrote:
>
>>And I think the Monitor release we were rewarded for was 5.07/6.01. This 
>>is because I recall the work I did on DAEMON to make DUMP and DCORE work 
with 
>>VM. I debugged that stuff in the machine room on the second floor at 
Marlboro. 
>>Wasn't that the first release with VM support?
>
>Whup... quick tangent/divergence here.  This is coming from someone who
>knows nothing about the operating systems which ran on the PDP-10 line,
>but what did DAEMON do?  I'm sort of curious from the standpoint of the
>history of the term "daemon".  The jargon file entry gives some insight
>into the term, but not really in relation to TOPS.

DAEMON was considered the swappable part of the monitor.

There was also the file daemon (FILDAE) which extended file
protections and the accounting daemon (ACTDAE) which replaced
those gawdawful FACT files.

The reason they were called daemons was that they were programs
that invisibly worked in the background to do system functions.
The user address space wasnt' bothered.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5519 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 
 questions...))
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 00:24:56 -0400
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <379FD798.A264179E@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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Brian Chase wrote:

> Whup... quick tangent/divergence here.  This is coming from someone who
> knows nothing about the operating systems which ran on the PDP-10 line,
> but what did DAEMON do?  ...

"
	SUBTTL	DAEMON CALLS

;DAEMON UUO FUNCTIONS

.DCORE==1	;(OBSOLETE)
.CLOCK==2	;ENTER A CLOCK REQUEST
.FACT==3	;MAKE A FACT FILE ENTRY
.DMQUE==4	;(UNIMPLEMENTED)
.DMERR==5	;ERROR LOGGING
.DMCTL==6	;(UNIMPLEMENTED)
"

I thought DAEMON core dump files were cool, at least potentially,
because they had fields for DDBs (device data blocks) - open file data
from the O/S which wasn't directly accessible through other means.

The "clock request" function made DAEMON send a WAKE back at you n
seconds later, I guess for potentially large n.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5518 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Sheila&bob <shsrms@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 
 questions...))
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 21:04:20 -0400
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John Everett wrote:
> 
> In article <7n4a1k$d0u$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
> >
> >In article <iXHk3.320$O2.15699@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
> >   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
> >>When I was young, foolish, and a bit impulsive, (and also responsible for
> >MTA
> >>support in TOPS-10) I wrote a somewhat intemperate memo addressed to
> >>practically anyone who was anyone in 36-bit land.
> >>
> >Jeez, it certainly took them long enough.  Jim had a chuckle
> >because, one day, DEC was talking about a deal with STC in
> >one end of the building (MRO) and talking about suing them
> >in the other end of the building.
> 
> It should be said the the above referenced memo was written while we were
> still in Maynard.
> 
> >When the KL was first powered up, it blew the Marlboro
> >plant's electric grid.  Is this true?
> 
> I don't recall that this happened. I'm also trying to recall where the KL was
> first powered up, Maynard or Marlboro. I know a lot of the design and
> engineering took place on 5-5 in Maynard, but can't recall where the first
> prototype was built and tested. Anyone? RCC, if you're still lurking perhaps
> you remember.

The first KLs were powered up in building 1.  In Maynard.
Yes the lights dimmed.  Boston Edison did come out and add some
capability.
DEC did have a bit to do with the second exchange being added to
maynard, the new ESS, and power upgrades!!
bob

> 
> --
> jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett


Article 5524 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10
 questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <7npckn$iou$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>>The first KLs were powered up in building 1.
>
>KLs?  Plural?  And now I can't remember where building 1 was.
>(I remember the building by the meandering paths we had to
>take from Tape Prep.)  IIRC, B-1 was one of those tricky ones
>that caused a new hire never to return to be seen again :-).

Building 1 was the one where the entire south wall was along the mill pond. 
It was reached via a three level bridge from Building 5. There were also a 
couple of bridges from Building 3, but I don't recall that these were ever 
opened. Down at the very end of Building 1 there was a connection to 
Building 21, also adjacent to the pond.

However, I don't ever recall any -10 stuff being in Building 1. If a KL was 
ever powered up in Maynard I'd guess it would have been on 5-5.

>>  In Maynard.
>>Yes the lights dimmed.  Boston Edison did come out and add some
>>capability.
>>DEC did have a bit to do with the second exchange being added to
>>maynard, the new ESS, and power upgrades!!
>>bob
>
>If I may ask...Bob who?

Yes, who indeed?

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5526 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Sheila&bob <shsrms@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid 
 TOPS-10questions...))
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 23:14:59 -0400
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Message-ID: <37A118B3.C0B4E833@erols.com>
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John Everett wrote:
> 
> In article <7npckn$iou$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
> >
> >>The first KLs were powered up in building 1.
> >
> >KLs?  Plural?  And now I can't remember where building 1 was.
> >(I remember the building by the meandering paths we had to
> >take from Tape Prep.)  IIRC, B-1 was one of those tricky ones
> >that caused a new hire never to return to be seen again :-).
> 
> Building 1 was the one where the entire south wall was along the mill pond.
> It was reached via a three level bridge from Building 5. There were also a
> couple of bridges from Building 3, but I don't recall that these were ever
> opened. Down at the very end of Building 1 there was a connection to
> Building 21, also adjacent to the pond.
> 
> However, I don't ever recall any -10 stuff being in Building 1. If a KL was
> ever powered up in Maynard I'd guess it would have been on 5-5.
> 
> >>  In Maynard.
> >>Yes the lights dimmed.  Boston Edison did come out and add some
> >>capability.
> >>DEC did have a bit to do with the second exchange being added to
> >>maynard, the new ESS, and power upgrades!!
> >>bob
> >
> >If I may ask...Bob who?
> 
> Yes, who indeed?
> 
Ok, Building 1 had the first 8/e assembly line. The 9 and 15 lines.  It
was, I think on 1-4, where Cudamore had his office.  Down the hall from
Module Test.  yeah, it was next to the pond. I think Core memory test
was there too. More than one power supply that was not repairable fell
out the window into the pond.

On the first floor of Building 1 was the first real CAD setup.  Don't
you recall GOD - Graphics Online Delivery?  I recall 4 KLs on that
floor.  A couple of KIs.
CSS had their lab - where the first 11/20 (really 11/15 - no power fail
circuit) built for Aeroflot was put together.  The 8/e lab was just down
the hall in Building 1, next to building 5.

Yeah, when Alan Kotok, Vic Ku, and the rest of the crew were around, the
very First KL was in Building 5(5-5) BUT the install of Multiple KLs and
the KIs in 1-1 required a bit more service.

I can't recall who all the guys were...one guy had a lotus (the car!). 
It was before the purchase of Alberquerque and Arizona facilities -
before Stockebrand left DEComm-11 land.  Before the purple plague took
over.

Nope, I am not RCC.  I am just one of the bob smiths.


Article 5529 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d7
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid
 TOPS-10questions...))
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 99 09:23:15 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 77
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In article <37A118B3.C0B4E833@erols.com>,
   Sheila&bob <shsrms@erols.com> wrote:
>John Everett wrote:
>> 
>> In article <7npckn$iou$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>> >
>> >>The first KLs were powered up in building 1.
>> >
>> >KLs?  Plural?  And now I can't remember where building 1 was.
>> >(I remember the building by the meandering paths we had to
>> >take from Tape Prep.)  IIRC, B-1 was one of those tricky ones
>> >that caused a new hire never to return to be seen again :-).
>> 
>> Building 1 was the one where the entire south wall was along the mill 
pond.
>> It was reached via a three level bridge from Building 5. There were also 
a
>> couple of bridges from Building 3, but I don't recall that these were 
ever
>> opened. Down at the very end of Building 1 there was a connection to
>> Building 21, also adjacent to the pond.
>> 
>> However, I don't ever recall any -10 stuff being in Building 1. If a KL 
was
>> ever powered up in Maynard I'd guess it would have been on 5-5.
>> 
>> >>  In Maynard.
>> >>Yes the lights dimmed.  Boston Edison did come out and add some
>> >>capability.
>> >>DEC did have a bit to do with the second exchange being added to
>> >>maynard, the new ESS, and power upgrades!!
>> >>bob
>> >
>> >If I may ask...Bob who?
>> 
>> Yes, who indeed?
>> 
>Ok, Building 1 had the first 8/e assembly line. The 9 and 15 lines.  It
>was, I think on 1-4, where Cudamore had his office.  Down the hall from
>Module Test.  yeah, it was next to the pond. I think Core memory test
>was there too. More than one power supply that was not repairable fell
>out the window into the pond.
>
>On the first floor of Building 1 was the first real CAD setup.  Don't
>you recall GOD - Graphics Online Delivery?  I recall 4 KLs on that
>floor.  A couple of KIs.

Then those KLs were not the first KLs.  Was that the CAD that was
headed  by Mr. Abel (I can't remember his first name, Tom?).
If it was they definitely weren't the first KLs.

>CSS had their lab - where the first 11/20 (really 11/15 - no power fail
>circuit) built for Aeroflot was put together.  The 8/e lab was just down
>the hall in Building 1, next to building 5.
>
>Yeah, when Alan Kotok, Vic Ku, and the rest of the crew were around, the
>very First KL was in Building 5(5-5) BUT the install of Multiple KLs and
>the KIs in 1-1 required a bit more service.

Well, they couldn't have been the first KLs.  What software did they
run?  JMF and Dan Murphy did the CPU code and I know that was done
in Marlboro.  I think I wrote about the disaster of a diagnostic type
destroying the pack.

>
>I can't recall who all the guys were...one guy had a lotus (the car!). 
>It was before the purchase of Alberquerque and Arizona facilities -
>before Stockebrand left DEComm-11 land.  Before the purple plague took
>over.
>
>Nope, I am not RCC.  I am just one of the bob smiths.

Yup.  We know you're not RCC :-).

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5533 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid
 TOPS-10questions...))
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
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In article <7ns1ub$r1f$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>Well, they couldn't have been the first KLs.  What software did they
>run?  JMF and Dan Murphy did the CPU code and I know that was done
>in Marlboro.

Barb, I know you're always complaining about your memory but I would have 
thought you'd have gotten this right. A lot of the operating system work for 
the KLs was done in Maynard, at least when initially the KL was going to be 
introduced with only one (new) OS. Dan Murphy lurks here and sometimes 
contributes, so he can confirm that he joined DEC while we were still in 
Maynard. I believe he brought TENEX through the VIROS and SNARK phases of its 
lifecycle while still in the mill. I can't recall when LCG (was it called LCG 
then?) finally gave approval to port TOPS-10 to the KL, but that might well 
have also been while we were still in Maynard. Dan, can you help with the 
chronology here?

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 5541 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!netnews.com!chnws02.mediaone.net!24.128.1.101!chnws05.ne.mediaone.net!24.128.44.7!wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net.POSTED!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10questions...))
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
     <7mhtf7$ns2$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <V2cj3.16$C4.2784@news2.voicenet.com>
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From: werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme)
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jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) writes:

>In article <7ns1ub$r1f$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...

> Dan Murphy lurks here and sometimes 
>contributes, so he can confirm that he joined DEC while we were still in 
>Maynard. I believe he brought TENEX through the VIROS and SNARK phases of its 
>lifecycle while still in the mill.

No way!.  I joined DEC in July 1974.  At that point the -10 group
had moved to Marlboro long enough before so that no one talked about them
being in the mill.  I didn't join the group for 9 months.  At that time,
VIROS was the code name, it changed to SNARK, KRANS, and back to SNARK
all during my tenure in Marlboro.  Well, maybe SNARK came about when I
was was in MR one a week.

I can't recall what shape the KL was in when I moved to MR, otherwise I would
have piped up earlier.

--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5540 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: Sheila&bob <shsrms@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple 
 stupidTOPS-10questions...))
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 22:16:04 -0400
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Yeah, Lou Abel ran the 10 based Cad shop.
Who was spock? I can't recall.
I recall John DeRose working there, Lou, and some of the others.

After Marlboro opened and the PDP10 crew moved out, the 5-5 area was
taken over by a good sized contingent of the 11 software crew, RT and
RSX folks. The lab, on I guess it would be south end? of 5- (furthest
from the parking lot) there was a section for the PDP12.


Where was Pat Sullivan during this time?  Or Ron Bingham?  McClure? 
Rick Merrill was still in 8 land, had not done anything with GiGi yet. 
Vic Ku was working comm systems, PDP8 based comms front ends for the
10s.
When I started in 69, one of the first things I asked was why DEC was
not doing anything with ecl.  That caused a couple of folks to kind of
Jump.

My memory of that time is rusty, yeah, the first power up of MULTIPLE
KLs in 1-1, did cause some flickering, that might have been 73 or 74. 
The 1-1 rehab was quite nice at the time.

bob

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <%0jo3.319$Ty1.9173@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
>    jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
> >In article <7ns1ub$r1f$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
> >>
> >>Well, they couldn't have been the first KLs.  What software did they
> >>run?  JMF and Dan Murphy did the CPU code and I know that was done
> >>in Marlboro.
> >
> >Barb, I know you're always complaining about your memory but I would have
> >thought you'd have gotten this right. A lot of the operating system work
> for
> >the KLs was done in Maynard, at least when initially the KL was going to
> be
> >introduced with only one (new) OS.
> 
> The pack wipe accident happened in Marlboro.
> 
> > Dan Murphy lurks here and sometimes
> >contributes, so he can confirm that he joined DEC while we were still in
> >Maynard. I believe he brought TENEX through the VIROS and SNARK phases of
> its
> >lifecycle while still in the mill.
> 
> Right.  And he took 546 stand alone in the afternoons for that work.
> I don't know what he took stand alone when you guys moved to Marlboro
> because I didn't collect the S/A data then.
> 
> >I can't recall when LCG (was it called LCG
> >then?) finally gave approval to port TOPS-10 to the KL, but that might
> well
> >have also been while we were still in Maynard. Dan, can you help with the
> >chronology here?
> >
> Yea, please help this poor brain-damaged soul :-).
> 
> /BAH
> 
> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5523 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10 questions...))
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9905171202310.15552-100000@bony.umtec.com> <7mgjsk$9fr$1@shell3.ba.best.com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>In article <379FA894.1BC2466@erols.com>,
>   Sheila&bob <shsrms@erols.com> wrote:

>>The first KLs were powered up in building 1.

>KLs?  Plural?  And now I can't remember where building 1 was.

I think that parallelled (sorta) bldg 3.  I got my start on 3-5.  Hmm.
you might heve been the person who brought from "orientation" to my
cube on my first day at work on 3-5.

Ahh, here's my map.  Bridges went from 3-6 to 1-3.  I think 1-1 was where
the circuit board etching area was.  From 3-5 I went to 4-? to a bridge to
5-2, and down to 5-B (below mill pond level), past the salvage area
and turned left into the system 40 area, which was a dual KI system
when I showed up.

>(I remember the building by the meandering paths we had to
>take from Tape Prep.)  IIRC, B-1 was one of those tricky ones
>that caused a new hire never to return to be seen again :-).

My map was my most important posession for the first three weeks.  After
the first week I tried taking a different route every day.

>>bob

>If I may ask...Bob who?

RCC, I assume.  Hi Bob!

--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5539 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com
From: Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: A primeval C compiler
References: <379FE9FA.7D08@bell-labs.com> <slrn7q1ciu.2v9.kaz@ashi.FootPrints.net> 	<37A11263.8A903F56@null.net> <slrn7q2dtn.jej.kaz@ashi.FootPrints.net> 	<37A2002B.504C8ADA@softstar.it> <ALDERSON.99Jul30150436@netcom16.netcom.com>
X-Disclaimer: Everything I write is false.
Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs
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Someone wrote (in another newsgroup):
> Agree. SCO is just a very small company with more bean counters than
> visionares. Compare it with DEC that freed all 36 bit software, gives VMS
> 				      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes::
> Oh?  Please cite a reference for this item.  We'd be extremely interested...

I imagine he must be referring to the hobbyist license.  All DEC's 36-bit
software was made available for noncommercial use.  You can find the
license on my web site or Joe's.

That's why I've on several occasions asked you by private email whether
you could supply copies of the DEC distribution tapes in your posession
(NOT the XKL versions); I have a legal license to obtain and use the stuff.

Cheers,
Eric

http://www.36bit.org/dec/


Article 5535 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Alan "AlB" Blackington (was Re: Another good guy is gone)
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 22:46:37 -0400
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> I just got mail that Al Blackington died Thursday.  [Charlie]
> McCutcheon wrote the note.  I think Terry's node name is KMOOSE but
> I'm not sure.  The note was posted in some flavor of Digital notes
> file.

"
Date:	Thu, 29 Jul 99 18:35:36 -0400
From:	Terrie Scott <tbs@cyberportal.net>

Cornish -- Alan Eugene Blackington, 59, died Thursday at Integrated
Health Services in Claremont, NH, where he had resided for the past
year.

He was born on July 10, 1940, in Windsor, Vermont, a son of Eugene C.
Blackington and Elinor (Edson) Blackington.  He attended schools in West
Windsor and Windsor, Vermont, and was a graduate of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.  After graduation Mr. Blackington worked for
more than twenty-five years for Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard
and Marlboro, Massachusetts and Nashua, New Hampshire where he was a
well-known and accomplished software engineer.

Survivors include two daughters, Theresa B. Scott of Cornish and
Marguerite H. Burth of Newport, NH; three brothers, Brian Blackington of
Columbus, OH, Leland Blackington of Windsor, and Robert Blackington of
Lee, NH; four sisters, Betty Cross of Windsor, Barbara Hall of
Huntington, VT, Dale Beaulieu of Cornish, and Karen Hurlburt of Windsor;
six grandchildren and several cousins, nieces and nephews.

He was predeceased by both his parents.

Calling hours [were on 23-Jul-99] from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Knight Funeral
Home in Windsor, Vermont.  There [was on 24-Jul-99] a graveside service
at the Brownsville Cemetery on Saturday at 2:00 pm.

In lieu of flowers memorial gifts may be made to the Brain Injury
Association of New Hampshire, 2 1/2 Beacon Street, Concord, NH 03301 [
http://www.bianh.org/ ; 603-225-8400 ] or to the Employee Assistance
Fund, Integrated Health Services at Claremont, RFD 3 Box 47, Claremont,
NH 03743 [ 603-542-2606 ].
"

Condolences may be sent to AlB's family via his daughter Terrie at the
above EMail address.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5544 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d17
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: TU10/20/7x (was: SA10 front panel (was Re: Multiple stupid TOPS-10questions...))
Date: Sun, 01 Aug 99 11:05:47 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <wuPo3.1737$W11.33133@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>,
   werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme) wrote:
>jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) writes:
>
>>In article <7ns1ub$r1f$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>> Dan Murphy lurks here and sometimes 
>>contributes, so he can confirm that he joined DEC while we were still in 
>>Maynard. I believe he brought TENEX through the VIROS and SNARK phases of 
its 
>>lifecycle while still in the mill.
>
>No way!.  I joined DEC in July 1974.  At that point the -10 group
>had moved to Marlboro long enough before so that no one talked about them
>being in the mill.  I didn't join the group for 9 months.  At that time,
>VIROS was the code name, it changed to SNARK, KRANS, and back to SNARK
>all during my tenure in Marlboro.  Well, maybe SNARK came about when I
>was was in MR one a week.

That all happened during the time that Peter Hurley was supervisor
of the -20 group.  The code names were the idiots' idea of keeping
the new OS development a secret.  All that subtrafuge was a PITA
because the same people who insisted on secrecy were the ones who
asked for special permission to talk to particular customers about
it.  Every coded name change produced manhours worth of work to 
run macros over the documents to reflect the latest.  It was also
caused by a reluctance of unknown persons to want to call the
product TOPS-anything.

>
>I can't recall what shape the KL was in when I moved to MR, otherwise I 
would
>have piped up earlier.
>
I'll say it again.  At that time JMF and Dan were writing their
KLSERs and related code using the KLs that were in the 
engineering lab (not the software lab).  There were two KLs
there but I don't know if the second one was runnable at the
time.  There was a lot of contention between hardware and software
because the hardware types claimed to need the hardware to develop
the hardware but didn't seem to understand that they wouldn't
be selling a single CPU without the software.  I don't think
those hardware types ever learned because Jim ran into the
same problem later with one of the VAX flavors and Alpha.
We always had that problem with peripherals.  Marketing always
promised the first hardware to a customer but refused to let
software engineering have it hooked up to our systems before
first customer ship.  Then, when the hardware didn't work due
to no software, the fit hit the shan.  And it happened every
damn time.  Markerteers never had an ability to learn.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5548 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!144.212.100.101.MISMATCH!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.mv.net!not-for-mail
From: Dan Murphy <dlm@opost.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: MLO - MRO move.  (was Re: TU10/20/7x et al)
Date: 06 Aug 1999 13:00:23 -0400
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    I haven't been lurking that much recently, so I'm not sure I got
    the original question.  However, here are a couple salient
    timestamps:

    Jan 2, 1973 - I started at DEC as a regular employee.  For the 3
    months prior to that, I had worked on a fixed-price fixed-time
    contract to port TENEX to the KI-10.  As of Jan 2, John Leng and
    the other powers-that-be had already decided to do a "new" OS for
    the next generation of 36-bit hardware.  This decision got made
    during my 3-month contract when: (1) it became clear that TENEX
    really could be made to work on the KI-10, and (2) IBM announced
    "virtual memory", thus making all the DEC marketeers believe they
    hadda have it asap.  (I love it when things like this happen...)

    Over the course of the next few months, Peter Hurley joined me in
    the "new os" group.  We were working for the engineering manager,
    Fred Wilhelm, at the time, not for SWE under Peter Conklin.  Tom
    Hastings also began devoting most of his time to the project as I
    recall, although he continued to report to PFC.  Peter and I had
    offices on 5-5 along with the hardware engineers.  During the
    first year, Arnie Miller and Len Bosack joined the group also.

    March 1, 1974 (approx) - Our group moved to MRO.  This date is
    easy as it was about two weeks after our first (and only) child
    was born.  Sara and I had both been working in the Mill, but she
    was out on maternity leave when the move to MRO happened.  At the
    point we moved, I *think* I had had a small amount of access to
    actual KL-10 hardware, but I'm not real clear on that.  I think
    there was a prototype down the hall on 5-5 that I did a bit of
    hacking on.  We continued to use a KI-10 for quite a bit of the
    work of beefing up the OS that wasn't very machine-dependent.

    When we got to MRO, I think it was just the four of us (dlm, pmh,
    asm, lb) working directly on the OS.  Supervisors came and went,
    and I can't recall exactly when.  Tom Hastings was supervisor for
    a while when we were in the Mill.  Then, Howard Steadman was
    hired.  Lou Cohen was in there somewhere after we were in MRO, and
    then Dick Snyder.  Peter Hurley became supervisor when Snyder
    moved up.  I stayed as technical honcho through first few releases
    and only lost my good sense for a while in the early '80s when I
    was TOPS-20 supervisor for a year.

    Also, don't ask me to nail down dates for the various names!  Ugh.
    I know that Fred Wilhelm came up with VIROS while we were still in
    the Mill, and it was John Leng who always made it sound like VIRUS
    when he said it.  (Not intentionally; it just came out that way.)
    SNARK and the later name madness was foisted on us only after we'd
    moved to MRO though; of that I'm sure.

    (Hey, I just checked and viros.com is available!  Anybody want to
    grab it?  Such a cool name.  snark.com is taken, but it sucks
    anyhow.)

    Anyhow, hope that helps with some of the nostalgia.
    
    
    dlm
    
jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

> In article <wuPo3.1737$W11.33133@wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net>,
>    werme@werme.ne.mediaone.net (Ric Werme) wrote:
> >jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) writes:
> >
> >>In article <7ns1ub$r1f$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
> >
> >> Dan Murphy lurks here and sometimes 
> >>contributes, so he can confirm that he joined DEC while we were still in 
> >>Maynard. I believe he brought TENEX through the VIROS and SNARK phases of 
> its 
> >>lifecycle while still in the mill.
> >
> >No way!.  I joined DEC in July 1974.  At that point the -10 group
> >had moved to Marlboro long enough before so that no one talked about them
> >being in the mill.  I didn't join the group for 9 months.  At that time,
> >VIROS was the code name, it changed to SNARK, KRANS, and back to SNARK
> >all during my tenure in Marlboro.  Well, maybe SNARK came about when I
> >was was in MR one a week.
> 
> That all happened during the time that Peter Hurley was supervisor
> of the -20 group.  The code names were the idiots' idea of keeping
> the new OS development a secret.  All that subtrafuge was a PITA
> because the same people who insisted on secrecy were the ones who
> asked for special permission to talk to particular customers about
> it.  Every coded name change produced manhours worth of work to 
> run macros over the documents to reflect the latest.  It was also
> caused by a reluctance of unknown persons to want to call the
> product TOPS-anything.
> 
> >
> >I can't recall what shape the KL was in when I moved to MR, otherwise I 
> would
> >have piped up earlier.
> >
> I'll say it again.  At that time JMF and Dan were writing their
> KLSERs and related code using the KLs that were in the 
> engineering lab (not the software lab).  There were two KLs
> there but I don't know if the second one was runnable at the
> time.  There was a lot of contention between hardware and software
> because the hardware types claimed to need the hardware to develop
> the hardware but didn't seem to understand that they wouldn't
> be selling a single CPU without the software.  I don't think
> those hardware types ever learned because Jim ran into the
> same problem later with one of the VAX flavors and Alpha.
> We always had that problem with peripherals.  Marketing always
> promised the first hardware to a customer but refused to let
> software engineering have it hooked up to our systems before
> first customer ship.  Then, when the hardware didn't work due
> to no software, the fit hit the shan.  And it happened every
> damn time.  Markerteers never had an ability to learn.
> 
> /BAH
> 
> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5550 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!nntp.ix.netcom.com!alderson
From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: A primeval C compiler
Date: 06 Aug 1999 23:43:59 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.99Aug6164359@netcom16.netcom.com>
References: <379FE9FA.7D08@bell-labs.com> <slrn7q1ciu.2v9.kaz@ashi.FootPrints.net>
	<37A11263.8A903F56@null.net> <slrn7q2dtn.jej.kaz@ashi.FootPrints.net>
	<37A2002B.504C8ADA@softstar.it>
	<ALDERSON.99Jul30150436@netcom16.netcom.com>
	<qhr9lofhnw.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: netcom16.netcom.com
X-NETCOM-Date: Fri Aug 06  6:43:59 PM CDT 1999
NNTP-Posting-User: alderson
In-reply-to: Eric Smith's message of 31 Jul 1999 17:50:27 -0700
Xref: news3.best.com alt.folklore.computers:135855 alt.sys.pdp10:5550

In article <qhr9lofhnw.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
<eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> writes:

>Someone wrote (in another newsgroup):
>> Agree. SCO is just a very small company with more bean counters than
>> visionares. Compare it with DEC that freed all 36 bit software, gives VMS
>> 				      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes::
>> Oh?  Please cite a reference for this item.  We'd be extremely interested...

>I imagine he must be referring to the hobbyist license.  All DEC's 36-bit
>software was made available for noncommercial use.  You can find the license
>on my web site or Joe's.

That seems to be what was intended.

>That's why I've on several occasions asked you by private email whether
>you could supply copies of the DEC distribution tapes in your posession
>(NOT the XKL versions); I have a legal license to obtain and use the stuff.

The problem is that we don't have DEC distribution tapes, we only have licensed
source.  (Distribution tapes are just so much clutter if you aren't going to
use them.)  I wish I *could* provide such a service.
--
Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 5618 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.voicenet.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy and the Tinker <shsrms@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 13:17:13 -0400
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <37C81999.BE194825@erols.com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:5618

I think I can shed some light on this, probably not the whole picture.

"Carl R. Friend" wrote:
> 
> Phil Gagner, in article nr. <37c4576e.0@news.kivex.com>, wrote:

>    In a way, I'm surprised that DEC didn't use an -8 as the front-
> end to the KL. An 8A (if they existed at the time) would have made
> a good choice unless they needed the -11's address space. Does any-
> body know why the choice of the 11/40 was made?
Dave McClure had done the comm stuff using the 8/e based comms
capabilities to replace the old 8i based stuff. I think Dave lurks here,
I am suffering a senior moment and can't recall that comm project using
the /e, DP8/e, KG8-ea, and some other bits. 

The 8e, and f were around (the m was not intended to have a switch front
panel) as was the 8/m.
The purple plague was in power, so it was politically correct to move
the former 8 based capabilities to the 11, AND to take advantage of the
emphasis on the 11 comm capabilities.  I don't recall the name of the
"window" that allowed you to have a unibus device hanging off the 10's. 
11/40 was fairly expandable, much more robust than the 20, and lots
cheaper than the 45, so ....
The DECComm-11 group was charged to create all the comm stuff = with Tom
Stockebrand and then Vince Bastiani leading the group.  8's, with the
MSB number properly just like the 10, were considered passe.  even tho
every single machine that could be built on the 8 lines was sold every
year.  Rueters kept coming in and buying rather large quantities.

If someone wants to check the history:
the original FPP8a, Don White's dual board FPP for the expanded omnibus,
ran rings around the 11/60, the 11/34a, the 11/40, and gave teh 11/70 a
good run for its money on fortran bench marks.

Don't forget about the dragon and hydra efforts - the attempts to merge
the 10 and 11 capabilities that really fueled the concept called Vax. 
The KL really spurred some research into an ECL 11, but the realization
that the 16bit word length and the limited address space, manufacturing
costs of the beast, and truly - market conditions  - we did have a bit
of a turn down a couple of times in the 70s  - kind of 

rambling mode off
bob

> 
> --
> +------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
> | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
> | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
> | mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com                +---------------------+
> | http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
> +------------------------------------------------+---------------------+


Article 5621 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@prescienttech.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 15:51:55 -0400
Organization: as little as possible!
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"Alan H. Martin" wrote, in article
nr. <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com>:
> 
> [The DL-10] was the 10<=>11 "memory window" which attached the DC76.

   I don't know a whole lot about the DC76, but the DL-10 was a three
feet by three feet by six feet rack which supported a maximum of four
UNIBUS systems. They were "cool" devices.

   Didn't the DC76 attach directly somehow?

-- 
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com                +---------------------+
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+


Article 5631 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:13:32 -0400
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <37C9DABC.E020A403@MA.UltraNet.Com>
References: <37BD3009.7CF7F12C@voicenet.com> <ALDERSON.99Aug20123139@netcom10.netcom.com> <37BED3F6.9EC3C84B@voicenet.com> <ALDERSON.99Aug23120804@netcom16.netcom.com> <37C28ABE.3661EAAD@voicenet.com> <7pu4le$dfl$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7pvq0e$t88@dfw-ixnews17.ix.netcom.com> <37c4576e.0@news.kivex.com> <37C7EEB2.23654470@prescienttech.com> <37C81999.BE194825@erols.com> <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com> <37C83DDB.4A3AF499@prescienttech.com>
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"Carl R. Friend" wrote:
> 
> "Alan H. Martin" wrote, in article
> nr. <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com>:
> >
> > [The DL-10] was the 10<=>11 "memory window" which attached the DC76.
> 
>    I don't know a whole lot about the DC76, but the DL-10 was a three
> feet by three feet by six feet rack which supported a maximum of four
> UNIBUS systems. They were "cool" devices.
> 
>    Didn't the DC76 attach directly somehow?

As long as my memory is valid that the DL-10 was a 10<=>11 memory
window, then that's what the DC76 used - KA-109 (BOCES/LIRICS) had a
DC76, and I read the DC76's (-11) assembly code.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5633 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 99 09:15:02 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <7qdpcj$98n$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <37C9DABC.E020A403@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>"Carl R. Friend" wrote:
>> 
>> "Alan H. Martin" wrote, in article
>> nr. <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com>:
>> >
>> > [The DL-10] was the 10<=>11 "memory window" which attached the DC76.
>> 
>>    I don't know a whole lot about the DC76, but the DL-10 was a three
>> feet by three feet by six feet rack which supported a maximum of four
>> UNIBUS systems. They were "cool" devices.
>> 
>>    Didn't the DC76 attach directly somehow?
>
>As long as my memory is valid that the DL-10 was a 10<=>11 memory
>window, then that's what the DC76 used - KA-109 (BOCES/LIRICS) had a
>DC76, and I read the DC76's (-11) assembly code.

And note, Alan, that that was a customer site.  Customers 
cobbed together quite unusual configurations to suit themselves.
I don't remember how we attached comm gear to our systems.  
WEX should be able to tell you what we supported since that
was the area he was supposed to be working on.  RDH could
tell us more.  

I don't remember a DL being hung off a KA but I didn't usually
keep track of hardware since the cybercrud seemed to change
with the phase of a marketeer.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5644 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
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     <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com> <37C83DDB.4A3AF499@prescienttech.com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>In article <37C9DABC.E020A403@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
>   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>>"Carl R. Friend" wrote:
>>> 
>>> "Alan H. Martin" wrote, in article
>>> nr. <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com>:
>>> >
>>> > [The DL-10] was the 10<=>11 "memory window" which attached the DC76.
>>> 
>>>    I don't know a whole lot about the DC76, but the DL-10 was a three
>>> feet by three feet by six feet rack which supported a maximum of four
>>> UNIBUS systems. They were "cool" devices.
>>> 
>>>    Didn't the DC76 attach directly somehow?
>>
>>As long as my memory is valid that the DL-10 was a 10<=>11 memory
>>window, then that's what the DC76 used 

Right.

>I don't remember a DL being hung off a KA but I didn't usually
>keep track of hardware since the cybercrud seemed to change
>with the phase of a marketeer.

It was.

On the discussion about -8 vs. -11 for KL10 console.  When that came
around, the PDP-8 comm gear was fading out and PDP-11s were de rigeur.
I made more sense to build a new KL10:PDP-11 interface to replace the
DL10 than to build a new PDP-8 interface.
--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5671 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@prescienttech.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 20:16:08 -0400
Organization: as little as possible!
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <37CDC1C8.A748BBCE@prescienttech.com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com, in article nr.<7qdpcj$98n$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>,
wrote:
> 
> I don't remember a DL being hung off a KA but I didn't usually
> keep track of hardware since the cybercrud seemed to change
> with the phase of a marketeer.

   Oh, DL-10s got hung of KA-10s, believe me. When ADPNS had a presence
in Waltham we had a pair of KA-10s which were used as fast comms
controllers which each had a pair of DL-10s attached to them.

   The main systems "talked" to the KAs through shared memory, the
KAs "talked" to the -11s through the DLs, and the -11s "talked"
to the remote customer, frequently through another -11. It was a
very elegant solution at the time -- and fast as the blazes for some
stuff.

-- 
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com                +---------------------+
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+


Article 5635 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 12:43:17 GMT
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
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On Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:13:32 -0400,  "Alan H. Martin"
<AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:

| "Carl R. Friend" wrote:
| > 
| > "Alan H. Martin" wrote, in article
| > nr. <37C82C24.12BFCF54@MA.UltraNet.Com>:
| > >
| > > [The DL-10] was the 10<=>11 "memory window" which attached the DC76.
| > 
| >    I don't know a whole lot about the DC76, but the DL-10 was a three
| > feet by three feet by six feet rack which supported a maximum of four
| > UNIBUS systems. They were "cool" devices.
| > 
| >    Didn't the DC76 attach directly somehow?
| 
| As long as my memory is valid that the DL-10 was a 10<=>11 memory
| window, then that's what the DC76 used - KA-109 (BOCES/LIRICS) had a
| DC76, and I read the DC76's (-11) assembly code.
| 				/AHM

Dorry, but the LIRICS KA-10 used a DCA-680 based on the PDP/8-I formerly known
as ICC or "Chiquita" after the banana logo that hung on it when it was in a
storefront in 1969-1970

The KA-10 had *no* PDP-11/Unibus peripherals from the time of its installation
through its unfortunate and misguided decommissioning. It had eight DECTape
drives, four Memorex 2Meg disk drives, a DEC swapping drum, TU-10 magtape and
lots of core, all tied to the standard KA-10 bus system.

The later LIRICS  KL-10s (PDP-20s) were another matter Red, White, Blue and
Yellow each had a small PDP-11 front end.

							dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 5646 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 23:42:10 -0400
Lines: 18
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"David M. Razler" wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 29 Aug 1999 21:13:32 -0400,  "Alan H. Martin"
> <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
...
> | As long as my memory is valid that the DL-10 was a 10<=>11 memory
> | window, then that's what the DC76 used - KA-109 (BOCES/LIRICS) had a
> | DC76, and I read the DC76's (-11) assembly code.
> |                               /AHM
> 
> Dorry, but the LIRICS KA-10 used a DCA-680 based on the PDP/8-I formerly known
> as ICC or "Chiquita" after the banana logo that hung on it when it was in a
> storefront in 1969-1970

Sorry, make that BOCES/*NCODE*.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5638 of alt.sys.pdp10:
From: "Phil Gagner" <gagner@svg-law.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <37BD3009.7CF7F12C@voicenet.com> <ALDERSON.99Aug20123139@netcom10.netcom.com> <37BED3F6.9EC3C84B@voicenet.com> <ALDERSON.99Aug23120804@netcom16.netcom.com> <37C28ABE.3661EAAD@voicenet.com> <7pu4le$dfl$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7pvq0e$t88@dfw-ixnews17.ix.netcom.com> <37c4576e.0@news.kivex.com> <37C7EEB2.23654470@prescienttech.com> <37C81999.BE194825@erols.com>
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 15:07:45 -0400
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Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy and the Tinker <shsrms@erols.com> wrote in message
news:37C81999.BE194825@erols.com...
> I think I can shed some light on this, probably not the whole picture.
>
> "Carl R. Friend" wrote:
> >
> >    In a way, I'm surprised that DEC didn't use an -8 as the front-
> > end to the KL. An 8A (if they existed at the time) would have made
> > a good choice unless they needed the -11's address space. Does any-
> > body know why the choice of the 11/40 was made?
> Dave McClure had done the comm stuff using the 8/e based comms
> capabilities to replace the old 8i based stuff. I think Dave lurks here,
> I am suffering a senior moment and can't recall that comm project using
> the /e, DP8/e, KG8-ea, and some other bits.

It was expected that the KL-10 FE would have full diagnostic capabilities,
including the ability to use (by buss sharing) the KL-10 primary hard drive.
It was a design requirement that the FE be able to run these diagnostics
even
(especially?) if the KL was stone cold dead. Since lots of mbs of
diagnostics
were expected, that required something bigger than a floppy. In addition,
the
-FE had to be able to read/write the -10 boot device. Nobody really wanted
to write new drivers for the large hard drives.

It was considered easier to build good I/O devices and drivers for
the -11, and it was much easier to get diagnostics for them (the group of
sophisticated
-8 people at DEC was shrinking). The powers that beed wanted the KL10
diagnostics to run like the VAX/-11 diagnostics, because more field service
folk
were familiar with the -11 style. So that counted, and the FS group put an
experienced FS person who knew both architectures (Roland Belanger)
in the software design loop. So the cost of the FE CPU was really a very
insignificant part of the decision process..

After the -FE had been chosen, the purists insisted that the -11 FE run a
pure DEC realtime operating system. Well, the only good one around at
the time was RSTS, but it wasn't politically popular, so a mixed system
was created called RSX-20F, which pretended to be RSX-11 (some
parts of it actually were). By the time it was cobbled together, people
worried that it was getting pretty big, so an 11/40 looked like a safe
choice.

The lack of switches had nothing to do with it, since it was never expected
that they'd be used for anything. A group was imported from -11 land into
LCG, headed by "Bugsy" McLean (I may be spelling his last name wrong) to
do the initial software.

> The DECComm-11 group was charged to create all the comm stuff = with Tom
> Stockebrand and then Vince Bastiani leading the group.  8's, with the
> MSB number properly just like the 10, were considered passe.  even tho
> every single machine that could be built on the 8 lines was sold every
> year.  Rueters kept coming in and buying rather large quantities.
>

Memories may differ...

>
> Don't forget about the dragon and hydra efforts - the attempts to merge
> the 10 and 11 capabilities that really fueled the concept called Vax.
> The KL really spurred some research into an ECL 11, but the realization
> that the 16bit word length and the limited address space, manufacturing
> costs of the beast, and truly - market conditions  - we did have a bit
> of a turn down a couple of times in the 70s  - kind of
>

Again memories differ. There just wasn't much of an effort below the VP
level to merge the two CPU architectures, although there was very much an
effort to merge the peripheral architecture (hence OMNIBUS and its friends).
And there were sporadic efforts to integrate networking (which is an
entirely
different set of flame wars), and to provide remote file sharing services.

Basically, the world was divided into two camps. The first followed the
Gordon
Bell philosophy that there should be a happy family of machines with
wordlengths
based on powers of two and with software designed by the pure of heart and
goto-less of mind. The other group thought that the native machine language
was
important because really fast routines had to be hand-coded, and the quicker
the
code the better. Their hearts weren't pure and their minds were filled with
goto's
(how many kinds can you name on the KL-10?).

So as I remember it, the choice of -FE was very much an engineering choice
and
not driven by politics. But then, at that time I wasn't much involved in the
politics... so
I may have missed it.






Article 5673 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@prescienttech.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: what ever happened to toad 1
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 21:15:36 -0400
Organization: as little as possible!
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Phil Gagner, in article nr. <37cad5f1.0@news.kivex.com>, wrote:
> 
> It was expected that the KL-10 FE would have full diagnostic
> capabilities, including the ability to use (by buss sharing) the
> KL-10 primary hard drive.

   I'd like to thank everybody who commented on that last brain-fart
of mine (of having an -8 as the KL's front-end) for clearing up quite
a bit of mystery surrounding the choice of the 11/40.

   One of the bits I'd forgotten was that the -11 wasn't _just_ for
spoon-feeding the KL its brains at power-on (and tickling it when it
was sick) but was also expected to play a part in day-to-day operation
of the system by supporting comms lines and such. I'd conveniently
forgotten about that capability since I'd never seen anything other
than the console TTY and diagnostic bits like DECtape and an RP04/6
wired to the -11.

   Also, as the KL never was a favourite of mine, I probably slept
through one too many classes.... (I always preferred the KI -- they
had character.)

-- 
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com                +---------------------+
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+


Article 5700 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 01:41:54 +0000
Organization: Cannine Computer Center
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <37D078E3.453489B2@plano.net>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <ALDERSON.99Sep2103848@netcom16.netcom.com> <7qpco9$l8o$1@null.agames.com>
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Mike Albaugh wrote:
> 
> Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom16.netcom.com) wrote:
> : In article <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> tom@automatedtech.com
> : (Tom Hickerson) writes:
> 
> : >Did I hear somewhere that Bill Gates original work for the 8008 (or 4004) was
> : >done on a PDP -8 ?
> 
> : You might have heard it somewhere--I can't say--but if you heard it, it would
> : be wrong.
> 
> : Both Gates and Allen were PDP-10 programmers at an early age, although Allen
> : did try to write an 8008 simulator on the Washington State System/360 at one
> : point.
> 
>         Did Gates do anything with the 8008? I wrote an 8008 native assembler
> using MACRO on a PDP-6 for "bootstrapping", and the MicroSoft Basic sources
> sure look like they had a similar genesis. I thought Gates started out with
> the 8080, though.
> 
Check out the interview that a guy from the Smithsonian had with Bill Gates at:

		http://innovate.si.edu/history/gates/gatestoc.htm

In the interview, he says that they used the 8008 in their Traf-O-Data system.
He says that the 8008 was too weak to do BASIC, and he wanted to do a BASIC
system like on the PDP-8 that he used before.

Personally, I liked the Seymour Cray interview much more.  It is at:

		http://innovate.si.edu/history/cray/cray.htm

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+


Article 5687 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: kuno@kuno.de (Kuno Kunhardt)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: PDP-Computermuseum
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 10:42:00 GMT
Organization: Kunhardt Computer, Germany^
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Hi


at Sept.7.1999 we will open our computer-museum based on DEC-products

The museum is located in Germany, D-25524 Itzehoe, IZET

We have:
PDP 9
PDP 10
PDP 11/20
PDP 8I
PDP lab8E
PDP 11/05, 11/23, 11/34, 11/40, 11/44, 11/45 
and some VAX-Computer

visit us at : http://www.kuno.de/steinburg/museum.htm


Kuno Kunhardt





Article 5735 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 02:18:00 +0000
Organization: Cannine Computer Center
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <37D32458.7CECFD88@plano.net>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7qpco9$l8o$1@null.agames.com> <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <u281zceygck.fsf@sidewalker.sics.se> <37d13973.0@news.wizvax.net>
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John Wilson wrote:
> 
> In article <u281zceygck.fsf@sidewalker.sics.se>,
> Mikael Cardell  <mc@hack.org> wrote:
> >Hence, you cannot judge the programming abilities of Allen nor Gates
> >by looking at MS-DOS.
> 
> No, but you can judge them by looking at MBASIC-80...  I'd feel a lot
> better about that if it's true that they were thinking of a PDP-8 BASIC
> (EDUSystem-50 maybe?  which isn't even full Dartmouth BASIC, the amazing
> thing about it was that it ran in 4 KW), because if they were trying to
> pattern it after a *nice* BASIC, they failed.
> 
> I'd certainly be curious to here what if any PDP-10 code they wrote.
> I thought they used 10s just for cross-assembly of 8080 code (which seems
> like a teeny bit of overkill!).
> 
According to the Bill Gates interview conducted by the Smithsonian, Paul Allen
wrote Macro-10 macroes to get the 8080 assembly language assembled.  He also
wrote an 8080 emulator in Macro-10 so they could test the code for Altair BASIC.
Paul also (according to Gates) did something to DDT on the -10 to allow it to
understand the assembly macroes.

Anyone who wants more info should look at the interview at:

		http://innovate.si.edu/history/gates/gatestoc.htm

The section titled "Writing an Altair Basic" discusses this part.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+


Article 5731 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <ALDERSON.99Sep2103848@netcom16.netcom.com>
     <7qpco9$l8o$1@null.agames.com> <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>I don't remember Harvard being a customer.  I would suspect
>that he never did TOPS10 I/O using MACRO-10.  And, based on
>the philosophy of this crap I use, I would suspect COBOL
>rather than Fortran.

Harvard most definitely was a customer.  They also had PDP-1s, and gave
me a programming manual for it.

Harvard was also on the ARPAnet early on and CMU ported their code
before I graduated and took over the ARPAnet code.  As the
replacements for the "old" telnet and FTP protocols appeared, I did
the client side at CMU and Ed Taft did the server side at Harvard.

Ed was also the author of the TULIP I/O package.  I came up with the
name, documentation and got it into DECUS.  Ed had called it the
futility package (for file utility), and I thought it deserved better.

Eventually Ed went to Xerox PARC and I went to DEC.  I remember one
night at DEC logged into Harv-10 when Ed and I were helping someone
at Rutgers getting the 3rd TOPS-10 site running on the ARPAnet.  The
biggest problem was that he had a KI and some of the code had to change
due to page map issues.

	-Ric Werme
--
Ric Werme                  | http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme
werme@nospam.mediaone.net  | http://www.cyberportal.net/werme
      ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 5747 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: 07 Sep 1999 23:49:05 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
Lines: 16
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	<7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <u281zceygck.fsf@sidewalker.sics.se>
	<37d13973.0@news.wizvax.net> <54k8q6o2pa.fsf@flipper.cisco.com>
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In-reply-to: Bill Westfield's message of 04 Sep 1999 13:13:05 -0700
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:3245 alt.sys.pdp10:5747

In article <54k8q6o2pa.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> Bill Westfield
<billw@flipper.cisco.com> writes:

>Didn't they use the PDP10 at Harvard or somesuch?  And I thought they wrote
>the cross-assembler as a set of macros for macro-10 (which is pretty easy - I
>did one too.)

They used the Harvard -10 for the Altair project, if I remember correctly.
According to what I have to consider a reliable source (PA himself), they used
-10's and -20's at Microsoft as development platforms for quite a long time.
They hired several LOTS students on the strength of their Tops-20 programming
exposure in the mid-80's.

Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 5762 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.itd.umich.edu!sarr
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7qsnv9$kbl@nnrp2.farm.idt.net> <7qtgn9$6nq$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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In article <7qtgn9$6nq$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>I don't remember Harvard being a customer.

In 72-73 or so, every release of MACRO-10 was greeted by a flurry of SPRs from
Harvard.  Specifically from Ed Taft (now at PARC?), who liked to do really
{hairy, cute, ...} macros.

-- 
--------
Sarr Blumson                    sarr@umich.edu
voice: +1 734 764 0253          home: +1 734 665 9591
ITD, University of Michigan     http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/


Article 5764 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 99 07:39:41 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <TpDB3.604$u73.117340@news.itd.umich.edu>,
   sarr@stick.us.itd.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson) wrote:
>In article <7qtgn9$6nq$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>I don't remember Harvard being a customer.
>
>In 72-73 or so, every release of MACRO-10 was greeted by a flurry of SPRs 
from
>Harvard.  Specifically from Ed Taft (now at PARC?), who liked to do really
>{hairy, cute, ...} macros.
>
I didn't do work that dealt with customers until 75 or so.  That
name is vaguely familiar.  Story time....

Whenever JMF wrote macros (I remember some effort for the monitor
and he wrote the macros for my accounting project), he would
work and work and work on them.  Invariably, he would throw up
his hands, take a walk over to Nixon's office, and then Dave
would be debugging for at least a week.  There was definitely
an art to writing those things :-).

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 5745 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: 07 Sep 1999 23:43:35 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.99Sep7164335@netcom16.netcom.com>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com>
	<ALDERSON.99Sep2103848@netcom16.netcom.com>
	<7qpco9$l8o$1@null.agames.com> <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp8:3243 alt.sys.pdp10:5745

In article <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>What kind of PDP-10 programming did those guys do?  It's obvious from how this
>#%$@ DOS system works, that they didn't do any monitor programming....and
>probably no CUSP-type programming.  I don't believe they ever wrote a single
>I/O routine that depended on buffer mode I/O.

Dunno, wasn't there.

By the time they bought QDOS from Seattle Computer (I think I remember that
name correctly), Gates wasn't doing any day-to-day programming, and I doubt
that Allen was, either.

The impression I've gotten from a conservation with Paul Allen is that he did
real PDP-10 programming on a job he had before Microsoft, but it may not have
been up to your high standards, Barb.

Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 5801 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bill Gates and PDP-8
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 22:44:31 -0400
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Message-ID: <37DB138F.8E995A6E@MA.UltraNet.Com>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <ALDERSON.99Sep2103848@netcom16.netcom.com> <7qpco9$l8o$1@null.agames.com> <7qqqn4$c1q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7qsnv9$kbl@nnrp2.farm.idt.net> <7qtgn9$6nq$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <7qsnv9$kbl@nnrp2.farm.idt.net>,
>    "Chris Ward" <ccw@idt.net> wrote:
> >Gates (at least) was at Harvard for three years, and cut his teeth
> >on the PDP-10 there.  ...
>
> I don't remember Harvard being a customer.  ...

KA #6, to be specific.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 5949 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy & the Tinker <shsrms@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11,vmsnet.pdp-11,alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Looking for Card Reader: DEC CR11 or CM11
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 20:34:27 -0400
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <37ED6A13.3681A92B@erols.com>
References: <7sg6ge$be7$1@morgoth.sfu.ca> <7si9nu$4hm$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37ED3C05.F4688BA2@srv.net>
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Kevin Handy wrote:
> 
> jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > In article <7sg6ge$be7$1@morgoth.sfu.ca>,
> >    mcquiggi@sfu.ca (Kevin McQuiggin) wrote:
> > >Hi Gang:
> > >
> > >I'm interested in finding a card reader for my pdp-11 machines. There was
> > one advertised as available earlier this week, unfortunately it has been
> > claimed.
> > >
> > >The CR11 and CM11 models are what I'm looking for - they're a desktop
> > variety that would work nicely with my current machines.
> > >
> > >Anyone out there have one they will part with?
> >
> > A card reader on a PDP-11?  Oh, never mind, I just remembered
> > front ends.  :-))
> 
> Actually my high school used cards (and a PDP-11) to track attendence.
> The teachers would send in the cards of absent students to be run
> through the card reader, then the cards were returned back to the
> teachers.
The CR and what was it CM, were first done on the 8/e. John McNamara - I
think, could be wrong - was the project engineer. I think John did the
interface design, and I got to make the optical and the pin versions to
work properly.  There was a minor problem with the power supply in the
readers, we used to be able to get them to read cards with AC line
noise.

We - well a couple of us - worked out a scheme to drive new england
telephone crazy with those beasts...
It is amazing what happened to the readers when you put just a little
butter on the old punch card telephone bill....
bad bob


Article 6046 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ix.netcom.com!206.214.99.8!alderson
From: alderson@netcom2.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: anyone remember/know of Yale editor 'E' (1970s)?
Date: 05 Oct 1999 00:22:27 GMT
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
Lines: 11
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.99Oct4172227@netcom2.netcom.com>
References: <op4sg8johf.fsf@candle.superlink.net>
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In-reply-to: David Alan Black's message of 03 Oct 1999 14:19:56 -0400
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:6046

In article <op4sg8johf.fsf@candle.superlink.net> David Alan Black
<dblack@candle.superlink.net> writes:

>Back in the early 1970s, the '10 at Yale ran an editor called 'E'.

Hmm.  Is this any relation to the SAIL editor called E?  I know that the code
in the monitor supporting E was ported to Tops-10 at some point.

Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now


Article 6056 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Subject: Re: GT40 (was Re: How did ZX81s work?)
From: aek@spies.com (Al Kossow)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp10
References: <7tcs1p$72c$1@gxsn.com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.folklore.computers:141410 alt.sys.pdp8:3523 alt.sys.pdp11:5968 alt.sys.pdp10:6056

From article <7tcs1p$72c$1@gxsn.com>, by "Peter Pachla" <my.name@wintermute.org.uk>:
> 
> But seriously, are GT40s really all that hard to find?
> 

There pretty tough to find now, given that they are around 25 years old.

MUCH tougher, though, is the second-generation DEC VS60. I've owned several
VT11's, but I've never even SEEN a VS60. At one point I had the VS60 print
set, pretty sophisticated vector generator. Not ever been at DEC, I've wondered
who bought them, or if they were used with SUDS.

> I've harboured a desire to get one every since I discovered their existence in
> an old DEC handbook a couple of years back. I've put out 2 or 3 requests for
> one over the past 18 months or so and gotten no replies.
> 
> Any pointers/suggestions?
> 

There are still a few around, but I doubt they're for sale. Eric Smith just
showed his GT40 at the Vintage Computer Fair. At this point, a simulator seems
the only way that most folks will ever see this device in operation.



Article 6040 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: scottw@bmtech.co.uk_DELETE_THIS (Scott Wheeler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: How did ZX81s work?
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 15:23:19 GMT
Message-ID: <37f8c629.1634287441@192.168.0.1>
References: <p98mccabe-2608990201150001@mepa2pp15.alltel.net> <37F2BE86.6EBB94A6@egg.chips.and.spam.com> <7svofq$eaf@web.nmti.com> <021019991332529710%scottm25@bigfoot.com> <37f726d5$0$211@nntp1.ba.best.com>
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On 03 Oct 1999 09:50:13 GMT, inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote:

>Ob PDP-10: Remember when TOPS-10 had the useless feature of "SET TTY
>DISPLAY"? ...
>
>Programs could be downloaded into the GT40's memory by sending an escape
>sequence and 6-bit data from the PDP-10.  Or any other device capable of
>sending about 100Kbytes of data through a serial port.  Including a
>Palm Pilot.

Wasn't that the technique used on some MS/DOS sw to establish a link
between a portable (3.5" disk) and a desktop (5 1/4" disk only, at
that time)?

Scott
-- 
(please de-mung address if replying by email)


Article 6093 of alt.sys.pdp10:
From: "Phil Gagner" <gagner@svg-law.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7r8fs4$a3j@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <7rdj6n$6g6$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rgb0n$4l6@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <37ded9c2$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7ujbco$rv6$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:42:45 -0400
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:6093

I'm posting this exchange at the suggestion of /BAH, prefacing it with
the comment that it's from the vaguely cloudy times long past of
a universe far far away...


>[from PAG]
>I have a vague memory that at one time the sources for PIP
>disappeared and it wasn't rebuilt for the release tapes.
>At least I think it was PIP. Do you recall this? (It's
>so far down in memory that it may well be some other CUSP.)

[from /BAH]
Was this a long, long time ago?  Like when we were still in
the Mill?  I remember a story that a source was gone (I'd
have to look at MAC files to find it so somebody took the
SAV and typed in the equivalent MACRO.  At least, that
was the explanation for the gag-awful code format :-).

Post it on the PDP10; maybe Bob Clements will contribute :-).
He's about the only one (other than John Everett) who goes back
that far.  Or would you like me to post the question?
------------------------------

[Remainder from PAG]

Now that /BAH mentions it, I remember someone (maybe Tony)
suggesting that we decompile the executable and write a new
source from it. The only scenario in which I could believe that
was actually done was if some management nitwit ordered
that ALL code had to be compiled from MACRO sources.

<Brief aside from PAG>
It happened that at that time that there was this certain
management nitwit who might have actually ordered such a
thing ... names will be withheld because he may have improved
over the years, but some of you might remember him... he didn't
last long in LCG and was bubbly with enthusiasm and had taken
a degree in computer engineering management-- one of the first
such awarded (for people whom it hurt to think). Ultimately
Valdeane Alusic and I and a few others (about everyone who'd
dealt with him) conspired to get him promoted into some marketing
position in smallcomputerland.
</End of brief aside>

Anyway, to return to the sourceless CUSP, I vaguely remember it
as something with lots of "bugs" for which people had found
workarounds over the years and which therefore couldn't be corrected
in a new version without breaking lots of other stuff (like batch files). So
PIP comes to mind as the likely candidate. It might, on reflection, have
been
a particular *version* of PIP which did something peculiar for a certain
discontinued or unsupported device.

Footnote: For those of you who don't admit to going back that
far (or whose memories have different fade spots), PIP
was "Peripheral Interchange Program" and did basically what
cat does in Un*x (copy data from one place to another). It had a
fair number of strange and sometimes documented behaviors, sometimes
controlled by switches.




Article 6109 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:56:57 -0400
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Peter da Silva wrote:
> 
> In article <3810852f.0@news.kivex.com>, Phil Gagner <gagner@svg-law.com> wrote:
> >Footnote: For those of you who don't admit to going back that
> >far (or whose memories have different fade spots), PIP
> >was "Peripheral Interchange Program" and did basically what
> >cat does in Un*x (copy data from one place to another). It had a
> >fair number of strange and sometimes documented behaviors, sometimes
> >controlled by switches.
> 
> On RSX-11 it did just about any random file command you could think of:
> copy files, delete files, rename files, purge old versions.
> 
> Was it like that in TOPS? ...

See PIP.HLP below.
				/AHM
"
Local File Transfer Using PIP

Function

The PIP program transfers files between standard I/O  devices  at  the
local system.  It can perform simple editing and magnetic tape control
operations during transfer operations.


Format

     R PIP
     * output file-spec(s)/switches = input file-spec(s)/switches

where:  * is the PIP prompt; output file-spec and input file-spec  are
        file specifications which may include wildcards; and = (equals
        sign) separates the output from the  input  files.   You  must
        include this, even if you omit either file specification.

/switch  is  one  or  more  of  the  options  described  below.   Each
description  includes  any  restrictions on combining that switch with
other switches.

Switch      Meaning

/A          Does not split lines between output buffers;  starts  each
            line with a new word.  Used for FORTRAN ASCII input.  This
            switch may be used with /C, /E, /G, /M, /N,  /O,  /Q,  /S,
            /V, and /Z.

/B          Copies in binary mode.  This switch is legal with /G,  /M,
            /P, /Q, and /X.

/C          Deletes trailing spaces and converts  multiple  spaces  to
            tabs.   You  can  use this switch with /A, /E, /G, /J, /M,
            /N, /O, /Q, /S, /T, /V, /W, /X, and /Z.

/D          Deletes one or more files  from  the  destination  device.
            You  can  only specify a destination device in the command
            string.  You may use the /X switch with /D.

/E          For card reader input, ignores card sequence numbers.   In
            other  words,  this  switch replaces characters in columns
            73-80 with spaces.  This switch can be used with  the  /A,
            /C, /G, /J, /M, /N, /O, /Q, /S, /X, and /Z switches.

/F          Gives a limited (fast) version of the  directory  for  the
            specified device.  You may not use any other switches with
            this one.

/G          Ignores I/O errors and continue processing  after  issuing
            an error message.  This switch is always legal.

/H          Copies in image binary mode.  You can use /H with /G,  /M,
            /X, and /Z.

/I          Copies in image mode.  You can use this  switch  with  /G,
            /M, /X, and /Z.

/J          Converts    non-printing     control     characters     to
            control-character  format  for  terminal output.  That is,
            001, <CTRL/A>, is output as ^A.  /A, /C, /E, /M,  /W,  and
            /X are permitted with this switch.

/L          Lists the directory for the  specified  device.   You  may
            only use /Z with this switch.

(Mx)        Magnetic tape switches, enclosed in parentheses.  They are
            listed  below.   You  may  not use /D, /F, or /U with this
            switch.

            Switch         Meaning

            (M8)           800 bpi density (default value)
            (M5)           556 bpi density
            (M2)           200 bpi density
            (ME)           Even parity (odd parity is default)
            (M#nA)         Advance tape  reel  n  files.   #n  omitted
                           means one file.
            (M#nB)         Backspace tape reel n  files.   #n  omitted
                           means one file.
            (M#nD)         Advance tape reel n  records.   #n  omitted
                           means one record.
            (M#nP)         Backspace tape reel n records.  #n  omitted
                           means one record.
            (MW)           Rewind tape reel.
            (MT)           Skip to logical end-of-tape.
            (MU)           Rewind and unload.
            (MF)           Mark end-of-file.

/N          Deletes line sequence numbers from an ASCII file.  If  tab
            follows  the  sequence  number, deletes the tab also.  You
            may use /A, /C, /E, /G, /M,  /Q,  /X,  and  /Z  with  this
            switch.

/O          Resequences or adds line  sequence  numbers  to  an  ASCII
            file,  incrementing by 1.  You may use /A, /C, /E, /G, /M,
            /X, and /Z with this switch.

/P          Converts  FORTRAN  format  control  characters  for   line
            printer listing.  You may use /B and /Z with this switch.

/Q          Lists a summary of switches on the specified device.   You
            may not use /Q with /D, /F, /R, and /V.

/R          Renames the source file to the  name  of  the  destination
            file.  /X may be used with /R.

/S          Resequences or adds line  sequence  numbers  to  an  ASCII
            file,  incrementing  by  10.   /A,  /C, /T, and /Z are all
            valid with /S.

/T          Deletes trailing spaces from the transferred file.   Keeps
            one  space  and  the line termintor for an all-space line.
            You may use /C, /S, and /Z with this switch.

/U          Obsolete.

/V          Matches angle brackets.  If there is  an  unmatched  angle
            bracket, creates a file listing those lines with unmatched
            angle brackets.  You may use /G, /M, and /Z with /V.

/W          Converts tabs to spaces.  /C and /Z are  legal  with  this
            switch.

/X and /DX  Copies  the  specified  files  without  concatenating  the
            files.   /DX  copies  all but the specified files.  If you
            omit the /X  switch,  PIP  concatenates  the  files  while
            copying.  You may not use /F or /L with this switch.

/Y          Obsolete.

/Z          Zeroes the  directory  of  the  destination  device.   PIP
            attempts  to  delete all the files named in the directory,
            depending on the protection codes.  You may not  use  this
            switch with /D or /R.

PIP can transfer files in either ASCII or binary mode.  PIP  uses  the
file  extension  in  the file specification to determine which mode to
use.  Whenever possible, PIP transfers files in a binary mode since it
is faster.  The binary modes are:  binary, image, and image binary.

PIP performs a specific series of tests on a file extension  in  order
to  determine  the mode to use during a transfer operation.  PIP looks
for:

      o  The presence of a data mode switch.  If no switch  is  found,
         PIP goes to the next test.

      o  The presence  of  a  known  (standard)  file  extension  that
         specifies a binary mode of transfer.  If no binary extensions
         are found, PIP goes to the next test.

      o  The input and the output devices specified, to  determine  if
         they  are  capable of handling binary data.  If either of the
         devices cannot handle binary, the transfer is made  in  ASCII
         mode.   If  both  devices can handle binary data, PIP goes to
         the next test.

      o  The presence of the /X switch in the command string; if it is
         found,  the  transfer is made in binary mode.  If an X option
         is not found, PIP goes to the next test.

      o  The  presence  of  commas  (non-delimiters)  in  the  command
         string;  if commas are found, ASCII mode is indicated.  If no
         commas are found, the transfer is made in binary mode.


Characteristics

The PIP program:

     Requires LOGIN.

     Destroys your core image.

     Places your terminal at user level.


Examples

     1.  Run PIP, and list your directory on your terminal.

              .R PIP
              *TTY:/L=

     2.  Transfer files from area [11,7]  to  your  directory  without
         concatenation.

              *DSK:/X=DSK:[11,7]filea.rel,filea.mac

     3.  Combine all the files on the tape on MTA0:  into one file  in
         your directory.

              *DSK:TAPE.MAC=MTA0:*

     4.  Rename the file MONI.MAC to MONI.CBL

              *DSK:MONI.CBL/R=MONI.MAC

     5.  Change the directory access code of [57,123] to <222>.

              *DSKA:[57,123].UFD<222>/R=[57,123].UFD

     6.  Transfer a file from MTA1:  to MTA2:  at 200  bpi  with  even
         parity.

              *MTA2:(M2E)=MTA1:(ME2)

     7.  Backspace MTA0:  to the start of the previous file.  (MB)  is
         equivalent to (M#1B).

              *MTA0:(MB)=

     8.  Backspace MTA2:  to the start of the current file.

              *MTA2:(M#0B)=
"
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 6100 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d10
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 99 08:34:13 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <7us3nm$8on$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7r8fs4$a3j@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <7rdj6n$6g6$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rgb0n$4l6@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <37ded9c2$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7ujbco$rv6$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <3810852f.0@news.kivex.com>
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In article <3810852f.0@news.kivex.com>,
   "Phil Gagner" <gagner@svg-law.com> wrote:
<snip>

>
>Anyway, to return to the sourceless CUSP, I vaguely remember it
>as something with lots of "bugs" for which people had found
>workarounds over the years and which therefore couldn't be corrected
>in a new version without breaking lots of other stuff (like batch files). 
>So
>PIP comes to mind as the likely candidate. It might, on reflection, have
>been
>a particular *version* of PIP which did something peculiar for a certain
>discontinued or unsupported device.
<snip>

I don't see how PIP could mess up batch files.  By the time
there was a batch, Pete Conklin had started his coding 
standard, I think.  John?  When did that memo come out 
that talked about using symbols instead of number for AC
assignments, etc. 

I had forgotten that Valdeane was around.  Perhaps somebody
could nudge her to read this particular thread?  <hint, hint> :-)

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 6102 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit)
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:6102

In article <7us3nm$8on$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>
>I don't see how PIP could mess up batch files.  By the time
>there was a batch, Pete Conklin had started his coding 
>standard, I think.  John?  When did that memo come out 
>that talked about using symbols instead of number for AC
>assignments, etc. 

I think you're referring to LEVELD.MEM (written by Tom Hastings), which 
defined the coding standards to be used in the creation of the Level-D monitor 
(4S72 to 5.01 transition). Monitor AC usage was rationalized during this 
transition by (if memory serves) Don Black. Prior to Level-D, ACs weren't 
necessarily referred to by number, but the names weren't consistant across 
modules. If I rack my brain enough I can probably come up with most of the old 
names, but off the top of my head I recall PDP, TAC, TAC1, DDB, etc. As to the 
date of the memo, I'm guessing 1969 or 1970.

>I had forgotten that Valdeane was around.  Perhaps somebody
>could nudge her to read this particular thread?  <hint, hint> :-)

I had forgotten the lovely Valdeane entirely. Hadn't thought of her in perhaps 
twenty-plus years, but seeing her name in this thread brought back all kinds 
of memories. Is she really still around somewhere? It's pretty amazing how the 
brain works. Thinking about Valdeane brings back all kinds of other names and 
faces from that era, also people I haven't thought about in lo these many 
years. 

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 6097 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!nntp.abs.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!world!mbg
From: mbg@world.std.com (Megan)
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
Message-ID: <FK1B39.AEs@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 02:33:08 GMT
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7ujbco$rv6$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <7uk3h0$i0l$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <380DC9D8.AEC17D77@erols.com> <380e6e68$0$229@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7umt0a$e0p$2@autumn.news.rcn.net> <FJzLA7.3w8@world.std.com> <7upb
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 43
Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:6097

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>But you did do DECnet.  And that was bliss in disguise no
>matter how it was built.

We (the RT-11 development team) did not do DECnet... that was
another group.  And the version for RT-11 was most certainly
not BLISS... I was part of a group which looked at the feasability
of getting DECnet/RT up to Phase IV/Ethernet... it was most
certainly MACRO-11...

>There were lots of consequences.  Do a cost analysis of 
>development.  Look at the customer price lists.  Look at
>the number of people needed to do a simple development 
>task and then take a look at the infrastructure required
>to maintain it.

Excuse me?  There wasn't even a reasonable BLISS for RT-11
at the time (was there ever?)  It required cross-compilation
on something like a VAX...

Although we did use an RSX system (and even a VMS system)
to do base-level builds of RT-11... we didn't *have* to...
We could built it on RT-11 running on an -11.  We couldn't
have done that if we did it with BLISS...

So I remember many of us simply ignored the BLISS issue,
saying that if they ever got a BLISS which ran on RT-11
that we could use for a real build, we'd reconsider it,
but not until.

					Megan Gentry
					Former RT-11 Developer

+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL   | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group |          (home):  mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation    | addresses need '@' in place of '!'  |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43   | URL:     http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | 
| Nashua, NH 03062               | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055                 |  required." - mbg                   |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+



Article 6112 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d16
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bootleg projects?
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 99 11:22:50 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <7v4aol$38$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <3811DDCD.97D38C2B@erols.com>
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In article <3811DDCD.97D38C2B@erols.com>,
   Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy & the Tinker <shsrms@erols.com> wrote:

>How about a thread on all the bootleg projects?

Offhand, I'd say that any software project was a bootleg
project.

>This group has reminded me how much fun I had in my early days at DEC.
>I joined in Jan 69. Badge 6387. Got to harrass Don White, Vic Ku,
>Kent, Kotok, Hastings, and a few of you on this list.

Vic Ku was around back then?  I don't remember him.  What
building was his office in?

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 6116 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d9
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Bootleg projects?
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 99 08:20:48 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <7v6kfl$m7a$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <3811DDCD.97D38C2B@erols.com> <7v4aol$38$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <38164EE5.15E59613@bellatlantic.net>
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In article <38164EE5.15E59613@bellatlantic.net>,
   Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy & the Tinker <shsrms@bellatlantic.net> wrote:

>Vic was in the mill, 5-5.

Where?  I sure don't remember seeing him until we were in Marlboro.


>Yep, I was thinking of certain SW projects....
>IBM Friend ring any bells?

Never heard of it.  FILDAE was a midnight hack.
SMP started out as a midnight hack.  A lot of the
DDT stuff was literally a midnight hack ('ey, Bob :-)).
RUNOFF was a midnight (I think 'ey, the other Bob :-)).
McComas' TECO work was a midnight hack (at least the
bugs we in Tape Prep needed fixes for were done in
his spare time).

Maybe we should define midnight hacks.  

/BAH


>bob
>
>
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> In article <3811DDCD.97D38C2B@erols.com>,
>>    Sheila&bob/Herbal Gypsy & the Tinker <shsrms@erols.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >How about a thread on all the bootleg projects?
>> 
>> Offhand, I'd say that any software project was a bootleg
>> project.
>> 
>> >This group has reminded me how much fun I had in my early days at DEC.
>> >I joined in Jan 69. Badge 6387. Got to harrass Don White, Vic Ku,
>> >Kent, Kotok, Hastings, and a few of you on this list.
>> 
>> Vic Ku was around back then?  I don't remember him.  What
>> building was his office in?


I really hate having this post presented upside-down.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 6118 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d9
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: (PDP-10 executable file types) (fortran)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 99 08:32:26 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <7v6l5f$m7a$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>
References: <37ce7e58.491364454@news.mindspring.com> <7r8fs4$a3j@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <7rdj6n$6g6$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rgb0n$4l6@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <37ded9c2$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7ujbco$rv6$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> <3810852f.0@news.kivex.com> <7us3nm$8on$3@autumn.news.rcn.net> <XrjQ3.13306$zp.7465@ord-read.news.verio.net>
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In article <XrjQ3.13306$zp.7465@ord-read.news.verio.net>,
   jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:
>In article <7us3nm$8on$3@autumn.news.rcn.net>, jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
>>
>>I don't see how PIP could mess up batch files.  By the time
>>there was a batch, Pete Conklin had started his coding 
>>standard, I think.  John?  When did that memo come out 
>>that talked about using symbols instead of number for AC
>>assignments, etc. 
>
>I think you're referring to LEVELD.MEM (written by Tom Hastings), which 
>defined the coding standards to be used in the creation of the Level-D 
monitor 
>(4S72 to 5.01 transition). Monitor AC usage was rationalized during this 
>transition by (if memory serves) Don Black. Prior to Level-D, ACs weren't 
>necessarily referred to by number, but the names weren't consistant across 
>modules. If I rack my brain enough I can probably come up with most of the 
old 
>names, but off the top of my head I recall PDP, TAC, TAC1, DDB, etc. As to 
the 
>date of the memo, I'm guessing 1969 or 1970.

There was that one.  But Conklin established another standard
(I don't remember seeing a memo, but I wouldn't have received
since I wasn't a programmer back then) for CUSPs.  It might
have been a side effect of this WILD and SCAN hacks.  Some
of the naming conventions (P instead of PDP for AC17) might
have been based on the Level D spec.  I sure wish I had
been dishonest and packed all that stuff away and brought
it home.  

>
>>I had forgotten that Valdeane was around.  Perhaps somebody
>>could nudge her to read this particular thread?  <hint, hint> :-)
>
>I had forgotten the lovely Valdeane entirely. Hadn't 
>thought of her in perhaps 
>twenty-plus years, but seeing her name in this thread 
>brought back all kinds 
>of memories. Is she really still around somewhere? 

Yup.  And I hear she's working with PDP10s :-).


>It's pretty amazing how the 
>brain works. Thinking about Valdeane brings back all 
>kinds of other names and 
>faces from that era, also people I haven't thought about 
>in lo these many years. 

And the stories.  After most of the people at TW's going
away party went home, a few of us stayed sitting at a
table.  TW and Pat White got together and just started talking
while reading the listing of DTASRX.  One comment in the
listing would remind TW of something; that would remind Pat
of something; that would remind TW of something.  And it
just went on and on.  It's one of the special times I
remember with great fondness [bittersweet emoticon here].


/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 6172 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.tli.de!news-fra.pop.de!uunet!ams.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!ffx2nh5!not-for-mail
From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Last release of TOPS-10 was...?
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 15:39:01 -0400
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology
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I'm sorting through some TOPS-10 distribution tapes, and I
see that 7.03, 7.03A, and 7.04 are all present in various mixes
of distributions/CUSPS/sources/monitors/tools/autopatch tapes.  Out of
curiosity, what *was* the last DEC release of TOPS-10?  If 7.04 was
the last, were there ever any autopatch releases for it?

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd                 Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927


Article 6175 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mindspring.net!firehose.mindspring.com!not-for-mail
From: pfarrell@netcom.com (Pat Farrell)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Database 1022 is this how it got its name?
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 04:34:50 GMT
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <817sii$jno$1@nntp6.atl.mindspring.net>
References: <3830150B.4F55B514@nsw.garetech.com.au> <38304c2d_2@news.wizvax.net> <HUeY3.3101$tI2.60883@ord-read.news.verio.net>
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jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote:

>In article <38304c2d_2@news.wizvax.net>, wilson@dbit.com says...
>>>If this isn't the reason for the name what is?
>>I thought it was that it ran on the ten, and twenty, too.
>Correct, at least according to Gene Sklaar who was Software House's marketing 
>manager. According to Gene, that's what Charlie Houseman told him.

Gene was kidding then. Or Charlie was kidding when he told Gene.

It was called System 1022 when I first started using it at First Data,
where Gene and John and I worked in the mid-seventies. 
For years, Software House was two guys, Charlie H. and Andy Garland.
It was originally written at night using borrowed or bartered time
from the FDC KA-10s. I can't remember when I started using it, but
it was the mainstay of FDC's govenment business by 75, well before
Tenex became renamed as Tops-20 and offered on the horrible 96KW
KL-20A's with core memory. (Late 77?). So the 20 part of
the name predated DecSystem-20 by a couple of years (unless
LCG could keep a secret for years -- nah...).

Gene also claimed that it was called 1022 because it first worked or
was sold, or demoed (depending on the story's version) on Oct 22.
Of course, while it was being named, Gene was a Macro-10 assembly
programmer at FDC, not a marketing dude building brand equity.

I believe it is true that their Vaxen product was called System 1032
because it was based on 1022 and ran on hated 32 bit machines.

Pat


Pat Farrell                           pfarrell@netcom.com
PGP key on the usual servers



Article 6179 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!144.212.100.101.MISMATCH!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.shore.net!not-for-mail
From: smw@shell3.shore.net (Sam Weiner)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Last release of TOPS-10 was...?
Organization: Shore.net
Lines: 20
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Message-ID: <81f9v4$le2@shell3.shore.net>
References: <38341D95.645685A8@trailing-edge.com>
Date: 23 Nov 1999 19:02:44 -0500
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In article <38341D95.645685A8@trailing-edge.com>,
Tim Shoppa  <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>I'm sorting through some TOPS-10 distribution tapes, and I
>see that 7.03, 7.03A, and 7.04 are all present in various mixes
>of distributions/CUSPS/sources/monitors/tools/autopatch tapes.  Out of
>curiosity, what *was* the last DEC release of TOPS-10?  If 7.04 was
>the last, were there ever any autopatch releases for it?

7.04 was the last release though 7.05 went out as either an Autopatch
or TSU tape.  I was involved more with TOPS-20 at the time so I
forget if it identified itself as 7.05 or if that was an internal
designation.

There were several Autopatch updates and 3 or 4 TSU tapes.  I also
have a patch or two which didn't make the last tape (LPTSPL or some
such as I recall.)  Details are buried somewhere for the moment.

Sam




Article 6181 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Saving old documentation
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 13:06:27 -0400
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology
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Pat Barron wrote:
> 
> So, I have a few old manuals:
> 
>     >> "PDP-10 Processor Handbook", dated 1970 and describing the KA10;
>     >> "PDP-10 Timesharing Handbook", same vintage, describing monitor
>        utilities and such;
>     >> "DECsystem-10 Assembly Language Programming", dated 1972 (? unsure,
>        and the book isn't here with me right now), describing KA10 and
>        KI10 and some programming utilities (MACRO, DDT, Loader, etc.)
> 
> These are all phonebook-style manuals, printed on newsprint, and are all
> beginning to fall apart - the paper has turned yellow/brown, and some of
> the pages are starting to crumble like dry leaves.
> 
> Can anyone suggest any ways these books could be preserved (or at least,
> have their disintegration slowed down)?  I'm inclined to try to scan them
> in and OCR them to preserve the information, but I believe that would
> require me to take the pages out of the binding, destroying the books
> immediately.

Yeah, well, that's the rub.  Doug Jones wrote up his efforts to
preserve of PDP-8 paperbacks, and he begins:

  Once you have concluded that a paperback is beond repair,
  the first step in preserving its contents
  is to complete its destruction. Slice off the glued
  spine of the paperback so that the pages come
  apart as separate sheets. You can cut the sheets
  from the spine with an X-acto knife, or you can
  find a shop with a paper shear that will cut the spine loose.

Doug then goes into a very detailed step-by-step description of
producing an archival-quality duplicate of the original information.
For further details on Doug's efforts, see

  http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/

--
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd                 Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927


Article 6186 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: David M. Razler <david.razler@worldnet.att.net>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Saving old documentation
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 13:48:51 -0500
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
Lines: 55
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Pat Barron <pat@transarc.com> wrote:

| So, I have a few old manuals:
| 
|     >> "PDP-10 Processor Handbook", dated 1970 and describing the KA10;
|     >> "PDP-10 Timesharing Handbook", same vintage, describing monitor
|        utilities and such;
|     >> "DECsystem-10 Assembly Language Programming", dated 1972 (? unsure,
|        and the book isn't here with me right now), describing KA10 and
|        KI10 and some programming utilities (MACRO, DDT, Loader, etc.)
| 
| These are all phonebook-style manuals, printed on newsprint, and are all
| beginning to fall apart - the paper has turned yellow/brown, and some of
| the pages are starting to crumble like dry leaves.
| 
| Can anyone suggest any ways these books could be preserved (or at least,
| have their disintegration slowed down)?  I'm inclined to try to scan them
| in and OCR them to preserve the information, but I believe that would
| require me to take the pages out of the binding, destroying the books
| immediately.  Can anyone suggest any other preservation methods?
| 
| --Pat.

If you do not wish to gillutine the books and scan the pages, the alternative
is deacidification, specifically W'ei T'o liquid available from Light
Impressions and other museum supply companies.

The liquid, applied with any kind of airless sprayer system, loads a page with
a transparent alkali (usually a magnesium compound) that neutralizes current
acid levels and provides a buffer to neutralize further acids produced by
lignin breakdown.

The price is rather high, $40+ a pint, though the excess material can be
recycled if you use a spray booth, and a little goes a long way. Contact Light
Impressions at their 800-number (not in front of me this second) for further
details.

Basically, you spray each page with the minimum required to do the job, allow
the excess to drip off and recycle. I believe that real problems develop if
you use the immersion technique on multi-page documents.

Books can also be sent to mass-deacidification firms used by libraries, but
the cost is even higher than doing it yourself (The Library of Congress had a
really neat system for doing the job except it relied on a gas that ignited in
the presence of water vapor, requiring books to be placed in a vacuume
chamber, pumped down and the gas introduced and then removed. The program was
unfortunately scrubbed when the failure of the prototype system (gas removal
function) required the Navy to blow up the prototype in situ. If continued, it
would have reduced the proce to making a book capable of lasting two centuries
to $10 per volume.

					dmr

David M. Razler
david.razler@worldnet.att.net


Article 6209 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Dec10
From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett)
Organization: Everett Associates
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In article <FMK2Lr.9DB@world.std.com>, mbg@world.std.com says...
>
>inge@tarboo writes:
>
>>And another happy Dec10 from [101,113] on KA-10 SN 7
>
>Hear hear, happy DEC-10...  ([1000,14321] on the WPI KA-10, circa 1975)

And a belated one from [10,77] on System 2 (the development KA at DEC).

BTW, when I joined DEC I was assigned [16,23] on the PDP-6. When the -10 came 
along we got to pick our own Programmer Number to go with Project Number 10. 
TW picked [10,10], perhaps because he was at the time working on the 
(stillborn) 10/10 monitor.. I kind of liked [10,77] because it was easy to 
type and was the largest two digit Programmer Number available; octal, you 
know. :-) JMF joined DEC later and got assigned [10,675] if memory serves. Is 
this right, BAH?

It was pure serendipity that [10,77] later became a model number.

-- 
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett)    http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett



Article 6972 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: VIROS? And Primary Protocol.
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 13:42:52 -0500
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <38CBE52C.A21B839C@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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Ric Werme wrote:

> TENEX had to be renamed.  (Well, I don't know if it _had_ to be, but
> marketing secrecy essentially ruled here.)  VIROS was the original
> codename, I think.  The trade press got wind of it and the name was
> changed to SNARK.  ...  When SNARK
> escaped, we switched to KRANS (Snark spelled backward), but cooler heads
> managed to get it back to SNARK.

Cooler heads?  From what I hear, KRANS reverted to SNARK because
Ulf Fagerquist complained that KRANS meant "funeral wreath" in Swedish.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 6984 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: VIROS? And Primary Protocol.
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 00 09:52:16 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10002212009220.6379-100000@bony.umtec.com> <qOHs4.2210$W92.46188@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net> <38CBE52C.A21B839C@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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In article <38CBE52C.A21B839C@MA.UltraNet.Com>,
   "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com> wrote:
>Ric Werme wrote:
>
>> TENEX had to be renamed.  (Well, I don't know if it _had_ to be, but
>> marketing secrecy essentially ruled here.)  VIROS was the original
>> codename, I think.  The trade press got wind of it and the name was
>> changed to SNARK.  ...  When SNARK
>> escaped, we switched to KRANS (Snark spelled backward), but cooler heads
>> managed to get it back to SNARK.
>
>Cooler heads?  From what I hear, KRANS reverted to SNARK because
>Ulf Fagerquist complained that KRANS meant "funeral wreath" in Swedish.

Sigh!  SNARK came before KRANS.  The reason more developer time
was spent on renaming SNARK was because the name tripped off the
lips of a customer.  If customers knew the secret code of
the developement effort, then it wasn't secret anymore.  I have
no idea why secrecy was such a high priority when non-disclosures
were being reissued left and right.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 6993 of alt.sys.pdp10:
From: "Phil Gagner" <gagner@svg-law.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10002212009220.6379-100000@bony.umtec.com> <qOHs4.2210$W92.46188@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net> <38CBE52C.A21B839C@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:6993

>
> Cooler heads?  From what I hear, KRANS reverted to SNARK because
> Ulf Fagerquist complained that KRANS meant "funeral wreath" in Swedish.

Does anyone remember the Hunting of the Snark party hosted
by Tim Stein, Valdeane Alusic, etc. on the 100th Anniversary
of the original publication date? I still have the invitation
for the party (an agony in 10 fits).

The highlight of the party was, of course, the ritual reading
of the entire hunting, from a first edition.

The book was published in 1876, so that the party was
(logically) in 1976. I know that in 1972 or so I began
putting quotes from The Hunting into comments in the
TOPS-10 monitor sources and into code and documentation
in varous DEC utilities I was forced (um, urged) to maintain later,
and we heavily sprinkled them throughout the TYPESET-10 sources
and documentation, starting in 1972.

The original comment on the keep-alive counter code that
RSX-whatever-F checked for the KL front end, when the
-10 stopped incrementing, was "Snark was Boojum-Call
Bellman." It was removed over my objection as too obscure.

This isn't in any way to take credit for the internal use of the
name for the SNARK project. The book and the term were
popular among -10 enthusiasts at the time. In the late 60's
when people called a a program "snarked" everyone knew
exactly what was meant, "Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder
sometimes."






Article 7069 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cnn.nas.nasa.gov!news.hawaii.edu!not-for-mail
From: Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP [Was Re: The computer jargon file]
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 10:06:05 -1000
Organization: Canada France Hawai`i Telescope Corporation
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <38D2902C.8E3AE54@cfht.hawaii.edu>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

>
> /BAH>My apologies to those who are reading it again; I'm feeling
> /BAH>better about reposting it because there's a new old fart on
> /BAH>the block who just started reading the newsgroup.

Being the "old fart" in question and wanting to comment but not
having posted with Netscrape before, we'll see how this comes out .... :-)

>
> /BAH>Sometime, during the 6.03 development cycle and the advent
> /BAH>of the KL10 CPU, Jim noticed that the speed of service to
> /BAH>users was not very good.  After we shipped 6.03, Jim did
> /BAH>his usual "stare at the SYSDPY" displays and created a
> /BAH>performance data base (I think with the help of CDO) for
> /BAH>further performance analysis.
>

Hmmm, you mention 1978 - that sounds right for 7.01 but not for
the KL.  I worked at Marlboro in 1974 and 1975 and the 1025/1026
(I think those were the serial numbers) appeared while I was there.
I know this was the case 'cause I got to fix BASIC which, being a
good, old style program, made use of the extra bits in BLT pointers
which were being absconded with by the new segment stuff.

>
> /BAH>What he found absolutely floored him.  When one added a
> /BAH>second KL10 CPU, one did not get twice the service; his
> /BAH>analyses showed that one only got 0.8 the expected
> /BAH>performance.Those development days were lively with laughter,
> /BAH>fights, ups and downs.  A big up was the day that
> /BAH>the guys got the monitor to print its dot after TW
> /BAH>ran his macroes over the sources;

Another high point was the first time 1025 (the "boot CPU") was
powered down and 1026 kept running :-)

Jim "Nothead" "Boyer-Moore search in Texas TECO" Thomas




Article 7091 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-40
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: TOPS-10 SMP [Was Re: The computer jargon file]
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 00 10:20:12 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 59
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References: <AtP94.8925$7S.6211@news20.bellglobal.com> <8aqqjs$mlb$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <38D2902C.8E3AE54@cfht.hawaii.edu>
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In article <38D2902C.8E3AE54@cfht.hawaii.edu>,
   Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>>
>> /BAH>My apologies to those who are reading it again; I'm feeling
>> /BAH>better about reposting it because there's a new old fart on
>> /BAH>the block who just started reading the newsgroup.
>
>Being the "old fart" in question and wanting to comment but not
>having posted with Netscrape before, we'll see how this 
>comes out .... :-)

It appears to have bopped over here OK.  For those of you
who may not remember the real name, may I introduce Nothead to
you all.

>
>>
>> /BAH>Sometime, during the 6.03 development cycle and the advent
>> /BAH>of the KL10 CPU, Jim noticed that the speed of service to
>> /BAH>users was not very good.  After we shipped 6.03, Jim did
>> /BAH>his usual "stare at the SYSDPY" displays and created a
>> /BAH>performance data base (I think with the help of CDO) for
>> /BAH>further performance analysis.
>>
>
>Hmmm, you mention 1978 - that sounds right for 7.01 but not for
>the KL.  I worked at Marlboro in 1974 and 1975 and the 1025/1026
>(I think those were the serial numbers) appeared while I was there.
>I know this was the case 'cause I got to fix BASIC which, being a
>good, old style program, made use of the extra bits in BLT pointers
>which were being absconded with by the new segment stuff.

One of the flavors of 6-level monitors supported KLs.  However,
they ran master/slave and turned out to be, IIRC, slower than
master/slave KI when comparing actually work getting done.

>
>>
>> /BAH>What he found absolutely floored him.  When one added a
>> /BAH>second KL10 CPU, one did not get twice the service; his
>> /BAH>analyses showed that one only got 0.8 the expected
>> /BAH>performance.Those development days were lively with laughter,
>> /BAH>fights, ups and downs.  A big up was the day that
>> /BAH>the guys got the monitor to print its dot after TW
>> /BAH>ran his macroes over the sources;
>
>Another high point was the first time 1025 (the "boot CPU") was
>powered down and 1026 kept running :-)

Yea.  Looking back on it now, we quickly got used to reconfiguring
systems on the fly for stand-alone, field service, etc.

Just for clarification, 1025 wasn't the "other" CPU.  It was
1042.  1025 was the hardware engineering CPU.
/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 7205 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: pechter@news.monmouth.com (Bill Pechter)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Shell scripts
Date: 21 Mar 2000 05:39:41 -0500
Organization: Unknown
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References: <AtP94.8925$7S.6211@news20.bellglobal.com> <38D058A2.A3178676@bell-labs.com> <Pine.NXT.4.30.0003152251550.3301-100000@Tomobiki-Cho. <38D172EA.49B8464D@bellatlantic.net>
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In article <38D172EA.49B8464D@bellatlantic.net>,
HerbalGypsy/justbobthebard  <shsrms@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>Ok, since this is also in a.f.c,
>what about the biannual rumors that DEC was a target for a takeover by
>AT&T?
>I don't recall if that was the odd year rumor or the even year rumor in
>the 70s.
>But there was the consent decree, the carterfone decision, etc.
>bob

Bob -- the rumor I heard at DEC was about 1984.

DEC was to merge with AT&T -- killed by AT&T telling Ken Olson they were
going to put in place the senior DEC mgmt... K.O. told em to go scratch
(supposedly).

At the same time DEC was working an outsource deal with AT&T to supply
all Sysadmin and Operations personnel into Bell Labs to admin the 
Unix machines... (I was being considered a position as a Unix admin
as part of that...)

Amazing since Lucent's done the outsource with IBM Global Services
and here I am in Bell Labs doing Sysadmin direct for Lucent 15 years
after the rumor.

If DEC and AT&T merged and DEC was in charge of hardware there might
never have been the spread of Unix to DEC competitors... Who knows.
This may have avoided the spread of HP-UX boxes and Apollo might have
remained successful with Domain/OS.

Compaq could've been just another PC company.

Sun might have had cheap DEC/AT&T Unix boxes to compete with and DEC and
AT&T microsystems might have had the Alpha out without building the
costly (now Intel) fab plant.

Bill
-- 
bpechter@monmouth.com      |     Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
                           |     Linux:     Where do you want to go tomorrow?
                           |     BSD:       Are you guys coming, or what?


Article 7188 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: TOPS-10 dates and features
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 09:33:14 -1000
Organization: Canada France Hawai`i Telescope Corporation
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Is there a decent list of dates and features of TOPS-10 versions?

I don't see much of one on Joe's nice page.  (It references Compaq's
Digital timeline pages - which don't get it right either.  They show
a picture of a KI-10 in 1971 as the first DECsystem-10 and another
picture in 1972 as the first KI-10. :-)  They also tout DECNET in
1975 neglecting ANF-10.)

I'd be willing to take a wild stab at it; though I was mostly only a
user, only active from 73 to 81, and have only a KI-10 reference
card left from my collection :-(

Nothead

1969 - 4N50/4S50 - Swapping?
1970 - 4S72 - high segments
1971 - 5.01 - KI-10, paging
???? - 5.02 - the first even numbered one to avoid ?
1973 - 5.03 - SFD's and PATH's ?
197? - 5.05 - FILDAE (or was that 5.07?)
1975 - 6.01 - KL-10
?




Article 7189 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Eric Fischer <enf@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: 20 Mar 2000 19:37:01 GMT
Organization: EnterAct Corp Turbo-Elite News Server
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Peter da Silva <peter@taronga.com> quotes Christopher C. Stacy:

> > The most often used kind of application today is the WYSIWYG display
> > editor, and the first one of those was TECO and EMACS, written in
> > assembley and TECO, respectively, on ITS.
> 
> What year? The first full screen editor I ever saw was in the early '70s on
> a minicomputer at Honeywell Australia.

TECO had screen editing at least by 1964, according to a manual that
you can read at

  http://www.pobox.com/~enf/lore/teco/teco-64.html

At that point TECO seems to have run standalone rather than under any
operating system; by the July, 1965 revision it seems to have picked up
some operating system support.

The first screen editor that I am aware of, though, was not TECO but
"M856.  EDITING TEXT FOR IMMEDIATE DISPLAY" written by Martin E. Somin
of the MIT Electrical Engineering Department in 1959.  It is described
as follows in Progress Report Number 6 of the Research and Educational
Activities in Machine Computation by the Cooperating Colleges of New
England, MIT Computation Center, January, 1960:

   This problem will be concerned with designing a computer program
   that will allow editorial work on a given piece of text in such
   a manner that the text in its edited form is immediately available
   in a visual display.  This example of man and machine interaction
   may prove useful in editing commercial copy.

   The program will allow both additions and deletions of text,
   punctuation marks, spacing and capitals at any point in the original
   text.  As additions and deletions are made, all words in the text
   will automatically shift so as to keep the margins uniform.  Any
   words making for more than a predetermined number of characters on
   a line will be shift [sic] to the next line of text.  In the case of
   additions to the text, material run off the bottom of the page would
   be stored in a separate memory for use in starting the next page.
   This run off text will not ordinarily appear in the visual display.

eric


Article 7190 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: 20 Mar 2000 19:47:20 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>What year? The first full screen editor I ever saw was in the early '70s [...]

It depends what you count as a "full screen editor."  TECO was displaying the
buffer on the screen in the early 60s (starting on the PDP-1), but you typed
a sequence of (terse) commands and the whole sequence took effect at once
when you finished (with ALT ALT).  Single-keystroke editing in TECO started
with "real time edit mode" around 1970 or so but I think TVEDIT at Stanford
was earlier than that.

P.S.  What I miss most from the PDP-10 is the ability to debug a crashed
kernel and revive it!  And of course the open-source nature of all the
software.  And, when it comes to teaching students about machine organization,
I miss the fact that an address can fit in an instruction.  :-)

No, on second thought, what I miss most is the fact that writing a file with
the same name as an existing file creates a new one, not seen by readers
until it's closed!  This is the most crucial thing that Unix got wrong, imho,
and Dos got it even more spectacularly wrong, from which we still suffer
in Windows.


Article 7192 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Eric Fischer <enf@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: 20 Mar 2000 21:21:04 GMT
Organization: EnterAct Corp Turbo-Elite News Server
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Brian Harvey <bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

> It depends what you count as a "full screen editor."  TECO was displaying the
> buffer on the screen in the early 60s (starting on the PDP-1)

For what it's worth, Dan Murphy has denied that PDP-1 TECO used the
display.  I would love to see code or documentation for PDP-1 TECO
proving either that it did or did not have display support.

> Single-keystroke editing in TECO started  with "real time edit mode" around
> 1970 or so but I think TVEDIT at Stanford was earlier than that.

And indeed, you can read about TVEDIT in "THOR--a display based time
sharing system" by John McCarthy, Gary Feldman, and John Allen in the
proceedings of the 1967 Spring Joint Computer Conference.  As documented
there, it supported the following editing commands:

  n space       move right n characters
  n backspace   move left n characters
  n return      move down n lines
  n K           delete n characters or lines
  n G           go to page n
  P             insert page mark
  I             enter insert mode
  W             get next display window
  F             finish editing

According to the bibliography attached to that article, TVEDIT existed
in March, 1965.

eric


Article 7213 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Eric Fischer <enf@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: 21 Mar 2000 16:04:21 GMT
Organization: EnterAct Corp Turbo-Elite News Server
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Johnny Billquist  <Johnny.Billquist@netinsight.se> wrote:

> > For what it's worth, Dan Murphy has denied that PDP-1 TECO used the
> > display.  I would love to see code or documentation for PDP-1 TECO
> > proving either that it did or did not have display support.
> 
> Huh? Eric, just about two hours earlier you posted a reference to
> a 1964 TECO manual with regards to the display.

The 1964 manual is for PDP-6 TECO and only says that *most* of the
ideas were taken from the PDP-1 version.  The display support might
have been one of the ideas that was ported from the PDP-1 to the
PDP-6, or it might have been a new feature.

eric


Article 7211 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Eric Fischer <enf@pobox.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^
Date: 21 Mar 2000 15:58:15 GMT
Organization: EnterAct Corp Turbo-Elite News Server
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Johnny Billquist  <Johnny.Billquist@netinsight.se> wrote:

> Well, you can argue as much as you want to. EMACS-style editing of command
> lines isn't in T20 as far as I know

At least some installations had it.  I have a copy of a University
of Chicago computation center newsletter with an article announcing
the availablity of the feature.

eric


Article 7921 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
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From: Christopher C Stacy <cstacy@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself)
Message-ID: <x8lsnx1ktou.fsf@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 05:22:57 GMT
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003180849470.6959-100000@bony.umtec.com> <38E6B5EA.5B112B79@bellatlantic.net> <8c7smv$jra$1@saltmine.radix.net> <Pine.LNX.4.10.10004030858500.3837-100000@bony.umtec.com> <8cbru6$s7n$1@saltmine.radix.net> <Pine.LNX.4.10.10004040849200.5364-100000@bony.umtec.com> <PAT.00Apr4113627@smithfield.transarc.ibm.com> <vytem8l7s7o.fsf@ai.mit.edu> <x8lln2tpqa2.fsf@world.std.com> <Pine.LNX.4.10.10004041949070.5677-100000@bony.umtec.com>
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>>>>> On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 19:49:53 -0500, Daniel Seagraves ("Daniel") writes:
 Daniel> On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Christopher C Stacy wrote:
 >> Moreover, the point of contention is not about "ITS", but rather about
 >> the personal files of the users of some computers that ran ITS.

 Daniel> Really?  I thought it was the software!  So, if I can get rid of the
 Daniel> personal stuff, I can distribute the remainder?

It's a little more complex than that.

In a sense, there is no such single thing as "ITS" or "the ITS
software".  There was never any ITS "distribution" or anything, 
nor was ITS any kind of product, nor (contrary to the silly claims
on this newsgroup) was ITS a deliverable item on a Government contract.  
(And as someone pointed out, that would not automatically make it
public domain or Government property anyway.)  There is no set of
files or directories which can clearly be identified as "ITS";
it's all mixed together with personal stuff.  That means that your
first job would be to determine who holds the copyrights to all the
pieces that you want to make copies of.  That also implies that you
know what the pieces are that you need.

It is very likely that MIT holds the copyrights to everything that is
needed to bring up a running ITS.  However, sorting out what those
pieces are, and distinguishing them from pieces of private materials
(software, documentation, and other files) that MIT might not own, 
and also filtering out other kinds of personal material, is a job
that can really only be accomplished by certain people at MIT.

If you were to take that upon yourself, you would be incurring all
the legal liability that goes with it.  And if you were not personally
intimately involved with the materials at the time, how do you imagine
you would know for sure what you're looking at?  In addition to
copyright issues, you could easily get into other kinds of legal
problems involving areas like invasion of privacy.  There could
potentially hundreds of people involved in legal actions.  
Do you have enough lawyers to back you up on a project like this?

Anyway, there are people working with MIT to create a sanitized ITS
distribution for people who would like this historical artifact.
They are mostly not getting paid, and are doing it for personal reasons. 
This also means that they are not in a big pressured hurry to do it.
When they have something ready, they will also have to get it past the
MIT lawyers, who must be confident that MIT will not get into trouble
by accidently releasing things that they shouldn't.

My advice would be to wait for them to get around to it, and not bug them.
There is no release schedule for this.  It will be a gift when it happens.


Article 7933 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 11:24:00 -0700
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing
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One of my earliest encounters with UNIX left a real bad impression with
me.  This was in V6 PDP-11 days.  A UNIX developer (who shall go nameless)
was having trouble implementing Telnet protocol.  It's not easy to do
Telnet right; the obvious implementation will set you into a protocol
loop.

So he picked my brains for how I did it in ITS and TOPS-20; I wrote the
standard Telnet client for both systems, although there were earlier
implementations.  At the time, my algorithm was considered to be the best
way to do Telnet, since it would get the protocol right and didn't have
deadlock problems.  When I outlined the algorithm, I could see him become
crestfallen, because what I described was unimplementable in the UNIX of
that time (it still is unimplementable in many UNIX variants running
today).

In brief, my algorithm had two processes sharing writeable memory to
communicate state.  Rather than have an "option pending" state (which is
very difficult to do right!), I simply had an "enabled" or "disabled" for
each Telnet state.  If I initiated a state change, I would simply send the
protocol to change the state and immediately set the state.  The protocol
receiving process would simply ignore any protocol that did not change the
state; if the protocol would change the state, it made the change and sent
back the answer.

The key was in using shared writeable memory, so interprocess
communication was possible without any deadlocks; furthermore, that there
be no queueing of the interprocess communication.  In other words, a
change that was overwritten by a subsequent change would essentially
disappear.

Tests demonstrated that the shortcut of not having the "option pending"
state didn't make any difference in the (correct) protocol dialog or in
user behavior.  Even Jon Postel agreed that it was a neat solution to the
problem.  Jon was normally quite a purist.

UNIX Telnet had to do it a different way, and anyone who's ever looked at
it will see just how hairy it ended up before they got it right.  
Fortunately, the versions that got it wrong are mostly extinct (although
not on my 3B1...).

Today, of course, you could do my algorithm on UNIX systems which have
threads.  But this is now, and that was then; and nobody really feels a
compelling need to rewrite UNIX Telnet now.  Most UNIX programmers still
don't comprehend the use of shared writeable memory between threads.

On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Tim Shoppa wrote:
> Candidate for #1 Internet Myth: That Unix invented the 'net and
> its protocols.
> 
> Reference: RFC 139, "Discussion of Telnet Protocol", 7-May-1971.
> 
> Admittedly, Telnet has changed a lot in the past three decades, but
> to claim that it didn't exist before its Unix implementation is
> a bit extreme, isn't it?

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.



Article 7936 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Telnet age (was ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^))
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Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> writes:

>Stephen H. Westin wrote:

>> I was under the impression that telnet was a fairly late phenomenon;
>> "rsh" and "rlogin" were makeshift utilities on Berkeley Unix

Well, gee.  The old telnet protocol was retired around 1974, the new
started showing up around 1973 (I implemented the client half on
TOPS-10, Ed Taft at Harvard implemented the server half).
The "r" commands in BSD Unix were part of teaching Unix about the ARPAnet
and happened much later.  The "r" commands are very much Unix-specific.

>Candidate for #1 Internet Myth: That Unix invented the 'net and
>its protocols.

>Reference: RFC 139, "Discussion of Telnet Protocol", 7-May-1971.

That's for the old protocol.  I think the new protocol got started around:

RFC 0461 - Telnet Protocol meeting announcement (February 14, 1973)

At least I worked on it in the 73/74 timeframe.  The old protocol is
so different it really deserves a different name.

Our implementation gave Harvard and CMU reputations as the fastest systems
around, as it was all implemented in interrupt level code.  I used
coroutines to handle decoding options split across message boundaries, as
I couldn't readily write code to "fetch the next character".  So I
just swapped PCs between interrupt code that stepped through each received
octet and code that decoded the octet stream.  I was quite delighted
to find a very good use for the PDP-10 coroutine instruction (JSP AC,0(AC)).
It was much like a state machine that used the PC as the state variable.

Ah yes.  I wrote a lot of code before going to New York City over
Thanksgiving in 1973 during the first of the oil crunches.  Trying to
find gas on the Sunday we returned was not fun.  It was a couple weeks
later before I had time to type in the code.  I wrote code on paper
and added comments as I typed.  It took me over a day to figure out
what I had written!  However, it came up quickly and was very solid.
I may have been the only site that was ready on the original changeover
date (Feb 1974?).

>Admittedly, Telnet has changed a lot in the past three decades,

Telnet has changed remarkably little since the new protocol was designed.

 but
>to claim that it didn't exist before its Unix implementation is
>a bit extreme, isn't it?

Not at all.  Unless one posts that claim in these newsgroups.  :-)

	-Ric Werme
--
Ric Werme                            | werme@nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete


Article 7938 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Telnet age (was ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC?
 ^_^))
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 18:57:40 -0700
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing
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On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Ric Werme wrote:
> I used
> coroutines to handle decoding options split across message boundaries, as
> I couldn't readily write code to "fetch the next character".  So I
> just swapped PCs between interrupt code that stepped through each received
> octet and code that decoded the octet stream.  I was quite delighted
> to find a very good use for the PDP-10 coroutine instruction (JSP AC,0(AC)).
> It was much like a state machine that used the PC as the state variable.

Damn, I miss coroutines!  I too was a big user of the JSP instruction for
coroutines.  The Dialnet protocol drivers, the TC-190 magtape driver, and
last but not least the infamous Cafard (TOPS-20 equivalent of UUCP mail)
all used JSP coroutines.

No way to do coroutines in C.  The closest thing is setjmp()/longjump()
which is much less powerful.

The interesting thing was that I figured out coroutines on my own with the
Dialnet stuff 23+ years ago.  I remember telling the senior wizard about
my new neat hack, and was deflated to be told "it's an old technique
that's been around for years.  It's call a coroutine."  ;-)

I have no doubt that in about 10-20 years, some kidlet will rediscover the
idea and try to patent it.

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.



Article 7946 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: michael.wojcik@merant.com (Michael Wojcik)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Telnet age (was ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC?  ^_^))
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Date: 6 Apr 2000 21:27:01 GMT
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[Snipped PDP-10 material and its newsgroup from the followup list.
Restore it if you like.]

In article <Pine.NXT.4.30.0004051838460.2895-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>, Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:

> No way to do coroutines in C.  The closest thing is setjmp()/longjump()
> which is much less powerful.

There's no standard coroutine mechanism in C.  But if you can't
implement coroutines in a particular C implementation, that's the
implementation's fault, not the language's.  There's nothing in C
itself to prevent you from inventing your own generalized catch/throw
or transfer-control mechanism, which can be used to create
coroutines.  It's tricky to do that in a portable fashion, but wasn't
someone arguing just a little while ago that nothing significant
could be done portably in C anyway?

It's not *convenient* to do coroutines in C, true.  But then it isn't
in most HLLs.  (Scheme is one exception; no doubt there are others.)
Yes, that's unfortunate; coroutines are a useful technique.  But their
applications can be satisfied well enough by other techniques, so
there's no compelling reason to add them to established languages.

Personally, I'd like to see a new language with some elements of the
C philosophy but with more of the close-to-the-metal power of assembler.
The trend with C derivatives (C++, Java) has been toward more abstrac-
tion; that's desirable in many domains, but not everywhere.  (There was
an excellent interview with someone in DDJ a couple of years back about
numerical programming where the interviewee pointed out that the big
impediment to using Java for number-crunching wasn't its performance
but its abstraction, particularly its enforcement of rounding modes and
other chip-level behavior.)

Such a hypothetical language would allow the programmer to transfer
control to specific addresses, perhaps not only of functions but of,
say, basic blocks as well.  And it would have other niceties to ease
deviating from the simple call-and-return control flow, like a real
mechanism for handling parameters rather than  the clumsy stdarg
kluge.  (stdarg is handy, but it's nasty and opaque and situated at
the wrong level.  It should be built into the basic language, not the
standard library.)

There's Forth, which has many nice characteristics, but isn't well-
suited to most large production applications.  (Forth religious wars
follow up to alt.I.don't.give.a.damn, please.)  I'd like a procedural
language that can do this sort of thing.

> I have no doubt that in about 10-20 years, some kidlet will rediscover the
> idea and try to patent it.

Indeed.  I'm sure many of us remember the Mark Williams Company
"canonical network representation" patent (apparently still in force;
I looked it up on the IBM patent web site a few months back out of
curiosity), and things have only gotten worse since.  The latest DDJ
has an editorial ranting (appropriately) about the recent Amazon.com
patents on trivial ideas...


-- 
Michael Wojcik          	        michael.wojcik@merant.com
AAI Development, MERANT                 (block capitals are a company mandate)
Department of English, Miami University

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead ... but the social
and political history of Europe would be exactly the same if Dante and
Shakespeare and Mozart had never lived.  -- W. H. Auden


Article 7923 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!uunet!ffx.uu.net!world!news
From: Christopher C Stacy <cstacy@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself)
Message-ID: <x8lln2tkpf5.fsf@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 06:55:10 GMT
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>>>>> On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 09:14:53 -0500, Daniel Seagraves ("Daniel") writes:
 Daniel> On 2 Apr 2000, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
 Daniel> [snip]

 >> It's a myth that there was a golden age when everyone on the net was a
 >> hacker, and private files could be left unprotected.
 >> 
 >> ITS was full of "lusing turistic scum" who were always getting warned,
 >> or even flushed.  People often read each others's mail, and sometimes
 >> even altered it.  It was common for people to spy on each other.

 Daniel> This is hinted at in some of the stuff I've read.  I gather that turist
 Daniel> then == luser (or user) today?

Daniel,

ITS was indeed very open: all users had what under UNIX would be
called root privileges (at all times).  Also, login did not require
any password, except when connecting from untrusted locations.

As mentioned above, there was a utility program that let you watch
what someone else was seeing on their terminal.  Mere voyerism was 
not the primary use of that facility, though; it was generally used 
to help some user who has having trouble.  It was also useful for
observing someone who was *making* trouble!  Just randomly surfing
around usually turned out rather boring.

There were certainly problems with malicous users, or more often,
users who were just making a mistake.  One poor fellow never lived
down the day he misunderstood a filename wildcard syntax and
accidently deleted almost all the files on the system!

We considered those kinds of problems to be worth the trouble,
compared to dealing with file security issues.  But that doesn't
work in the large.  A better analogy in today's world would be
a file directory in which the Group permissions were set so that
all group member could read/write/delete the files.

ITS was designed for use by a small number of cooperative users living
in a small laboratory.  It was a very advanced PDP-10 operating system
with many interesting features.  ITS was written at MIT (originally
for the PDP-6) and was not based on any other system.  

It was somewhat different from later PDP-10 operating systems such 
as TOPS-10 and TOPS-20.  Many people considered ITS to be better 
than TOPS-20, although "Twenex" had many features (security, batch
processing, extended addressing, uniform application command interface,
and more) which ITS lacked.  ITS was where EMACS, among other things,
was invented.

The ITS computers were run under a policy where we would allow some
limited access by guest users.  We called the guest users "tourists",
and they included students and researchers from MIT and elsewhere
on the network, and even some totally random people who somehow
figured out how to connect to us via the ARPANET.  However, I don't
recall the tourists being referred to in the derogatory manner 
described above, at least by us, even when they were being pests.

The ITS hackers (system programmers) jokingly referred to all the
other users as "lusers"; that didn't have anything to do with tourists.
This joke appears in various places all over the system.
See "LUSER" (or even "USER") in an authentic version of the JARGON file.

Some of the tourists were high school or college kids from the DC area
who had somehow gotten hold of a dialup number to the ARPANET.
Like, their daddy worked for the Defense Department, and they stole
it from him, and then they told a friend who told a friend.
Sometimes these tourists (knowing that at least to some degree,
they were not supposed to be on the system) would try to masquerade
as someone else; the smart ones just kept a low profile.
The DC/VA tourists were generally considered to be the most pesty
and most prone to do annoying things on the system, partly because
there were just more of them.  Anyway, when any particular tourist
became a problem, we would ask them to straighten up, or finally
go ahead and delete their account.  

Starting around late 1981, when people suddenly had access to personal
computers (like the TRS-80) and modems and BBS systems, there were many
more problems with tourist users.   Our open, unprotected environment
was not very compatible with the nascent real world.

Doing something like altering someone else's email would be a good
example of behaviour that would get you kicked off the system.  
That particular thing didn't happen very much -- I don't actually
remember any such incidents off the top of my head.  More likely
would be someone accidently deleting someone else's mailbox.

None of these guest users had any "right" to be on the system; the
whole deal was totally at the sufferage of the ITS administrators,
and so accounts could be terminated anytime for any arbitrary reason.
Typically, accounts were terminated for not obeying the rules about
when you were allowed to be connected (ie. not when the machine is
busy), harassing other users, or for doing things (eg. on the network)
that brought unwanted attention from the Government (you will recall
that the ARPANET was not a public network, but rather a military
network owned and opeated by the Department of Defense).

Not too surprisingly, many tourists had really weird and distorted ideas
about the system, the policies, the people on it, and the whole thing.

-- Chris

This message is a copyrighted work of Christopher Stacy with All Rights Reserved.


Article 7932 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 11:03:16 -0700
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing
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On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Christopher C Stacy wrote:
> Many people considered ITS to be better 
> than TOPS-20, although "Twenex" had many features (security, batch
> processing, extended addressing, uniform application command interface,
> and more) which ITS lacked.

Even RMS once admitted to me that Tenex/TOPS-20 also had a better virtual
memory system than ITS.  In Tenex/TOPS-20, virtual memory was the
fundamental basis of the entire file/memory system.  The best way to think
of it is that every 512-word page, be it in memory ("core"), filesystem
("disk"), or swapping area ("drum"), had a globally unique page address;
and that a particular memory address space page could be mapped to any of
these.  A full understanding requires a reading of the PDP-10 Hardware
Reference Manual and understanding the function of the different types of
page pointers, section tables, page tables, shared page table, and core
status table.

In ITS, virtual memory was almost as much as an afterthought as it is on
UNIX.

Needless to say, TOPS-20 style virtual memory is probably unimplementable
on modern CPUs.

> Not too surprisingly, many tourists had really weird and distorted ideas
> about the system, the policies, the people on it, and the whole thing.

Definitely true!

-- Mark --

* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State.	*
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.		*
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.



Article 7941 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: Christopher C Stacy <cstacy@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself)
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>>>>> On 5 Apr 2000 23:04:33 -0400, Keith F Lynch ("Keith") writes:
 Keith> Chris neglects to mention that he was one of those pesty
 Keith> and annoying DC/VA tourists.

Heh heh.  However, I am not sure how pesty a tourist I was, since it
was only a little while before I accepted a research position at the
AI lab, where I worked on the development of ITS (and other things)
and was also the ARPANET liason and primary system administrator.



Article 8089 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <qhd7nwti79.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
>    Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
> >Christopher C Stacy <cstacy@world.std.com> writes:
> >> That means that your
> >> first job would be to determine who holds the copyrights to all the
> >> pieces that you want to make copies of.  That also implies that you
> >> know what the pieces are that you need.
> >
> >Pre-1988 files (which would presumably be most of them) are not elgible
> >for copyright protection in the US unless they bear a copyright notice
> >(with minor exceptions in U.S. Code Title 17 Section 405).
> 
> And every single source within DEC had a copyright notice.
> As of (I think it was) 7.02 ship, even the EXE files had
> a f***ing ASCII copyright notice stored in appropriate
> low core.  I really do know what I'm talking about.
> I spent years of my life editing those damn notices.
> 
> /BAH
Yep, that was what happened when we started hiring all those lawyers.
I don't recall the patent attorney we hired, we got a lot of questions
about why we did not apply for patents on all kinds of things -
including the design for the original UART that Vince Bastiani, John
McNamara, Remi Lisee, et al did.  WE just wanted a lower price on
chips!! 
bob
> 
> Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 8101 of alt.sys.pdp10:
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From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: ITS CD (was Re: Wanna see how to annoy MRC? ^_^)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 00 09:03:35 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <38F51423.FF7DAA8E@bellatlantic.net>,
   HerbalGypsy/justbobthebard <shsrms@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>
>
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> In article <qhd7nwti79.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
>>    Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>> >Christopher C Stacy <cstacy@world.std.com> writes:
>> >> That means that your
>> >> first job would be to determine who holds the copyrights to all the
>> >> pieces that you want to make copies of.  That also implies that you
>> >> know what the pieces are that you need.
>> >
>> >Pre-1988 files (which would presumably be most of them) are not elgible
>> >for copyright protection in the US unless they bear a copyright notice
>> >(with minor exceptions in U.S. Code Title 17 Section 405).
>> 
>> And every single source within DEC had a copyright notice.
>> As of (I think it was) 7.02 ship, even the EXE files had
>> a fucking ASCII copyright notice stored in appropriate
>> low core.  I really do know what I'm talking about.
>> I spent years of my life editing those damn notices.

>Yep, that was what happened when we started hiring all those lawyers.
>I don't recall the patent attorney we hired, we got a lot of questions
>about why we did not apply for patents on all kinds of things -
>including the design for the original UART that Vince Bastiani, John
>McNamara, Remi Lisee, et al did.  WE just wanted a lower price on
>chips!! 

DEC was terribly sloppy about patenting the stuff they should
have.  Patent training was not widespread throughout the company.
Copyrighting was mainly because we, in Tape Prep, had been told
to put one in everything we typed up for the programmers.  If
it had been left to the programmers, not a thing would have
been copyrighted either because that info never made it through
the supervisor.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 8171 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 18:38:13 -0400
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <38F8EF55.CB005230@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In article <38f3a164$0$222@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
>    inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) wrote:
...
> >To get an unabiguous answer to the question "is anyone
> >updating this file",
> >all programs accessing that file would have to consistently call ENQ./DEQ.
> >requesting shared or exclusive locks.
> 
> I forgot about the ENQ./DEQ.  I always meant to figure out
> exactly what happened with that stuff.  ...

Peter Vatne (at least) ported it to VMS.  

http://www.openvms.digital.com:8000/72final/4527/4527pro_033.html#jun_227
http://www.openvms.digital.com:8000/72final/4527/4527pro_028.html#jun_202
http://www.openvms.digital.com:8000/72final/4527/4527pro_045.html#jun_295

He and Bill Kilgore presented the results in the 10/20 conference rooms
(aka Hardware/Software C/Rs, off of the MR1-2 cafeteria) from 2-4PM on
Monday, 4-Mar-85.  The talk was catered (a red wine-flavored,
walnut-bit-encrusted cheese ball).

One presumes that Wild Bill worked on the port as well; I just don't
remember speaking to him about it, whereas I chatted with Peter a tad.

Peter (at least) might have paid for the cheese ball.  I don't know
whether the wine flavoring was port, or something else.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 8188 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail
From: "Alan H. Martin" <AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: ooh, a *real* flamewar :)
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 11:44:16 -0400
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <38F9DFD0.FFF04951@MA.UltraNet.Com>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
...
> The UUOSYM that you were reading in high school was BEFORE
> I became responsible for it.  After it became my baby, there
> were no omissions, AFAICT.

Now the truth can be told:  Once upon a time, FOROTS had to refer to a
secret bit in I/O buffer headers.

During backspace operations it would wait until I/O was done, and then
count the number of buffers that had been read, turning off use bits on
the way.  However, there was no documented way of telling how many
buffers contained data.  From FORIO.MAC:

"
FNDUSE:	MOVE	T4,-1(T3)		;GET STATUS WORD
	TLNE	T4,40			;TAPE EOF?
	 AOJA	T1,USEDON		;YES. WE'RE DONE
"

From S.MAC:

"
; I/O STATUS WORD ASSIGNMENTS - THESE ARE THE "MODE" OF DEVMOD

...
; STATUS BITS

;RIGHT HALF (USER)

...
; LEFT HALF (SYSTEM)

...

	XP	IOEND,40	;SERVICE ROUTINE HAS TRANSMITTED LAST DATA

"

The bit is commented as a "system" (non-"user") bit, but the
information was only available by testing that bit.  I remember the look
on Jon's face when he came back from the monitor group telling him to
use the magic number (maybe they even told him about the magic number in
the first place).


The reference eventually went away when FOROTS switched to leaning more
heavily on TAPOP.
				/AHM
-- 
Alan Howard Martin				AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com


Article 8154 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-102-86
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: ooh, a *real* flamewar :)
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 00 08:33:52 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <8d9iv9$b6f$7@bob.news.rcn.net>
References: <AtP94.8925$7S.6211@news20.bellglobal.com> <8c058c$o9d@weyl.math.psu.edu> <38e3c5a9_3@news.wizvax.net> <8c0oeq$ek4$1@eeyore.INS.CWRU.Edu> <38e40a3b_2@news.wizvax.net> <8c2a8v$a01$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <mWcJ4.1877$PV.126922@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <8d6tf7$rkm$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <uem88vmn5.fsf@graphics.cornell.edu> <38F79DE7.26C031B1@cfht.hawaii.edu>
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In article <38F79DE7.26C031B1@cfht.hawaii.edu>,
   Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>"Stephen H. Westin" wrote:
>
>> jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>>
>> > It certainly seemed to generate it.  The yahoos who were
>> > insisting that all development be done in BLISS suffered
>> > from that malady to the nth degree.
>> >
>> > It sure was a pain in everybody's backside.
>> >
>> > Developer:  I've found a bug in the BLISS compiler.
>> > BLISS developer:  Find a workaround.
>> >
>> > And that was the story forever.
>>
>> Which, I think, explains the attitude toward higher-level languages in
>> the 36-bit DEC world. That's not the only possible scenario; with
>> Unix, the two groups were the same, so folks had a personal stake in
>> fixing things. So C basically worked, and an OS was written in it.
>>
>
>Barb, do you know any of the history behind the choice of BLISS-10 for
>FORTRAN-10? 

No.  I don't.

> Was it Norma's choice or burden? 

IIRC, when FORTRAN-10 was begun (I was in Tape Prep so that
had to be 1971 or 1972), Norma was still a programmer becoming
project leader; so didn't that make Al Ryder the supervisor?
John Everett would remember more.  Ah, and I forgot, Valdeanne
Alusic was there at the time, too.  

> And how did that grow into
>the incompatible implementation of BLISS-36/BLISS-32 

The divergence of BLISS-10 (and, I suspect also BLISS-11)
and BLISS-nn was due to two software ships from CMU that
were spanned by many years and implementing backwards
incompatibilities.  What do you expect from something 
produced via an insulated installation?

> ...and requirement for
>using BLISS for everything?

There requirement that BLISS be used for everything came from CMU
imports.  I remember the day when I was told that all TOPS10
monitor _patches_ had to be written in BLISS.  Now, patches
are little tiny files written in DDT that were applied to EXE
files.  And these HARDWARE assholes couldn't understand that
the law didn't make any sense.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 8153 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!europa.netcrusader.net!207.172.3.37!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-102-86
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: ooh, a *real* flamewar :)
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 00 08:24:16 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 80
Message-ID: <8d9ida$b6f$6@bob.news.rcn.net>
References: <AtP94.8925$7S.6211@news20.bellglobal.com> <8c058c$o9d@weyl.math.psu.edu> <38e3c5a9_3@news.wizvax.net> <8c0oeq$ek4$1@eeyore.INS.CWRU.Edu> <38e40a3b_2@news.wizvax.net> <8c2a8v$a01$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <mWcJ4.1877$PV.126922@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <8d6tf7$rkm$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <uem88vmn5.fsf@graphics.cornell.edu>
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In article <uem88vmn5.fsf@graphics.cornell.edu>,
   westin*nospam@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin) wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>
>> In article <mWcJ4.1877$PV.126922@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
>>    "David Thompson" <david.thompson1@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> >Sorry, I can't resist:  So BLISS dev't is ignorance?
>> >
>> >..REPT 3 <G> ; hmm...  <<G>> ? <"<G>"> ? foo!
>> >
>> It certainly seemed to generate it.  The yahoos who were
>> insisting that all development be done in BLISS suffered
>> from that malady to the nth degree.
>> 
>> It sure was a pain in everybody's backside.  
>> 
>> Developer:  I've found a bug in the BLISS compiler.
>> BLISS developer:  Find a workaround.
>> 
>> And that was the story forever.
>
>Which, I think, explains the attitude toward higher-level languages in
>the 36-bit DEC world. 

Errrmmm, no.  This also happened when JMF got lobotomized from
a 36-bit to a 32-bit memory.  He was doing the Alpha CPU
stuff _for_ VMS and got told that from the VMS language people.

>That's not the only possible scenario; with
>Unix, the two groups were the same, so folks had a personal stake in
>fixing things. So C basically worked, and an OS was written in it.

Yes.  That is the way it should work.  But, as a group gets
successful, the number of people involved increase.  Eventually,
the group splits up so that the workers can "managed" better.
Then egoes and empire building happens.  Soon, the groups
no longer tolerated a "good morning" from each other.

>
>I can imagine the corporate culture that made this happen: growth
>followed by Balkanization, then selling ideas to upper management that
>*could* work in the right conditions, but not worrying about whether
>the conditions were right.
>
>So DEC got to be successful enough that there were different groups
>doing parallel work on different architectures. This was seen as
>corporate inefficiency, so the notion of a common higher-level
>implementation language was attractive.

Nah, this happened before there was inefficiency.  What happened
is we got a fatal infection; I always called it CMUitis.

> Unfortunately, those
>responsible for making that language work didn't have the same
>motivation as various product groups, who were trying to meet customer
>needs. So nothing worked. And I can imagine that teh cure was worse
>than the disease: folks finally realized that BLISS wasn't working, so
>they withdrew support for the compiler, leaving a body of production
>code that still needed maintenance, but with no hope of ever fixing
>the compiler.

Not with an edict that demanded all programming be done in BLISS.
The only holdouts that I know of was the -10 people.  (There may
have been little pockets of PDP-11 resistance, like IAS.)  And
we had to get "approval" for each and every module that we had
to write in MACRO-10.  



>Was it anything like that?
>
Read above. :-).  There's more the story but it was 
all a complicated political mess.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 8161 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!216-164-247-55
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: death of architectures...
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 00 11:27:57 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <8d9t5k$dji$3@bob.news.rcn.net>
References: <547leyms3t.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> <8cv9rk$48c$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <38f3902c$0$212@nntp1.ba.best.com> <8d1m1s$m4n$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <8d2i4j$2fe1$1@citadel.in.taronga.com>
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In article <8d2i4j$2fe1$1@citadel.in.taronga.com>,
   peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote:
>In article <8d1m1s$m4n$2@bob.news.rcn.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>>Hopefully, that instruction execution at loc 4 didn't blast
>>any memory.  What does one do?  Write a bunch of JFCLs 
>>after each JUMP to ensure memory integrity?
>
>Normally something like move an instruction (or two) from before the
>jump to after the jump. Which can get tricky if it's a conditional jump.
>
OH, yes...I remember.  The Jupiter was supposed to cause that
flavor of programming.  I was in FORTRAN maintenance at the
time, attending the FORTRAN devlopement of verion 6 reviews
of specs and project meetings for the minions.  The OTS guy
was starting to program for the way it was _rumored_ that
Jupiter executed instructions.  That was one issue that
I put my foot down and insisted that nothing be done based
on Jupiter architecture.  I won that battle, fortunately.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.


Article 8203 of alt.sys.pdp10:
Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-245-97
From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: ooh, a *real* flamewar :)
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 00 08:23:56 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <8der58$qtg$4@bob.news.rcn.net>
References: <38E767FD.D3D0BBE8@MA.UltraNet.Com> <x8l7lefvdnv.fsf@world.std.com> <38F081DB.F25A9D52@MA.UltraNet.Com> <8cq353$8pe$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <38F0A26C.729245DC@MA.UltraNet.Com> <8csesa$bn7$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <38F8D7CD.87FD1272@MA.UltraNet.Com> <8dc5la$7le$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <Pine.NXT.4.30.0004161036370.19973-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
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In article 
<Pine.NXT.4.30.0004161036370.19973-100000@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>,
   Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>On Sun, 16 Apr 2000 jmfbahciv