From m_thompson@ids.net Sat Sep 7 23:33:36 PDT 2002 Article: 17640 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-east.nntpserver.com!nntpserver.com!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: m_thompson@ids.net (Michael Thompson) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 17:19:16 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.9 (Released Version) (x86 32bit) References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 14 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17640 In article , Ron.Hubbard@spamex.com says... > >jmfbahciv@aol.com seems to have said: > >>System comes up with three CPUs and begins timesharing. Shit happens >>and CPU0 (the boot CPU) has to come down. > >Of course, the type of "shit" we are talking about here is someone >like CDO or JMF poking the monitor of 1026 while the rest of the folks >on the floor were trying to get real work done... :-) Then CPUs 1042 and 1322 would stay running... From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sat Sep 7 23:33:54 PDT 2002 Article: 17645 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!newspeer.monmouth.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-181-88 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 02 09:08:10 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYmW7/Z9pDTExbJFr8qJtocDEU3am77W8OF1wW8guugfCgdn1WZk7r6 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Aug 2002 10:16:43 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17645 In article , m_thompson@ids.net (Michael Thompson) wrote: >In article , Ron.Hubbard@spamex.com >says... >> >>jmfbahciv@aol.com seems to have said: >> >>>System comes up with three CPUs and begins timesharing. Shit happens >>>and CPU0 (the boot CPU) has to come down. >> >>Of course, the type of "shit" we are talking about here is someone >>like CDO or JMF poking the monitor of 1026 while the rest of the folks >>on the floor were trying to get real work done... :-) > >Then CPUs 1042 and 1322 would stay running... > Once in a blue moon if the crash was due to fumble fingers. When those guys patched on the fly they usually did a thorough job. I should note that any hardware paths that were unique to a CPU went down with that CPU. This included front end comm lines and remote stations that didn't have a dual path. Thank the bit gods for Ethernet. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sat Sep 7 23:34:06 PDT 2002 Article: 17644 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed.gol.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-181-88 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 02 09:05:42 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 19 Message-ID: References: X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVZX0wFp77nwayAOhvWjvn4vUl5WTll1YUvFPFKqF/7FoNr1kulfI36k X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Aug 2002 10:14:14 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17644 In article , Ron wrote: >jmfbahciv@aol.com seems to have said: > >>System comes up with three CPUs and begins timesharing. Shit happens >>and CPU0 (the boot CPU) has to come down. > >Of course, the type of "shit" we are talking about here is someone >like CDO or JMF poking the monitor of 1026 while the rest of the folks >on the floor were trying to get real work done... :-) There is no defense from fumble fingering. That usually happened early on (for you daytimers). Poking usually wasn't done after 8:30 or so. ;-). /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From Ron.Hubbard@spamex.com Sat Sep 7 23:34:11 PDT 2002 Article: 17660 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!feed.textport.net!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!Barn.!not-for-mail From: Ron Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 14:55:19 -0400 Organization: HCO Message-ID: Reply-To: Ron.Hubbard@spamex.com References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.92/32.570 X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 7 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17660 jmfbahciv@aol.com seems to have said: > There is no defense from fumble fingering. That usually >happened early on (for you daytimers). Poking usually wasn't done >after 8:30 or so. ;-). For me it was late, as I had 1026 & 514 till 3:00 AM. :-) From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sat Sep 7 23:34:22 PDT 2002 Article: 17661 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-102-49 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: Mon, 19 Aug 02 09:17:22 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVb4YA29s8o3gGCpbu/2nHOLeRv5taifwUlL1fb5+n29C7vf5yCHsvOd X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Aug 2002 10:26:24 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17661 In article , Ron wrote: >jmfbahciv@aol.com seems to have said: > >> There is no defense from fumble fingering. That usually >>happened early on (for you daytimers). Poking usually wasn't done >>after 8:30 or so. ;-). > >For me it was late, as I had 1026 & 514 till 3:00 AM. :-) :-)) That's when TW would come in and growl. If he hadn't had his coffee, his bite was worse than his bark. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From healyzh@shell1.aracnet.com Sat Sep 7 23:34:43 PDT 2002 Article: 17648 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!pln-e!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!not-for-mail From: "Zane H. Healy" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: A bug in TOPS-10 7.04? Date: 16 Aug 2002 20:08:40 GMT Organization: Aracnet Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: p-340.newsdawg.com User-Agent: tin/1.4.4-20000803 ("Vet for the Insane") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.19 (i686)) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17648 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > SYSUPT is the counter for the _system_ uptime. This is not necessarily > the same number as the CPU uptime. Let me give you a scenario. > System comes up with three CPUs and begins timesharing. Shit happens > and CPU0 (the boot CPU) has to come down. Now CPU1 is the boot CPU. > Time passes and more shit happens. Now CPU1 is down and CPU2 takes > over as the boot CPU. NOTE THAT TIMESHARING HAS NOT BEEN INTERRUPTED! > So SYSUPT is a large number and does match the uptimer for CPU2. > Now CPU0 has been deemed OK and ADDed into the system; CPU2 is still > the boot CPU. After a while, CPU1 gets ADDed back. Then more shit > happens and CPU2 bites the dust. Either CPU0 or CPU1 will take over > as the BOOT CPU; let's let CPU1 be it. > Now the SYSUPT contents doesn't match any CPU uptime. This is > a case where the sum is greater than its parts. You know, reading this brings a tear to my eye! I've been playing with toy computers way to long, and had pretty much forgotten that real computer systems can do things like this. Unfortunatly the only system I ever got to work on that was able to do this was a 4 CPU Honeywell DPS-8 system running GCOS-8. The closest I've seen to this in modern Hardware would have to be a VMS Cluster. Zane From alderson+news@panix.com Sat Sep 7 23:44:29 PDT 2002 Article: 17605 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!panix!not-for-mail From: Rich Alderson Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: An archive program for TOPS-20? Date: 07 Aug 2002 02:07:58 -0400 Organization: Systems Administration, XKL LLC, Redmond WA 98052 Lines: 18 Sender: alderson+news@panix5.panix.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix5.panix.com X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1028700478 15112 166.84.1.5 (7 Aug 2002 06:07:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 06:07:58 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17605 Alan Greig writes: > On 02 Aug 2002 21:03:29 -0400, Rich Alderson > wrote: >> There was a TAR for Tops-20, but it sucked sharp gravel through a soggy >> paper straw. > Unless I'm suffering faulty memory, Chuck Hedrick had a version of tar > written in S-PASCAL complete with COMND% interface which didn't suck. The one with which I had to contend was written in MIDAS, if I remember correctly. It was more Unix-like than Tops-20-like, which is surprising when you think about the implementation language. Or perhaps not. -- Rich Alderson alderson+news@panix.com "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." --Death, of the Endless From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sun Sep 8 00:17:48 PDT 2002 Article: 17609 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!209-122-234-68 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: DEC CC341 (36 Bit Software) Group Photo Update Date: Wed, 07 Aug 02 12:18:46 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 21 Message-ID: References: X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVa+JeV6f22g+gpX3gEASJNLZYQwUjTqOc9AUtoxNfxquMhvyGbxFl8s X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Aug 2002 13:25:46 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17609 In article , budd@csa.bu.edu (Phil Budne) wrote: >If you make any new identifications, please let me know! >Phil (who was 31,5732 on KL1026, and BUDNE on MRFORT) The person whose head is right behind Clair Grant and before Howard Mayberry is Susan Anderson...I think. She was a secretary. I've been trying to remember her married name but have drawn a blank so far. The person whose head is behind Alan's, and sorta next to Phil, is Carol Perlman, a writer. I forgot to print out your list of names and numbers. My apologies if you've already got them on the list. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sun Sep 8 00:22:22 PDT 2002 Article: 17611 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!209-122-234-68 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Unpacking my 15-year old office boxes generates memory refreshes Date: Wed, 07 Aug 02 12:41:53 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 56 Message-ID: References: <3C1355B4.2C7F6772@trailing-edge.com> <9v25i9$a73$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <9v56r7$dqd$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <9v5ajf$3vi$1@bob.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVbDEokQCfYgS1lAAx5B4DtjRByCO/Uj+d+gi/nExAGKMWMQ2MDxiW3H X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Aug 2002 13:48:57 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17611 alt.folklore.computers:94795 I found the following typed on a 8-1/2x11 paper with sprocket holes along with a dollar bill. (It took me years to get people to spell my name without a New England accent.) I've tried to reproduce it as printed, but am unable to smudge the print quality to spec. FORT:CONTES.STS[31,1565] subj: FORTRAN-10 Bug Contest ********************** to: Bug Contest Winners (see below) QAF List KC Shih Peter Conklin Pat White Heinz Frantz Craig Flectcher Art Clark from: F. Michael Harris date: 17 July 1973 The contest has been running since 11-June-1973. Over a hundred entries have been received, and the contest will continue until further notice. The winners (EXPERT SLEUTHS) so far are: David Nixon 1107, 1108, 1148 $3.00 Frank DiPace 1001, 1019, 1149 $3.00 S. Rabinowitz 1079, 1080, 1083 $3.00 Nancy Gillis Ohm 1098, 1162 $2.00 Craig Fletcher 1032 $1.00 Don Lewine 1099 $1.00 David Rosenberg 1036 $1.00 Mary Payne 1064 $1.00 Don McKee 1135 $1.00 Barbara Huisinger 1205 $1.00 The real winner is, of course, FORTRAN-10; the reliability and usability of its forthcoming official release have shown obvious improvement as a consequence of this in-house exposure. We sincerely thank all contest participants, and urge everyone to keep trying! Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From bdc@world.std.com Sun Sep 8 00:36:06 PDT 2002 Article: 17653 of alt.sys.pdp10 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!world!bdc From: bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) Subject: Unix on the PDP-10? Message-ID: Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 06:17:19 GMT Organization: HappyNet Bungalow Lines: 16 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:96266 alt.sys.pdp10:17653 Has there ever been a port of Unix (or a Unix-like operating system) to the PDP-10 family of computer systems, /prior/ to the NetBSD/pdp10 port? Which, btw, is far from a pipe dream now. The kernel boots to the point of looking for a filesystem to mount. The last major obstacle to overcome would appear to be getting ffs to deal with disk sectors that are made up of 9-bit bytes. I'm sure once it's finally working, the unholy marriage of NetBSD to the PDP-10 will cause the heads of various ITS, SAIL, TOPS-10, and TOPS-20 hacker's to explode; assuming, of course, a Unix port hasn't already been done by someone else. -brian. -- --- Brian Chase | bdc@world.std.com | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ ----- This counter is [6,177,399,753] times as pointless as a real one. -- K. From dgc@spies.com Sun Sep 8 02:25:57 PDT 2002 Article: 17765 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!207.115.63.138!newscon04.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr14.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!3a2e9f9f!not-for-mail User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.0.5 Subject: Re: fpga pdp-10 status report From: "David G. Conroy" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Message-ID: References: <3D7A97ED.6EEC4CE0@ev1.net> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Lines: 47 NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.120.160.139 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr14.news.prodigy.com 1031454925 ST000 66.120.160.139 (Sat, 07 Sep 2002 23:15:25 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 23:15:25 EDT Organization: Prodigy Internet http://www.prodigy.com X-UserInfo1: SCSYASVDLRUORWDYNCOF_W\@PJ_^PBQLGPQRJRQIMASJETAANVW[AKWZE\]^XQWIGNE_[EBL@^_\^JOCQ^RSNVLGTFTKHTXHHP[NB\_C@\SD@EP_[KCXX__AGDDEKGFNB\ZOKLRNCY_CGG[RHT_UN@C_BSY\G__IJIX_PLSA[CCFAULEY\FL\VLGANTQQ]FN Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 03:15:25 GMT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17765 The design had already run the DEC core diagnostics for the instructions it implements (AA-AM, CA-CB) which caught a few errors. Finding the two errors I mentioned would require a fairly exhaustive diagnostic which ran with paging enabled. There are no DEC diagnostics which can run with ITS paging enabled, and the diagnostic I wrote from scratch to take a quick swish around the ITS executive mode instructions was far from exhaustive. > From: Charles Richmond > Organization: Canine Computer Center > Reply-To: richmond@ev1.net > Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 > Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 22:23:27 GMT > Subject: Re: fpga pdp-10 status report > > jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >> >> In article , >> "David G. Conroy" wrote: >>> Tonight I logged into an ITS, running on the >>> micromachine simulator, which believes that consoles look like >>> 16c450 UARTS, and disks have ATA-2 interfaces. >>> >>> Fixing ITS to understand a different kind of terminal >>> and disk was easy. Fixing ITS to understand a model of machine which >>> was like a KS, but not exactly a KS, was fairly easy too (once >>> I clued into the fact that "IFE KA10P" really means "IFN KL10P\KS10P"). >> >> Heh, heh. Those pesky macroes. >> > BAH, were there any "test suites" that DEC ran on the -10's > to beat the hell out of them??? I read in _The Soul of a New > Machine_ about such test suites that were used on the MV-8000 > at Data General. These programs loop back and forth, execute > all kinds of instructions in many, many combinations, and > generally do everything they can to expose a flaw in the > hardware. Something like this for the -10 would be helpful > to all the fpga developers out there building their own -10. > IMHO. > > Did such programs ever exist at DEC??? > > -- > +-------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Charles and Francis Richmond | > +-------------------------------------------------------------+ From jmfbahciv@aol.com Wed Sep 18 13:22:15 PDT 2002 Article: 17771 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!dfw-peer!news.verio.net!newspump.sol.net!newsfeed.news2me.com!canoe.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news-hub.kaist.ac.kr!nntp.kreonet.re.kr!newsfeed.gol.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-216-141 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: fpga pdp-10 status report Date: Sun, 08 Sep 02 10:22:36 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 58 Message-ID: References: <3D7A97ED.6EEC4CE0@ev1.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVb1taMTlwHrZGfGt/+Zmj0PIPqRLK61KhrQCVTpfJQPi6Lsf3jnNVQg X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Sep 2002 11:35:04 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17771 In article <3D7A97ED.6EEC4CE0@ev1.net>, Charles Richmond wrote: >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >> >> In article , >> "David G. Conroy" wrote: >> >Tonight I logged into an ITS, running on the >> >micromachine simulator, which believes that consoles look like >> >16c450 UARTS, and disks have ATA-2 interfaces. >> > >> >Fixing ITS to understand a different kind of terminal >> >and disk was easy. Fixing ITS to understand a model of machine which >> >was like a KS, but not exactly a KS, was fairly easy too (once >> >I clued into the fact that "IFE KA10P" really means "IFN KL10P\KS10P"). >> >> Heh, heh. Those pesky macroes. >> >BAH, were there any "test suites" that DEC ran on the -10's >to beat the hell out of them??? A group got paid to do this. The only people in that group who actually did any useful work didn't stay long. To compensate for the lack of testing out of this group, we found that the Tuesday builds of the monitor gave the system a pretty good workout (I can't say that this exercised the hardware--it sure exercised the montior software). We always wanted ORNL for our field test site because they had a lot of "users" who did all kinds of different things. I've quoted the users because a lot of them thought they were using the IBM machines. > .. I read in _The Soul of a New >Machine_ about such test suites that were used on the MV-8000 >at Data General. These programs loop back and forth, execute >all kinds of instructions in many, many combinations, and >generally do everything they can to expose a flaw in the >hardware. Something like this for the -10 would be helpful >to all the fpga developers out there building their own -10. >IMHO. That was supposed to be provided with the diagnostics. Unfortunately, the diagnostic mind set was based on a hardware p.o.v. and not a software p.o.v. (this is my hypothesis). The last guy in charge of the dianostic group did try to add as many lapses as he could into the diags. The problem with diags is that they were targeted at _pieces_ of hardware, not the interaction of different kinds of hardware. >Did such programs ever exist at DEC??? > Yup. TOPS-10. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From gah@ugcs.caltech.edu Wed Sep 18 13:24:04 PDT 2002 Article: 17782 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!washdc3-snh1.gtei.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!howland.erols.net!usc.edu!attla2!ip.att.net!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!sccrnsc01.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "glen herrmannsfeldt" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp8 References: <468vmuokjgbipol3qh5uke4f2odp5bllnj@4ax.com> Subject: Re: Extension to SIMH magtape format Lines: 32 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.228.58.87 X-Complaints-To: abuse@attbi.com X-Trace: sccrnsc01 1031629639 12.228.58.87 (Tue, 10 Sep 2002 03:47:19 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 03:47:19 GMT Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 03:47:20 GMT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:17782 alt.sys.pdp11:6708 alt.sys.pdp8:5544 "Joe Smith" wrote in message news:VFDe9.17671$T_.395915@iad-read.news.verio.net... > In article , wrote: > >Could there be an erased portion in the middle of a physical > >tape? That is, the layout of the tape is ? > > Yes. TAPOP. code 12 (.TFWLG) = Write Long Gap = Write 3 inches > of blank tape. Used with read-verify-while-writing on tape drives > that have separate read and write heads. The device driver can > be configured to read back the data that was being written, and if > there was a read error, backspace one record, write a long gap, and > try again. This allowed skipping over parts of the tape where the > oxide was substandard. > > When such a tape was rewound and read back, there was no indication > that there was a long gap. As long as the first byte of data started > coming in within 30 seconds of tape motion, all was OK. IBM's tape drives would have even less problems. As I understand they will go through the whole tape looking for the first block. If you mount a blank tape when it is expecting a labeled or unlabeled tape it will run it off the reel looking for the label. Then again, I used to hear stories about PDP10 tape drives that had the ability to do fast forward and rewind at the same time. You got your tape back on two reels when it started on only one. (I knew someone who this happened to.) -- glen From fdc@columbia.edu Wed Oct 2 00:52:34 PDT 2002 Article: 17889 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!aanews.merit.edu!gumby.it.wmich.edu!newsreader.wustl.edu!stl-feed.news.verio.net!news.cmnh.org!phl-feed.news.verio.net!newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu!news.columbia.edu!news-not-for-mail From: fdc@columbia.edu (Frank da Cruz) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 27 Sep 2002 15:58:09 -0400 Organization: Columbia University Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com> <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: watsol.cc.columbia.edu X-Trace: newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu 1033156693 2642 128.59.39.139 (27 Sep 2002 19:58:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: postmaster@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Sep 2002 19:58:13 GMT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:99951 alt.sys.pdp10:17889 In article <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net>, Robert Bonomi wrote: : ... : We had a couple of Dataproducts drum printers, with different : character-sets. One had any given character at different rotational : positions at each column. another had a character at the _same_ position : at each column. That latter one was _really_ noisy, when somebody printed : a row of dashes, for example, to separate sections of a report --- "whing, : whing, whing, whing, *BANG*, whing, whing, whing, whing, *BANG*...." I : kept threatening to do an "1812 Overture" on that one -- the cannon-fire : going to be _easy_! : Complete with flames! When I was a young'un and wrote my first line-printer plotting program that scaled the data and rotated the graph to natural x/y orientation, cleverly sorting the data pairs by y-value and then going thru the list and printing an asterisk for each point... the program came to a cluster of values in the data that caused it to print the same asterisk in the same place repeatedly with a little tic tic tic tic noise. Then after several hundred of these a VRRRROOOOOOOM!!! noise as the paper and ribbon burst into flame... That's how I learned about output buffering. - Frank From jcmorris@mitre.org Wed Oct 2 00:54:46 PDT 2002 Article: 17924 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!newstransit.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jcmorris From: jcmorris@mitre.org (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 16:00:24 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The MITRE Organization Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com> <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net> Reply-To: jcmorris@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: newslocal.mitre.org 1033228824 14684 128.29.114.13 (28 Sep 2002 16:00:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 16:00:24 +0000 (UTC) X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:100080 alt.sys.pdp10:17924 bonomi@c-ns. (Robert Bonomi) writes: >>The sound of a high end tape drive running at full clip. >Continuous start/stop I/O. >And that jet-turbine rewind. particularly as it started up, and/or braked to a >stop. ...and the slap-slap-slap sound of a tape that has just run past the EOT marker and has left the supply reel empty. Usually followed by a bellow of profanity from the operator who now has to rethread the tape on a reel that has no fingerholes. Don't forget the sounds of an entire machine room coming to life from a cold shutdown. Start with dead quiet, then a quiet of the power-on button, followed by loud kerCHUNK sounds from the power relays (plus pinball-game-like sounds from the rotary relay in the CPU as it skips over unused power-control connections), followed by thudrrrrreeeeeeIIIII >from the huge motors that spun the disk drives...all accompanied by the increasingly loud noise from the fans in the various boxes, and the chatter of the 8" floppy readers loading microcode. Joe Morris From bonomi@c-ns. Wed Oct 2 00:55:05 PDT 2002 Article: 17886 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!dfw-peer!news.verio.net!ord-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing References: <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com> Organization: Not Much X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test69 (20 September 1998) From: bonomi@c-ns. (Robert Bonomi) Lines: 58 Message-ID: <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 18:58:04 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.241.52.60 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: ord-read.news.verio.net 1033153084 207.241.52.60 (Fri, 27 Sep 2002 18:58:04 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 18:58:04 GMT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:99945 alt.sys.pdp10:17886 In article <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>, Mark Hittinger wrote: >Thomas Dzubin writes: >>Has anyone archived any sound recordings of old systems and made them >>accessible on the Internet? >>Really. I'm not kidding. > >Wow another set of "things" that we've lost > >The sound of a line printer printing out a snoopy or psa jet poster with >overprinting. Also, line-printer "music". "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountian" was one of the more common ones. Had to be 'tuned' for the specific printer and character-set. We had a couple of Dataproducts drum printers, with different character-sets. One had any given character at different rotational positions at each column. another had a character at the _same_ position at each column. That latter one was _really_ noisy, when somebody printed a row of dashes, for example, to separate sections of a report --- "whing, whing, whing, whing, *BANG*, whing, whing, whing, whing, *BANG*...." I kept threatening to do an "1812 Overture" on that one -- the cannon-fire going to be _easy_! >The sound of a high end tape drive running at full clip. Continuous start/stop I/O. And that jet-turbine rewind. particularly as it started up, and/or braked to a stop. >The sound of a Decwriter printing out acct.sys. Or various status and/or error messages. a "Name that error-message" contest, from just the -sound- of it ? :)) > >The sound of an RP06 seeking like crazy. > >The sound of a DECtape drive looking for a file. > >The sound of a "silent 700" writing a file to a cassette tape. > >The sound of a card reader getting a pic check. a card punch at work, a regular deck also making 'lace' cards Some plotters also had 'interesting' sound-effects. Not sure they were standard enough to be recognizable, though. Then there's some of the off-line equipment punch-card sorter, punch-card 'interpreter', decollater (for separating multi-part form stock into separate stacks) burster (turned continus-form into a pile of individual sheets) From jmfbahciv@aol.com Wed Oct 2 00:58:15 PDT 2002 Article: 17970 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-181-153 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: Mon, 30 Sep 02 08:41:43 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com> <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net> <594.37T2208T5185349@kltpzyxm.invalid> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVbVi6rO6j3rPuFalrT4hg9Gj70RonqzXk5ytANwMM0NtcGzVZKUeU/A X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Sep 2002 09:57:55 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:100251 alt.sys.pdp10:17970 In article <594.37T2208T5185349@kltpzyxm.invalid>, "Charlie Gibbs" wrote: >In article jcmorris@mitre.org >(Joe Morris) writes: > >>...and the slap-slap-slap sound of a tape that has just run past the >>EOT marker and has left the supply reel empty. Usually followed by >>a bellow of profanity from the operator who now has to rethread the >>tape on a reel that has no fingerholes. > >Don't forget the initial THWUP as the end of the tape slams to the >bottom of the vacuum column... > DECtapes used to go slap..slap..slap after an UNLOAD DTA0: command. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From mrr@foo.eunet.no Wed Oct 2 01:03:22 PDT 2002 Article: 17983 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!feed.news.nacamar.de!uio.no!Norway.EU.net!not-for-mail From: mrr@foo.eunet.no (Morten Reistad) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 30 Sep 2002 15:34:14 GMT Organization: EUnet Lines: 70 Message-ID: References: <3aJk9.241731$216.8812895@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com> <0T1l9.25287$A%3.321111@ord-read.news.verio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: www.reistad.priv.no X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 1033400054 16146 193.71.26.162 (30 Sep 2002 15:34:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@KPNQwest.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Sep 2002 15:34:14 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test69 (20 September 1998) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:100307 alt.sys.pdp10:17983 In article , Joe Morris wrote: >bonomi@c-ns. (Robert Bonomi) writes: > >>>The sound of a high end tape drive running at full clip. > >>Continuous start/stop I/O. > >>And that jet-turbine rewind. particularly as it started up, and/or braked to a >>stop. > >...and the slap-slap-slap sound of a tape that has just run past the EOT >marker and has left the supply reel empty. Usually followed by a bellow >of profanity from the operator who now has to rethread the tape on a reel >that has no fingerholes. Or the sounds of paper tape punches; they were real mechanical devices making real mechanical sounds. Made a real mess if(when!) a paper tape broke. >Don't forget the sounds of an entire machine room coming to life from >a cold shutdown. Start with dead quiet, then a quiet of the >power-on button, followed by loud kerCHUNK sounds from the power relays (plus >pinball-game-like sounds from the rotary relay in the CPU as it skips >over unused power-control connections), followed by thudrrrrreeeeeeIIIII >from the huge motors that spun the disk drives...all accompanied by the >increasingly loud noise from the fans in the various boxes, and the chatter >of the 8" floppy readers loading microcode. Attempting this one in any of the installations I have been working at would just burn a large, fat hole in some major circuit-breakers covering the entire city block. (did that once). The sound was rather like a loud bang, followed by *total* silence. The startup sounds would be a clatter of sequencing relays, first big "clank-clack-clack" of the main relays hitting power, and then lots of minor "clack-dzzzZZRRR" as motors (disks) or fans were started. Installers were fine-tuning all of this, all the disks needed to spin up in time for the boot-code not to time out, but without blowing fuses on the way. In between all of this were cooling and ventilation units starting. There were separate sequencers attached to all the major hardware; the trick was to have them be suitably staggered. A cabinet full of (10) old Fujitsu 770MB Winchester SMD drives took a three-phase 32A C-type 220V fuse, and that just blew if they all started without sequencing. At the Oslo Stock Exchange there were (probably still is) bi-annual events where the entire shutdown/startup register is exercised, to check that things really coldstart cleanly. A powerfail at the same installation also produced spectacular sounds. First, the non-priority stuff lost power(3/4th of lightning, lots of monitors; ventilation/heating/cooling), the building took an eerie, dim half-silence for a minute or so while the diesel engine got pre-heated; and then it started with a spectacutar roar that shook the building; and the sequencing stuff started switching in things; with clicks and flashes as item after item got power back. The dark computer monitors came right back where they were, the terminal/pc/whatever was on UPS power, but non-essential monitors were not. Going back to main power did all of this in reverse, as there was a break in power when building power went off generator back to utility power. The power load was simply too great to switch without operating as a standalone power generation utility, and that requires lots of licenses. It gets kind of weird building one of those mini-itx systems that actually can run most of the old trading system code on 2-3 unix systems; and they can run a day from a single car battery. -- Morten Reistad From peter@taronga.com Wed Oct 2 01:08:21 PDT 2002 Article: 17877 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.usenet2.org!news-proxy.baileynm.com!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 27 Sep 2002 15:44:55 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: <_F_k9.1343$p03.56@fe01> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1033141495 70388 10.0.0.43 (27 Sep 2002 15:44:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Sep 2002 15:44:55 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:99914 alt.sys.pdp10:17877 In article <_F_k9.1343$p03.56@fe01>, Kevin Handy wrote: >Wouldn't you also want to change your font to one which looks like >you've been using the ribbon too long, and where the hollows in the >'e' and 'o' have been filled in by dried ink, and the letters don't >quite line up properly? http://www.eyewire.com/magazine/columns/robin/typewriter/ -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. 29.6852N 95.5770W WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) From rcs@osfn.org Thu Oct 3 18:39:57 PDT 2002 Article: 18028 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed-west.nntpserver.com!hub1.meganetnews.com!nntpserver.com!telocity-west!TELOCITY!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: RCS / RI Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 11:56:46 -0400 Organization: The Retro-Computing Society of RI Message-ID: <3D9C68BE.59A67268@osfn.org> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.8 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 26 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:100597 alt.sys.pdp10:18028 Thomas Dzubin wrote: > > Has anyone archived any sound recordings of old systems and made them > accessible on the Internet? > > Anybody have an old IBM card reader that they could power up and run a > couple of decks of cards through and mike the sound? Or have an old > Model 35 TTY running that they could punch out a tape and record it? > Or an old DECWriter II printing out a code listing. Ask, and ye shall receive. At the below URL you will find short sound recordings of an ASR-33 Teletype punching paper tape and a Univac 1710 VIP punching a card. http://starfish.osfn.org/rcs/audio/ As we get the chance we will add more sounds to this archive. -mikeu Michael Umbricht -- The Retro-Computing Society of RI, Inc. (401) 861-1977 25 Eagle St Bldg 5 Ste 206 http://www.osfn.org/rcs/ Providence RI 02908 telnet://kronos.egr-ri.ids.net From huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Fri Oct 25 22:01:11 PDT 2002 Article: 18117 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.airnews.net!cabal12.airnews.net!cabal2.airnews.net!news-f.iadfw.net!not-for-mail From: huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Date: 14 Oct 2002 06:37:45 GMT Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Lines: 18 Sender: Huw Davies Message-ID: <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> X-Orig-Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Mon Oct 14 01:37:45 2002 NNTP-Posting-Host: !`kX51k-VP0*o9;&8#uu@2!uX (Encoded at Airnews!) User-Agent: tin/1.4.2-20000205 ("Possession") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.20 (alpha)) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:18117 In alt.sys.pdp10 Chris Hedley wrote: > According to Steve O'Hara-Smith : >> On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 13:12:11 +0000 (UTC) >> jcmorris@mitre.org (Joe Morris) wrote: >> JM> Joe Morris (wondering how many younger programmers get the reference) > As one of the group's sprogs, I remember seeing the odd show in the > '70s during summer and easter school holidays (pre-secondary...) Groan. Some of us (well at least me!) were writing real cool programs in the 70's in DEC-10 assembler and (my personal favorite) BLISS-10. You watch that last bit get me into trouble (again) :-) -- Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies@kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green" From huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Fri Oct 25 22:02:07 PDT 2002 Article: 18128 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.airnews.net!cabal12.airnews.net!cabal2.airnews.net!news-f.iadfw.net!not-for-mail From: huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 15 Oct 2002 05:19:45 GMT Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Lines: 34 Sender: Huw Davies Message-ID: X-Orig-Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Tue Oct 15 00:19:45 2002 NNTP-Posting-Host: !`Tp\1k-X'/W%+hFV%r/C2+X9 (Encoded at Airnews!) User-Agent: tin/1.4.2-20000205 ("Possession") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.20 (alpha)) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:101464 alt.sys.pdp10:18128 In alt.sys.pdp10 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >>Groan. Some of us (well at least me!) were writing real cool programs >>in the 70's in DEC-10 assembler and (my personal favorite) BLISS-10. >>You watch that last bit get me into trouble (again) :-) > Why, Huw! Why would that get you into trouble? As long as you > do your own builds and packaging, there's nothing to get you into > trouble. Well I knew you had fairly strong views on Bliss-10, especially the edict that all DECsystem-10 monitor development should be done in it. > What kinds of stuff did you do when you used BLISS? A variety of systems programming tasks including a user mode version of SYSDPB, a reimplementation of PIP (more about this below), a BLISS-10 interface to IOLIB, many compiler tools (I was really into compilers) and general programming tasks. The reimplementation of PIP (originally known as PAGER but renamed to TYPER to avoid confusion) came about when we discovered an interesting bug in the software that accounted for pages printed. It basically just counted line feeds and form feeds - we just filled out each line with spaces and removed form feeds and suddenly we didn't have a problem printing out large files any more. I can't remember, but I think we had a limit of 200 pages per month, which was no where near enough! Looking back, I must have been a real pain as a user! -- Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies@kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green" From jmfbahciv@aol.com Fri Oct 25 22:02:52 PDT 2002 Article: 18129 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-4 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: Tue, 15 Oct 02 12:44:49 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 66 Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYsBb5iy8tPZHwAjQ2ZQdVyz6QYeNCHeM4WGd/Tgv3nKxbex/Lrf7NC X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 Oct 2002 14:03:33 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:101497 alt.sys.pdp10:18129 In article , huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au wrote: >In alt.sys.pdp10 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >>>Groan. Some of us (well at least me!) were writing real cool programs >>>in the 70's in DEC-10 assembler and (my personal favorite) BLISS-10. >>>You watch that last bit get me into trouble (again) :-) > >> Why, Huw! Why would that get you into trouble? As long as you >> do your own builds and packaging, there's nothing to get you into >> trouble. > >Well I knew you had fairly strong views on Bliss-10, especially the edict >that all DECsystem-10 monitor development should be done in it. Not Bliss-10, Bliss36. And, not only the code, but all monitor patches. You generate a BLISS-36 file that can be patched into the monitor without DDT. In addition, the -10 groups were not allowed to have any BLISS-36 sources. In addition to that, if we used BLISS-36 for any development, we would not be allowed to ship our sources. If we did use BLISS-36 and we found a bug in the compiler, it was promised that a fix would not be supplied ever. And I'm not even to the point of the viability of programming, maintaining, and running the fucking stuff. I'm just talking about corporate head-wedges getting shoved down our asses. This has nothing to do with how useful BLISS is. :-) As a packager of a few products that did use all flavors of BLISS, life sucked. The organization of Bliss tools (if I can use that term) was horrible. Not even a developer knew what files he used when doing a compile of a MAIN. > >> What kinds of stuff did you do when you used BLISS? > >A variety of systems programming tasks including a user mode version of >SYSDPB, a reimplementation of PIP (more about this below), a BLISS-10 >interface to IOLIB, many compiler tools (I was really into compilers) >and general programming tasks. > >The reimplementation of PIP (originally known as PAGER but renamed to >TYPER to avoid confusion) came about when we discovered an interesting >bug in the software that accounted for pages printed. It basically just >counted line feeds and form feeds - we just filled out each line with spaces >and removed form feeds and suddenly we didn't have a problem printing >out large files any more. I can't remember, but I think we had a limit of >200 pages per month, which was no where near enough! ROTFLMAO. Just to make it clear to the peanut gallery, this wasn't a PIP behaviour; it was a SPROUT count. > >Looking back, I must have been a real pain as a user! Oh, you naughty boy! :-))) /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU Fri Oct 25 22:03:11 PDT 2002 Article: 18130 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 08:12:31 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1034694753 13312 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:101505 alt.sys.pdp10:18130 On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > >Well I knew you had fairly strong views on Bliss-10, especially the edict > >that all DECsystem-10 monitor development should be done in it. > Not Bliss-10, Bliss36. And, not only the code, but all monitor > patches. You generate a BLISS-36 file that can be patched into > the monitor without DDT. In addition, the -10 groups were not > allowed to have any BLISS-36 sources. In addition to that, if > we used BLISS-36 for any development, we would not be allowed > to ship our sources. If we did use BLISS-36 and we found a bug > in the compiler, it was promised that a fix would not be > supplied ever. Needless to say, the customers wanted to have nothing to do with BLISS-36. If a program was written in BLISS-36 that essentially meant that it was unmaintainable. The common pithy saying was "BLISS is ignorance." Not all that many people were impressed with BLISS-10 either. It was considered to be strictly a DEC/CMU aberration. Far more people used SAIL (or even PASCAL) for systems software development than BLISS; at least programs in these languages were maintainable and you could get compiler bugs fixed! -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. From huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Fri Oct 25 22:03:44 PDT 2002 Article: 18133 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!dfw-peer!news.verio.net!news.airnews.net!cabal13.airnews.net!cabal1.airnews.net!news-f.iadfw.net!not-for-mail From: huw.davies@kerberos.davies.net.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 16 Oct 2002 06:02:31 GMT Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Lines: 26 Sender: Huw Davies Message-ID: X-Orig-Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Wed Oct 16 01:02:31 2002 NNTP-Posting-Host: !_J7p1k-Ve0GU9;FV&#$I1pO" (Encoded at Airnews!) User-Agent: tin/1.4.2-20000205 ("Possession") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.20 (alpha)) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:101554 alt.sys.pdp10:18133 In alt.sys.pdp10 Mark Crispin wrote: > Not all that many people were impressed with BLISS-10 either. It was > considered to be strictly a DEC/CMU aberration. Far more people used SAIL > (or even PASCAL) for systems software development than BLISS; at least > programs in these languages were maintainable and you could get compiler > bugs fixed! Well as I said, I don't ever recall having a problem with the BLISS-10 compiler. Some things were documented poorly in the BLISS-10 manual but once I gained access to the compiler sources (I just touched the listings for good luck) things got a lot easier.... We had SAIL at La Trobe as well but I don't think it was installed for long. We had a printed version of the manual and I remember the famous "Dry Rot in SAIL compiler" error message. This was one of the few messages that made sense (we Australians weren't getting much American culture thrust upon us in those days). Things like the BLISS-10 compiler taking a punt and the SIX12 BLISS-10 debugger didn't make much sense then.... -- Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies@kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green" From Trevor.Jenkins@suneidesis.com Fri Oct 25 22:28:59 PDT 2002 Article: 18134 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.arcor-online.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!213.208.87.130!not-for-mail From: Trevor.Jenkins@suneidesis.com (Trevor Jenkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing Date: 16 Oct 2002 08:15:55 GMT Organization: suneidesis Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <20021012081012.541cdf13.steveo@eircom.net> <2215FC28C531B3E4.6C008F4B96544FE0.8C75BB1D05E1C828@lp.airnews.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.208.87.130 X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 1034756155 24349408 213.208.87.130 (16 [129086]) X-Orig-Path: Trevor.Jenkins User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.2 (Linux) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:101558 alt.sys.pdp10:18134 On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 08:12:31 -0700, Mark Crispin wrote: > Not all that many people were impressed with BLISS-10 either. Some business associates of mine were impressed enough that they wrote a text retrieval system using BLISS-10. They had fairly reasonable success selling it around the world. However, once the Jupiter project was killed and the -10s/-20s declared obsolete that ledt them without a hardware base to work with. > ... It was > considered to be strictly a DEC/CMU aberration. And heavily influence by Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful" letter. Perhaps if a larger marketing budget had been given to BLISS then we'd all be using it rather than C as a system implementation langauge. The macro processor features are so much better than those available in C. Isn't it true that there was a Basic interpreter written entirely in BLISS Macros? I would love to see a Bliss language front-end for GCC. > ... Far more people used SAIL > (or even PASCAL) for systems software development than BLISS; at least > programs in these languages were maintainable and you could get compiler > bugs fixed! This is the line my associates took. They re-wrote their system in Pascal (VAX PASCAL). This version is still for sale today and ported to loads more operating systems than VMS/OpenVMS. One might accuse them of short-sightedness in first choosing 10s/20s as their operating system base, BLISS as their implementation language, and then compounding that by choosing PASCAL as the re-implementation language. Doesn't seem to have affected sales too much. My associates kept their Bliss skills by hooking their text retrieval system into Digital's ALL-IN-1. I got my hands dirty then by writing Bliss-32 code to enhance that integration. Once you got over the dotty-ness it was a nice language to use. Hence my desire to see Bliss added to GCC. Regards, Trevor British Sign Language is not inarticulate handwaving; it's a living language. Support the campaign for formal recognition by the British government now! Details at http://www.fdp.org.uk/ -- <>< Re: deemed! From a.greig@virgin.net Sun Jan 26 20:16:06 PST 2003 Article: 18724 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newspeer1.nwr.nac.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp1.phx1.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews1 From: Alan Greig Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec,de.comp.os.vms,alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: vax6k.openecs.org rebirth Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 11:35:14 +0000 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: <3E05FE9D.B3A12286@vax6k.openecs.org> <3E0DF584.5070705@vajhoej.dk> <87fzsedy05.fsf@prep.synonet.com> <2JAN200322230368@gerg.tamu.edu> <7HnKc5R40lsA@eisner.encompasserve.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-409.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.8/32.548 Xref: dfw-artgen comp.os.vms:169166 comp.sys.dec:28631 de.comp.os.vms:3707 alt.folklore.computers:109318 alt.sys.pdp10:18724 On 3 Jan 2003 07:27:24 -0600, koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: >In article <2JAN200322230368@gerg.tamu.edu>, carl@gerg.tamu.edu (Carl Perkins) writes: >> Way back when, roughly 1983, I got cought calling the phsyical memory, >> e.g. RAM, of an 11/780 "core" by someone who thought it odd. Why did I? >> I picked it up from the people I worked for and with. Why did they? >> Because that's what they had always called that sort of thing - they >> didn't care if it was real "core" type memory, it was the physical >> memory and they always called it "core". At that point I didn't care >> what the difference was (and was barely aware of the difference), and >> neither did they. The expression was apparently pretty commonly used >> that way back then. > > Once upon a time we had a facility with 3 PDP-11, 2 PDP-10, and 8 > 11/780. One of the engineers came by and said we were going to > replace the 1MB core in the 2050, I thought he was talking out of > habit. When you replaced the core memory with IC based memory in a DEC20 the entire cabinet could become unstable if certain access panels were swung out due to the absence of the heavy core memory.. Field Service engineers told me they had actually heard of machines tipping over in the early upgrade days before the problem was fixed. I *think* we had counterweights fitted but it might have just been a large warning sticker. Can't recall now. > Nope. -- Alan From eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com Sun Jan 26 20:18:24 PST 2003 Article: 18740 of alt.sys.pdp10 Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec,alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: vax6k.openecs.org rebirth References: <3E05FE9D.B3A12286@vax6k.openecs.org> <3E0DF584.5070705@vajhoej.dk> <87fzsedy05.fsf@prep.synonet.com> <2JAN200322230368@gerg.tamu.edu> <7HnKc5R40lsA@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3E2799B4.FEF4CA15@mrnutty.com> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Date: 17 Jan 2003 13:18:04 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 35 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.66.107.17 X-Trace: 17 Jan 2003 13:56:41 -0800, 209.66.107.17 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.spies.com!209.66.107.17 Xref: dfw-artgen comp.os.vms:169661 comp.sys.dec:28660 alt.folklore.computers:109668 alt.sys.pdp10:18740 SkyWriter writes about memory for KL10 processors: > core memory never was 'swung out' oh the MF20 nmos (i think) memory > it was on the back cabinet door, with the power supplies directly beneath it. > on MH20 core memory is was a stand alone cabinet, and the backplane was > fixed to the cabinet. There wasn't an MH20. You must be thinking of an MH10 core box or the like. Some KL10 variants could support external memory boxes (core from DEC, semiconductor from Ampex and other vendors) using the DMA20 memory adapter. This interfaced the KL10 S bus [*] to the KI-style external memory bus. All DECsystem-1080 and -1090 systems were supplied this way. The DMA20 was optional on the -1091 and -1095. However, the KL10 variants used in the DECSYSTEM-2040, -2050, -2060, and -2065 generally had internal memory. MA20 and MB20 were internal core memory, and MF20 and MG20 were internal MOS memory. All of these were normally mounted inside the KL10. I'm not sure whether the DMA20 was a supported option on any of the 20s. The interface to the MF20 and MG20 MOS memory was the X bus, which had the same functions and timing as the S bus but at different electrical levels. This required different translator modules in the main processor card cage. The KL10 cabinets were supposed to have stabilizer feet regardless of whether they had internal memory. Eric [*] Not to be confused with the Sun Sbus which appeared more than a decade later. From eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com Sun Jan 26 20:19:01 PST 2003 Article: 18743 of alt.sys.pdp10 Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec,alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: vax6k.openecs.org rebirth References: <3E05FE9D.B3A12286@vax6k.openecs.org> <3E0DF584.5070705@vajhoej.dk> <87fzsedy05.fsf@prep.synonet.com> <2JAN200322230368@gerg.tamu.edu> <7HnKc5R40lsA@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3E2799B4.FEF4CA15@mrnutty.com> <3E28C507.4BADC181@mrnutty.com> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. Date: 17 Jan 2003 18:50:53 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 31 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.66.107.17 X-Trace: 17 Jan 2003 19:29:33 -0800, 209.66.107.17 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!nntp1.roc.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!newspump.sol.net!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.easynews.com!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!news.he.net!news.kjsl.com!news.spies.com!209.66.107.17 Xref: dfw-artgen comp.os.vms:169680 comp.sys.dec:28663 alt.folklore.computers:109701 alt.sys.pdp10:18743 I wrote: >> I'm not sure whether the DMA20 was a supported option on any of the 20s. SkyWriter writes: > i believe the DMA20 was available, but i can't remember the modules cards. > it sat between the DTE m8552,53,54, and the memory M8560,61,58 (x8). > but i'm pretty sure the quicklatches were there. The DMA20 memory bus adapter consists of the M8560, M8563, and eight M8558 modules. Those modules were not normally present in systems originally manufactured to use internal memory. In most KL10-based DECSYSTEM-20 models the backplane doesn't even have slots for them, so it's not even an option. I *think* all KL10s had backplane slots for the DIA20/DIB20 adapter for the KI-style I/O bus (two M8550 and one M8551). Those were standard on the 1080 and 1090, and optional on other systems including the 20s. >> The interface to the MF20 and MG20 MOS memory was the X bus, which had >> the same functions and timing as the S bus but at different electrical >> levels. This required different translator modules in the main >> processor card cage. > either the m8516's or 19's, forgot..... Two M8519 Memory Bus Translator modules converted the processor's internal ECL signals to the memory bus, which then went to the DMA20 or MA20/MB20. For systems with internal MOS memory (MF20/MG20), one or both of the M8519 modules were replaced by M8580 or M8581 X bus translators. Eric From jmfbahciv@aol.com Sun Jan 26 20:19:56 PST 2003 Article: 18746 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!chcgil2-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!wn12feed!worldnet.att.net!199.184.165.233!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-102-105 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec,alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: vax6k.openecs.org rebirth Date: Sat, 18 Jan 03 11:34:39 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <3E05FE9D.B3A12286@vax6k.openecs.org> <3E0DF584.5070705@vajhoej.dk> <87fzsedy05.fsf@prep.synonet.com> <2JAN200322230368@gerg.tamu.edu> <7HnKc5R40lsA@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3E2799B4.FEF4CA15@mrnutty.com> <3E28C507.4BADC181@mrnutty.com> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYhGw/LpmtyUG/Cqe0WRgZgvE54wqVE+8yIqKuiWsqeIE2iubn2GT3Q X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Jan 2003 12:10:57 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: dfw-artgen comp.os.vms:169707 comp.sys.dec:28666 alt.folklore.computers:109725 alt.sys.pdp10:18746 In article <3E28C507.4BADC181@mrnutty.com>, SkyWriter wrote: >Eric Smith wrote: > >> SkyWriter writes about memory for KL10 >> processors: >> > core memory never was 'swung out' oh the MF20 nmos (i think) memory >> > it was on the back cabinet door, with the power supplies directly beneath it. >> > on MH20 core memory is was a stand alone cabinet, and the backplane was >> > fixed to the cabinet. >> >> There wasn't an MH20. You must be thinking of an MH10 core box or the >> like. >> > >yup, i realized my mistake after i read it. oh well. > >> >> Some KL10 variants could support external memory boxes (core from DEC, >> semiconductor from Ampex and other vendors) using the DMA20 memory >> adapter. This interfaced the KL10 S bus [*] to the KI-style external memory >> bus. All DECsystem-1080 and -1090 systems were supplied this way. The >> DMA20 was optional on the -1091 and -1095. >> > >yes, i remember seeing ampex boxes too. also the DX20 for RP20 (IBM 3370 >FBA I think) The 5-CPU SMP site at Oakridge had to use the Ampex memory. And we routinely used two 1090s with a 2060 to run tri-SMP. The internal memory on the 2060 was disabled for that configuration. When we REMOVEd the 2060, we could reconfigure it to run either as a TOPS-20 or a TOPS-10 single processor. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. From mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU Sun Jan 26 20:28:25 PST 2003 Article: 18762 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva1.cac.washington.edu!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp8 Subject: Re: SIMH 2.10-2 Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 10:01:49 -0800 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <012o2v47nu0gri6frofbe11scdufftsq1c@4ax.com> <244ba93d.0301211244.6b0ee57f@posting.google.com> <73dff34c.0301211959.2ed9703e@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1043258512 42392 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: <73dff34c.0301211959.2ed9703e@posting.google.com> Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:18762 alt.sys.pdp11:7232 alt.sys.pdp8:5715 On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, HarrisNewman wrote: > It is a shame that in such an advanced society as we have we can't > even keep information for even a short period of time. Looking back > at the "ancients" it seems that they have one up'd us on this issue. Beginning in the 1970s, and escalating in the 1980s, there was an aggressive effort to erase all relics of the past of computing and rewrite history to suit the political correctness of the time. Entire tape libraries were ordered destroyed, with prohibitions on any archival copies. One of the worst examples of this was at DEC, where VAX jealousy reached such a fever pitch that almost all record of DEC ever building another machine than the VAX were annihilated. But it was elsewhere. The UNIX world never reached the insanity of VAX jealousy, but bad things were said and done. I don't think that today's retrocomputing fans fully appreciate the tremendous amount of work that was done by the old farts to save what we have today. As much as we've lost, it's truly a miracle how much was saved. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. From J_Sauter@Empire.Net Fri Mar 14 23:20:24 PST 2003 Article: 19229 of alt.sys.pdp10 From: John Sauter Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp8,comp.os.vms Subject: Re: SIMH 2.10-4 released: major bug fixes to PDP-8, PDP-11, VAX, PDP-15, Interdata Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 21:32:14 -0500 Organization: System Eyes Computer Store Reply-To: J_Sauter@Empire.Net Message-ID: <796t6v8bflis5vm6uufo1hcuqteit2nddb@4ax.com> References: <667a2609.0303061424.30dae301@posting.google.com> <9adn6v82f47mt7j1f71so40ddbqvrmcneh@4ax.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: hydra141-127.empire.net X-Trace: news.destek.net 1047436335 198.144.141.127 (11 Mar 2003 21:32:15 -0500) Lines: 49 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!news.destek.net!not-for-mail Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:19229 alt.sys.pdp11:7580 alt.sys.pdp8:5877 comp.os.vms:176345 On Tue, 11 Mar 03 11:10:31 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: John Sauter wrote: I am disappointed that the DN60 is not on the list. It was a separate product, but I tried to arrange to include the PDP-11 assembly language sources on the kit. BAH wrote: But your code would be in that file, John. IIRC, the IBM option was a whole different can of worms than ANF-10. And I don't think anybody put the DN60 stuff on the monitor distribution tape; it had to be bought. We did include the monitor stub for it on the general distribution, but not the DN60 PDP-11 files. That's probably another tape that got shitcanned when Release Engineering's office got cleaned out. John Sauter responded: Well, since it was sent to every DN60 customer, it might still be out there somewhere. I was quite proud of that bit of PDP-11 code. It had a very small real-time kernel, with tasks and device drivers. The tasks moved data between the DTE-20 or DL-10 and the serial line units, formatting as they went. The device driver for the DTE-20 was two interlocked state machines, reflecting the half-duplex nature of the hardware. I used the fancy lights on the DL-10 as a load indicator, like the stack of LEDs on modern digital audio mixers. Allocating memory from interrupt level was quite a challenge. One task was devoted to clearing deallocated memory and placing it on a list from which interrupt level could consume it. The MACY11 assembler helped us count microseconds in the critical paths. We took advantage of the double buffering in the serial line units to let us take a long path provided that the next received character always took the short path. I don't remember the highest speed we were able to run reliably, but it may have been 4800 bits per second. I do remember that adding the KMC-11 didn't help. Debugging while sitting between two KL10s without skins was quite an experience. If I were doing it today I would wear hearing protectors. John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net) From fdc@columbia.edu Fri Mar 14 23:21:45 PST 2003 Article: 19220 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.stueberl.de!cox.net!newshosting.com!news-xfer1.atl.newshosting.com!129.250.35.142.MISMATCH!iad-feed.news.verio.net!phl-feed.news.verio.net!newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu!news.columbia.edu!news-not-for-mail From: fdc@columbia.edu (Frank da Cruz) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp11,alt.sys.pdp8,comp.os.vms Subject: Re: SIMH 2.10-4 released: major bug fixes to PDP-8, PDP-11, VAX, PDP-15, Interdata Date: 11 Mar 2003 15:52:05 -0500 Organization: Columbia University Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: watsol.cc.columbia.edu X-Trace: newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu 1047415926 8566 128.59.39.139 (11 Mar 2003 20:52:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: postmaster@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Mar 2003 20:52:06 GMT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:19220 alt.sys.pdp11:7576 alt.sys.pdp8:5873 comp.os.vms:176304 In article , John Sauter wrote: : ... : I think the DN20 was the DECnet front end, but I could : be misremembering this also. Was the DN200 a remote : PDP-11-based concentrator, with printer and terminals? : Right. At one point we had a 2040 (later upgraded) that had *two* DN20s: one for DECnet, one for HASP/RJE. We were also one of the few sites with a DN200. This was used to put terminals and a line printer in a "remote" area (i.e. about a block away), connected (as I recall) with line drivers and a synchronous null modem at some ridiculously low speed that seemed perfectly adequate at the time. This was in 1977. Our DN200 was unique in also having an 8-inch diskette drive. More about that here: http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20.html#kermit We wound up using the DN200 only for the printer. There were better ways to handle the terminals, and the DN200 diskette drive -- removable storage for students -- was abandoned in favor of Kermit. - Frank From strohm@airmail.net Sun Apr 6 23:37:35 PDT 2003 Article: 19412 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.airnews.net!cabal12.airnews.net!usenet From: "John R. Strohm" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Any DEC 340 Display System Doco ? Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 08:37:48 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America Lines: 38 Message-ID: <8E148184DB2599C3.8EF118B5E05F14E9.A4AD5465D3E6D226@lp.airnews.net> X-Orig-Message-ID: References: <3e8ae086.45754328@news.m.iinet.net.au> <3e8b80d6.589280@news.m.iinet.net.au> <3e8ba3f9.9585243@news.m.iinet.net.au> <20030403212559.5cd06fef.steveo@eircom.net> <3E8E1558.37B749F8@ev1.net> <54lv8vog00o93bsr2k1d8sd3a5ia1kjhfq@4ax.com> Abuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Sun Apr 6 09:06:08 2003 NNTP-Posting-Host: !b)!P1k-WeToC31 (Encoded at Airnews!) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.folklore.computers:118591 alt.sys.pdp10:19412 wrote in message news:54lv8vog00o93bsr2k1d8sd3a5ia1kjhfq@4ax.com... > On Sat, 5 Apr 2003 16:34:51 +0000 (UTC), Joe Morris > wrote: > > >Charles Richmond writes: > > > >>Computing time on the 1130 was *much* too valuable to waste with > >>a game... ;-) > > > >PLEASE remember that this is a.f.c, and games are training tools. > > > >Seriously. > > > >Back in ... um, 1974, I think, at a SHARE meeting I was having lunch > >with one of the sysprogs from a large manufacturing company. He noted > >that his management had sent down an edict that all games were to be > >immediately removed from the computer (this is, of course, in the day > >of the mainframe), and so the games disappeared. > > > >Within a week the HR department threw a temper tantrum and convinced > >upper management to revoke the no-games edict. HR had been using them > >to make new hires (who probably had seen computers only in el cheapo > >sci-fi movies or the "Mission: Impossible" TV show) comfortable with > >the idea of using computer terminals. > > Games are sometimes useful as burn-in tests or fault-finding tests. > ISTR once having a system that only failed when playing some game on > it, but where and when has escaped my mind. Data General once shipped a system after it passed all their diagnostics, only to receive an angry phone call from the customer. The machine wouldn't run Adventure, for some reason. It turned out there was a problem that the diagnostics didn't catch. As a result, DG adopted a policy that no machine would be shipped until it had passed all the diagnostics AND run dventure. --Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine". From mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU Sat May 31 21:53:56 PDT 2003 Article: 19966 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!dfw-peer!news.verio.net!newsfeed!arclight.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-10 Macsyma Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 20:26:40 -0700 Organization: University of Washington Lines: 35 Sender: mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM Message-ID: References: <7xllxpuo9i.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7x1xzgy8fd.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7xk7d8e8lq.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nntp6.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1053574012 28770 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:19966 On Wed, 21 May 2003, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote: > > vandalizing equipment, > Haven't heard that one. References? After the official sources for the Lisp machine software were moved to Symbolics (long story there...I'm told that it was to stop RMS from making unilateral changes that broke it), RMS retailiated by disconnecting Symbolics' microwave link (which was their link to the network). RMS brags about doing that. I believe it when I'm told that it was to stop RMS from making unilateral changes. RMS had a well-deserved reputation for doing that; he considered (and as far as I know still considers) it to be his right to edit anybody's files for any reason. Another thing that he would do is patch binaries without making the corresponding change in the source code; that way, he could keep anyone else from modifying his projects. > > and threating suicide > > bombing. > He is a little off, but suicide bombing? I haven't heard that one > either. He denies it, but people who got the email swear it's true: he said that he was going to strap dynamite around his body and blow himself up in front of Symbolics' headquarters. He denies saying it in email, but admits that he thought about doing it. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. From ian@hammo.com Thu Aug 7 22:25:55 PDT 2003 Article: 21193 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!pd2nf1so.cg.shawcable.net!residential.shaw.ca!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: ian@hammo.com (paramucho) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp11,comp.os.rsts,comp.os.vms Subject: Re: Does RT-11 run on the PDP-11/70? (was Re: PDP-11 OS Release Dates) Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 08:13:29 GMT Organization: www.beathoven.com Message-ID: <3f341461.35928175@news.supernews.com> Reply-To: ian@hammo.com References: <62789131a4960a272be481f908c0246d@TeraNews> <5arTa.6759$9f7.783529@news02.tsnz.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 33 Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:21193 alt.sys.pdp11:8360 comp.os.rsts:855 comp.os.vms:191112 On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 08:18:55 GMT, don@news.daedalus.co.nz (Don Stokes) wrote: >In article , >Christian Corti wrote: >>Don Stokes wrote: >>> Yep. And on machines with supervisor mode (until recently when >>> supervisor mode got used for real work), they did something clever with >>> the addressing so that the same pattern, in reverse, appeared on the >>> address lines. It looked like the snakes were chasing each other around >>> and around the two rows of lights. It looked bloody good in a darkened >>> room full of 11/70s... >> >>With what OS? > >RSTS/E. The first system I wrote was in Germany where we had a host 11/40 running RT-11 and about ten satellite 11/10s running my RT-11 clone. Along with a LIGHTS routine I also implemented a SOUND idle loop. The only sound that a PDP-11/10 could make was the terminal bell, which came out as a beep. I found that by suitably timing RESETs I could cut the beep off at various points and thus modulate the signal. The result was more like grunts, burps, twits, etc. Watching and listening to ten of these machines in the dark, with or without additional substances, was very much a trip to the jungle. -- Ian Impressive If Haughty - Q Magazine From J_Sauter@Empire.Net Thu Aug 7 23:06:16 PDT 2003 Article: 21225 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!router1.news.adelphia.net!news1.news.adelphia.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Sauter Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: TOPS-10 Error Message Codes Serendipity Organization: System Eyes Computer Store Reply-To: J_Sauter@Empire.Net Message-ID: References: <3ed7acc3$1_3@news.iglou.com> <3F31CDA9.B117CF04@diapensia.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 27 Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 22:54:15 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.22.199.56 X-Complaints-To: abuse@adelphia.net X-Trace: news1.news.adelphia.net 1060296855 67.22.199.56 (Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:54:15 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:54:15 EDT Xref: dfw-artgen alt.sys.pdp10:21225 geezer wrote: Well, DEC actually shipped Level D with the error comment YOU HAVE BEEN FUCKED BY THE SHIT EATING MACHINE (all caps since the console TTY was an ASR-33) (How's that for indelicate :-> ) PMW (as in the monitor listings) John Sauter responded: That message was created by Bill Weir, author of the COMPIL cusps. He wrote it in reaction to the monitor's unwillingness to allocate emough memory for a program, even though enough was available. The problem, as I understand it, was that the available memory was not contiguous, which was required in those pre-pager days. Later version of the monitor were able to shuffle memory around to coalesce free space. However, I thought that DEC changed the message to "Memory available, but not to you." That's both more delicate and more informative than Bill's rant. John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)