Article 3452 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!vncnews!HSNX.wco.com!news.wco.com!not-for-mail From: "Henry W. Miller" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: KI-10 DFDIV bug Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 10:44:37 -0800 Organization: Cisco Systems Lines: 23 Message-ID: <3454E115.7989@cisco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: hmiller.mistic.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3452 I hope that I got the meunomic right! Anyway, I heard years ago that a bug was found in the KI-10, where a double floating divide of the form: DFDIV AC,AC+1 Would hang the machine so badly that you had to physically power cycle it to get it back. The problem was like this: 1) The machine started the divide cycle, and found that AC+1, the second half of the floating point number in AC, was not normalized; it normalized it. 2) The machine stepped to AC+1, the first half of the second argument; found that it was not now normalized; it normalized it. 3) The machine restarted at step 1. Endless loop. I understand that the problem was easily corrected via a harware ECO, but I was curious as to how the machine behaved after thie bug was fixed. -HWM Article 3464 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!museltd.demon.co.uk!Roy From: Roy Trubshaw Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: KI-10 DFDIV bug Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 12:41:14 +0000 Organization: MUSE Ltd. Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <3454E115.7989@cisco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: museltd.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: museltd.demon.co.uk [158.152.108.40] MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: Turnpike Version 3.04 Lines: 28 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3464 In an article not dissimalar to <3454E115.7989@cisco.com>, "Henry W. Miller" wrote: >I hope that I got the meunomic right! Anyway, I heard years ago >that a bug was found in the KI-10, where a double floating divide of >the form: > > DFDIV AC,AC+1 > [Snipped] > > I understand that the problem was easily corrected via a harware >ECO, but I was curious as to how the machine behaved after thie bug was >fixed. > >-HWM I think this is the bug that was discovered at Essex University (in the UK!?!?) sometime in 1979-80. I do recall that some fun was had by our computing department asking several other '10 sites around the country if they could "just run this little job for us" and then getting a call back saying something on the lines of: "sorry we can't run your job our system just died..." (OK they probably warned them first... but it makes a better story the other way! 8-}) Cheers, Roy -- Roy Trubshaw You haven't lived 'til you've died... in MUD! Article 3453 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!lead.zk3.dec.com!zk2nws.zko.dec.com!denton.zko.dec.com!amartin From: amartin@denton.zko.dec.com (Alan H. Martin) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Another one bites the dust Date: 30 Oct 1997 00:15:23 GMT Organization: DEC Lines: 18 Message-ID: <638jir$9e2@zk2nws.zko.dec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: denton.zko.dec.com Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3453 The following comes to us from Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District in California: /AHM From: ... "Sometimes you have to hope that the weasels win. ..." To: ahm Subj: FWD: DEC 10 is gone From: "...@gcccd.cc.ca.us" "21-Oct-1997 1310 -0400" ... Subj: DEC 10 is gone On Monday, October 13, 1997, at 3:15 PM they switched off on the DEC 10 for good. I think they made a small ceremony out of the occasion. I heard that within an hour or two the temperature in the room dropped from 76 to 67. -- Alan Howard Martin AMartin@TLE.ENet.DEC.Com Article 3468 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-pull.sprintlink.net!news-in-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!199.232.56.18!news.ultranet.com!not-for-mail From: "Carl R. Friend" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Another one bites the dust Date: Sat, 01 Nov 1997 16:24:23 -0500 Organization: as little as possible! Lines: 32 Message-ID: <345B9E07.2284C6D7@stoneweb.com> References: <638jir$9e2@zk2nws.zko.dec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: zephyr.ultranet.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; Linux 2.0.29 i586) Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3468 Alan H. Martin, in article nr. <638jir$9e2@zk2nws.zko.dec.com>, wrote: > > The following comes to us from Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College > District in California: > > On Monday, October 13, 1997, at 3:15 PM they switched off on the > DEC 10 for good. I think they made a small ceremony out of the > occasion. As well as they should have. The final shutdown of any machine (with a few exceptions ;-)) deserves a solemn ceremony. > I heard that within an hour or two the temperature in the room > dropped from 76 to 67. The drop speed may give a hint as to the machine type. If it dropped the full 9 degrees in an hour (with the AC running at rated capacity) it was probably a KL-10; if 2 hours, it may have been a KI. What is the fate of the machine? I've been known to do stupider things than ship iron cross-continent. -- ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | |________________________________________________|_____________________| Article 3484 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.voicenet.com!news.idt.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom12!alderson From: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: History of CompuServe In-Reply-To: mwood@woodshed.iupui.edu's message of Sat, 1 Nov 1997 10:03:46 GMT Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services References: <62v2ef$r23@snews3.zippo.com> <639r61$jfr$1@decius.ultra.net> Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 22:16:27 GMT Lines: 39 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3484 In article mwood@woodshed.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) writes: >(How quickly we forget. I just came across a 1990 issue of DTJ (the one on >the VAX 9000) which says, among other things, that the 9000 was Digital's >first foray into the mainframe world. Obviously the author missed the >ad. campaign which dubbed DECSYSTEM20 "the Personal Mainframe".) The DECUS Site, Management, and Training SIG inherited a working group made up of the remains of the Large Systems SIG, with yours truly as chair of the WG. We sponsored the 25th Anniversary celebration in Anaheim, in 1989, where the 9000 was being touted as "Digital's First Mainframe System." We got hold of the silkscreens for the infamous 20th Anniversary T-shirt, revised the graphic to read (NB: the DECsystem-3000 was also new at the time) VAXbusters II ain't I afraid to RISCs! take on the front, around Chester, and on the back PDP-6 PDP-10 DECsystem-10 DECSYSTEM-20 The first DEC mainframes I wore mine to the VAX Magic session after the 36-bit dinner, and even got on camera with it. Interesting reaction ;-> from the crowd. -- Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo- logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_ Article 3483 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom12!alderson From: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: Another one bites the dust In-Reply-To: "Carl R. Friend"'s message of Sat, 01 Nov 1997 16:24:23 -0500 Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services References: <638jir$9e2@zk2nws.zko.dec.com> <345B9E07.2284C6D7@stoneweb.com> Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 22:02:31 GMT Lines: 16 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3483 In article <345B9E07.2284C6D7@stoneweb.com> "Carl R. Friend" writes: >The drop speed may give a hint as to the machine type. If it dropped the full >9 degrees in an hour (with the AC running at rated capacity) it was probably a >KL-10; if 2 hours, it may have been a KI. According to an RFP from 1993 (for a replacement system), this was a 1091 PA, with 3 RP06 and 3 RP07 drives, 2 TU78 tapes, and a DN20. A 1091 is a KL with MOS memory, isn't it? (I grew up in the orange world ;-) -- Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo- logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_ Article 3510 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ais.net!news1.chicago.iagnet.net!iagnet.net!news.indiana.edu!news.iupui.edu!woodshed!mwood From: mwood@woodshed.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: OS for PDP10? Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 11:31:08 GMT Organization: La Petite Hackerie Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: <63tg4f$bd5$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: mhw.oit.iupui.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950515BETA PL0] Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3510 Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom20.netcom.com) wrote: [deletia] : Technically, of course, I should have written "WAITS" instead of "SAIL"--the : official name of the operating system was the former. There were at least four : different things all called "SAIL" relating to the Stanford Artificial Intelli- : gence Laboratory: The Lab itself, the PDP-10 owned by the Lab and attached to : the ARPANET (later Internet), for a while the OS on that -10, and an Algol 60 : derivative (with the "LEAP" data structures, whatever that may mean) where it : stood for "Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language." The manual also suggests Stare At It Later. I never figured out what LEAP was for, but I did a bit of work in SAIL because its string handline was so (relatively) nice. -- Mark H. Wood Speaking, as always, for himself MWOOD@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Our nation suffers from too little leadership, and far too much management. Article 3519 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Octal doen't suck References: <642f95$9tm$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <01bcf248$f2ecbee0$257884a9@wardch> <54wwi9cela.fsf@puli.cisco.com> Organization: D Bit, Troy, NY From: wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson) NNTP-Posting-Host: dbit.dbit.com Message-ID: <346f9c3a.0@news.wizvax.net> Date: 17 Nov 97 01:22:02 GMT Lines: 18 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!dbit.com!wilson Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3519 In article , Megan wrote: >When I was a student at WPI in the mid-70's, talk-like IPC programs >were the rage... and there were all sorts of techniques used. One of >the most strange that I remember was passing the messages through the >program name that shows up in a SYSTAT, using synchronization through >a hiseg... This sounds about as weird as what I was told was done at RPI before I got there, supposedly early versions of the MTS operating system (for IBM mainframes) didn't support floating point (i.e. FP context was not saved/restored between tasks), so people had some fun with token- passing protocols using the FP registers for IPC. Later there was a CB program that used scratch files for IPC, what hell, but that's what you get stuck with on an OS whose whole goal in life is to separate tasks from each other. John Wilson D Bit Article 3529 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!newsadm From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Curious about 10s. Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 00:20:29 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 41 Message-ID: <65vk8l$2cn@mtinsc04.worldnet.att.net> References: Reply-To: david.razler@worldnet.att.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.68.5.10 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3529 "Daniel A. Seagraves" wrote: | Just out of curiosity, what boards are needed to make a KA10 or a KL10? | There's a guy not far from here who had a few KL boards discarded from | Caterpillar. I bet there's more. What numbers would I be looking for? | I have a DEC parts book, but the KA is omitted and the KL is a slew of | boards in one section, I'm not sure which is required. | It would be really interesting to see if I could get enough parts to make | one. (Yeah, I know this will probably never happen. Humor me.) | Well, for a KA, about a thousand of the single-height B-21n series boards, (I forget what the digit for n is, only that they were the ones that burned until the original pair of resistors were replaced with 2 to 5 watt jobs) and a few thousand more R,W,B,and G-series discreet transistor and negative-logic ultra-low-scale IC boards, most of which have unfortunately been ground up for scrap, 1000 pounds of power supplies, lots of little core rings and the patience to string them, unless you can find a few core boxes still around. A KA-10 basic CPU was three 24"(? maybe more) x 6' racks of these things. A 36-bitx250K-word core box ran the same size. You'll also need several tons of air conditioning, a rather large room, and an awful lot of old DEC backplane and a steady hand with a wire wrap gun to handle about four miles of pin-to-pin wiring without error (DEC had automated the process by 1965) It could be worse, you could be planning on building s PDP-6, which used modules with about twice the surface area per gate and some specialized modules that were notoriously unreliable. Oh, yes, I would absolutely love an intact KA-10 and a place to play with it, not to mention the money to run the thing and cool down the room. But building one from scratch ranks up there with repairing steam locomotives while underway as tasks that are theoretically possible, though not very desirable. dmr David M. Razler david.razler@worldnet.att.net Article 3538 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!newsadm From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Curious about 10s. Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 01:48:51 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 38 Message-ID: <66i978$h31@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net> References: <34837B44.5AD8E95F@stoneweb.com> <34889994.8C0F6033@eng.pko.dec.com> <348B556D.167E@eng.pko.dec.com> <66gg3a$r8g$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <544t4jny2n.fsf@iwan-view4.cisco.com> Reply-To: david.razler@worldnet.att.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.68.5.74 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3538 William "Chops" Westfield wrote: | The Computing Center at the Colorado School of Mines sold DECtapes to | students for $12 each. The tapes were stored on-site, and required | operator intervention via the MOUNT command. | | LIRICS on Long Island had a similar scheme. After you graduated from | high school or otherwise no longer had access to the account, you could | pick up your tape and take it with you. I think I still have mine | somewhere - probably full of embarassing basic programs named after | female friends and acquaintences... | | It's a good things files were so much smaller back then! | | BillW But if Bruce or Gerry didn't feel like mounting it when you needed it.... Does anyone of the LIRICS alumni have a copy of Karen Pepe's poem "The World is Made Out of Disk Segments" I believe the first three lines were: The World is made out of disk segments No one is swapping No one is sharing time dmr David M. Razler david.razler@worldnet.att.net Article 3540 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom16!alderson From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: DEC-20 Free to Good Home Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 20:05:15 GMT Lines: 35 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3540 We at XKL LLC find that we are in greater need of computer room floor space than we are of a KL10/B and a disk farm. We will therefore entertain offers to provide a working home for this venerable beast. Otherwise, it's going to be stripped for spare boards and RP07 HDAs by a broker. This is a "you take it away" offer: We will not ship the system, though we may provide some help in de-installing it. The system is configured as follows: KL10 Model B processor with MCA25 cache and 4MW MOS memory (orange FCC cabinetry, three double-wide bays) 4 RP06 disk drives (two in use, two spares) -- dual ported for -11/-10 access 7 RP07 disk drives 4 TU78 tape drives (two in use, two spares) Network interface is a MEIS (MASSBUSS-Ethernet Interface Subsystem) Two LA120 consoles Tops-20 version 7.0 with Stanford mods (Ethernet access and such) We will accept offers until 31 January 1998, to allow for slow propagation of the news of this offer to interested parties. We reserve the right to make a decision before that time, if an acceptable offer is made early. Please send e-mail containing offers to KL-giveaway -at XKL.COM (where -at is RFC733-speak for the "commercial at" symbol you'll really use). -- Rich Alderson Customer Advocacy XKL LLC Redmond, WA 98052 (425) 869-9050 Article 3612 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.idt.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!news From: JCGreen@ix.netcom.com (John C Green Jr) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Curious about 10s. Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 23:38:54 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 32 Message-ID: <68rr3g$4nd@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> References: <34837B44.5AD8E95F@stoneweb.com> <34889994.8C0F6033@eng.pko.dec.com> <348B556D.167E@eng.pko.dec.com> <66gg3a$r8g$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <68hnrr$mnm@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com> <68ivu3$f0r$2@decius.ultra.net> <68pnef$kme@sjx-ixn6.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sjc-ca4-01.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Mon Jan 05 5:41:36 PM CST 1998 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3612 alt.folklore.computers:96513 alderson@netcom17.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) wrote: >In article <68pnef$kme@sjx-ixn6.ix.netcom.com> JCGreen@ix.netcom.com >(John C Green Jr) writes: >>I was only at DEC for 21 months from JUN1968 to FEB1970. >>Then went on to Systems Concepts. >Were you still with Mike and Stewart when they delivered an SC-30M to Stanford >in 1986? I didn't meet everyone at SC; mostly, I worked with Fred Wright, and >occasionally Bertram or Pete Sampsen. Nope. By then I was at Alliant and delivered an FX/8 to a room full of DEC-10 stuff. Looked like a museum. Len Bosack gave me a tour. Their KA-10 was used rarely; the sole purpose for keeping it was to read an occational paper tape. I'm still friends with Mike and Stew and will see them again MLK Jr weekend when I'm in Reno to play in a SCRABBLE tournament. The crew when I was there was Mike, Stew, Jack Holloway, and Fred plus me as #5. I left before Pete Samson started. I knew him from TMRC in Cambridge when he was at MIT and I was at DEC but never worked with him at SC or anywhere else. - - - RP10 (controller for RP02) Project Engineer 21483 Old Mine Rd (408)353-1870 Los Gatos CA 95030 JCGreen@ix.netcom.com Article 3644 of alt.sys.pdp10: From: abaddon@ibm.net (Michael Ross) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Dan Murphy Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 08:43:43 GMT Message-ID: <34c7043a.44141805@news-s02.ny.us.ibm.net> References: <19971214142701.JAA16730@ladder01.news.aol.com> <34b26154.48480434@news-s02.ny.us.ibm.net> <69sspd$qu$1@decius.ultra.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.01/16.397 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 139.92.16.98 Organization: IBM.NET Lines: 41 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!news1.ibm.net!139.92.16.98 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3644 On 18 Jan 1998 21:21:35 GMT, cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) wrote: >In article <34b26154.48480434@news-s02.ny.us.ibm.net>, > NOSPAMabaddon@ibm.net (Michael Ross) writes: >> I rescued the last operational KL in England from >> the scrapmen, although I have since lost the I/O cabinet in an >> accident. I also saved the last 2020 and the last pdp-15. > >The -10 and -20 weren't the ex-Hatfield ones, were they? I never figured >out what happened to them after they were decommisioned, but had an unpleasant >thought of these fine systems finding their resting place in a skip. The >only reason I ask is because I don't know of any others around in the area >in recent years! I missed those. The last -10 I know of was a triple processor KL configuration at British Airways, Heathrow. I saved one processor in ~93-94, when it was switched off. Rest was scrapped. Didn't get any memory as 1. it was Ampex, not DEC, and 2. It had too much gold and the scrapman had counted all the cabinets twice! The 2020 was at Robert Gordons University, Aberdeen, I rescued that in ~94-95. Got the whole system - RP06s, TU45s, a load of disk packs. The 15 was an XVM system rescued from British Aerospace, Warton, last year, where it had been used on the Tornado hydraylic test rig. Unless anyone knows different these were the last 18 and 36 bit machines operational in the UK. What I would dearly love to know is what became of the last KI, which was removed from the Scottish Special Housing Association in Edinburgh in the mid-80s. It was dismantled - with DEC assistance - and taken away by a guy who was trying to start up 'The Scottish Computing Museum' - and never seen or heard of again! Anyone got any suggestions or more info? Mike "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" - Kosh Naranek Article 3647 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail From: inwap@best.com (Smith and O'Halloran) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PA1050 Error Messages on DEC20 Date: 22 Jan 1998 12:26:43 -0800 Organization: Chez INWAP (people, computers, cats) Lines: 20 Message-ID: <6a8a23$928$1@shell3.ba.best.com> References: <68iin3$i2e@snews2.zippo.com> <6a17rm$q7c$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <6a25og$ca1$1@decius.ultra.net> <34C5D15B.382B2667@stoneweb.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell3.ba.best.com X-Trace: 885500806 23585 inwap 206.184.139.132 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3647 In article <34C5D15B.382B2667@stoneweb.com>, Carl R. Friend wrote: >> The KA and KI could be bootstrapped from magtape, DECtape, or paper >> tape. > > Both could be booted from whatever device supported ReadIn mode. >This included RH-10-attached disks. IIRC, at ADP we set the ReadIn >device switches to 270; punching the ReadIn button caused the zero >disk on the RH-10 chain to seek to zero and transfer block 0 through >the DF-10 into memory. The RH-10would then feed a jump back through >the I/O bus to kick the processor into the DMA-loaded program. At the Colorado School of Mines, we used the PDP-8 terminal scanner as our read-in device. Our disk configuration was not suitable for use as the read-in device, the PDP-8 would send a short bootstrap program that did know how to talk to the disks. -Joe -- INWAP.COM is Joe and Sally Smith, John and Chris O'Halloran and our cats See http://www.inwap.com/ for "ReBoot", PDP-10, and Clan MacLeod. Article 3648 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!164.67.42.145!awabi.library.ucla.edu!137.82.194.1!unixg.ubc.ca!alph02.triumf.ca!shoppa From: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: How Jerry Pournelle was kicked off the Arapanet Date: 24 Jan 1998 17:44:59 GMT Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility Lines: 545 Message-ID: <6ad9ar$o3d$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> References: <34cc18da.40166597@news.interlog.com> <6a5sea$rhq$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6a8fbj$50s@news-central.tiac.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: alph02.triumf.ca Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:97632 alt.sys.pdp10:3648 In article <6a8fbj$50s@news-central.tiac.net>, Lawrence Woods wrote: >Tim Shoppa wrote: >: Of course, Jerry Pournelle also has the honor of being the only person >: I know who was kicked off of the ARPAnet. I'll dig up the email >: logs if anyone is interested. >I'd be interested! OK, here it is. The log files below have moved with me from account to account over the years, but I believe that I originally found them on MC.LCS.MIT.EDU in 1987 or so. These files were widely circulated at the time; I was extremely surprised to not be able to find them on the web today. I suppose the point-and-click generation simply doesn't care about anything that happened over a decade ago - which is too bad, as there's a fascinating amount of history contained in the the attached file. Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca) HOW JERRY POURNELLE GOT KICKED OFF THE ARPANET This file explains why Jerry Pournell is no longer on the ARPANet. It's in chronological order. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding and confusion that may exist. Date: 19 January 1984 00:50 EST From: Christopher C. Stacy Subject: TACACS To: REM @ MIT-MC, BANDY @ MIT-MC, DEVON @ MIT-MC, DIGEX @ MIT-MC, JURGEN @ MIT-MC, PINTO @ MIT-MC, POURNE @ MIT-MC, KFL @ MIT-MC, STEVEH @ MIT-MC, GUMBY @ MIT-MC, IAN @ SRI-NIC cc: USER-ACCOUNTS @ MIT-MC Hi, I didn't see your original messages, and I don't know how the NIC got into the loop, but I am indeed the person to answer your questions. Apparently you have encountered TAC access control (TACACS) on your favorite MILNET TAC. TACACS is a login system based on encrpytion codes recorded on little paper cards which authorized MILNET TAC users are being issued. To be a MILNET TAC user, you must have a personal TACACS account and be issued one of these cards, so that you can type your login code to the TAC and make it happy. People establish TACACS accounts and get cards by contacting me to get registered. If you stick to using ARPAnet TACs, you will have no trouble, since TACACS for the ARPAnet is going to be a little different and has not been completely figured out yet. MIT is not sponsoring guest/tourist usage of the MILNET; if you are a guest, you should just switch to using a TAC on the ARPAnet and avoid the problem. I can provide you the name of an ARPAnet TAC in your area, but I cannot authorize you to use it or provide you with telephone dialup numbers. I will soon have some "Guest TACACS cards" for authorized MIT people on our machines who need to use a MILNET TAC but have not yet been registered for their own personal cards. These cards are confusingly named: they have nothing to do with guest accounts and are not available to tourists/guests. To put it straight: in general, you are up a creek, and there really isn't very much to be done about it. Feel free to ask me further questions or whatever though. Cheers, Chris Date: Wed, 29 May 85 06:16:01 EST From: Leigh L. Klotz To: POURNE@MIT-MC.ARPA cc: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA You used the word "ARPANET" in your June Byte column three times. You even said "I gave Alex the local ARPANET access number to record for the 1200-baud modem and inadvertently transposed two numbers." I don't care if Alex IS a computer -- you may soon find your accounts on MC decremented by gov't order. Date: Thu, 30 May 85 03:57:38 EST From: Jerry E. Pournelle To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA thank you. if left to you I suppose I cewrtainly will find my accounts terminated. Your nice private message appreciated. seppuku follows.. maybe you ought to have me dumped off the net and be done with it? or must you work through someone else? J. E. Pournelle Date: Thu, 30 May 85 11:23:26 EST From: David Vinayak Wallace To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Surprise! Date: Wed, 29 May 85 07:04:16 EST From: Leigh L. Klotz Do you think I chastised jerry pournelle too much for talking about his use of the arpanet in byte? Yes. It's embarrassing to send a message to someone like that when a message in OFF POURNE would have done as well! And now you've sent the message out I'll have to go and find out why he had to mention it in the first place! Date: Thu, 30 May 85 18:44:42 EST From: Leigh L. Klotz To: POURNE@MIT-MC.ARPA cc: GUMBY@MIT-MC.ARPA Date: Thu, 30 May 85 03:57:38 EST From: Jerry E. Pournelle To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA thank you. if left to you I suppose I cewrtainly will find my accounts terminated. Your nice private message appreciated. seppuku follows.. maybe you ought to have me dumped off the net and be done with it? or must you work through someone else? J. E. Pournelle USER-A is the mailing list created explicitly for dealing with these sorts of issues. It is the appropriate forum for discussion. There are eight people on user-a. You probably know better than I do, but last I heard about 100,000 times as many people read BYTE. Thus, the issue of privacy is the last one you should raise. I don't particularly want to force you into ritual disembowelment; rather, I'm interested -- and I'm not the only one -- in why you find it necessary to flaunt your use of the arpanet. The more attention you (and other people) draw to non-blow-em-up use of the arpanet the more likely some Proxmire type is to start inquiring into its operations. Date: Fri, 31 May 85 01:11:16 EST From: Jerry E. Pournelle To: KLOTZ@MIT-MC.ARPA cc: GUMBY@MIT-MC.ARPA I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone. Date: 31 MAY 1985 0225 EST From: GSB at MIT-MC.ARPA (Glenn S. Burke) To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA i guess i haven't been paying enough attention to realize that he knew there was any heckling going on at all. I'm almost tempted to let him take his marbles and floppy disks and go home. Date: Fri, 31 May 85 09:39 EDT From: Kent M Pitman To: CStacy at MIT-MC.ARPA cc: Klotz at MIT-MC.ARPA, KMP at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA, Gumby at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Pourne Date: Fri, 31 May 85 01:11:16 EST From: Jerry E. Pournelle To: KLOTZ@MIT-MC.ARPA I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone. Personally, I'd just turn off his account. It's not like it's the first time, and he not only flaunts his use of our machines but stabs us in the back with grumblings about why he doesn't like this or that program of ours when he gets a chance. (Am thinking particularly of an article he wrote which condemned Lisp for reasons amounting to little more than his ignorance, but which cited Teach-Lisp in a not-friendly light... The man has learned nothing from his presence on MC and sets a bad example of what people might potentially accomplish there. I'd rather recycle his account for some bright 12-yr-old...) Date: Fri, 31 May 85 11:02:27 EST From: John G. Aspinall To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA, GSB at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: just think of it... MIT Maximum Confusion PDP-10 MC ITS.1488. PWORD.2632. TTY 57 16. Lusers, Fair Share = 86% *:login pourne That account has been temporarily turned off. Reason: Think of it as evolution in action. Any questions may be directed to USER-ACCOUNTS * ------------------------------------------------ I don't know whether you guys have read Niven and Pournelle's _Oath_of_Fealty_, but "Think of it as evolution in action." is their thinly disguised rallying cry for do-it-yourself social Darwinism. It would be so, so sweet to shove it back in his face. Date: Sat, 1 Jun 85 04:37:47 EST From: David Vinayak Wallace To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: POURNE Date: Sat, 1 Jun 85 00:09:30 EST From: Glenn S. Burke I.e., little jerry isn't going to get my sympathy if big bad leigh klotz picks on him. KLOTZ: 5'8"? POURNE: >6'4" Fuck it. Flush him. Date: Tue, 4 Jun 85 16:01:51 EST From: David Vinayak Wallace To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: pourne Why hasn't he been flushed yet? Date: Tue, 4 Jun 85 16:54:04 EST From: Christopher C. Stacy To: ACCOUNTS-HELD-REFUSED@MIT-MC.ARPA I set the following account: Was: POURNE NTURIS [OK] TM Jerry E. Pournelle 06/03/85 Is: POURNE NTURIS [OFF] TM Jerry E. Pournelle 06/03/85 Because: This account has been terminated due to abuse. Date: Tue, 4 Jun 85 17:04:29 EST From: Christopher C. Stacy To: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA Given POURNE's obnoxious attitiudes towards USER-A and his apparent belief that he has a god-given right to be on this machine and the network, we have flushed him. Date: Tue, 4 Jun 85 17:55:12 EST From: David Vinayak Wallace To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: POURNE Too late. CSTACY flushed him even from the tac database. Date: Fri, 12 Jul 85 20:54:44 EDT From: Glenn S. Burke To: KLOTZ at MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: [Forwarded: topaz!RU-BLUE!LECIN@seismo.CSS.GOV, Re: for those out th ere who DON'T read SF-LOVERS...] Received: from MIT-OZ by MIT-MC.ARPA via Chaosnet; 11 JUL 85 05:47:15 EDT Received: from MIT-HTVAX.ARPA by MIT-OZ via Chaosnet; 11 Jul 85 05:46-EDT Received: from seismo.CSS.GOV (css-ring-gw.ARPA) by MIT-HTVAX.ARPA (4.12/4.7) id AA13327; Thu, 11 Jul 85 05:35:05 edt Return-Path: Received: from topaz.UUCP by seismo.CSS.GOV with UUCP; Thu, 11 Jul 85 05:29:07 EDT Received: from RU-BLUE.ARPA by topaz.arpa; Thu, 11 Jul 85 05:28:06 edt Message-Id: <8507110928.AA07998@topaz.arpa> Date: 11 Jul 85 05:21 EDT (Thu) From: Mijjil To: topaz!seismo!bandykin@seismo.CSS.GOV Phase-Of-The-Moon: LQ+1D.13H.12M.5S. Subject: for those out there who DON'T read SF-LOVERS... ---begin forwarded message--- Date: Monday, 8 July 1985 15:45-EDT From: "Franz Mark" at LLL-MFE.ARPA Re: WESTERCON 38 and The Pournelle/ARPANET Split We attended the WESTERCON 38 SF convention held in Sacramento, CA, over the July 4th weekend. At WESTERCON we talked with Jerry Pournelle about why he never contributed to the SF-LOVERS bb since he had an account at MIT-MC. He said his account at MIT-MC was terminated by some "graduate student" in charge of accounting, who felt he did not have a need for an account. He knows who this "graduate student" is, and he refuses to grovel so that his account is reinstated. However, he asked us to broadcast this little story - presumably so that MIT-MC will come to him. BTW - if you ever get a chance to meet Jerry Pournelle, you will not be dissappointed. Sequel to FOOTFALL:-) HARPANET FOR PRESIDENT, HUSENET FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. Also planned is a sequel (and a prequel) to THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. WESTERCON 38 was run very well. In addition to Jerry, we spent several hours talking with Greg Bear, Norman Spinrad, Robert Adams, James P. Hogan, Larry Niven, John Brunner, and David Brin. ---end forwarded message--- He might still have an account if he could keep from using words like ARPANET and DARPA in his column in BYTE magazine! {Mijjil} Date: Wed, 24 Jul 85 22:35:03 EDT From: Christopher C. Stacy Subject: [kerch: Jerry Pournelle] To: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA I'll take care of this, but I thought you might be amused by it. Date: Wed Jul 24 13:15:44 1985 From: kerch at lll-tis-b (Berry Kercheval) To: CSTACY Re: Jerry Pournelle Status: N (Note -- I am a neutral third party) Mr. Pournelle bids me tell you that if you intended to annoy him, you have succeeded, and that his next column in BYTE will have a lot to say about the ARPANET.... Date: Wed, 24 Jul 85 23:00:04 EDT From: David Vinayak Wallace Subject: [kerch: Jerry Pournelle] To: CSTACY@MIT-MC.ARPA cc: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA It's funny this should appear in my mail to-day. I had lunch this afternoon with McCarthy, and in the course of conversation (we were discussing SF) he mentioned that someone at MC had flushed Pournelle... As for pournelle himself: He really thinks that WE are trying to annoy HIM??? Of course if he's vitriolic enough and all the obnoxious turists vanish (leaving the nice ones of course) then he may have atoned without realising it... Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1985 00:04 EDT From: PGS%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA To: "Christopher C. Stacy" Cc: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: [kerch: Jerry Pournelle] Date: Wednesday, 24 July 1985 22:35-EDT From: Christopher C. Stacy To: USER-ACCOUNTS at MIT-MC.ARPA Re: [kerch: Jerry Pournelle] I'll take care of this, but I thought you might be amused by it. You might consider contacting Byte about publishing some note from us to appear simultaneously with this. This is only important if pournelle is going to say what I think he is going to say (what JMC told me pournelle was claiming), which is that the reason his account was flushed was because he favors the Strategic Defense Initiative, and MC is run by a bunch of communists. This will no doubt please darpa immensely. Pournelle claims that he heard at a science fiction convention that you (chris) had said that the real reason his account was flushed was that ``he (pournelle) is a fascist.'' Given the current political climate, this could raise some sort of ruckus, so it would probably be good to nip this in the bud. Date: Thu, 25 Jul 85 14:06:21 EDT From: Daniel Weise Subject: Pournelle and Byte. To: PGS@MIT-MC.ARPA, USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA, CSTACY@MIT-MC.ARPA All we have to to is warn Byte that MIT will sue the magazine if any incorrect defamatory comments are made by Pournelle. I am sure the editors there have the same opinion of him that we do and will make sure that Pournelle doesn't end them up in court. As it stands Pournelle really doesn't understand the state of the world. If he insists on printing his delusions then MIT's case would be trivial to win. Daniel Date: Wed, 9 Oct 85 23:55:48 EDT From: Leigh L. Klotz To: user-a@MIT-OZ The following is offered without comment. It was forwarded to me by someone who reads the Byte Magazine bulletin board. = = B Y T E C O S Y 3.1+ = = =========================== ###### ####### ### ## ### # ### ### ## ###### ### #### (TM) ### # ### ## ### ###### ####### ## ### =========================== BYTE Information Exchange McGraw-Hill Information Systems Co. COSY Conferencing System, Copyright (c) 1984 University of Guelph Written by: Alastair JW Mayer :j networks/arpanet Joining conference 'networks', topic 'arpanet'. 0 new message(s). Read:3 ========================== networks/arpanet #3, from jerryp, 377 chars, Tue Jul 9 18:22:01 1985 This is a comment to message 2. There is/are comment(s) on this message. -------------------------- One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee. No more unread messages in this topic Hit for next active conf/topic. Read:bye Date: Thu, 24 Oct 85 16:45:09 EDT From: "Christopher C. Stacy" Subject: vax135!petsd!pedsgd!bobh at UCB-VAX.Berkeley.EDU To: USER-ACCOUNTS@MIT-MC.ARPA It would be a good idea if people did NOT respond to the message about Jerry Pournelle; nothing useful can come from stirring this around further. Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1985 23:10 EST From: PGS%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA To: user-a@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Pournelle Leigh read me some of Mr. Pournelle's expose' of the ARPAnet. He pretty much said that, due to increased demands on computational resources, guest accounts are no longer generally available on MC, thereby saving Chris some typing. Article 3650 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.109.1.106!ultraneo.neosoft.com!bonkers!not-for-mail From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: How Jerry Pournelle was kicked off the Arapanet Date: 24 Jan 1998 14:47:32 -0600 Organization: none Lines: 15 Message-ID: <6adk14$f9q@bonkers.taronga.com> References: <6a5sea$rhq$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6a8fbj$50s@news-central.tiac.net> <6ad9ar$o3d$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.taronga.com Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:97644 alt.sys.pdp10:3650 ROFL! In an email exchange with Pournelle after I took him to task for whining about the Amiga or UNIX or something in his User's Column in Byte (It's a damn shame is Mad Friend Maclean died, he used to keep Jerry under control) he told *ME* that he and Larry Niven had left the ARPANET voluntarily because he was tired of all the flaming. Maybe he even believes it these days. -- This is The Reverend Peter da Silva's Boring Sig File - there are no references to Wolves, Kibo, Discordianism, or The Church of the Subgenius in this document Article 3652 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!pln!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!not-for-mail From: vjp2@dorsai.org @smtp.dorsai.org (Vasos Panagiotopoulos +1-917-287-8087 Bioengineer-Financier) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: How Jerry Pournelle was kicked off the Arapanet Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Date: 25 Jan 1998 11:02:21 GMT Organization: Samani Marions Panyaught NYC-11357-3436-287-USA Lines: 15 Message-ID: <6af63t$f68@snews3.newsguy.com> References: <34cc18da.40166597@news.interlog.com> <6a5sea$rhq$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6a8fbj$50s@news-central.tiac.net> <6ad9ar$o3d$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: amanda.dorsai.org Mail-Copies-To: vjp2@dorsai.org, vjp2@compuserve.com, vjp2@mcimail.com X-Disclaim: Nothing herein constitutes advice; everything fully disclaimed. X-Quiet: My silence is not reluctant acquiescence rather confident deprecation. X-URL: http://www.dorsai.org/~vjp2 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:97691 alt.sys.pdp10:3652 We had a 2050 at Columbia in 1978 when I was a freshman. I understand the year before it was a beta system. And a year or two later they got a 2060. The two were networked together and DEC also tied them to NYU and CMU. We used the net to send files between the two machines. Then about 1983, I was visiting Cornell and asked a friend to show me how his id looked like. I figured out how to send mail to him but when I got back to Columbia and sent the message, I got back a really stern and nasty sounding warning that I was using ARPANET illegally.. - = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bioengineer-Financier, NYC BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian http://WWW.Dorsai.Org/~vjp2 vjp2@{MCIMail.Com|CompuServe.Com|Dorsai.Org} ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- Article 3659 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.voicenet.com!news.wwa.com!not-for-mail From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.sys.pdp8 Subject: Re: Compaq buys DEC... Date: 29 Jan 1998 15:29:53 GMT Organization: Everett Associates Lines: 35 Message-ID: <6aq79h$hii$1@hirame.wwa.com> References: <5467n668qx.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> <6am7fn$fin@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6an5v3$hrp$1@decius.ultra.net> <6aovjh$11o@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: poolf2-053.wwa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3659 alt.sys.pdp8:2327 In article <6aovjh$11o@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, david.razler@worldnet.att.net says... > >I was only a customer/user (my very first machine was the Son of Huntington >Project PDP-8/I, the first machine I owned was a Straight-8, followed by a >7,9,15 and then my current project machine, hell, I still use a Rainbow on my >desk at work, connected to a pair of 11s, and have a Straight-8 under >restoration at home) > >But you guys *were* the absolute best, still *are,* for that matter. > >You should have been allowed to continue to *be* the best. > >And I am sorry that ever since the original team left, it's been not exactly >growth and improved architecture and the old DEC >reach-out-and-touch-some-user, but corporate greed driving things. Thanks on behalf of all the old DECies who lurk (and sometimes contribute) here. As someone said when DEC announced that LCG was moving to Marlboro, "you can take the boy out of The Mill but you can't take The Mill out of the boy." DEC somehow managed to first take "The Mill" out of their corporate culture and then (I understand) took The Mill out of DEC entirely. After a twenty-seven year involvement, first as an employee then as a customer, I was saddened by DEC's decline but then ceased being interested in DEC as a company some number of years ago. So now they're being acquired by Compaq...ho-hum. -- jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Things have gotten so bad I feel the need to disguise my email address. And I don't like this explanation because I just hate long signatures. Article 3673 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!newsfeed.internetmci.com!207.241.0.194!news.wwa.com!not-for-mail From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Compaq buys DEC... Date: 2 Feb 1998 17:20:47 GMT Organization: Everett Associates Lines: 57 Message-ID: <6b4v9f$1q7$1@hirame.wwa.com> References: <5467n668qx.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> <6am7fn$fin@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6an5v3$hrp$1@decius.ultra.net> <6aovjh$11o@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6asid0$4lm$1@decius.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: poolf1-001.wwa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3673 In article , dlm@opost.com says... > > Well, my take on it is that the "One Company, One Strategy, One > Message" directive of the mid '80s was the death knell of the > company. > > DEC grew and became successful originally because it was a hotbed > of ideas, a lot of them got tried, and some of them were very > good. Product line managers had a lot of autonomy, and yeah, so > they competed with one another, but so what? As I read Dan's thoughtful posting I was reminded of a "project" I got involved in sometime around 1967 or 1968. There was an active auto racing sub-culture in the mill at that time. Many race car parts were being turned out in the machine and fabrication shop on the first floor of Building 5 during off hours. Custom wiring harnesses were being designed and fabricated in various corners of the mill. The instrument panel in my race car had the same black splatter finish as DEC cabinet panels of the era. There was a lot of cross pollination of ideas among the drag, stock, and sports car racers who worked in The Mill. At about that time the EPA had started to impose exhaust emmision regulations and Robert Bosch had just introduced the first production electronic fuel injection (EFI) systems. Some of us got to talking about where this would all lead and decided that EFI was the technology of the future. Fred Gould was an active drag racer and headed up the modules product line. We started looking at the possible numbers and decided that someone would have to make all those EFI control modules, so why not DEC? I presented a "back-of-the-envelope" summary of the idea to my boss and was given permission to spend one day a week looking into the EFI question. At this time I was a PDP-8 programmer. Ron Boudreau (Formula Vee racer) somehow got ahold of a Bosch EFI module. I seem to remember disassembling it and going over the electronics with Fred and some of his engineers. We decided that by DEC module standards it was hopelessly primitive and we came up with an estimate of what it would cost to produce a more state of the art equivalent. Finally we decided to sanity test our ideas. GM's Hydromatic Division had been working with DEC on the design of the PDP-14, an industrial controller. Through contacts there Fred got to talk to some folks at GM's R&D facility. Turns out GM thought they could meet the EPA requirements for the forseeable future with carburators, air pumps, and catalytic converters. They acknowledged that EFI was in the future, but not for many years; and with the volumes involved they would probably manufacture their own controllers. Based upon that input we dropped our "project", but it's an example of the kind of activities encouraged by the corporate culture that existed at DEC during its early years. Also, twenty-twenty hindsight proves GM was right on target. -- jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Things have gotten so bad I feel the need to disguise my email address. And I don't like this explanation because I just hate long signatures. Article 3674 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!digex!europa.clark.net!209.70.91.68!news.clark.net!kfl From: kfl@clark.net (Keith Lynch) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: How Jerry Pournelle was kicked off the Arapanet Date: 3 Feb 1998 07:00:14 GMT Organization: Clark Internet Services, Inc. Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6b6f9u$j5u@clarknet.clark.net> References: <6ad9ar$o3d$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6ar7fg$pnf@clarknet.clark.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: deathfromabove.clark.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:98298 alt.sys.pdp10:3674 In article , Wayne J. Rasmussen wrote: > How did you manage to keep yours? I lost my MIT guest account back > in 1989. Supposedly, they were getting rid of guest accounts. Probably because I assisted other users. Others kept their accounts because they made themselves useful in various other ways, such as helping to write and debug the software. > You must have a lot of connections. No. I did briefly visit MIT in person in 2/86 (when I was in town for Boskone), 2/87 (Boskone) 1/89 (IAP), 9/89 (Worldcon), and 1/90 (IAP). (Boskone and the Worldcon are science fiction conventions. Boskone was held annually in Boston through 1987. It's now held annually in Framingham. The Worldcon is in a different city every year. It was last in Boston in 1989, and won't return there before 2004 at the earliest. IAP is an annual event, open to everyone, held by MIT.) Being seen in person, even if only for a minute, *does* make a difference, if you want to call that "connections". -- Keith Lynch, kfl@clark.net http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/ I boycott all spammers. Article 3724 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.oru.edu!sol.pdnt.net!orlon.ssi.net!dseagrav From: Daniel Seagraves Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Class pictures today... (This is relevant! Just read!) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 08:27:22 -0600 Organization: Planet Digital Network Technologies Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <6buf1j$bev$1@shell3.ba.best.com> <6buqg0$qui$1@decius.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.176.137.241 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3724 This is awful... I'll make a long story short. My parents bought a PC. And T-shirt transfer paper. I got to make a test shirt. Class pictures is today. I'll be the one in the DECSYSTEM-10 shirt... It has the yellow-on-green decsystem10 logo, and underneath it reads "If it's not 36 bits, you're not playing a full DEC." (I know there's supposed to be a with here^ but I couldn't fit it on the transfer page.) I hope they don't make me change shirts... But it doesn't have anything that's bad on it, and it's not like there's a rule saying I can't wear a shirt that plugs a 30 year old computer... Article 3729 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.voicenet.com!netnews.com!ix.netcom.com!news From: joseph61.SPAM?NO!@ix.netcom.com.SERIOUSLY (Wonko the Sane) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Interesting DEC Stuff (forwarded) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 01:00:49 GMT Organization: Ralph's Yak Emporium Lines: 174 Message-ID: <34f01523.20507621@nntp.ix.netcom.com> References: <34E648A8.1CBE@mail.ic.sunysb.edu> <34E64EB5.BE8AA041@wdn.com> <34e7babd.44238310@news.missouri.edu> <6cice1$9te@world6.bellatlantic.net> <34EDB925.3E72@azstarnet.com> <01bd3e1e$bfca7760$01f010d1@juddesk> NNTP-Posting-Host: sfo-ca12-14.ix.netcom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-NETCOM-Date: Sat Feb 21 3:01:45 AM CST 1998 X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/16.451 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3729 This was posted to a number of the BASIC NGs, thought it would be interesting here too. ================================================================== >Judson McClendon (judmczzz@mindspring.com) wrote: >: Yes. And such a pity when people don't understand that in 1977 Microsoft >: was talking about Intel 8080 BASIC, because the Intel 8086 hadn't even >: been introduced yet. Since copyright applies strictly to the specific >: expression of the work, and since the 8080 and 8086 have completely >: different instruction sets, a copyright suit involving 8080 BASIC has >: nothing to do with the 80x86 products of today. > >Apparently you don't know how Microsoft developed and maintained BASIC during >much of its life. After a certain point - somewhere around 1977 - ALL >versions of Microsoft BASIC were generated from a single set of source code, >INCLUDING for different processor types. > >The code, written in MACRO-10 with a set of pseudo op-codes loosely-based on >the 8080 instruction set were assembled on a DECsystem-20 (named the >"Central Heating Plant"). The pseudo opcodes were actually a set of macros >to generate machine opcode bytes specific to a given processor. In this way, >every time they fixed a problem or added a feature for the TI 99/4A or some >Rockwell 6502-based box, the change showed up in the TRS-80 Z80 systems and >a dozen other platforms, sometimes wrecking existing documentation or simply >not working on that platform. > >A side-effect was that each year they touched the code, they bumped the >copyright date on it and re-filed with the copyright office, extending the >valid copyright further into the future for all of the platforms. Remember >the times: BASIC pretty much WAS the Microsoft business at that point. > >I have seen and worked with the real Microsoft BASIC source code, so I know >how it was done. I can even tell you in general which bits Paul Allen did >(mainly math), which bits Bill did (mainly tokens, general parser & syntax), >and what others did (fixed bugs, did ports, added features after 1977). > >In fact, here is a snippet (one sheet is all I can find) from the Tandy >Model 100 BASIC code, an 8085-based processor, developed in 1982. Look at >some of the manufacturer names and processor types that pop up in the >assembly conditionals. This is typed-in, so the typos are mine: > (This is a short excerpt as part of a critical review) > > >BIPRTU BASIC Interpreter PRINT USING Driver/WHY MACRO %53(1020) 22:05 14-Apr-83 Page 1-9 >BIPRTU MAC 29-Mar-83 11:12 PRINT USING DRIVER > > >551 000550' 00100 000334 FLDFIN: CC CRDO ;IF NOT COMMA OR SEMI-COLON >552 000551' 0000000000# > ;ENDED THE VALUE LIST > ;PRINT A CRLF >555 000553' 001000 000343 XTHL ;SAVE THE TEST POINTER > ;[H,L]=POINT AT THE "USING" STRING'S > ;DESCRIPTOR >558 000554' 001000 000315 CALL FRETM2 ;FINALLY FREE IT UP >559 000555' 000000000000# > >Yeah, that's octal, on a 36-bit processor, 18-bit half-words, running TOPS-20. >A different set of macros caused each opcode shown here to emit one or more >native bytes of machine code that did equivalent work on a given platform. >For example, that 315 is 0xcd (8080/8085/Z-80 CALL opcode). A different >value or values would be emitted if compiling for an 8086 or 6502. > >From this point on, I'll leave the assembler output off for readability... > > > POP H ;GET BACK THE TEXT POINTER >> >IFE LPTSW!RSHACK!DISK!NCRCAS!SPCDSK,< >> >IFN FIVED!XEROX,< >> ;IFN FIVED!XEROX >IFE NECPC,< > ;NECPPC does not have string formatter > ; because of ROM space >; HERE WHEN THE "!" INDICATING A SINGLE CHARACTER >; STRING FIELD HAS BEEN SCANNED >; >IFE BIGSTR,< ;************************************** >SMSTRF: MVI C,I ;SET THE FIELD WIDTH TO 1 >> >IFN BIGSTR,< ;******* IFE BIGSTR ******************* >> >IFE I8086!BIGSTR,< > SKIP ^O76 ;SKIP NEXT BYTE WITH A "MVI A," >> >IFN I8086!BIGSTR,< >> >ISSTRF: POPA PSW ;GET RID OF THE [H,L] THAT WAS BEING > ;SAVED IN CASE THIS WASN'T A STRING FIELD >IFN BIGSTR,< ;************************************* >> ;******* IFN BIGSTR ****************** >IFE BIGSTR,< ;************************************* >ISSTR1: DCR B ;DECREMENT THE "USING" STRING CHARACTER COUNT >> ;******* IFE BIGSTR ****************** >IFN BIGSTR,< ;************************************* >> ;******* IFN BIGSTR ****************** > CALL PLSPRT ;PRINT A "*" IF ONE CAME BEFORE THE FIELD >IFN BIGSTR,< ;************************************* >> ;******* IFN BIGSTR ****************** > POP H ;TAKE OFF THE TEXT POINTER > POPFL PSW ;TAKE OF(spelling) THE FLAG WHICH SAYS > ;WHETHER THERE ARE MORE VALUES IN THE > ;VALUE LIST > JRZ FLDFIN ;IF THERE ARE NO MORE VALUES >... > >Did you notice the conditional assembly instructions for XEROX, NECPPC, >I8086 processors, NCR and Radio Shack? In other parts of the code you >would have found ROCKWELL, TI, IMSAI and many others players of the day, >and even the Z80, M6809 and R6502 processor conditionals. It should be >obvious these are not quite 8085 nor any other processors mnemonics. Got >any idea what a "JRZ" opcode is on an 8085? It emitted 312, which is CA, >or what Intel called a JZ, a jump-on-zero, absolute address. But the macros >were smart enough to emit a relative branch on a processor that supported >them. (8080/8085 processors don't have relative branch opcodes.) > >I don't recall seeing the conditional operator "ALTAIR" in there. It was >a long time ago, but maybe it was a "banned" word in Bellvue. > > >This one-tree-fits-all coding method also explains why generally the >Microsoft BASIC interpreter code was very loose on non-8080 processors and >didn't always utilize the best opcodes a given processor provided. Example, >almost none of the Z-80 opcodes were used in the TRS-80 Microsoft versions, >except where there was no choice, such as obtaining the OS flags in >TRSDOS 6 via the IY+n opcodes. In these cases, Microsoft used small subroutines >with machine/OS-dependent code to deal with these special cases. > >On the other hand, it made my job of coming up with patches easy for TRS-80 >versions of Microsoft BASIC. There were always plenty of bytes you could >squeeze out on the Z80 systems. > >In 1982, when Microsoft standardized on ANSI Minimal BASIC starting with >the TRS-80 Model 4, they effectively generated new versions for every >platform back to 1978 at the same time since it all comes out of a common >tree. The BCD math pack that would appear in the Model 100 and 68000 >targets also was a conditional assembly module. > > >Only when Microsoft bought QBASIC for PCs from a different company and began >selling it under their name did the above source tree get abandoned. >As I recall, Microsoft got rid of Central Heating Plant and the other >DEC-20s (I think one was was called "Miss Piggy"), in the mid-late eighties. > >Now, will Microsoft ever release this code that they probably can't >even assemble anymore to the public domain, or make it available with a >Berkeley-style copyright? I doubt it. Too much bother. At the same time, >I suspect in 60 years or so, some Microsoft lawyer will dutifully file for a >copyright renewal for another 75 years, or whatever the term is by then. > >It seems that prying the old Tandy source code out of the hands of Samsung >(the current copyright holders of all that work) would seem like a walk in >the park compared to getting Microsoft to let go of anything that made them >money once. > >To paraphrase Bill Gates on 'The Simpsons' last Sunday: > "Hey, I didn't get rich giving obsolete software away." > > >Frank Durda IV - only these addresses work:|"How do I know? I fixed > | bugs in the MS-BASIC code, >These Anti-spam addresses expire Mar. 31st | that's how." >(c) 1998, ask before reprinting. -- ********************************************************* *** All that exists are atoms and empty space; *** *** All else is opinion. *** ************************* Joseph Cote ******************* *******************joseph61*@*ix.netcom.com************** ********************************************************* Article 3731 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-master.cisco.com!not-for-mail From: William "Chops" Westfield Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Interesting DEC Stuff (forwarded) Date: 21 Feb 1998 02:54:53 -0800 Organization: Cisco Systems, Inc. Lines: 18 Message-ID: <54u39tns76.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> References: <34E648A8.1CBE@mail.ic.sunysb.edu> <34E64EB5.BE8AA041@wdn.com> <34e7babd.44238310@news.missouri.edu> <6cice1$9te@world6.bellatlantic.net> <34EDB925.3E72@azstarnet.com> <01bd3e1e$bfca7760$01f010d1@juddesk> <34f01523.20507621@nntp.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: flipper.cisco.com In-reply-to: joseph61.SPAM?NO!@ix.netcom.com.SERIOUSLY's message of Sat, 21 Feb 1998 01:00:49 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3731 Cool. I did that same thing (8085 cross assembler written as macro-10 macros, generating one 8 bit byte per 36 bit word.) Very handy to have all those macro features without exerting any effort! I Wrote a forth in it (well, typed it in from kilobaud magazine), and ran it on my 8085 simulator (for tops10 - this was my final project for a microprocessor class at Penn.) Couldn't tell which piece had the bugs in it :-) The 8085 simulator went on the ARPANet somewhere, and later (82, 83?) appeared as a full-blown commercial CPM simulator that would run Z80 cpm binaries on your Decsystem-10 (or was it 20.) I forget the name of the company. I was offered a discount on their package for the part my simulator played in in the origin of their product. Seemed fair enough; they had gone a long way from where I stopped... BillW -- (remove spam food from return address) Article 3733 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.he.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 19:40:02 GMT Organization: Low Lines: 16 Message-ID: <34ef2b43.1100607@news.net1plus.com> References: <6camvq$f4n@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com> <6ccd1u$es7$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6ccikm$rda$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6cdkap$dl7@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <6cen7m$iup$1@decius.ultra.net> <34ee2348.12088990@news.net1plus.com> <6cmp4h$d6e$1@hirame.wwa.com> Reply-To: racerdave@net1plus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 3818@208.200.157.20 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3733 On 21 Feb 1998 14:42:25 GMT, jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) wrote: >Adventure didn't appear on the PDP-10 until 1977, much less get ported to the >DC76. I believe Barb was referring to an earlier era. > Still had the same rules. The DOC (Department of Chiefs) changed very little over the years. I still see some of them from time to time. Adventure did get ported to the DC76. Dave Bell, Mike Gilbert, Dave Neff, Dan Duffel and I did it. We also did the reverse vidio hack "in" the '76. It made the VT52 scroll down, home was in the lower right, and the entire screen filled backwards. That was inspired by Bruce Evens, the person everybody picked on, even CDO. (Will CDO ever admit to all the hacks he put into DAEMON?) Article 3737 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!164.67.42.145!awabi.library.ucla.edu!137.82.194.1!unixg.ubc.ca!alph02.triumf.ca!shoppa From: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: The ARPANET TERROR from the MC humor vaults... Date: 23 Feb 1998 03:46:59 GMT Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility Lines: 15 Message-ID: <6cqrfj$nnl$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> References: <6cpsp0$7sv$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6cptmg$8dt$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <34f0e139.0@news.dca.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: alph02.triumf.ca Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:99490 alt.sys.pdp10:3737 In article <34f0e139.0@news.dca.net>, David Horvath, CCP wrote: >In article <6cptmg$8dt$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>, shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca says... >>Again from the HUMOR directory, SIXTY.MINS: >Wow! The classic! ca. 1980. Where did you find this? Copies I made from an archive of MC before it went down. It pays to keep your archives in order - while the computer industry may decide that everything is obsolete every 6 months, some of us have decided to go for the long haul, and are carefully maintaining card readers, paper tape punches, and 7-track tape drives :-). I regularly read media up to 40 years old for my customers. Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca) Article 3739 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!nntp2.ba.best.com!thvv From: thvv@best.com (Tom Van Vleck) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Real Programmers Don't Write Specs Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 22:44:19 -0800 Organization: Multicians Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: <6cpsp0$7sv$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6cptmg$8dt$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <6cqsul$og7$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: thvv.vip.best.com X-Trace: 888216264 13687 (none) 206.86.0.12 X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.1 X-url: http://www.best.com/~thvv/multics.html Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:99495 alt.sys.pdp10:3739 In article <6cqsul$og7$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>, shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) wrote: > Circa 1983 or so, REAL PROGRS from the MC vaults. I wrote this in 1982, after I had left the Multics group and was working in Calfornia. I was thinking of particular colleagues and former colleagues for several of the paragraphs. For example, "pipe stress" refers to a large FORTRAN program at Universal Oil Products in Des Plaines Ill, and I was thining of Noel Morris when I wrote > Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are > around at 9 AM, it's because they were up all night. Article 3742 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!209.6.107.173!newsfeed.xcom.net!news.ultranet.com!d9 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Mon, 23 Feb 98 19:02:48 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 23 Message-ID: <6csfpe$8si$1@decius.ultra.net> References: <6camvq$f4n@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com> <6ccd1u$es7$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6ccikm$rda$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6cdkap$dl7@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <6cen7m$iup$1@decius.ultra.net> <34ee2348.12088990@news.net1plus.com> <6cmp4h$d6e$1@hirame.wwa.com> <34ef2b43.1100607@news.net1plus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: d9.dial-15.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 23 Feb 1998 18:39:42 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3742 In article <34ef2b43.1100607@news.net1plus.com>, racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) wrote: >On 21 Feb 1998 14:42:25 GMT, jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John >Everett) wrote: > > >>Adventure didn't appear on the PDP-10 until 1977, much less >>get ported to the DC76. I believe Barb was referring to an earlier era. >> >Still had the same rules. The DOC (Department of Chiefs) changed very >little over the years. I still see some of them from time to time. > >Adventure did get ported to the DC76. Dave Bell, Mike Gilbert, Dave >Neff, Dan Duffel and I did it. We also did the reverse vidio hack >"in" the '76. It made the VT52 scroll down, home was in the lower >right, and the entire screen filled backwards. That was inspired by >Bruce Evens, the person everybody picked on, even CDO. (Will CDO ever >admit to all the hacks he put into DAEMON?) there was a reason that BBE was picked on by Jim and Tony; but that was only once and BBE never did it again. :-) /BAH Article 3748 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newshub1.home.com!news.home.com!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:05:46 GMT Organization: Low Lines: 23 Message-ID: <34f284a8.56998366@news.net1plus.com> References: <6camvq$f4n@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com> <6ccd1u$es7$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6ccikm$rda$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6cdkap$dl7@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <6cen7m$iup$1@decius.ultra.net> <34ee2348.12088990@news.net1plus.com> <6csg8c$8si$3@decius.ultra.net> Reply-To: racerdave@net1plus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 11572@208.200.157.35 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3748 On Mon, 23 Feb 98 19:10:46 GMT, jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com wrote: >>p.s. I still have the system logo from KA #1, when it was torn apart >>in the DoomsDay Too lab, back in middle earth. >> >Jim managed to get two DEC-10 slider strips (I can't remember where >the were...above the doors maybe?); I found them in his office. > >/BAH [10,2162] Well, mine came with the mounting extrusion, which was double sided stickey taped to the top of the system. You (bah) can have it if you want... p.s. I remember the reason that BBE was despised for those few weeks. Seems it had to do with a certain field test trip. The funny part is that when we started the "reverse vidio" hack on BBE, he called field circus because his terminal was "broken", and they replaced the deflection yoke and the tube, trying to fix it..... Article 3749 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!209.6.107.173!newsfeed.xcom.net!news.ultranet.com!d17 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Tue, 24 Feb 98 12:30:20 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 66 Message-ID: <6cud5q$d5p$1@decius.ultra.net> References: <6camvq$f4n@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com> <6ccd1u$es7$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6ccikm$rda$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6cdkap$dl7@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <6cen7m$iup$1@decius.ultra.net> <34ee2348.12088990@news.net1plus.com> <6csg8c$8si$3@decius.ultra.net> <34f284a8.56998366@news.net1plus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: d17.dial-12.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 24 Feb 1998 12:07:22 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3749 In article <34f284a8.56998366@news.net1plus.com>, racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) wrote: >On Mon, 23 Feb 98 19:10:46 GMT, jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com wrote: > >>>p.s. I still have the system logo from KA #1, when it was torn apart >>>in the DoomsDay Too lab, back in middle earth. >>> >>Jim managed to get two DEC-10 slider strips (I can't remember where >>the were...above the doors maybe?); I found them in his office. >> >>/BAH [10,2162] > >Well, mine came with the mounting extrusion, which was double sided >stickey taped to the top of the system. > >You (bah) can have it if you want... I've been trying to find good homes for the stuff that I have. My family will just dump everything because they won't know the value of the stuff I do have. > >p.s. I remember the reason that BBE was despised for those few weeks. >Seems it had to do with a certain field test trip. > >The funny part is that when we started the "reverse vidio" hack on >BBE, he called field circus because his terminal was "broken", and >they replaced the deflection yoke and the tube, trying to fix it..... > I didn't hear about that. I guess I should tell our part of the story.....Once upon a time.... For some reason, I opened up SOS.MAC. It's possible that somebody told me what BBE was doing. He had removed ALL form feeds from the source. I went to him and asked him 1. why he did it (because that was his style of editing) and 2. to put them back (never with the attitude that I was a stupid broad--that was a mistake :-)). I went to Jim and Tony fuming, swearing, and beating up the walls. Tony asked me what was wrong and I told him that BBE had taken out all the form feeds in SOS. Jim, by the way, just sat back and watched, grinning. Tony told me that I was being unreasonable and a stupid shit for getting upset about something nobody cared about. I continued to argue with him that the form feeds should go back into the MAC file and he lost patience with me (he did that often). So, after we had fought for a little while about the value of SOS, I got up and, while walking out of the office, said, "BBE edits the monitor sources, too." The next morning Jim and Tony were giggling away. They had spent their whole S/A time, developing and debugging an aspect that affected only BBE's PPN. Upon logging in, his whole directory would appear backwards. Tony also provided a MIC file in his directory (that read forwards) to put his stuff back to its original status. By the time everything was ready, there were a few of the maintainers who had stopped by and were told about the trick. They went off to watch what BBE did when he logged in that morning. I don't remember any more of the details, but apparently he never figured out what happened or how to put the files back (somebody had to show him). Oh, he put back the form feeds. /BAH Article 3752 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 19:41:40 GMT Organization: Low Lines: 87 Message-ID: <34f31602.4923131@news.net1plus.com> References: <6camvq$f4n@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com> <6ccd1u$es7$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6ccikm$rda$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6cdkap$dl7@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <6cen7m$iup$1@decius.ultra.net> <34ee2348.12088990@news.net1plus.com> <6csg8c$8si$3@decius.ultra.net> <34f284a8.56998366@news.net1plus.com> <6cud5q$d5p$1@decius.ultra.net> Reply-To: racerdave@net1plus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 4143@208.200.157.38 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3752 On Tue, 24 Feb 98 12:30:20 GMT, jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com wrote: >I didn't hear about that. I guess I should tell our part of the >story.....Once upon a time.... > >For some reason, I opened up SOS.MAC. It's possible that somebody >told me what BBE was doing. He had removed ALL form feeds from the >source. I went to him and asked him 1. why he did it (because that >was his style of editing) and 2. to put them back (never with the >attitude that I was a stupid broad--that was a mistake :-)). > >I went to Jim and Tony fuming, swearing, and beating up the walls. >Tony asked me what was wrong and I told him that BBE had taken out >all the form feeds in SOS. Jim, by the way, just sat back and >watched, grinning. Tony told me that I was being unreasonable and >a stupid shit for getting upset about something nobody cared about. >I continued to argue with him that the form feeds should go back >into the MAC file and he lost patience with me (he did that often). >So, after we had fought for a little while about the value of SOS, >I got up and, while walking out of the office, said, "BBE edits >the monitor sources, too." > >The next morning Jim and Tony were giggling away. They had spent >their whole S/A time, developing and debugging an aspect that >affected only BBE's PPN. Upon logging in, his whole directory >would appear backwards. Tony also provided a MIC file in his >directory (that read forwards) to put his stuff back to its >original status. By the time everything was ready, there were >a few of the maintainers who had stopped by and were told about >the trick. They went off to watch what BBE did when he logged >in that morning. I don't remember any more of the details, but >apparently he never figured out what happened or how to put the >files back (somebody had to show him). > >Oh, he put back the form feeds. > >/BAH Well, I guess I'll tell a small part of CDO's story. Some time in '78 or '79, when a monitor (forget the version, but it might have been 7.01 (SMP)) was going out, it was a real big deal. There were teams going to each field test site, and they had people from development, support, and field service going to each customer. Well, Tony, I think it was CDO (might have been Jim), BBE and others went to one location, and a few of us got to read the trip report that BBE put in. Looked like CDO (or was it Jim) and Tony were there just to fetch coffee every now and then, and contribute a few little things during the trip. Just a little bit of help to the customer... Management, of course, believed the report. (It was Elton. Remember Elton? He once said "I can scew up all I want, because DEC won't fire me because I am black!" His exact words. And he did screw up, and did as little as possible. He's the one that Pope Richard (Cower) once stood up on his desk and screamed at. Maybe 100 people heard it. "Elton, you are a f******g a*****e." Thats another long story, lets not go there.) A few people were really upset, and that started the "Open season war" on BBE. The hacks included: FLIP.MIC (Better known as PILF.CIM) Reverse Vidio DAEMON (would check for BBE, and log him out silently some time between 30 and 90 minutes after he logged in.) There were other hacks there, but I forget what CDO did. His terminal kept getting "fixed". Reversed yoke, slow speed... unplugged "Keyboard Bounce", another hack that would, if you were typing fast (touch typing), randomly drop letters, double letters, or change the letter to something close as you were typing. If you typed the same letters over and over (dfgdfgdfgdfg...), or typed too slow, it wouldn't kick in. All this went on for a month, and then we stopped, because he had no clue we were doing it... Article 3753 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!portc04.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: madbeing@aol.com (MadBeing) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Things that happen when the system people get bored (was Monitor names) Date: 24 Feb 1998 20:43:01 GMT Lines: 35 Message-ID: <19980224204301.PAA24249@ladder03.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder03.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3753 Since this wasn't directly related to the monitor names discussion I broke it out just for fun. One of the last things I saw mentioned was wild things done to one another in the systems group. Well.. I was only a Dec customer but we (the systems people) used to pull a few interesting things on each other. Two things that vividly come to mind are: One afternoon we were particularly bored. One of the main systems guys wrote a small program that sent the string "DECSYSTEM-20 NOT RUNNING" to the head system programer's terminal. It also followed this up with a keyboard lock sequence that Z19's responded to. The system AMPEX mem box timing had been goofy for the past few weeks so right after we ran this John D. burst out of his office and ran over to the two Dec 20 consoles and proceeded to scratch his head for a few minutes. You should have heard the words emitted when he heard us all laughing in the background. Another time we got into John D's gexec init file and added in a "WATCH BEARS" command. For those who didn't get goodies tapes from the other universities running TOPS 20, gexec was a small program which had some nice functions for systems people. The watch command could be set to watch for various system events. In this case we told it to watch for a user called BEARS (who didn't exist) One of John D.'s favorite sayings was "Do bear's s**t in the woods" The next time he logged in he was greeted with the message "No BEARS yet" John went on to work at DEC's support center in CO in the TOPS20 group. I think his time with us seasoned him to the weird things that customers would tell him when their system crashed -- Dan Smith "Old Programmers never die, They just jrst to a new address" reaper bots chew on this root@localhost Article 3758 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newshub1.home.com!news.home.com!newshub1-work.home.com!void.agames.com!albaugh From: albaugh@agames.com (Mike Albaugh) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Interesting DEC Stuff (forwarded) Date: 25 Feb 1998 02:38:55 GMT Organization: Atari Games Corporation Lines: 27 Message-ID: <6d007v$gao$1@void.agames.com> References: <34f01523.20507621@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <6cvktu$eiu$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: java.agames.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3758 G. Herrmannsfeldt (gah@u.washington.edu) wrote: : I once knew that the Radio Shack Color computer basic was the test : system for the IBM/PC basic. This makes a little sense in light of the : previous post. (CC is 6809 based). That macros could generate the : different opcodes. : (For those missing the previous post, all MS basic before 1982 or so were : generated with macros to generate processor specific opodes.) Well, having also seen "the source" for MSBasic for the 6502, I can confirm that it sure looked like it was written in Macro-10, but the version _I_ saw definitely had more-or-less 6502 assembly, not "one size fits all" macros. I particular, they chose to use self-modifying code running in Zero-page for the "get next token" routine, which I find it more than a bit difficult to believe would have resulted from a "straight macro translation" of any plausible 8080 code. I am not 100% sure _when_ the code I saw was written, but it was purchased from Microsoft for use on the original Atari400/800, so I'd _guess_ no later than about 1979. It certainly had octal F.P. constants and Macro-10ish pseudo-ops. No, this was not the BASIC that shipped with the system. That one was even odder :-) BTW: the "Rockwell 6502" comment does ring a bell. Typical MS cluelessness :-) Mike | albaugh@agames.com, speaking only for myself Article 3800 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news2.chicago.iagnet.net!news1.chicago.iagnet.net!qual.net!iagnet.net!129.79.6.160!news.indiana.edu!news.iupui.edu!woodshed!mwood From: mwood@woodshed.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Monitor names Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:19:51 GMT Organization: La Petite Hackerie Lines: 11 Message-ID: References: <6ck7sj$499$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6d1cc4$bfj$1@hirame.wwa.com> <6d1tkq$463$1@shell3.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mhw.oit.iupui.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950515BETA PL0] Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3800 Well, I certainly wouldn't write about "TOPS Monitor calls" or filesystems as if they were all the same. But much of the GALAXY code was common. DN87S was *too* common. (The first release for TOPS-10 used byte pointers that could only be interpreted by the TOPS-20 microcode. It would start just fine but crash reliably when the first job started. Finding this was an interesting job! Fortunately we had two 2060 systems, one running each OS, at the time, so I was familiar with the differences.) -- Mark H. Wood Speaking, as always, for himself MWOOD@IUPUI.EDU We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Article 3812 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.63.63.70!nwnews.wa.com!brokaw.wa.com!not-for-mail From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Read - PixieFuel's Infamous Manifesto Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:54:38 -0800 (PST) Organization: NorthWest Nexus Inc. Lines: 51 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: panda.wa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3812 This doesn't have much to do with PDP-10s, but...: PixieFuel claims to be from Middlesex, NJ and gave a rather mild description of the place. As PixieFuel says, Middlesex is one of those benightened hamlets where homosexuality is defined as being "intelligent and interested in computers." Needless to say, most of the "queers" who are beaten up are not gay; but many of the jocks who beat up "queers" are. Middlesex girls get pregnant starting about seventh grade. The high point of the year for Middlesex boys is the extended Halloween season, the merry days of vandalism. The inevitable fate of a Middlesex youngster who does not escape is to become like Al and Peg Bundy in "Married with Children". I lived in Middlesex, NJ from 1967 until 1973; my junior high school and high school years. One of the reasons why I dropped out of high school after 3 years (to go to college -- I'm a high school dropout with a bachelor of science degree...) was to get out of Middlesex High School. At least I went to a college with a PDP-10; otherwise I never would have been debrainwashed from two years of OS/360!!! Thus began an abiding relationship which continues to this day, 25 years later. A whole room of my house is consumed by two DEC-2020 mainframes, dual ported to two RM05s and two RM03s. Fortunately for me, my significant other is a tolerant sort who accepts that she has to share her man with a machine, although she has at times questioned which comes first... Well, let's face it; women come and women go, but a PDP-10 is forever! ;-) ;-) Anyway, if PixieFuel is really from Middlesex and has run afoul of the Middlesex culture, she deserves our deepest sympathy. If she's reading this, she can take this consolation from an old fart who escaped long ago: there is life after Middlesex. Also, take this advice: get a life outside of the network. Go to the range with an AK-47 and perforate Barney targets with hundreds of holes. Go to the furthest and most desolate place imaginable, and get thoroughly cold, wet, tired, and miserable (in other words, truly happy). Eat poisonous puffer fish at a restaurant in Tokyo. Drive a Formula Ford at Laguna Seca. Learn a foreign language that no sensible person would think of studying. Pan for gold in a frigid stream in Alaska. Collect stuff. It'll help you get perspective. As you get to the age of the people who actually know what a PDP-10 is, you'll get another one: everytime is someone's golden age. You weren't even born during my "golden age of the network." PS: Thanks for the nice words about Pine. I'll tell the other Pine developers. Article 3838 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!uninett.no!news.algonet.se!pepsi.tninet.se!not-for-mail From: pgd@algonet.seNOSPAM (Per Lindqvist) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10,comp.os.rsts Subject: Re: Ken Olsen on the bueaty of Unix, 1984 Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 04:21:33 GMT Organization: Algonet/Tninet Lines: 32 Message-ID: <35060f41.3922523@194.213.69.148> References: <889105061snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <6dn50e$afo@bonkers.taronga.com> <6dn6ur$4pl$1@nntp3.uunet.ca> <3500256E.43CD@smarts.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: du220-248.ppp.algonet.se X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/16.235 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:100437 alt.sys.pdp10:3838 comp.os.rsts:480 On Fri, 06 Mar 1998 11:33:50 -0500, Jerry Leichter wrote: >RSTS and BASIC PLUS provided one of the most productive programming >environments I've ever used. It's astounding how much we managed to do >with multiple users on an 11/40. And RSTS's Run Time System interface >was a really elegant design - what was called "multiple personalities" >for OS's a couple of years back, before efforts in that direction seemed >to disappear. My favourite was RSTS/E. It indeed had multiple personalities, in that it had emulation for the two other popular operating systems RT11 and RSX. For a very long time the only native development tool was basic, fortran and macro-11 was running under RT11 emulation. I think RSTS was originally developed on a DEC-10. I once had my hands on a RSTS version 2(?) source listing, and it was full of witty comments, and I think it was assembled with MACY11. In any case, the devices where called DSK:, TTY: LPT: etc. Rumours said it was originally made as a holiday/semester project or something by one or two programmers. The RSTS run time systems was in my opinion DEC-10 hi-segs in disguise. That is, a program had two segments, the low segment, and the high segment. You executed the low segment, and the high segment followed with it. What was not DEC-10'ish was that the keyboard command interpreter was an ordinary user program. That is, RSTS had no actual native keyboard command interpreter. (Except for the very early versions) -- Per Lindqvist, pgd@algonet.se Article 3843 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news.ultranet.com!d7 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Another TWism? Date: Sun, 29 Mar 98 16:17:50 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 6 Message-ID: <6flr63$kin$1@ligarius.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: d7.dial-11.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 29 Mar 1998 16:00:03 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3843 He used to mumble something about fire and matches. Was it "Shit fire and eat matches." Or maybe, "Shit fire and save matches." /BAH Article 3871 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.idt.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!news From: JCGreen@ix.netcom.com (John C Green Jr) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: ** Old Vintage Operating Systems ** Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 17:52:45 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 62 Message-ID: <6hg27v$kh5@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> References: <6gea3u$egh@netaxs.com> <6gg41v$j9i@news-central.tiac.net> <6ggd7a$85d$1@nntp1.uunet.ca> <6ggo7k$3e3@news-central.tiac.net> <6gqco0$mtc$1@strato.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: sjx-ca74-37.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Mon Apr 20 12:56:15 PM CDT 1998 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.folklore.computers:102540 alt.sys.pdp10:3871 alderson@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) wrote: I'm actually replying to a number of posts in this thread. > [PDP-10 operating systems have been referred to as: > Monitor > Operating System > Timesharing System > Etc.] When a concept is new it often has several names. Usually it settles to one eventually (unless IBM persists in using another :-) Grace Hopper used the name Exec as in executive. She thought it was appropriate since the Exec makes command decisions typical of top executives, schedules resources, etc. So at Remington Rand the monitors/operating systems/timesharing systems were called Execs such as 1108's Exec-8. Soon after invented in 1886 at Coney Island a new ride type was called: Giant Dipper Big Dipper Scenic Railway Scenic Railroad Rollercoaster Today we call them all rollercoasters. By the bye rollercoasters are called: Spanish "Russian Hills" French "Russian Hills" Italian "Russian Hills" Portuguese "Russian Hills" Russian "American Hills" (True, no joke) German "Figure-8 Railroads" English "Rollercoasters" By the bye Rollercoasters were actually invented in 1735 in St. Petersburg Russia and reinvented 151 years later at Coney Island with no knowledge of the previous work. The inventors were NOT named respectively Babbage and Eckert & Mauchley :-) I worked for Alliant Computer for 7+ years. The machines we made were called: VAX Killers Affordable Supercomputers Minisupercomputers Air Cooled Supercomputers Personal Supercomputers Crayettes Regards, John C - - - RP10 (controller for RP02) Project Engineer 21483 Old Mine Rd (408)353-1870 Los Gatos CA 95030 JCGreen@ix.netcom.com Article 3914 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!not-for-mail From: vjp2@dorsai.org @smtp.dorsai.org (Vasos Panagiotopoulos +1-917-287-8087 Bioengineer-Financier) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,alt.sys.pdp11,comp.sources.wanted,alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Wanted: Info & sources on old ARPANET mail systems and software Followup-To: comp.mail.misc,alt.sys.pdp11,comp.sources.wanted Date: 5 May 1998 09:08:43 GMT Organization: Samani Marions Panyaught NYC-11357-3436-287-USA Lines: 37 Distribution: world Message-ID: <6imkus$mkb@enews4.newsguy.com> References: <354DA51D.B2E4CF50@sross.anglianet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: amanda.dorsai.org Mail-Copies-To: vjp2@dorsai.org, vjp2@compuserve.com, vjp2@mcimail.com X-Sys-Config: The configuration of my system is described in my web page. X-Disclaim: Nothing herein constitutes advice; everything fully disclaimed. X-Quiet: My silence is not reluctant acquiescence rather confident deprecation. X-URL: http://www.dorsai.org/~vjp2 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com comp.mail.misc:26256 alt.sys.pdp11:3741 comp.sources.wanted:8834 alt.sys.pdp10:3914 alt.folklore.computers:103634 A lot of it was DECNET with DEC20s. When Columbia got a second DEC20 ca 1980, we had to use network software to move files (they added a VM/CMS IBM 4341 a year later), so we got to "see" some stuff at CMU and NYU (mostly "finger" of who was logged on). Mail was by MM, which also ran BBoard - I believe a version of MM is still available on ftp://kermit.columbia.edu. I once went to visit a friend at Cornell in 1982 and when I sent an e-mail to him, I got a nasty message back that I wasn't authorised to use ARPANET. The stuff was written NODE::DISK:filename.ext. In the SPring of 1981 I crossed wires 2&3 and tried to plug the Chemical Engineering Plessey 11 to the DEC20 and it came crashing down repeatedly because they were both full-duplexing the first character ad infinitum - so a buch of my classmates wrote something now known as Kermit. I believe BITNET (with IBM VM) was the next step when Columbia and CCNY linked up, but I wasn't on campus then (but I still got the newsletter by snail mail). Then about 1989, Senator Al Gore promoted NSFNET. I sent an e-mail to CompuServe customer service (I'm sure I wasn't the only one making that suggestion) asking why we don't get e-mail linkage via some local university and we got in via saqqara.cis.ohio-state.edu. Initially it was cluncky for others to include all that routing info in my e-mail address. After Delphi sent out postcards to sign on, a lot of users began clamoring for newgroups accesson CompuServe. In 1994, I was visiting my Columbia Bioengineering mentor who had retired to la Jolla when one of his staffers showed me this "neat new thing" called Mosaic and the "Web". Although I had used a bunch of gopher servers on Delphi and some library dial up catalogs, wider access to the Web started with Lynx on Unix systems. I'd bet if you could get your hands on the computer newsletters of one of the more prestigious universities (Columbia, CMU, Stanford) for the past twenty-five years, you'ld get an accurate picture. - = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bioengineer-Financier, NYC BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian http://WWW.Dorsai.Org/~vjp2 vjp2@{MCIMail.Com|CompuServe.Com|Dorsai.Org} ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- Article 3969 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!nntp2.ba.best.com!thvv From: thvv@best.com (Tom Van Vleck) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: BUGHLT/STOPCD in Latin? Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 17:32:57 -0700 Organization: Multicians Lines: 13 Message-ID: References: <6lv05g$243$1@shell3.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: thvv.vip.best.com X-Trace: 897784387 11504 (none) 206.86.0.12 X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.1 X-url: http://www.best.com/~thvv/multics.html Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3969 Joe Smith wrote: > I got e-mail asking > > Hi. Years ago, I heard a story about a DECsystem running either > > TOPS-10, TOPS-20 or Tenex that halted and issued an error message in > > Latin. You wouldn't happen to know where I could find the rest of the > > story, or confirm/deny that it's an urban legend? > > It sounds vaguely familiar. I know a similar event happened with a Multics system at GM. See http://www.best.com/~thvv/hodie-natus-est.html They called me at home. Article 3980 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.wli.net!news.oru.edu!sol.pdnt.net!bony.umtec.com!root From: Daniel Seagraves Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: It's done. Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:03:21 -0500 Organization: Planet Digital Network Technologies Lines: 26 Approved: Why bother? Message-ID: References: <6lr79s$gps$2@strato.ultra.net> <6ltlh0$9jm$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <3585e1b9.514970788@news.accessone.com> <6m5i9b$phf$2@ligarius.ultra.net> <6m8ehj$4f8@bonkers.taronga.com> <6m8h1t$pim$2@strato.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: bony.umtec.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <6m8h1t$pim$2@strato.ultra.net> Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3980 > peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote: > >I remember the tee-shirts. > > > > "If you don't have 36 bits you're not playing with a full DEC" I forged one of those! I saw this line somewhere, and my parents had just bought a bunch of T-shirt transfers, so I made a quickie clone. I scanned the "DECsystem-10" logo from the front of my TOPS-10 manual, added the line above it (Except I wrote "If it's not 36 bits, you're not playing a full DEC" instead because of space constraints. The T-shirt may be big, but the xfer is only 8.5"x11"...) and wore it to school pictures. I even had my "Introducing the expandable PDP-10!" card, but the teachers made me leave it upstairs. Then they "lost" the picture... If anyone has a picture of the original I may be able to reproduce it... I didn't know the line was on a shirt. I just thought it would be funny to wear it. This other guy in class had 3 shirts: An Ameritech T, an Intel Bunny-Geek T, and a Microsoft 95 logo tee. Lord, did I have fun making him mad... (Like bringing a MicroVAX in one day, and proving I could boot VAX/VMS before 95 came up... And the same with RSTS/E and my 11/44... Lord, was he ever mad! He was one of those types that will decapitiate you if you proved him wrong, but I didn't care...) Article 4270 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!chippy.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!news.uunet.ca!not-for-mail From: "Don Chiasson" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: KL Console Commands Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 21:06:52 -0400 Organization: UUNET Canada News Transport Lines: 39 Message-ID: <703i7a$2l5$1@nntp2.uunet.ca> References: <6vdd7g$ohs$1@nntpd.lk <6vjjvc$4qm$1@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <361d61a8.0@news.wizvax.net> <361d6c9e.13147729@news.clark.net> <6vl4lp$k3v$1@hirame.wwa.com> <361E5E28.1DD1C12B@InfoMation.ExciseThis.com> <36239e18.6108655@news.clark.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.167.85.20 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4270 >Philip Gagner wrote in message <36239e18.6108655@news.clark.net>... >"Aron K. Insinga" >wrote: > >>John Everett wrote: > >> >>The interconnect problems of the PDP-6, the appearance of the Sylvania >>wirewrap sockets and Gardner-Denver wirewrap machine, and the prospect >>of building many, cheap computers on an assembly line forced changes. >> >Standard maintenance on a PDP-6 was running a heavy tool across the >back of the boards (the contacts were on the front) to shake them up a >bit and seat them in their sockets better. It would solve many many >problems. Higher level maintenance was pulling the boards, staring at >them for a few seconds, and shoving them back in with lots of >wiggling. Harder problems would be solved that way. We had a bizarre problem with a DEC-20 back in about 1980. There were frequent crashes with inconsistent error messages. Field Circus swapped all the boards, but nothing solved the problem. DEC flew in a person whose expertise was looking at wire wrap backplanes, searching for loose bits of wire, broken wires, nicked insulation, and so on. Still no luck and the problem continued for several weeks. One poor FS technician decided to clean the contacts on all the CPU cards, so he got an eraser and pulled out all the cards. He happened to glance at the backplane and there was white paint on it! The paint hadn't been able to bind to the plastic and was flaking off, falling on the cards and causing all sorts of inconsistent faults. He scraped off the paint, vacuumed thoroughly and put the system back together. It worked. Shortly afterward, DEC gave us a new backplane with system upgrade from a 2040 to a 2050. Don Article 4348 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.voicenet.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!nntp.abs.net!outfeed1.news.cais.net!in1.nntp.cais.net!199.0.216.204.MISMATCH!audrey2.cais.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <36456A3A.528FF8C4@trailing-edge.com> From: Tim Shoppa Organization: Trailing Edge Technology X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0 DEC 3000 Model 300L) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix? References: <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com> <7243h8$p3v$1@ligarius.ultra.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 36 Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 09:54:03 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.232.144.27 X-Trace: audrey2.cais.com 910537361 198.232.144.27 (Sun, 08 Nov 1998 10:02:41 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 10:02:41 EDT Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4348 alt.folklore.computers:117263 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > > In article <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com>, > Tim Shoppa wrote: > > >In my business, I'm called upon to read old TOPS-10 > >DECTapes for customers. Because all the tapes I've been > >asked to read are from 1974 or earlier, ... > > Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you > pick off those tapes? Remarkably good. 14" disk packs and 8" floppies from the same era usually read without any difficulty, too, though I wouldn't want to use any of this older media more than is absolutely necessary - oxide tends to start flaking off the disks after 20-25 years. What can be a problem are 7-track and 9-track 1/2" tape. Many brands of tape, from the 60's through the 90's, become gummy if not stored under absolutely pristine environmental conditions. This gumminess isn't a problem if the tape is read from beginning to end without any start/stop cycles or retries, so recovery efforts concentrate very much on smooth, continuous tape motion and signal processing techniques that maximize the data recovered on the first try. The only brand of tape where I never have the gumminess problem is 3M 700/Blackwatch. It seems that Imation continues to manufacture this stuff, and that is a Good Thing. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927 Article 4349 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix? References: <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com> <7243h8$p3v$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <36456A3A.528FF8C4@trailing-edge.com> Organization: D Bit, Troy, NY From: wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson) NNTP-Posting-Host: dbit.dbit.com Message-ID: <3645bafa.0@news.wizvax.net> Date: 8 Nov 1998 10:38:34 -0500 X-Trace: 8 Nov 1998 10:38:34 -0500, dbit.dbit.com Lines: 13 Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!dbit.com!wilson Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4349 alt.folklore.computers:117264 In article <36456A3A.528FF8C4@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa wrote: >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >> Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you >> pick off those tapes? > >Remarkably good. I second that. I've had no trouble reading data off DECtapes from the early 1970s either, well except for the DECtape hardware itself! John Wilson D Bit Article 4350 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.shore.net!news.ultranet.com!d6 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix? Date: Sun, 08 Nov 98 15:30:30 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 32 Message-ID: <724egf$1ba$7@strato.ultra.net> References: <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com> <7243h8$p3v$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <36456A3A.528FF8C4@trailing-edge.com> <3645bafa.0@news.wizvax.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: d6.dial-16.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 8 Nov 1998 15:48:31 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4350 alt.folklore.computers:117265 In article <3645bafa.0@news.wizvax.net>, wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson) wrote: >In article <36456A3A.528FF8C4@trailing-edge.com>, >Tim Shoppa wrote: >>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >>> Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you >>> pick off those tapes? >> >>Remarkably good. > >I second that. I've had no trouble reading data off DECtapes >from the early 1970s either, well except for the DECtape >hardware itself! Well, there is that :-). I remember field service types telling stories about DECtape readability with great awe in their voices. The treatment of these tapes included throwing the tapes in the back of their station wagon and forgetting about them until needed again. Of course, these tapes went through winter and summer seasons, getting heated and frozen on a regular basis. There were also stories about animals, tape crunching [literally, not figuratively], etc. I was just curious about the time element since we couldn't test that back then :-). Thanks for the info. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. Article 4358 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!news From: "Chris Ward" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix? Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 11:04:49 -0500 Organization: IDT (Best News In The World) Lines: 24 Message-ID: <727415$hm3@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> References: <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com> <36457A95.3932FA73@trailing-edge.com> <3645B4D8.5222AF2E@trailing-edge.com> <7270gg$j91$1@ligarius.ultra.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-9.ts-1-bay.hob.idt.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3115.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4358 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message <7270gg$j91$1@ligarius.ultra.net>... >In article <3645B4D8.5222AF2E@trailing-edge.com>, > >To test all the TOPS10 software for DATE75 bugs, the TOPS10 >Monitor group brought their systems up with dates of a decade >later. So, on the day of 11Dec1973, the system was really >brought up with a date of 11Dec1983. There was a problem.. >picture an emoticon here renewing the swearing tirades that >were produced by this problem. 1984 happened to be a leap >year (1974 was not). Thus, when I ran the FACTPR program >on data produced after 28Feb1974, the sortable Julian dates >were wrong. The cross billing programs who read this data >got really, really screwed up. > Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. But System Forty Can't Remember..... (I saw this on the wall at Stevens, the home of #101) Article 4360 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!10.0.0.1!10.0.0.1 From: racerdave@net1plus.com (Dave Lyons) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Easter Eggs...In TOPS Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 22:35:34 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com - Discussions start here! Lines: 17 Message-ID: <36486d5c.115202500@10.0.0.1> NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.200.157.111 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 910654642 P0XQBQRYN9D6FD0C8C usenet52.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 X-No-Archive: yes Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4360 All this Date 75 stuff remineded me of an SPR support once got: Bug: You sold system 28 to us. [I think it was 28] Fix: Please remove system 28 from the magic table in SYSTAT Seems systat had two tables, one of all the developers birthdays, and one of the systems owned by DEC. When SYSTAT was built, those were included in the shipped version. So, when we sold the old KA to a customer (after refurb), they started seeing the developers birthdays, just like the folks in house. It was an easy fix. Article 4374 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Revenue from Tops-10 References: <726tq5$3ep$1@supernews.com> Organization: D Bit, Troy, NY From: wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson) NNTP-Posting-Host: dbit.dbit.com Message-ID: <364930fd.0@news.wizvax.net> Date: 11 Nov 1998 01:38:53 -0500 X-Trace: 11 Nov 1998 01:38:53 -0500, dbit.dbit.com Lines: 13 Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!dbit.com!wilson Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4374 In article , Seth J. Morabito wrote: >It seems to me that for the large majority of us, getting the software >itself would be less trouble than getting the _hardware_ on which >to run it :) As I've said before, anyone who wants a brown-painted KS10 just has to show up in Troy NY (Thruway exit 23) with a minivan or trailer, I've got lots of them (not guaranteed to work, but I've got plenty of spare boards too) and I'd love to get most of them out of here. John Wilson D Bit Article 4400 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.itd.umich.edu!sarr Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,alt.lang.teco Subject: Re: ASCII (was: What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix?) References: <36444B15.2FBA1EA5@trailing-edge.com> <3649BCC2.5ADD22E2@trailing-edge.com> <5490hhvjxg.fsf@flipper.cisco.com> <72gqfr$29h$1@shell3.ba.best.com> Reply-To: sarr@umich.edu Organization: University of Michigan From: sarr@engin.umich.edu (Sarr J. Blumson) Lines: 16 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 14:37:45 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 141.211.43.166 X-Trace: news.itd.umich.edu 910967865 141.211.43.166 (Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:37:45 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:37:45 EDT Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4400 alt.folklore.computers:117692 alt.lang.teco:781 In article <72gqfr$29h$1@shell3.ba.best.com>, Smith and O'Halloran wrote: > >It surprized the heck out of me when moved the H2000 from one room >to another, plugged it in, and had yesterday's SYSTAT show up on the >screen. The durn thang had core memory! Hard though it may be to believe now, back then core was the _cheap_ form of memory. -- -------- Sarr Blumson sarr@umich.edu voice: +1 734 764 0253 home: +1 734 665 9591 ITD, University of Michigan http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/ 519 W William, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943 Article 4424 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-pen-3.sprintlink.net!news-in-east1.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Question about running 10 sw on a 20 Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 17:32:14 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <72hagc$aok$1@supernews.com> <72k01a$9b8@www001.itanet.com.br> <72l35u$5eu$1@shell3.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tomobiki-cho.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 911179936 41720 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: edm To: Smith and O'Halloran In-Reply-To: <72l35u$5eu$1@shell3.ba.best.com> Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4424 On 14 Nov 1998, Smith and O'Halloran wrote: > Nope. It wasn't MONITOR.exe, it wasn't SYSTEM.EXE, but a different > program. And it wasn't all privileges, it was just USER-IOT. Was that the .r ddt coni$x .as dsk .dd bug that left you in USER-IOT? -- Mark -- * RCW 19.149 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 4433 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: DECTapes Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 09:48:26 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing Lines: 33 Message-ID: References: <36519d40.0@news.wizvax.net> <72saau$9em@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: tomobiki-cho.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 911324908 33762 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: alex In-Reply-To: <72saau$9em@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4433 On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Chris Ward wrote: > There was a KL-10 with Dectapes when I was at Stevens Tech. I think a > number of them were kept from the KA (serial 101) when they upgraded. > Dectapes were the basic off line storage available for purchase by students > and faculty. Also a much-resented revenue source for the computer center. They bought DECtapes in bulk but sold them at full retail. Since disk quotas were limited to 100 blocks (200 for "sponsored" accounts), purchase of DECtapes was pretty much mandatory to do any useful work. 100 blocks is a whopping 57.6K. Needless to say, computer center employees got disk quotas in the thousands of blocks. They also sold computer time to outsiders, who similarly never seemed to have disk quota problems. Oh yeah, mere students and sponsored accounts were subject to "loser", a charming little program which deleted any files which hadn't been referenced in the past 7 days. Once again, computer center employees and outsiders didn't have this problem. I'll admit that their total disk capacity was only 36MB when I first started there, but the fundamental unfairness of these policies triggered lasting impressions. Among other things, there were those of us who cheered the demise of DECtapes because that meant that computer centers actually had to think about long-term online storage for mere users. -- Mark -- * RCW 19.149 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 4435 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.voicenet.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: DECTapes Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 13:29:45 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <36519d40.0@news.wizvax.net> <72saau$9em@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: tomobiki-cho.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 911338187 39298 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: chj In-Reply-To: Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4435 On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Daniel Seagraves wrote: > > Oh yeah, mere students and sponsored accounts were subject to "loser", a > > charming little program which deleted any files which hadn't been > > referenced in the past 7 days. > You should've just put the eqivalent of "COPY * NUL:" or "touch *" in your > login script... (OC, you probably DID do that...) Yup. I had a little program called KNLAFM (Keep Nasty Loser Away From Me) which did exactly that (of course, it was written in assembly). Needless to say, the computer center promptly put KNLAFM on their "banned programs" list, along with such dangerous programs as ADVENT. It was Against The Rules to possess a banned program; they would even scan your private DECtapes and magtapes for such. They'd also scan for any neat files that you might have and make copies for themselves; there was no such thing as a privacy policy at that place. If you ever hear ex-Stevens Tech people from that era talk about VADing, VAD was one of the names under which ADVENT was hidden, and "to vad" meant to engage in any sort of similar activity in real life (e.g. steam tunneling). This was slightly after my time, but I know most of the folks who were involved. Oh, I forgot to mention, after my time, the regular disk quota at that place got cut from 100 blocks to 50 blocks. A whopping 28,800 bytes. From what I heard, that was the last straw and it was open warfare. Although I would have loved to see it, I probably would've been blamed for it so it was better that I wasn't around... One good thing that came out of it is that a lot of us folks who suffered under these policies went elsewhere determined to have the exact *opposite* policies on the systems we managed. Our users would pissed off at us for one thing or another (often with good reason), but they never *hated* us and we never had significant internal subversion problems. I wonder why... ;-) -- Mark -- * RCW 19.149 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 4436 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news1.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!news From: "Chris Ward" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: DECTapes Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:48:39 -0500 Organization: IDT (Best News In The World) Lines: 24 Message-ID: <72sr5s$4jn@nnrp2.farm.idt.net> References: <36519d40.0@news.wizvax.net> <72saau$9em@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-7.ts-2-bay.hob.idt.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3115.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4436 Mark Crispin wrote in message ... >On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Daniel Seagraves wrote: >Oh, I forgot to mention, after my time, the regular disk quota at that >place got cut from 100 blocks to 50 blocks. A whopping 28,800 bytes. >From what I heard, that was the last straw and it was open warfare. >Although I would have loved to see it, I probably would've been blamed for >it so it was better that I wasn't around... The quota he speaks of was the standard student account that was offered under the auspices of the Stevens student chapter of the ACM. They were also open for use after 5:00 P.M. and on weekends. Originally the ACM was the orgainization that sponsored the use of the machine on Sundays, but things got more popular after my freshman year. I remember that other programs such as AID (a version of JOSS) and I think Focal got banned on the grounds that they had "immediate mode" and that "the computer is not to be used as a desk calculator". Then Dec introduced a version of Basic that had immediate mode, and they could not tell from a SYSTAT that you were doing that, so I think they threw up their hands. Too labor intensive I guess. Article 4437 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!news1.tor.metronet.ca!nntp1.savvis.net!sol.pdnt.net!bony.umtec.com!root From: Daniel Seagraves Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: DECTapes Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 17:44:27 -0600 Organization: Planet Digital Network Technologies Lines: 45 Approved: Why bother? Message-ID: References: <36519d40.0@news.wizvax.net> <72saau$9em@nnrp3.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: bony.umtec.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4437 On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Mark Crispin wrote: > It was Against The Rules to possess a banned program; they would even scan > your private DECtapes and magtapes for such. They'd also scan for any > neat files that you might have and make copies for themselves; there was > no such thing as a privacy policy at that place. And so someone reimplements the linking loader to run encrypted binaries. (I.E. You need a password to exec the file correctly) > If you ever hear ex-Stevens Tech people from that era talk about VADing, > VAD was one of the names under which ADVENT was hidden, and "to vad" meant > to engage in any sort of similar activity in real life (e.g. steam > tunneling). This was slightly after my time, but I know most of the folks > who were involved. In steam tunneling, or in renaming ADVENT? > Oh, I forgot to mention, after my time, the regular disk quota at that > place got cut from 100 blocks to 50 blocks. A whopping 28,800 bytes. > From what I heard, that was the last straw and it was open warfare. > Although I would have loved to see it, I probably would've been blamed for > it so it was better that I wasn't around... Yeah, that would have been fun to watch... I see somewhat the same thing today, but it's not fun at all. In your case, the students would have had to come up with ingenious or creative ways to circumvent system security to Stick It To Da Man. Nowadays, the students at the high school I work at don't like our policy (We won't let them on porno sites, we won't let them print obscene pictures, etc.) and so they do stupid things to destroy the hardware, which (Thanks to the PeeCee having taken over) is right there in front of them. Little or no brains involved, and a pain in the ass. Usual treatment of the machines is breaking Win95 security (Ha!) and formatting C, or jamming metal objects in the floppy drives, and stealing the mouseballs. The teachers don't get held liable for this, so they just don't give a rat's a$$ and let the animals do this. It's sickening. Daniel Seagraves | I'm an International Clandestine Arms Dealer! #!/bin/perl -sp0777i Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: An SMP Story Date: 17 Dec 1998 15:27:33 -0800 Organization: Spam Haters (please remove -nojunk before replying) Lines: 8 Message-ID: <871zlynyca.fsf@mongrel.kd6pag.ampr.org> References: <74oic9$o52$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <74ok82$vag$1@strato.ultra.net> <74ore7$p23$1@hirame.wwa.com> <74r549$9hi$2@ligarius.ultra.net> <759pp3$c1s$1@shell3.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: op108.value.net X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.6.45/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4568 That's not nearly as wierd as the SAIL system, which for a long time was a three processor system: KL10, KA10, and PDP-6! Only the KL ran ordinary user programs, but the KA and the -6 did run real-time user programs, as well as the XGP (granddaddy of the laser printer, which was, ironically enough, a recycled fax machine), the first full-scale real-time digital synthesizer, and various other obscure peripherals. -- TVR Article 4558 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!135.173.83.225!attworldnet!newsadm From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Re: The True Faith Date: 17 Dec 1998 03:20:25 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 18 Message-ID: <36786cd1.340381357@netnews.worldnet.att.net> References: <36794982.265795064@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <3677890C.75AD37A9@trailing-edge.com> Reply-To: david.razler@worldnet.att.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.68.11.180 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4558 Tim Shoppa wrote: | David M. Razler wrote: | > Celebrations will be marked by the ringing of Bells. | | I propose that celebrations of AD events be marked by the | ringing of VT52 Bells :-) | | Tim. Oh, I was thinking of Gordie and Gwen, but if you want to yse a real bell, use a Model 10-series Teletype bell - about 5" in diameter with a big solonoid-driven metal clapper. The Rev. dmr David M. Razler david.razler@worldnet.att.net Article 4565 of alt.sys.pdp10: Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: The True Faith References: <36794982.265795064@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <7591ch$kks@bonkers.taronga.com> <75amfq$cqt$1@ligarius.ultra.net> Organization: D Bit, Troy, NY From: wilson@dbit.com (John Wilson) NNTP-Posting-Host: dbit.dbit.com Message-ID: <36796950.0@news.wizvax.net> Date: 17 Dec 1998 15:28:00 -0500 X-Trace: 17 Dec 1998 15:28:00 -0500, dbit.dbit.com Lines: 59 Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!digex!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!dbit.com!wilson Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4565 In article , Megan wrote: >And what exactly is it that constitutes "Small Computer Thinking"? > >Is it the address space? Is it the physical size? Is it the >programming style? Simple! It's the failure to give the computer its own personal 24-hour staff (of tape lackeys, printout sorters, etc.). :-) :-) :-) Re MRC's comments about IBM, let's not get carried away now! You are of course correct that the PDP-11 represented a significant break with DEC tradition and if you're a true believer in that tradition, this is an unforgivable crime. But a mini-IBM 360 it certainly was NOT. The only un-octal thing about the PDP-11 is the byte and word size, the instruction operand subfields fall clearly on 3-bit boundaries, which by the way is not entirely true of the PDP-10 (the left halfword is a bit messy). As for bit/byte order, that's a strange topic to bring up. The PDP-10 documentation claims to number the bits from left to right (hmm, like the earlier mainframes from what other company?), but the shift/rotate instructions shift LEFT with positive numbers (maybe I'm the only one who thinks the shift count should represent the change in bit number). The byte manipulation is inconsistant -- all the instructions that manipulate byte pointers consider the positive direction to be moving from left to right within the word, but the byte pointers themselves record the byte's starting position as the number of bits from the *right*. Re skips vs. branches, OK skips allow handling simple conditional execution w/o requiring a prefetch queue flush, but -- there was no prefetch queue! They also open the door to all kinds of nifty tricks which are lost with branches. But the PDP-11 was supposed to be a low-end workhorse anyway (but still a step up from the PDP-8), and multi-word instructions are a good way to enlarge the address space w/o enlarging the word size. I hope you'll agree that once you've switched to variable instruction lengths, branches are a cleaner way to handle conditions than having three different sizes of skips (or one wasteful skip that has to read and decode the skipped opcode to find out how far to skip, yech). Anyway comparing this to big ugly machines with opcode fields on 4-bit multiples, lopsided 24(31?)/12 base/displacement addressing with wacky *unsigned* displacements, non-interruptable string instructions, no stack instructions, a brain-damaged floating point format, inconsistant alignment requirements, and a character set (blessed by hardware support) that looks like some kind of sick joke, is an unfair insult to the PDP-11 architecture. It was designed to complement, rather than destroy, the PDP-10; the fact that DEC decided to extend the *wrong* architecture for deranged political reasons (I mean, what other company so consistantly gives up profits just to maintain their own image of what kind of business they think they should be in? Killing the 10 AND the 11/74 AND the 11/70 all basically to keep the VAX from looking bad, then refusing to support 4BSD sites, ignoring the Arpanet after having been involved in the early days, telling Dan Bricklin to fuck off, assuming the Alpha will sell itself, it just never ends!) isn't the PDP-11's fault, and the bad blood between groups is something that really ought to be put in perspective now that the VAX has killed off the *entire* PDP series and then committed suicide. John Wilson D Bit Article 4584 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!newsfeed-in.aone.net.au!not-for-mail From: Ivy Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: The True Faith Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 13:26:33 +1100 Organization: Customer of OzEmail/Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 71 Message-ID: <367B0ED6.238FD95D@s054.aone.net.au> References: <36794982.265795064@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <7591ch$kks@bonkers.taronga.com> <75amfq$cqt$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <36796950.0@news.wizvax.net> <75dkbn$2i2@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> <75dqop$pqe$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <75eplu$2ne@nnrp2.farm.idt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: d48-2.cpe.sydney.aone.net.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.mel.aone.net.au 914034414 2947 203.12.187.48 (19 Dec 1998 02:26:54 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Dec 1998 02:26:54 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4584 > > > > Some of the advantages would have been.. > > 1) Bigger address space. The 10 had 256k (~1 megabyte) of user space, which > was good for a significant amount of code and data, but it was looking like > (when the 10 was zapped) like real world problems might need it. The KL and its canceled follow on rebirth as XKL by XKL LLC had 22bit physical address and 23bit virtual address which makes it a 4Mword machines ie about 16Mbytes physical memory and 8Mwords per user of virtual address ie about 36Mbytes which was all before 1983 which back then made it a massive machine. Granted it took some time before people got non macro programs to expand out of section 0 but they did. even TOPS-10 in its final version got with the program of virtual memory and more than one section ( At least I think it did). > > > 2) Your average floating point is 32 bits, but double is seen more often (64 > or in -10 terms 72) and full IEEE extended (80) is something I have seen. I > have also seen 64bit integers used more often. Why not do it in one fetch. > The memory is a bottleneck. The KL read 4 word into cache every time one was required and did a fare amount of interleaving of memory controllers I think DEC had it as best it could be shame amount the power supply :) Also It would have the next word being pre fetched by the MBOX while the EBOX executed the current one. There is a fare amount of technology happening in a KL10 they still look interesting to me in 1998 and I expect even 2003. > > > 3) They might have been able to go to a very long instruction word > implementation (as described in the book "Computer Architecture, A > Quantitative Approach" by David Patterson and John Hennesy. This would have > been nice in that with some compiler manipulation you could have two > instructions execute at once. I mention the book because that is my source, > and they do describe it well. (Of course many equivalent things could be > done if the machine were superscalar.) > > do not depend on one another, and you could do them all in one fetch, if the > machine fetched two 36 bit words at once (72 bits across). There would be > all sorts of games. The instruction set on PDP-10 was in my opinion ideal RISC technology even DEC thought so for Jupiter I believe others got it right. The difficulty I believe is the n degree of indirection allowed by the processor if this had been fix at one or even just a known low number, then I think that this processor could have been made to really sing with quite deep pipes and multiple issue. As it is the processor is so difficult to pipeline. It has such an advantage over VAX which had one of the most variable length instructions and just plain stack crazy (don't get me wrong and I think CALLG CALLS to be my best friends as well as my processors worst enemies) To have instructions in one word with set predefined bits makes and execution unit so much simpler, does any one know how difficult it was for Jud Leonard to transition from PDP-10 microcode to VAX-11 microcode development ? As I have said before the 10's died an un-natural death at the hands of their parents , its hard to know where they might have been maybe the same, its a very strange world we live in , I'm oft thinking of becoming a Zoo keeper :) Mark :) Article 4633 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!135.173.83.225!attworldnet!newsadm From: david.razler@worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: merry christams! Date: 25 Dec 1998 16:24:19 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 35 Message-ID: <3683bac4.1081344063@netnews.worldnet.att.net> References: <36831156.443C0046@worldnet.att.net> Reply-To: david.razler@worldnet.att.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.68.4.143 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4633 OPCOM wrote: | 9 track tape drives with the red glowing switches, | VT100's with anti-glare filters, | hard drives in rackmount with load-level feet, | these are a few of my favorite things.. | When the heads crash, | when the core dumps, | when the bit is stuck, | I simply remember my favorite things, | and then I don't feel so bad.... DECTapes spinning on an open drive JW spying at your password(*) Holiday SYStats being typed at the site And jobs dressed up as [1,2] Everybody knows some downtime and some disk crashes Help to make the system slow SYSOPs with their panels all algow Will find it hard to sleep tonight And so I'm offering this simple phrase For core from 1 to 4096 Although it's been said many times, many ways Bomb the system, to you! (words, from memory, by Bruce Maier, LIRICS project) (* The original contained a name deleted to protect the, er, well deleted) posted by dmr David M. Razler david.razler@worldnet.att.net Article 4718 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.online.no!newsfeed.online.no!Norway.EU.net!not-for-mail From: blarsen@infostream.no (Bjørn Hell Larsen) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: AI.AI.MIT.EDU is coming back online Date: 26 Feb 1999 23:24:53 +0100 Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <7at1ej$ioj$1@callisto.clark.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: aubert.svg.infostream.no X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4718 mhwood@Ameritech.net (Mark H. Wood) writes: > I heard about a disk disaster at an un-named site. A pack got > slightly damaged, but not enough so to clue the operator. He moved > the pack to another drive and ruined its heads. Still not realizing > what was going on, and faced with "mysterious" data errors, he began > swapping all the packs around to see if he could discern a pattern. > In short order every pack and every head-set was scrap. No, I > wouldn't put a damaged disk into another drive unless that drive was > built specifically for such purposes. I am sure that this has happened at a lot of sites, at least it did at my former place of work. I think the grand total was six totalled RP06 diskpacks, three badly maimed RP06 drives, and one seriously embarrased chief operator. As is usually the case with such stories, I wasn't actually there to watch it happen, it was claimed to have happened some time before I got my job there. The operator was still there, though, and was regularly reminded of his foulup. Bjørn Article 4719 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!nntp.abs.net!newshub2.home.com!newshub1.home.com!news.home.com!newshub1-work.home.com!null!albaugh From: albaugh@agames.com (Mike Albaugh) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Spreading the damage (was Re: AI.AI.MIT.EDU ...) Date: 26 Feb 1999 23:09:45 GMT Organization: Atari Games Corporation Lines: 45 Message-ID: <7b79jp$n9t$1@null.agames.com> References: <7at1ej$ioj$1@callisto.clark.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: java.agames.com X-Trace: null.agames.com 920070585 23869 192.245.83.156 (26 Feb 1999 23:09:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@agames.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Feb 1999 23:09:45 GMT X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4719 Bjørn Hell Larsen (blarsen@infostream.no) wrote: : mhwood@Ameritech.net (Mark H. Wood) writes: : > I heard about a disk disaster at an un-named site. A pack got : > slightly damaged, but not enough so to clue the operator. He moved : > the pack to another drive and ruined its heads. : As is usually the case with such stories, I wasn't actually there to : watch it happen, it was claimed to have happened some time before I : got my job there. The operator was still there, though, and was : regularly reminded of his foulup. Not exactly equivalent, but I'm in a "cracker-barrel tale" mood, and this reminded me of an event I _was_ there to witness. This other guy (No, really) was debugging some instructions he had added to uur Univac 7900 (Yes, truly, and another cool story, we called it "hands-in programming" :-) when he just wasn't getting any "wigggle" on the expected signals. Checked the settings on the scope, look OK. Hung the scope-probe on a few other lines to check it out, Hmm, no wiggle. Started touching the scope-probe to random test-points across the two-by-four meter backplane, no wiggle (although the lights on the console were a-blinkin away. Touched the scope-probe to the "main clock", which was actually somewhat of the "main power-supply" on this diode-core logic machine, about 3KW IIRC) and was rewarded by a sharp CRACK! from the probe housing. Seems the probe-tip had been internally shorted to the ground-ring. Seems that he'd been shorting-out and _blowing_ the drivers of all those random signals he had hung it on. Took him a week to find and replace all the blown cards :-) (Well, at the time, :-( ) And then there was the time one guy told the CE that he'd used the alignment pack for scratch, when he ran out. "Ya know, two of the tracks had a lot of erros, so I had to re-format it". For the ones who aren't old enough to find this funny, the "alignment pack" had two tracks deliberately offset radially from the "correct" position, one inward, one outward. The head-carriage was aligned by making sure the signals from both were roughly equal. Alignment packs were specially made at some IBM facility and had a _grey_ upper platter to visually distinguish them from normal packs. Mike | albaugh@agames.com, speaking only for myself Article 4721 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU!mrc From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Spreading the damage (was Re: AI.AI.MIT.EDU ...) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 16:51:43 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing Lines: 69 Message-ID: References: <7at1ej$ioj$1@callisto.clark.net> <7b79jp$n9t$1@null.agames.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tomobiki-cho.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 920076706 28672 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: hellman In-Reply-To: <7b79jp$n9t$1@null.agames.com> Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4721 > : > I heard about a disk disaster at an un-named site. A pack got > : > slightly damaged, but not enough so to clue the operator. He moved > : > the pack to another drive and ruined its heads. > > : As is usually the case with such stories, I wasn't actually there to > : watch it happen I was there to watch it happen. I was a young systems programmer at the Stanford AI Lab towards the end of its existance (late 1970s). Two of our disk drives were for UDPs (User Disk Packs); in other words, private, removable disk packs as distinguished from the system packs. I was working in the machine room when I noticed that the CTY (the console) was spewing a lot of disk channel errors from one of the UDPs. Prominent in the message was the word "DEATH" (it turned out that this was one of the status bits from the Foonly channel). There was also this very loud buzz-saw noise coming from that drive. I was the most junior system programmer there, and pretty much not allowed to mess with things. I chafed at the restrictions, and often circumvented them, but this was different. I called up the hardware engineer: "I think that there may be a head crash on one of the UDPs." "Why do you say that?" "Well, the CTY keeps on giving disk error messages with this word DEATH in it, and there's this loud buzz-saw noise coming from the drive." "SHUT THE DRIVE DOWN!!! NOW!! DON'T TOUCH!" I figured that the correct interpretation of those screamed instructions was "spin down the drive but otherwise leave it alone." Which I did. The hardware engineer presently came dashing in (I prudently staying out of the way) and autopsied. It was, indeed, a head crash. He later apologized for screaming at me; he didn't know that all that I knew about "head crash" was the term. The next day, I noticed the CTY against spewing out the same error message, this time on the other UDP. There was no buzzing noise coming from it. I spun it down (figuring that's what I was supposed to do) and called the hardware engineer: "The other UDP is giving the same DEATH messages, so I shut it down." "I'll be right over." Sure enough, it had just started to head crash. All the user packs were immediately impounded; something like 10 of them had some amount of damage. The crash had started with a different pack than the one was in the first UDP when I discovered it. After the first UDP drive was taken down, that pack (which was not yet known to have been crashed) was put on the other UDP and damaged its heads. Then other packs had been mounted on that UDP. Had all packs been impounded immediately after the first head crash, it's believed that at least some of the packs which were lost in that incident would not have been crashed. Fortunately, none of that was my fault, and if anything, I had prevented an ever worse disaster. But the hardware engineer and lead system programmer were kicking themselves... I've since experienced other head crashes, most recently of my 2020's main RM05 pack last November. All have been of the quiet variety; no buzz-saw noises. However, I still get this twinge when I hear drives with noisy bearings. -- Mark -- * RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State. * * Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message. * Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Article 4722 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.slurp.net!bony.umtec.com!root Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 From: Daniel Seagraves Subject: Re: Spreading the damage (was Re: AI.AI.MIT.EDU ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <7at1ej$ioj$1@callisto.clark.net> <7b79jp$n9t$1@null.agames.com> Approved: Why bother? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Lines: 45 Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 09:57:18 -0600 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.199.189.6 X-Trace: newsfeed.slurp.net 920130863 198.199.189.6 (Sat, 27 Feb 1999 09:54:23 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 09:54:23 CDT Xref: news3.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4722 On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Mark Crispin wrote: [snip] > I've since experienced other head crashes, most recently of my 2020's main > RM05 pack last November. All have been of the quiet variety; no buzz-saw > noises. However, I still get this twinge when I hear drives with noisy > bearings. I pulled a good one thinking noise = headcrash... My desk is a mess. It's arranged like this: +-------------+ |DECSERVER 200| +-------------+ +--------+ +---------+ |MicroVAX 3100| | VAX | | PEECEE | +-------------+ | CONSOLE| | MONITOR | | DEMPR | | | | | +-------------+ +--------+ +---------+ And assorted garbage (Like the Sailor Mercury doll on top the VAX console) is scattered around it. Anyway, if case you forgot your DEC model names, a DEMPR is basically a hub for 10Base2. Anyway, this starts about the beginning of last month. I start hearing an odd noise from the VAX, sounds like bearing noises. So, I do DIR DKAXXX:[000000...]*.*;* on all the drives, and say SHO DEV DK. It reports no errors. So I ignore the noise, having no way of backing this machine up. Over the next few days, the noise gets progressivley louder, until I can actually hear the device SPIN DOWN periodically. So I repeat the above exercise. No errors. I'm thinking "Goddess! How is it running while making that horrible noise?" So, I down the VAX. (and blew a 55-day uptime too :( ) Turn the power off. All is silent. Then I hear the "drive" spinning up again... You probably guessed it. I'd forgotten about the DEMPR fan. The bearings in it had gone, and since it was right under the VAX, I couldn't tell the difference. It's since been replaced. Daniel Seagraves | I'm an International Clandestine Arms Dealer! #!/bin/perl -sp0777i