date:20240503

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 12:48 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> >> Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it
> >> supported a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box
> >> that included video support and a floppy.
>
> On Fri, 3 May 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> > Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
> > and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
> > Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)
>
> The "Coco" ("Color Computer") was similar to Microsoft Standalone BASIC,
> particularly in its disk format.
>
> The TRS80 models 1, 3, and 4 had file commands in their BASICs.
> They ran under TRS-DOS.
>
>
> The Saga Of TRSDOS:   (long (TLDR?))
> ...

--
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com


Great write-up, Fred.

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread CAREY SCHUG via cctalk

I am not an expert, but are all petaflops the same?  might there be some 
applications fo which this is relatively better than the nominally equivalent 
petaflops of nvidia?  as in  how intermediate results are shared between 
calculation units, this is likely to be more cross connected so values can be 
share faster, the nvidia would have to keep stopping and waiting to get values 
from another node?

And of course, could it be some company that has one and wants a drop in backup 
or second site?  and being bid against by competitors that DON'T want them to 
have a backup?

--Carey

> On 05/03/2024 7:41 PM CDT Mike Katz via cctalk  wrote:
> 
>  
> I wonder if some intermediary is buying it for a country that cannot 
> legally purchase something like that from the USA.
> 
> I'm not normally a conspiracy guy but why would any normal company pay 
> half a million dollars for something that could be produced with today's 
> technology for considerably less?
> 
> On 5/3/2024 6:57 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:
> > Sold at $480,085.00.
> >
> > On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
> >> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
> >>  wrote:
> >>
> >>> Bad news...
> >> But does he have 8,000 of them haha.
> >>
> >> Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
> >> bidders extending it.

[cctalk] floating point formatnas [was: BASIC]

2024-05-03 Thread CAREY SCHUG via cctalk

And the 1620 was a 2 decimal digit exponent with a 2 to 98 digit mantissa.  
IIRC,  you could do math on two numbers with different length mantissas.  You 
could watch a division with a long mantissa crank through.

integer multiplication/division on numbers up to almost 10,000 decimal digits, 
and addition/subtraction on two numbers up to almost half of total memory (max 
of just under 30,000 decimal digits each).

--Carey

> On 05/03/2024 7:48 PM CDT Paul Koning via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>  
> > On May 3, 2024, at 5:31 PM, Sean Conner via cctalk  
> > wrote:
> > 
> > It was thus said that the Great Steve Lewis via cctalk once stated:
> >> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
> >> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
> >> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
> >> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
> >> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
> >> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
> >> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
> >> But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
> >> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
> >> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
> >> of individual contributors
> > 
> >  I think most of the "street BASICs" were written before IEEE-754 (floating
> > point standard) was ratified (1985 if I recall).  Microsoft's floating point
> > [1] was five bytes long---four bytes for the mantissa, and one byte for the
> > exponent, biased by 129.  I did some tests a month ago whereby I tested the
> > speed of the Microsoft floating point math on the 6809 (using Color Computer
> > BASIC) vs. the Motorola 6839 (floating point ROM implementing IEEE-754), and
> > the Microsoft version was faster [2].
> 
> BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
> version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
> word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
> switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came 
> to be called "F" and "D" float.
> 
> One curious thing about floating point formats of earlier computers is that 
> they came with wrinkles not seen either in IEEE nor in DEC float.  As I 
> recall, the 360 is really hex float, not binary, with an exponent that gives 
> a power of 16.  CDC 6600 series mainframes used a floating point format where 
> the mantissa is an integer, not a fraction, and negation is done by 
> complementing the entire word.
> 
> The Electrologica X8 is yet another variation, which apparently came from an 
> academic paper of the era: it treats the mantissa as an integer too, like the 
> CDC 6600, but with a different normalizationn rule.  THe 6600 does it like 
> most others: shift left until all leading zeroes have been eliminated.  (It 
> doesn't have a "hidden bit" as DEC did.)  But in the EL-X8, the normalization 
> rule is to make the exponent as close to zero as possible without losing 
> bits.  So an integer value is normalized to the actual integer with exponent 
> zero.  And since there is no "excess n" bias on the exponent, the encoding of 
> an integer and of the identical normalized floating point value are in fact 
> the same.
> 
>   paul

[cctalk] Re: New VCF Video bumper

2024-05-03 Thread Jeffrey Brace via cctalk

On Sat, May 4, 2024 at 12:05 AM brad  wrote:

> I watched them all.  Hmm.
>
> I don't think I much like the SID ones.. Commodore has become kind of
> overexposed as a subject and VCF covers so much more than Commodore.
>
> The Atari one is kind of loud/jarring.
>
> I think the graphic sequence itself is great but the typing.. hmm.  I
> realize these are the choices but if there was another option with like a
> single daisywheel or modem or disk drive or teletype sound - that would do
> it for me.
>

> Just my thoughts.. friendly critique here.
>

So are you willing to make another option for us?


>
> Brad
>
> Sent from my Galaxy
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Jeffrey Brace via cctalk 
> Date: 2024-05-03 8:45 p.m. (GMT-08:00)
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Cc: Jeffrey Brace 
> Subject: [cctalk] New VCF Video bumper
>
> The Vintage Computer Federation is looking for a new bumper to add to the
> front and back of all their new videos.
> There are 7 different versions. Vote on the one that you like best!
>
> https://forms.gle/Y9Qrj26xokeFXjub6
>

[cctalk] Re: New VCF Video bumper

2024-05-03 Thread brad via cctalk

I watched them all.  Hmm.I don't think I much like the SID ones.. Commodore has 
become kind of overexposed as a subject and VCF covers so much more than 
Commodore.The Atari one is kind of loud/jarring.I think the graphic sequence 
itself is great but the typing.. hmm.  I realize these are the choices but if 
there was another option with like a single daisywheel or modem or disk drive 
or teletype sound - that would do it for me.Just my thoughts.. friendly 
critique here.BradSent from my Galaxy
 Original message From: Jeffrey Brace via cctalk 
 Date: 2024-05-03  8:45 p.m.  (GMT-08:00) To: "General 
Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"  Cc: Jeffrey 
Brace  Subject: [cctalk] New VCF Video bumper The Vintage 
Computer Federation is looking for a new bumper to add to thefront and back of 
all their new videos.There are 7 different versions. Vote on the one that you 
like best!https://forms.gle/Y9Qrj26xokeFXjub6

[cctalk] New VCF Video bumper

2024-05-03 Thread Jeffrey Brace via cctalk

The Vintage Computer Federation is looking for a new bumper to add to the
front and back of all their new videos.
There are 7 different versions. Vote on the one that you like best!

https://forms.gle/Y9Qrj26xokeFXjub6

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:09 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk
 wrote:

> Careful disassembly and transportation could run well into 6 figures all
> by itself.

Just getting it out of NCAR could be a substantial fraction of that.
Per the auction documents it looks like about 100,000 pounds
(~45,000kg) of racks. I think smuggling Nvidia cards would be
substantially more viable.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

On 5/3/24 17:41, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
> I wonder if some intermediary is buying it for a country that cannot
> legally purchase something like that from the USA.
> 
> I'm not normally a conspiracy guy but why would any normal company pay
> half a million dollars for something that could be produced with today's
> technology for considerably less?

Careful disassembly and transportation could run well into 6 figures all
by itself.

Disassembling for scrap is considerably easier.  Bolt cutters, impact
wrenches and sawzalls.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Douglas Taylor via cctalk

In the 1980's I attended a US Gov't auction for a Vax 780.  It was being 
exported to South Africa and the State Dept stopped the transfer because 
it was ultimately going to a banned country.  Don't know which one, but 
I do remember the system was configured for 50Hz power.  50Hz power, 
disks, cpu, everything.  Wow.

Doug

On 5/3/2024 8:41 PM, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
I wonder if some intermediary is buying it for a country that cannot 
legally purchase something like that from the USA.


I'm not normally a conspiracy guy but why would any normal company pay 
half a million dollars for something that could be produced with 
today's technology for considerably less?


On 5/3/2024 6:57 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

Sold at $480,085.00.

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
 wrote:


Bad news...

But does he have 8,000 of them haha.

Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Re: Saga of CP/M

On 5/3/24 18:30, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> PL/M (think "PL/1") was a high level programming language for
> microprocessors.

Notable that a subset of PL/I was marketed for CP/M around 1981 or so.

I've heard from some folks that Gary developed ISIS for Intel.  That is
definitely not true. It was the work of Jim Stein and Terry Burgett.
Disk allocation was quite different from CP/M.  ISIS used a list-sort of
structure, like Unix.

I almost took a job as site analyst at the PG school for CDC, but
thought better of it.  The guy who did get the job spent a lot of time
at the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel, I recall.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Mike Katz via cctalk

I wonder if some intermediary is buying it for a country that cannot 
legally purchase something like that from the USA.


I'm not normally a conspiracy guy but why would any normal company pay 
half a million dollars for something that could be produced with today's 
technology for considerably less?


On 5/3/2024 6:57 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

Sold at $480,085.00.

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
 wrote:


Bad news...

But does he have 8,000 of them haha.

Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Saga of CP/M

PL/M (think "PL/1") was a high level programming language for microprocessors.

CP/M was also briefly called "Control Program and Monitor"
It was written by Gary Kildall. (May 19, 1942 - july 11, 1994)

Gary taught at Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey.
He took a break in 1972, to complete his PhD at University of Washington.

He wrote 8008 and 8080 instruction set simulators for Intel, and they loaned
him hardware.

In 1973? he wrote CP/M.
He offered it to Intel, but they didn't want it, although they marketed the
PL/M.

He and his wife started "Intergalactic Digital Research" in Pacific Grove.
Later renamed "Digital Research, Inc."

CP/M rapidly became a defacto standard as operating system for 8080 and later
Z80 computers.

In the late 1970s, when CP/M computers were available with 5.25" drives, and
there were hundreds, soon thousands of different formats, I chatted with Gary,
and pleaded with him ot create a "standard" format for 5.25".
His response was a very polite, "The standard format for CP/M is 8 inch single
sided single density."

I pointed out that formats were proliferating excessively.
His response was a very polite, "I understand. Sorry, but the standard format
for CP/M is 8 inch single sided single density."

In 1980? IBM was developing a personal computer. (y'all have heard of it) One
of the IBM people had a Microsoft Softcard (Z80 plus CP/M) in his Apple. IBM
went to Microsoft, to negotiate BASIC for the new machine, and CP/M.

Bill Gates explained and sent them to Digital Research.

When the IBM representatives arrived, Gary was flying his plane up to Oakland
to visit Bill Godbout. He hadn't seen a need to be present, and assumed that
Dorothy would take care of the [presumably completely routine] paperwork. While
visiting Bill godbout, and delivering some software was important, it WAS
something that a low level courier could have done.

There was a little bit of a culture clash.
The IBM people were all in identical blue suits.
The DR people were in sandals, barefoot, shorts, t-shirts, braless women, with
bicycles, surfboard, plants and even cats in the office,

The IBM people demanded a signed non=disclosure ageement before talking.
Dorothy Kildall refused.

When Dorothy got Gary on the phone, it is unreliably reported that he said,
"well, let them sit on the couch and wait their turn like the rest of the
customers."

It is also been said that DR people upstairs saw the IBM people marching up,
and thought that it was a drug raid. I have stood in that bay window
overlooking the front door, and can believe that.

IBM chose to not do business with DR and went back to Microsoft.
When billg was unable to convince them that Microsoft was not in the operating
system business, Microsoft went into the operating system business. They
bought an unlimited license to QDOS (Tim Paterson's work at Seattle Computer
Products). They also hired Tim Paterson.

DR was working on CP/M-86, but it was a ways off.
Paterson had written QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System") as a placeholder
to be able to continue development while waiting for CP/M-86
We've mentioned before, that Tim Paterson got the idea for the directory
structure from Microsoft Standalone BASIC. As Chuck pointed out, that was not
a new invention, merely a choice of which way to do it.

billg knew how to deal with officious managers. It is unreliably said that he
told the Microsoft people, "Everybody who does not own a suit, stay home
tomorrow!"

IBM insisted that Micorsoft beef up security. window shades, locks on doors
that normally weren't, locks on file cabinets, etc.
It is unreliably said that to throw off anyboy who heard about it, that
Microsoft referred to the IBm project as "Project Commodore"

dr continued to sell CP/M.
When the 5150/:PC was ready, IBM announced it with PC-DOS, which was a renaming
of MS-DOS,renaming 86-DOS, renaming QDOS.

If I recall correctly theprice was $40 (or maybe $60?)

DR pointed out that NS-DOS was extremely similar to CP/M.
https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~johnsojr/2012-13/fall/cs370/resources/An%20Inside%20Look%20at%20MS-DOS.pdf
IBM didn't consider it a problem, andsimply offered to ALSO sell CP/M-86,
particularly since they were already also marketing UCSD P-System.

CP/M-86 was not available yet, so everybody buying a disk based PC bought
PC-DOS.
But, most of us assumed thata CP/M-86 would become the standard once it came
out, and PC-DOS was similar and let us use the machines while waiting.

CP/M-86 took a long time to come out (6 months is a LONG time in such things).
When it did, the price was $240.
There are disagreemnets about whether DR or IBM had set the price point.

Most decided to keep using Pc-DOs until CP/M-86 had caught on.
But with the price differential, and the lead, PC-DOS remained the standard.

dr continued, came out with MP/M-86, and eventually came out with "Concurrent
DOS", and "DR-DOS", which was based on MS-DOS.
M

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Paul Koning via cctalk

> On May 3, 2024, at 6:22 PM, Sytse van Slooten via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> And since nobody else seems to, allow me to recall:
> 
> - MINC BASIC, with all its extensions for I/O and real time events.
> 
> - MUBAS, the multi-user basic for RT-11.
> 
> And playing around with BASIC is just so much easier and more fun than 
> anything else you can do with old hardware or emulations thereof. Run a C 
> program? Sure, marvel in how much slower it is than on your desktop, phone, 
> or the MCU in your microwave. None of those will have BASIC though, and 
> certainly not the MINC extensions with the blinkenlights. And isn't that what 
> all the joy is about?

That's one reason I like FORTH: it's just as compact, perhaps more so, fast, 
and much more flexible and extensible than BASIC.

I didn't know MINC BASIC, should compare it with the "LABBASIC" I created in 
college.  The one line description is identical; mine ran on an 11/20 with 
AD01, AD11, KW11-P and DR11-A.  The programmable clock enabled stuff like take 
a vector of samples spaced at a tightly controlled time interval, or run bits 
of BASIC code from timer (or DR11) interrupts. 

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

On 5/3/24 17:48, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I seem to recall that MCBA's business applications were originally coded
in DG BASIC.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 7:49 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:

> BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
> version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
> word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
> switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came 
> to be called "F" and "D" float.

Interesting. The original (pre-Series II) HP 3000 systems in the mid
1970s also started with a three (16-bit) word floating point format
and later switched to supporting both 2 and 4 word formats. One of the
only ways you would see this is in the header line that displays when
you run BASIC::

:BASIC

HP32101B.00.26(4WD)  BASIC  (C)HEWLETT-PACKARD CO 1979
>

The "4WD" (as opposed to "3WD") tells you you're on a machine that
uses the four word long floating point.

[cctalk] Re: CP/M

2024-05-03 Thread Bill Degnan via cctalk

Herb Johnson has some good info on the history of cp/m here
https://www.retrotechnology.com/#dri
Bill

On Fri, May 3, 2024, 8:23 PM Murray McCullough via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> I came across an article that said CP/M came out in April 1974. I remember
> using this OS in the microcomputer world in the late 70’s; early 80’s. It
> came from PL/M, (Programming Language for Microcomputers) later renamed
> CP/M(Control Program for Microcomputers). I’m not sure what its legacy is
> though as far as I can recall it was wrapped up in litigation for quite
> some time. It was used in the 8-bit world but not sure what it's role was
> in the early PC world!
>
> Happy computing,
>
> Murray 🙂
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Paul Koning via cctalk

> On May 3, 2024, at 5:31 PM, Sean Conner via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> It was thus said that the Great Steve Lewis via cctalk once stated:
>> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
>> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
>> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
>> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
>> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
>> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
>> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>> But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
>> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
>> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
>> of individual contributors
> 
>  I think most of the "street BASICs" were written before IEEE-754 (floating
> point standard) was ratified (1985 if I recall).  Microsoft's floating point
> [1] was five bytes long---four bytes for the mantissa, and one byte for the
> exponent, biased by 129.  I did some tests a month ago whereby I tested the
> speed of the Microsoft floating point math on the 6809 (using Color Computer
> BASIC) vs. the Motorola 6839 (floating point ROM implementing IEEE-754), and
> the Microsoft version was faster [2].

BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came to 
be called "F" and "D" float.

One curious thing about floating point formats of earlier computers is that 
they came with wrinkles not seen either in IEEE nor in DEC float.  As I recall, 
the 360 is really hex float, not binary, with an exponent that gives a power of 
16.  CDC 6600 series mainframes used a floating point format where the mantissa 
is an integer, not a fraction, and negation is done by complementing the entire 
word.

The Electrologica X8 is yet another variation, which apparently came from an 
academic paper of the era: it treats the mantissa as an integer too, like the 
CDC 6600, but with a different normalizationn rule.  THe 6600 does it like most 
others: shift left until all leading zeroes have been eliminated.  (It doesn't 
have a "hidden bit" as DEC did.)  But in the EL-X8, the normalization rule is 
to make the exponent as close to zero as possible without losing bits.  So an 
integer value is normalized to the actual integer with exponent zero.  And 
since there is no "excess n" bias on the exponent, the encoding of an integer 
and of the identical normalized floating point value are in fact the same.

paul

[cctalk] Re: CP/M

2024-05-03 Thread Mike Katz via cctalk

CP/M (Originally Control Program/Monitor later Control Program for 
Microcomputers) we developed by Gary Killdall in at Digital Research, 
Inc.  1974.

CP/M-86 was released in 1981.
CP/M-68K was released in 1982.





On 5/3/2024 7:11 PM, Norman Jaffe via cctalk wrote:

Not quite.
CP/M is not a rename of PL/M.
PL/M is a derivative of the programming language PL/I and was used in the 
development of CP/M - it is not an operating system.
CP/M-86 was a later development of CP/M that was designed to run on 16-bit 
Intel processors.
CP/M-68K was another branch of CP/M for use with Motorola 68K processors.

From: "Murray McCullough via cctalk" 
To: "cctalk" 
Cc: "Murray McCullough" 
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 4:46:54 PM
Subject: [cctalk] CP/M

I came across an article that said CP/M came out in April 1974. I remember
using this OS in the microcomputer world in the late 70’s; early 80’s. It
came from PL/M, (Programming Language for Microcomputers) later renamed
CP/M(Control Program for Microcomputers). I’m not sure what its legacy is
though as far as I can recall it was wrapped up in litigation for quite
some time. It was used in the 8-bit world but not sure what it's role was
in the early PC world!

Happy computing,

Murray 🙂

[cctalk] Re: CP/M

2024-05-03 Thread Norman Jaffe via cctalk

Not quite. 
CP/M is not a rename of PL/M. 
PL/M is a derivative of the programming language PL/I and was used in the 
development of CP/M - it is not an operating system. 
CP/M-86 was a later development of CP/M that was designed to run on 16-bit 
Intel processors. 
CP/M-68K was another branch of CP/M for use with Motorola 68K processors. 

From: "Murray McCullough via cctalk"  
To: "cctalk"  
Cc: "Murray McCullough"  
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 4:46:54 PM 
Subject: [cctalk] CP/M 

I came across an article that said CP/M came out in April 1974. I remember 
using this OS in the microcomputer world in the late 70’s; early 80’s. It 
came from PL/M, (Programming Language for Microcomputers) later renamed 
CP/M(Control Program for Microcomputers). I’m not sure what its legacy is 
though as far as I can recall it was wrapped up in litigation for quite 
some time. It was used in the 8-bit world but not sure what it's role was 
in the early PC world! 

Happy computing, 

Murray 🙂

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Don R via cctalk

Not bad for scrap value? ;)

Don Resor

Sent from someone's iPhone

> On May 3, 2024, at 4:57 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Sold at $480,085.00.
> 
>> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> Bad news...
>> 
>> But does he have 8,000 of them haha.
>> 
>> Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
>> bidders extending it.
>

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

Sold at $480,085.00.

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
>  wrote:
>
> > Bad news...
>
> But does he have 8,000 of them haha.
>
> Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
> bidders extending it.

[cctalk] CP/M

2024-05-03 Thread Murray McCullough via cctalk

I came across an article that said CP/M came out in April 1974. I remember
using this OS in the microcomputer world in the late 70’s; early 80’s. It
came from PL/M, (Programming Language for Microcomputers) later renamed
CP/M(Control Program for Microcomputers). I’m not sure what its legacy is
though as far as I can recall it was wrapped up in litigation for quite
some time. It was used in the 8-bit world but not sure what it's role was
in the early PC world!

Happy computing,

Murray 🙂

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
 wrote:

> Bad news...

But does he have 8,000 of them haha.

Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Sytse van Slooten via cctalk

And since nobody else seems to, allow me to recall:

- MINC BASIC, with all its extensions for I/O and real time events.

- MUBAS, the multi-user basic for RT-11.

And playing around with BASIC is just so much easier and more fun than anything 
else you can do with old hardware or emulations thereof. Run a C program? Sure, 
marvel in how much slower it is than on your desktop, phone, or the MCU in your 
microwave. None of those will have BASIC though, and certainly not the MINC 
extensions with the blinkenlights. And isn't that what all the joy is about?

Cheers,
Sytse

> On 2 May 2024, at 00:03, Murray McCullough via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Nostalgia keeps pressing ahead: It was 60 yrs. ago that BASIC came into
> existence. I remember very well writing in Apple Basic and GW Basic later
> on. As a non-compiled OS, an interpreted OS, it was just the right tool for
> a microcomputer with  limited memory. I recall fondly taking code from
> popular magazines and getting them to run. It was thrilling indeed!
> 
> Happy computing,
> 
> Murray 🙂

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Liam Proven via cctalk

On Fri, 3 May 2024 at 16:31, Gavin Scott via cctalk
 wrote:

> It has  8,064 commodity CPUs, "E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base
> frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)" which may still sell new
> (NOS?) for up to $2K each

Bad news...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235507916254

$47.99 each. Plus shipping, I'm sure.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Sean Conner via cctalk

It was thus said that the Great Steve Lewis via cctalk once stated:
> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>  But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
> of individual contributors

  I think most of the "street BASICs" were written before IEEE-754 (floating
point standard) was ratified (1985 if I recall).  Microsoft's floating point
[1] was five bytes long---four bytes for the mantissa, and one byte for the
exponent, biased by 129.  I did some tests a month ago whereby I tested the
speed of the Microsoft floating point math on the 6809 (using Color Computer
BASIC) vs. the Motorola 6839 (floating point ROM implementing IEEE-754), and
the Microsoft version was faster [2].

  -spc

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Binary_Format

[2] https://boston.conman.org/2024/03/01.1

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Liam Proven via cctalk

On Fri, 3 May 2024 at 10:58, Gordon Henderson via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> The original Acorn Archimedes (First ARM CPU system) had an OS initially
> called "Arthur" which was written in BBC Basic and assembler. It supported
> a graphical user interface - later re-written in assembler and called
> RISC-OS.

How odd. This is the second time _this evening_ that this false
information has come up.

No, it was not written in BASIC.

Arthur *the OS* was hand-coded in Arm assembly language, including the
BBC BASIC V interpreter.

The GUI, in Arthur called DESKTOP, was written in BASIC. Just the
desktop, nothing else.

Later called the WIMP, and still around today and open source. I wrote
about it: version 5.30 just came out, runs on bare metal on 7
different Arm boards, and on the Raspberry Pi this version supports
Wifi for the first time.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/rool_530_is_here/

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Just Kant via cctalk

Quick Basic and I seem to recall all or most of M$ Quick compilers were 
released at 99$ US. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. As I think on it maybe QB 
i itially was 150$.

Those were the cheap compilers I was referring to. By 1987/88 the cost was less 
then 1/2 a week's take home earnings no matter what you did. I found QB 3 at a 
computer show in 1990 and it wasn't much at all, maybe 25$.

Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

On Friday, May 3rd, 2024 at 9:40 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk 
 wrote:

> On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 02:51:06AM +, Just Kant via cctalk wrote:
> 
> > BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8
> > bit micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And
> > if you had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick
> > Basic, Turbo Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping
> > 4-500$ for a full product probably wasn't worth the expense.
> 
> 
> A bit of perspective: the equivalent of $400-500 (~£200-250) was a couple of
> weeks salary in the UK at the time. Unless it could be written-off as a
> business expense, the purchase of that "cheap" compiler just wasn't
> happening.

[cctalk] Re: APL (Was: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Liam Proven via cctalk

On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 20:51, Lee Courtney  wrote:

> Too bad because the language itself lends itself to learning by anyone with 
> an understanding of high school algebra.

You remind me -- and _not_ in a good way -- of the first day of my
undergrad 1st year statistics course at university. I did biology and
we had a mandatory stats course.

The lecturer came on stage and said (roughly, this was ~40 years ago)

"Now I know many of you don't want to be here, or are nervous or
apprehensive. I just want to reassure you. Don't be. This course is
easy stuff, and it will be basically revision for anyone with A-level
mathematics. You'll be fine."

I failed _O_ level mathematics, and to get onto a science degree
course, I had to do another 6 months of remedial maths just to get me
through the exam. To be told "easy if you did the A level" would have
made me angrily walk out in disgust if it wasn't a mandatory course.

As it was, I worked out that the only test I needed was a Chi-squared
test. I had no idea how to do it and the explanation was, well, all
Greek to me. But my friend did get it, and he helped break it down
into very small simple steps for me, while I wrote a Sinclair BASIC
program to not merely do a chi-squared test _but to print out all the
intermediate working as if I had done it by hand_ so I could copy it
down longhand and fake being able to do it in my coursework.

That worked. It took me a weekend and was no direct use because at the
end of about 32-33 hours of work, I could do a chi-squared test by
hand. So, indirectly, it achieved its purpose.

But the point is: not everyone can do "high school algebra." I do not
know what age "high school" means to you but very basic secondary
school algebra was _extremely_ hard for me and took years of real work
to master.

And yet, I have a degree and at the time I got it I scored about 150
on the Mensa IQ test. I am not daft.

In real life, for ordinary people, algebra is a byword for "really
hard to understand".

As Stephen Hawking wrote in _A Brief History of Time_

«
Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve
the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In
the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous
equation, E = mc squared. I hope that this will not scare off half of
my potential readers.
»

I think it did not help. (I found the book very dull, myself. I
already knew what he was trying to explain.)

"It's as easy as algebra" is reinforcing my point about this stuff
_not_ being easy, natural, obvious, helpful, convenient, clear,
meaningful or useful for most people.

I wrote an article about 3 new BASIC releases for its 60th anniversary:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/basic_60th_birthday/

Do go read the first comment.

It shows how BASIC was immediately apprehensible and memorable in a
way that APL never would be.

Translation for American readers:
"O" level -- school exams at about age 16; you normally do about 8
subjects. I did 12.
"A" level -- school exams at ~18, necessary to get into university.
You normally do 3. I did 5.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: BASIC


Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?


On Fri, 3 May 2024, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.
So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.


Many people used the BASIC and loved it.

But, there were other built-in "apps", and it was possible to use it 
without using the BASIC.
So, some users used the BASIC, and some did not; those two groups 
apparently didn't associate much with each other :-)


All of the Kyocera based machines (Model 100, NEC8201, and Olivetti M10) 
had text editor, and telcom.

http://oldcomputers.net/kc.html

The Model 100 and the Olivetti M10 also had Address and scheduler
The model 100 had an optional Multiplan spreadsheet ROM, or you could 
write yor own ROMS.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Paul Koning via cctalk




> On May 3, 2024, at 3:27 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 1:30 PM W2HX via cctalk  wrote:
> 
>> Someone seems to want it. Bidding is at $250,000 and counting. I guess 
>> someone didn’t get the memo about getting just a few nvidia cards!
> 
> If you go to Amazon today and buy just the CPUs and RAM, that will
> cost you around 21 million dollars. So I imagine those used parts are
> still worth substantially more than the current high bid. The close of
> the auction should be interesting.

Or maybe it's just metals recycling.  If there's more than 120 ounces of gold 
in all those racks, that's $250k right there. 

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Chris Zach via cctalk

Hardly. The Model 100 basic had a ton of features including modem 
support, date/time, and so forth. Lots of programs and utilities were 
written in the BASIC, and games such as Heartbreaker worked perfectly.


There was also a really amazing compiler that could compile basic 
programs to make them smaller/even faster. I've got it on one of my 
Model 100 floppy disks (which still works, note the belt will turn to 
gunk but it's an easy thing to replace.)


C

On 5/3/2024 3:35 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:14 AM KenUnix via cctalk  wrote:


Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?


The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.

So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it 
supported a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box 
that included video support and a floppy.


On Fri, 3 May 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)


The "Coco" ("Color Computer") was similar to Microsoft Standalone BASIC, 
particularly in its disk format.


The TRS80 models 1, 3, and 4 had file commands in their BASICs.
They ran under TRS-DOS.


The Saga Of TRSDOS:   (long (TLDR?))

TRSDOS was created by Randy Cook as a work for hire.
Although it was marketed as TRSDOS 2.0, Randy Cook never finished it, and 
documentation was inadequately sparse.
When Radio Shack came out with their "expansion interface" and disk 
drives, they gave out TRSDOS 2.0, which barely worked.  Randy Cook 
hurriedly came out with 2.1 , and then left Radio Shack.  Radio 
Shack worked on 2.2


Clifford Ide, under pseudonym "Sam Jones" created an enormous collection 
of patches to TRSDOS, and called it APRDOS.

Apparat marketed it, and changed the name to NEWDOS
 https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/apparat-newdos80

But, it was a patched version of TRSDOS.
Both Randy Cook and Radio Shack were not amused.
Apparat initially said that everybody who used it also had to buy TRSDOS.
That didn't hold up well.
So, they said that it was changed so much that there was no trace of 
TRSDOS in it. 
That didn't hold up well.
Randy Cook's lawyer (who was also a programmer, and marketed a serial 
communications program) gathered witnesses, and typed BOOT.SYS/RV36 , 
running BOOT.SYS as if it were an executable, using one of the master 
passwords. The screen cleared, and displayed a full screen copyright 
message including "Copyright Randy Cook".


Apparat settled and agreed to rewrite from scratch to create a 
non-infringing version (called "NEWDOS80").  That was actually very 
advantageous, as it made it possible to create a substantially improved 
product.


Meanwhile, Radio Shack was frantically patching TRSDOS 2.2, and came out 
with TRSDOS 2.3

They changed the hidden copyright message from
"Copyright Randy Cook" to 
"Copyright Tandy Corp"


In addition to NEWDOS80, there were several other independents, including 
DOSPLUS.  Most of which added support for double sided drives, and 80 
tracks, and numerous other features not present in TRSDOS.
In fact, when Micropolis started selling disk drives to TRS80 users, they 
included their own completely unrelated OS!


Meanwhile, Randy Cook, no longer affiliated with Radio Shack, started his 
own company (ACS), and worked on further expansion of TRSDOS.  He worked 
on adding in incredible features unheard of in microcomputer operating 
systems.  He called it TRS80-DOS-3.0, but that wouldn't hold up for 
trademark reasons, so he renamed it VTOS 3.0

http://www.trs-80.org/vtos/
Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation 
was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features)


Scott Adams, (of Adventure Internationsl, NOT Scott Adams of "Dilbert")
cut a deal with Randy Cook to expand it and finish it. That was VTOS 4.0
Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation 
was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features)


Lobo drives was in the lucrative market of marketing disk drives.  They 
could buy drive, including the Shugart SA400 used by Radio Shack and 
re-sell tham at a substantial profit, and still be WAY cheaper than Radio 
Shack's prices for the same drive mechanism (~$250 Vs $500, although Radio 
Shacks case and power supply had a card extender that made them more 
convenient to install).


Lobo decided to develop and market an expansion interface compatible with 
TRS80 model 1, with double density, and 8 inch drive support!

But, there was a glitch.
Model 1 TRSDOS, using a Western Digital 1771 chip used some strange 
address marks, including different ones for directory sectors than for 
data sectors.  It is rumored that that was unintentional, and due to 
misreading, or misprinting of the 1771 data sheets.


Lobo's expansion interface used a WD 1791 FDC, which could do MFM (double 
density).  BUT, it COULD NOT write some of the address marks used by 
model-1 TRSDOS!


Lobo set up another company, ("LSI" "Logical Systems, Inc"), to create a 
new operating system for it.  They purchased rights to VTOS 4.0, and hired 
all of the best TRS80 assembly language programmers that they could find, 
such as Roy Soltoff, Bill Schroeder, and Tim Mann. Without Randy Cook.
Their all-star team actually FINISHED it!  And wrote a large binder of 
documentation.  LSI called their new operating system LDOS 5.0

https://vtda.org/docs/computing/LSI/LSI_LDOS_51_Model_I_III.pdf

Meanwhile, Radio Shack was coming out with their model 3, which had double 
density.  Their "TRSDOS [for model

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:14 AM KenUnix via cctalk  wrote:

> Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?

The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.

So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 1:30 PM W2HX via cctalk  wrote:

> Someone seems to want it. Bidding is at $250,000 and counting. I guess 
> someone didn’t get the memo about getting just a few nvidia cards!

If you go to Amazon today and buy just the CPUs and RAM, that will
cost you around 21 million dollars. So I imagine those used parts are
still worth substantially more than the current high bid. The close of
the auction should be interesting.

Still pretty sure nobody intends to re-install and run any part of the
whole system, but who knows. Maybe there are other SGI systems still
out there.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC


Yes, Microsoft certainly did not invent linked list allocation.

But, the Microsoft implementation of the existing idea happened to be what 
inspired Tim Paterson to do it.




On 5/3/24 11:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:


"Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation Tables 
in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating system, Paterson 
decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk information than the way CP/M 
did it."



On Fri, 3 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Link-list file allocation was hardly new back then.  CDC had been doing
that since the mid-1960s (cf. SCOPE RBR, RBT, FNT FST, etc.). I suspect
other mainframe operating systems using that scheme may even pre-date that.

One thing that I liked about the CDC approach is that you could use
certain pre-defined file names (INPUT OUTPUT, PUNCH) and they would be
disposed of appropriately at end-of job.   Any other "permanent" files
had to be explicitly attached to the job, giving permissions, passwords,
cycles, etc.

Any temporary files were created just by reference and were deleted at
the end-of-job unless explicitly saved as "permanent" files.

None of this IBM "DD" stuff.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

On 5/3/24 11:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

> "Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation 
> Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating 
> system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk 
> information than the way CP/M did it." 

Link-list file allocation was hardly new back then.  CDC had been doing
that since the mid-1960s (cf. SCOPE RBR, RBT, FNT FST, etc.). I suspect
other mainframe operating systems using that scheme may even pre-date that.

One thing that I liked about the CDC approach is that you could use
certain pre-defined file names (INPUT OUTPUT, PUNCH) and they would be
disposed of appropriately at end-of job.   Any other "permanent" files
had to be explicitly attached to the job, giving permissions, passwords,
cycles, etc.

Any temporary files were created just by reference and were deleted at
the end-of-job unless explicitly saved as "permanent" files.

None of this IBM "DD" stuff.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread W2HX via cctalk

Someone seems to want it. Bidding is at $250,000 and counting. I guess someone 
didn’t get the memo about getting just a few nvidia cards!


73 Eugene W2HX
My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@w2hx/videos
 

-Original Message-
From: Gavin Scott via cctalk  
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 11:31 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: Gavin Scott 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

It's a different world now with GPU and AI performance, so I strongly doubt 
Cheyenne will ever boot again. Somewhat sad that they're doing such a nice job 
of de-installing the machine, labeling all the cables etc. 5PF is just not 
impressive these days. A single Nvidia card will do more than that in FP8 I 
think which is probably good enough for AI training, and something like 100PF 
in FP4 for inference. At worst it's a small handful of Nvidia cards to 
completely replace that monster.

It has  8,064 commodity CPUs, "E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, 
Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)" which may still sell new
(NOS?) for up to $2K each (though it's probably questionable whether the total 
future market amounts to anything close to 8K units), and 300TB of standard 
DDR4 ECC memory. That's probably what people are bidding on.

The rest of it is likely getting melted. And it's something like 42 racks of 
stuff.

But tune in for the exciting auction finish at 4PM Pacific. Auction will 
continue until 10 minutes elapses without a bid I believe.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC


On Fri, 3 May 2024, KenUnix via cctalk wrote:

Steve,
Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported 
a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included 
video support and a floppy.

-Ken


The Model 100 BASIC (puportedly the last product that billg had active 
coding participation in) was, indeed, closely tied to the Microsoft 
Standalone BASIC.


The external 3.5" "Tandy Portable Disk Drive" was a unique system, that 
used ordinary 2DD 3.5" floppies, but had a bizarre format, unlike anything 
else. It is even WAY more different than the 600RPM full-height Sony 
drives.  Although it would be possible, with a system supporting 
FM/single-density to write code to read those disks, with their half-track 
FM sectors, you would be far better off to connect that drive to a serial 
port and use its internal circuitry (there have existed short programs to 
talk to it).


But, the video and floppy external expansion box for the Model 100 uses 
Microsoft Standalone BASIC MFM format and directory structure on 5.25" 
floppies.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC


On Fri, 3 May 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:

Microsoft BASIC appears on the 1979 NEC PC-8001, which includes disk drive
support (similar to the later additions to Commodore BASIC also around
1980).  But in the NEC PC-8001 manual about BASIC, it refers to a "FAT"
format used on disks.  So I suspect Microsoft's early work in adding disk
drive support into BASIC did help them in maintaining that format when
packaging up QDOS later.


Marc McDonald, Microsoft's first SALARIED employee, designed and 
implemented 8-bit FAT for the NCR 8200 and Micorsoft Standalone Disk 
BASIC-80 in 1977.


Numerous "authoritative" sources, including Microsoft's "MS-DOS 
Encyclopedia" (ISBN 1-55615-049-0), as well as Manes' "Gates : How 
Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man 
in America" (ISBN 0-385-42075-7) explicitly state that it was the 
idea/inspiration for Tim Paterson's (author of QDOS, MS-DOS, ...) use of 
FAT, while sharing a booth with Microsoft at NCC (trade show) Chicago 
1977.


"Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File 
Allocation Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS 
operating system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to 
handle disk information than the way CP/M did it."


The MS-DOS Encyclopedia says that it was an implementation on NCR.
I've never seen the NCR implementation, but the NEC PC8001[A] and 
PC8801 were quite common.  20 years ago, Sellam and I helped Don Maslin 
decipher such a disk from an NEC9801 8" disk.  And Lee brought me an 
Okidata standalone BASIC disk from Russia.



The Coco uses the same basic disk directory structure, with a few minor 
differences (including calling it a "GAT" ("Granule Allocation Table") 
instead of a FAT.


The external 5.25" disk drive for the Radio Shack Model 100 also uses the 
same directory structure.



In the various instances of the Standalone BASIC, there are variations in 
the details of the size and exact form of the directory entries and the 
size and number of FAT entries.  They put the directory, both FAT and file 
name based entries, on a track near the seek center of the disk.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Steve Lewis via cctalk

>  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.
> Certainly a very subjective statement.

I was thinking the other day, that I wish the startup BIOS of modern
systems had BASIC - such as in a modern i7 based laptop.   At the very
least, with all the trig functions, it's as useful as any graphing
calculator, or time features make it useful as a clock or stopwatch.

In the variants that had PEEK/POKE, then BASIC essentially becomes as
useful as an assembler (since you can place the opcodes into DATA
statements and POKE and SYS them anywhere into memory).  It took me awhile
to realize why original variants of BASIC didn't have PEEK/POKE:  they were
probably timeshare systems, and so arbitrary access to write to system
memory would be taboo in those environments.  But in a single-user micros,
that address space is all yours.

Even if your main storage components are kaput, boot up BASIC still allows
the system to be useful.   Most variants will have keywords or features to
make use of serial IO, so you could pipe in a larger program through that
(or do a simple terminal program).  For sure BASIC has its limitations, but
I appreciate how it can function with extremely limited resources (and as a
somewhat intuitive interface to programmatically access other system calls).

-Steve

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 8:59 AM Sellam Abraham via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 2, 2024, 7:58 PM Just Kant via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
> >
> >  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.
>
>
> Certainly a very subjective statement.
>
> Sellam
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread Bill Gunshannon via cctalk





On 5/3/2024 10:13 AM, KenUnix via cctalk wrote:

Steve,

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported a
disk drive,
ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included video support and
a floppy.



Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)

bill

[cctalk] Re: IBM 360

2024-05-03 Thread John Robertson via cctalk


On 2024/04/09 7:53 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

I had not realized the IBM 360 was 60 yrs. old this month. I worked on such
a computer in the late 60s in Toronto. What one could do with 8 Kbytes of
ram was remarkable!

Happy computing

Murray 🙂


One of my early summer jobs as a teenager (19?) was at IBM in Toronto - 
stripping old noise reduction foam from card punch machines so they 
could get sandblasted and repainted...also in the very late 60s.


John :-#)#

--
 John's Jukes Ltd.
7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3
Call (604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
 flippers.com
 "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

On 5/3/24 08:07, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:

>> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/

2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors,

I think that's a close relative to what I'm running on the X99 desktop...

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

It's a different world now with GPU and AI performance, so I strongly
doubt Cheyenne will ever boot again. Somewhat sad that they're doing
such a nice job of de-installing the machine, labeling all the cables
etc. 5PF is just not impressive these days. A single Nvidia card will
do more than that in FP8 I think which is probably good enough for AI
training, and something like 100PF in FP4 for inference. At worst it's
a small handful of Nvidia cards to completely replace that monster.

It has  8,064 commodity CPUs, "E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base
frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)" which may still sell new
(NOS?) for up to $2K each (though it's probably questionable whether
the total future market amounts to anything close to 8K units), and
300TB of standard DDR4 ECC memory. That's probably what people are
bidding on.

The rest of it is likely getting melted. And it's something like 42
racks of stuff.

But tune in for the exciting auction finish at 4PM Pacific. Auction
will continue until 10 minutes elapses without a bid I believe.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Ali via cctalk

>Fairly sure you could find something to run Doom >that uses less than 1.7MWBut 
>what's the point of buying this monstrosity if not to play Doom? It is like 
>SEVEN years old. ;)

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread jim stephens via cctalk





On 5/3/24 09:35, Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote:

Fairly sure you could find something to run Doom that uses less than 1.7MW
I saw that someone posted on Twitter that they repurposed a disposable 
home pregnancy test stick display and parts to run it.


Apparently it wasn't enough (isn't?) to have lines on the stick you need 
to have it have a fairly capable display.  And it's disposable.  Unless 
you're a tinkerer.




(from
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/
)


On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 3:23 PM Ali via cctalk  wrote:


Just 7 year old and no longer in service.>Anyone with some space in the

basement ?But will it run Doom?

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Adrian Godwin via cctalk

Fairly sure you could find something to run Doom that uses less than 1.7MW

(from
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/
)


On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 3:23 PM Ali via cctalk  wrote:

>
> >Just 7 year old and no longer in service.>Anyone with some space in the
> basement ?But will it run Doom?

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

2024-05-03 Thread Ali via cctalk


>Just 7 year old and no longer in service.>Anyone with some space in the 
>basement ?But will it run Doom?

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

2024-05-03 Thread KenUnix via cctalk

Steve,

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported a
disk drive,
ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included video support and
a floppy.

-Ken

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 4:18 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk 
wrote:

> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>  But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
> of individual contributors
>
> But what I mostly wanted to mention is that on the Commander X16 project,
> one special thing we now have in its System ROM is a program called
> BASLOAD.  Unfortunately we couldn't come up with a cooler name -- it's not
> a native compiler, like Blitz.  I'm not sure what you'd categorize BASLOAD
> as, a pre-parser of sorts?  By license, we were stuck with the Commodore V2
> BASIC (that was derived from Microsoft BASIC, with the story being that
> Gates wasn't so interested in a 6502 port of Microsoft BASIC, and just sold
> BASIC source code to Commodore for a flat one time fee rather than a
> license).   One of the main limitations of that V2 BASIC is the two-letter
> variable names.
>
> BASLOAD gives you a feel of being similar to QuickBASIC - in that you can
> do regular "BASIC things" without using line numbers.  You can have long
> variable names (like THE.SOLUTION) and you can use symbol labels in
> GOTO/GOSUB (GOTO PROCESS.MORE.DATA, where "." is used since standard
> PETSCII doesn't have an underscore).  All BASLOAD does is "convert" your
> BASIC-source text file into a tokenized Commodore V2 BASIC input file.
> Your long variables get "auto assigned" into available two-letter BASIC
> variables, and it just keeps track of the line number targets of your
> symbolic labels.  Stefan Jakonson did the actual development of BASLOAD,
> including making it "ROM-able" so that it is always available.
>
> Anyhow, BASLOAD has been a "game changer" to me - in that it would have
> been great to have something like it back in the 80's.  Not being
> constrained by the two-letter variable, and using symbolic label
> difference, while not dealing with line numbers at all (plus things like
> similar to a #include to import other BASLOAD source files).
>
>
> Couple more BASIC related comments:
>
> (1)
> There was talk regarding BASIC as an operating system.  While not fancy, I
> actually do think in a way it counts as an operating system.  Fundamentally
> as a parser, BASIC is "just" stream in an input, and some output is
> produced when you RUN.  But to get that point, you need a kind of
> "operating environment" wrapper around BASIC.   In the very early days,
> that was the line printer.  But then CRTs started to become affordable
> around 1970.  Adapting that capability with a text-generator and a console
> - you have things like the blinking cursor (between each blink, things like
> time/clock interrupts, joystick polling), and the text-screen itself is
> your editor (as a gateway to manipulate your program, one screen at a time
> with no scrollback buffer).   And similar to the line-printer days, when
> you press CR (carriage return) the content on the current line is tokenized
> and stored in memory  (sort of - again on the IBM 5100 it will parse-check
> upfront and won't let you ENTER/CR a syntactically invalid BASIC line; it
> shows this arrow on what column the error is which has to be corrected
> before the line can be committed into memory -- most "street BASIC" seem
> more forgiving about that, probably just to conserve ROM space and fit in
> under 8KB).  And the BASIC manages access to hardware like printer, serial
> port, and some file handles.
>
>
> (2)
> Microsoft BASIC appears on the 1979 NEC PC-8001, which includes disk drive
> support (similar to the later additions to Commodore BASIC also around
> 1980).  But in the NEC PC-8001 manual about BASIC, it refers to a "FAT"
> format used on disks.  So I suspect Microsoft's early work in adding disk
> drive support into BASIC did help them in maintaining that format when
> packaging up QDOS later.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 10:38 PM CAREY SCHUG via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > compiled basics too longer to run and debug because of the compile time.
> >
> > Anything I did was limited to floppy disk, or later even hard disk speed,
> > the greater speed from compiling could not be noticed.
> >
> > --Carey
> >

[cctalk] Re: Altair 8800 50th birthday...

On Fri, May 3, 2024, 1:28 AM Smith, Wayne via cctalk 
wrote:

> I looked up the Jan. 1975 issue of Popular Electronics in the Copyright
> Office's Periodicals Digest.  It was published on Nov. 19, 1974 if you are
> looking for an actual anniversary date.
>

The January issue was certainly not available in November of 1974.

When did it actually get sent out and start showing up in people's
mailboxes?

Sellam

>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

On Thu, May 2, 2024, 7:58 PM Just Kant via cctalk 
wrote:

>
>  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.


Certainly a very subjective statement.

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC