[cctalk] Re: LCM auction
Paul Koning wrote: >> It probably came from CompuServe, and it would have been running some >> of CompuServe's software; user interface, database, I don't know. > Yes, I believe the description says so. I was wondering if it could > run any DEC software, in particular any DEC OS. Or other interesting > OS... ITS? :-) They ran TOPS-20 and TOPS-10. CompuSeve used some heavily hacked TOPS-10. I think they *could* run ITS if anyone cared to do the work to port it.
[cctalk] Re: LCM auction
Paul Koning wrote:
> Does anyone know what that SC40 ("PDP-10 clone") can do? It seems to
> support SCSI I/O devices, interesting. What software, if any, might
> run on that?
It probably came from CompuServe, and it would have been running some
of CompuServe's software; user interface, database, I don't know.
[cctalk] Foolishness, I mean Foonlyness
> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> I remember my friend, Debbie, who worked as a CE for DEC back in the >> primordial ages, made a big deal about the Super Foonly. >> >> Have any working Foonly systems survived? > > Software wise Oh, and I forgot. There's a bunch of Foonly stuff from Tymshare/Tymnet. Maybe on SRI tapes too, ARC/NLS stuff.
[cctalk] Re: Seattle’s Living Computers Museum logs off for good as Paul Allen estate will auction vintage items
Chuck Guzis wrote: > I remember my friend, Debbie, who worked as a CE for DEC back in the > primordial ages, made a big deal about the Super Foonly. > > Have any working Foonly systems survived? The Stanford Super Foonly was designed, but never built. The project ran out of ARPA funding in the earl 70s. There may or may not be SUDS drawing and/or microcode in the Saildart archives. There was ever only one Foonly F1. It was used in movie production, but no one knows where it ended up. I have seen bits and pieces of the smaller Foonlies in musems catalogs and such. I doubt there's anything complete enough to be considered working. But who knows, there were a few made and maybe one will pop up from somewhere eventually. Software wise, besides running the standard PDP-10 stuff. There is a copy of Foonex, the Foonly hacked TENEX, on Bitsavers. There is also microcode for the F2, and it even comes with a working assembler should anyone want to hack it. WAITS can run on a Foonly.
[cctalk] Bit numbering
Mike Katz wrote: > I want to add to this argument and ask Is bit 0 the high order bit > (like on the PDP-8) or the low order bit (like on the 6809)? It's the same across all PDPs... except maybe the 11, I'm sure someone will remind me. There are good arguments for numbering "bit N" such that its value is 2^N. With PDP-style bit numbering, it's quite awkward if you have several different word lengths so that bit 0 have different value depending on what kind of word you're dealing with. However, it's not entirely clear cut. In many situations data inside words are arranged "left to right" and in this case the PDP numbering sometimes is more convenient than the opposite.
[cctalk] Re: oscilloscopes
Phil Budne wrote: > I wrote and tuned the code twenty years ago, but haven't looked at > whether better results might be possible by wasting the capabilities > of current systems (SIMD libaries and/or multiple cores). I felt like > I only was able to give a slim impression, and I've also wondered what > could be done with 4K HDR displays: making points round(!) and > simulating the "bloom" and intensity of repeatedly or highly > intensified spots. I have done some experiments in this direction. There are two sample pictures here which are supposed to look similar to a P7 CRT. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt-simulation
[cctalk] Re: recreating old computers [was: Paper tape in casettes...]
Paul Koning wrote: > Suppose you had schematics of, say, a KA-10. You could turn those > gates into VHDL or Verilog, and that should deliver an exact replica > of the original machine, bug for bug compatible. That assumes the > timing quirks are manageable The mapping from asynchronous pulses, delay lines, etc, to VHDL or Verilog isn't entirely straight forward. Still, it can be done, and in the case of a KA10, it has. See https://github.com/aap/fpdpga
[cctalk] Re: recreating old computers [was: Paper tape in casettes...]
CAREY SCHUG wrote: > What I wish somebody would create is an S-100 card (probably with a > raspberry pie daughter running simulation for future upgradeability) > that, initially emulates a complete Byte-8 or Imsai computer including > memory and disk images on sdc cards, 24x40 display on an HDMI display > and USB keyboard. serial and parallel ports emulated. I believe this tick some of your boxes: https://thehighnibble.com/imsai8080/
[cctalk] Re: VCF SoCal Saturday
jos wrote: >> I don't recall emulators for the early Datapoints.- > There now is a Datapoint 2200 emulator > Be aware that it does not show the true Datapoint fonts. There is also an emulator for the 3300, with a font from an imaged ROM. It's in here: https://github.com/aap/vt05/ (The 3300 is older than the 2200, and doesn't have a processor.)
[cctalk] Re: RIP: Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth
Paul Koning wrote: > Pascal is still around; the GCC compiler suite has it, and Modula-2 as > well. Speaking of which, GCC (or its first attempt) came from a Pascal compiler called Pastel.
[cctalk] Re: Vintage Computer Fest Midwest "DECnut" pizza party
Paul Koning wrote: > Even then it increments by 2, by special exception. So 112700, 1 > (movb #1,r0) fetches the instruction and increments PC by 2, then > fetches the word where the PC points and increments by 2, not 1, > again. It's not really a special exception because immediate mode is @(R7)+.
[cctalk] Re: Emacs on v7
Adam Thornton wrote: > I finally got an Emacs running on v7--it's on misspiggy at LCML now as > "ue". It's Microemacs 3.6 As far as I know, the first Emacs on a PDP-11 was written by MIT alumnus Warren Montgomery at Bell labs. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/blob/sources/docs/Montgomery%20Emacs%20History.txt https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/%7Ejnc/tech/unix/emacs https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Norman_v9/batterpudding.tar.gz/cmd/emacs > Arrow keys, naturally, don't work, but C-b, C-f, C-p, C-n do. As is good and proper.
[cctalk] Re: fredmacs?
> I don't know if this is what you heard about, but Fred Fish wrote an > Emacs that ran on top of TECO-11. Another similar thing: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/decus/110737.html
[cctalk] Re: fredmacs?
Adam Thornton via cctalk writes: > I have heard rumors of one "fredmacs" which is a more-or-less emacs that > will run on PDP-11 v7 Unix. I don't know if this is what you heard about, but Fred Fish wrote an Emacs that ran on top of TECO-11. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/teco/emacs11/
[cctalk] Re: The World Wide Web
geneb wrote: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: >> It seems like all of the good USENET providers are subscription >> services now. > You can get free access via http://www.eternal-september.org/ There's also news.dotsrc.org. (formerly sunsite.dk)
[cctalk] Re: MIT Lisp Machine and ucode recovered
Eric Moore wrote: > Here is a hello world: > (format t "Hello, World!") > It kinda works, need to throw maybe a \n on it, no idea what options format > takes. Do it like this: (format t "~&Hello, World!~%") Looks like Common Lisp documentation works for the System 100 FORMAT: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/22_c.htm
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Paul Koning wrote: > I noticed the section on deferred interrupts, which mentions Cutler > and "fork" on RSX. It doesn't mention the similar mechanism, also > called fork, in RT-11. And, pray tell, what do these "fork" mean? I'm curious since Unix has fork as a verb, whereas Tenex has it as a noun. Presumably they both got it from the Berkeley 930 timesharing system, so maybe something got lost in translation on the way to the East coast. It would be intresting to compare against the meaning in RSX (11 not 15, I guess) and RT-11.
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Steve Lewis wrote: > I always considered a mainframe to basically be a "fully decked out" > minicomputer. You may find people will disagree with that. I'm not sure what mainframe means either, but I'm asking around. Pysical size, I/O capacity, CPU offload to front ends, and users served seem to factor into it. > Actually, to answer my own question: if "main frame" refers to the actual > framing... well the PDP-1, PDP-10, PDP-10 were minicomputers and still > required a lot of metal "framing" to set up. So, can't they be considered > mainframes? I believe the term minicomputer was first applied to the PDP-8. It was kind of retroactively applied going back to the PDP-1. Whether the PDP-10 is a mini is sometimes hotly debated. IBM people say no, DEC peole say yes. > another notion is that mainframes are "multi-user" -- most early > microcomputers were not multi-user, as they just barely supported the needs > of one user; I'm not sure if the very first minicomputers were > multi-user? Kind of yes, but recally early computers were often operated in batch mode. Minis would typically do one task, or handle a few users. > The term minicomputer has always been awkward to me -- "mini" in my > head just means something smaller than me, which most minicomputers > aren't Consider that a minicomputer is larger than microcomputer. > But to say "mainframe" when showing a minicomputer I don't think that does a service to anyone.
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Fred Cisin wrote: > So, what defines a "supercomputer"? FLOPS
[cctalk] Re: Stuff to go or it's off to the dumpster
> Need to get rid of some things here that I am never going to use, > maybe someone else will: > > M7705 > M7706 > M7906 > M7907 > M7908 I think I heard a VAXstation 100 owner missing an M7452. Any spares?
[cctalk] NeWS tapes in SF Bay area; rubber baby buggy bumpers
Hello, Some Sun 1/4" tapes with NeWS has turned up in the SF Bay area. However, the the tape drive available has bad rubber baby buggy bumpers. Is there anyone around there who can provide new bumpers, or has a working 1/4" tape drive and is willing to read the tapes? Best regards, Lars Brinkhoff
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Tarek Hoteit wrote: > I still don’t know who runs [SDF] Stephen M. Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System#History https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030526-sdf https://ia600903.us.archive.org/22/items/bsdtalk021/bsdtalk021.mp3
[cctalk] Re: Late '70s DEC manual covers [niche!]
Paul Flo Williams wrote: > During lockdown I was having some fun redrawing old DEC manual covers > with Inkscape, specifically terminal and printer manuals from the late > 1970s. I've attached a montage of four that I printed out so I could > stick it on the wall. I'm aware I may be the only person, even here, > who finds them attractively simple and coloured in such a definably > 1970s way. They look great! I for one appreciate this, and I suspect Norbert Landsteiner would too. https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/dec-crt-typography
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Mark Huffstutter via cctalk writes: > Christian Corti wrote: >> Interesting, but not really a beauty ;-) And BTW, who is SDF? They >> don't tell it on their site. > Short story on the welcome page. Long story: https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030526-sdf
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Jake Utley wrote: > Sellam Abraham >> "A new PDP-10 has been put in the INTERNET." >> "New" as in newly-built? Or "new" as in wasn't there before? >> The hardware looks modern, and not at all like what a PDP-10 should look >> like. > > I would say it is newly built as the pcb substrate looks nothing like > vintage stock. On first glance it’s a impressive achievement reverse > engineering the PDP10 cards and then getting it online It's "new" as in "it wasn't there last week". Well, it's also somewhat new since it was made in the 90s. It's not a DEC PDP-10, but a clone by Systems Concepts.
[cctalk] Re: Making sense of VAXstation 100 ROMs
Paul Koning wrote: > Given 16 bit wide ROMs, I would expect the microcode width to be > rounded up to a multiple of that, so 64 bits, which means the expected > ROM size is 64k bits. That matches two of the ROMs you mentioned. I don't know if they are 16 bits wide. The two 68000 ROMs are 8 bit wide. The others I have no data on. Also, there aren't enough bits on the BBA board ROMs to make up 56x1024. (I was wrong in my previous post, the microcode is 56 bits wide, not 57.) Besides, the contents doesn't look like code but graphics masks.
[cctalk] Making sense of VAXstation 100 ROMs
Hello, I could use some help making sense of the VAXstation ROM images. A set is provided here: https://www.9track.net/roms/ The two .bin files are each one halfword of a 16-bit wide ROM for the 68000 display processor. I checked it, and it's fine. My problem is with the Bit Blit Accelator. The board has four Am2901 bitslice processors to make up a 16-bit custom blitter. The information I have is that the microcode is 57 bits wide and there should be 1024 words. However, this is not a great match for the rest of the ROM images. Some of the BBA ROMs seem to be bit masks, presumably useful for rendering graphics. But none of them seem to match what I'd expect to see for a 57x1024 microcode. Here are the sizes, in bits, of the ROMs: Bit Blit Accelerator (BBA) 23-066K3.jed 2048 23-067K3.jed 2048 23-068K3.jed 2048 23-069K3.jed 2048 23-076F4.e32 16384 23-077F4.e65 16384 23-077J5.jed 2048 23-078J5.jed 2048 23-354A1.e33 256 23-355A1.e66 256 23-356A1.e77 256 23-357A1.e85 256 Display Processor Module (DPM) 23-020L1.jed 3553 23-021L1.jed 3553 23-022L1.jed 3553 23-023L1.jed 3553 23-024L1.jed 3553 23-025L1.jed 3553 23-288E4.bin 65536 68000 code in these two. 23-289E4.bin 65536
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
Grant Taylor wrote: > I'm not that surprised that soft fonts are (re)using Sixel. Maybe the other way around. I don't really know what the timeline was, but it seems to me maybe soft fonts came first, with the VT220. The VT240 had sixel graphics, right? But I'm guessing it came later. As would the VT340. > I suspect that means that XTerm could support soft fonts if some minor > changes were made to re-use it's existing Sixel support. Probably. I had the good fortune to meet the person who first added sixel graphics to XTerm, and he mentioned it is on his to-do list. It would also be interesting to make a faithful VT220 emulator that runs the original ROMs. >> But apparently you saw that already! > Nope. But I have now. :-) Oh, isn't this you? https://twitter.com/DrScriptt/status/1187958760901414913
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
Grant Taylor wrote: >> https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/sixel > The naming of the git repository confused me a bit. I needed more > coffee and time to realize that this is more about soft fonts (the > thread subject) than it is about Sixel graphics. It started with an idea about sixel graphics, but I repurposed it. VT220 (and followups) use sixels for soft fonts. > Aside: Would you please take a picture of some of the output from the > samples on a VT220 or other soft font supporting terminal (emulator) > so those of us under equipped can enjoy them too? I'm not aware of any terminal emulator with such support. I don't have my terminal available right now, but here's a photo I took: https://twitter.com/larsbrinkhoff/status/1187649036368658432 But apparently you saw that already!
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
David Griffith wrote: > I'm trying to figure out how to created and load a "soft character > set" into a vt220 terminal. I have successfully done that with a real VT220. Here are some .txt files with samples. They upload a custom font and arrange characters on screen to display a picture. The Emacs Lisp code does the conversion. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/sixel
[cctalk] Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)
Chris Zach wrote: > All that said, if I have to drive out to Seattle with a U-Haul I'll do > it. Again. But I would prefer them to be displayed, taken care of, > loved. AI is available right now from here: ssh i...@tty.livingcomputers.org It's running under the name LC ITS now, but it's the original AI KS10.
[cctalk] CAL TSS information and source listings
Paul McJones posted this recently: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/ There aren't a lot of machine readable media, but many listings: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/source/
[cctalk] Re: LCM news?
Paul Koning wrote: > When I did some looking it appeared to me that essentially all of > what's online is simulators, not real machines. That's right, but at least ITS is running on a real PDP-10 now.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote: >> My idea is to make a VS100 emulator and have it run the firmware >> uploaded by early X versions. > > What kind of emulator are you planing? A completely new thing? Or do > you want to use SIMH as a basis? It's just a vague idea. It's much too early to say I have any kind of plan in place. I might use SIMH, or something like Musashi, or write my own in adjunction to my VT52 and VT100 simulators. I suppose the Unibus interface to a VAX host would favour use of SIMH, in which case the VS100 would look like a SIMH device with a 68000 inside.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Matt Burke wrote: > I dumped the ROMs from my VAXstation 100 some time ago (along with many > other DEC devices): > > http://www.9track.net/roms/ > > 23-288E4.bin and 23-289E4.bin are probably the two main ones you are > looking for. Do you just need the ROMs or are you looking for technical > info on the VAXstation 100? I may be able to help. Thank you very much! My idea is to make a VS100 emulator and have it run the firmware uploaded by early X versions. But I have some other things going on now, so it will have to wait. I'd be grateful for any help; I may well get in touch in the future.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Lee Gleason wrote: > I gave my VAXstation 100 system unit to Dave McGuire last year (I > didn't need it since I lost interest in UNIBUS sized hobby equipment). > Perhaps he could make a copy of its ROMs. Thanks! I asked, and he said he's willing to dump the ROM.
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > My understanding is that 4.3BSD that ran on VAXes had support for NCP. 4.3BSD released in 1986 was long after ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP. Apparently early TCP/IP support was added to 4.1a in 1981. I'm going out on a limb to claim BSD never had NCP support.
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > I think of Tymnet as a service and not as much as a protocol. Though > maybe it implies a protocol and I'm unaware of it. Tymshare was a service, but the computers talked to each over over a vast network. The network was spun off as a separate business. There is code available for the SDS 940, Tymeshare's TYMCOM-X, and TENEX. > Isn't Chaosnet mostly used in LISP machines? Yes, but also all over the MIT campus really. There is Chaosnet for 4.1BSD, if that's your thing. Also various PDP-10 systems: ITS, TOPS-20, TENEX.
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Cameron Kaiser wrote: > If we're going to do Tymnet, we should definitely do Telenet. Telenet is BBN's commercial network based on their IMP technology, right? How would you go about making a Telenet network?
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Warner Losh wrote: > NCP was the forerunner of TCP/IP. Net Unix had it as its supported > protocol and that was old enough that BSD had at least one > implementation. Are you saying there's a BSD Unix with Arpanet NCP? If so, where?
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > I find myself interested in (at least) the following and would like to > find others with similar (dis)interests to chat about things. > > - 10Base5 / 10Base2 / 10BaseT > - ISDN > - DSL / ADSL / SDSL / HDSL > - T1 / E1 > - ATM > - Frame Relay > - ARCnet > - PSTN / PBX / PABX For your consideration: - Arpanet (NCP) - Tymnet - Chaosnet - PUP - UUCP
Re: UNIBUS powoer on/off spec
Noel Chiappa wrote: > I have been told that at one point Google was 'downgrading' results > that used plain HTTP, instead of HTTPS, because they were trying to > push people to switch to HTTPS (this was when everyone was > hyperventilating over the Snowden revelations). Given the > near-ubiquitous use of HTTPS these days, I'd have thought that piece > of 'information credit engineering' by our tech overlords was past its > 'sell by' date, and now serves primarily to block people from finding > the material they are looking for (as here). I often include the search term "site:bitsavers.org".
Re: Typing in lost code
Noel Chiappa wrote: > https://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf > Someone's already done the specialist OCR to deal with faded program > listings. I tried to contact the author about converting some of the other IMP listings, but got no reply.
Re: The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation
Michael Kerpan wrote: > (See the sad fate of the Living Computer Museum, which was killed by > its new owners as soon as COVID gave them an excuse to do so) It's not killed. It's still there, but not open to the public. They continue to offer remote access to vintage systems. Some are now running on emuators.
Re: What happened to control-data.info and controlfreaks.org?
Some ARPANET hosts were running SCOPE. Is there any ARPANET software that has been preserved?
Re: SIMH KL10 usage guide? Hints? and
Bob Smith via cctalk writes: > I am hoping someone here knows Richard Cornwell, driving force behind > KL10B SimH and associated forks. Yes, I do. I would suggest you contact Richard directly, either by posting an issue to his GitHub repository, or by email. https://github.com/rcornwell/sims/ http://sky-visions.com/ > Also trying to figure out how to set switches as in other KA/KL sims. > I can't seem to find a means of doing that in RC's KL. I'm using his KL10 for running ITS. Here is an example: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/build/pdp10-kl/run
Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
> Does anyone have a (set of) ROM image(s) for the VAXstation 100? > It might be interesting to attempt an emulator. I think the machine has some historical interest. Barbara Liskov's CLU group received a number of VS100 terminals for their VAX. This prompted Bob Scheifler to create X. CLU even got X libraries before C. X10 comes with software for the VS100 "version 3.10", but it goes into RAM through the ROM firmware. The other main concern, emulation-wise, would be the blitter with its separate microcode.
VAXstation 100 ROM image
Hello, Does anyone have a (set of) ROM image(s) for the VAXstation 100? It might be interesting to attempt an emulator.
Re: PDP-10 CLU language now available
> I found files for Barnara Liskov's programming language CLU on PDP-10 Sorry, it's BARBARA Liskov.
PDP-10 CLU language now available
Hello, I found files for Barnara Liskov's programming language CLU on PDP-10 backup tapes. MIT has made them available here: https://github.com/MITDDC/clu-1976-1989 See also: http://pmg.csail.mit.edu/CLU.html
Re: C.mmp OS
Fred Cisin wrote: > If "drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll" is not the answer, > then you are asking the wrong question. I'm not very interested in drugs or rock'n'roll, but I would very much like to see the software for the UCLA Simgma-7!
Re: ISO Laserjet I/II/III firmware
Al Kossow wrote: > There has been some work going on emulating early Laserwriters in MAME Maybe an emulator for Xerox's XGP could be piggybacked onto that. The "firmware" is PDP-11 or PDP-6 code from MIT and SAIL. It could be used to print classical memos written in PUB, TeX, TJ6, Scribe, Bolio, etc.
Re: LCM Accounts?
>>> Bill Gunshannon wrote: What would you use it for if everything is shut down? LCM isn't completely shut down. Zane Healy wrote: > I can’t speak for that, but the VAX 7000 is still online. Someone is > obviously paying the electric bills at a minimum, as that’s got to > chew through some real power. The XKL TOAD-2 is online as well > (PDP-10 clone), and some of the emulated systems. To get a list of online hardware and emulators: ssh m...@tty.livingcomputers.org
Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....
Chris Zach wrote: > Anyone know if the LCM will be open this summer? I'm going to be in > Seattle for a day in August, wouldn't mind stopping by and seeing how > it was doing Still closed for on site visitors: https://livingcomputers.org/Closure.aspx But they haven't shut down all operations. All along they have been offering remote access to vintage systems, some of which are real hardware and some migrated to emulators: ssh m...@tty.livingcomputers.org https://wiki.livingcomputers.org/
Re: ARDS was Re: VT340 Emulation
Steve Malikoff wrote: > Douglas said >> Someone already did this with a TEK4010 emulation: See >> https://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010 >> Hmmm... You could use a Raspberry Pi to emulate a number of terminals. > > Interesting that that emulator covers the ARDS. I collected some notes about ARDS as relating to the ITS operating system: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/821
Re: VT100 colors
Many replies. Thank you all! I have 3D printed Michael Gardi's VT100 model, and I'll try to find some pleasing colors for painting it. https://hackaday.io/project/177596-23-scale-vt100-terminal-reproduction
VT100 colors
Hello, Does anyone know what colors a VT100 is? Most photos online has it looking yellowish, but I expect that's from aging. Some people I have asked claim it was a light cream color. This bitsavers picture has it looking neutral grey: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt100/vt100_wps-8.jpg And the black parts are claimed to be dark brown. I haven't found any color codes in the manuals.
Re: LCM and AI
Chris Zach wrote: > The switches are still set, so we should be able to figure out which > system it came from if anyone still had the documentation on that > thing. These are the Chaosnet addresses of the four KS10 ITS machines: AI 3130 MC 3131 MD 3132 ML 3133
Re: LCM
Chris Zach wrote: > That is good news. Ok, hopefully it will be open by August in which > case I'll drop by and see which CHAOSNet card it has. It may have been removed when we worked on getting ITS booted.
Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....
Chris Zach wrote: > She's lonely. And although I have been looking after her for a long > time, she needs help. I think you did well. AI got a few more logins, and let's hope there will be more in the future.
Re: VT100 dot stretching in reverse video
Bill Degnan wrote: > I already let Lars know, but if anyone wants to see what I came up with: > https://www.vintagecomputer.net/temp/VT102/ Thank you very much! This is interesting because it shows VT100 dot stretching is done first, and other attributes on top of that. The VT220 does character widening first, and dot stretching after that. This means VT220 double width characters get more fine details than on the VT100. (The CIT-101 clone does widening first and dot stretching later like the VT220. BUT it disables dot stretching in reverse video, which is unlike the DEC terminals. Maybe this suggests reverse video is done before dot stretching.)
Re: VT100 dot stretching in reverse video
Peter Coghlan wrote: > Would a photograph of a VT220 be any use? Thanks, but no. I already have one myself.
VT100 dot stretching in reverse video
Hello, Is there anyone with a VT100 (or any VT1xx, if so please specify which) that can make a photo displaying text in reverse video? I'm making a detailed simulation of the VT100 hardware, and I'd like to see what, if any, effect dot streching has. I searched the "VT100 Technical Manual", but as far as I can see it doesn't say. A good sample text would be: ESC [ 7 m b d h x CR LF ESC [ 0 m b d h x CR LF
Re: PDP-11 SPACEWAR running again!
Ethan Dicks wrote: >> There are also at least two GT40 implementations of Spacewar. > > Is there a web page I could check that would include the hardware > requirements? I don't have a GT40, but I have a VT11 (4-slot > backplane and cards) and an assortment of Unibus PDP-11 processors > (11/04 or 11/34 would be the easiest to configure, but I have others). > I don't have the keyboard, lightpen or a tube yet. Sorry, there is no web page. But the games only require the VT11, and a keyboard which is attached to the standard console input so any ASCII sender is usable. They don't use a light pen. For more serious computing, there is also a terminal emulator compatible a Datapoint 3300 which requires a DL11 to talk to a host.
Re: PDP-11 SPACEWAR running again!
There are also at least two GT40 implementations of Spacewar. One from MIT, by Dick Waters, and another from SAIL, by Bo Eross. They run fine on SIMH, but it would be nice to see them on real hardware too.
Re: PDP-11 SPACEWAR running again!
Mattis Lind wrote: > Today I finally got the SPACEWAR version for PDP-11/10 running again > on my PDP-11/05 with AR11 board. Congratulations! It's great to watch your video. > But the lines mostly confused the OCR process so a lot of errors was > introduced. It turned out that it was easier to just transcribe the > whole lot by hand than finding and correcting errors. That is also my experience after doing a few of these transcription jobs.
Re: DECtape ancestry (Kyle Owen)
Michael Thompson wrote: > Kyle Owen wrote: >> What systems took advantage of the bidirectional nature? > > ADSS on the PDP-9 does an interleave of 6 when reading/writing to the > DECtape. If it runs off the end it reverses direction and keeps going. MIT's MACDMP (and by extension, ITS) does this too. I think some DEC format as well, right?
Re: PDP-10 I/O notes
Don Stalkowski wrote: > For what it's worth I've posted some notes on PDP-10 I/O from a course > taught by Mike Bennett at UWO in the early 1970s. Thank you! Interesting to see the DECtape file structure format.
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Tony Aiuto wrote: > It's a buffer overrun. sixbit_to_ascii writes 7 bytes. The extension was > declared as 4. Changing to 7 is required. Thanks, good catch!
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Jim Carpenter wrote: > If it makes you feel any better, I can't figure out how to get back10 > to extract all files. :) I have to give the file names to extract. It does have some quirk. The names are matched exactly, or as regexp. I think an '' empty string works, or maybe '.*'. And it's best to start in an empty directory
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
The tapes are now hosted here: http://vtda.org/bits/software/DEC/PDP-10/tymshare/
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Jim Carpenter wrote: > Tony Aiuto wrote: >> I think that is an artifact of the files being created with the wrong >> names. For example, with tape 169249, after you skip the UFDs, tito >> -t prints >> >>(SYS).SHR1977-01-26 22:22 [1,4] >> [...] >> >> All the file names are missing. That seems not right. > > Very not right, because this is what tito -t is giving me: > >(SYS) PIP .SHR1977-01-26 22:22 [1,4] > [...] I have no idea what could make that happen. I made some improvements to tito.c, so please try the latest version. (I also have a dart.c in the works for WAITS tapes. Mostly useful if you're running WAITS and want to transfer files in and out.)
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Tony Aiuto wrote: >> I'm not sure what to do with the file checksum yet. > That is useful to verify that we reassembled the pieces correctly. I phrased that poorly. What I meant was the checksum that is stored on the tape along with each file. Or at least that's what the documentation says. To me it looks like some files have it, others don't.
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Tony Aiuto wrote: >> What problem do you have with my tito tool? > > $ ./tito -x -f 169249.tape > fopen: Is a directory This appears to be because creating an output file was attempted, but there was already a directory there with the same name. I'm updating the program to print better error messages.
Re: Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Tony Aiuto wrote: > that gets lots of files with names like 'dsk:[1,4]specdf525].mic' > That just seems wrong. Correct, back10 does get some things wrong. It also puts some data at the beginning of files which should be part of the file header. TITO uses the "*FAILSAFE" magic number which fools back10 to think it's FAILSAFE. What problem do you have with my tito tool? Which tape did you try? I haven't tested all tapes, so maybe some of them has surprises. I'm not sure what to do with the file checksum yet.
Tymshare PDP-10 tapes
Hello, Someone sent me these magtape images from Tymshare and said "they fell off the back of a truck on route 62 in Hudson, MASS." I don't know their provenance. Sorry, I don't have any good hosting. For now they are here: https://gitlab.com/larsbrinkhoff/tymshare The download.sh script will retrieve individual files one by one rather than cloning the repository; next use cat.sh to get the .tape.bz2 files. The tape format is close to not not quite FAILSAFE. With help from Joe Smith, I made a tool to extract the files: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/pdp10-its-disassembler/blob/master/tito.c
Re: Massbus - was: Re: VAX 11/750
Toby Thain wrote: > Rich Alderson wrote: >> You could ask our friends Keith Perez (Massbus Disk Emulator v1) and >> Bruce Sherry (MDE v2) about it, or even ask me. ... produced, and >> we had to do something. My brilliant friend Keith sat down with a >> logic analyzer and an RP06 attached to a KL-10, and proceeded to >> spend the next two years (when not called on for other projects) >> creating a disk emulator. ... >> >> Later, Bruce came on board as the museum was ramping up, and redid >> the design in a Xilinx chip with VHDL. ... > > Are the above projects published? See here: https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum?tab=repositories
Re: Massbus - was: Re: VAX 11/750
Rich Alderson wrote: > As for operating system support, the only DEC operating system which > could put tapes and disks on the same Massbus was TOPS-20. Tops-10 > explicitly tells you in the SYSGEN process that disks and tapes must > reside on different channels; I believe that ITS follows that same > principle. KS10 ITS has MIT hacked microcode for IO instuctions hardwired to use UBA 1 for disk and UBA 3 for tape. KA10 and KL10 ITS have TM10 I/O bus tape controllers, optionally using a DF10 channel.
Re: Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
> I heard back from Fred Wright: > > "Although I wasn't at SC in 1972, I'm pretty sure I would have heard of > the SC-4 if it had ever existed. The document you linked was just a > proposal, and I imagine that that's as far as it ever got. AFAIK, SC > didn't create any full-fledged computers between the SC-15 (1970) and > the SC-30 (1983)." Following up about the SC-15: "It was a clone of the PDP-15, designed for Information International. The prototype was our main in-house machine for many years. III's main product at the time was the FR-80 microfilm recording machine, initially using PDP-9s and later PDP-15s. Our design let them build their own machines for substantially less than what PDP-15s cost from DEC. We provided designs and prototypes for everything up to the PLS (the Programmable Light Source, a small *very* high-resolution CRT) and camera. I think SC built one SC-15 as part of a system for the Nevada Test Site (while I wasn't here), but most of them were built by III."
Re: Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
Phil Budne wrote: > From: Lyle Bickley via cctalk >> >> I contacted Peter Samson regarding a "SC-4" and this was his response: >> "There was an SC-40 (made after my time there) which was a fast >> PDP-10-compatible system. I don’t know of any SC-4 though." > > The document that raised the question has his name and signature (or > the name and signature of *A* Peter R Samson) on it? > > I suppose one could say that SC-4 might be a marketing term that an > engineer might have forgotten, or chosen to have forgotten, but Peter > Samson's title in the document is Director of Marketing! > > The URL again: > http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/141.graphics-system/Scan%203.PDF I heard back from Fred Wright: "Although I wasn't at SC in 1972, I'm pretty sure I would have heard of the SC-4 if it had ever existed. The document you linked was just a proposal, and I imagine that that's as far as it ever got. AFAIK, SC didn't create any full-fledged computers between the SC-15 (1970) and the SC-30 (1983)."
Re: Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
Lyle Bickley wrote: > I contacted Peter Samson regarding a "SC-4" and this was his response: > > "There was an SC-40 (made after my time there) which was a fast > PDP-10-compatible system. I don’t know of any SC-4 though." Thanks for asking! I'm turning next to Fred Wright, another former Systems Concepts employee.
Re: Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
Noel Chiappa wrote: > One oddity: the cover letter is dated 1972, but it talks of "the main > G.E. computer". GE's computer business was sold to Honeywell in 1970, > though? The letter was directed to Project MAC. I suppose that main computer could be the GE-645 on which Multics was developed? And they would still refer to it as G.E.
Re: Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Anyone ever heard of the Systems Concepts SC-4 computer? > > "This is an two's-complement 18-bit machine, with 16 general registers > and a 16 level priority interrupt system. Its programming ascpects > are explained in great detail in the SC-4 Reference Manual, of which a > draft is enclosed." > > From page 6 here: > http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/141.graphics-system/Scan%203.PDF Eric Moore wrote: > http://mnembler.com/ragooman/computers_mini_products.html > You can see some info on the systems (gould SEL) concept line here, but > looking at that PDF, systems concepts was something different. Yes, something different. Systems Concepts was formed by Stewart Nelson and Mike Levitt, made some early equipment for the MIT AI lab PDP-10 computer, and later the successful SA-10 disk controller compatible with IBM disks. In the 80s they went on to make the SC-30M and SC-40 computers which where compatible with DEC's KL10. But this SC-4 computer was apparently something else.
Systems Concepts SC-4 computer
Anyone ever heard of the Systems Concepts SC-4 computer? "This is an two's-complement 18-bit machine, with 16 general registers and a 16 level priority interrupt system. Its programming ascpects are explained in great detail in the SC-4 Reference Manual, of which a draft is enclosed. Below are times for some typical instructions. Add word on stack (not top word) to general register 1.5 us Multiply general register by memory word 6.2 us Jump 750 ns Push and Jump 1.5 us Compare Immediate 750 ns" >From page 6 here: http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/141.graphics-system/Scan%203.PDF
Re: KL11 asynchronous serial line interface on eBay
Always jarring to see KL... and then not 10 after!
Re: The weird stuff I keep finding: 19 bit core memory?
Doug Jackson wrote: > Those of us late to the party may like to know: > 1. What was AL > 2. Why was it famous? Not AL, but AI. Also known as MIT-AI on the ARPANET. It was the PDP-10 used by the MIT AI lab, hence the name. The Incompatible Timesharing System was developed on their PDP-6, later moved to the PDP-10. There were three more ITS machines in the 70s: MIT-DMS/Dynamic Modeling, MIT-ML/Mathlab, and MIT-MC/Macsyma Consortium. If ITS doesn't ring a bell, maybe some of its applications/tools might: Maclisp, Scheme, Logo, CLU, DDT/HACTRN, SHRLDU, MacHack VI, Macsyma, Maze(war), Emacs, Zork. > 3. Tell us more about Doug, and his apartment :-) I'll leave it to others to talk about Digex.
Re: The weird stuff I keep finding: 19 bit core memory?
Chris Zach wrote: > Did AI use MA10 memory boxes? No. It had the original 256K "moby" from Fabri-Tek, and another 256K from Ampex. The associated PDP-6 had an older DEC Type 16x-something 16K memory. > Did any of that stuff survive? Maybe bits and pieces here and there. The AI KA10 went to Concourse, and then it was lost.
Thompson's Space Travel running
Hello, Ken Thompson's space exploration simulation Space Travel will now run on the SIMH PDP-7 simulator: http://sebras.se/space-travel-2.mp4
General Turtle TT2500
Hello, I'm making a software emulator for the General Turtle TT2500. Does anyone have any information about it? It's hard to come by. Here's what I have learned: It's a custom TTL design by Marvin Minsky et al, with 64K 16-bit memory and 4K 16-bit control store. It has two displays attached, one for vector graphics, and one for text. There is a UART for talking to a host (presumably running Logo), and a keyboard.
Re: Exploring early GUIs
Noel Chiappa wrote: > > it was AI rather than MC. As I'm sure you know, AI had the Rubin > > 10-11 interface > > Really? (I expect you're correct, mind.) I just remember one day MC > wasn't running as normal, and I was told it was because CHEOPS was in > some tournament, and MC had been taken offline so that it could focus > on the game. So I assumed CHEOPS was connected to MC (and had indeed > wondered why/how, when I wrote that message, with the Rubin interface > being on AI). The MaHack sources seem to say it was made to run on the KL10 out of timesharing, so I suppose the intent was to really have the full machine dedicated to chess. I hope it did well! > It was pretty early, but I guess the CHAOSNET was already running > then. My guess is that AI didn't do much but act as a communication > node between CHEOPS and MC, for that. I think that's correct.
Re: Exploring early GUIs
Noel Chiappa wrote: > I'm not sure CONS ever ran as a stand-alone system; I suspect (but > don't recall for sure; RG, TK or Moon or someone could confirm one way > or the other) that it ran as a loosely-coupled co-processor to MC, the > way the Chess Machine did. I believe you are entirely correct, except it was AI rather than MC. As I'm sure you know, AI had the Rubin 10-11 interface with eight Unibuses for attaching processors through shared memory. MC had the DTE20 and DL10, but those were for PDP-11 front ends. The Chess Machine CHEOPS was used with MacHack VI running on MC, but communicating over Chaosnet. At least, that's how I interpret the code in MacHack. This doesn't make me less interested in emulating both CONS and CHEOPS. Time permitting - which it doesn't. I don't see any technical obstacles; we already have one of the 10-11 processors working. I have reviewed the amount of preserved software, and I think chances are good microcode and microassemblers for CONS and CHEOPS still exist. There is some debate over whether the CONS had a display of its own, and if so whether it could draw to a bitmap. Do you remember? As a mid-70s technology, it might be a contender for one of the early GUIs this thread is about. > The CONS and the Chess Machine were both in the same room; 906-907 or > so: [...] When the first CADR was built, its console was in the room > next door (in the higher-numbered room direction); I remember watching > over Moon's shouulder the night they first tried to boot it. I have talked to Lispm enthusiasts, and they have a hard time pinpointing a birthdate for the CADR. Do you have a recollection when, even what year, the first boot attempt was? My information says room 907 at various points in time housed CADR-1, "Chess, Lisp machines", Lisp Machine Consoles, GT40 (Lisp machine).
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Al Kossow wrote: >> I'm kind of maintaining that. > where? Here: https://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils > and since your fscking around inside of it, have you added the > Bordynuik extensions in the ToTS tape images? No, but I certainly will if yout tell me what it is.
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Al Kossow wrote: >> I usually use tapeutils: >> https://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils > > I should bug Eric about this, but the .tap files that library creates > doesn't have the Supnik SIMH extensions In case Eric doesn't have time to make updates, bug me instead. I'm kind of maintaining that.
Re: Exploring early GUIs
Michael Kerpan wrote: > Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me > wondering: how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or > emulated at all)? I know that there are more or less functional > emulations of Alto, Star, and Lisa out there, but what about the > various LISP machines There are emulators for the CADR Lisp machine and a lot of software has been preserved. There's no emulators for the CONS, but I claim it would be interesting to attempt one. Now NLS and TX-2 emulators, that would be something.
Re: Computer History
Murray McCullough wrote: > We in the classic computer community need to know the history of our > hobby I for bigger iron history, I suggest "Dream Machine" by Waldrop. It's not just about Licklider, though his is a very interesting story by itself.
Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)
Josh Dersch wrote: > Not a ton to see, lisp-wise, it's just a port of Franz Lisp to > Uniflex. I can try to benchmark fibonacci later this week if you want. Thanks! I wasn't expecting a benchmark, just a little defun. For the record, I have a Maclisp over here that will do (fib 40) in less than 9 seconds.
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Dave Wade wrote: > The docs for SIMH .TAP files are here:- > > http://simh.trailing-edge.com/docs/simh_magtape.pdf > > be careful as there are also non-SIMH .tap formats Haha, yes very much so. For the fun of it, people like to mix and match these options: - Records padded to even length or not. - Little or big endian record length metadata. - 9-track or 7-track data (the latter may have a parity bit).
Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)
Josh Dersch wrote: > I did recently get my 4404 running, at last. Any Lisp screenshots? I believe fibonacci is a required exercise for occations like this.
Re: CMU Andrew system (and wm) preservation
Michael Kerpan wrote: > AFS is also cool, but it's a separate project that's still actively > maintained and (presumably) used. MIT uses it, as does the student organization Stacken.
Re: ISO: DEC VR100 and early X releases
Josh Dersch via cctalk writes: > I'm also looking for earlier releases of X to run on this -- the VS100 > was the development platform for X (and W ran on it at one point as > well). I haven't been able to track down anything prior to X10R3. I asked the usual suspects (Reid, Asente, Kantarjiev) about W, but it seems to be lost.
