Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration - failure modes

2020-03-30 Thread Ethan Dicks via cctalk 
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 3:43 PM Bob Rosenbloom via cctalk
 wrote:
> In restoring my PDP-8/s, diodes were the problem. Turns out they have
> steel leads that rust. Easy to see with a microscope.
> Badly rusted ones broke the glass body.

Good to know.  My PDP-8/S was stored indoors but my Straight-8 was in
a storage locker for years before I got it.

I have a stereo inspection microscope.  I'll definitely peer at the
diodes as part of the cleaning/evaluation process.

But I also have to line up a bunch of spare bulbs.  The leads on more
than half of the ones on my -8/S are fractured where they enter the
glass.

-ethan

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-30 Thread Josh Dersch via cctalk 
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 1:48 PM Brendan McNeill via cctech <
cct...@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending
> more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed
> the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in
> New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate
> resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 
>

Very nicely done, and an excellent write-up.  That core memory repair was
amazing. It's interesting to read about a PDP-8 with such a high failure
rate -- I've personally worked on two straight-8 systems (one at LCM+L, and
one in my personal collection) where relatively few component failures were
found.  I wonder what accounts for the difference -- batches of diodes more
prone to failure, the environment the machines were stored in, or the
number of years of service...


>
> While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a
> Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off
> list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this
> wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
>

There's a 4K LISP as well, though it's a pseudo-LISP-1.5 dialect so it's a
bit different.

- Josh



>
> --//
> bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> +64 21 881 883
>
>
>
>
>

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration - failure modes

2020-03-30 Thread Bob Rosenbloom via cctalk 

On 3/30/2020 12:02 PM, Josh Dersch via cctech wrote:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 1:48 PM Brendan McNeill via cctech <
cct...@classiccmp.org> wrote:


Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending
more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed
the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in
New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate
resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 


Very nicely done, and an excellent write-up.  That core memory repair was
amazing. It's interesting to read about a PDP-8 with such a high failure
rate -- I've personally worked on two straight-8 systems (one at LCM+L, and
one in my personal collection) where relatively few component failures were
found.  I wonder what accounts for the difference -- batches of diodes more
prone to failure, the environment the machines were stored in, or the
number of years of service...



While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a
Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off
list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this
wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.


There's a 4K LISP as well, though it's a pseudo-LISP-1.5 dialect so it's a
bit different.

- Josh


In restoring my PDP-8/s, diodes were the problem. Turns out they have 
steel leads that rust. Easy to see with a microscope.

Badly rusted ones broke the glass body.

I had to replace more than 200. Most turned into ~600 Ohm resistors, 
some open circuit. I'm sure I'm going to have to
replace all of them over time. So how (and where) the machine was stored 
probably plays a big part in it's reliability.


Bob

--
Vintage computers and electronics
www.dvq.com
www.tekmuseum.com
www.decmuseum.org

Re: Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration) (Resubmitting without attachment)

2020-03-30 Thread geneb via cctalk 

On Mon, 30 Mar 2020, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:


I was preparing to make the leap and buy my first personal computer--a
PDP-8/E back in the day.   The attraction was not just the low price of
around $5000, but the fact that there was FORTRAN available for it.  DEC
made a big deal of that in their promotions.

Wrote an emulator for it (in FORTRAN, of course) and still have my copy
of Introduction to Programming".  Never got the machine, however--other
things got in the way.

I just finished uploading this: 
https://archive.org/details/fortrancodingform


:)

g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Re: Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration) (Resubmitting without attachment)

2020-03-30 Thread Chuck Guzis via cctalk 
I was preparing to make the leap and buy my first personal computer--a
PDP-8/E back in the day.   The attraction was not just the low price of
around $5000, but the fact that there was FORTRAN available for it.  DEC
made a big deal of that in their promotions.

Wrote an emulator for it (in FORTRAN, of course) and still have my copy
of Introduction to Programming".  Never got the machine, however--other
things got in the way.

I still routinely deal with FORTRAN (capitalize the name for dialects
earlier than F90).   It's still hard to beat for a portable, fast
mathematical HLL.  The big competitor back in the day from Europe,
Algol, appears to have disappeared from collective consciousness.

--Chuck

Re: Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration) (Resubmitting without attachment)

2020-03-30 Thread Nigel Johnson via cctalk 
Since we are all at home exchanging stories, I thought I would regale 
you with my best punch card one:


My first job out of school was at Bell Canada in  Downtown Toronto.

I was trained as an FE on their Univac 418 II systems that ran a 
Canada-wide store-and-forward MSDS - Message Switching Data Service 
(MSDS - means something else now!)  I also got trained on the PDP11, 
then PDP8, and Interdata 50.


The year was 1972 or '73 I think.

Since there was very little operating to do with a real-time system, we 
didn't have operators and did all the operating ourselves.  One system 
ran H23 (it had to be shutdown for maintenance over midnight because the 
system would crash if the time went backwards after midnight), the 
other, use by stockbrokers and the T. Eaton Company started at 0600 and 
was turned down at 2100.


Being critical real time (after all, it fed about a thousand 110 baud 
teletypes across Canada :-) ) it would crash sometimes due to racing 
conditions that had not been forecast.  Instead of re-assembling the 
system (about four hours), the programmers would issue us with PARLO 
(PARameter LOader) cards to make patches after we loaded the enterprise 
code and before we started it.  This fixed the bugs by binary changes.


One morning, I was on duty as the 0600 system crashed immediately after 
I started it.  As trained, I switched all the peripherals over to the 
backup machine and loaded the program on there, carrying the PARLO cards 
over and running them before I started that system. Same crash happened, 
while the panic dump was still running between the first computer and 
the Uniservo VI C.


Lots more attempts happened, including running heavy cables across the 
floor to patch in spares that were not on the transfer switch, until 
first, second, and finally third level managers were standing behind me 
as I tried new things.  "A 20-year old does not need this kind of 
stress", I thought!


Upper management wanted to 'get somebody else' to work the computer by 
my boss told me to stand fast.  Suddenly, I had an idea.  We had an old 
IBM 028 punch sitting at the back of the room.


"Go and copy these PARLO cards" I said to the programmer.  She scowled 
at being told what to do by this young kid, especially since she was 
management and I was not. But as nobody had any better ideas the 
managers told her to do it.


Thankfully, my idea that the PARLO cards were worn thin so that the 
photo readers could see holes where there were not, was accurate. The 
028 used fingers to feel for the holes and so made a perfect copy!


After that they instituted a policy of changing the PARLO cards or 
re-assembling on a regular basis!


The attachment is a picture of where this happened.

cheers,

Nigel Johnson








On 30/03/2020 11:41, Diane Bruce wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:31:56AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 8:13 AM Diane Bruce  wrote:


On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:33:35PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk <

cctalk@classiccmp.org>

wrote:


...

...

A dropped card deck was disaster and how many folks filled in columns 73
to 80
with an index? Not very many. :-(

Worse: 80% of the cards had that, but the other 20% didn't since they 
were

later bug fixes.

The decks that I had to verify were from the "in the barn" days of the
company and had sat in storage for a few years. People would remove cards
from the top box in the stack to show visitors and weren't great about
putting them back exactly in order... So when the boss, who was sure he
And the cards bent due to humidity and stuck together while you read 
them right?


semi-real editor (visual TECO at a glorious 4800 baud). and I learned 
a lot

about FORTRAN and just how bad it could be (the boss was a great
businessman, much better than his FORTRAN prowess).
The worst Fortran I remember was from Scientists. I got to fix some of 
that

back in the day. Nowadays a lot of them learn C/C++ and are not horrible
coders now. Early Fortran as you remember was pretty easy to turn into 
spaghetti

code. WATFOR and IFTRAN helped.


Ah yes the LARGE array with indexes used as pointers trick. *ugh* I
remember.


Yea. And ugly tricks to overlay/alias heap1, heap2 and heap4 (which were
for byte, word and longword access respectively). And converting between
the different "pointer" types. It was helle ugly... But pointers in C 
that

Yep. yep.


I learned a few years later were a piece of cake in comparison...

Pointers were a treat compared to the horrible Fortran mess and was very
appreciated.


Ha! We had some assembler for the most time critical bits, but we wrote
that in MACRO-11 directly and linked it in.

Yep. BTDT I did a lot of 'raw' MACRO-11 too.


Warner

Diane



--
Nigel Johnson
MSc., MIEEE
VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU

Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!


You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591

If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. A

Re: Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration)

2020-03-30 Thread Nigel Johnson via cctalk 
Since we are all at home exchanging stories, I thought I would regale 
you with my best punch card one:


My first job out of school was at Bell Canada in  Downtown Toronto.

I was trained as an FE on their Univac 418 II systems that ran a 
Canada-wide store-and-forward MSDS - Message Switching Data Service 
(MSDS - means something else now!)  I also got trained on the PDP11, 
then PDP8, and Interdata 50.


The year was 1972 or '73 I think.

Since there was very little operating to do with a real-time system, we 
didn't have operators and did all the operating ourselves.  One system 
ran H23 (it had to be shutdown for maintenance over midnight because the 
system would crash if the time went backwards after midnight), the 
other, use by stockbrokers and the T. Eaton Company started at 0600 and 
was turned down at 2100.


Being critical real time (after all, it fed about a thousand 110 baud 
teletypes across Canada :-) ) it would crash sometimes due to racing 
conditions that had not been forecast.  Instead of re-assembling the 
system (about four hours), the programmers would issue us with PARLO 
(PARameter LOader) cards to make patches after we loaded the enterprise 
code and before we started it.  This fixed the bugs by binary changes.


One morning, I was on duty as the 0600 system crashed immediately after 
I started it.  As trained, I switched all the peripherals over to the 
backup machine and loaded the program on there, carrying the PARLO cards 
over and running them before I started that system.  Same crash 
happened, while the panic dump was still running between the first 
computer and the Uniservo VI C.


Lots more attempts happened, including running heavy cables across the 
floor to patch in spares that were not on the transfer switch, until 
first, second, and finally third level managers were standing behind me 
as I tried new things.  "A 20-year old does not need this kind of 
stress", I thought!


Upper management wanted to 'get somebody else' to work the computer by 
my boss told me to stand fast.  Suddenly, I had an idea.  We had an old 
IBM 028 punch sitting at the back of the room.


"Go and copy these PARLO cards" I said to the programmer.  She scowled 
at being told what to do by this young kid, especially since she was 
management and I was not. But as nobody had any better ideas the 
managers told her to do it.


Thankfully, my idea that the PARLO cards were worn thin so that the 
photo readers could see holes where there were not, was accurate.  The 
028 used fingers to feel for the holes and so made a perfect copy!


After that they instituted a policy of changing the PARLO cards or 
re-assembling on a regular basis!


The attachment is a picture of where this happened.

cheers,

Nigel Johnson








On 30/03/2020 11:41, Diane Bruce wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:31:56AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 8:13 AM Diane Bruce  wrote:


On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:33:35PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk <

cctalk@classiccmp.org>

wrote:


...

...

A dropped card deck was disaster and how many folks filled in columns 73
to 80
with an index? Not very many. :-(


Worse: 80% of the cards had that, but the other 20% didn't since they were
later bug fixes.

The decks that I had to verify were from the "in the barn" days of the
company and had sat in storage for a few years. People would remove cards
from the top box in the stack to show visitors and weren't great about
putting them back exactly in order...  So when the boss, who was sure he

And the cards bent due to humidity and stuck together while you read them right?


semi-real editor (visual TECO at a glorious 4800 baud). and I learned a lot
about FORTRAN and just how bad it could be (the boss was a great
businessman, much better than his FORTRAN prowess).

The worst Fortran I remember was from Scientists. I got to fix some of that
back in the day. Nowadays a lot of them learn C/C++ and are not horrible
coders now. Early Fortran as you remember was pretty easy to turn into spaghetti
code. WATFOR and IFTRAN helped.


Ah yes the LARGE array with indexes used as pointers trick. *ugh* I
remember.


Yea. And ugly tricks to overlay/alias heap1, heap2 and heap4 (which were
for byte, word and longword access respectively). And converting between
the different "pointer" types. It was helle ugly...  But pointers in C that

Yep. yep.


I learned a few years later were a piece of cake in comparison...

Pointers were a treat compared to the horrible Fortran mess and was very
appreciated.


Ha! We had some assembler for the most time critical bits, but we wrote
that in MACRO-11 directly and linked it in.

Yep. BTDT I did a lot of 'raw' MACRO-11 too.


Warner

Diane


 


--
Nigel Johnson
MSc., MIEEE
VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU

Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!


You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591

If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. A

Re: Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration)

2020-03-30 Thread Diane Bruce via cctalk 
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:31:56AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 8:13 AM Diane Bruce  wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:33:35PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> > > On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk <
> > cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > ...
...
> >
> > A dropped card deck was disaster and how many folks filled in columns 73
> > to 80
> > with an index? Not very many. :-(
> >
> 
> Worse: 80% of the cards had that, but the other 20% didn't since they were
> later bug fixes.
> 
> The decks that I had to verify were from the "in the barn" days of the
> company and had sat in storage for a few years. People would remove cards
> from the top box in the stack to show visitors and weren't great about
> putting them back exactly in order...  So when the boss, who was sure he

And the cards bent due to humidity and stuck together while you read them right?

> semi-real editor (visual TECO at a glorious 4800 baud). and I learned a lot
> about FORTRAN and just how bad it could be (the boss was a great
> businessman, much better than his FORTRAN prowess).

The worst Fortran I remember was from Scientists. I got to fix some of that
back in the day. Nowadays a lot of them learn C/C++ and are not horrible
coders now. Early Fortran as you remember was pretty easy to turn into spaghetti
code. WATFOR and IFTRAN helped.

> > Ah yes the LARGE array with indexes used as pointers trick. *ugh* I
> > remember.
> >
> 
> Yea. And ugly tricks to overlay/alias heap1, heap2 and heap4 (which were
> for byte, word and longword access respectively). And converting between
> the different "pointer" types. It was helle ugly...  But pointers in C that

Yep. yep.

> I learned a few years later were a piece of cake in comparison...

Pointers were a treat compared to the horrible Fortran mess and was very
appreciated.

> 
> Ha! We had some assembler for the most time critical bits, but we wrote
> that in MACRO-11 directly and linked it in.

Yep. BTDT I did a lot of 'raw' MACRO-11 too.

> 
> Warner

Diane
-- 
- d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-30 Thread Warner Losh via cctalk 
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 8:13 AM Diane Bruce  wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:33:35PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> ...
> >
> > He was lucky the card deck was in order. One of my first jobs was to read
> > in old, horrible FORTRAN IV from punch card, then check it against a
> > listing the boss had and edit to match... This was the same place we
> wrote
>
> A dropped card deck was disaster and how many folks filled in columns 73
> to 80
> with an index? Not very many. :-(
>

Worse: 80% of the cards had that, but the other 20% didn't since they were
later bug fixes.

The decks that I had to verify were from the "in the barn" days of the
company and had sat in storage for a few years. People would remove cards
from the top box in the stack to show visitors and weren't great about
putting them back exactly in order...  So when the boss, who was sure he
did a program just like that back "when he was running this place out of my
barn," discovered things weren't perfect it fell to me to 'fix' it because
I was minimum wage high school kid help... No totally dropped decks, at
least, and once I got them read into the computer I could edit them with a
semi-real editor (visual TECO at a glorious 4800 baud). and I learned a lot
about FORTRAN and just how bad it could be (the boss was a great
businessman, much better than his FORTRAN prowess).


> > malloc for FORTRAN and passed around all kinds of crazy data structures
> > that offset into the malloc arena so it would run on both the pdp-11 and
> > the vax...
>
> Ah yes the LARGE array with indexes used as pointers trick. *ugh* I
> remember.
>

Yea. And ugly tricks to overlay/alias heap1, heap2 and heap4 (which were
for byte, word and longword access respectively). And converting between
the different "pointer" types. It was helle ugly...  But pointers in C that
I learned a few years later were a piece of cake in comparison...
Thankfully none of the boss' code was like this, and it got left behind
when they moved to this code base.


> I also remember the implementation of Fortran on the university computer
> one could abuse the assigned goto and have it execute your own assembler
> code on the fly.  ;)
>

Ha! We had some assembler for the most time critical bits, but we wrote
that in MACRO-11 directly and linked it in.

Warner


> >
> > Warner
> >
>
> Diane
> --
> - d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db
>

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-30 Thread Diane Bruce via cctalk 
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:33:35PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
...
> 
> He was lucky the card deck was in order. One of my first jobs was to read
> in old, horrible FORTRAN IV from punch card, then check it against a
> listing the boss had and edit to match... This was the same place we wrote

A dropped card deck was disaster and how many folks filled in columns 73 to 80
with an index? Not very many. :-(

> malloc for FORTRAN and passed around all kinds of crazy data structures
> that offset into the malloc arena so it would run on both the pdp-11 and
> the vax...

Ah yes the LARGE array with indexes used as pointers trick. *ugh* I remember.

I also remember the implementation of Fortran on the university computer
one could abuse the assigned goto and have it execute your own assembler
code on the fly.  ;)

> 
> Warner
> 

Diane
-- 
- d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Richard Pope via cctalk 

Diane,
Very nicely done. I read the whole thing.
GOD Bless and Thanks,
rich!

On 3/29/2020 3:59 PM, Diane Bruce via cctech wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:

Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more time on 
our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed the restoration of a 
PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New Zealand.  You can view the 
restoration story and find appropriate resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 


While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a 
Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list.  
I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old 
machine with 4K of memory.

I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)


--//
bren...@mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883





73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Marc Howard via cctalk 
Nigel,

I first learned assembly on a straight-8.  Also learned about repair with
the same machine (1974).

As for fun time wasters back then there was a DECUS paper tape that could
compute n! up to 200! exactly.  I remember that I could start it before
lunch, come back, and then about 15 minutes later it would start printing
all the digits for 200!.

Enjoy your 8,

Marc Howard


On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 2:59 PM Nigel Johnson via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000
> Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11
> but the card reader was on the PDP-8.
>
> The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief
> Engineer and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape,
> and fed it directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled
> by hitting the stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was
> faster than the reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the
> floor, which we carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed
> to not crash with the constant start/stop.
>
> Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled
> perfectly on the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham
> repeater controller!
>
> The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year
> and we often have fun talking about the good old days!
>
> cheers,
>
> Nigel Johnson
>
>
> On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech
> wrote:
> >> Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending
> more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed
> the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in
> New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate
> resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 
> >>
> >> While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write
> (say) a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to
> me off list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for
> this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
> > I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also
> learned
> > how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a
> file
> > instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)
> >
> >> --//
> >> bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> >> +64 21 881 883
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > 73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
>
>
>
> --
> Nigel Johnson
> MSc., MIEEE
> VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
>
> Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
>
>
> You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591
>
> If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
>
> This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route
> from me to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by
> any number of system administrators along the way.
> Nigel Johnson 
>
>
> Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print
> this message
>
>
>
>

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Warner Losh via cctalk 
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020, 5:10 PM Diane Bruce via cctalk 
wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:59:42PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> > Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000
> > Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11 but
> > the card reader was on the PDP-8.
>
> Funny how the kids don't realise Fortran was the 'C' language at one time.
> Editors, linker, macro preprocessors a lot of it was done in Fortran. ;)
>

He was lucky the card deck was in order. One of my first jobs was to read
in old, horrible FORTRAN IV from punch card, then check it against a
listing the boss had and edit to match... This was the same place we wrote
malloc for FORTRAN and passed around all kinds of crazy data structures
that offset into the malloc arena so it would run on both the pdp-11 and
the vax...

Warner

>
> > The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief Engineer
> > and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape, and fed it
> > directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled by hitting
> the
> > stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was faster than the
> > reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the floor, which we
> > carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed to not crash
> with
> > the constant start/stop.
>
> heh I can only imagine.
>
> >
> > Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled
> perfectly on
> > the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham repeater controller!
>
> Cool!
>
> >
> > The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year
> and
> > we often have fun talking about the good old days!
>
> Nice!
>
>
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > Nigel Johnson
> >
> >
> > On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
> > > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech
> wrote:
> > > > Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and
> spending more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just
> completed the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only
> one in New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find
> appropriate resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 
> > > >
> > > > While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write
> (say) a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to
> me off list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for
> this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
> > > I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also
> learned
> > > how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a
> file
> > > instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)
> > >
> > > > --//
> > > > bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> > > > +64 21 881 883
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > 73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
> >
> >
> > --
> > Nigel Johnson
> > MSc., MIEEE
> > VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
> >
> > Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
> >
> >
> > You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591
> >
> > If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again
> yesterday
> >
> > This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route
> from me to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by
> any number of system administrators along the way.
> >Nigel Johnson 
> >
> > Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to
> print this message
> >
> >
>
> --
> - d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db
>

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Randy Dawson via cctalk 
I can't be the only one who would like to see the FORTRAN source of some of 
those editors, linkers, macro processors.

As a medical electronics guy, I had to deal with a fortran monster of a 
database engine, manman.

It was legacy in with the FDA, but woa, what a suck piece of crap it is.

Hi Diane.  Still Cadence here, signal integrity work for space


From: cctalk  on behalf of Diane Bruce via 
cctalk 
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2020 4:09 PM
To: Nigel Johnson ; General Discussion: On-Topic and 
Off-Topic Posts 
Subject: Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:59:42PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000
> Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11 but
> the card reader was on the PDP-8.

Funny how the kids don't realise Fortran was the 'C' language at one time.
Editors, linker, macro preprocessors a lot of it was done in Fortran. ;)

>
> The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief Engineer
> and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape, and fed it
> directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled by hitting the
> stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was faster than the
> reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the floor, which we
> carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed to not crash with
> the constant start/stop.

heh I can only imagine.

>
> Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled perfectly on
> the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham repeater controller!

Cool!

>
> The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year and
> we often have fun talking about the good old days!

Nice!


>
> cheers,
>
> Nigel Johnson
>
>
> On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:
> > > Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending 
> > > more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed 
> > > the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in 
> > > New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate 
> > > resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz <https://pdp-8.nz/>
> > >
> > > While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) 
> > > a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me 
> > > off list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for 
> > > this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
> > I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
> > how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
> > instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)
> >
> > > --//
> > > bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> > > +64 21 881 883
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > 73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
>
>
> --
> Nigel Johnson
> MSc., MIEEE
> VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
>
> Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
>
>
> You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591
>
> If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
>
> This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from 
> me to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any 
> number of system administrators along the way.
>Nigel Johnson 
>
> Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print 
> this message
>
>

--
- d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Diane Bruce via cctalk 
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:59:42PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000
> Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11 but
> the card reader was on the PDP-8.

Funny how the kids don't realise Fortran was the 'C' language at one time.
Editors, linker, macro preprocessors a lot of it was done in Fortran. ;)

> 
> The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief Engineer
> and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape, and fed it
> directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled by hitting the
> stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was faster than the
> reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the floor, which we
> carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed to not crash with
> the constant start/stop.

heh I can only imagine.

> 
> Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled perfectly on
> the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham repeater controller!

Cool!

> 
> The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year and
> we often have fun talking about the good old days!

Nice!


> 
> cheers,
> 
> Nigel Johnson
> 
> 
> On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:
> > > Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending 
> > > more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed 
> > > the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in 
> > > New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate 
> > > resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 
> > > 
> > > While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) 
> > > a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me 
> > > off list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for 
> > > this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
> > I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
> > how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
> > instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)
> > 
> > > --//
> > > bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> > > +64 21 881 883
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
> 
> 
> -- 
> Nigel Johnson
> MSc., MIEEE
> VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
> 
> Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
> 
> 
> You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591
> 
> If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
> 
> This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from 
> me to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any 
> number of system administrators along the way.
>Nigel Johnson 
> 
> Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print 
> this message
> 
> 

-- 
- d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Nigel Johnson via cctalk 
Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000 
Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11 
but the card reader was on the PDP-8.


The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief 
Engineer and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape, 
and fed it directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled 
by hitting the stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was 
faster than the reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the 
floor, which we carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed 
to not crash with the constant start/stop.


Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled 
perfectly on the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham 
repeater controller!


The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year 
and we often have fun talking about the good old days!


cheers,

Nigel Johnson


On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:

Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more time on 
our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed the restoration of a 
PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New Zealand.  You can view the 
restoration story and find appropriate resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz 


While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a 
Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list.  
I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old 
machine with 4K of memory.

I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)


--//
bren...@mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883





73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)


 


--
Nigel Johnson
MSc., MIEEE
VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU

Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!


You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591

If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday

This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from me 
to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any number 
of system administrators along the way.
   Nigel Johnson 


Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print this message

PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Brendan McNeill via cctalk 
Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more 
time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed the 
restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New 
Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate resources 
here:  https://pdp-8.nz    

While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a 
Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list.  
I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old 
machine with 4K of memory.

--//
bren...@mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883

Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

2020-03-29 Thread Diane Bruce via cctalk 
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:
> Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more 
> time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed the 
> restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New 
> Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate resources 
> here:  https://pdp-8.nz    
> 
> While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a 
> Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off 
> list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this 
> wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.

I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)

> --//
> bren...@mcneill.co.nz
> +64 21 881 883
> 
> 
> 
> 

73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
-- 
- d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db