Re: RALGOL - A PDP8 ALGOL 60
Thanks for that link Charles and also thanks to Mark Kahrs for obituary on Roger Abbott. I started out on PDP-8 in 1968 which was the first time I had hands on access to a computer at UofCalgary. Would have loved to have had access to one when I did my MSc in neurophysiology in 1975 but obviously Oxford in 1972 had much better funding than Uof0 (University of Ottawa). Roger Abbott had a PDP-8 to acquire data from his insect muscle preparations and noticed that 1972 Journal of Physiology papers no longer behind a paywall when was looking what type of research he was doing. Uof0 was still using rotating smoked drum cylinders to record muscle twitches in some labs and the lab I was in had a high speed oscilloscope camera which one could use to shoot long strips of neuron spike activigy from a mouse cerebellar culture. A technician was available to measure the time intervals between spikes and that's how I was supposed to do my project to look for connections between simultaneously recorded cells in the cultures. My request for a computer was denied and I was given $200 to build an electronic device to time the spikes and send them to the Uof0 360 mainframe where my FORTRAN code generated cross-correlograms and other neat graphs on a line printer http://drgimbarzevsky.com/Computers/UofOTerminal/TerminalCircuitBoards1.html Despite comments that I seemed to be working on a graduate degree in electrical engineering rather than neurophysiology, what I learned doing large scale TTL state-machine devices was invaluable when I moved to Vancouver and worked at UBC Pharmacology where lab computers were the norm and did my last bit of PDP-8 programming on a PDP-12 to speed up gathering data from a mouse diaphragm preparation which was easily done by rewriting the whole thing in PDP-8 and Link-8 assembler. The researcher whose machine it was used FOCAL for everything which made for horrendously slow data analysis. That done, I finally got to play on what I still view as one of the best computers ever made, the PDP-11. Fortunately at UBC there were a lot of researchers who mixed writing code and building their own hardware with doing their electrophysiologic experiments. That was a neat time when dicussions we'd have were whether a particular bit of data acquisition was to be done with optimized assembler code vs building our own dedicated board which would plug into Unibus on 11/34. I liked the latter approach but it was easier to debug PDP-11 ASM than chasing down bugs on a custom interface board having to spend time writing custom diagnostics to see if things were really working as designed. Have an old Algol book around from early 1970's and remember reading it then but liked FORTRAN more but most of my code was FORTRAN calling PDP-11 ASM functions on a PDP-11. All my PDP-8 programs from early 1970's are on paper tape and have never been transferred to other media. Algol 60 looks interesting enough to use given compact code and neat architecture that will try running it on PDP-8 simulator someday. Problem with simulators is that almost all of PDP-8 and PDP-11 code I wrote was to interface to A/D's and D/A's or parallel ports to run experiments. Once got a C64, wrote graphing code in C64 Basic and photographed my TV which was way faster than writing code in PDP-11 ASM to display graphs and data on oscilloscope screen from D/A's. Got into VB once PC's were cheaper than Macs and notice there's a lot of VB5 and VB6 code on Roger Abbott's final code. VB6 is something I still use and once I get my VB6 code running under Wine, windoze will be a distant memory. Was neat to see where other physiologists had been in early 1970's where it seemed I spend more time building the tools I needed to get the data I wanted than to do the experiments. Boris Gimbarzevsky I played around with this algol 60 compiler for the PDP8 and succeeded in getting it to run. I have not found any other notes, so I thought that I would give a leg up to the next one that wants to work on it. -chuck This ALGOL 60 implementation for the PDP8 was written by Roger H. Abbott while he was at Oxford. The bits are here: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/russ.ucs.indiana.edu/Langs/Algol/ A copy of the manual here: https://archive.org/details/hack42_ROG_ALGOL_Compiler A paper here: http://pdp8.de/download/RogAlgol.pdf Mr. Abbotts business is here: http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/index.html The website or the host is a bit sketchy. The business is probably defunct. I found a link that said Mr. Abbott died in the early 2000. The system is two parts: the compiler and the runtime. This is all assuming the use of OS/8. To create the SV file for the compiler: .R ABSLDR *INTRUN.BN,ALGCOM.BN,COMOS8.BN$ .SAVE SYS:ALGCOM.SV .R ALGCOM.SV To create the SV file for the runtime system/loader: .R ABSLDR *FPP.BN,ALGRUN.BN,RUNOS8.BN .SAVE SYS:RALGOL
RALGOL - A PDP8 ALGOL 60
I played around with this algol 60 compiler for the PDP8 and succeeded in getting it to run. I have not found any other notes, so I thought that I would give a leg up to the next one that wants to work on it. -chuck This ALGOL 60 implementation for the PDP8 was written by Roger H. Abbott while he was at Oxford. The bits are here: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/russ.ucs.indiana.edu/Langs/Algol/ A copy of the manual here: https://archive.org/details/hack42_ROG_ALGOL_Compiler A paper here: http://pdp8.de/download/RogAlgol.pdf Mr. Abbotts business is here: http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/index.html The website or the host is a bit sketchy. The business is probably defunct. I found a link that said Mr. Abbott died in the early 2000. The system is two parts: the compiler and the runtime. This is all assuming the use of OS/8. To create the SV file for the compiler: .R ABSLDR *INTRUN.BN,ALGCOM.BN,COMOS8.BN$ .SAVE SYS:ALGCOM.SV .R ALGCOM.SV To create the SV file for the runtime system/loader: .R ABSLDR *FPP.BN,ALGRUN.BN,RUNOS8.BN .SAVE SYS:RALGOL.SV .R RALGOL.SV There are other options for the FPP.BN for other hardware possibilities. FPEAE8.BN for the classic pdp8 EAE and FPPEAE.BN for the PDP8/e EAE. This needs some testings. Running an ALGOL program: .TYPE FLOAT.AL 'BEGIN' 'REAL' A,B; TEXT(1,"HELLO WORLD!"); SKIP(1); A := 3.141592; B := COS(A); TEXT(1,"A = "); RWRITE(1,A); SKIP(1); TEXT(1,"B = COS(A) = "); RWRITE(1,B); 'END' $ .R ALGCOM ROGALGOL MK40 OUT
Re: PDP8 ALGOL
From: Michael Thompson via cctalk: Tuesday, December 05, 2017 4:59 PM The paper tape images are here: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/set3/ The RICM also has an original set of the DECUS 8-213 ALGOL paper tapes, but they are different from the ones on Bitsavers. I need to make images of these tapes. When you do, I can perhaps help with the differences, if they are not too major. Students at the UMN are trying to get ALGOL to run on their PDP-12 so they can run some benchmarking software. We haven't been able to get DECUS 8-213 ALGOL working. Any help would be appreciated. I got to the "OPT-" prompt, but after I enter "R", the simulation hangs, repeatedly taking an un-serviced interrupt. It would be helpful to know which of the seven images are re-initialization or patches, and which are part of the compiler and which the runtime. Vince
Re: PDP8 ALGOL
> > From: Charles Dickman > Subject: PDP8 ALGOL > > I have been looking at the available software for the PDP8, > particularly languages. I see there was an ALGOL. The source is > archived on Bitsavers and dbit. > > There is some information here: > http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/ > > Has anyone played with this before? Is there any additional > information on how to use it? > > -chuck > I have looked at the 4k ALGOL described here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/pdp8/8-213_4K_ALGOL.pdf The paper tape images are here: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/set3/ The RICM also has an original set of the DECUS 8-213 ALGOL paper tapes, but they are different from the ones on Bitsavers. I need to make images of these tapes. Students at the UMN are trying to get ALGOL to run on their PDP-12 so they can run some benchmarking software. We haven't been able to get DECUS 8-213 ALGOL working. Any help would be appreciated. -- Michael Thompson
PDP8 ALGOL
I have been looking at the available software for the PDP8, particularly languages. I see there was an ALGOL. The source is archived on Bitsavers and dbit. There is some information here: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/ Has anyone played with this before? Is there any additional information on how to use it? -chuck