Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff

> Does anyone know more about this PDP-6? Did it ever run ITS, like its
> PDP-10 successor?

I don't know about the software run on the two PDP-6's - by the time I
arrived at MIT, they were both powered off and never, as far as I know, ever
ran again. I would _assume_ that it ran ITS.

I don't recall if the physical remains stayed until the KA's were
de-commissioned, or of they were removed prior to that - I suspect they
stayed, since they were mixed in with the KA's - in the case of AI at least,
wired in together - but don't remember exactly. I don't recall if the I/O bus
was shared between the two CPUs on the DM machines, the way it was on the AI
KA and PDP-6.

The DM PDP-6 was part of the DM KA 'assembly' - DM was in two rows (front and
back) to the right of the right-hand door from the lobby into the machine
room. IIRC, the PDP-6 was in the front row, to the right? of the KA CPU. (The
back row contained memory boxes - a mix of different DEC memories. I don't
recall where the tape and disk controllers were - or the disk drives. I seem
to vaguely recall a few boxes to the left of the KA CPU? Maybe there are some
pictures of the MAC machine room that will show it.)

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> I don't know about the software run on the two PDP-6's - by the time I
> arrived at MIT, they were both powered off and never, as far as I
> know, ever ran again. I would _assume_ that it ran ITS.

Yet it's very rare to see references to it, and never (as far as I know)
in the context of ITS.

Pure speculation, but I suppose that since the DynaMod group got their
10 shortly after the 6, they may have focused on getting the 10 up and
running.  Maybe they didn't bother to make the 6 run in timesharing mode.

> The DM PDP-6 was part of the DM KA 'assembly' - DM was in two rows
> (front and back) to the right of the right-hand door from the lobby
> into the machine room. IIRC, the PDP-6 was in the front row, to the
> right? of the KA CPU.

Thank you very much!  It great to have such a detailed description of
the DM PDP-6.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Phil Budne]

I never knew there had been two '6s in Tech Square.  I had thought AI
and LNS (Labratory for Nuclear Science) were the only PDP-6s at MIT...

phil

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> It great to have such a detailed description of the DM PDP-6.

I hope you're not being serious! There was almost no detail there. But...

> I suppose that since the DynaMod group got their 10 shortly after the 6,
> they may have focused on getting the 10 up and running.  Maybe they
> didn't bother to make the 6 run in timesharing mode.

I think all the DM people are still around - why not ask one of them for more?

Probably best to start with Al Vezza, the group leader; I don't have a
guaranteed e-mail for him, and a quick Google didn't show a page for him
anywhere, but the e-mail address on his WWW resignation note page is the same
as the one on his MIT information entry, so maybe it still works.

Jack Haverty was in the group for a while early on, too:

  http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2012-May/002288.html

Another possibility is P. Dave Lebling (PDL). Or Tim Anderson (TAA) if you
can't get ahold of him.

  Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> I hope you're not being serious! There was almost no detail there.

Oh, it was much more detailed than anything else I've read before!

I wonder how the AI PDP-6 was used back in the day.  I suppose ITS
development moved to the KA10 using the virtual memory pager, leaving
the 6 behind.  But it was still attached as a slave CPU, right?

> I think all the DM people are still around - why not ask one of them
> for more?

I will.  TAA has already posted some information about Muddle in our
GitHub project.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff

> I wonder how the AI PDP-6 was used back in the day.  I suppose ITS
> development moved to the KA10 using the virtual memory pager, leaving
> the 6 behind.  But it was still attached as a slave CPU, right?

Yes. There is a document, "February 1972 ITS Status Report", AIM-238, which is
from a point in time when both CPUs were in operation as a dual-CPU system,
with paging on the KA10, and it contains a considerable amount of technical
detail. It is available here:

  https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6194

as a scan, and someone has recently OCR'd it, here:

  http://its.victor.se/wiki/aim-238

The section you probably find most interesting is "Dual Processors" (pg. 29),
which describes the unified, shared I/O bus.

The earlier "ITS 1.5 Status Manual" might also be interesting; it covers a
point in time when I think they only had a PDP-6.


>> I think all the DM people are still around - why not ask one of them
>> for more?

> I will.

I'd be interested to hear anything about the DM PDP-6 which you find out.

Ideally it would be optimal to load any information into the Computer History
Wiki, but alas, creation of new accounts on that seems to be wedged at the
moment; I'm working on trying to get that solved.

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:

> > I wonder how the AI PDP-6 was used back in the day.  I suppose
> > ITS development moved to the KA10 using the virtual memory
> > pager, leaving the 6 behind.  But it was still attached as a
> > slave CPU, right?
>
> Yes. There is a document, "February 1972 ITS Status Report", AIM-238,
> which is from a point in time when both CPUs were in operation as a
> dual-CPU system, with paging on the KA10, and it contains a
> considerable amount of technical detail.

Thank you!  Reading that, and the system documentation, makes it quite
clear.

> The earlier "ITS 1.5 Status Manual" might also be interesting; it
> covers a point in time when I think they only had a PDP-6.

It mentions the sparkling new PDP-10, but it seems the PDP-6 was the
primary CPU at the time.

> I'd be interested to hear anything about the DM PDP-6 which you find
> out.

Most of my notes end up in GitHub, but I'll try to keep you in the loop.

Early Project MAC Progress Reports mention both the AI and the DM system
as PDP-6/10 machines.  I suppose it's likely they both used the same
master/slave configuration.  However, there's one thing I found that
may indicate that the DM machine went in an other direction.

Alan Bawdens wrote a draft paper about ITS (maybe what later become the
PCLSRing paper) that says:

> Sequence of machines:
> AI pdp6
> DM pdp6
> AI ka10 (first as attached processor; role switch)
> DM ka10 (pdp6 flushed)
> ML ka10 (first non-special-I/O-oriented system)
> MX kl10 (expand ML group to high performance)
> AI ks10 (begin renaissance)

This describes the progression of machines used in ITS development.  Of
interest here is the "pdp6 flushed" note.  The obvious interpretation is
that the DM group stopped using the PDP-6 when they got their KA10.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> I suppose it's likely they both used the same master/slave
> configuration.  However, there's one thing I found that may indicate
> that the DM machine went in an other direction.

I think the latter may be true, I have this vague sense that the two DM
machines were never interonnected the way the AI pair were.

For one, the DM people didn't have a bunch of oddball hardware connected to
their main machine, the way the AI people did. (There was a special Evans+
Sutherland display processor, but that's about it. The ITS sources will
probably have a complete list, until the DM configuration section.) They also
didn't have as deep a bench of hardware people.

Also, I remember reading somewhere (it was decades ago, sorry, don't remember
the source) that AI's paging box was subtly different from the one on DM; the
AI one could IIRC, address 4 'moby's (a full PDP-10 address spare), and two (I
think? I'm pretty sure all the KA's had two moby's of main memory) were used
for the Fabritek 2-moby memory, one was for the PDP-6 (so the KA could see
into it) and one was for the PDP-11's. (AI had a number of PDP-11's attached
to it - one to drive the Xerox Graphic Printer, one to drive the Knight TV
system, and I think maybe one more, the so-called I/O -11 - or was that on MC,
which had two -11's - the standard KL front console -11, and I think one more?
I'm can't quite remember, although I'm pretty sure neither DM or ML had any
-11's. Anyway, on AI, the KA could see into the memory of its PDP-11's. If you
look at the ITS sources this probably is all laid out there.)

So probably the DM -6 and -10 were two separate machines.


> MX kl10 (expand ML group to high performance)

Actually, this machine was named MC when it first arrived, and kept that name
until its 'replacement', a KS, arrived, _many_ years later. (They didn't want
to give the new machine a new name, since there were a ton of mailing lists on
'MC', and it was easier to swap the machine names.) It was renamed 'MX' at
that point. It was called 'MC' since it was bought for the Macsyma Consortium
(part of LCS, not sure if it was part of the ML group, it might have been).

  Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[David Bridgham]

On 12/17/2016 08:14 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> I'm can't quite remember, although I'm pretty sure neither DM or ML had any
> -11's.

I thought I'd heard that the 10s were connected to the Chaosnet through
11s running MINITS.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> I remember reading somewhere (it was decades ago, sorry, don't remember
> the source) that AI's paging box was subtly different from the one on
> DM; the AI one could IIRC, address 4 'moby's (a full PDP-10 address
> spare), and two (I think? I'm pretty sure all the KA's had two moby's
> of main memory) were used for the Fabritek 2-moby memory, one was for
> the PDP-6 (so the KA could see into it) and one was for the PDP-11's.

I wasn't able to track down the source of that, but reading ITS sources did
confirm (see SYSTEM;CONFIF >) that the AI paging box had one more bit of
output address than the ones on DM and ML. And the PDP-6 memory appeared at
0300.

I now recall that later in the AI KA's life, the Fabritek ('Moby') memory got
flaky, and it was replaced with a kludge (done by HIC, according to the ITS
source) which used a number of LISPM memory cards.

> (AI had a number of PDP-11's attached to it - one to drive the Xerox
> Graphic Printer, one to drive the Knight TV system, and I think maybe
> one more, the so-called I/O -11 - or was that on MC, which had two
> -11's - the standard KL front console -11, and I think one more?

So the I/O-11 code (see SYSTEM;IOELEV >) ran on 3 PDP-11's; two on MC (one
was the front console, interfaced through a DTE20, and one an I/O processor
interfaced through a DL10 - this latter one was used to hook up to the CHAOS
network).

The other machine running this code was the so-called "CHAOS-Ether-Gateway"
machine on AI (AI had two other -11's, as above). I had this vague memory that
that machine was there before it was hooked up to either the CHAOS net, or the
(3 Mbit) Ethernet, and it was doign something else, previously - but maybe not
- maybe it was added to give the AI KA access to the CHAOS network?


> From: David Bridgham dab at froghouse.org 

> I thought I'd heard that the 10s were connected to the Chaosnet through
> 11s running MINITS.

That would have required building a 10-11 interface for them.. :-)

But if you look in SYSTEM;CONFIF > you can find this:

  IFE MCOND MLKA,[
  ..
  DEFOPT CH10P==1   ;CHAOS NET VIA PDP-10 I/O BUS, NOT FRONT-END

and then in SYSTEM;CHAOS >

  SUBTTL CH-10 HARDWARE DEFINITIONS
  IFN CH10P,[
  CHX==470  ;I/O DEVICE NUMBER
  ;CONI/CONO BITS

So there were PDP-10 I/O bus CHAOS network interfaces. (Although I have
absolutely no, zero, memory of them! :-)

   Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[John Labovitz]

I have nothing particularly useful to add to the history here, but just wanted 
to say how much I appreciate hearing about the MIT ITS machines.

Around 1982, I was a 16-year old hacker living in suburban Maryland, running a 
CP/M BBS. I came across a text file titled something like ‘interesting phone 
numbers.’ One of those numbers I tried dialing up to was a local DOD TAC, which 
then led me to connect (over NCP) to MIT-MC. Playing around at the login 
prompt, I got a message like ‘That user doesn’t exist; would you like an 
account?’… and of course said yes! I was HNIJ@MIT-MC, if I recall. A little 
later, RMS sponsored me (without ever meeting or knowing me) as 
rms.g.hnij@mit-ai. I also used mit-ccc, which was v6 Unix, for my first foray 
into both Unix and Usenet.

Anyway, it’s really fun to read about these machines that I spent so much time 
with and learned so much from, yet were so abstract in their existence to me. 
;-)

—John

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> I don't know about the software run on the two PDP-6's - by the time
>> I arrived at MIT, they were both powered off and never, as far as I
>> know, ever ran again. I would _assume_ that it ran ITS.
> Pure speculation, but I suppose that since the DynaMod group got their
> 10 shortly after the 6, they may have focused on getting the 10 up and
> running.  Maybe they didn't bother to make the 6 run in timesharing mode.

I found this text:

Full ITS first ran on the AI PDP6, and was ported to the DM PDP6.
Later, PDP10s became available, and the labs acquired some of the
earliest ones -- the AI-KA10 (AI Lab's machine), the ML KA-10 (used
by the MathLab, Theory of Computation, Automatic Programming, and
certain other LCS gruops), and the DMS KA-10 (Dynamic Modeling
systems, also used by certain other LCS groups); these replaced the
PDP-6s, which were slowly phased out.

So it seems the DM PDP-6 indeed ran ITS, at least for a while.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

AI memo 161A: ITS 1.5 Reference Manual, July 1969:
> An .OPEN on device USR with a second file name of "PDP10" may be made,
> in all the modes allowed for regular procedures, to access the memory
> of the PDP-10.

So at this time, the AI PDP-6 was still the primary CPU.

AI memo 238: ITS Status Report, April 1972:
> Actually the Project MAC Dynamic Modelling Group uses a non-paged
> early offshoot of ITS on their PDP-10.

So it seems DM kept using the non-paged version of ITS, probably like
what their PDP-6 did.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> AI memo 238: ITS Status Report, April 1972:
>> Actually the Project MAC Dynamic Modelling Group uses a non-paged
>> early offshoot of ITS on their PDP-10.

> So it seems DM kept using the non-paged version of ITS, probably like
> what their PDP-6 did.

No, their KA10 had a paging box, made by System Concepts - probably
programmatically similar to the ones on the other two KA's (looking at the ITS
source would probably verify that).

Note that in addition to the paging box, there were moderately extensive mods
to the KA10 itself (on all three machines) to add a variety of instructions
(to do things like, IIRC, flush the paging entry cache). Did the original KA10
have XCT too? And then there were things like the MAR.

Now, how soon after their KA10 arrived it had the paging box, etc, added I
have no idea - it sounds like they ran it without paging for a while.

 Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Johnny Eriksson]

> Did the original KA10 have XCT too?

XCT is present in all PDP-10 processors.  From the KI10 and onwards it
includes PXCT, since these have the concept of a previous context...

Given a pager for the KA10 PXCT would make sense there.

>  Noel

--Johnny

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Johnny Eriksson

> From the KI10 and onwards it includes PXCT, since these have the
> concept of a previous context...
> Given a pager for the KA10 PXCT would make sense there.

It turns out the KA ITS machines have an instruction that does roughly the
same thing, but it's different. Here's the relevant code fragment from
SYSTEM;ITS >:

  IFN KA10P,[

  SUBTTL STUFF PECULIAR TO KA-10 PROCESSOR

  ;;;PAGING BOX INSTRUCTIONS

  LPM=102000,,  ;LOAD PG MEM STATE VECTOR DONT CLR ASSOC MEM
  LPMR= LPM 2,  ;CLEAR ASSOC MEM AND LOAD
  SPM= LPM 1,   ;STORE PG MEM STATE VECTOR
  LPMRI=LPM 6,  ;LOAD PM, CLEAR ASSOC REG, AND CAUSE INTERRUPT
  EXPGNG==4 .SEE UPQUAN ;4 TO TURN ON EXEC PAGING
  XCTR=103000,, ;EXECUTE INSTRUCTION WITH MAPPING CONTROLLED BY AC FIELD
;VIOLATION CAUSES USER MEM PROTECT INTERRUPT UNLESS INHIBITED
;VIOLATION ALSO SKIPS BUT THIS IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE UNLESS
;INTERRUPT IS INHIBITED SINCE PC WILL BE RESET FROM OPC
  XCTRI= XCTR 4,;XCTR WITH PAGE FAULT INHIBITED (SKIPS ON FAULT)
; AC FIELD VALUES FOR XCTR AND XCTRI
XR==1   ;MAP READ MAIN OPERAND OF SIMPLE INSTRUCTION (MOVE, 
SKIPL, HLL)
XW==2   ;MAP WRITE MAIN OPERAND OF SIMPLE INSTRUCTION (MOVEM)
XRW==3  ;MAP READ/WRITE OPERAND OF SIMPLE INSTRUCTION (E.G. 
IORM)
XBYTE==3;MAP BYTE DATA AND BYTE POINTER (ILDB, IDPB)
XBR==1  ;MAP BLT READ
XBW==2  ;MAP BLT WRITE
XBRW==3 ;MAP BOTH OPERANDS OF BLT
;KA10 PAGING BOX GOES BY WHETHER IT'S A READ OR WRITE (OR RW) 
CYCLE
;KL10 PAGING BOX WORKS DIFFERENTLY (SEE BELOW)
;DO NOT USE MULTI-OPERAND INSTRUCTIONS (DMOVE, PUSH, ETC.) WITH 
XCTR

The KL and KS are both different (although both use XCTR and XCTRI); the KL
stuff is later down in that file; the special KS instructions are in
KSHACK;KSDEFS > if anyone wants to look at them.

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Adrian Graham]

On 23/12/2016 00:00, "Noel Chiappa"  wrote:

>> From: Johnny Eriksson
> 
>> From the KI10 and onwards it includes PXCT, since these have the
>> concept of a previous context...
>> Given a pager for the KA10 PXCT would make sense there.
> 
> It turns out the KA ITS machines have an instruction that does roughly the
> same thing, but it's different. Here's the relevant code fragment from
> SYSTEM;ITS >:
> 
>   IFN KA10P,[
> 
>   SUBTTL STUFF PECULIAR TO KA-10 PROCESSOR



I love stuff like this and I'm quite miffed that I was born 10 years too
late to see it all as it grew. Of course I'm grateful for what I HAVE seen
over time, but these early years are fascinating to me.

-- 
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Adrian Graham

> I was born 10 years too late to see it all as it grew. ... these early
> years are fascinating to me.

Well, you _can_ still experience ITS! It runs under a number of PDP-10
simulators (and there used to be an 'open-access' ITS system on the 'net at
its.svensson.org, but alas it doesn't seem to be up any more - although in a
fit of fore-sightedness, I downloaded the source to the HTTP server he wrote
while it was still up).

But you can still download one of the emulators that supports the special ITS
instructions on the PDP-10, KLH's KLH10, and SIMH; instructions, files, etc
here for KLH10:

  http://klh10.trailing-edge.com/

and SIMH:

  https://www.cosmic.com/u/mirian/its/

which give step-by-stop on how to get ITS running.

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Adrian Graham  writes:
> I love stuff like this and I'm quite miffed that I was born 10 years
> too late to see it all as it grew. Of course I'm grateful for what I
> HAVE seen over time, but these early years are fascinating to me.

It's not too late to grow it some moore!

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Well, you _can_ still experience ITS! It runs under a number of PDP-10
> simulators (and there used to be an 'open-access' ITS system on the
> 'net at its.svensson.org, but alas it doesn't seem to be up any more

I have it from the Swedish owner that it's still running, although not
connected to the internet.

There's also another system called UP that's running in Sweden.  (What
is it with Swedes and ITS?!?)

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Ian S. King]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 9:42 AM, Lars Brinkhoff  wrote:

> Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > Well, you _can_ still experience ITS! It runs under a number of PDP-10
> > simulators (and there used to be an 'open-access' ITS system on the
> > 'net at its.svensson.org, but alas it doesn't seem to be up any more
>
> I have it from the Swedish owner that it's still running, although not
> connected to the internet.
>
> There's also another system called UP that's running in Sweden.  (What
> is it with Swedes and ITS?!?)
>

At one point, Rich Alderson at LCM had ITS running on a KS-10 (from MIT!),
but I don't know what the current status might be.

-- 
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School 
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical
Narrative Through a Design Lens

Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal 
Value Sensitive Design Research Lab 

University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Ian S. King wrote:
>> There's also another system called UP that's running in Sweden.
>> (What is it with Swedes and ITS?!?)
>
> At one point, Rich Alderson at LCM had ITS running on a KS-10 (from
> MIT!), but I don't know what the current status might be.

Right, that would be MIT-AI.  Of course it's only right and proper that
it should keep running ITS.

I have tried to keep track of all the ITS machines, and where they went.
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/181

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> I have tried to keep track of all the ITS machines, and where they went.
> https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/181

By the way, the Australian ITS called FU is a great mystery.  I only
found it mentioned in the ITS source code.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff  (What is it with Swedes and ITS?!?)

They're definitely seriously crazy. I myself attribute it to the weather. :-)

You probably already know this, but I doubt everyone does, but shortly after
MIT-MC (the KL ITS) was shut down, a bunch of (crazy - redundant, I know :-)
Swedes showed up at MIT with a shipping container (perhaps under the mistaken
impression that Cambridge was Lindisfarne ;-), and loaded the KL into it,
along with, IIRC, one of the KA ITS machines - possibly AI? They then shipped
the whole thing back to Sweden.

ISTR that they actually got the KL to work, but I don't know what the current
status of the whole works is. (Me, if I'd taken a KA, I would have taken a
second one for spares! The parts in that thing are _seriously_ obscure. :-)

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Swedes showed up at MIT with a shipping container (perhaps under the
> mistaken impression that Cambridge was Lindisfarne ;-), and loaded the
> KL into it, along with, IIRC, one of the KA ITS machines - possibly
> AI?

I have this on AI:

> the semi-original AI (that is, the KA-10 rather than the PDP-6) was
> flushed 3 years ago. the hardware was given to a bunch of hackers from
> Concourse (an MIT alternative undergrad program) -- after it walked
> across the street to Bldg. 20, the KA still ran, but had no memory,
> since its latest memory incarnation was all modified LispM Mem boards,
> which were given to needy Lispms when the Lab flushed the machine. i
> think the Concourse hackers have since had access to more of these Mem
> boards, but they have not (alas!) managed to bring the KA up in
> full-fledged fashion.

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff

> I have this on AI:

>> the semi-original AI (that is, the KA-10 rather than the PDP-6) was
>> .. was given to a bunch of hackers from Concourse

Oh, right, now that you mention it, I very vaguely recall this.

I'm not sure why I thought they had taken a KA too - I think I may have been
confused by this email:

  Date: Fri, 16 Sep 88 00:16:04 EDT
  From: Peter Lothberg 
  Subject: The "crack team", is dissasembling MX, for it's trip to Sweden
  To: info-...@ai.ai.mit.edu

  The crack team has begun to work;
  ...
  (As the system will not fill the container more than 40% or so, we vold like
  donations of other stuff, like Lisp-machines, AAA terminals, a IMP,
  Conection machines, retired 2060's etc, (I'm not joking...))

which does talk about taking other stuff. But I have this persistent memory
that they took a KA - maybe I should try and get ahold of Peter and see? There
is a later email:

  Date: 11-Nov-88  0:39:51 +0100
  From: Peter_Lothberg 
  To: bug-...@ai.ai.mit.edu
  Subject: The container and MX

  Arrived to Stockholm and we unpacked the container on wendsday.

  The container has, sure shaked, the cardboard paper that we put between
  the cabinets, has bloue spots.

  But, everything was in the same position that we left it, so, hopfully it is
  not hurt by the transport, or the cold here.

  We have put the machine on several places, while we are waiting for our new
  machine room to be completed.

which makes it sound like they only got the KL? It's also possibly I am mixing
two memories, and remembering this:

  Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 23:02:14 EDT
  From: Alan Bawden 
  Subject: The operating system that wouldn't die! EE!
  To: info-...@ai.ai.mit.edu

  I thought I would take this opportunity to spread the word about something
  that I don't think has been very widely publicized. Some of you may recall
  that a while ago some fellows in Sweden contacted us about running ITS on
  various PDP-10's that they owned? Well, we mailed them a set of tapes for
  bringing up ITS on their 2020, which they were able to do without too much
  trouble .. That all happened over a year ago. Recently we learned that these
  guys have successfully -built- ITS paging hardware for their KA-10, and have
  ITS up and running there as well! Totally Amazing.

Pretty astonishing accomplishment, that.

   Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> their KA10 had a paging box, made by System[s] Concepts

Speaking of which, here's a photo of the display panel from it:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/SysConKAPanel.jpg

The meter didn't show up well in that, and it's too cool to miss, so here:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/SysConMeter.jpg

is a shot of it.

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[jim stephens]

On 12/24/2016 12:00 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 > their KA10 had a paging box, made by System[s] Concepts

Speaking of which, here's a photo of the display panel from it:

   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/SysConKAPanel.jpg

The meter didn't show up well in that, and it's too cool to miss, so here:

   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/SysConMeter.jpg

is a shot of it.

Noel


I was looking at some photos on FB posted by a friend and ran across 
Richard Greenblatt's oral history.  It has some mentions of what the 
PDP6's and PDP 10's were used for.


http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/oral-history/greenblatt.oral_history.2005.102634500/102657935-05-01-acc.pdf

I've not had time to read other than to think these are perhaps 
interesting if you guys didn't run across them.  I think they may have 
been used by the Project Mac folks.  Perhaps posting this over on the 
Multics thread might stir up some information if you want more.  A lot 
of the original guys are there.  I'd be glad to do it if no-one else on 
the thread here can do so.


Thanks for the interesting thread.

thanks
Jim

And Merry Christmas from LA

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Seth Morabito]

* On Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 03:00:01PM -0500, Noel Chiappa 
 wrote:
> The meter didn't show up well in that, and it's too cool to miss, so here:
> 
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/SysConMeter.jpg
> 
> is a shot of it.

That's brilliant. I love that meter, and now I kind of want to make
one of my very own.

>   Noel

-Seth
-- 
Seth Morabito
w...@loomcom.com

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Huw Davies]

> On 24 Dec 2016, at 06:00, Lars Brinkhoff  wrote:
> 
> Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> I have tried to keep track of all the ITS machines, and where they went.
>> https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/181
> 
> By the way, the Australian ITS called FU is a great mystery.  I only
> found it mentioned in the ITS source code.


Flinders University had a 36 bit system (I’m not sure if it was a KI or KL). I 
think they were running TOPS-20 on it. I see in the notes the they were running 
ITS on a KS - seems a rather odd thing to do as they’d invested a lot in there 
other system but perhaps it was a separate project outside of their main 
Computer Centre stuff. They had a very innovative medical degree program so 
perhaps this was associated with it?

I remember visiting once for a DECUS meeting - at that stage I was a student at 
La Trobe University and we had a KI-10 running TOPS-10. For that particular 
DECUS meeting I’d worked on comparing various ‘systems’ programming languages 
for ease of use and performance - the list included BCPL. BLISS-10, Simula-67, 
SAIL, MACRO-10 and Algol-60.

As some on the list know, this includes my favourite language which puts me at 
odds with many within Digital :-)

Huw Davies   | e-mail: huw.dav...@kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne| "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia| air, the sky would be painted green" 

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Huw Davies wrote:
>> By the way, the Australian ITS called FU is a great mystery.  I only
>> found it mentioned in the ITS source code.
>
> Flinders University had a 36 bit system (I’m not sure if it was a KI
> or KL). I think they were running TOPS-20 on it. I see in the notes
> the they were running ITS on a KS

Thank you very much.  Yes, it should have been a KS.  Do you have
anything else in your notes?

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Huw Davies]

> On 27 Dec 2016, at 20:12, Lars Brinkhoff  wrote:
> 
> Huw Davies wrote:
>> 
>> Flinders University had a 36 bit system (I’m not sure if it was a KI
>> or KL). I think they were running TOPS-20 on it. I see in the notes
>> the they were running ITS on a KS
> 
> Thank you very much.  Yes, it should have been a KS.  Do you have
> anything else in your notes?

Sorry, I don’t have anything more about Flinders. I’ll see if any of my 
contacts have any more details.

Huw Davies   | e-mail: huw.dav...@kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne| "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia| air, the sky would be painted green" 

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Pontus Pihlgren]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 03:56:09PM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> 
> ISTR that they actually got the KL to work, but I don't know what the current
> status of the whole works is. (Me, if I'd taken a KA, I would have taken a
> second one for spares! The parts in that thing are _seriously_ obscure. :-)
> 

I wouldn't be surprised if Peter have them all:

http://www.stupi.se/Bilder/pdp-10/

I've seen pictures from when he ran a three CPU KI10 setup!

/P

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
>Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> Swedes showed up at MIT with a shipping container (perhaps under the
>>> mistaken impression that Cambridge was Lindisfarne ;-), and loaded the
>>> KL into it, along with, IIRC, one of the KA ITS machines - possibly
>>> AI?
>>
>> I have this on AI:
>>
>>> the semi-original AI (that is, the KA-10 rather than the PDP-6) was
>>> flushed 3 years ago. the hardware was given to a bunch of hackers from
>>> Concourse
> Oh, right, now that you mention it, I very vaguely recall this.  I'm
> not sure why I thought they had taken a KA too - I think I may have
> been confused by this email:

Well, apparently Michael Patton asked GILL@AI:

> The Swedes are here picking up the KL-10.  They have a really big
> container and are interested in other things they might pick up.  They
> expressed some interest in the old MIT-AI KA-10 that you have in
> storage.  Can they have it?  Do you want to arrange some time for them
> to come get it, or can I just do it?

So maybe they got it after all!

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff

>> They expressed some interest in the old MIT-AI KA-10 that you have in
>> storage. Can they have it?

> So maybe they got it after all!

So perhaps my memory is not so bad after all! :-) Or maybe I was just 
remembering the discussion of them possibly getting it?

The real thing to do is check directly with those guys, rather than examining
tea entrails.


Howwever, if my memory is accurate, there perhaps might be, in those pictures:

  http://www.stupi.se/Bilder/pdp-10/

some evidence that they did get it: in the row above the bottom, the picture
on the left seems to me like it might be a picture of the HIC-memory for AI.

But now that I look close, maybe it's just a CADR? The picture to the right
of that one shows what looks like a CADR (they had those giant swing-out
monolithic bays on the front which are the CPU - the AI Lab build a cool
robot to check the wirewrap when they went into production on the CADRs), and
so that may be the front of the same rack as that one before (which would
therefore be of the back of that CADR).

Noel

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

RFC 89 from January 1971 is interesting:

> While awaiting the completion of an interim network control program
> (INCP) for the MIT MAC Dynamic Modeling/Computer Graphics PDP-6/10
> System (MITDG), we were able to achieve a number of 'historic moments
> in networking' worthy of some comment.

> Our experiments were run on the MITDG PDP-6/10 using what we have
> affectionately called our 'interim interim NCP' (IINCP).

> MITDG runs the MAC Incompatible Time-sharing System (ITS)

> At MITDG are a PDP-6/10 Time-sharing System

https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc89.txt

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Phil Budne]

> RFC 89 from January 1971 is interesting:

Yes, very!!

p

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

This document says MIT's Lab for Nuclear Sience was busy working with
their PDP-6 in early 1970.  So that could not be the used machine the
DynaMod group got in late 1969.  That is, if those dates are accurate.

http://cds.cern.ch/record/862545/files/233.pdf

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Phil Budne]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff 
>
> This document says MIT's Lab for Nuclear Sience was busy working with
> their PDP-6 in early 1970.  So that could not be the used machine the
> DynaMod group got in late 1969.  That is, if those dates are accurate.
>
> http://cds.cern.ch/record/862545/files/233.pdf

The report mentions rearranging the core boxes (to be able to
interleave the two pairs of faster memories) in January 1970.  The
conference date is March 1970, and it says they were "presently"
upgrading to a PDP-10, so maybe there were three on campus for a brief
time!

The table "Figure 4" is interesting: It shows they were able to do
scans 75.5%, 72.2% and 82.3% of the time in three months.

More time was lost due to Film Change, PEPR (Film scanner) trouble,
Magnetic Tape unit trouble (in increasing order) than due to the PDP-6
CPU; They must have gotten a GOOD one!!

I've converted my notes at http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/pdp6-serials.html
to HTML, and added some (but not all new info) from the current discussion.

The invoice dates come from a document about core memory royalties but
I didn't note a URL

Re: PDP-6s at MIT

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Howwever, if my memory is accurate, there perhaps might be, in those
> pictures:
>
>   http://www.stupi.se/Bilder/pdp-10/
>
> some evidence that they did get it: in the row above the bottom, the
> picture on the left seems to me like it might be a picture of the
> HIC-memory for AI.

What can you glean from this?

http://www.stacken.kth.se/~thn/FullScale/f3-1.jpg