To my sorrow, I'd never heard of the CDC 6600 and I barely knew who
Control Data was (whippersnapper, I know). I see a lot of traffic about
them on the list and I went out to discover "why so cool?" Wikipedia and
other spots talk about the features, but I'm trying to understand from
folks who
On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 2:06 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
>
>
> - It was RISC nearly before folks could even articulate the concept
>
>
> - It used odd sized (by todays standards) register, instruction, and bus
> sizes. 60 bit machine with 15/30 bit instructions. But, didn't it cause
> a bunch of
> From: Swift Griggs
> I see a lot of traffic about them on the list and I went out to
> discover "why so cool?"
One word - 'crunch'. The 6600 especially, but also its successors (7600, etc)
were _the_ number-crunching monsters of their day. For everyone who had a
scientific/engineer
> the 6600 was the source of the famous Watson memory
Oops, typo; 'memo'.
Noel
From: Swift Griggs
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 2:06 PM
> - It used odd sized (by todays standards) register, instruction, and bus
> sizes. 60 bit machine with 15/30 bit instructions. But, didn't it cause
> a bunch of alignment issues for you ?
??? Alignment issues? Care to define this?
On 06/21/2016 02:27 PM, Charles Anthony wrote:
> So the extra credit exercise is to figure out how to write a
> subroutine that prints out the value of all of the registers; ie.
> how can you save *all* of the register values to memory?
That one was old even in the 60s. You use the RJ (return
On 06/21/2016 02:06 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
> - It had some wicked cool "demos", to cop a C64 term. (ADC, PAC, EYE)
Those were mostly toys to amuse the CEs, like the baseball game BAT.
Chess 3.0 was implemented on Northwestern's machine and probably was the
first computer chess program of note.
> On Jun 21, 2016, at 5:39 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>
>> From: Swift Griggs
>
>> I see a lot of traffic about them on the list and I went out to
>> discover "why so cool?"
>
> One word - 'crunch'. The 6600 especially, but also its successors (7600, etc)
> were _the_ number-crunching monsters o
On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:
> > - It used odd sized (by todays standards) register, instruction, and bus
> > sizes. 60 bit machine with 15/30 bit instructions. But, didn't it cause
> > a bunch of alignment issues for you ?
> ??? Alignment issues? Care to define this? Are you
On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> > - It had some wicked cool "demos", to cop a C64 term. (ADC, PAC, EYE)
> Those were mostly toys to amuse the CEs, like the baseball game BAT.
I was trying to find some video of one of those actually running. I wanted
to see how the "calligraphic displays
> On Jun 22, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Swift Griggs wrote:
>
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>>> - It had some wicked cool "demos", to cop a C64 term. (ADC, PAC, EYE)
>> Those were mostly toys to amuse the CEs, like the baseball game BAT.
>
> I was trying to find some video of one of those a
> From: Swift Griggs
>> Much of the architectural concept was shared with IBM 7030 STRETCH
>> (another system worth researching).
> Hmm, I've never heard of it. I'll check it out.
The first supercomputer, IMO. It's an interesting machine, with a variety of
innovations that later
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:01 PM, Noel Chiappa
wrote:
Werner Buchholz (editor), "Planning a Computer System: Project Stretch",
> McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962
>
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-7030-Planning-McJones.pdf
> Speaking of books, there's also a CDC 6600 book:
>
> Jim E.
On 06/22/2016 08:32 AM, Swift Griggs wrote:
> I was trying to find some video of one of those actually running. I wanted
> to see how the "calligraphic displays" painted the graphics. Do you happen
> to know why they went with two displays like that? Did the two have
> different purposes?
I th
> From: Brian Walenz
>> Werner Buchholz (editor), "Planning a Computer System: Project
>> Stretch", McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962
> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-7030-Planning-McJones.pdf
Yeah, I found that _after_ I sent the email, sigh...
>> Speaking of books, there's a
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> I think Paul's covered that pretty well. I'll add that the more complex
> the display, the more flicker was present.
The descriptions are fascinating. I hope I can see one operating some day.
Do you know of any still operational ?
> >> Much of the archi
On 6/22/16 1:58 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
> I contrast their efforts with
> folks like NASA where a lot of (amazing and super important) tech found
> it's way to the public domain.
And a lot that didn't, the NASA COSMIC software archive, in particular.
Too much money to be made with NASTRAN.
On 06/22/2016 01:58 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
> Hmm, after reading the responses, I'm guessing most folks just showed
> up with an armload of punch cards and didn't bother with keying
> things on the console at the altar of the system.
You don't seem to realize how expensive these systems were to o
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 5:15 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> You don't understand. Big iron did multitasking and multiprogramming,
> but the I/O media was cards, tape and printed output. Going "online"
> was expensive and slow in terms of equipment.
There were many people who saw timesharing as a huge
From: Swift Griggs
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 1:58 PM
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> I think Paul's covered that pretty well. I'll add that the more complex
>> the display, the more flicker was present.
> The descriptions are fascinating. I hope I can see one operating some day.
On 06/22/2016 04:46 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> And it's rarely an armload. Most programs fit into a deck of a few dozen
> cards or so. If you can't wrap a rubber band around the deck, you kept it
> in the box. (Oh, yeah, you bought cards in boxes of 2000. About 16" long,
> IIRC.)
Well, if you
Which was the first machine to have an optical card reader (V brass
roller)?
For card based data processing, such as what my father did for Office Of
Civil Rights, that speed improvement made a big difference.
> On Jun 22, 2016, at 8:40 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
>
> Which was the first machine to have an optical card reader (V brass roller)?
>
> For card based data processing, such as what my father did for Office Of
> Civil Rights, that speed improvement made a big difference.
I'm not sure why that wo
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 5:13 PM
> On 06/22/2016 04:46 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
>> And it's rarely an armload. Most programs fit into a deck of a few dozen
>> cards or so. If you can't wrap a rubber band around the deck, you kept it
>> in the box. (Oh, yeah, you bought
> On Jun 22, 2016, at 7:15 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
> ...
>> Could you roll them back in by just re-populating memory with the
>> dump and hooking back to whatever the equivalent of PC and EIP were
>> on that system and re-launching the job?
>
> The rolled-out job didn't lose its files or place
>
> On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> ...
>> Its illegitimate relative, KRONOS, made extensive use of ECS for support
>> of the PLATO system.
Not quite. KRONOS treated ECS (rather clumsily) as a kind of disk. PLATO just
bypassed all that and managed ECS directly, as memory the way it
On 2016-06-22 10:12 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
On Jun 22, 2016, at 8:40 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Which was the first machine to have an optical card reader (V brass roller)?
For card based data processing, such as what my father did for Office Of Civil
Rights, that speed improvement made a big diffe
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> You don't seem to realize how expensive these systems were to operate.
I'm sure I don't (but hey! give me credit for trying). I'm betting that
even "expensive" systems of today (barring ultra-massive HPC SSI rigs) are
cheap by comparison in inflation-ad
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:
> We have one running at LCM, attached to an instance of dtCyber, the
> 6000/Cyber simulator, via John Zabolitzky's Xilinx-based display
> adapter. We're in the process of refurbing the one that came with the
> 6500, which we may attach to the system at
On 06/22/2016 06:18 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote: ...
>>> Its illegitimate relative, KRONOS, made extensive use of ECS for
>>> support of the PLATO system.
>
> Not quite. KRONOS treated ECS (rather clumsily) as a kind of disk.
> PLATO just bypassed all that
On 06/22/2016 06:15 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
> Slightly different. A rolled out job was a file, containing the
> whole job state, including stuff like currently attached files,
> memory content, exchange package (program registers). Like any other
> "local file" it would show up in memory as an en
On 23/06/2016 2:38 AM, Brian Walenz wrote:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:01 PM, Noel Chiappa
wrote:
Werner Buchholz (editor), "Planning a Computer System: Project Stretch",
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-7030-Planning-McJones.pdf
Speaking of books
On 2016-06-23 3:20 AM, Lionel Johnson wrote:
...
I joined CDC in Melbourne, Aust in 1972, worked mostly on 3200 machines
- Didn't like the Cybers, but admired the horsepower. I could fix a
3200, every time, that was the best training I ever had, alone with my
machine in Hobart, I loved it. When t
From: Swift Griggs
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 6:46 PM
>On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:
>> We have [a DD60] running at LCM, attached to an instance of dtCyber, the
>> 6000/Cyber simulator, via John Zabolitzky's Xilinx-based display adapter.
>> We're in the process of refurbing the on
Hey guys,
I was looking and found that the Tektronix 4010 is a calligraphic display,
for which I found a video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM
Let me know if it bares a resemblance to the display on the 6600
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:32 AM, Swift Griggs
wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 20
On 06/23/2016 10:28 PM, James Vess wrote:
Hey guys,
I was looking and found that the Tektronix 4010 is a calligraphic display,
for which I found a video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM
Let me know if it bares a resemblance to the display on the 6600
It wasn't normally used in tha
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 11:28 PM, James Vess wrote:
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I was looking and found that the Tektronix 4010 is a calligraphic display,
> for which I found a video!
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM
>
> Let me know if it bares a resemblance to the display on the 6600
None,
This thread reminded me that I recently got shipped what the person told me
was a CDC 6000 Central Memory core.
(it matches what's on this page :
http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/computer/en/6400hwac.html ). He told me that
the console looked like this :
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people
On 23/06/2016 10:54 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
On 2016-06-23 3:20 AM, Lionel Johnson wrote:
...
I joined CDC in Melbourne, Aust in 1972, worked mostly on 3200 machines
- Didn't like the Cybers, but admired the horsepower. I could fix a
3200, every time, that was the best training I ever had, alone wi
ate: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:43:16 -0400
>
> From: Earl Baugh
> To: cct...@classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: CDC 6600 - Why so awesome?
>
> This thread reminded me that I recently got shipped what the person told me
> was a CDC 6000 Central Memory core.
> (it matches what
On 2016-06-22 9:45 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
...
Everyone had some whack-a-doodle way to encode character sets back then
(and now it's just as bad or worse with things like UTF-8).
Do you have a counterproposal? What problem do you think UTF-8 is trying
to solve?
> People who
complain about t
On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Toby Thain wrote:
> Do you have a counterproposal? What problem do you think UTF-8 is trying
> to solve?
Oh, heck no! I don't have any wish to wade into that particular swamp full
of alligators. I have no counterproposal and as far as "what problem is
UTF-8 trying to solve?
On Fri, 24 Jun 2016, Paul Koning wrote:
> By contrast, a Tex 401x is a storage tube, which puts it at the other
> extreme: once you draw a character or line, it would stay without any
> further action. You can't erase it; the only erase available is a full
> screen erase.
That reminds me vague
Swift wrote...
but it showed me that "terminal emulation" could be all kinds of awesome
stuff.
And then there's 3270 terminal protocol ;)
J
> And then there's 3270 terminal protocol ;)
And HTML, which is 3270 updated for the 1990s.
On Thu, 23 Jun 2016, James Vess wrote:
> I was looking and found that the Tektronix 4010 is a calligraphic
> display, for which I found a video!
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM Let me know if it bares a
> resemblance to the display on the 6600
I was just looking at those things, t
On 2016-06-24 08:23, Swift Griggs wrote:
However, I think most folks these days would faint if they were forced to
work on a terminal.
Just don't tell them, that they do ;-)
If you really think about it, the terminals just got faster and
got more colors. (and you call them smartphone, thin cli
Not Tek but I've seen directly two instances where simple terminal
UI's where very much missed by the end users.
The one I remember the most was a nationwide auto parts company who I
wont mention who. The stores used
80x25 ASCII terminals with forms and fields and just about every
function key did
48 matches
Mail list logo
