Re: Typing in lost code
Noel Chiappa wrote: > https://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf > Someone's already done the specialist OCR to deal with faded program > listings. I tried to contact the author about converting some of the other IMP listings, but got no reply.
Re: UNIBUS powoer on/off spec
Noel Chiappa wrote: > I have been told that at one point Google was 'downgrading' results > that used plain HTTP, instead of HTTPS, because they were trying to > push people to switch to HTTPS (this was when everyone was > hyperventilating over the Snowden revelations). Given the > near-ubiquitous use of HTTPS these days, I'd have thought that piece > of 'information credit engineering' by our tech overlords was past its > 'sell by' date, and now serves primarily to block people from finding > the material they are looking for (as here). I often include the search term "site:bitsavers.org".
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > I find myself interested in (at least) the following and would like to > find others with similar (dis)interests to chat about things. > > - 10Base5 / 10Base2 / 10BaseT > - ISDN > - DSL / ADSL / SDSL / HDSL > - T1 / E1 > - ATM > - Frame Relay > - ARCnet > - PSTN / PBX / PABX For your consideration: - Arpanet (NCP) - Tymnet - Chaosnet - PUP - UUCP
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Warner Losh wrote: > NCP was the forerunner of TCP/IP. Net Unix had it as its supported > protocol and that was old enough that BSD had at least one > implementation. Are you saying there's a BSD Unix with Arpanet NCP? If so, where?
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Cameron Kaiser wrote: > If we're going to do Tymnet, we should definitely do Telenet. Telenet is BBN's commercial network based on their IMP technology, right? How would you go about making a Telenet network?
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > I think of Tymnet as a service and not as much as a protocol. Though > maybe it implies a protocol and I'm unaware of it. Tymshare was a service, but the computers talked to each over over a vast network. The network was spun off as a separate business. There is code available for the SDS 940, Tymeshare's TYMCOM-X, and TENEX. > Isn't Chaosnet mostly used in LISP machines? Yes, but also all over the MIT campus really. There is Chaosnet for 4.1BSD, if that's your thing. Also various PDP-10 systems: ITS, TOPS-20, TENEX.
Re: Retro networking / WAN communities
Grant Taylor wrote: > My understanding is that 4.3BSD that ran on VAXes had support for NCP. 4.3BSD released in 1986 was long after ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP. Apparently early TCP/IP support was added to 4.1a in 1981. I'm going out on a limb to claim BSD never had NCP support.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Lee Gleason wrote: > I gave my VAXstation 100 system unit to Dave McGuire last year (I > didn't need it since I lost interest in UNIBUS sized hobby equipment). > Perhaps he could make a copy of its ROMs. Thanks! I asked, and he said he's willing to dump the ROM.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Matt Burke wrote: > I dumped the ROMs from my VAXstation 100 some time ago (along with many > other DEC devices): > > http://www.9track.net/roms/ > > 23-288E4.bin and 23-289E4.bin are probably the two main ones you are > looking for. Do you just need the ROMs or are you looking for technical > info on the VAXstation 100? I may be able to help. Thank you very much! My idea is to make a VS100 emulator and have it run the firmware uploaded by early X versions. But I have some other things going on now, so it will have to wait. I'd be grateful for any help; I may well get in touch in the future.
[cctalk] Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image
Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote: >> My idea is to make a VS100 emulator and have it run the firmware >> uploaded by early X versions. > > What kind of emulator are you planing? A completely new thing? Or do > you want to use SIMH as a basis? It's just a vague idea. It's much too early to say I have any kind of plan in place. I might use SIMH, or something like Musashi, or write my own in adjunction to my VT52 and VT100 simulators. I suppose the Unibus interface to a VAX host would favour use of SIMH, in which case the VS100 would look like a SIMH device with a 68000 inside.
[cctalk] Re: LCM news?
Paul Koning wrote: > When I did some looking it appeared to me that essentially all of > what's online is simulators, not real machines. That's right, but at least ITS is running on a real PDP-10 now.
[cctalk] CAL TSS information and source listings
Paul McJones posted this recently: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/ There aren't a lot of machine readable media, but many listings: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/source/
[cctalk] Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)
Chris Zach wrote: > All that said, if I have to drive out to Seattle with a U-Haul I'll do > it. Again. But I would prefer them to be displayed, taken care of, > loved. AI is available right now from here: ssh i...@tty.livingcomputers.org It's running under the name LC ITS now, but it's the original AI KS10.
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
David Griffith wrote: > I'm trying to figure out how to created and load a "soft character > set" into a vt220 terminal. I have successfully done that with a real VT220. Here are some .txt files with samples. They upload a custom font and arrange characters on screen to display a picture. The Emacs Lisp code does the conversion. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/sixel
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
Grant Taylor wrote: >> https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/sixel > The naming of the git repository confused me a bit. I needed more > coffee and time to realize that this is more about soft fonts (the > thread subject) than it is about Sixel graphics. It started with an idea about sixel graphics, but I repurposed it. VT220 (and followups) use sixels for soft fonts. > Aside: Would you please take a picture of some of the output from the > samples on a VT220 or other soft font supporting terminal (emulator) > so those of us under equipped can enjoy them too? I'm not aware of any terminal emulator with such support. I don't have my terminal available right now, but here's a photo I took: https://twitter.com/larsbrinkhoff/status/1187649036368658432 But apparently you saw that already!
[cctalk] Re: loading vt220 fonts
Grant Taylor wrote: > I'm not that surprised that soft fonts are (re)using Sixel. Maybe the other way around. I don't really know what the timeline was, but it seems to me maybe soft fonts came first, with the VT220. The VT240 had sixel graphics, right? But I'm guessing it came later. As would the VT340. > I suspect that means that XTerm could support soft fonts if some minor > changes were made to re-use it's existing Sixel support. Probably. I had the good fortune to meet the person who first added sixel graphics to XTerm, and he mentioned it is on his to-do list. It would also be interesting to make a faithful VT220 emulator that runs the original ROMs. >> But apparently you saw that already! > Nope. But I have now. :-) Oh, isn't this you? https://twitter.com/DrScriptt/status/1187958760901414913
[cctalk] Making sense of VAXstation 100 ROMs
Hello, I could use some help making sense of the VAXstation ROM images. A set is provided here: https://www.9track.net/roms/ The two .bin files are each one halfword of a 16-bit wide ROM for the 68000 display processor. I checked it, and it's fine. My problem is with the Bit Blit Accelator. The board has four Am2901 bitslice processors to make up a 16-bit custom blitter. The information I have is that the microcode is 57 bits wide and there should be 1024 words. However, this is not a great match for the rest of the ROM images. Some of the BBA ROMs seem to be bit masks, presumably useful for rendering graphics. But none of them seem to match what I'd expect to see for a 57x1024 microcode. Here are the sizes, in bits, of the ROMs: Bit Blit Accelerator (BBA) 23-066K3.jed 2048 23-067K3.jed 2048 23-068K3.jed 2048 23-069K3.jed 2048 23-076F4.e32 16384 23-077F4.e65 16384 23-077J5.jed 2048 23-078J5.jed 2048 23-354A1.e33 256 23-355A1.e66 256 23-356A1.e77 256 23-357A1.e85 256 Display Processor Module (DPM) 23-020L1.jed 3553 23-021L1.jed 3553 23-022L1.jed 3553 23-023L1.jed 3553 23-024L1.jed 3553 23-025L1.jed 3553 23-288E4.bin 65536 68000 code in these two. 23-289E4.bin 65536
[cctalk] Re: Making sense of VAXstation 100 ROMs
Paul Koning wrote: > Given 16 bit wide ROMs, I would expect the microcode width to be > rounded up to a multiple of that, so 64 bits, which means the expected > ROM size is 64k bits. That matches two of the ROMs you mentioned. I don't know if they are 16 bits wide. The two 68000 ROMs are 8 bit wide. The others I have no data on. Also, there aren't enough bits on the BBA board ROMs to make up 56x1024. (I was wrong in my previous post, the microcode is 56 bits wide, not 57.) Besides, the contents doesn't look like code but graphics masks.
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Jake Utley wrote: > Sellam Abraham >> "A new PDP-10 has been put in the INTERNET." >> "New" as in newly-built? Or "new" as in wasn't there before? >> The hardware looks modern, and not at all like what a PDP-10 should look >> like. > > I would say it is newly built as the pcb substrate looks nothing like > vintage stock. On first glance it’s a impressive achievement reverse > engineering the PDP10 cards and then getting it online It's "new" as in "it wasn't there last week". Well, it's also somewhat new since it was made in the 90s. It's not a DEC PDP-10, but a clone by Systems Concepts.
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Mark Huffstutter via cctalk writes: > Christian Corti wrote: >> Interesting, but not really a beauty ;-) And BTW, who is SDF? They >> don't tell it on their site. > Short story on the welcome page. Long story: https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030526-sdf
[cctalk] Re: Late '70s DEC manual covers [niche!]
Paul Flo Williams wrote: > During lockdown I was having some fun redrawing old DEC manual covers > with Inkscape, specifically terminal and printer manuals from the late > 1970s. I've attached a montage of four that I printed out so I could > stick it on the wall. I'm aware I may be the only person, even here, > who finds them attractively simple and coloured in such a definably > 1970s way. They look great! I for one appreciate this, and I suspect Norbert Landsteiner would too. https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/dec-crt-typography
[cctalk] Re: SDF had put a PDP-10 on the Internet
Tarek Hoteit wrote: > I still don’t know who runs [SDF] Stephen M. Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System#History https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030526-sdf https://ia600903.us.archive.org/22/items/bsdtalk021/bsdtalk021.mp3
[cctalk] NeWS tapes in SF Bay area; rubber baby buggy bumpers
Hello, Some Sun 1/4" tapes with NeWS has turned up in the SF Bay area. However, the the tape drive available has bad rubber baby buggy bumpers. Is there anyone around there who can provide new bumpers, or has a working 1/4" tape drive and is willing to read the tapes? Best regards, Lars Brinkhoff
[cctalk] Re: Stuff to go or it's off to the dumpster
> Need to get rid of some things here that I am never going to use, > maybe someone else will: > > M7705 > M7706 > M7906 > M7907 > M7908 I think I heard a VAXstation 100 owner missing an M7452. Any spares?
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Fred Cisin wrote: > So, what defines a "supercomputer"? FLOPS
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Steve Lewis wrote: > I always considered a mainframe to basically be a "fully decked out" > minicomputer. You may find people will disagree with that. I'm not sure what mainframe means either, but I'm asking around. Pysical size, I/O capacity, CPU offload to front ends, and users served seem to factor into it. > Actually, to answer my own question: if "main frame" refers to the actual > framing... well the PDP-1, PDP-10, PDP-10 were minicomputers and still > required a lot of metal "framing" to set up. So, can't they be considered > mainframes? I believe the term minicomputer was first applied to the PDP-8. It was kind of retroactively applied going back to the PDP-1. Whether the PDP-10 is a mini is sometimes hotly debated. IBM people say no, DEC peole say yes. > another notion is that mainframes are "multi-user" -- most early > microcomputers were not multi-user, as they just barely supported the needs > of one user; I'm not sure if the very first minicomputers were > multi-user? Kind of yes, but recally early computers were often operated in batch mode. Minis would typically do one task, or handle a few users. > The term minicomputer has always been awkward to me -- "mini" in my > head just means something smaller than me, which most minicomputers > aren't Consider that a minicomputer is larger than microcomputer. > But to say "mainframe" when showing a minicomputer I don't think that does a service to anyone.
[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini
Paul Koning wrote: > I noticed the section on deferred interrupts, which mentions Cutler > and "fork" on RSX. It doesn't mention the similar mechanism, also > called fork, in RT-11. And, pray tell, what do these "fork" mean? I'm curious since Unix has fork as a verb, whereas Tenex has it as a noun. Presumably they both got it from the Berkeley 930 timesharing system, so maybe something got lost in translation on the way to the East coast. It would be intresting to compare against the meaning in RSX (11 not 15, I guess) and RT-11.
[cctalk] Re: MIT Lisp Machine and ucode recovered
Eric Moore wrote: > Here is a hello world: > (format t "Hello, World!") > It kinda works, need to throw maybe a \n on it, no idea what options format > takes. Do it like this: (format t "~&Hello, World!~%") Looks like Common Lisp documentation works for the System 100 FORMAT: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/22_c.htm
[cctalk] Re: The World Wide Web
geneb wrote: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: >> It seems like all of the good USENET providers are subscription >> services now. > You can get free access via http://www.eternal-september.org/ There's also news.dotsrc.org. (formerly sunsite.dk)
Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)
Chuck Guzis wrote: > That is a bit of a surprise--in my experience it takes very little > code to support Forth on any processor--that someone would build a > dedicated chip for it is unusual. There are actually quite a few Forth processors. Charles Moore himself designed half a dozen or so. The RTX-2000 series is a descentant of his Novix chip. Check out GreenArrays for his latest work. There are also some FPGA designs out there. The J1 seems somewhat popular.
Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle - Firsts
Charles Dickman via cctalk writes: >> He seems to have been the first to mention ARPANET in a popular >> hobbyist-type context like BYTE. (Leading him to get kicked off >> ARPANET!) > Yes I remember reading something like that too. I would like to know > the story of that. You should probably ask Leigh Klotz. http://klotz.me/
Re: PDP8.org
William Degnan wrote: > This site can’t be reached > > www.pdp-8.org’s server DNS address could not be found. > Search Google for pdp org postinfo > ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED The DNS names for the pdp8.org name servers fail to resolve. The name server at 216.99.193.149 does respond to requests for pdp8.org.
Re: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?
Jon Elson wrote: > I'm not sure the original DEC PDP-10 (KA-10) used microcode, but the > KI-10 did. As far as I understand, the PDP-6 (type 166), KA10, and KI10 were hardwired. KL10 and KS10 were microcoded. The Foonly F1 preceeded and influenced the KL10 design.
Re: "Personal" Computers
Chuck Guzis wrote: > Food and drink around the machines was also a definite no-no. Not just > to prevent contamination (e.g. dumping your Coke into the keyboard of > the operator's console) Coke bottles caught near the DEC-10s MIT-MC and KATIA: http://donhopkins.com/home/catalog/images/mc-console.jpg http://www.qedata.se/bilder/historik/ka10a.jpg
Re: Forth for PDP-8?
Kyle Owen wrote: > Just a little bit of cursory looking turned up nothing. Has someone > written a Forth interpreter for PDP-8? Preferably using 24-bit > integers, but I'll take what I can get. OS/8 support would be nice. I recently wrote a Forth cross compiler with PDP-8 support. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/xForth/tree/master/target/pdp8
[cctalk] Re: fredmacs?
Adam Thornton via cctalk writes: > I have heard rumors of one "fredmacs" which is a more-or-less emacs that > will run on PDP-11 v7 Unix. I don't know if this is what you heard about, but Fred Fish wrote an Emacs that ran on top of TECO-11. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/teco/emacs11/
[cctalk] Re: fredmacs?
> I don't know if this is what you heard about, but Fred Fish wrote an > Emacs that ran on top of TECO-11. Another similar thing: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/decus/110737.html
[cctalk] Re: Emacs on v7
Adam Thornton wrote: > I finally got an Emacs running on v7--it's on misspiggy at LCML now as > "ue". It's Microemacs 3.6 As far as I know, the first Emacs on a PDP-11 was written by MIT alumnus Warren Montgomery at Bell labs. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/blob/sources/docs/Montgomery%20Emacs%20History.txt https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/%7Ejnc/tech/unix/emacs https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Norman_v9/batterpudding.tar.gz/cmd/emacs > Arrow keys, naturally, don't work, but C-b, C-f, C-p, C-n do. As is good and proper.
[cctalk] Re: Vintage Computer Fest Midwest "DECnut" pizza party
Paul Koning wrote: > Even then it increments by 2, by special exception. So 112700, 1 > (movb #1,r0) fetches the instruction and increments PC by 2, then > fetches the word where the PC points and increments by 2, not 1, > again. It's not really a special exception because immediate mode is @(R7)+.
[cctalk] Re: RIP: Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth
Paul Koning wrote: > Pascal is still around; the GCC compiler suite has it, and Modula-2 as > well. Speaking of which, GCC (or its first attempt) came from a Pascal compiler called Pastel.
[cctalk] Re: VCF SoCal Saturday
jos wrote: >> I don't recall emulators for the early Datapoints.- > There now is a Datapoint 2200 emulator > Be aware that it does not show the true Datapoint fonts. There is also an emulator for the 3300, with a font from an imaged ROM. It's in here: https://github.com/aap/vt05/ (The 3300 is older than the 2200, and doesn't have a processor.)
[cctalk] Re: recreating old computers [was: Paper tape in casettes...]
CAREY SCHUG wrote: > What I wish somebody would create is an S-100 card (probably with a > raspberry pie daughter running simulation for future upgradeability) > that, initially emulates a complete Byte-8 or Imsai computer including > memory and disk images on sdc cards, 24x40 display on an HDMI display > and USB keyboard. serial and parallel ports emulated. I believe this tick some of your boxes: https://thehighnibble.com/imsai8080/
[cctalk] Re: recreating old computers [was: Paper tape in casettes...]
Paul Koning wrote: > Suppose you had schematics of, say, a KA-10. You could turn those > gates into VHDL or Verilog, and that should deliver an exact replica > of the original machine, bug for bug compatible. That assumes the > timing quirks are manageable The mapping from asynchronous pulses, delay lines, etc, to VHDL or Verilog isn't entirely straight forward. Still, it can be done, and in the case of a KA10, it has. See https://github.com/aap/fpdpga
[cctalk] Re: oscilloscopes
Phil Budne wrote: > I wrote and tuned the code twenty years ago, but haven't looked at > whether better results might be possible by wasting the capabilities > of current systems (SIMD libaries and/or multiple cores). I felt like > I only was able to give a slim impression, and I've also wondered what > could be done with 4K HDR displays: making points round(!) and > simulating the "bloom" and intensity of repeatedly or highly > intensified spots. I have done some experiments in this direction. There are two sample pictures here which are supposed to look similar to a P7 CRT. https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt-simulation
[cctalk] Bit numbering
Mike Katz wrote: > I want to add to this argument and ask Is bit 0 the high order bit > (like on the PDP-8) or the low order bit (like on the 6809)? It's the same across all PDPs... except maybe the 11, I'm sure someone will remind me. There are good arguments for numbering "bit N" such that its value is 2^N. With PDP-style bit numbering, it's quite awkward if you have several different word lengths so that bit 0 have different value depending on what kind of word you're dealing with. However, it's not entirely clear cut. In many situations data inside words are arranged "left to right" and in this case the PDP numbering sometimes is more convenient than the opposite.
[cctalk] Re: Seattle’s Living Computers Museum logs off for good as Paul Allen estate will auction vintage items
Chuck Guzis wrote: > I remember my friend, Debbie, who worked as a CE for DEC back in the > primordial ages, made a big deal about the Super Foonly. > > Have any working Foonly systems survived? The Stanford Super Foonly was designed, but never built. The project ran out of ARPA funding in the earl 70s. There may or may not be SUDS drawing and/or microcode in the Saildart archives. There was ever only one Foonly F1. It was used in movie production, but no one knows where it ended up. I have seen bits and pieces of the smaller Foonlies in musems catalogs and such. I doubt there's anything complete enough to be considered working. But who knows, there were a few made and maybe one will pop up from somewhere eventually. Software wise, besides running the standard PDP-10 stuff. There is a copy of Foonex, the Foonly hacked TENEX, on Bitsavers. There is also microcode for the F2, and it even comes with a working assembler should anyone want to hack it. WAITS can run on a Foonly.
[cctalk] Foolishness, I mean Foonlyness
> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> I remember my friend, Debbie, who worked as a CE for DEC back in the >> primordial ages, made a big deal about the Super Foonly. >> >> Have any working Foonly systems survived? > > Software wise Oh, and I forgot. There's a bunch of Foonly stuff from Tymshare/Tymnet. Maybe on SRI tapes too, ARC/NLS stuff.
[cctalk] Re: LCM auction
Paul Koning wrote:
> Does anyone know what that SC40 ("PDP-10 clone") can do? It seems to
> support SCSI I/O devices, interesting. What software, if any, might
> run on that?
It probably came from CompuServe, and it would have been running some
of CompuServe's software; user interface, database, I don't know.
[cctalk] Re: LCM auction
Paul Koning wrote: >> It probably came from CompuServe, and it would have been running some >> of CompuServe's software; user interface, database, I don't know. > Yes, I believe the description says so. I was wondering if it could > run any DEC software, in particular any DEC OS. Or other interesting > OS... ITS? :-) They ran TOPS-20 and TOPS-10. CompuSeve used some heavily hacked TOPS-10. I think they *could* run ITS if anyone cared to do the work to port it.
Chaosnet for SIMH
Hello, I have added a Unibus CH11 Chaosnet interface to SIMH. I have tested it with 4.1BSD running on the vax780 simulator, and MINITS running on the pdp11 simulator.
Re: KCC on TOPS-20 linking question
Adam Thornton wrote: > So the first question is: where's the KCC configuration stored, so we > can add the right library path [...] ? If no one here knows, maybe someone on alt.sys.pdp10 does.
Re: DEC VT20 boot device
Paul Birkel wrote: >>I wonder if, maybe, it used the same protocol as the GT40, which also >>had a boot-over-serial line capability. > > Section 5.1.1 Bootstrap Loader describes the packed-and-serialized > 6-bit "byte" stream I have the GT40 boot ROM assembled on a PDP-10 host and used for booting by SIMH. There is also a GTLOAD program which translates a PDP-11 binary on the PDP-10 host and sends it to the GT40.
Re: MIPS I-IV instruction set standards
Angelo Papenhoff wrote: > I'm wondering where the MIPS I-IV standards that are referenced > everywhere are defined. I was able to actually find what seems to be the > IV standard [1] but found no such thing for I-III. Anything you find, I'd like to add to https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/awesome-cpus/tree/master/MIPS I suppose you know about this? https://www.imgtec.com/mips/architectures/
Re: DEC VT100/220 line wrapping semantics sought
Mattias Engdegård wrote: > Data for VT100, VT220 and VT510 have been collected, as well as > several emulators > (https://github.com/mattiase/wraptest/blob/master/results.txt). If > anyone has access to other working terminals, VT3xx/VT4xx in > particular, I'd be most grateful if you would take a few minutes to > run the test program. I have a VT420 set up for my kid to play with. I'll borrow it and submit a pull request with the results.
Re: DEC VT100/220 line wrapping semantics sought
Mattias Engdegård wrote: > Many thanks for the VT420 results! I have a VT220 too, but it's in storage. I can dig it out if necessary, but I'm hoping someone else can contribute those results. Note that the setup probably can alter the results. I had "Auto Wrap" enabled, which is probably what you want.
Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?
Warren Toomey wrote: > are there any _good_ VT100 terminal emulators This emulates the 8080 and runs off ROMs, if you want that kind of accuracy: https://github.com/phooky/VT100-Hax
Re: Any faithful VT100 Emulators?
Ethan Dicks wrote: > Somewhere around 2004, I was setting up klh10. I found that xterm did > not allow me to run emacs successfully. I have successfullyl run xterm in VT52 mode with ITS Emacs.
Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles
Zane Healy wrote: > I use RPi3’s for PDP-10 and DPS-8 emulation, I haven’t tried them for > VAX emulation. I would like to try a RPi4 for VAX emulation. I have an RPi4 running ITS. I attached a fast USB3 memory rather than running off the SD card. For the full ITS rebuild from scratch it takes two hours rather, compared to one hour on my Core i7 2.4 GHz laptop. An RPi2 with slow SD card takes around 24 hours!
Re: LISP implementations on small machines
Mark Kahrs wrote: > The first implementation was done for the 7090 by McCarthy (hence CAR > and CDR --- Contents of Address Register and Contents of Decrement > Register). Or was it an IBM 704?
Re: LISP implementations on small machines
Bill Degnan wrote: > First full version 7090 and then a version was ported tot he PDP-1 > that was less powerful. This is straight from the LISP manual on > site. Which LISP manual is that? The LISP I Programmer's Manual from 1960 says IBM 704. It also says "a version of LISP I is being prepared for the IBM 709". http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/rle_lisp/LISP_I_Programmers_Manual_Mar60.pdf
JOSS-II: good news and bad news
Hello, A small group of volunteers are working on restoring JOSS-II, the PDP-6 version, to a working state. We are typing in a program listing provided by the RAND corporation. The listing is the supervisor, which is a large part of the system. So far good news. The bad news is that it's not a complete system. The Computer History Museum seems to have additional program listings here: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102734547 But they have not been scanned. They archvists are willing to let us see the collection, but no one of us lives near the museum. Is there anyone interested in this kind of thing that are willing to help out?
Re: State of New Jersey needs COBOL programmers
Chris Zach wrote: > That's problematic. And now that I said I know COBOL81, I could find > myself kidnapped by NJ Govt agents and chained to a VT05 terminal. > No, no, not 12 lines per screen! HELP Am I wrong in understanding the VT05 was 20 lines, and the VT50 12 lines? By the way, I believe the VT50 character font is slightly different from VT52. Does anyone have the ROMs?
Re: Grinnell Systems
Emanuel Stiebler wrote: > was just fishing in old memories & graphics systems. We had in the > 1980's a big fridge from Grinnell Systems as a frame buffer on a 11/34. > Anybody remember those? Links to any documentation? MIT Plama Fusion had one, made by John Kulp. It was connected to MIT-MC and was kind of a remake of Tom Knight's TV system for MIT-AI. (Kulp also made the "space-cadet" keyboard primarily for this system, but it was also more famously used with the CADR Lisp machines and the Symbolics and LMI machines.) The "Plasma TV", as it was called, was first connected through a serial line from Tech Square to Building 38. It was later updated to Chaosnet. Grinnell was a spinoff from Ramtek.
Re: Grinnell Systems
This has some interesting information. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a086098.pdf
Re: Grinnell Systems
Emanuel Stiebler >> https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a086098.pdf > GREAT FIND! I think it is the fridge I was talking/thinking about. I think it's an early generation from Grinnell. Note the year ~1977. The MIT one was from 1976, but maybe the same model GMR-27(0?). The DTIC document describes an interface based on DR-11, same as MIT. And the commands seem to match. I have made emulators for more obscure hardware than this.
Re: Grinnell Systems
emanuel stiebler writes: >> I have made emulators for more obscure hardware than this. > You've written an emulator for it? No... not yet. But now it's on my to-do list. Here are some notes I made about the MIT system: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/1837
Re: Imlac/Hazeltine Dynagraphic terminals?
Josh Dersch wrote: > Anyone have any idea if any Imlac/Hazeltine Dynagraphic terminals are > still around? Maybe some of these people will know: https://www.old-computers.com/museum/forum.asp?c=1295
Re: LK201 emulation
Paul Koning wrote: > Question to the list: is this something that would be of interest to > others? If yes, I can make the design available. Perhaps the PCB > layout and parts list. Yes, I'm interested. I also have a broken LK201, and I have a Trinket lying around.
Re: Evans & Sutherland PS-2?
Brad Parker wrote: > Does anyone have, or know of low level documentation for Evans & > Sutherland Picture System 2 hardware? Sorry, I can't help. Is there any software for it? I do consider making an emulator for the E&S LDS-1.
Re: LK201 emulation
Sophie Haskins wrote: > A long term dream of mine is to build some sort of general-purpose box > that can make connections to arbitrary vintage computer > keyboard/mouse/video ports, and connect in to modern HDMI & USB > peripherals to make it easier to just pull a machine off the shelf and > get going. I'm kind of moving in this direction a tiny bit. I have a set of software emulators that I install on Raspberry Pis. My idea is that they should boot straight into the emulator and connect to a host computer over the network.
Re: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC
Al Kossow wrote: >> Algol W was from Eroupe? > Algol W was from Stanford, written by Wirth when he was there I wonder if there's any connection to Stanford's SAIL language?
Re: Living Computer Museum
Eric Smith wrote: > When we restored the PDP-1 at CHM, we *really* wanted to make sure > that the public could interact with it, though in a limited > fashion. Ken Sumrall and I built quick-and-dirty Spacewar control > boxes out of particle board and arcade switches, which were intended > for restoration team use, and we originally thought that we would > later build some "more authentic" control boxes. (The control boxes > used in Boston had disappeared, and in any case we don't know whether > they were "original".) However, Steve Russell (author of the Spacewar > game) pointed out that our hastily knocked together control boxes > actually were "authentic" in the sense that the originals were also > hastily knocked together out of whatever was at hand. Random tidbit. I heard from Richard Greenblatt the PDP-1 Spacewar consoles (original or not, I don't know) had a really great feel, and when Spacewar was ported to the PDP-6 the new consoles were not as good. Asking around about this, Michael Beeler said he make the PDP-6 consoles and conceded the original consoles were better.
Re: SAIL (was ALGOL-W)
Mark Kahrs wrote: > As a past occasional maintainer of SAIL, I'll add my version of history Found in the source code: There was a compiler named SAIL, Assembled and coded in FAIL. Its authors, they say (one glorious day) Were run out of town on a rail.
Re: Future of cctalk/cctech
Jon Elson wrote: > Yes, several other groups I read and contribute to have moved to > groups.io, and they are working quite well and reliably. Some options > require $10 a month to be free from ads. That's a red flag.
Re: Future of cctalk/cctech - text encoding
Peter Coghlan wrote: > Does anyone use ASCII anymore? I read and write my email with Emacs running in a terminal emulator. I rarely need anything beoynd codepoint 126. I hear MIT-MC is a popular host for mailing lists. Remind me, is ARPANET still up and running?
Re: PLATO V Terminal
Noel Chiappa wrote: > > Paul Koning wrote: > > airfight and any number of other multi-user games -- a thing made > > popular by PLATO and possibly originated there. > > What was the date on that? Multi-player MazeWar on the Imlacs/ITS at > MIT was running before 1976 (I played it about then), but I don't > recall exactly when it first ran (before my time). I think Greg Thompson said he brought Maze to MIT in 1974. Wikipedia says 1973. The game was first developed at NASA Ames in 1972.
Re: PLATO V Terminal
Paul Koning wrote: >> I think Greg Thompson said he brought Maze to MIT in 1974. Wikipedia >> says 1973. The game was first developed at NASA Ames in 1972. > Ok, chances are that predates PLATO MUGs by 2-3 years. Spasim from 1974 is usually regarded as contemporary with Maze. I'm not so sure about that 1973 dating; after all it's Wikipedia.
Re: Mame vt100 emulation. Cool
> https://zork.net/~st/jottings/Real-VT102-emulation-with-MAME.html Also. https://github.com/phooky/VT100-Hax https://www.pcjs.org/machines/dec/vt100/
Re: Adventures online
Chuck Guzis wrote: > Well, if one wanted to stay historically accurate, one would use a > PDP-10. It's not Crowther's Adventure, but the Infocom games.
Re: Adventures online
Chuck Guzis wrote: > Lars Brinkhoff wrote: >> Chuck Guzis wrote: >>> Well, if one wanted to stay historically accurate, one would use a >>> PDP-10. >> It's not Crowther's Adventure, but the Infocom games. > Infocom's games were based on Crowther, after all. Rich Alderson wrote: > Well, they started with the PDP-10 ZORK, and used PDP-10 > (architecture) systems to develop many of the others... Based on, started with, used to develop, all true of course. Still, I wouldn't exactly say a PDP-10 host is a requirement for historical accuracy to run e.g. Seastalker. An Apple II would do fine.
Re: Adventures online
How about running MDL Zork on ITS for historical accuracy? I'm scheming with some of the implementers to take steps in that direction.
Re: Adventures online
Eric Smith wrote: > Infocom games were written in ZIL (based on MDL), and developed on a > DECSYSTEM-20. Presumably Infocom had a ZIP for the -20, but they > didn't publicly release that. Maybe this. https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/twenex/zork/z/zip.mud.96
Re: Adventures online
> When you've got that set up, post the link on Slashdot, they love text > adventures. I seen nothing there about the 1977 copy of Zork. If you're a Slashdot regular, maybe post it there?
Re: LSI-11 Simulator from Bob Meister
Richard Cini wrote: > an article by Bob Meister that appeared in the July 1996 issue of > Circuit Cellar with an LSI-11 simulator program. I found this by Robert P. Meister at Battelle Columbus labs. It mentions an LSI-II. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a071102.pdf
Re: LSI-11 Simulator from Bob Meister
Richard Cini wrote: > I found this by Robert P. Meister at Battelle Columbus labs. > > The source code to the LSI11 says "R.W.Meister" so it's likely the > same chap. But P. isn't the same as W. :-(
Re: LSI-11 Simulator from Bob Meister
Richard Cini wrote: > Ha, yes, P != W. I have actually found several Bob Meisters, but it's > like Where's Waldo. People should have unique names to make it easier for us stalkers! I have been trying to find Edward H. Black, ex MIT Dynamic Modeling.
Re: SIMH on low overhead platform
Andrew Back wrote: > Also wondered if SimH could be ported to a UEFI application. The > environment seems to provide some O/S like features, but no idea how > much would be missing or significantly different. I made a set of stubs to compile and link a simulator without the SIMH framework. Empty stubs only, so it will not actually work. But they point to what kind of facilities would have to be provided to run a simulator on some other platform.
Re: UniSys ClearPath OS/2200 Express?
Kevin Monceaux wrote: > The first emulator is web based, and the second fails to build. I'm > not a fan of web interfaces. Are there any other B5500 emulators > and/or software that Bing missed? Richard Cornwell added one to SIMH: https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/B5500
ITS version 671 from 1971 found
>From the incompatible department of classic computement: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc.
Re: ITS version 671 from 1971 found
Warner Losh wrote: >> A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from 1971 has been >> found. > > Where? How? Will it be made available? Where: In the "ToTS" archives, see https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/1265 How: MIT has given me access to the archives, for research only. I'm not allowed to publish files, but I'm snooping around. Other people have been working on the material years ago, but this particular tape had escaped notice. Made available: It's up to MIT to decide. They previously released this on my suggestion: https://github.com/MITDDC/zork
Zork from ITS tapes
Hello, Early Zork source and binary files have been found on ITS backup tapes. MIT previously released some December 1977 files here: https://github.com/MITDDC/zork Recently discovered files from January 1978 will appear soon.
Re: ISO: DEC VR100 and early X releases
Josh Dersch via cctalk writes: > I'm also looking for earlier releases of X to run on this -- the VS100 > was the development platform for X (and W ran on it at one point as > well). I haven't been able to track down anything prior to X10R3. I asked the usual suspects (Reid, Asente, Kantarjiev) about W, but it seems to be lost.
Re: CMU Andrew system (and wm) preservation
Michael Kerpan wrote: > AFS is also cool, but it's a separate project that's still actively > maintained and (presumably) used. MIT uses it, as does the student organization Stacken.
Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)
Josh Dersch wrote: > I did recently get my 4404 running, at last. Any Lisp screenshots? I believe fibonacci is a required exercise for occations like this.
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Dave Wade wrote: > The docs for SIMH .TAP files are here:- > > http://simh.trailing-edge.com/docs/simh_magtape.pdf > > be careful as there are also non-SIMH .tap formats Haha, yes very much so. For the fun of it, people like to mix and match these options: - Records padded to even length or not. - Little or big endian record length metadata. - 9-track or 7-track data (the latter may have a parity bit).
Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)
Josh Dersch wrote: > Not a ton to see, lisp-wise, it's just a port of Franz Lisp to > Uniflex. I can try to benchmark fibonacci later this week if you want. Thanks! I wasn't expecting a benchmark, just a little defun. For the record, I have a Maclisp over here that will do (fib 40) in less than 9 seconds.
Re: Computer History
Murray McCullough wrote: > We in the classic computer community need to know the history of our > hobby I for bigger iron history, I suggest "Dream Machine" by Waldrop. It's not just about Licklider, though his is a very interesting story by itself.
Re: Exploring early GUIs
Michael Kerpan wrote: > Something in another recent thread about LISP machines got me > wondering: how many early graphical systems are well emulated (or > emulated at all)? I know that there are more or less functional > emulations of Alto, Star, and Lisa out there, but what about the > various LISP machines There are emulators for the CADR Lisp machine and a lot of software has been preserved. There's no emulators for the CONS, but I claim it would be interesting to attempt one. Now NLS and TX-2 emulators, that would be something.
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Al Kossow wrote: >> I usually use tapeutils: >> https://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils > > I should bug Eric about this, but the .tap files that library creates > doesn't have the Supnik SIMH extensions In case Eric doesn't have time to make updates, bug me instead. I'm kind of maintaining that.
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
Al Kossow wrote: >> I'm kind of maintaining that. > where? Here: https://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils > and since your fscking around inside of it, have you added the > Bordynuik extensions in the ToTS tape images? No, but I certainly will if yout tell me what it is.
