From robert.jarratt@ntlworld.com Wed Jan 1 11:31:04 2025 From: Rob Jarratt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Rainbow Z80 firmware Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:30:53 +0000 Message-ID: <003d01db5c40$9edabfc0$dc903f40$@ntlworld.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8223103666399414476==" --===============8223103666399414476== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello Warner, =20 Thanks for the reply below. I have spent the whole Christmas holiday poring o= ver the disassembled ROM and using a logic analyser to try to find the fault = shown in the image above. I am at a bit of a loss now and would like to ask f= or any advice/help. =20 From what I can see using my logic analyser, all the RAM, Screen RAM and Attr= ibute RAM seems to be working fine. =20 There are multiple places in the ROM where the diagnostic code for this error= is used. The diagnostic LEDs do not appear to have the mapping you would exp= ect, the error I am seeing seems to write 0x6F to the diagnostic port. The po= ints in the ROM where this status is written are: * 0x0496. Followed by two that write 0x3F and 0x4F. * 0x057A. Followed by one that writes 0x0F * 0x05B7. Followed by one that writes 0x0F * 0x069B. * 0x06C7. Other locations write the status (as 0x016F) to a memory location for later u= se in writing to the LEDs. I think it is the test at 0x7F8 that is causing th= is to happen and I think this is where it decides there is a problem. But I c= an't work out why or what this particular test means. I think some of the lat= er writes of the 0x6F value happen after it has already decided there is a pr= oblem. =20 I have posted some information about the memory map and the disassembled ROM = here: https://robs-old-computers.com/collection/rainbow-100a/#repair-referenc= e-information =20 NB I have posted this same message on VCF. =20 Regards =20 Rob =20 =20 From: Warner Losh =20 Sent: 09 December 2024 18:35 To: rob(a)jarratt.me.uk Cc: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: [cctalk] Rainbow Z80 firmware =20 =20 =20 On Sun, Dec 8, 2024 at 11:58=E2=80=AFPM Rob Jarratt > wrote: Hello Warner, =20 Thanks for your detailed reply. =20 I forgot to mention that I do get a display of sorts, it looks like this: htt= ps://robs-old-computers.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/img_20241127_222706.jpg =20 I had assumed that this would mean the DC011 and DC012 were OK, otherwise it = wouldn=E2=80=99t seem possible for it to be able to display this message. Do = you still think it could be one of those two chips? =20 Given that the video attribute for the S is messed up and the T has both the = video attribute and the character messed up, and the anomaly runs the full he= ight of the screen, I'd say something is wrong with the character generation = or the video ram that it uses (which I think is dual ported to the 8088). So = maybe not the chips, per se, but there's clearly something wonky in that area= . I've not read through the 8088 BIOS in a while to see what tests it does to= come to this conclusion, however. =20 However, you originally said 011 0101. The upper 3 bits of the diag code is c= ontrolled by the Z80. I think this is Z80 controlled parts of the fail code..= . but I'm not entirely sure, but that's what I get from reading the 100B sche= matic at https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/rainbow/MP01722_PC100-B_Rainbow_Schema= tic_Jul84.pdf (The SH8 ZDx data is routed to E28 on sheet 10, so this may als= o be the data when E28 is latched on sheet 10 when SH8 ZDIAG WR L is active). =20 Warner =20 Thanks =20 Rob =20 From: Warner Losh >=20 Sent: 09 December 2024 01:01 To: rob(a)jarratt.me.uk ; General Discussion: On= -Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Cc: Rob Jarratt > Subject: Re: [cctalk] Rainbow Z80 firmware =20 =20 =20 On Sun, Dec 8, 2024 at 12:39=E2=80=AFPM Rob Jarratt via cctalk > wrote: Hello everyone, I am working on a Rainbow 100A which is showing a diagnostic code on the lights at the back of 0110101. This is supposed to be Message 1 "Main Board Video". =20 OK That's likely a failure of the main VT100 chips that's are buried inside t= he Rainbow. =20 I have disassembled the 8088 firmware and checked address traces with a logic analyser and my suspicion is that actually this is something to do with the interaction with the Z80 because it is reading a status from the shared memory and then using that to set the status lights. =20 The video controller is connected directly to the 8088 side of the world. The= Z80 has to make calls to the 8088 to output to the screen. =20 I have been unable so far to work out where in the ROMs the Z80 code lives or where in the 8088 code it transfers it to the shared memory to allow the Z80 to run. =20 https://github.com/shattered/retro-bios/blob/master/dec-rainbow100b/8086_DISA= SSEMBLY_from_23-020e5-00 has disassembled 8088 code. https://github.com/shattered/retro-bios/blob/master/dec-rainbow100b/Z80_DISAS= SEMBLY_from_23-020e5-00 has the Z80 code (so both are in the ROMs). This may be the 100B code, but th= e two models are quite similar in this detail. =20 You can look through the 8086 assembly, I think to find where this error code= is generated. I looked at this stuff ages ago when I was getting Venix to run under emulati= on, but that was 5 years ago now I think. =20 Can anyone tell me where the Z80 firmware is in the ROMs? And does anyone have any insight into the above error or have details of the interaction between the Z80 and the 8088? The Technical Manual only goes so far unfortunately. =20 You might look at the mame emulation of the Rainbow. It does a decent job of = things. =20 There's a 2k shared memory area between the Z80 and 8088 that they use to do = I/O. The floppy is connected to the Z80, while the hard disk, keyboard and video a= re connected to the 8088. The 8088 loads the Z80 code by writing a magic value that 'flips= ' the mapping. It then writes to the 'flipped' RAM and flips things back and restarts the Z8= 0. =20 bitsavers also has the schematics for both the 100A and 100B models. You real= ly need them because they have the only documentation (or best documentation) for the I/O = ports that are mapped. There is some registers documented in the TRM, but it's incomplete in= some details at least if you are trying to write an emulator. =20 It's a bit of a shame that the MAME efforts have run into personality issues = that I'm not close enough to to positively affect. As such, all rainbow efforts have stalled for= a couple of years now and the port uses older interfaces that have proven resistant to recoding in = the new APIs. =20 Warner --===============8223103666399414476==-- From robert.jarratt@ntlworld.com Wed Jan 1 12:04:45 2025 From: Rob Jarratt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Rainbow Z80 firmware Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2025 12:04:37 +0000 Message-ID: <004601db5c45$54f9fdd0$feedf970$@ntlworld.com> In-Reply-To: <003d01db5c40$9edabfc0$dc903f40$@ntlworld.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4333234376419177649==" --===============4333234376419177649== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I should add that the other candidate location for this problem is that it fa= ils to reach the location 0x11CC, but this seems to be mostly about the print= er and the comms port, although for some reason these tests also capture a co= unt of the number of DC012 vertical frequency interrupts, see the code at 0x1= 4D7. Regards Rob > -----Original Message----- > From: Rob Jarratt via cctalk > Sent: 01 January 2025 11:31 > To: 'Warner Losh' > Cc: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > ; Rob Jarratt > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Rainbow Z80 firmware >=20 > Hello Warner, >=20 >=20 >=20 > Thanks for the reply below. I have spent the whole Christmas holiday poring > over the disassembled ROM and using a logic analyser to try to find the fau= lt > shown in the image above. I am at a bit of a loss now and would like to ask > for any advice/help. >=20 >=20 >=20 > From what I can see using my logic analyser, all the RAM, Screen RAM and > Attribute RAM seems to be working fine. >=20 >=20 >=20 > There are multiple places in the ROM where the diagnostic code for this err= or > is used. The diagnostic LEDs do not appear to have the mapping you would > expect, the error I am seeing seems to write 0x6F to the diagnostic port. T= he > points in the ROM where this status is written are: >=20 > * 0x0496. Followed by two that write 0x3F and 0x4F. > * 0x057A. Followed by one that writes 0x0F > * 0x05B7. Followed by one that writes 0x0F > * 0x069B. > * 0x06C7. >=20 > Other locations write the status (as 0x016F) to a memory location for later= use > in writing to the LEDs. I think it is the test at 0x7F8 that is causing thi= s to > happen and I think this is where it decides there is a problem. But I can't= work > out why or what this particular test means. I think some of the later write= s of > the 0x6F value happen after it has already decided there is a problem. >=20 >=20 >=20 > I have posted some information about the memory map and the > disassembled ROM here: https://robs-old- > computers.com/collection/rainbow-100a/#repair-reference-information >=20 >=20 >=20 > NB I have posted this same message on VCF. >=20 >=20 >=20 > Regards >=20 >=20 >=20 > Rob >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > From: Warner Losh > Sent: 09 December 2024 18:35 > To: rob(a)jarratt.me.uk > Cc: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: [cctalk] Rainbow Z80 firmware >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > On Sun, Dec 8, 2024 at 11:58=E2=80=AFPM Rob Jarratt > wrote: >=20 > Hello Warner, >=20 >=20 >=20 > Thanks for your detailed reply. >=20 >=20 >=20 > I forgot to mention that I do get a display of sorts, it looks like this: > https://robs-old-computers.com/wp- > content/uploads/2024/11/img_20241127_222706.jpg >=20 >=20 >=20 > I had assumed that this would mean the DC011 and DC012 were OK, > otherwise it wouldn=E2=80=99t seem possible for it to be able to display th= is message. > Do you still think it could be one of those two chips? >=20 >=20 >=20 > Given that the video attribute for the S is messed up and the T has both the > video attribute and the character messed up, and the anomaly runs the full > height of the screen, I'd say something is wrong with the character generat= ion > or the video ram that it uses (which I think is dual ported to the 8088). So > maybe not the chips, per se, but there's clearly something wonky in that ar= ea. > I've not read through the 8088 BIOS in a while to see what tests it does to > come to this conclusion, however. >=20 >=20 >=20 > However, you originally said 011 0101. The upper 3 bits of the diag code is > controlled by the Z80. I think this is Z80 controlled parts of the fail cod= e... but > I'm not entirely sure, but that's what I get from reading the 100B schemati= c at > https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/rainbow/MP01722_PC100- > B_Rainbow_Schematic_Jul84.pdf (The SH8 ZDx data is routed to E28 on sheet > 10, so this may also be the data when E28 is latched on sheet 10 when SH8 > ZDIAG WR L is active). >=20 >=20 >=20 > Warner >=20 >=20 >=20 > Thanks >=20 >=20 >=20 > Rob >=20 >=20 >=20 > From: Warner Losh > > Sent: 09 December 2024 01:01 > To: rob(a)jarratt.me.uk ; General Discussion: = On- > Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > Cc: Rob Jarratt > > Subject: Re: [cctalk] Rainbow Z80 firmware >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 > On Sun, Dec 8, 2024 at 12:39=E2=80=AFPM Rob Jarratt via cctalk > wrote: >=20 > Hello everyone, >=20 >=20 >=20 > I am working on a Rainbow 100A which is showing a diagnostic code on the > lights at the back of 0110101. This is supposed to be Message 1 "Main Board > Video". >=20 >=20 >=20 > OK That's likely a failure of the main VT100 chips that's are buried inside= the > Rainbow. >=20 >=20 >=20 > I have disassembled the 8088 firmware and checked address traces with a > logic analyser and my suspicion is that actually this is something to do wi= th > the interaction with the Z80 because it is reading a status from the shared > memory and then using that to set the status lights. >=20 >=20 >=20 > The video controller is connected directly to the 8088 side of the world. T= he > Z80 >=20 > has to make calls to the 8088 to output to the screen. >=20 >=20 >=20 > I have been unable so far to work out where in the ROMs the Z80 code lives > or where in the 8088 code it transfers it to the shared memory to allow the > Z80 to run. >=20 >=20 >=20 > https://github.com/shattered/retro-bios/blob/master/dec- > rainbow100b/8086_DISASSEMBLY_from_23-020e5-00 >=20 > has disassembled 8088 code. >=20 > https://github.com/shattered/retro-bios/blob/master/dec- > rainbow100b/Z80_DISASSEMBLY_from_23-020e5-00 >=20 > has the Z80 code (so both are in the ROMs). This may be the 100B code, but > the two >=20 > models are quite similar in this detail. >=20 >=20 >=20 > You can look through the 8086 assembly, I think to find where this error co= de > is generated. >=20 > I looked at this stuff ages ago when I was getting Venix to run under > emulation, but that was 5 >=20 > years ago now I think. >=20 >=20 >=20 > Can anyone tell me where the Z80 firmware is in the ROMs? And does anyone > have any insight into the above error or have details of the interaction > between the Z80 and the 8088? The Technical Manual only goes so far > unfortunately. >=20 >=20 >=20 > You might look at the mame emulation of the Rainbow. It does a decent job of > things. >=20 >=20 >=20 > There's a 2k shared memory area between the Z80 and 8088 that they use to > do I/O. >=20 > The floppy is connected to the Z80, while the hard disk, keyboard and video > are connected >=20 > to the 8088. The 8088 loads the Z80 code by writing a magic value that 'fli= ps' > the mapping. >=20 > It then writes to the 'flipped' RAM and flips things back and restarts the = Z80. >=20 >=20 >=20 > bitsavers also has the schematics for both the 100A and 100B models. You > really need them >=20 > because they have the only documentation (or best documentation) for the > I/O ports that are >=20 > mapped. There is some registers documented in the TRM, but it's incomplete > in some details >=20 > at least if you are trying to write an emulator. >=20 >=20 >=20 > It's a bit of a shame that the MAME efforts have run into personality issues > that I'm not close >=20 > enough to to positively affect. As such, all rainbow efforts have stalled f= or a > couple of years now >=20 > and the port uses older interfaces that have proven resistant to recoding in > the new APIs. >=20 >=20 >=20 > Warner --===============4333234376419177649==-- From Bruce@Wild-Hare.com Wed Jan 1 19:57:05 2025 From: Bruce Ray To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] FOCAL history Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2025 12:56:38 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4105702921459633378==" --===============4105702921459633378== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 'FOCAL's history is now highlighted on the Software Preservation Group web site. Originally created for the PDP-8 in 1968, this simple, approachable computer language significantly expanded the use of early DEC minicomputers into applications not previously possible. It was embraced by users in an extremely wide range of applications, like education, psychology, aviation, medicine, to nuclear physics and process control. Read about the personal motivations and decisions that shaped this language and its wide-ranging impact at: https://www.SoftwarePreservation.org/projects/FOCAL -- Bruce Ray Wild Hare Computer Systems, Inc. Denver, Colorado USA bkr(a)WildHareComputers.com ...preserving the Data General legacy: www.NovasAreForever.org --===============4105702921459633378==-- From epekstrom@gmail.com Thu Jan 2 15:35:35 2025 From: Peter Ekstrom To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: I need some RSX11M+ TKB help Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2025 10:35:18 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4008838477595305665==" --===============4008838477595305665== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mark, I just wanted to say Thank you for the help! I have the device loaded up now on my PDP. -Peter On Tue, Dec 31, 2024 at 10:26=E2=80=AFAM Peter Ekstrom wrote: > Hi Mark, > > Ooo! Awesome! It turns out my setup is missing a lot of things so > rebuilding drivers doesn't seem to work. I am looking at redoing the > install in a SIMH pdp11 to see if I can get a more complete installation. > But this looks like it should solve the immediate problem. I will > definitely try this later today when I get back home from work. > > Thank you! > - Peter > > On Tue, Dec 31, 2024 at 10:14=E2=80=AFAM Mark Matlock > wrote: > >> Peter, >> I just set up a pregenned RL02 based RSX11M+ and took a look at the >> DD driver. It is a vectored driver and needs to have the /VEC switch to >> tell it not to use the default RSX11M.STB but instead use RSXVEC.STB >> >> I was able to load the DDDRV with: >> >> >LOA DD:/VEC/PAR=3DGEN/HIGH >> >> The /PAR=3DGEN overrides trying to put the driver in DRVPAR that won=E2=80= =99t have >> room for it unless you reVMR >> The /HIGH puts the driver at highest available memory in GEN to avoid >> fragmenting the memory in GEN >> >> Best, >> Mark >> >> On Dec 30, 2024, at 4:21=E2=80=AFPM, Peter Ekstrom = wrote: >> >> Hi Mark, >> >> Thank you so much for this information! Seeing this, I was on the right >> track but was missing a few items. >> I typed this into a file on the PDP and ran it, but now it turns out I >> don't have the RSX11M.OLB file, so I guess I am just going to have to work >> on getting the sysgen stuff onto my disk. >> >> Again, thank you very much for the info! >> >> -Peter >> >> >> On Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 3:20=E2=80=AFPM Mark Matlock >> wrote: >> >>> Peter, >>> The command file below is from a SYSGEN driver build of DDDRV from my >>> system but I think it should work for yours. Note that OU: is defined by >>> the SYSGEN process and should be set as a logical to your system disk >>> (DL0:) or perhaps more simply just edited to be SY: Also, note that it us= es >>> RSXVEC.STB which should work on the pregenned RL02 RSX11M+. >>> >>> [200,200]DDDRVBLD.CMD >>> ; >>> ; DDDRVBLD.CMD -- RSX-11M-PLUS loadable DD: driver build command file >>> ; >>> ; Created on 01-NOV-2024 at 14:00:05 >>> ; >>> OU:[1,54]DDDRV/-MM/-HD,SY:[1,34]DDDRV/SH/-SP,OU:[1,54]DDDRV=3D >>> SY:[1,24]RSX11M/LB:DDDRV:DDTAB >>> LB:[3,54]RSXVEC.STB/SS >>> LB:[1,1]EXELIB/LB >>> / >>> STACK=3D0 >>> PAR=3DDRVPAR:120000:20000 >>> / >>> >>> If for some reason you need to assemble the DDDRV driver below is the >>> SYSGEN produced assembly command files. >>> >>> >>> [200,200]DDDRVASM.CMD >>> ; >>> ; DDDRVASM.CMD -- RSX-11M-PLUS loadable DD: driver assembly command >>> file >>> ; >>> ; Created on 01-NOV-2024 at 12:56:02 >>> ; >>> >>> OU:[11,24]DDDRV,LS:[11,34]DDDRV/-SP=3DIN:[1,1]EXEMC/ML,[11,10]RSXMC/PA:1,= DDDRV >>> >>> OU:[11,24]DDTAB,LS:[11,34]DDTAB/-SP=3DIN:[1,1]EXEMC/ML,[11,10]RSXMC/PA:1,= DDTAB >>> >>> Good Luck, >>> Mark >>> >>> >>> 1. I need some RSX11M+ TKB help (Peter Ekstrom) >>> >>> *From: *Peter Ekstrom >>> *Subject: **[cctalk] I need some RSX11M+ TKB help* >>> *Date: *December 29, 2024 at 6:21:46 PM CST >>> *To: *"General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" < >>> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> >>> *Reply-To: *"General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" < >>> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> >>> >>> I have RSX11M+ 4.6 BL87 installed and running on my real PDP 11/23+ and >>> have gotten DECnet to work as well. But recently a need to access a TU58 >>> tape has come up, and turns out the DD driver on disk isn't built against >>> the correct RSX11M.STB file. So I need to, I guess, recreate the >>> DDDRV.TSK >>> file. I have tried some very simplistic TKB commands but keep getting an >>> error saying a required file is missing. >>> >>> I don't have the sysgen stuff on this disk... What I have comes from the >>> pregenned RL02 image. >>> >>> Does anyone know how the TKB command line should look for this? I know, I >>> am looking for the easy way out. I have skimmed through some manuals but >>> nothing has stood out to me (I'm sure I missed it). >>> >>> Any help would be greatly appreciated. >>> >>> - Peter >>> >>> >> --===============4008838477595305665==-- From ed@groenenberg.net Fri Jan 3 08:26:18 2025 From: Ed Groenenberg To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: [PiDP-11] A propere RDBMS for RSX-11M+ Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2025 15:43:53 +0000 Message-ID: <87d3c9f3ba93e609014133b90c9528e8@groenenberg.net> In-Reply-To: <46350799-AC28-4EBD-B890-0955A5083F46@rsx11m.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3967709986908823725==" --===============3967709986908823725== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello Mark. The Oracle V2.3 manual is only partly usable for 4.1.4. The build/install scripts copies a help file to [1,1] and you only need to add the keyword and reference to the help file in mcr.hlp and dcl.hlp. Yhos help file is mucht more usefull. If you used the newsinst.cmd file after the installation, it will create a demo database (scott/tiger), which has several similarities compared to V2.3. Main difference for UFI, in v2.3 it is 'ufi personnel scott/tiger' whereas in V4 it is 'ufi scott/tiger' for the basic demo. Ed -- Ik email, dus ik besta 😆 January 2, 2025 4:26 PM, "Mark Matlock" wrote: > Ed, > Congrats to both you and Johnny on bringing this Oracle software back from = extinction!! >=20 > I was a big fan of Datatrieve but haven=E2=80=99t worked with Oracle before= . I downloaded the V2.3 manuals > and have started reading them, but I ran into a question. To use the UFI, o= ne needs to login with a > user name and password. Is there a default one or how do you set one up? I = configured my > installation for two users. >=20 > Thanks for this great software archeology development! > Mark >=20 >> On Dec 31, 2024, at 5:59 PM, Ed Groenenberg wrote: >>=20 >> The wait was long, but it's finally available, Oracle V4.1.4 for RSX-11M+. >> More at www.oracle-v2.online/oracle414 >>=20 >> Ed >> -- >>=20 >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups = "[PiDP-11]" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an = email to >> pidp-11+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/f3fe33a34335d8f9bb9daa30ca0a36f0= (a)groenenberg.net. >=20 > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= [PiDP-11]" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an e= mail to > pidp-11+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/46350799-AC28-4EBD-B890-0955A5083= F46(a)rsx11m.com. --===============3967709986908823725==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 8 19:20:44 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:20:33 +0000 Message-ID: <1feca9a9-26e0-4ccf-91f1-774ce50639a4@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8548260041476303632==" --===============8548260041476303632== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original file names. Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? TIA Chuck --===============8548260041476303632==-- From roger@arrick.com Wed Jan 8 21:13:48 2025 From: roger arrick To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 21:13:36 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1feca9a9-26e0-4ccf-91f1-774ce50639a4@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6761012971237260716==" --===============6761012971237260716== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable There are some good FB groups specific to DEC and PDP11 with thousands of mem= bers and lots of knowledge. Here's one https://www.facebook.com/groups/40651613978 -rA ________________________________ From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2025 1:20 PM To: CCtalk Cc: Chuck Guzis Subject: [cctalk] PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original file names. Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? TIA Chuck --===============6761012971237260716==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 8 23:10:52 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 23:00:32 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM6PR14MB3449128AFCA123073FC5B6A5D8122=40DM6PR14MB?= =?utf-8?q?3449=2Enamprd14=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3114839061733554361==" --===============3114839061733554361== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/8/25 13:13, roger arrick via cctalk wrote: > There are some good FB groups specific to DEC and PDP11 with thousands of m= embers and lots of knowledge. >=20 > Here's one https://www.facebook.com/groups/40651613978 Maybe, but I'm not a facebooker. Is there any good TWENEX/TOPS-20 documentation around that might have the information? --Chuck --===============3114839061733554361==-- From bitwiz@12bitsbest.com Wed Jan 8 23:12:11 2025 From: Mike Katz To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:55:52 -0600 Message-ID: <603ccffb-76f6-4e21-be39-1ab9fcfc4551@12bitsbest.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM6PR14MB3449128AFCA123073FC5B6A5D8122=40DM6PR14MB?= =?utf-8?q?3449=2Enamprd14=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6119853962735501394==" --===============6119853962735501394== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Also try the DEC Forum at vcfed.org. On 1/8/2025 3:13 PM, roger arrick via cctalk wrote: > There are some good FB groups specific to DEC and PDP11 with thousands of m= embers and lots of knowledge. > > Here's one https://www.facebook.com/groups/40651613978 > > -rA > ________________________________ > From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk > Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2025 1:20 PM > To: CCtalk > Cc: Chuck Guzis > Subject: [cctalk] PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format > > I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. > It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 > 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to > be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original > file names. > > Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? > > TIA > Chuck > --===============6119853962735501394==-- From cclist@sydex.com Thu Jan 9 01:15:42 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 01:15:28 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <603ccffb-76f6-4e21-be39-1ab9fcfc4551@12bitsbest.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4141530457444722605==" --===============4141530457444722605== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/8/25 14:55, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: > Also try the DEC Forum at vcfed.org. Hmmm, somewhere, I think I've heard of that place. I'll give it try, but I wonder how many TENEX disciples are out there. --Chuck --===============4141530457444722605==-- From cc@alderson.users.panix.com Thu Jan 9 02:58:54 2025 From: Rich Alderson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 21:40:44 -0500 Message-ID: <4YT8Cw4nBxzfYm@panix5.panix.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM6PR14MB3449128AFCA123073FC5B6A5D8122=40DM6PR14MB?= =?utf-8?q?3449=2Enamprd14=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5688981005352401174==" --===============5688981005352401174== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2025 21:13:36 +0000 > From: roger arrick via cctalk > There are some good FB groups specific to DEC and PDP11 with thousands of > members and lots of knowledge. Chuck asked about the PDP-10, a 36 bit mainframe system from DEC, rather than the PDP-11, a 16 bit minicomputer from the same company. The two systems have nothing in common besides the naming convention. Rich --===============5688981005352401174==-- From cc@alderson.users.panix.com Thu Jan 9 03:22:57 2025 From: Rich Alderson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 22:22:52 -0500 Message-ID: <4YT98X38glzfYm@panix5.panix.com> In-Reply-To: <1feca9a9-26e0-4ccf-91f1-774ce50639a4@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6968476406400493000==" --===============6968476406400493000== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:20:33 +0000 (UTC) > From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk > I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. > It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 > 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to > be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original > file names. > Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? Chuck, I never got the opportunity to use TENEX, so never encountered "mini-dump" format tapes. However, a quick browse through the TENEX manuals at Bitsavers tunred up a program called TAINT which accompanied TENEX but was intended for execution on Tops-10, specifically to read mini-dump tapes under the DEC OS. This program does not appear in Tim Shoppa's archive of PDP-10 tapes (not surprising, since most of them are DEC images). I asked a friend who is not on the list if he was familiar with anything TENEX (he was a systems programmer for SAIL), but he did not know. A 7 track tape should have the 36 data bits across 6 frames, unlike the 9 tra= ck usage of 5x8 with zero padding in the 5th. Someone familiar with the TENEX file system (i. e., TOPS-20 lite) should be able to decipher the block headers easily enough. There's at least one of us on the list. Rich ...still programming PDP-10 systems for money in the 21st Century... --===============6968476406400493000==-- From cclist@sydex.com Thu Jan 9 04:24:08 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 04:23:59 +0000 Message-ID: <2585d95d-9b1b-4d0f-b6d8-59d41af2aa5a@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <4YT98X38glzfYm@panix5.panix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6927915507377609328==" --===============6927915507377609328== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/8/25 19:22, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote: > A 7 track tape should have the 36 data bits across 6 frames, unlike the 9 t= rack > usage of 5x8 with zero padding in the 5th. >=20 > Someone familiar with the TENEX file system (i. e., TOPS-20 lite) should be > able to decipher the block headers easily enough. There's at least one of = us > on the list. I'm familiar with the data format; back around 1975, a DEC CE friend smuggled a tape (don't recall if it was 7 or 9 track) of Colossal Cave Adventure to me. I figured out the 36 bit 5 x 7bit character scheme back then and got the thing running on a Cyber 74 running SCOPE. Darned thing spread like wildfire at SVLOPS to the extent that COMSOURCE wrote a "search and destroy" program. Did Tenex employ the Rad50 file naming scheme? --Chuck --===============6927915507377609328==-- From lars@nocrew.org Thu Jan 9 07:17:09 2025 From: Lars Brinkhoff To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 07:17:04 +0000 Message-ID: <7wtta8a233.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> In-Reply-To: <2585d95d-9b1b-4d0f-b6d8-59d41af2aa5a@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3202707585496814964==" --===============3202707585496814964== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Rich Alderson wrote: >> Someone familiar with the TENEX file system (i. e., TOPS-20 lite) I also jotted down some notes about the TENEX file system: https://gunkies.org/wiki/TENEX_file_system_layout I don't know what the internals of the TOPS-20 file system look like, but supposedly DEC rewrote or replaced the TENEX code. Among other things, TOPS-20 supports subdirectories, but TENEX doesn't. Chuck Guzis wrote: > Did Tenex employ the Rad50 file naming scheme? No, file names are in ASCII. Other PDP-10 operating systems use SIXBIT, not RAD50. --===============3202707585496814964==-- From lars@nocrew.org Thu Jan 9 07:22:13 2025 From: Lars Brinkhoff To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 07:06:21 +0000 Message-ID: <7wy0zka2ky.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> In-Reply-To: <1feca9a9-26e0-4ccf-91f1-774ce50639a4@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1750648930000940034==" --===============1750648930000940034== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. > It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 > 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to > be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original > file names. Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? Yes. I wrote this by combining various documents, MINI-DUMPER and DUMPER sources, and testing. It includes both MINI-DUMPER and DUMPER. https://gunkies.org/wiki/DUMPER_tape_format I wrote a program to read and write such tapes: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/pdp10-its-disassembler/blob/master/dumper.c I haven't tested extracting a MINI-DUMPER tape, because I don't have any samples. I have created tape images, and tested reading them from inside TENEX. --===============1750648930000940034==-- From cz@bunsen.crystel.com Thu Jan 9 07:41:08 2025 From: Christopher Zach To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:16:54 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM6PR14MB3449128AFCA123073FC5B6A5D8122=40DM6PR14MB?= =?utf-8?q?3449=2Enamprd14=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6962180853745207084==" --===============6962180853745207084== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Too bad it is Facebook. I=E2=80=99m sure there are people here or on discord = who would know Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 8, 2025, at 4:13=E2=80=AFPM, roger arrick via cctalk wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFThere are some good FB groups specific to DEC and PDP11 with thous= ands of members and lots of knowledge. >=20 > Here's one https://www.facebook.com/groups/40651613978 >=20 > -rA > ________________________________ > From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk > Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2025 1:20 PM > To: CCtalk > Cc: Chuck Guzis > Subject: [cctalk] PDP-10 TENEX mini-dump format >=20 > I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a PDP-10 TENEX setup. > It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10 > 5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to > be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original > file names. >=20 > Does anyone have information on the mini-dump structure? >=20 > TIA > Chuck >=20 --===============6962180853745207084==-- From doug@doughq.com Mon Jan 13 07:02:02 2025 From: Doug Jackson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Spare Time Gizmos SBC6128 PDP8 board Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:01:40 +1100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2763501157174758516==" --===============2763501157174758516== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi everybody, I used to own a SBC6128 which I built from Spare Time Gizmo's. It was a PDP8 on a chip, using a Harris 6128 PDP8 on a chip. It featured a serial port and an IDE disk interface. It was a heap of fun to use and recreated quite faithfully, my PDP8 that I had access to as a kid circa 1985... Sadly, I had to move a few years ago, and search as I can, I can't find it. I also can't find my HP41 HPIL cassette drive, printer and accessories but that's another story. Does anybody have a bare PCB or a built one that they don't use any more? I know I'm in Australia, but I don't mind paying postage. Happy to pay whatever you need.. Kindest regards, Doug Jackson --===============2763501157174758516==-- From rich.cini@gmail.com Mon Jan 13 07:27:18 2025 From: Richard Cini To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Looking for S100 SCSI stuff Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 21:30:50 +0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1413350225232500552==" --===============1413350225232500552== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable All =E2=80=94 I haven=E2=80=99t posted to this list in the recent past, mostly posting to V= CF or the S100 group. But, I=E2=80=99m trying to cast my net wide looking for= some specific things for a project I=E2=80=99m working on. I=E2=80=99ve done recreations/clones of two Lomas S100 boards =E2=80=93 the C= olor Magic and the Thunder 186 (https://github.com/RichCini/LomasBoards). Thi= s set creates a two-board computer that can run unmodified PC-DOS. While it= =E2=80=99s PC-compatible, it=E2=80=99s compatible in the Tandy 2000 kind of w= ay. I started work on the Color Magic about 2 years ago, pending reversing th= e PALs, which happened this year. The Thunder 186 was much easier to recreate= , and thus was done in a few months. What this system currently lacks is a mass storage option. Lomas offered a SC= SI board (which added an RTC and 4 serial ports), but copies of the manual an= d schematics aren=E2=80=99t known to exist on the Internet. There=E2=80=99s a= lso a great alternative, the Lifeboat SCSI (for the Z-100 machines), but I ha= ven=E2=80=99t been able to locate the software drivers or firmware for it (I = have a manual which has the schematic and PAL equations). Finally, I can almost get Windows 1.0 running on this setup, but it needs cus= tom drivers. I have the drivers from the Tandy 2000 (aka, the "Tandy 2000 MS-= Windows Pre-Installation Disk") which don=E2=80=99t work as-is but I believe = could with modifications. I posted to the Tandy Discord server but if anyone = should know of the existence of these sources, please let me know. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://cini.classiccmp.org --===============1413350225232500552==-- From mikeparr@live.com Mon Jan 13 09:03:01 2025 From: Mike Parr To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: FOCAL history Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:02:56 +0000 Message-ID: <173675897611.1304.14026532453343080896@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0714040930206908127==" --===============0714040930206908127== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wondered about any influences from BASIC? --===============0714040930206908127==-- From mikeparr@live.com Mon Jan 13 09:06:59 2025 From: Mike Parr To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:06:55 +0000 Message-ID: <173675921596.1304.7389713122081514196@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5391790780219717763==" --===============5391790780219717763== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello all. Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background, a= nd how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. https://mikeparr.info/algol68.html Mike Parr --===============5391790780219717763==-- From vaxorcist@googlemail.com Mon Jan 13 09:31:16 2025 From: Hans-Ulrich =?utf-8?q?H=C3=B6lscher?= To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: FOCAL history Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:31:00 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173675897611.1304.14026532453343080896@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1227708897429304030==" --===============1227708897429304030== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Isn't FOCAL older than BASIC? Mike Parr via cctalk schrieb am Mo., 13. Jan. 2025, 10:03: > I wondered about any influences from BASIC? > --===============1227708897429304030==-- From vaxorcist@googlemail.com Mon Jan 13 09:34:02 2025 From: Hans-Ulrich =?utf-8?q?H=C3=B6lscher?= To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: FOCAL history Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:33:46 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8955449667827595330==" --===============8955449667827595330== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sorry, no: BASIC 1963 FOCAL 1968 Hans-Ulrich Hölscher schrieb am Mo., 13. Jan. 2025, 10:31: > Isn't FOCAL older than BASIC? > > Mike Parr via cctalk schrieb am Mo., 13. Jan. > 2025, 10:03: > >> I wondered about any influences from BASIC? >> > --===============8955449667827595330==-- From jwsmail@jwsss.com Mon Jan 13 14:38:48 2025 From: jim stephens To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Spare Time Gizmos SBC6128 PDP8 board Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 08:38:41 -0600 Message-ID: <95f964c1-e789-4405-b712-be2b67ecf859@jwsss.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7143065577518813986==" --===============7143065577518813986== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable original board github https://github.com/SpareTimeGizmos/SBC6120 manual https://www.grc.com/pdp-8/sbc/sbc6120_users_manual.pdf this forum had some people building and selling some boards https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=3Dboards:sbc:sbc6120-rbc-editi= on:start the 6120s are the fun part.=C2=A0 I don't know if you will find any real=20 chips out there now days, bht who knows thanks Jim On 1/13/25 01:01, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > Hi everybody, > > I used to own a SBC6128 which I built from Spare Time Gizmo's. > > It was a PDP8 on a chip, using a Harris 6128 PDP8 on a chip. It featured a > serial port and an IDE disk interface. It was a heap of fun to use and > recreated quite faithfully, my PDP8 that I had access to as a kid circa > 1985... > > Sadly, I had to move a few years ago, and search as I can, I can't find > it. I also can't find my HP41 HPIL cassette drive, printer and > accessories but that's another story. > > Does anybody have a bare PCB or a built one that they don't use any more? > I know I'm in Australia, but I don't mind paying postage. Happy to pay > whatever you need.. > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson --===============7143065577518813986==-- From lyndon@orthanc.ca Mon Jan 13 15:08:53 2025 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 07:02:08 -0800 Message-ID: <58bac767a09d3a37@orthanc.ca> In-Reply-To: <173675921596.1304.7389713122081514196@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6623681937208042884==" --===============6623681937208042884== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mike Parr via cctalk writes: > Hello all. > Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background,= a > nd how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. This triggers a fuzzy memory of an Algol 68 compiler running on MTS at the U of Alberta, circa 1980. ISTR Chris Thompson at UofA Computing Services had a hand in its development. Was this just a UofA thing? Did it escape to other MTS installations? Did anyone use it to write substantial programs on MTS? Or was it intended for Comp. Sci. teaching purposes? --lyndon --===============6623681937208042884==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Mon Jan 13 15:36:36 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Spare Time Gizmos SBC6128 PDP8 board Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:36:29 +0000 Message-ID: <44c38ba7-a9cd-4737-8f04-15b968e68f0b@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0746266516335866771==" --===============0746266516335866771== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 13/01/2025 07:01, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > Hi everybody, > > I used to own a SBC6128 which I built from Spare Time Gizmo's. > > It was a PDP8 on a chip, using a Harris 6128 PDP8 on a chip. It featured a > serial port and an IDE disk interface. It was a heap of fun to use and > recreated quite faithfully, my PDP8 that I had access to as a kid circa > 1985... > > Sadly, I had to move a few years ago, and search as I can, I can't find > it. I also can't find my HP41 HPIL cassette drive, printer and > accessories but that's another story. > > Does anybody have a bare PCB or a built one that they don't use any more? > I know I'm in Australia, but I don't mind paying postage. Happy to pay > whatever you need.. I have both. So I have a community board and I think most of the chips you need to build one. I also have a built board, with an IOB6120 which emulates a VT terminal and has VGA output. Its in a very scruffy enclosure but it worked a few months ago , booting from CF card. Sadly the IDE disk seems to have died. However I am in the UK so posting either to Australia might be expensive. I think the board and chips might be be possible..... both are available, but I feel the built unit is worth £250. The board and chips perhaps £100 depending on which chips I can find. > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson Dave --===============0746266516335866771==-- From bhilpert@shaw.ca Mon Jan 13 19:25:15 2025 From: Brent Hilpert To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 11:18:02 -0800 Message-ID: <29F86483-6998-40B4-B588-72C28CAC895D@shaw.ca> In-Reply-To: <58bac767a09d3a37@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5934362456942083810==" --===============5934362456942083810== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025Jan 13,, at 7:02 AM, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via cctalk wrote: >=20 > Mike Parr via cctalk writes: >> Hello all. >> Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background= , a >> nd how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. >=20 > This triggers a fuzzy memory of an Algol 68 compiler running on > MTS at the U of Alberta, circa 1980. ISTR Chris Thompson at UofA > Computing Services had a hand in its development. >=20 > Was this just a UofA thing? Did it escape to other MTS installations? > Did anyone use it to write substantial programs on MTS? Or was it > intended for Comp. Sci. teaching purposes? Are you recalling specifically Algol68 or could it be AlgolW? I used AlgolW on MTS at UBC in =E2=80=9978 as a CS undergrad. Still have the textbook =E2=80=9CFANGET AN - an algolw primer=E2=80=9D, and m= y greenbar listings (but threw out the box of batch cards some years go, lol). I rather liked algol, the course work moved to Pascal the next year, and felt= like a downgrade. Then I met curly-brace languages and no longer had much patience for begin-en= d. In upgrading Algol60, Algol W and =E2=80=9968 were apparently alternatives/c= ompetitors. --===============5934362456942083810==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Mon Jan 13 20:57:54 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 13:57:44 -0700 Message-ID: <846b552a-acfb-4a15-bbc8-13c122ba14b5@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <29F86483-6998-40B4-B588-72C28CAC895D@shaw.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3553338131028642285==" --===============3553338131028642285== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: > I used AlgolW on MTS at UBC in =E2=80=9978 as a CS undergrad. > Still have the textbook =E2=80=9CFANGET AN - an algolw primer=E2=80=9D, and= my greenbar listings > (but threw out the box of batch cards some years go, lol). > I rather liked algol, the course work moved to Pascal the next year, and fe= lt like a downgrade. > Then I met curly-brace languages and no longer had much patience for begin-= end. >=20 This quote comes to mind. > Monty Brewster: What are you gonna vote? > Crowd: [in unison] None of the above! The politics involved with ALGOL for 1) having a character set with no=20 [] but lots of the /\ \/ like characters, 2)not having a machine with ample power for recursion and indexed data structures. 3) Eggheads who kept adding features, like call by name and dynamic arrays. 4)Student and production compilers where two different beasts with No standard defined IO, do to a lack of standard disc operating system=20 calls. really slowed use of algol type languages in development and use. > In upgrading Algol60, Algol W and =E2=80=9968 were apparently alternatives= /competitors. >=20 Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to=20 vanish off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? I never liked the idea of dynamic arrays, who knows when the heap? will=20 overflow. With static data it fits, or not at all. --===============3553338131028642285==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Mon Jan 13 21:11:48 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:11:34 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <846b552a-acfb-4a15-bbc8-13c122ba14b5@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0413882050967094144==" --===============0413882050967094144== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> I used AlgolW on MTS at UBC in =E2=80=9978 as a CS undergrad. >> Still have the textbook =E2=80=9CFANGET AN - an algolw primer=E2=80=9D, an= d my greenbar listings >> (but threw out the box of batch cards some years go, lol). >> I rather liked algol, the course work moved to Pascal the next year, and f= elt like a downgrade. >> Then I met curly-brace languages and no longer had much patience for begin= -end. > This quote comes to mind. >=20 >> Monty Brewster: What are you gonna vote? >> Crowd: [in unison] None of the above! >=20 > The politics involved with ALGOL for 1) having a character set with no [] b= ut lots of the /\ \/ like characters, Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character sets at= the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EBCDIC = machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords and op= erators. > 2)not having a machine with ample power for recursion and indexed > data structures. You don't need a machine with recursion or indexing in the instruction set to= implement a language that has those features. Consider the CDC 6000 series,= which are RISC machines with no stack, no recursion, and limited indexing. = There are (production grade) ALGOL 60 AND ALGOL 68 compilers for those. The world's first full language ALGOL-60 compiler was written for a machine w= ithout stack or recursion, by two people in six months: the compiler for the = Electrologica X-1 by Dijkstra and Zonneveld. Oh yes, they also had to invent= a whole bunch of compiler concepts to do so, because much of what was needed= hadn't been invented yet. > 3) Eggheads who kept adding features, like call by name and dynamic arrays. Sure, though call by name is not hard to implement, and lots of languages hav= e dynamic arrays. > 4)Student and production compilers where two different beasts with > No standard defined IO, do to a lack of standard disc operating system call= s. Hard to have standard OS calls when OS barely exist, never mind any notion of= OS standards. POSIX didn't appear until maybe 25 years later. > really slowed use of algol type languages in development and use. >=20 >> In upgrading Algol60, Algol W and =E2=80=9968 were apparently alternative= s/competitors. > Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish o= ff the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? No. I have a pretty good PDP-11 ALGOL compiler that fits very comfortably in= 64 kB. And the first ALGOL 60 ran on a machine with 4 kW of memory (27 bit = words). > I never liked the idea of dynamic arrays, who knows when the heap? will ove= rflow. > With static data it fits, or not at all. Unless you overflow the stack. If you don't use stack-locals either, nor mal= loc, then yes, that particular class of error won't happen. paul --===============0413882050967094144==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Mon Jan 13 21:31:53 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 21:31:46 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3445428989446734587==" --===============3445428989446734587== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Re: =E2=80=9CAlgol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. =E2=80=9C I think the popularity of languages is due to how trendy they are to teach in= Colleges. Witness the popularity of Python. That=E2=80=99s being taught in school these= days. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 13, 2025, at 13:11, Paul Koning via cctalk = wrote: >=20 > Algol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. --===============3445428989446734587==-- From roger@arrick.com Mon Jan 13 22:06:19 2025 From: roger arrick To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:06:10 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181D4E9EC8669BEFA386671E41F2=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1213278682484369511==" --===============1213278682484369511== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I'm sad to learn in life that programming languages, and so many other things= I thought were objective, turn out to be mostly a function of human trendy t= ribalism =F0=9F=99=82 -- Roger Arrick -- Tyler, Texas, USA -- Roger(a)Arrick.com -- ________________________________ From: Wayne S via cctalk Sent: Monday, January 13, 2025 3:31 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Cc: Wayne S Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Re: =E2=80=9CAlgol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. =E2=80=9C I think the popularity of languages is due to how trendy they are to teach in= Colleges. Witness the popularity of Python. That=E2=80=99s being taught in school these= days. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 13, 2025, at 13:11, Paul Koning via cctalk = wrote: > > Algol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. --===============1213278682484369511==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Mon Jan 13 22:10:45 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:10:37 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5828472514823248555==" --===============5828472514823248555== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ben I shall simply comment that for a useless language it did a lot of good, sign= al processing, work for me all but 50 years ago As an example, you could define matrix operators with parametric dimensions a= nd write complex matrix (Riccati) equations "naturally". The code was easy t= o verify, if not efficient on sparse matrices. But, they provided a gold sta= ndard to commission the efficient code and validate its computations. Even now "languages" that can return dynamically dimensioned results on the h= eap are a bit thin on the ground, and Algol68R took care of the garbage colle= ction and had better fault dumps than I have seen since. And, the syntax was defined in BNF - just like Ada and VHDL Martin -----Original Message----- From: Paul Koning via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 13 January 2025 21:12 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Paul Koning Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows > On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> I used AlgolW on MTS at UBC in =E2=80=9978 as a CS undergrad. >> Still have the textbook =E2=80=9CFANGET AN - an algolw primer=E2=80=9D, an= d my=20 >> greenbar listings (but threw out the box of batch cards some years go, lol= ). >> I rather liked algol, the course work moved to Pascal the next year, and f= elt like a downgrade. >> Then I met curly-brace languages and no longer had much patience for begin= -end. > This quote comes to mind. >=20 >> Monty Brewster: What are you gonna vote? >> Crowd: [in unison] None of the above! >=20 > The politics involved with ALGOL for 1) having a character set with no=20 > [] but lots of the /\ \/ like characters, Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character sets at= the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EBCDIC = machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords and op= erators. > 2)not having a machine with ample power for recursion and indexed data=20 > structures. You don't need a machine with recursion or indexing in the instruction set to= implement a language that has those features. Consider the CDC 6000 series,= which are RISC machines with no stack, no recursion, and limited indexing. = There are (production grade) ALGOL 60 AND ALGOL 68 compilers for those. The world's first full language ALGOL-60 compiler was written for a machine w= ithout stack or recursion, by two people in six months: the compiler for the = Electrologica X-1 by Dijkstra and Zonneveld. Oh yes, they also had to invent= a whole bunch of compiler concepts to do so, because much of what was needed= hadn't been invented yet. > 3) Eggheads who kept adding features, like call by name and dynamic arrays. Sure, though call by name is not hard to implement, and lots of languages hav= e dynamic arrays. > 4)Student and production compilers where two different beasts with No=20 > standard defined IO, do to a lack of standard disc operating system calls. Hard to have standard OS calls when OS barely exist, never mind any notion of= OS standards. POSIX didn't appear until maybe 25 years later. > really slowed use of algol type languages in development and use. >=20 >> In upgrading Algol60, Algol W and =E2=80=9968 were apparently alternative= s/competitors. > Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish o= ff the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? No. I have a pretty good PDP-11 ALGOL compiler that fits very comfortably in= 64 kB. And the first ALGOL 60 ran on a machine with 4 kW of memory (27 bit = words). > I never liked the idea of dynamic arrays, who knows when the heap? will ove= rflow. > With static data it fits, or not at all. Unless you overflow the stack. If you don't use stack-locals either, nor mal= loc, then yes, that particular class of error won't happen. paul --===============5828472514823248555==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Mon Jan 13 22:12:30 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:12:21 -0500 Message-ID: <72920A43-19EC-49DA-A5F2-7540FBC67C55@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7276053107396265555==" --===============7276053107396265555== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 13, 2025, at 5:10 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: >=20 > Ben >=20 > I shall simply comment that for a useless language it did a lot of good, si= gnal processing, work for me all but 50 years ago >=20 > As an example, you could define matrix operators with parametric dimensions= and write complex matrix (Riccati) equations "naturally". The code was easy= to verify, if not efficient on sparse matrices. But, they provided a gold s= tandard to commission the efficient code and validate its computations. >=20 > Even now "languages" that can return dynamically dimensioned results on the= heap are a bit thin on the ground, and Algol68R took care of the garbage col= lection and had better fault dumps than I have seen since. >=20 > And, the syntax was defined in BNF - just like Ada and VHDL >=20 > Martin Indeed, BNF was created in the Algol 60 language definition (the Revised Repo= rt). paul --===============7276053107396265555==-- From bill.gunshannon@hotmail.com Mon Jan 13 22:19:24 2025 From: Bill Gunshannon To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:19:11 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <846b552a-acfb-4a15-bbc8-13c122ba14b5@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6177465199151882199==" --===============6177465199151882199== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/13/2025 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: > > Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to > vanish off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? > ALGOL ran just fine on the PDP-11. bill --===============6177465199151882199==-- From bill.gunshannon@hotmail.com Mon Jan 13 22:21:33 2025 From: Bill Gunshannon To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:21:26 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181D4E9EC8669BEFA386671E41F2=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0396810903525226167==" --===============0396810903525226167== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/13/2025 4:31 PM, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: > Re: =E2=80=9CAlgol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. =E2=80=9C >=20 > I think the popularity of languages is due to how trendy they are to teach = in Colleges. > Witness the popularity of Python. That=E2=80=99s being taught in school the= se days. >=20 Thus the reason I am still a strong advocate for COBOL. Languages should be domain specific and not general purpose. bill --===============0396810903525226167==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Mon Jan 13 22:30:01 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:29:55 +0000 Message-ID: <0ffe550b0143497ab4789335939d2297@emeritus-solutions.com> In-Reply-To: <173675921596.1304.7389713122081514196@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7848271074793879362==" --===============7848271074793879362== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mike Thank you for assembling this information - a very useful resouce; I must fin= d time to play in the sand box. In the list of influences you could meaningfully add VHDL, broadly from the s= ame stable as Ada, and riddled with Algol (68) influences. Even if it suffer= s from end if etc - why not fi etc ; so much more informative. The Algol68R implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68-R ran on I= CL 1900s and would merit mention / consideration in a survey. Ref 14 is a us= eful, brief write up. And, the 1900 resurectionists have a simulator to run = it. Martin -----Original Message----- From: Mike Parr via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 13 January 2025 09:07 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Mike Parr Subject: [cctalk] Try Algol 68 on Windows Hello all. Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background, a= nd how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. https://mikeparr.info/algol68.html Mike Parr --===============7848271074793879362==-- From gavin@learn.bio Mon Jan 13 22:38:04 2025 From: Gavin Scott To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:37:47 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14697C05BF4D307301B38F77ED1F2=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3842626590549300625==" --===============3842626590549300625== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 4:21 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > Thus the reason I am still a strong advocate for COBOL. Languages > should be domain specific and not general purpose. Absolutely. https://github.com/meyfa/CobolCraft "A Minecraft server written in COBOL. It supports Minecraft 1.21.4 (the latest version at time of writing)." --===============3842626590549300625==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Mon Jan 13 23:00:10 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000 Message-ID: <7f0992b8-359a-41ff-91df-5e94bb190841@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB146908E1497B72668864A01BED1F2=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6428154868804805617==" --===============6428154868804805617== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 13/01/2025 22:19, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > > > On 1/13/2025 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: >> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >> > >> Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to >> vanish off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? >> > More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic into a 4K ROM so it will work without a disk drive. Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in. Its far easier to learn than Algol. > ALGOL ran just fine on the PDP-11. > Thats not an 8-bit micro and needed a decent disk to run Algol > bill > Dave Dave --===============6428154868804805617==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Mon Jan 13 23:26:41 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:26:32 -0700 Message-ID: <3c245e16-1601-46d0-a902-68434973053d@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3341401407720954109==" --===============3341401407720954109== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-13 3:10 p.m., Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > Ben >=20 > I shall simply comment that for a useless language it did a lot of good, si= gnal processing, work for me all but 50 years ago I never said it was bad, just kept being delayed by politics. > As an example, you could define matrix operators with parametric dimensions= and write complex matrix (Riccati) equations "naturally". The code was easy= to verify, if not efficient on sparse matrices. But, they provided a gold s= tandard to commission the efficient code and validate its computations. >=20 > Even now "languages" that can return dynamically dimensioned results on the= heap are a bit thin on the ground, and Algol68R took care of the garbage col= lection and had better fault dumps than I have seen since. But all this stuff still is the old 8,16,32+ bit data sizes. Only ALGOL for the DG NOVA computers ( that I know of ) let one define=20 variable sized data. You would think by now one could define real abstract data sizes and types. unsigned int: 4091 bits foobar, decimal=20 float 48,2 big-money. >=20 > And, the syntax was defined in BNF - just like Ada and VHDL More standards I don't like. As code monkey, give a few bananas for a page machine code and I am=20 happy. All this modern stuff is too complex to for me figure out what is=20 really compiled. I don't agree with computer science in that most things are too ABSTRACT=20 like parsing a program. Take the ; it is really the end of a statement,=20 none of this end of line stuff, simply because blanks are stripped and you can't delimit tokens otherwise. I have yet to see a recursive operating system, other than LISP in terms=20 of atomic objects, something not seen in computer science books. Nor have I been able to afford a ALGOL programming book. >=20 Who needs BNF, we have FORTRAN II :) > Martin --===============3341401407720954109==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Mon Jan 13 23:29:41 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:29:34 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7f0992b8-359a-41ff-91df-5e94bb190841@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3065305138108139155==" --===============3065305138108139155== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-13 4:00 p.m., David Wade via cctalk wrote: > > More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic into > a 4K ROM so it will work without a disk drive. > Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in. > Its far easier to learn than Algol. 8K ROM got you APL. --===============3065305138108139155==-- From lyndon@orthanc.ca Mon Jan 13 23:35:53 2025 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows (fwd) Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:35:48 -0800 Message-ID: <58baca0ab6957d78@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4287083035658187336==" --===============4287083035658187336== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit [Oops. Forgot to cc the list the first time.] --===============4287083035658187336==-- From paul@mcjones.org Tue Jan 14 00:07:32 2025 From: Paul McJones To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: FOCAL history Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:57:46 -0800 Message-ID: <5165A924-4A45-428D-9FEB-D2A372698AC6@mcjones.org> In-Reply-To: <173679120817.1298.12326543928406859700@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4837780614285060152==" --===============4837780614285060152== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Note in his "FOCAL Notes and Background =E2=80=9D, Rick Merrill said: "Back in Maynard I took an editor, a floating point package and the specs for= the JOHNNIAC Open Shop System (JOSS) and ideas from the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility = Multi-Programming System (MUMPS) and wrote an interpreter that would do the user's job on the s= pot and interactively" > Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:33:46 +0100 > From: Hans-Ulrich H=C3=B6lscher > > Subject: [cctalk] Re: FOCAL history > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > Cc: Mike Parr > > Message-ID: > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"UTF-8" >=20 > Sorry, no: > BASIC 1963 > FOCAL 1968 >=20 > Hans-Ulrich H=C3=B6lscher > schrieb am Mo., 13. Jan. > 2025, 10:31: >=20 >> Isn't FOCAL older than BASIC? >>=20 >> Mike Parr via cctalk > schrieb am Mo., 13. Jan. >> 2025, 10:03: >>=20 >>> I wondered about any influences from BASIC? --===============4837780614285060152==-- From paul@mcjones.org Tue Jan 14 00:07:59 2025 From: Paul McJones To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:07:53 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173679120817.1298.12326543928406859700@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1679068789357001270==" --===============1679068789357001270== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This sounds like FLACC (Full Language Algol68 Checkout Compiler) by Chris Tho= mson and Colin Broughton: "You know, we only ever got 22 copies installed, and less than 5 of those in = North America. Even though it ran on 370's under MVS, CMS and MTS, and was c= heap and reliable. Talk about a marketing disaster. " [Chris Thomson, comp.l= ang.misc, November 27, 1988] https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol68impl/#FLACC > Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 07:02:08 -0800 > From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" > > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > Message-ID: <58bac767a09d3a37(a)orthanc.ca > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"us-ascii" >=20 > Mike Parr via cctalk writes: >> Hello all. >> Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background= , a >> nd how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. >=20 > This triggers a fuzzy memory of an Algol 68 compiler running on > MTS at the U of Alberta, circa 1980. ISTR Chris Thompson at UofA > Computing Services had a hand in its development. >=20 > Was this just a UofA thing? Did it escape to other MTS installations? > Did anyone use it to write substantial programs on MTS? Or was it > intended for Comp. Sci. teaching purposes? >=20 > --lyndon --===============1679068789357001270==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Tue Jan 14 00:42:08 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 19:42:00 -0500 Message-ID: <4878628E-EEC0-441E-BB02-43C8C93D9B5D@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <7f0992b8-359a-41ff-91df-5e94bb190841@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3940247989654843789==" --===============3940247989654843789== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 13, 2025, at 6:00 PM, David Wade via cctalk wrote: >=20 >=20 >=20 > On 13/01/2025 22:19, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: >>=20 >>=20 >> On 1/13/2025 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: >>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >>>=20 >>=20 >>> Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish= off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? >>>=20 >>=20 >=20 > More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic into a = 4K ROM so it will work without a disk drive. > Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in. Interpreting or compiling are implementation options entirely independent of = the language. I don't know of ALGOL 60 interpreters but there's no reason wh= y one could not be built. I do know of an ALGOL 68 (subset) interpreter, by = Ammeraal at CWI. > Its far easier to learn than Algol. That's debatable. My father (a physicist and professor of metrology) found A= LGOL-60 to be quite readable, he simply treated it as an odd dialect of Engli= sh. (He never wrote any, but he certainly reviewed applications written for = his lab by the department programmer.) And for me it was my first language (= Fortran II being next, and Basic-Plus fourth). =20 >> ALGOL ran just fine on the PDP-11. >>=20 >=20 > Thats not an 8-bit micro and needed a decent disk to run Algol A tiny disk; RT-11 ALGOL is 9k so it would fit very easily on a floppy. And = the first Algol compiler, for the EL-X1, ran on a papertape system; no magnet= ic storage at all. Hm, it would be amusing to port it to a Raspberry Pico...= $4 ALGOL machine! FWIW, if I want a tiny language for ROM or other deeply embedded applications= , I would pick Forth way sooner than Basic. But again, language preferences = are very much a matter of personal taste. =20 paul --===============3940247989654843789==-- From joe@barrera.org Tue Jan 14 01:16:27 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:16:09 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181D4E9EC8669BEFA386671E41F2=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0471230998079806792==" --===============0471230998079806792== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable If C were called Algol SC [Algol With Special Characters, e.g. using { instead of BEGIN, } instead of END, &c] then there would be absolutely no talk about "Algol vanishing off the face of the earth". Almost all commonly used languages use Algol SC syntax. C++, Java... even JavaScript even though JavaScript semantics are much more like LISP. I'd say that, looking at the first three languages (LISP, FORTRAN, Algol 60), Algol won the syntax war and most of the semantics war, with LISP semantics coming in second. FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). Oops, forgot COBOL. I honestly have never programmed in COBOL. But its syntax seems dead and its semantics are now just standard formatting libraries. On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 1:31=E2=80=AFPM Wayne S via cctalk wrote: > Re: =E2=80=9CAlgol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. =E2=80=9C > > I think the popularity of languages is due to how trendy they are to teach > in Colleges. > Witness the popularity of Python. That=E2=80=99s being taught in school the= se days. > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Jan 13, 2025, at 13:11, Paul Koning via cctalk > wrote: > > > > Algol seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. > --===============0471230998079806792==-- From lyndon@orthanc.ca Tue Jan 14 01:34:35 2025 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:34:30 -0800 Message-ID: <58bacace983bfeea@orthanc.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5234672268347157924==" --===============5234672268347157924== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Paul McJones via cctalk writes: > This sounds like FLACC (Full Language Algol68 Checkout Compiler) by Chris T= ho > mson and Colin Broughton: Yes, that's the one. On MTS is lived in *FLACC. --lyndon --===============5234672268347157924==-- From joe@barrera.org Tue Jan 14 01:56:12 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:55:56 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <58bacace983bfeea@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0502482848006139332==" --===============0502482848006139332== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC were designed for floppies. On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 5:34 PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via cctalk wrote: > Paul McJones via cctalk writes: > > This sounds like FLACC (Full Language Algol68 Checkout Compiler) by > Chris Tho > > mson and Colin Broughton: > > Yes, that's the one. On MTS is lived in *FLACC. > > --lyndon > --===============0502482848006139332==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Tue Jan 14 02:51:28 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:51:15 -0800 Message-ID: <7abd375b8d61377050dac785774d373053de81ed.camel@sbcglobal.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7749674513607567692==" --===============7749674513607567692== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: > FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) > and > semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. --===============7749674513607567692==-- From joe@barrera.org Tue Jan 14 04:20:58 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:20:41 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7abd375b8d61377050dac785774d373053de81ed.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7813192061359775288==" --===============7813192061359775288== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable OK, but do you know what I mean? I should have said that classic FORTRAN syntax was a dead end. Modern FORTRAN to me looks like "Algol F". P.S. Apologies but I may be confusing this thread with another (on this or some other list) about Hollerith constants. Which definitely were (semantically) a dead end. On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 6:51=E2=80=AFPM Van Snyder wrote: > On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: > > FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and > semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). > > > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > > --===============7813192061359775288==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 14 04:33:29 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:33:23 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============9124647292914735470==" --===============9124647292914735470== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and > semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. But, a real programmer can write a FORTRAN program in any language, even in Fortran 77, Fortran 90, or Fortran 2025 (which I have never seen) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============9124647292914735470==-- From lists@skogtun.org Tue Jan 14 08:50:00 2025 From: Harald Arnesen To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:28:47 +0100 Message-ID: <439647e3-f9e5-470d-8781-256554ab43c4@skogtun.org> In-Reply-To: <4878628E-EEC0-441E-BB02-43C8C93D9B5D@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4661737768972195315==" --===============4661737768972195315== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Paul Koning via cctalk [2025-01-14 01:42:00]: > Interpreting or compiling are implementation options entirely independent o= f the language. I don't know of ALGOL 60 interpreters but there's no reason = why one could not be built. You'll find a couple here: --=20 Hilsen Harald --===============4661737768972195315==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Tue Jan 14 09:50:44 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 02:50:35 -0700 Message-ID: <3bdf1cb2-f175-4d35-b0ff-70eedf539f76@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4149766170742898433==" --===============4149766170742898433== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: > I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC > were designed for floppies. >Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? --===============4149766170742898433==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Tue Jan 14 10:36:22 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:36:15 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3c245e16-1601-46d0-a902-68434973053d@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7933968522009480603==" --===============7933968522009480603== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Interestingly, I moved on from Fortran IV to Algol68; perhaps Fortran II woul= d have been a more compelling offering Martin -----Original Message----- From: ben via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 13 January 2025 23:27 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: ben Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows << snippety >> Who needs BNF, we have FORTRAN II :) --===============7933968522009480603==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Tue Jan 14 10:37:35 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 03:37:26 -0700 Message-ID: <2b927e22-9c19-410b-9d89-f8e20ec302c0@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2930462599963789251==" --===============2930462599963789251== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-13 9:33 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and >> semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). > >> Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > > But, a real programmer can write a FORTRAN program in any language, even > in Fortran 77, Fortran 90, or Fortran 2025 (which I have never seen) > Who wants 2025, FORTRAN IV was portable. Sometimes you need the original version warts and all. Look how many versions of ADVENTURE is out there. > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred             cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============2930462599963789251==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 10:59:20 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:59:12 +0000 Message-ID: <0acf1130-1d87-42cf-906e-bdfdf32e59fe@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2203072520622849321==" --===============2203072520622849321== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 13/01/2025 23:29, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-13 4:00 p.m., David Wade via cctalk wrote: > >> >> More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic=20 >> into a 4K ROM so it will work without a disk drive. >> Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in. >> Its far easier to learn than Algol. > > 8K ROM got you APL. > Yes but on an emulated IBM Mainframe, not an 8-bit CPU. I ran 4K tape=20 Basic in 8K of RAM. It was enough to have fun. As for BASIC being easer to learn than Algol, well the things that make=20 it a nasty language make it easier to learn. I expect it could be simpler but look at the CDC reference manual:- http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/Tom_Hunter_Scans/Algol_68_version_1_Referenc= e_Manual_RevB.pdf 116 pages of total obfuscate and technical drivel.... and then the SWTPC products 8K basic manual.... https://deramp.com/swtpc.com/BASIC_2/SWTPC_8K_BASIC.pdf 32 pages of mostly plain English... .. remember at this time most people had no idea what a program was..... Dave --===============2203072520622849321==-- From doug@doughq.com Tue Jan 14 12:26:42 2025 From: Doug Jackson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 23:26:25 +1100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6284097196589497219==" --===============6284097196589497219== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Dave, I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. Doug ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Doug Jackson Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05 am Subject: Re: SBC6128 To: Hi Dave, I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. sigh - memory is often faulty) WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so enthusiastically - I feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that - these little boards are awesome. Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. Kindest regards, Doug Jackson em: doug(a)doughq.com ph: 0414 986878 Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > Hi Dave, > > Thanks so much for that. > > Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. > > If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense > (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). > > Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built board > as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. > > Are you able to double check and send me some photos. > > For a shipping address, I am at: > > Doug Jackson > 5 Pinschof Place, > Gordn, ACT, 2906 > Australia > +61 414 986878 > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > ph: 0414 986878 > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > --===============6284097196589497219==-- From lproven@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 12:40:33 2025 From: Liam Proven To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:40:16 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2880110514181853573==" --===============2880110514181853573== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 02:02, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: > > I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC > were designed for floppies. Er. Is this a somewhat tortuous joke about the large file sizes of the FLAC audio compression format, its resultant large file sizes, and the number of floppies you'd need to store them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC Apparently it averages about 9MB per minute. So a 3min song would need about 20 diskettes of 1.4MB. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 --===============2880110514181853573==-- From lproven@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 12:43:51 2025 From: Liam Proven To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:43:35 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173675921596.1304.7389713122081514196@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2609471615033245160==" --===============2609471615033245160== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Mon, 13 Jan 2025 at 09:17, Mike Parr via cctalk wrote: > > Hello all. > Here is a link to something I wrote - brief intro to Algol 68's background,= and how to run it on Windows - with a toy IDE as well. > https://mikeparr.info/algol68.html I have no idea if this is connected in any way, but there is a work-in-progress front-end to add ALGOL-68 to GCC. I wrote about it a week ago: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/07/algol_68_comes_to_gcc/ --=20 Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 --===============2609471615033245160==-- From mikeparr@live.com Tue Jan 14 13:26:16 2025 From: Mike Parr To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:26:11 +0000 Message-ID: <173686117160.1304.17726997152703127362@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0760709807861571968==" --===============0760709807861571968== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Liam - a connection - I think so. The Windows one I used was: - the Algol 68 Genie by Marcel van der Veer. and this is mentioned in your Register article, I think. Mike --===============0760709807861571968==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 14 13:29:19 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 05:29:13 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3bdf1cb2-f175-4d35-b0ff-70eedf539f76@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7612984044062031143==" --===============7612984044062031143== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: >> I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC >> were designed for floppies. On Tue, 14 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: > Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? > Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? What do you consider to be a "mainframe"? IBM's 23FD "Minnow" (arguably the first use of floppy disks) was for=20 loading microcode into the 3330. Development at IBM started in late 1960s under Alan Shugart, and=20 completed? in 1971. https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/floppy-disk-loads-mainframe-com= puter-data/ The Memorex 650 (1972) was the first commercially available floppy drive.=20 Its 8" floppies were hard sectored, with holes outward of teack=20 zero; 50 tracks, with 8 sectors per track. later, 8, 16, or 32 sectors You don't see THOSE disks much, any more. Floppies were later used for data-entry (1973, 33FD for 3740). In those=20 days, data entry was for "mainframes". That was the "first" to use the=20 soft sectored format, which became the "standard". ("3740 SSSD format") It held same data as 3000 cards. And, it did not require diagonal magic=20 marker lines on the deck, since dropping it did not rearrange the records! Shugart left to go to Memorex, and then eventually formed Shugart=20 Associates (1973) [NOT about floppies:] After Shugart sold his company to Xerox, he started "Shugart Technology"=20 (1978). Xerox informed him that their purchase of Shugart Associates included the=20 name (trademark), and he could not use his name. They renamed the company=20 "Seagate Technology". Lesson: do not name your company after yourself! If/when you sell the=20 company, you no longer own IP rights to your own name. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============7612984044062031143==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 13:54:59 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:54:53 +0000 Message-ID: <50246b99-1afb-4c33-85e3-dbebca536b0b@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7869380439600157183==" --===============7869380439600157183== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Doug, it did indeed drop into Spam. Let me take some pics first. Dave On 14/01/2025 12:26, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > Hi Dave, > > I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. > > Doug > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Doug Jackson > Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05 am > Subject: Re: SBC6128 > To: > > > Hi Dave, > > I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. > sigh - memory is often faulty) > > WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the > community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so enthusiastically - I > feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. > > I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put > together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that - > these little boards are awesome. > > Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > ph: 0414 986878 > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > >> Hi Dave, >> >> Thanks so much for that. >> >> Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. >> >> If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense >> (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). >> >> Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built board >> as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. >> >> Are you able to double check and send me some photos. >> >> For a shipping address, I am at: >> >> Doug Jackson >> 5 Pinschof Place, >> Gordn, ACT, 2906 >> Australia >> +61 414 986878 >> >> Kindest regards, >> >> Doug Jackson >> >> em: doug(a)doughq.com >> ph: 0414 986878 >> >> Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net >> >> --===============7869380439600157183==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Tue Jan 14 14:20:30 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:56:06 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <846b552a-acfb-4a15-bbc8-13c122ba14b5@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0860877567517738932==" --===============0860877567517738932== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 01:57:44PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: [...] > Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish > off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? It's likely to be the same reasons why C never really became a thing on typical microcomputers of the era, although the specifics vary by architecture: The popular 8-bit CPUs such as the 6502 and 8080/Z80 lack useful base-plus-index addressing modes. These are useful for accessing function parameters and local variables on the stack, and for extracting fields from a structure. The 6502 doesn't have these modes *at all* and requires explicit futzing around to compute the effective address, whereas the Z80 does have IX/IY-relative operations, but they are both very slow to use and only support fixed offsets so if the index is variable, manual address calculation like on the 6502 is required. Real-world code for these CPUs tended to use hardwired (i.e. static/global) addresses, and/or used a virtual machine (with a BASIC interpreter being an extreme case) which was more capable than the base CPU. The 6800/6809 and the 65802/65816 are somewhat better on this front, but they were either too expensive or too late to be relevant. You might as well just get a 16-bit system instead. As to the 16-bits, the 8086/80286 had segmentation and so did bang up against a 64kiB address space because once again there was a lot of futzing around with segment registers to access more memory than that. They were barely any better than an 8-bit system with bank switching. Realistically, they are still basically 8-bit CPUs with 16-bit busses. The other popular 16-bit CPU was the 68000, which what with its PDP-11 heritage, couldn't fail to be a good C target. A fair chunk of AmigaOS was written in C, for example. But one could argue that it's actually a 32-bit CPU with a 16-bit bus. C was still not terribly popular on these machines, but that'll be because C compilers cost as much as the machine itself, and generated *much* worse code than handwritten assembler. So the only customers were businesses for whom time-to-market was more important than the cost of tools or the performance of the end product. > I never liked the idea of dynamic arrays, who knows when the heap? will > overflow. With static data it fits, or not at all. The converse argument is that the developer has to guesstimate the appropriate size for a static array, which may turn out to be the wrong size at run time. Making it larger than required wastes space, and smaller than required results in buffer overruns and data corruption. --===============0860877567517738932==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Tue Jan 14 14:28:23 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:28:15 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7abd375b8d61377050dac785774d373053de81ed.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3264353943503688888==" --===============3264353943503688888== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 06:51:15PM -0800, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: >> FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and >> semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. So what, though? "The Intel® Fortran Compiler 2025" just uses the LLVM backend, as does flang, the other contender, so the resulting code is going to perform much the same as anything else using LLVM. The only good reason to use Fortran today is if you have a large legacy codebase in Fortran, or are targetting a platform which is not supported by LLVM. Arguably the same applies to C. A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school and then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the intervening decades. --===============3264353943503688888==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Tue Jan 14 16:29:06 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:28:58 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3bdf1cb2-f175-4d35-b0ff-70eedf539f76@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0525453403647957891==" --===============0525453403647957891== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/14/25 03:50, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > wrote: >> I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who >> would ask if FLACC >> were designed for floppies. >> Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? > Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? IBM 370's had an 8" floppy, but I doubt it was accessible to the OS or user programs.  It was used to load main firmware, emulators and diagnostics.  IBM must have had something at the factory to make those floppies. Jon --===============0525453403647957891==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Tue Jan 14 16:33:48 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:33:41 -0600 Message-ID: <12617a37-8787-8c0f-2058-373a1c637a1e@pico-systems.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5043586942961481332==" --===============5043586942961481332== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/14/25 07:29, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk >> wrote: >>> I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who >>> would ask if FLACC >>> were designed for floppies. > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: >> Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? >> Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? > IBM 370's had an 8" floppy, but I doubt it was accessible to the OS or user programs.  It was used to load main firmware, emulators and diagnostics.  IBM must have had something at the factory to make those floppies. Jon --===============5043586942961481332==-- From wdonzelli@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 16:41:55 2025 From: William Donzelli To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 11:41:39 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8425873316658011230==" --===============8425873316658011230== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > IBM 370's had an 8" floppy, but I doubt it was accessible to > the OS or user programs. It was used to load main firmware, > emulators and diagnostics. IBM must have had something at > the factory to make those floppies. IBM 3540. -- Will --===============8425873316658011230==-- From joe@barrera.org Tue Jan 14 16:43:42 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 08:43:27 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3425783625745176525==" --===============3425783625745176525== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit OMG I am so sorry. It’s a play on “flaccid” And I will spare you any comments about 8” floppies apologies to all On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 4:40 AM Liam Proven via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 02:02, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > wrote: > > > > I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC > > were designed for floppies. > > Er. Is this a somewhat tortuous joke about the large file sizes of the > FLAC audio compression format, its resultant large file sizes, and the > number of floppies you'd need to store them? > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC > > Apparently it averages about 9MB per minute. So a 3min song would need > about 20 diskettes of 1.4MB. > > -- > Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com > Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven > IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 > Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 > --===============3425783625745176525==-- From joe@barrera.org Tue Jan 14 17:26:58 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:26:41 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4327188756704668295==" --===============4327188756704668295== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Does Fortran 2025 provide pointers and make it possible to dereference an invalid pointer? If not, then I guess that’s one reason to use it instead of C. On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 6:28 AM Peter Corlett via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 06:51:15PM -0800, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > wrote: > >> FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and > >> semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support). > > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > So what, though? "The Intel® Fortran Compiler 2025" just uses the LLVM > backend, as does flang, the other contender, so the resulting code is going > to perform much the same as anything else using LLVM. > > The only good reason to use Fortran today is if you have a large legacy > codebase in Fortran, or are targetting a platform which is not supported by > LLVM. Arguably the same applies to C. > > A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school and > then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the > intervening > decades. > > --===============4327188756704668295==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Tue Jan 14 18:09:24 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 11:09:17 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6068771139412092694==" --===============6068771139412092694== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-14 6:29 a.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Floppies were later used for data-entry (1973, 33FD for 3740).  In those > days, data entry was for "mainframes".   That was the "first" to use the > soft sectored format, which became the "standard".  ("3740 SSSD format") > It held same data as 3000 cards.  And, it did not require diagonal magic > marker lines on the deck, since dropping it did not rearrange the records! I was thinking files, not data entry. Could one write card data to them? > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred             cisin(a)xenosoft.com > --===============6068771139412092694==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 14 19:36:07 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:35:58 +0000 Message-ID: <17ed6ae0-a8c1-4766-8b59-c954701ea0c2@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0350396024932259654==" --===============0350396024932259654== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk =20 > wrote: >> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >> >> Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? >> >> Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character sets= at the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EBCD= IC machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords and= operators. This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott=20 803 which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the=20 first commercial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world=20 extensions like PRINT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }.=20 And no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an=20 apostrophe (or single quote), and things like >=3D were GREQ, LESSEQ or=20 what-have-you. * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and **=20 was exponent. Remember that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol=20 was common, as well as single character >=3D <=3D and !=3D - if you had a=20 fancy enough terminal! DIV was divide (I don't think there was a '/'=20 available anyway) The worst was the open and close quote characters around strings, which=20 were replaced by =C2=A3 (pound sign) and ? (question mark). I'm going from memory here, but this is something close to what I mean: |PRINT THE 5* TABLE' BEGIN INTEGER I, P' SWITCH SS :=3D L1; I :=3D 1' L1: P=20 :=3D I * 5' PRINT =C2=A35 * ?, I, =C2=A3=3D?, P' I =3D I + 1' IF I LESSEQ 12 = THEN GOTO=20 L1' END'| Because it looked so different to any other Algol I assumed it was Algol=20 58, until Tony Hoare (the author) corrected me that it was Algol 60 when=20 I said how much I'd admired it about 35 years later. Embarrassing! There was an Algol 68 compiler released with the Research Machines 380Z,=20 and S-100 CP/M machine used in universities (and schools) in England as=20 the government approved computer. --===============0350396024932259654==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Tue Jan 14 19:42:57 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:42:49 -0500 Message-ID: <379D3235-C770-4683-94C8-87C331C1638D@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <17ed6ae0-a8c1-4766-8b59-c954701ea0c2@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2424470899261241347==" --===============2424470899261241347== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 14, 2025, at 2:35 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrot= e: >>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >>>=20 >>> Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? >>>=20 >>> Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character set= s at the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EBC= DIC machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords an= d operators. >=20 > This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott 803 = which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the first comme= rcial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world extensions like PR= INT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. >=20 > Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }. And = no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an apostrop= he (or single quote), and things like >=3D were GREQ, LESSEQ or what-have-you= . * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and ** was exponent. Rememb= er that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol was common, as well as sin= gle character >=3D <=3D and !=3D - if you had a fancy enough terminal! DIV wa= s divide (I don't think there was a '/' available anyway) Eek. I learned on the THE system at TU Eindhoven. That was an Electrologica X8 sy= stem with a very nice OS designed and built by Dijkstra. For input it used F= lexowriters to do off-line paper tape punching, in a 6 bit code (puched as 7 = bits, one being parity), giving upper and lower case plus assorted special ch= aracters. Dijkstra once commented that it was nice to be able to order custo= m characters on their Flexowriters. So it had the "and" and "or" symbols, a = "not" symbol, and non-escaping _ and | characters so you could construct ALGO= L keywords by typing, say, _b_e_g_i_n or not-equal as |=3D . That allowed so= me non-standard characters, |< and |> for string delimiters for example. ALGOL 68 made the notion of different representations a formal part of the de= finition, so the Report spoke of "bold" symbols, leaving it up to an implemen= tation to represent those as underlined symbols, "stropped" symbols meaning w= ords enclosed in single quotes, or reserved words. All those were options ch= osen in various ALGOL 60 compilers but at that time it wasn't a specifically = documented thing. paul --===============2424470899261241347==-- From lyndon@orthanc.ca Tue Jan 14 20:13:45 2025 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:13:41 -0800 Message-ID: <58bacd9ed730283d@orthanc.ca> In-Reply-To: <3bdf1cb2-f175-4d35-b0ff-70eedf539f76@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8854680344971485500==" --===============8854680344971485500== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ben via cctalk writes: > Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? Is anyone in touch with or know how to track down Chris Thompson? It would be worth asking if he preserved the FLACC source code anywhere? If it still lives, we could take a crack at getting it running on MTS under simh. Danny Boulet might know how to find him, but I don't have an email address for him any more. --lyndon --===============8854680344971485500==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 20:32:40 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:32:33 +0000 Message-ID: <47bff615-21c7-4efb-877e-f822cc499631@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8764831571161688364==" --===============8764831571161688364== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Doug, Well I fished out the SBC + IOB and tested it. It actually boots from both IDE disk and CF card. I made a few pictures and video and stuck them on my one drive... https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag4BJfE5B3onoNli9TZ4C4GMmhTJbg?e=wUThV9 I need to dig a little deeper for the board and bits, but I only have a CPU board, not an IOB... Dave On 14/01/2025 12:26, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > Hi Dave, > > I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. > > Doug > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Doug Jackson > Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05 am > Subject: Re: SBC6128 > To: > > > Hi Dave, > > I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. > sigh - memory is often faulty) > > WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the > community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so enthusiastically - I > feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. > > I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put > together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that - > these little boards are awesome. > > Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > ph: 0414 986878 > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > >> Hi Dave, >> >> Thanks so much for that. >> >> Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. >> >> If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense >> (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). >> >> Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built board >> as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. >> >> Are you able to double check and send me some photos. >> >> For a shipping address, I am at: >> >> Doug Jackson >> 5 Pinschof Place, >> Gordn, ACT, 2906 >> Australia >> +61 414 986878 >> >> Kindest regards, >> >> Doug Jackson >> >> em: doug(a)doughq.com >> ph: 0414 986878 >> >> Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net >> >> --===============8764831571161688364==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 14 20:45:19 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:45:12 +0000 Message-ID: <0bb0876d-b8a5-43f7-8bd3-89060f6da1f2@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <379D3235-C770-4683-94C8-87C331C1638D@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0774484647804096644==" --===============0774484647804096644== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 14/01/2025 19:42, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> On Jan 14, 2025, at 2:35 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> >> On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wro= te: >>>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >>>> >>>> Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? >>>> >>>> Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character se= ts at the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EB= CDIC machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords a= nd operators. >> This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott 803= which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the first comm= ercial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world extensions like P= RINT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. >> >> Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }. And= no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an apostro= phe (or single quote), and things like >=3D were GREQ, LESSEQ or what-have-yo= u. * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and ** was exponent. Remem= ber that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol was common, as well as si= ngle character >=3D <=3D and !=3D - if you had a fancy enough terminal! DIV w= as divide (I don't think there was a '/' available anyway) > Eek. > > I learned on the THE system at TU Eindhoven. That was an Electrologica X8 = system with a very nice OS designed and built by Dijkstra. For input it used= Flexowriters to do off-line paper tape punching, in a 6 bit code (puched as = 7 bits, one being parity), giving upper and lower case plus assorted special = characters. Dijkstra once commented that it was nice to be able to order cus= tom characters on their Flexowriters. So it had the "and" and "or" symbols, = a "not" symbol, and non-escaping _ and | characters so you could construct AL= GOL keywords by typing, say, _b_e_g_i_n or not-equal as |=3D . That allowed = some non-standard characters, |< and |> for string delimiters for example. > > ALGOL 68 made the notion of different representations a formal part of the = definition, so the Report spoke of "bold" symbols, leaving it up to an implem= entation to represent those as underlined symbols, "stropped" symbols meaning= words enclosed in single quotes, or reserved words. All those were options = chosen in various ALGOL 60 compilers but at that time it wasn't a specificall= y documented thing. > > paul Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later.=20 Look at APL keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun. Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't=20 even all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same=20 symbols in the same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses=20 were on any teleprinter that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by=20 Elliott). I've still got a Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might=20 have scavenged it for parts for the ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts=20 on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) --===============0774484647804096644==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 14 20:55:01 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:54:54 +0000 Message-ID: <19b998c9-f253-48a9-9223-bf30f0b83eb4@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8603094672624135392==" --===============8603094672624135392== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14/01/2025 16:28, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > On 1/14/25 03:50, ben via cctalk wrote: >> On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: >>> I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC >>> were designed for floppies. >>> Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? >> Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? > > IBM 370's had an 8" floppy, but I doubt it was accessible to the OS or > user programs.  It was used to load main firmware, emulators and > diagnostics.  IBM must have had something at the factory to make those > floppies. > > Jon > There were definitely floppy drives in a 3174 (the controller for the 3270 terminals). I never found out what they were for! They were attached to a 4381 that was running an old 370 assembler program (the 4381 being the last CPU that was was 370 code compatible, or so I was told). If you're a legacy IBM person, this involved PAMs, and you probably know which software this is :-) --===============8603094672624135392==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 14 20:55:39 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:55:34 +0000 Message-ID: <4f77d5ae-0bdd-4da1-a725-29757cce6e3f@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <379D3235-C770-4683-94C8-87C331C1638D@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3877443136177718500==" --===============3877443136177718500== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 14/01/2025 19:42, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> On Jan 14, 2025, at 2:35 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> >> On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wro= te: >>>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >>>> >>>> Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? >>>> >>>> Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character se= ts at the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EB= CDIC machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords a= nd operators. >> This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott 803= which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the first comm= ercial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world extensions like P= RINT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. >> >> Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }. And= no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an apostro= phe (or single quote), and things like >=3D were GREQ, LESSEQ or what-have-yo= u. * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and ** was exponent. Remem= ber that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol was common, as well as si= ngle character >=3D <=3D and !=3D - if you had a fancy enough terminal! DIV w= as divide (I don't think there was a '/' available anyway) > Eek. > > I learned on the THE system at TU Eindhoven. That was an Electrologica X8 = system with a very nice OS designed and built by Dijkstra. For input it used= Flexowriters to do off-line paper tape punching, in a 6 bit code (puched as = 7 bits, one being parity), giving upper and lower case plus assorted special = characters. Dijkstra once commented that it was nice to be able to order cus= tom characters on their Flexowriters. So it had the "and" and "or" symbols, = a "not" symbol, and non-escaping _ and | characters so you could construct AL= GOL keywords by typing, say, _b_e_g_i_n or not-equal as |=3D . That allowed = some non-standard characters, |< and |> for string delimiters for example. > > ALGOL 68 made the notion of different representations a formal part of the = definition, so the Report spoke of "bold" symbols, leaving it up to an implem= entation to represent those as underlined symbols, "stropped" symbols meaning= words enclosed in single quotes, or reserved words. All those were options = chosen in various ALGOL 60 compilers but at that time it wasn't a specificall= y documented thing. > > paul Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later.=20 Look at APL keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun. Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't=20 even all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same=20 symbols in the same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses=20 were on any teleprinter that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by=20 Elliott). I've still got a Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might=20 have scavenged it for parts for the ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts=20 on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) --===============3877443136177718500==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Tue Jan 14 20:59:45 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:59:38 -0500 Message-ID: <4C031859-D5E8-4BCE-9F4A-18F65425BA69@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <0bb0876d-b8a5-43f7-8bd3-89060f6da1f2@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4345124856941139391==" --===============4345124856941139391== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 14, 2025, at 3:45 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >=20 > ... > Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later. Look = at APL keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun. Fixed in Unicode... :-) > Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't even a= ll have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same symbols in the= same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses were on any teleprinte= r that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by Elliott). I've still got a Ba= udot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have scavenged it for parts for the = ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) That would be an ASR32. I remember seeing a listing of some of the variations of Baudot. One of them= was the "weather" version, which had a pile of meteorology symbols in the fi= gures set for use by weather station reporting. There were many versions. A= n odd one I remember is the Electrologica X8 console, which has printable cha= racters for the 000 code point (# for ltrs and * for figures). Not to mentio= n a figures character the users referred to as "iron cross". For even more strangeness consider the various flavors of six-bit teleprinter= codes, which were used in the typesetting business. Services like Associate= d Press would distribute their news stories using those codes. A special var= iant came with a pile of different fractions, for sending stock listings. Th= ose codes would give you upper and lower case, but there was still a shift co= de called "upper rail" or "lower rail", a reference to Linotype line-casting = machines. Upper rail meant italics, as I recall. paul --===============4345124856941139391==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 14 21:19:28 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:19:22 +0000 Message-ID: <819a86c1-6bc1-4831-af2b-07fdbb82afa6@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <4C031859-D5E8-4BCE-9F4A-18F65425BA69@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5954501500722519143==" --===============5954501500722519143== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 14/01/2025 20:59, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't even = all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same symbols in th= e same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses were on any teleprint= er that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by Elliott). I've still got a B= audot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have scavenged it for parts for the= ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) > That would be an ASR32. > > I remember seeing a listing of some of the variations of Baudot. One of th= em was the "weather" version, which had a pile of meteorology symbols in the = figures set for use by weather station reporting. There were many versions. = An odd one I remember is the Electrologica X8 console, which has printable c= haracters for the 000 code point (# for ltrs and * for figures). Not to ment= ion a figures character the users referred to as "iron cross". > > For even more strangeness consider the various flavors of six-bit teleprint= er codes, which were used in the typesetting business. Services like Associa= ted Press would distribute their news stories using those codes. A special v= ariant came with a pile of different fractions, for sending stock listings. = Those codes would give you upper and lower case, but there was still a shift = code called "upper rail" or "lower rail", a reference to Linotype line-castin= g machines. Upper rail meant italics, as I recall. > > paul It could well be been a 32 - I don't think they're labelled. The thing=20 is that I don't think it's much different from the ASCII 33 inside - it=20 just looks like some of the control rods are missing. I don't think the=20 keyboard is any different. But I don't think I've looked at it for 40=20 years... This isn't what you'd expect from a pre-ASCII model, unless=20 they were planning ahead. Although thinking about it, it was the most=20 modern Baudot machine in the building so perhaps they were designed=20 together. Not a whole lot of use to me - I kept with a Data Dynamic 390 into the=20 1980s, which was a 33 in a heavy sound-proof box more suitable for a=20 domestic environment. You couldn't hear it chattering away, but you=20 could feel the rumble throughout the house even though I stood it on=20 foam blocks. Where it remains today. --===============5954501500722519143==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Tue Jan 14 21:23:24 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: 3174 - Was Re: Try Algol 68 on Windowsnn Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:23:17 +0000 Message-ID: <72874367-5a71-4153-8413-f0f80e6dab3a@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <19b998c9-f253-48a9-9223-bf30f0b83eb4@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1297706660302005588==" --===============1297706660302005588== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14/01/2025 20:54, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > > On 14/01/2025 16:28, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: >> On 1/14/25 03:50, ben via cctalk wrote: >>> On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: >>>> I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if >>>> FLACC >>>> were designed for floppies. >>>> Did mainframes ever have a floppy option? >>> Do any copies exist and what was the meduium? >> >> IBM 370's had an 8" floppy, but I doubt it was accessible to the OS >> or user programs.  It was used to load main firmware, emulators and >> diagnostics.  IBM must have had something at the factory to make >> those floppies. >> >> Jon >> > There were definitely floppy drives in a 3174 (the controller for the > 3270 terminals). I never found out what they were for! They were > attached to a 4381 that was running an old 370 assembler program (the > 4381 being the last CPU that was was 370 code compatible, or so I was > told). If you're a legacy IBM person, this involved PAMs, and you > probably know which software this is :-) > The 3174 runs firmware that interfaces between the mainframe channel and the screens. The original 3270 type terminals are pretty dumb. The connect to the 3174 by co-ax cable which I think runs at 1M/bit/sec. It displays characters sent to it, and sends keystrokes to the 3174. So the 3174 runs a "control program" which manages the terminals. It keeps a map of the screen, receives and stores characters and sends them to the mainframe  only when a key which requires an interaction is pressed. The floppies in the 3174 are not accessible by the mainframe. In fact a 3174 can do quite a few things. It can also do Telnet and ANSI terminal emulation to a UNIX or VMS host. There is a key which allows the user to rotate round the sessions. It can also connect to the mainframe by BI-SYNC, SDLC/SNA, X.25 or Token Ring. Versatile but slow. Dave --===============1297706660302005588==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Tue Jan 14 22:03:44 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:03:30 -0800 Message-ID: <3f08713bed1245eef677c21df1cfe828a28468df.camel@sbcglobal.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6805053758380202016==" --===============6805053758380202016== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 15:28 +0100, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 06:51:15PM -0800, Van Snyder via cctalk > wrote: > > On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > > wrote: > > > FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line > > > numbers) and > > > semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string > > > support). > > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > So what, though? "The Intel® Fortran Compiler 2025" just uses the > LLVM > backend, as does flang, the other contender, so the resulting code is > going > to perform much the same as anything else using LLVM. Intel ifort, which one can still get but is no longer supported, used Intel's in-house back-end. > The only good reason to use Fortran today is if you have a large > legacy > codebase in Fortran, or are targetting a platform which is not > supported by > LLVM. Arguably the same applies to C. I guess that explains why the NASA climate models being developed at Goddard are all in Fortran, and all of the data analysis codes for many Earth-observing satellites are developed in Fortran > A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school > and > then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the > intervening > decades. This assumes that your professors are teaching Fortran 66 instead of Fortran 2025. I'd be interested to know what you believe its defects to be. --===============6805053758380202016==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Tue Jan 14 22:11:23 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 17:11:16 -0500 Message-ID: <48C524FB-4EAB-49C1-9430-BBA5E921F13C@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <819a86c1-6bc1-4831-af2b-07fdbb82afa6@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8937489131684445021==" --===============8937489131684445021== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 14, 2025, at 4:19 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 14/01/2025 20:59, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't even= all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same symbols in t= he same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses were on any teleprin= ter that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by Elliott). I've still got a = Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have scavenged it for parts for th= e ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) >> That would be an ASR32. >>=20 >> ... >=20 > It could well be been a 32 - I don't think they're labelled. The thing is t= hat I don't think it's much different from the ASCII 33 inside - it just look= s like some of the control rods are missing. I don't think the keyboard is an= y different. But I don't think I've looked at it for 40 years... This isn't w= hat you'd expect from a pre-ASCII model, unless they were planning ahead. Alt= hough thinking about it, it was the most modern Baudot machine in the buildin= g so perhaps they were designed together. They certainly look overall like a model 33 and presumably are similar inside= . An easy way to tell the two apart is that the model 33 has a four-row keyb= oard, with numbers on the top row just like today's standard keyboards. A mo= del 32 has a three-row keyboard, with the numbers shown as shifted values on = the top row letters (QWERTY...). That three row keyboard is a common feature= of Baudot terminals, though a few manufacturers use a four row keyboard and = either lock out some of the keys depending on the shift state, or do a letter= s/figures shift automatically, I'm not sure which. paul --===============8937489131684445021==-- From doug@doughq.com Tue Jan 14 22:13:29 2025 From: Doug Jackson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:13:08 +1100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <47bff615-21c7-4efb-877e-f822cc499631@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8936244381813181029==" --===============8936244381813181029== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Dave, That's exactly what I remembered - *infinite* storage across many volumes :-) That enclosure looks practical as well. - Whats the PSU? Fortunately the UK and Aus have the same power 230V (ish). Given the level of completeness, I would be very happy to provide the completed unit a new home if you are happy to send it. If you do find the other board and bits, I would have a think about them - Maybe somebody here in Oz would be interested - I will ask around - I dont think I *need* a PDP8 cluster ;-) Maybe thats also a conversation for the Minister of Parks and Recreation here :-) I love that the IOB is surface mount - It has caused my brain to start thinking about simplifying some of my STD bus based boards to be SM - So much cleaner. I can do payment via Paypal if thats ok? Just let me know what you would like.. Kindest regards, Doug Jackson em: doug(a)doughq.com ph: 0414 986878 Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net On Wed, 15 Jan 2025 at 07:32, David Wade via cctalk wrote: > Doug, > Well I fished out the SBC + IOB and tested it. It actually boots from > both IDE disk and CF card. > I made a few pictures and video and stuck them on my one drive... > > https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag4BJfE5B3onoNli9TZ4C4GMmhTJbg?e=wUThV9 > > I need to dig a little deeper for the board and bits, but I only have a > CPU board, not an IOB... > > Dave > > On 14/01/2025 12:26, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > > Hi Dave, > > > > I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. > > > > Doug > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > > From: Doug Jackson > > Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05 am > > Subject: Re: SBC6128 > > To: > > > > > > Hi Dave, > > > > I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. > > sigh - memory is often faulty) > > > > WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the > > community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so enthusiastically > - I > > feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. > > > > I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put > > together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that > - > > these little boards are awesome. > > > > Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. > > > > Kindest regards, > > > > Doug Jackson > > > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > > ph: 0414 986878 > > > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > > > > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > > > >> Hi Dave, > >> > >> Thanks so much for that. > >> > >> Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. > >> > >> If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense > >> (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). > >> > >> Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built > board > >> as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. > >> > >> Are you able to double check and send me some photos. > >> > >> For a shipping address, I am at: > >> > >> Doug Jackson > >> 5 Pinschof Place, > >> Gordn, ACT, 2906 > >> Australia > >> +61 414 986878 > >> > >> Kindest regards, > >> > >> Doug Jackson > >> > >> em: doug(a)doughq.com > >> ph: 0414 986878 > >> > >> Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > >> > >> > > --===============8936244381813181029==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 14 22:34:43 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:34:37 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3f08713bed1245eef677c21df1cfe828a28468df.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5627838048500511417==" --===============5627838048500511417== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school >> and then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the >> intervening decades. On Tue, 14 Jan 2025, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > This assumes that your professors are teaching Fortran 66 instead of > Fortran 2025. I'd be interested to know what you believe its defects to > be. I first taught Fortran in community college in Fall 1983. In the lab, we used the IBM/Micorosft Fortran, which worked very well for THAT task, but had some serious deficiencies. A "Sieve of Erastothanes" compiled in it ran slower than in BASICA. Bob Wallace (who was still at Microsoft) warned me to avoid the run-time library. My FORTRAN experience was from fifteen years prior (PDQ FORTRAN, WATFOR, and FORTRAN 4?), so, until I managed to catch up, I was teaching my students to write FORTRAN programs in Fortran77. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============5627838048500511417==-- From cclist@sydex.com Tue Jan 14 22:44:07 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 22:43:57 +0000 Message-ID: <2cbb5ab7-216a-42e1-8b5b-9da1a8370f22@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <3f08713bed1245eef677c21df1cfe828a28468df.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0923105983120775042==" --===============0923105983120775042== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/14/25 14:03, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. F90 was a huge break from earlier versions; the target release date, IIRC was supposed to be 1988, but there was a great amount of negotiation. I was an alternate on our firm's representative to X3J3 for vector extensions. I recall that, at one point, both IBM and DEC threatened to walk out of X3J3 over the committee's not choosing to use VECTRAN syntax. I haven't kept up with releases after F90, unfortunately. I can say that F90 bears little resemblance to F77. --Chuck --===============0923105983120775042==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Tue Jan 14 23:19:23 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:19:12 -0800 Message-ID: <1f77e4b7c186abed061455e448e3a8022f6825c7.camel@sbcglobal.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4345363615620758907==" --===============4345363615620758907== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 14:34 -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > >> A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school > >> and then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the > >> intervening decades. > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > This assumes that your professors are teaching Fortran 66 instead of > > Fortran 2025. I'd be interested to know what you believe its defects to > > be. > > I first taught Fortran in community college in Fall 1983. > In the lab, we used the IBM/Micorosft Fortran, which worked very well for > THAT task, but had some serious deficiencies.  A "Sieve of Erastothanes" > compiled in it ran slower than in BASICA.  Bob Wallace (who was still at > Microsoft) warned me to avoid the run-time library. Microsoft Fortran was a joke, but I liked Bob Allison, one of the developers. He retired at age 35. Ryan-MacFarland Fortran was promoted by IBM for the AT. I reported problems with it. I eventually got an invitation to buy the next version, but by then I had been using Lahey F77L for about a year. We found an error in F77L complex divide and expected the same sort of "reply" we had gotten from Ryan-MacFarland. The next day, Bruce Bush called and told me "type this into your fix file." I asked "what's a fix file?" He told me it's a small text file that the compiler reads and patches itself when it loads. We stuck with Lahey until Tom retired. By then, he wasn't selling his own compiler, but rather the Fujitsu Fortran 95 Windoze compiler that he had modified for Linux. Fujitsu didn't provide any meaningful support, never provided a 64-bit compiler, and never provided Fortran 2003 or anything newer. I use NAG and Intel now. gfortran has too many bugs and too many weird interpretations of "standard compliant." It refuses to compile some of my clearly-compliant modules. It gets occasional fatal internal errors and offers to send a message to the developers ­— from whom I never get a reply. Intel ifx is free and by far the best for run time performance, while NAG is by far the best for both compile-time and run-time diagnostics. ifx is free but nagfor isn't. > My FORTRAN experience was from fifteen years prior (PDQ FORTRAN, WATFOR, > and FORTRAN 4?), so, until I managed to catch up, I was teaching my > students to write FORTRAN programs in Fortran77. Damian Rouson teaches classes in parallel programming. About two weeks into the course he reveals to his students that they're using the coarray SPMD features of modern Fortran — far easier to use and understand, and generally more efficient, than MPI or PVM. > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred      cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============4345363615620758907==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Tue Jan 14 23:31:55 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:31:45 -0800 Message-ID: <246e1fc1b6116da0f2e77b2d14a815a0401293a1.camel@sbcglobal.net> In-Reply-To: <2cbb5ab7-216a-42e1-8b5b-9da1a8370f22@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6001125995528422436==" --===============6001125995528422436== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 22:43 +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/14/25 14:03, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > F90 was a huge break from earlier versions; the target release date, > IIRC was supposed to be 1988, but there was a great amount of > negotiation.  I was an alternate on our firm's representative to X3J3 > for vector extensions.  I recall that, at one point, both IBM and DEC > threatened to walk out of X3J3 over the committee's not choosing to > use > VECTRAN syntax. I corresponded with X3J3 starting in about 1980, but had no funding to participate officially. From 1997 until I retired in 2020, I was my employer's representative to J3, as INCITS renamed X3J3 when they took over from CBEMA, and then PL22.3, as they renamed it to correspond to ISO nomenclature. I was also my employer's representative to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5. I was liaison from J3/PL22.3 to WG9 (Ada), IEEE P1722 (interval arithmetic), and IFIP WG 2.5 (numerical software), of which I was vice-chair for about five years until I retired. > I haven't kept up with releases after F90, unfortunately.  I can say > that F90 bears little resemblance to F77. F90 was an extension to F77 and was entirely upwardly compatible with it, not an entirely new language. The most important syntax extension was free-form input to get away from the rigid card-oriented format, but vector operations, dynamic memory, modules, etc. were also very important.  Almost all of F66 and F77 are still present in F2025. The column-1 vertical format control was removed in 2003 because there was no way to detect or specify that it was enabled for a particular file. Assigned GO TO and assigned FORMAT and the ASSIGN statement were removed in 2008. A few things are marked as "obsolescent" with a caveat that they might be removed, but the vendors say "go ahead and remove it, but I still have to compile it forever." > > --Chuck > --===============6001125995528422436==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Wed Jan 15 00:04:13 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:04:07 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1f77e4b7c186abed061455e448e3a8022f6825c7.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4702741179186801116==" --===============4702741179186801116== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>>> A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school >>>> and then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the >>>> intervening decades. >>> This assumes that your professors are teaching Fortran 66 instead of >>> Fortran 2025. I'd be interested to know what you believe its defects to >>> be. >> >> I first taught Fortran in community college in Fall 1983. >> In the lab, we used the IBM/Micorosft Fortran, which worked very well for >> THAT task, but had some serious deficiencies.  A "Sieve of Erastothanes" >> compiled in it ran slower than in BASICA.  Bob Wallace (who was still at >> Microsoft) warned me to avoid the run-time library. On Tue, 14 Jan 2025, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > Microsoft Fortran was a joke, but I liked Bob Allison, one of the > developers. He retired at age 35. Ryan-MacFarland Fortran was promoted > by IBM for the AT. I reported problems with it. I eventually got an > invitation to buy the next version, but by then I had been using Lahey > F77L for about a year. We found an error in F77L complex divide and > expected the same sort of "reply" we had gotten from Ryan-MacFarland. > The next day, Bruce Bush called and told me "type this into your fix > file." I asked "what's a fix file?" He told me it's a small text file > that the compiler reads and patches itself when it loads. We stuck with > Lahey until Tom retired. By then, he wasn't selling his own compiler, > but rather the Fujitsu Fortran 95 Windoze compiler that he had modified > for Linux. Fujitsu didn't provide any meaningful support, never > provided a 64-bit compiler, and never provided Fortran 2003 or anything > newer. I use NAG and Intel now. gfortran has too many bugs and too many > weird interpretations of "standard compliant." It refuses to compile > some of my clearly-compliant modules. It gets occasional fatal internal > errors and offers to send a message to the developers ­— from whom I > never get a reply. Intel ifx is free and by far the best for run time > performance, while NAG is by far the best for both compile-time and > run-time diagnostics. ifx is free but nagfor isn't. > >> My FORTRAN experience was from fifteen years prior (PDQ FORTRAN, WATFOR, >> and FORTRAN 4?), so, until I managed to catch up, I was teaching my >> students to write FORTRAN programs in Fortran77. > > Damian Rouson teaches classes in parallel programming. About two weeks > into the course he reveals to his students that they're using the > coarray SPMD features of modern Fortran — far easier to use and > understand, and generally more efficient, than MPI or PVM. My courses were SO beginning (first-single semster, no prerequisites) that the differences were relatively unimportant. We had to spend two or three of the eighteen 3 hour lectures on "What is a program?" and how to compile. I had a couple of students with prior college courses in programming, but some of them had never learned anything about what happened between leaving their deck of cards on the ocunter, and picking up output hours or day later. First assignment was "write a program to display YOUR name." Freeform input would indeed be a lot easier for beginners! Formatting the input was a struggle for some. (obviously, only at the very beginning) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============4702741179186801116==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 15 00:32:59 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:32:49 +0000 Message-ID: <40062d3e-b625-42e1-904b-f43179dcd0cc@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <246e1fc1b6116da0f2e77b2d14a815a0401293a1.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1954985361315905336==" --===============1954985361315905336== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/14/25 15:31, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > F90 was an extension to F77 and was entirely upwardly compatible with > it, not an entirely new language. IMOHO, the most significant revision of the F77 standard by F90 was that is was acceptable to spell the last 6 letters of the language in lower case. (i.e. Fortran). In a way, that broke with the historical sense of the name. It should have been ForTran. (just kidding) F66 was important in a way, as vendor extensions had gone a bit wild. (e.g. punch a B in column 1 and the arithmetic operators become boolean. I think that was a feature in 7090 FMS/IBSYS). One defining characteristic of post-1980 languages was the assumption of a binary radix, as opposed to systems like the 1401 or 7070, which were decimal and lacked bitwise boolean operations. --Chuck --===============1954985361315905336==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Wed Jan 15 00:50:19 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:50:06 -0800 Message-ID: <6edbb4c21fdfd9e27f7ca62611bf0751d5117181.camel@sbcglobal.net> In-Reply-To: <40062d3e-b625-42e1-904b-f43179dcd0cc@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============9205851606079791578==" --===============9205851606079791578== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Wed, 2025-01-15 at 00:32 +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > One defining characteristic of post-1980 languages was the assumption > of > a binary radix, as opposed to systems like the 1401 or 7070, which > were > decimal and lacked bitwise boolean operations. I have the 1401 FORTRAN-II compiler. I reverse engineered it from operational tapes, then the author (Gary Mokotoff) sent me a scan of his listings, that he thought he lost when he retired. My reverse- engineered code has far more comments. It works in an interesting way: It reads the source code into core, then reads 64 more phases, average about 300 instructions each, until it has object code in core. It has an option to punch an object deck, or just compile-and-go. I recently modified it so they could run it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. They have a Tape Adapter Unit (TAU) emulator connected to a PC. It can pretend to be a TAU that they can use to diagnose tape drives, or it can pretend to be a tape drive so they can read and write "tapes" in the PC. But it has a 2,400 character buffer, and some of the blocks were 3,500 characters. It works in SimH i1401, but I don't know whether they've tried on their real 1401s. Its (necessarily decimal) floating point arithmetic was quite good -- up to 20 digits, with two guard digits. The only defect by modern standards was that it didn't do symmetric rounding. The intrinsic function library was small, but also quite good — trig functions, exponential, logarithm, square root. Jay Jaeger has built a 1410 using FPGA, including 1401 compatibility. I haven't kept up with the status so I don't know whether everything works yet. 1401 (and 1410 and 7010) had a "branch if bit equal" instruction and column-binary card reading and punching (both optional on 1401), but nothing more for boolean operations. --===============9205851606079791578==-- From joe@barrera.org Wed Jan 15 00:52:46 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:52:31 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <40062d3e-b625-42e1-904b-f43179dcd0cc@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7268782156434236232==" --===============7268782156434236232== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > It should have been ForTran. OMG :-O Let me then suggest: LisP (List Processing) AlgoL (Algorithmic Language) JavaScript (Pure unadulterated marketing BS. Should have been named something based on "LISP disguised as Java"[1].) > (just kidding) NOW you tell me. This is why I prefer LISP./forward-Polish-notation. First you are told what will happen, and then you discover whom it will happen to, As Laurie Anderson would say, it's like a prophecy. Doesn't it? Doesn't it look? [2] (just-kidding (should-have-been it 'ForTran)) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4t672J3PvM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0lShWwy_Oc On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 1/14/25 15:31, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > > F90 was an extension to F77 and was entirely upwardly compatible with > > it, not an entirely new language. > > IMOHO, the most significant revision of the F77 standard by F90 was > that is was acceptable to spell the last 6 letters of the language in > lower case. (i.e. Fortran). In a way, that broke with the historical > sense of the name. It should have been ForTran. > > (just kidding) > > F66 was important in a way, as vendor extensions had gone a bit wild. > (e.g. punch a B in column 1 and the arithmetic operators become boolean. > I think that was a feature in 7090 FMS/IBSYS). > > One defining characteristic of post-1980 languages was the assumption of > a binary radix, as opposed to systems like the 1401 or 7070, which were > decimal and lacked bitwise boolean operations. > > --Chuck > > > --===============7268782156434236232==-- From roger@arrick.com Wed Jan 15 01:01:27 2025 From: roger arrick To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 01:01:17 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8988163259107339401==" --===============8988163259107339401== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Concerning notation, we actually could just set the nouns (numbers) and set t= he verbs (operators) in any order. Both the programmer and the computer know= the difference. Nouns =3D objects, verbs =3D methods. I have a look-up ALU-based CPU design that has a register for operator, and r= egisters for 1 or 2 operands. What's cool about this is that you can set the= operator and just feed in a series of numbers. 74HCxx and EEPROMs. -- Roger Arrick -- Tyler, Texas, USA -- Roger(a)Arrick.com -- ________________________________ From: Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 6:52 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Cc: Joseph S. Barrera III Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows > It should have been ForTran. OMG :-O Let me then suggest: LisP (List Processing) AlgoL (Algorithmic Language) JavaScript (Pure unadulterated marketing BS. Should have been named something based on "LISP disguised as Java"[1].) > (just kidding) NOW you tell me. This is why I prefer LISP./forward-Polish-notation. First you are told what will happen, and then you discover whom it will happen to, As Laurie Anderson would say, it's like a prophecy. Doesn't it? Doesn't it look? [2] (just-kidding (should-have-been it 'ForTran)) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3De4t672J3PvM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dn0lShWwy_Oc On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 4:33=E2=80=AFPM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 1/14/25 15:31, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > > F90 was an extension to F77 and was entirely upwardly compatible with > > it, not an entirely new language. > > IMOHO, the most significant revision of the F77 standard by F90 was > that is was acceptable to spell the last 6 letters of the language in > lower case. (i.e. Fortran). In a way, that broke with the historical > sense of the name. It should have been ForTran. > > (just kidding) > > F66 was important in a way, as vendor extensions had gone a bit wild. > (e.g. punch a B in column 1 and the arithmetic operators become boolean. > I think that was a feature in 7090 FMS/IBSYS). > > One defining characteristic of post-1980 languages was the assumption of > a binary radix, as opposed to systems like the 1401 or 7070, which were > decimal and lacked bitwise boolean operations. > > --Chuck > > > --===============8988163259107339401==-- From joe@barrera.org Wed Jan 15 01:05:55 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 17:05:39 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM6PR14MB344986AB3089B49EB7CFCBE4D8192=40DM6PR14MB?= =?utf-8?q?3449=2Enamprd14=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3652808353027244183==" --===============3652808353027244183== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Well, verb order does matter, but I appreciate your point. E.g. in RPN: 1 2 3 * + => 7 1 2 3 + * => 5 On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 5:01 PM roger arrick via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > Concerning notation, we actually could just set the nouns (numbers) and > set the verbs (operators) in any order. Both the programmer and the > computer know the difference. Nouns = objects, verbs = methods. > > I have a look-up ALU-based CPU design that has a register for operator, > and registers for 1 or 2 operands. What's cool about this is that you can > set the operator and just feed in a series of numbers. 74HCxx and EEPROMs. > > -- Roger Arrick -- Tyler, Texas, USA -- Roger(a)Arrick.com -- > > ________________________________ > From: Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 6:52 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Cc: Joseph S. Barrera III > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows > > > It should have been ForTran. > > OMG :-O > > Let me then suggest: > > LisP (List Processing) > > AlgoL (Algorithmic Language) > > JavaScript (Pure unadulterated marketing BS. Should have been named > something based on "LISP disguised as Java"[1].) > > > (just kidding) > > NOW you tell me. > > This is why I prefer LISP./forward-Polish-notation. First you are told what > will happen, and then you discover whom it will happen to, > As Laurie Anderson would say, it's like a prophecy. Doesn't it? Doesn't it > look? [2] > > (just-kidding (should-have-been it 'ForTran)) > > [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4t672J3PvM > > [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0lShWwy_Oc > > > On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > On 1/14/25 15:31, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > > > > > F90 was an extension to F77 and was entirely upwardly compatible with > > > it, not an entirely new language. > > > > IMOHO, the most significant revision of the F77 standard by F90 was > > that is was acceptable to spell the last 6 letters of the language in > > lower case. (i.e. Fortran). In a way, that broke with the historical > > sense of the name. It should have been ForTran. > > > > (just kidding) > > > > F66 was important in a way, as vendor extensions had gone a bit wild. > > (e.g. punch a B in column 1 and the arithmetic operators become boolean. > > I think that was a feature in 7090 FMS/IBSYS). > > > > One defining characteristic of post-1980 languages was the assumption of > > a binary radix, as opposed to systems like the 1401 or 7070, which were > > decimal and lacked bitwise boolean operations. > > > > --Chuck > > > > > > > --===============3652808353027244183==-- From cube1@charter.net Wed Jan 15 02:26:45 2025 From: Jay Jaeger To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:26:30 -0600 Message-ID: <7B37DB0F-00E7-46F7-B6C3-2D3E36865F25@charter.net> In-Reply-To: <6edbb4c21fdfd9e27f7ca62611bf0751d5117181.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5355985451261085381==" --===============5355985451261085381== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 14, 2025, at 6:50=E2=80=AFPM, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: >=20 > Jay Jaeger has built a 1410 using FPGA, including 1401 compatibility. I > haven't kept up with the status so I don't know whether everything > works yet. The 1410 cpu runs and passes cpu dials in both 1410 and 1401 mode . Tape rea= ds work, but way too slowly over a 115kbps usb serial connection, so I have b= een working on doing lamps, tape and maybe disk over UDP. Getting the UDP wor= king on my particular dev board took some time. Tape in maybe 6 months, I ho= pe. =20 My last year in grad school I was part of a team working on an ALGOL68 to PDP= -11 cross compiler (running on a UNIVAC 1110). I worked on direct pdp11 relo= catable code gen from a quadruples intermediate form. We made good progress = and got good grades, but it was never finished. >=20 > 1401 (and 1410 and 7010) had a "branch if bit equal" instruction and > column-binary card reading and punching (both optional on 1401), but > nothing more for boolean operations. >=20 >=20 --===============5355985451261085381==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 15 03:48:17 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 03:48:04 +0000 Message-ID: <63712b46-8d1c-4959-a1ca-97a922cc2ec4@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <6edbb4c21fdfd9e27f7ca62611bf0751d5117181.camel@sbcglobal.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3426010262508494328==" --===============3426010262508494328== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/14/25 16:50, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > On Wed, 2025-01-15 at 00:32 +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > I have the 1401 FORTRAN-II compiler. I reverse engineered it from > operational tapes, then the author (Gary Mokotoff) sent me a scan of > his listings, that he thought he lost when he retired. My reverse- > engineered code has far more comments. It works in an interesting way:.. I remember running 1620 card FORTRAN. It sounds much like the 1401 version (no surprise). You first read in the compiler, then the source program; an intermediate deck is punched. The second pass of the compiler is then read in, followed by the intermediate deck punched in pass 1, then any subroutine decks. My recollection is that the precision could be specified by the user; integers could be up to 10 digits and floating mantissas could be up to 28 digits in length. An interesting feature was that subroutines were not required to have the same precision as the main program. It was a fairly time-consuming process and program errors set the whole process back to square 1. IBM, realizing the essence of "cumbersome", produced a companion product, called GOTRAN, where the compiler/runtime remained resident and source statements were compiled into an intermediate form and executed interpretively. Of course, execution was slower and the language was simpler (e.g. the FORMAT statement was omitted). --Chuck --===============3426010262508494328==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Wed Jan 15 17:49:23 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:49:09 -0500 Message-ID: <774084C5-EBE4-41C6-A609-D27419BEBF78@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <63712b46-8d1c-4959-a1ca-97a922cc2ec4@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5666775504790920940==" --===============5666775504790920940== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 14, 2025, at 10:48 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 1/14/25 16:50, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: >> On Wed, 2025-01-15 at 00:32 +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >>=20 >> I have the 1401 FORTRAN-II compiler. I reverse engineered it from >> operational tapes, then the author (Gary Mokotoff) sent me a scan of >> his listings, that he thought he lost when he retired. My reverse- >> engineered code has far more comments. It works in an interesting way:.. >=20 > I remember running 1620 card FORTRAN. It sounds much like the 1401 > version (no surprise). You first read in the compiler, then the source > program; an intermediate deck is punched. The second pass of the > compiler is then read in, followed by the intermediate deck punched in > pass 1, then any subroutine decks. >=20 > My recollection is that the precision could be specified by the user; > integers could be up to 10 digits and floating mantissas could be up to > 28 digits in length. An interesting feature was that subroutines were > not required to have the same precision as the main program. Yes, it certainly had that feature. I'm not sure about the limits, I thought= the integer limit was 99 digits. The reason for these options is that it's = directly supported by the hardware, which has arbitrary length integers and (= up to a limit I forgot) floating point mantissas. Given the encoding in the = hardware, it makes sense that you could mix and match; the hardware would acc= ept operands of whatever size you pick, in whatever combination you like. So= , for example, adding a 3 digit integer to a 300 digit integer would work jus= t fine. paul --===============5666775504790920940==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 15 18:58:22 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 18:58:09 +0000 Message-ID: <34886d26-cbe3-4043-8b06-6e9949caa211@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <774084C5-EBE4-41C6-A609-D27419BEBF78@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1504186841466557048==" --===============1504186841466557048== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/15/25 09:49, Paul Koning wrote: > Yes, it certainly had that feature. I'm not sure about the limits, I thoug= ht the integer limit was 99 digits. The reason for these options is that it'= s directly supported by the hardware, which has arbitrary length integers and= (up to a limit I forgot) floating point mantissas. Given the encoding in th= e hardware, it makes sense that you could mix and match; the hardware would a= ccept operands of whatever size you pick, in whatever combination you like. = So, for example, adding a 3 digit integer to a 300 digit integer would work j= ust fine. Looked up the latest 1620 FORTRAN reference in the Monitor II-D manual. 10 and 28 for FANDK, so my memory isn't completely gone yet. Always wondered if addition and subtraction on the 1620 had a "shortstop" implementation. For example, adding a 10 digit to a 50 digit number, would the operation stop if there was no carryout after 10 digits, or would the implementation process all 50 digits? --Chuck --===============1504186841466557048==-- From lyndon@orthanc.ca Wed Jan 15 22:01:29 2025 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Not Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:01:23 -0800 Message-ID: <1268e0d596173b06@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2439205161374708381==" --===============2439205161374708381== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Could we maybe change the subject headers here? Neither Fortran nor IBM terminal controllers has anything to do with Algol :-) --===============2439205161374708381==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Wed Jan 15 22:02:51 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:02:45 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6155793956624208313==" --===============6155793956624208313== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14/01/2025 22:13, Doug Jackson wrote: > Hi Dave, > > That's exactly what I remembered - *infinite* storage across many > volumes :-) > > That enclosure looks practical as well. - Whats the PSU? Fortunately > the UK and Aus have the same power 230V (ish). > > Given the level of completeness, I would be very happy to provide the > completed unit a new home if you are happy to send it. > > If you do find the other board and bits, I would have a think about > them - Maybe somebody here in Oz would be interested - I will ask > around - I dont think I *need* a PDP8 cluster ;-)  Maybe thats also a > conversation for the Minister of Parks and Recreation here :-) > OK so I have found the bits I have which are:- 2 x SBC6120 PCBs RBC Edition R 1.10 08-Oct-2016 2 x Custom Chips - BTS6120 High, BTS6120 Low, IOT 1, IOT 2, MEM 2 X HD1-6120-9 6 X HD1-6402-9 What I don't have is any 82C55A, AS6C1008 or the other bits needed to complete a unit. (actually I might have some power connectors) Assuming Doug is taking the working unit, If others in Australia want any bits I can ship them to Doug. I think £50 is a reasonable price for 1 off - PCB, Custom Chips, 6120 and 6402. Spare 6402s available for postage. Dave --===============6155793956624208313==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Wed Jan 15 22:25:31 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Fwd: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:25:24 +0000 Message-ID: <45ae5aaa-d233-4449-9194-8f3e42bc1a68@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <47bff615-21c7-4efb-877e-f822cc499631@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4470061239303725052==" --===============4470061239303725052== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit More pics of other bits added to my one drive Dave (Sorry if this is a bit of a mess. Some messages got lost in my spam folder) -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [cctalk] Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:32:33 +0000 From: David Wade To: Doug Jackson via cctalk Doug, Well I fished out the SBC + IOB and tested it. It actually boots from both IDE disk and CF card. I made a few pictures and video and stuck them on my one drive... https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag4BJfE5B3onoNli9TZ4C4GMmhTJbg?e=wUThV9 I need to dig a little deeper for the board and bits, but I only have a CPU board, not an IOB... Dave On 14/01/2025 12:26, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: > Hi Dave, > > I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. > > Doug > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Doug Jackson > Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05 am > Subject: Re: SBC6128 > To: > > > Hi Dave, > > I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. > sigh - memory is often faulty) > > WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the > community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so > enthusiastically - I > feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. > > I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put > together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that - > these little boards are awesome. > > Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > ph: 0414 986878 > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > >> Hi Dave, >> >> Thanks so much for that. >> >> Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. >> >> If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense >> (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). >> >> Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built board >> as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. >> >> Are you able to double check and send me some photos. >> >> For a shipping address, I am at: >> >> Doug Jackson >> 5 Pinschof Place, >> Gordn, ACT, 2906 >> Australia >> +61 414 986878 >> >> Kindest regards, >> >> Doug Jackson >> >> em: doug(a)doughq.com >> ph: 0414 986878 >> >> Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net >> >> --===============4470061239303725052==-- From cclist@sydex.com Wed Jan 15 22:55:27 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Not Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:55:18 +0000 Message-ID: <02fb83ee-d83e-4c2a-b0fc-7e102132b7d5@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <1268e0d596173b06@orthanc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2873033035575207581==" --===============2873033035575207581== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/15/25 14:01, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via cctalk wrote: > Could we maybe change the subject headers here? Neither Fortran > nor IBM terminal controllers has anything to do with Algol :-) I didn't participate in the Algol 68 discussion because I haven't used Algol since Algol 60. --Chuck --===============2873033035575207581==-- From d44617665@hotmail.com Thu Jan 16 00:17:33 2025 From: David Wise To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:17:26 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <34886d26-cbe3-4043-8b06-6e9949caa211@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0589050475819090890==" --===============0589050475819090890== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Pretty sure it does stop, if it runs out of addend and there=E2=80=99s no car= ry. Dave Wise > On Jan 15, 2025, at 10:58 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFOn 1/15/25 09:49, Paul Koning wrote: >=20 >> Yes, it certainly had that feature. I'm not sure about the limits, I thou= ght the integer limit was 99 digits. The reason for these options is that it= 's directly supported by the hardware, which has arbitrary length integers an= d (up to a limit I forgot) floating point mantissas. Given the encoding in t= he hardware, it makes sense that you could mix and match; the hardware would = accept operands of whatever size you pick, in whatever combination you like. = So, for example, adding a 3 digit integer to a 300 digit integer would work = just fine. >=20 > Looked up the latest 1620 FORTRAN reference in the Monitor II-D manual. > 10 and 28 for FANDK, so my memory isn't completely gone yet. >=20 > Always wondered if addition and subtraction on the 1620 had a > "shortstop" implementation. For example, adding a 10 digit to a 50 > digit number, would the operation stop if there was no carryout after 10 > digits, or would the implementation process all 50 digits? >=20 > --Chuck >=20 >=20 --===============0589050475819090890==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Thu Jan 16 03:16:19 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] DECtalk for Digital UNIX Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:06:14 -0800 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1933678340322045427==" --===============1933678340322045427== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Anyone out there collecting Digital UNIX or Tru64 stuff? I'm trying to find t= he Alpha version of DECtalk V4.2A that ran on Digital UNIX. The readme file is easy to find but not the actual package. If you know where it is or have a go= od guess, I'd be much obliged (and so will this AlphaPC 164LX running Tru64 5.1B= ). --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- The surest test of discipline is its absence. -- Clara Barton ------------= -- --===============1933678340322045427==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Thu Jan 16 07:41:06 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:40:54 -0700 Message-ID: <223aa253-7360-4457-b7d2-2e3fb5e61877@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCYXPR84MB3515EB9652C94DFB3B296B46AE1A2=40CYXPR84MB?= =?utf-8?q?3515=2ENAMPRD84=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7162545480518274142==" --===============7162545480518274142== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-15 5:17 p.m., David Wise via cctalk wrote: > Pretty sure it does stop, if it runs out of addend and there’s no carry. I think being dumb is the smart thing to do. --===============7162545480518274142==-- From donald@donaldwhittemore.com Thu Jan 16 08:50:49 2025 From: "donald donaldwhittemore.com" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:50:08 +0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6870448759855528047==" --===============6870448759855528047== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Yes, but punch cards did not have to worry about magnets. 😊 --===============6870448759855528047==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Thu Jan 16 08:50:54 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:50:05 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3631504847090850067==" --===============3631504847090850067== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 14/01/2025 13:56, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 01:57:44PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > [...] >> Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish >> off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space? > It's likely to be the same reasons why C never really became a thing on > typical microcomputers of the era, although the specifics vary by > architecture: > > The popular 8-bit CPUs such as the 6502 and 8080/Z80 lack useful > base-plus-index addressing modes. These are useful for accessing function > parameters and local variables on the stack, and for extracting fields from > a structure. The 6502 doesn't have these modes *at all* and requires > explicit futzing around to compute the effective address, whereas the Z80 > does have IX/IY-relative operations, but they are both very slow to use and > only support fixed offsets so if the index is variable, manual address > calculation like on the 6502 is required. Real-world code for these CPUs > tended to use hardwired (i.e. static/global) addresses, and/or used a > virtual machine (with a BASIC interpreter being an extreme case) which was > more capable than the base CPU. > > The 6800/6809 and the 65802/65816 are somewhat better on this front, but > they were either too expensive or too late to be relevant. You might as well > just get a 16-bit system instead. > > As to the 16-bits, the 8086/80286 had segmentation and so did bang up > against a 64kiB address space because once again there was a lot of futzing > around with segment registers to access more memory than that. They were > barely any better than an 8-bit system with bank switching. Realistically, > they are still basically 8-bit CPUs with 16-bit busses. > > The other popular 16-bit CPU was the 68000, which what with its PDP-11 > heritage, couldn't fail to be a good C target. A fair chunk of AmigaOS was > written in C, for example. But one could argue that it's actually a 32-bit > CPU with a 16-bit bus. C was still not terribly popular on these machines, > but that'll be because C compilers cost as much as the machine itself, and > generated *much* worse code than handwritten assembler. So the only > customers were businesses for whom time-to-market was more important than > the cost of tools or the performance of the end product. As someone in the Atari 68000 camp I'd dispute the idea that 'C' wasn't used. Most of the OS was written in 'C' apart from DAS BOOT, and most of the shrink wrap applications (games being written in assembler, I believe). Originally it used the Alcyon 'C' compiler (whcih I think was produced by Motorola in some way) and it was pretty naff. There was also Lattice, and a couple of Tiny 'C's (I'd have said BCPL with pretensions). Then along came Megamax, which set the standard. You could, of course, cross-compile for Unix System V but internally we ate our own dog food! I defected from Apple to Atari when Uncle Jack "defected" from Commodore. The Apple II was Assembler but I did have a 'C' compiler for it (Aztec). Strangely, in 1984 you were faced with BCPL for developing for the Mac, as only the Lisa had a 'C' cross-compiler and no one could afford a Lisa. Running 'C' on a single system floppy drive wasn't practical (the second external floppy came later). --===============3631504847090850067==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Thu Jan 16 08:50:58 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:56:07 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <379D3235-C770-4683-94C8-87C331C1638D@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2435006075769072950==" --===============2435006075769072950== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 14/01/2025 19:42, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > >> On Jan 14, 2025, at 2:35 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> >> On 13/01/2025 21:11, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> On Jan 13, 2025, at 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wro= te: >>>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote: >>>> >>>> Huh? Are you saying ALGOL (60) doesn't have [ ] ??? >>>> >>>> Remember that ALGOL predates ASCII. There weren't standard character se= ts at the time. Also, plenty of people have implemented ALGOL on ASCII or EB= CDIC machines; it's not hard to think up a way of dealing with the keywords a= nd operators. >> This is very true. The first (and only) Algol I use was on the Elliott 803= which had Baudot 5-hole paper tape (and teleprinters). It was the first comm= ercial Algol compiler ever written, and included real world extensions like P= RINT, READ and MOVETO, DRAWTO and stuff for the plotter. >> >> Because of the Baudot there was no ';' to be seen, never mind { and }. And= no lower case, of course. The end of statement was indicated with an apostro= phe (or single quote), and things like >=3D were GREQ, LESSEQ or what-have-yo= u. * was multiply (something that stuck this day!) and ** was exponent. Remem= ber that before ASCII, a multiply and divide symbol was common, as well as si= ngle character >=3D <=3D and !=3D - if you had a fancy enough terminal! DIV w= as divide (I don't think there was a '/' available anyway) > Eek. > > I learned on the THE system at TU Eindhoven. That was an Electrologica X8 = system with a very nice OS designed and built by Dijkstra. For input it used= Flexowriters to do off-line paper tape punching, in a 6 bit code (puched as = 7 bits, one being parity), giving upper and lower case plus assorted special = characters. Dijkstra once commented that it was nice to be able to order cus= tom characters on their Flexowriters. So it had the "and" and "or" symbols, = a "not" symbol, and non-escaping _ and | characters so you could construct AL= GOL keywords by typing, say, _b_e_g_i_n or not-equal as |=3D . That allowed = some non-standard characters, |< and |> for string delimiters for example. > > ALGOL 68 made the notion of different representations a formal part of the = definition, so the Report spoke of "bold" symbols, leaving it up to an implem= entation to represent those as underlined symbols, "stropped" symbols meaning= words enclosed in single quotes, or reserved words. All those were options = chosen in various ALGOL 60 compilers but at that time it wasn't a specificall= y documented thing. > > paul Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later.=20 Look at APL keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun. Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't=20 even all have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same=20 symbols in the same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses=20 were on any teleprinter that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by=20 Elliott). I've still got a Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might=20 have scavenged it for parts for the ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts=20 on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-) --===============2435006075769072950==-- From van.snyder@sbcglobal.net Thu Jan 16 19:12:43 2025 From: Van Snyder To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 11:12:34 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5481875083049445066==" --===============5481875083049445066== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 19:50 +0000, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > As someone in the Atari 68000 camp I'd dispute the idea that 'C' > wasn't > used. I did most of my Atari 520 programming using TDI Modula-2 and Prospero FORTRAN 77. --===============5481875083049445066==-- From paul.kimpel@digm.com Thu Jan 16 19:55:56 2025 From: paul.kimpel@digm.com To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 19:55:53 +0000 Message-ID: <173705735300.1304.16534567249025894913@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: <34886d26-cbe3-4043-8b06-6e9949caa211@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6015957403641590105==" --===============6015957403641590105== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yes, 1620 addition and subtraction do stop if the addend is shorter than the = augend and there's no further carry. There was no pre-defined limit to the length of integer operands. If you had = the memory to do it, you could add two 10,000-digit operands. Floating-point = numbers were limited to 99 digit mantissas, however. On 1620 Monitor I, the default FANDK option was 4-digit integers and 8-digit = floating-point mantissas. --===============6015957403641590105==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Thu Jan 16 22:07:48 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:07:36 +0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3057241725982895069==" --===============3057241725982895069== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of connector I am = unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other for signal connections = -further detail and pictures in the following VCF post No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is-the-oem= -what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371/ Martin --===============3057241725982895069==-- From Anders.Gustafsson@pedago.fi Fri Jan 17 07:36:23 2025 From: Anders Gustafsson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] New DRAM (SIMM) board works but gives a parity error, only on cold powerup Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:30:14 +0200 Message-ID: <678A070602000028001369E7@pamir.pedago.fi> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8065746812020548174==" --===============8065746812020548174== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi! I have been mostly lurking here, but I have been designing a DRAM board for t= he HP1000 A-Series, using a more modern 72-pin SIMM. The A400 can adress 32Mb of parity ram so I use 17 bits o= n a 64Mb SIMM. I have taken inspiration from the original HP12103X boards and tried to keep away from eso= teric parts. The board prototype works now and passes all tests, except that it gives a partity error in one o= f the first addresses (ie 2,7,10 octal) when booted cold. If I then run a %T it works fine, and also if I rese= t by bringing PON low. I have tested with different SIMMs and the two different types I have tested = both exhibit the same issue. The 64Mb one has Samsung KM41C16000C chips. As this is for hobby-use, it is not a big deal as the board works, otherwise,= but it is annoying. If anyone here, and I expect there are several that have worked with DRAM chi= ps, have any suggestions on this issue or the board in general? Schematic is here:www.dalton.ax/hp1000/Memory/HP1000RAM_SIMM_Buffers_20241130= .pdf Yes. I have also written protocol decodes for the KingstWiz LA5032 32-bit LA = to analyse the HP memory bus if anyone is interested. --=20 Med v=C3=A4nlig h=C3=A4lsning Anders Gustafsson, ingenj=C3=B6r --===============8065746812020548174==-- From doc@vaxen.net Fri Jan 17 08:28:11 2025 From: Doc Shipley To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 02:22:44 -0600 Message-ID: <23a4fc69-2032-4d5e-89a6-80c82dfd4830@vaxen.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8403856294834670620==" --===============8403856294834670620== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I don't have any real information, but... I know Fanuc as a manufacturer of industrial and CNC equipment, not=20 somputing, and I wouldn't be surprised if those connectors come from=20 that side of their business. Maybe check industrial suppliers like MSC=20 and McMasters/Carr? Doc On 1/16/25 4:07 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of connector I a= m unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other for signal connection= s -further detail and pictures in the following VCF post >=20 > No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received >=20 > https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is-the-o= em-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371/ >=20 > Martin >=20 --===============8403856294834670620==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 11:22:16 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 11:22:09 +0000 Message-ID: <3c2b384d0a154db5969f0ccfdc6ff11e@emeritus-solutions.com> In-Reply-To: <23a4fc69-2032-4d5e-89a6-80c82dfd4830@vaxen.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1738709707209555430==" --===============1738709707209555430== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Thank you for the suggestions: - MSC Industrial's view of a connector is a thing for joining hoses together - McMaster's/Carr are closer to the bone offering several ranges of known (to= me) mate and lock style connectors, potentialy the basis of bodging In the 1970's / 1980's there was a close connection between CNC and mini-comp= uters, eg Google offered=20 https://www.cnc-shopping.co.uk/dec-dlv11-j-asynchronous-serial-line-interface= -card.html The technology on the PECs is a mix of SSI TTL, MSI LS TTL and early micropro= cessor, eg 8052, little different to computer peripherals of the period Martin -----Original Message----- From: Doc Shipley via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 17 January 2025 08:23 To: Martin Bishop via cctalk Cc: Doc Shipley Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification I don't have any real information, but... I know Fanuc as a manufacturer of industrial and CNC equipment, not somputi= ng, and I wouldn't be surprised if those connectors come from that side of th= eir business. Maybe check industrial suppliers like MSC and McMasters/Carr? Doc On 1/16/25 4:07 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of=20 > connector I am unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other=20 > for signal connections -further detail and pictures in the following=20 > VCF post >=20 > No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received >=20 > https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is- > the-oem-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371/ >=20 > Martin >=20 --===============1738709707209555430==-- From atex57@mwt.net Fri Jan 17 12:26:15 2025 From: Ed To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:16:37 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <23a4fc69-2032-4d5e-89a6-80c82dfd4830@vaxen.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2941041170428621636==" --===============2941041170428621636== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/17/25 2:22 AM, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote: > I don't have any real information, but... > >  I know Fanuc as a manufacturer of industrial and CNC equipment, not > somputing, and I wouldn't be surprised if those connectors come from > that side of their business.  Maybe check industrial suppliers like > MSC and McMasters/Carr? > > > Doc I have purchased connectors like this from Galco.com Ed. --===============2941041170428621636==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 17 12:42:17 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Languages on Atari ST (was: Try Algol 68 on Windows) Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:42:10 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2675342689949048701==" --===============2675342689949048701== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-16 19:12, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote: > On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 19:50 +0000, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> As someone in the Atari 68000 camp I'd dispute the idea that 'C' >> wasn't >> used. > > I did most of my Atari 520 programming using TDI Modula-2 and Prospero > FORTRAN 77. There's always going to be someone writing in Fortran. ;-) Looking back the ST got a lot of language support for enthusiasts - probably because it was one of the first affordable home computers with a suitable processor. There were a couple of BASICs around - I remember GFA BASIC was popular and we had one that came from DRI that was awful. And I do remember the Modula 2 - there was a buzz about it at Comdex in 1985 with some people saying it was the answer to the iffy Alcyon 'C' we all had to use, and others asking what Modula 2 was. But GEM was a 'C' operating system and I'm not aware of any mainstream software that didn't use it (except games). A couple of programs I had a hand in (Fastcom and Hyperchart) had a common source deck that compiled for the ST and PC. Not easy given pointers on an 8086, but they were hidden using macros. Yuck. --===============2675342689949048701==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 13:06:42 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:06:33 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6060836825139022915==" --===============6060836825139022915== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Links or OEM / part numbers would be very helpful - Galco have a big warehouse VMTiA Martin -----Original Message----- From: Ed via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org] Sent: 17 January 2025 12:17 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Ed Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification On 1/17/25 2:22 AM, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote: > I don't have any real information, but... > >  I know Fanuc as a manufacturer of industrial and CNC equipment, not > somputing, and I wouldn't be surprised if those connectors come from > that side of their business.  Maybe check industrial suppliers like > MSC and McMasters/Carr? > > > Doc I have purchased connectors like this from Galco.com Ed. --===============6060836825139022915==-- From holm@freibergnet.de Fri Jan 17 13:37:11 2025 From: Holm Tiffe To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] OT: not that classic but already old: Cubieboard2 Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:29:40 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4234567939715194992==" --===============4234567939715194992== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I've got 3 pcs. Cubieboard 2 SBC's with the Allwinner A20 SOC Chip on them. That's kind of a RaspberryPi SBC with an 2 Code Arm7hf on it. The boards are equipped with HDMI, USB, Ethernet (100Tx), SATA, SD Card slot and some 4G NAND Flash Cip on it. RAM is 1 Gbyte, CPU Clock is 996Mhz. Additionally I've bought some Base Boards for them, that's the DVK521 from Waveshare..contains the Baseboard, an Camera Module OV670, a 7" LCD with LVDS, a thermo sensor and other things.. Good HW in my eyes, but already outdated. I wnt to use the boards for some Home/house related stuff, PV, heating, Light control etc. and for that they should be more than enough. The Chips even have an graphics accelerator in the SOC. Now the Problem: as far as I know Allwinner has made some mistake using gnu/Linux stuff without any respecting the GPL. Because of that (if no other cause) most of the support Software on the net seems to be gone. There where some different Linux distributions for it, (Linaro, Cubieez etc) but most of the stuff isn't available anymore because of dead links. I've successfully build an modern Armbian image for them..but have endless trouble. The Xserver configutres an not existing Video Output, the LCD is unknown at all and if I manage to switch the X-server to the HDMI output using xrandr (only with tricks because it needs a session) the performance is like some old thick glue... Besides of that I had to fix an already for 8 years known Bug in the A20 Ethernet driver (it simpy has a more modern ethernet Unit as the A10 inside) that was'nt fixed at all. Armbian has only "community Support" fo those chips..which means that there is no support at all. If one asks for help the answer is more or less "find it yourself and provide a patch". I have an Linaro disk image that seems to be working, but there are some parts missing. The base distribution seems to be ubuntu 12.04 LTS (precise Pangolin) for armhf. I can't find a package repository anymore..(since that's long outdated). I've managed to install ssh by using an tarball of an ubuntu 12.04 armhf image for another board..and it works..but sshd is still missing. There are more modern disk images at https://mega.nz/folder/ZtwxCCJC#AIYHcTqz-ucjuzKnE9qD7A/folder/t0p2SBQD but mostly they don't even boot..possibly they using an newer/other uboot and uboot-envirnonment... Now the question: Is someone in the world still using those boards and has disk images/software for them? Again: I'ts not that much interesting that this is old linux, because I'll use that only inhouse in the lan, not browsing actual websites.. I'm a BSD guy and not know that much about Linux, especially such things as configurations for uboot etc. and there is none that I could ask for such things. Kind Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Goethestrasse 15, 09569 Oederan, USt-Id: DE253710583 info(a)tsht.de Tel +49 37292 709778 Mobil: 0172 8790 741 --===============4234567939715194992==-- From atex57@mwt.net Fri Jan 17 14:17:59 2025 From: Ed To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:17:48 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7653780741431258769==" --===============7653780741431258769== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/17/25 7:06 AM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > Links or OEM / part numbers would be very helpful - Galco have a big wareho= use > > VMTiA > > Martin It was several years ago, no longer have part numbers. Searched for=20 Fanuc cable connectors. Ed. --===============7653780741431258769==-- From ccth6600@gmail.com Fri Jan 17 14:41:10 2025 From: Tom Hunter To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fwd: SBC6128 Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 22:40:46 +0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0676273607455147265==" --===============0676273607455147265== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi Doug, Chris Tersteeg over at Vcfed designed a very nice front panel (FP6120 replacement) and also a 3D printed case for the SBC6120. Check out the following thread: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/sbc6120-mini-front-panel.1245272/ All the design files including build instructions, Gerbers, BOM and STL files are available from GIThub: https://github.com/djtersteegc/sbc6120-mini-front-panel If you have no SBC6120 CPU board you can build a new one using a PCB redesign from Retrobrew: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=3Dboards:sbc:sbc6120-rbc-editi= on:start/ Gerbers, BOM, software and build instructions for the SBC6120 CPU board are available from the link above (see the "File List" at the bottom of the Retrobrew page). Enjoy Tom On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 8:37=E2=80=AFPM Doug Jackson via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > Hi Dave, > > I'll send this to the group, I suspect my email made it into your spam. > > Doug > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Doug Jackson > Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025, 6:05=E2=80=AFam > Subject: Re: SBC6128 > To: > > > Hi Dave, > > I was just researching the IOB6120 (I had an 8 at the end of the model.. > sigh - memory is often faulty) > > WOW - I had no idea that existed. I also had no idea that the > community picked up Bob's designs and ran with them so enthusiastically - I > feel like I have been under a rock for quite a while. > > I would be very very happy to purchase your board + IOB that you have put > together - If the enclosure is not ideal, I am very happy to update that - > these little boards are awesome. > > Just let me know a Paypal address and shipping details. > > Kindest regards, > > Doug Jackson > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > ph: 0414 986878 > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 at 05:37, Doug Jackson wrote: > > > Hi Dave, > > > > Thanks so much for that. > > > > Yes, postage is a pain, but necessary. > > > > If you are not using it, then the partially built one makes sense > > (assuming you can find the programable logic and CPU). > > > > Failing that, then I don't mind paying the 250 Pounds for the built board > > as long as it's complete :-) As I said, I was devastated. > > > > Are you able to double check and send me some photos. > > > > For a shipping address, I am at: > > > > Doug Jackson > > 5 Pinschof Place, > > Gordn, ACT, 2906 > > Australia > > +61 414 986878 > > > > Kindest regards, > > > > Doug Jackson > > > > em: doug(a)doughq.com > > ph: 0414 986878 > > > > Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net > > > > > --===============0676273607455147265==-- From wigyori@uid0.hu Fri Jan 17 14:53:08 2025 From: Zoltan HERPAI To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: OT: not that classic but already old: Cubieboard2 Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:23:40 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4598824116178397131==" --===============4598824116178397131== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, On Fri, 17 Jan 2025, Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote: > I've got 3 pcs. Cubieboard 2 SBC's with the Allwinner A20 SOC Chip on > them. That's kind of a RaspberryPi SBC with an 2 Code Arm7hf on it. > The boards are equipped with HDMI, USB, Ethernet (100Tx), SATA, SD Card > slot and some 4G NAND Flash Cip on it. RAM is 1 Gbyte, CPU Clock is > 996Mhz. > > Additionally I've bought some Base Boards for them, that's the DVK521 > from Waveshare..contains the Baseboard, an Camera Module OV670, a 7" LCD > with LVDS, a thermo sensor and other things.. > Good HW in my eyes, but already outdated. > > I wnt to use the boards for some Home/house related stuff, PV, heating, > Light control etc. and for that they should be more than enough. > The Chips even have an graphics accelerator in the SOC. > > Now the Problem: as far as I know Allwinner has made some mistake using > gnu/Linux stuff without any respecting the GPL. > Because of that (if no other cause) most of the support Software on the > net seems to be gone. There where some different Linux distributions for > it, (Linaro, Cubieez etc) but most of the stuff isn't available anymore > because of dead links. > > I've successfully build an modern Armbian image for them..but have > endless trouble. The Xserver configutres an not existing Video Output, > the LCD is unknown at all and if I manage to switch the X-server to the > HDMI output using xrandr (only with tricks because it needs a session) > the performance is like some old thick glue... > Besides of that I had to fix an already for 8 years known Bug in the A20 > Ethernet driver (it simpy has a more modern ethernet Unit as the A10 inside) > that was'nt fixed at all. Armbian has only "community Support" fo those > chips..which means that there is no support at all. If one asks for help > the answer is more or less "find it yourself and provide a patch". > > I have an Linaro disk image that seems to be working, but there are some > parts missing. The base distribution seems to be ubuntu 12.04 LTS > (precise Pangolin) for armhf. I can't find a package repository > anymore..(since that's long outdated). I've managed to install ssh by > using an tarball of an ubuntu 12.04 armhf image for another board..and > it works..but sshd is still missing. > > There are more modern disk images at > https://mega.nz/folder/ZtwxCCJC#AIYHcTqz-ucjuzKnE9qD7A/folder/t0p2SBQD > > but mostly they don't even boot..possibly they using an newer/other uboot > and uboot-envirnonment... > > Now the question: Is someone in the world still using those boards and > has disk images/software for them? > > Again: I'ts not that much interesting that this is old linux, because > I'll use that only inhouse in the lan, not browsing actual websites.. > I'm a BSD guy and not know that much about Linux, especially such things > as configurations for uboot etc. and there is none that I could ask for > such things. I do use these, but I'm an OpenWrt guy (I've added support for these sunxi boards into the distro), which has probably less bells-and-whistles than what you're looking for, but it's being updated and runs recent kernels. If you want those bells-and-whistles, then indeed your best bet is Armbian and its community support, whatever state it's in. Debian also has an armhf target with a limited number of boards supported (the CB2 is in the list), you can take a look at that too. I mainly use these boards to a) test and upstream new kernel versions, b) console-only stuff like running an ADS-B receiver, sensor measurements, but nothing that goes into the multimedia use case. Also, getting the flash running on the A10/A20 SoCs IIRC never worked correctly with mainline kernels due to them being MLC. Having said that, getting the board to a point where you can use most of the DVK521's features seems possible, bar the LCD display and the OV7670. For the Ubuntu release, you might be able to use old-releases.ubuntu.com, but unsure if you're going to have a kernel mismatch between what Ubuntu used and what Linaro used. Bear in mind that these boards were built when this whole cheap SBC stuff started to take off, with distros taking different approaches - some have integrated the SDK drivers, some have worked on mainline drivers, some have bashed Allwinner or other SoC vendors for better documentation to write better drivers. Regards, Zoltan Herpai --===============4598824116178397131==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Fri Jan 17 14:59:56 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:59:50 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173705735300.1304.16534567249025894913@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0932001947934855045==" --===============0932001947934855045== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit OK, I just wanted to chime in on this retro stuff.  Back in 1996 or so I built a laser photoplotter for making circuit board artwork.  See http://pico-systems.com/photoplot.html for a pic and some info.  The original software was written in Turbo Pascal on a Win 95 system so it could access the DMA card from a user program.  The limited memory under Win95 left the program really cramped for large bitmaps.  So, I moved the program to a Win 2K system and split it in half.  the Win 2K program created a massive bitmap file which I then compressed with zip and shipped to the Win95 computer that then sent it out to the laser.  This worked quite well.  But, about 2014 I was worried that ancient Win 95 system would die, so I converted it to run from a Beagle Bone Black.  Due to the small shared memory between the PRU and the ARM processor, I needed to compress the data.  So, for each raster line, there was a string of 16-bit tokens.  The high bit indicated laser on/off, and the rest of the bits were a 15-bit repeat count.  A token of all zero indicates the end of that raster line.  2 consecutive zero tokens indicates the end of the entire plot. THEN, I hacked up the Win 2K Turbo Pascal for Windows program from 1996 to generate these compressed files and ran it through the Linux FPC (Free Pascal Compiler).  It was designed to handle Borland and DEC Pascal extensions, and does a really nice job of it. Pascal is really sort of a dialect of Algol, so I thought this was somewhat on topic. Jon --===============0932001947934855045==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Fri Jan 17 15:07:23 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:07:15 -0600 Message-ID: <3346b55f-f768-5db2-b3cc-c6b570c6ea1f@pico-systems.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8553416106075705688==" --===============8553416106075705688== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/16/25 16:07, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of connector I a= m unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other for signal connection= s -further detail and pictures in the following VCF post > > No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received > > https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is-the-o= em-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371 I believe the serial connector is a Honda part.=C2=A0 Not sure if=20 that is the same Honda that makes cars, but a lot of=20 Japanese gear uses these.=C2=A0 Industrial VCRs and video=20 cameras, CNC, etc. Jon --===============8553416106075705688==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Fri Jan 17 15:25:11 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:25:04 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2131386995579194998==" --===============2131386995579194998== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-17 7:59 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > Pascal is really sort of a dialect of Algol, so I thought this was > somewhat on topic. That is the DARK side of computing, Real computers are found in the BATCAVE and can even run ALGOL 58. (batman 1967) :) http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=37 Did ALGOL 68 have separate compilation, or was all one big Program like Pascal? C has the advantage of separate compilation and include files. > Jon > --===============2131386995579194998==-- From artgodwin@gmail.com Fri Jan 17 15:41:19 2025 From: Adrian Godwin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:41:01 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8939923367692145392==" --===============8939923367692145392== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit My experience of Algol 68 was for my computer programming course in Uni (Hull, 1978). We submitted a pile of cards and got fanfold in return. No contact with the actual run system. ICL 1900 running George iV iirc. On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 3:32 PM ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-17 7:59 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > > > Pascal is really sort of a dialect of Algol, so I thought this was > > somewhat on topic. > > That is the DARK side of computing, Real computers are found in the > BATCAVE and can even run ALGOL 58. (batman 1967) :) > http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=37 > > Did ALGOL 68 have separate compilation, or was all one big Program like > Pascal? > C has the advantage of separate compilation and include files. > > > Jon > > > > > --===============8939923367692145392==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 17 15:46:25 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:46:09 -0500 Message-ID: <3ADEA46E-37BE-42DC-8B42-531C046A4FE1@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5156204626408984758==" --===============5156204626408984758== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 17, 2025, at 10:25=E2=80=AFAM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-17 7:59 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> Pascal is really sort of a dialect of Algol, so I thought this was somewha= t on topic. >=20 > That is the DARK side of computing, Real computers are found in the BATCAVE= and can even run ALGOL 58. (batman 1967) :) > http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=3D37 >=20 > Did ALGOL 68 have separate compilation, or was all one big Program like Pas= cal? > C has the advantage of separate compilation and include files. I don't remember if it's part of the standard, but separate compilation is a = common extension in a bunch of languages. I don't remember if the Pascal I l= earned on (PDP-10) has it, but I would certainly expect the VMS version to do= so. As for ALGOL, I know that Burroughs ALGOL (which is an extended ALGOL-60) has= separate compilation, through a linker called "Binder". There is even a Bin= der for PDP-11 ALGOL, though I haven't tried it. PDP-11 ALGOL looks very muc= h like a 16-bit derivative of Burroughs ALGOL. paul --===============5156204626408984758==-- From geneb@deltasoft.com Fri Jan 17 15:59:41 2025 From: geneb To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 07:50:53 -0800 Message-ID: <14a8c73a-2307-44cd-5f68-8e89f3c04897@deltasoft.com> In-Reply-To: <23a4fc69-2032-4d5e-89a6-80c82dfd4830@vaxen.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6713897049721874292==" --===============6713897049721874292== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 17 Jan 2025, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote: > I don't have any real information, but... > > I know Fanuc as a manufacturer of industrial and CNC equipment, not > somputing, and I wouldn't be surprised if those connectors come from that > side of their business. Maybe check industrial suppliers like MSC and > McMasters/Carr? It's not unreasonable to see a Fanuc CNC machine of that era equipped with a paper tape reader. g. -- -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. I'm not crazy, I'm plausibly off-nominal! ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_! --===============6713897049721874292==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Fri Jan 17 16:03:20 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:03:13 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3ADEA46E-37BE-42DC-8B42-531C046A4FE1@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1339535503996335352==" --===============1339535503996335352== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/17/25 09:46, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > I don't remember if it's part of the standard, but separate compilation is = a common extension in a bunch of languages. I don't remember if the Pascal I= learned on (PDP-10) has it, but I would certainly expect the VMS version to = do so. I can state certainly that VMS Pascal had separate=20 compilation features, that were VERY similar to Borland's=20 method. Jon --===============1339535503996335352==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 17 16:11:16 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 11:11:00 -0500 Message-ID: <3B25131B-9908-4663-9666-3040D53BE9D9@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1441284991907601329==" --===============1441284991907601329== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 17, 2025, at 11:03=E2=80=AFAM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 1/17/25 09:46, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>=20 >> I don't remember if it's part of the standard, but separate compilation is= a common extension in a bunch of languages. I don't remember if the Pascal = I learned on (PDP-10) has it, but I would certainly expect the VMS version to= do so. > I can state certainly that VMS Pascal had separate compilation features, th= at were VERY similar to Borland's method. > Jon One important aspect of VMS design was a common calling standard, capable of = supporting all the languages VMS has, in any combination. So you could write= C programs that call COBOL support routines, or vice versa, all in a well do= cumented way. paul --===============1441284991907601329==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 16:42:33 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 16:42:27 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0720737411010478876==" --===============0720737411010478876== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ed Thank you for the nudge, I travelled laterally down the Fanuc bunny hole and = found myself reading the Series 10/11/12 maintenance manual [B-54815E/05] - p= age 550 et seq has some connector part numbers. A handy timeline for Fanuc C= NC systems can be found at https://www.cnc1.com/support/learning-center/fanuc= -timeline=20 The free power connector looks to have been a Nihon Burndy SMS3PK-5 back in t= he day; a contemporary OEM equivalent seems to be Souriau SMS3P3 The free serial connector looks to be a Honda Connector MR-20LFH (legacy part= number), the contemporary equivalent is on ePay "HONDA MR-20F+MR-20L FANUC I= /O Plug Female Connector" Happy bunny Martin -----Original Message----- From: Ed via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 17 January 2025 14:18 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Ed Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification On 1/17/25 7:06 AM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > Links or OEM / part numbers would be very helpful - Galco have a big=20 > warehouse > > VMTiA > > Martin It was several years ago, no longer have part numbers. Searched for Fanuc cab= le connectors. Ed. --===============0720737411010478876==-- From g4ajq1@gmail.com Fri Jan 17 16:44:04 2025 From: Nigel Johnson Ham To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 11:43:58 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3346b55f-f768-5db2-b3cc-c6b570c6ea1f@pico-systems.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7882335488985078060==" --===============7882335488985078060== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-17 10:07, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > On 1/16/25 16:07, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: >> 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of=20 >> connector I am unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other=20 >> for signal connections -further detail and pictures in the following=20 >> VCF post >> >> No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received >> >> https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is-the-= oem-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371=20 >> > > I believe the serial connector is a Honda part.=C2=A0 Not sure if that is=20 > the same Honda that makes cars, but a lot of Japanese gear uses=20 > these.=C2=A0 Industrial VCRs and video cameras, CNC, etc. > > Jon > I may be clutching at straws here, but Fanuc was a GE company, was it=20 not?=C2=A0 And I know that GE had a relationship with Matsushita back in the = 70s. Our local GE rep (Toronto, Canada) offered Matsushita product where=20 they didn't have a fit.=C2=A0 Maybe try looking there? --=20 Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591 --===============7882335488985078060==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 16:46:49 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 16:46:42 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3346b55f-f768-5db2-b3cc-c6b570c6ea1f@pico-systems.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0837796934173185747==" --===============0837796934173185747== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jon Thank you for the Honda pointer, I got there independently, but your helpful = response is correct and might have been just what I required Orthogonally, I'm pretty certain that Honda were the OEM for 50w and 68w Scsi= ribbon cable connectors we used in the 90's Best Regards Martin -----Original Message----- From: Jon Elson via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 17 January 2025 15:07 To: Martin Bishop via cctalk Cc: Jon Elson Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification On 1/16/25 16:07, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: > 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of=20 > connector I am unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other=20 > for signal connections -further detail and pictures in the following=20 > VCF post > > No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received > > https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is- > the-oem-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.1251371 I believe the serial connector is a Honda part.=C2=A0 Not sure if that is the= same Honda that makes cars, but a lot of Japanese gear uses these.=C2=A0 Ind= ustrial VCRs and video cameras, CNC, etc. Jon --===============0837796934173185747==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 16:52:13 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 16:52:08 +0000 Message-ID: <186b6f045a074d58a7a5852e3ca1487b@emeritus-solutions.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5053423739080374655==" --===============5053423739080374655== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Nigel Thank you for the suggestion, some time ago I tried engaging with Fanuc UK ... The Fanuc timeline I linked on a previous post says that the GE tie up was fr= om '86 to '09 For me the most remarkable thing is that both connector families seem to have= survived in production Best Regards Martin -----Original Message----- From: Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 17 January 2025 16:44 To: Jon Elson via cctalk Cc: Nigel Johnson Ham Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification On 2025-01-17 10:07, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > On 1/16/25 16:07, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote: >> 1980's Fanuc tape reader PECs are fitted with two families of=20 >> connector I am unfamiliar with : one is used for power and the other=20 >> for signal connections -further detail and pictures in the following=20 >> VCF post >> >> No joy on Burndy website or at BitSavers - wisdom gratefully received >> >> https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/fanuc-pec-connectors-who-is >> -the-oem-what-family-are-they-from-and-where-can-i-obtain-pdfs.125137 >> 1 >> > > I believe the serial connector is a Honda part.=C2=A0 Not sure if that is=20 > the same Honda that makes cars, but a lot of Japanese gear uses these.=C2= =A0=20 > Industrial VCRs and video cameras, CNC, etc. > > Jon > I may be clutching at straws here, but Fanuc was a GE company, was it not?=C2= =A0 And I know that GE had a relationship with Matsushita back in the 70s. Ou= r local GE rep (Toronto, Canada) offered Matsushita product where they didn't= have a fit.=C2=A0 Maybe try looking there? -- Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin= of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591 --===============5053423739080374655==-- From elson@pico-systems.com Fri Jan 17 17:03:59 2025 From: Jon Elson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 11:03:52 -0600 Message-ID: <66b144b7-051b-d8eb-f4de-9d80664a2e04@pico-systems.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============9129864084633657834==" --===============9129864084633657834== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/17/25 10:43, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote: > I may be clutching at straws here, but Fanuc was a GE > company, was it not? And I know that GE had a relationship > with Matsushita back in the 70s. Our local GE rep > (Toronto, Canada) offered Matsushita product where they > didn't have a fit.  Maybe try looking there? > In 1986, GE and Fanuc entered a partnership to sell more modern CNC controls.  GE's CNC controls were insanely old-school, their Mark Century controls used hundreds of boards with Germanium transistors to do tape NC control.  If you wanted linear interpolation, they added about 100 boards.  If you wanted circular interpolation, they added several hundred more!  They eventually did put their own computer logic in their controls, but they were years behind the times.  Fanuc brought in 8086-vintage processors to the mix.  The partnership was dissolved in 2009. Fanuc made some really great motors and encoders, but tried to make everything secret and proprietary after the early 1990's, which made retrofitting older machines quite difficult. Jon --===============9129864084633657834==-- From cclist@sydex.com Fri Jan 17 17:05:31 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:05:20 +0000 Message-ID: <5dd5a22d-eaf2-4a64-bc47-af08048f515d@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <186b6f045a074d58a7a5852e3ca1487b@emeritus-solutions.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3173415017654589548==" --===============3173415017654589548== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit https://www.ebay.com/itm/254949174184 I believe that this is the one. Used by Fanuc. --Chuck --===============3173415017654589548==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Fri Jan 17 17:10:07 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:10:01 -0700 Message-ID: <761919af-1e85-430f-8dc2-c5f952d49fc8@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <3ADEA46E-37BE-42DC-8B42-531C046A4FE1@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3955672996277716608==" --===============3955672996277716608== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-17 8:46 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: > As for ALGOL, I know that Burroughs ALGOL (which is an extended ALGOL-60) h= as separate compilation, through a linker called "Binder". There is even a B= inder for PDP-11 ALGOL, though I haven't tried it. PDP-11 ALGOL looks very m= uch like a 16-bit derivative of Burroughs ALGOL. >=20 Gadzooks, A PDP running something other than B ^H C. :) > paul >=20 Did Burroughs ALGOL, make cleaner software for people that used it? What about FORTRAN users? (I keep wanting to spell FORTAN) Ben. --===============3955672996277716608==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 17:11:55 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:11:50 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5dd5a22d-eaf2-4a64-bc47-af08048f515d@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3236267123362597671==" --===============3236267123362597671== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Many Thanks; Just ordered something similar - these guys don't ship to the UK Martin -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org] Sent: 17 January 2025 17:05 To: Martin Bishop via cctalk Cc: Chuck Guzis Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification https://www.ebay.com/itm/254949174184 I believe that this is the one. Used by Fanuc. --Chuck --===============3236267123362597671==-- From mjd.bishop@emeritus-solutions.com Fri Jan 17 17:16:35 2025 From: Martin Bishop To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:16:25 +0000 Message-ID: <6e984891c3154a09a3cfe6ec5e5ba9be@emeritus-solutions.com> In-Reply-To: <66b144b7-051b-d8eb-f4de-9d80664a2e04@pico-systems.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5364202934630972099==" --===============5364202934630972099== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable As you will have gathered my interest is in their paper tape readers, and to = date I have found nothing better than the maintenance / operators manuals. PEC schematics, and listings/source for their final reel to reel would be pay= dirt Best Regards Martin=20 -----Original Message----- From: Jon Elson via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: 17 January 2025 17:04 To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Jon Elson Subject: [cctalk] Re: Fanuc Tape Reader PECs 1980's - Connector Identification On 1/17/25 10:43, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote: > I may be clutching at straws here, but Fanuc was a GE company, was it=20 > not? And I know that GE had a relationship with Matsushita back in the=20 > 70s. Our local GE rep (Toronto, Canada) offered Matsushita product=20 > where they didn't have a fit.=C2=A0 Maybe try looking there? > In 1986, GE and Fanuc entered a partnership to sell more modern CNC controls.= =C2=A0 GE's CNC controls were insanely old-school, their Mark Century control= s used hundreds of boards with Germanium transistors to do tape NC control.= =C2=A0 If you wanted linear interpolation, they added about 100 boards.=C2=A0= If you wanted circular interpolation, they added several hundred more!=C2=A0= They eventually did put their own computer logic in their controls, but they= were years behind the times.=C2=A0 Fanuc brought in 8086-vintage processors = to the mix.=C2=A0 The partnership was dissolved in 2009. Fanuc made some really great motors and encoders, but tried to make everythin= g secret and proprietary after the early 1990's, which made retrofitting olde= r machines quite difficult. Jon --===============5364202934630972099==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 17 17:24:14 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:24:00 -0500 Message-ID: <6554247A-F3F9-4187-9E23-C22D011CBF8A@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <761919af-1e85-430f-8dc2-c5f952d49fc8@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7568364342033110978==" --===============7568364342033110978== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 17, 2025, at 12:10=E2=80=AFPM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-17 8:46 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >=20 >> As for ALGOL, I know that Burroughs ALGOL (which is an extended ALGOL-60) = has separate compilation, through a linker called "Binder". There is even a = Binder for PDP-11 ALGOL, though I haven't tried it. PDP-11 ALGOL looks very = much like a 16-bit derivative of Burroughs ALGOL. > Gadzooks, A PDP running something other than B ^H C. :) Other than Unix, C wasn't a common PDP-11 language. Mine run BASIC-PLUS, Mac= ro-11, TECO, FORTH, and ALGOL. >> paul > Did Burroughs ALGOL, make cleaner software for people that used it? > What about FORTRAN users? (I keep wanting to spell FORTAN) > Ben. What do you mean by "cleaner software"? =20 ALGOL was the primary language on Burroughs mainframes, and the machine archi= tecture was specificaly optimized for ALGOL. I don't know about FORTRAN (or = COBOL) on those machines, I expect it existed but I never ran into it. Burroughs used ALGOL variants for various specialized purposes on those syste= ms. For the terminal I/O machinery there was DCALGOL (data comm Algol) and f= or the kernel there was ESPOL -- basically ALGOL with C-like extensions to al= low playing with lower level machine details. Apparently there was no assemb= ler; a document I saw says that the only low level code is in the startup of = the kernel, written in machine language (straight hex), just enough to set up= the stack and a few other registers and transfer control to the ESPOL code e= ntry point. Interestingly enough, the system security depended in large part on the fact = that there was no assembler and access to ESPOL was restricted by file system= access rules. If you could write ESPOL programs you could do things that br= eak security, but the regular ALGOL compiler would not generate such code. T= his explains why at the shop where I used that machine (TU Eindhoven, B 6700 = system) I got some very suspicious looks from the staff when I asked about wa= nting to read an ESPOL manual. paul --===============7568364342033110978==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 17 18:36:38 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: OT: not that classic but already old: Cubieboard2 Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:53:08 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1729930716996610246==" --===============1729930716996610246== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm pretty sure FreeBSD runs on these boards and the A20 has pretty good support. Try asking kevans(a)FreeBSD.org. Regards, Frank. --===============1729930716996610246==-- From paul.kimpel@digm.com Fri Jan 17 19:33:54 2025 From: paul.kimpel@digm.com To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 19:33:50 +0000 Message-ID: <173714243056.1304.12590513363267262139@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: <6554247A-F3F9-4187-9E23-C22D011CBF8A@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6988752351114272118==" --===============6988752351114272118== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > On Jan 17, 2025, at 12:10=E2=80=AFPM, ben via cctalk > > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > =20 > > On 2025-01-17 8:46 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: > > =20 > > As for ALGOL, I know that Burroughs ALGOL (which > > is an extended ALGOL-60) has separate compilation, through a linker called > > "Binder". There is even a Binder for PDP-11 ALGOL, though I haven't tried > > it. PDP-11 ALGOL looks very much like a 16-bit derivative of Burroughs A= LGOL.=20 > > Gadzooks, A PDP running something other than B ^H C. :)=20 > Other than Unix, C wasn't a common PDP-11 language. Mine run BASIC-PLUS, M= acro-11, > TECO, FORTH, and ALGOL. >=20 > > paul=20 > > Did Burroughs ALGOL, make cleaner software for people that used it? > > What about FORTRAN users? (I keep wanting to spell FORTAN) > > Ben.=20 > What do you mean by "cleaner software"? =20 >=20 > ALGOL was the primary language on Burroughs mainframes, and the machine arc= hitecture was > specificaly optimized for ALGOL. I don't know about FORTRAN (or COBOL) on = those > machines, I expect it existed but I never ran into it. >=20 > Burroughs used ALGOL variants for various specialized purposes on those sys= tems. For the > terminal I/O machinery there was DCALGOL (data comm Algol) and for the kern= el there was > ESPOL -- basically ALGOL with C-like extensions to allow playing with lower= level machine > details. Apparently there was no assembler; a document I saw says that the= only low level > code is in the startup of the kernel, written in machine language (straight= hex), just > enough to set up the stack and a few other registers and transfer control t= o the ESPOL > code entry point. >=20 > Interestingly enough, the system security depended in large part on the fac= t that there > was no assembler and access to ESPOL was restricted by file system access r= ules. If you > could write ESPOL programs you could do things that break security, but the= regular ALGOL > compiler would not generate such code. This explains why at the shop where= I used that > machine (TU Eindhoven, B 6700 system) I got some very suspicious looks from= the staff when > I asked about wanting to read an ESPOL manual. >=20 > paul Burroughs (it's now called Unisys) mainframes and their ALGOL dialect shouldn= 't be discussed in the past tense, because the current versions of those syst= ems are still being marketed, supported, and used. Burroughs had a variety of mainframe architectures. The one under discussion = here has variously been called Large Systems (B6x00/7x00), A Series, and now = ClearPath MCP. That product line was derived from the B5000/5500 and has an a= rchitecture specifically designed to support ALGOL, including hardware suppor= t for dynamically-allocated arrays and call-by-name semantics. Binder is still used, but it never was that common outside of FORTRAN and C a= pplications. For the past 40 years, separate compilation has usually been don= e by means of dynamically-linked libraries, which are quite efficient. That i= s also now the most common way to call routines written in other languages, e= .g., a COBOL program calling routines in an ALGOL library. FORTRAN and COBOL definitely exist on those machines. COBOL in particular is = still used heavily. There was a PL/I compiler for a while, but almost no one = used it, and it was discontinued years ago. Other languages are Pascal and C = (with a fairly complete POSIX library). There are also a few utility language= s, such as a sort generator and WFL, the batch job control language. There is still no assembler. ESPOL did not have anything like C extensions (n= ever mind that it existed before C did). It was basically ALGOL with language= extensions to access low-level hardware facilities and handle control words = transparently. ESPOL was replaced in the early '80s by a new language, NEWP, = which is somewhat Modula-like. All of the system software is written in ALGOL= (or one of its variants), and NEWP, with some of the newer stuff in Pascal a= nd C. It's true that the B6700 (early '70s) systems depended heavily on the compile= r to restrict access to sensitive capabilities of the system, but that's been= tightened up a lot over the years. You never could just sit down and write a= program to generate runnable code -- runnable code can only be generated by = compilers, and the code file for a compiler must be "blessed" by the system a= dministrator. ESPOL could never be used to write a program that would run und= er the MCP (the OS). It could only be used to generate standalone programs th= at had to be booted manually. You could, however, write a procedure (subrouti= ne) in ESPOL and bind it to another program. NEWP can generate runnable progr= ams, but if you use any "unsafe" features of the language, the resulting code= file is marked unsafe and requires administrator blessing before it can be r= un. We just don't have a problem with bad code getting into the modern system= s. There is no such thing as anti-virus software for them. A different Paul --===============6988752351114272118==-- From holm@freibergnet.de Fri Jan 17 22:23:07 2025 From: Holm Tiffe To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: OT: not that classic but already old: Cubieboard2 Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 23:22:59 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6239596386797201105==" --===============6239596386797201105== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > I'm pretty sure FreeBSD runs on these boards and the A20 has pretty good > support. Try asking kevans(a)FreeBSD.org. > > Regards, Frank. Yes.. a year ago or so I had FreeBSD running on a CB2, yes it works and I'm ad home on FreeBSD. Most of my daily work is on FreeBSD. But.. there where some big differences between the docs and the code, I've really had to fight to finally get the 2nd uart configured..and better don't talk about X servers touch or cam support... Even the entire GPIO system is totally different. Maybe I should have another look to see what's happened in the meantime. Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Goethestrasse 15, 09569 Oederan, USt-Id: DE253710583 info(a)tsht.de Tel +49 37292 709778 Mobil: 0172 8790 741 --===============6239596386797201105==-- From bill.gunshannon@hotmail.com Sat Jan 18 15:37:19 2025 From: Bill Gunshannon To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 10:36:57 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2890047252888634369==" --===============2890047252888634369== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A little humor for the group. Among my other "legacy" systems I also have and still fool around with a bunch of TRS-80's. Believe it or not, the Z80 based TRS-80's were among the systems for which a version of STVOS was available. Thought I would look to see if any of it was still floating around. Asked Google "TRS-80 Software Tools Virtual Operating System" Got this result at the top of my response generated by whatever AI engine they use. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A "TRS-80 Software Tools Virtual Operating System" refers to a software program that allows a modern computer to emulate a vintage TRS-80 computer, essentially creating a virtual environment where you can run old TRS-80 software, including operating systems like TRSDOS, by simulating the hardware and functionality of the original machine, letting you access and use programs designed for the TRS-80 on your current computer. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- That is the biggest pile of steaming poo I have ever seen come out of any of the various AI engines I have run into. Not one piece of it is accurate other than the mention of TRSDOS. I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house. Based on my experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will have to worry about any Terminators in the future. bill --===============2890047252888634369==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Sat Jan 18 16:53:47 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 16:53:41 +0000 Message-ID: <689823da-f872-424c-a795-71b57e9bd383@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14698B06D28F49242658C572EDE52=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8342392548023301318==" --===============8342392548023301318== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 18/01/2025 15:36, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > > A little humor for the group. > > Among my other "legacy" systems I also have and still fool around > with a bunch of TRS-80's.  Believe it or  not, the Z80 based TRS-80's > were among the systems for which a version of STVOS was available. > Thought I would look to see if any of it was still floating around. > > Asked Google > > "TRS-80  Software Tools Virtual Operating System" > > Got this result at the top of my response generated by whatever AI > engine they use. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > A "TRS-80 Software Tools Virtual Operating System" refers to a > software program that allows a modern computer to emulate a vintage > TRS-80 computer, essentially creating a virtual environment where you > can run old TRS-80 software, including operating systems like TRSDOS, > by simulating the hardware and functionality of the original machine, > letting you access and use programs designed for the TRS-80 on your > current computer. > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > That is the biggest pile of steaming poo I have ever seen come out of > any of the various AI engines I have run into.  Not one piece of it is > accurate other than the mention of TRSDOS. > This is what ChatGPT said about me: ---------------- Frank Leonhardt is known for his work as a programmer in the early days of personal computing. He began programming on the Apple II in the late 1970s and later moved on to the Atari 8-bit computer platform. He was involved in the development of several popular software titles for these platforms, including games and utilities. One of his most notable contributions was the development of the "Assemblotron" programming tool, which was a popular assembly language development environment for the Atari 8-bit computers. The tool was widely used by Atari programmers in the 1980s and is still used by some enthusiasts today. Leonhardt's early work as a programmer helped pave the way for the personal computing revolution and laid the foundation for the modern computing industry that we know today. ---------------- Started off okay-ish. Then Atari 8-bit? Nope - never even owned one, never mind writing a 6502 assembler for anything. Oh well,  I guess it confused me with the real author of "Assemblotron, so I looked it up. The product is completely imaginary AFAIK, but perhaps someone here knows different? The last paragraph is over-stating things a bit. It clearly has no knowledge of what happened before the WWW - presumably it scraped a load of Personal Computer World articles while smoking e-pot. --===============8342392548023301318==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sat Jan 18 17:08:46 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 17:08:37 +0000 Message-ID: <4a47b94f-9017-4781-b1dd-ac5ef05e45c9@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <689823da-f872-424c-a795-71b57e9bd383@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7185171664587675137==" --===============7185171664587675137== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/18/25 08:53, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > > Started off okay-ish. Then Atari 8-bit? Nope - never even owned one, > never mind writing a 6502 assembler for anything. Oh well,  I guess it > confused me with the real author of "Assemblotron, so I looked it up. > The product is completely imaginary AFAIK, but perhaps someone here > knows different? > > The last paragraph is over-stating things a bit. It clearly has no > knowledge of what happened before the WWW - presumably it scraped a load > of Personal Computer World articles while smoking e-pot. Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world, That has such AI in’t.’ I fear that before long, the WWW will be hopelessly polluted by AI-generated content. "Facts" will become irrelevant. --Chuck --===============7185171664587675137==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Sat Jan 18 17:24:07 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:12:55 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14698B06D28F49242658C572EDE52=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2375544040160196278==" --===============2375544040160196278== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 10:36:57AM -0500, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > > A little humor for the group. > > Among my other "legacy" systems I also have and still fool around > with a bunch of TRS-80's. Believe it or not, the Z80 based TRS-80's > were among the systems for which a version of STVOS was available. > Thought I would look to see if any of it was still floating around. > > Asked Google > > "TRS-80 Software Tools Virtual Operating System" > > Got this result at the top of my response generated by whatever AI > engine they use. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > A "TRS-80 Software Tools Virtual Operating System" refers to a software > program that allows a modern computer to emulate a vintage TRS-80 computer, > essentially creating a virtual environment where you can run old TRS-80 > software, including operating systems like TRSDOS, by simulating the > hardware and functionality of the original machine, letting you access and > use programs designed for the TRS-80 on your current computer. > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > That is the biggest pile of steaming poo I have ever seen come out of > any of the various AI engines I have run into. Not one piece of it is > accurate other than the mention of TRSDOS. First off all, that which is being marketed as "AI" these days is essentially pattern matching on drugs and industrial solvents. No matter what the marketing tells you, these systems do not and cannot think or reason. When queried (and both the queries and the answers tend to be heavily filtered and reprocessed from I read), they are hilariously prone to whats politely called "hallucinations" and what is actually "vomiting bullshit"[0]. Second: There are echos of the OG AI boom here, except these days the systems use _epic_ amounts of brute force because today we can and back then, _nobody_ could even build systems with a fraction of the compute that is being casually thrown around here. LLMs are being called "Stochastic Parrots" for very good reasons. > I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house. Based on my experience > with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will > have to worry about any Terminators in the future. Oversized pattern matching systems do have their use in the appropriate places - i.e. when the problem to be solved _is_ actually pattern matching. For instance, Swiss Railways (SBB) uses acoustic detectors tied to rails feeding into a well trained "AI" pattern matching system to detect and classify damage to rolling stock wheels based on the acoustic signature of the damage - and then matches against time tables and train data to identify the damaged wheel so it can be fixed and doesn't further damage the rails. Kind regards, Alex. [0] See Harry Frankfurter: On Bullshit -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============2375544040160196278==-- From a.carlini@ntlworld.com Sat Jan 18 18:20:17 2025 From: Antonio Carlini To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:13:57 +0000 Message-ID: <2e4fd5a6-7ba5-4025-ac53-3906fb67f0d5@ntlworld.com> In-Reply-To: <4a47b94f-9017-4781-b1dd-ac5ef05e45c9@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3376095171848367665==" --===============3376095171848367665== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 18/01/2025 17:08, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > I fear that before long, the WWW will be hopelessly polluted by > AI-generated content. "Facts" will become irrelevant. I think this has already started and is progressing at pace, but AI is a late  to the party. We haven't noticed because neither Space Karen nor Zuck care about old computers (and let's hope it stays that way). Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio(a)acarlini.com --===============3376095171848367665==-- From a.carlini@ntlworld.com Sat Jan 18 18:48:26 2025 From: Antonio Carlini To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:11:42 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <689823da-f872-424c-a795-71b57e9bd383@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8700928180521987759==" --===============8700928180521987759== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 18/01/2025 16:53, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > This is what ChatGPT said about me: Is this the latest variation on goolging one's own name ? :-) It doesn't know me at all. I'm assuming that means I'm safe ... for now. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio(a)acarlini.com --===============8700928180521987759==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Sat Jan 18 18:51:49 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 13:51:32 -0500 Message-ID: <2B7B7146-ADDB-4DE6-8057-E2E9278B86E0@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5849871943583100385==" --===============5849871943583100385== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >=20 > On 18/01/2025 16:53, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> This is what ChatGPT said about me: I learned a bit about the near-worthlessness of AI supplied web query results= when I asked Google about international book mail rates. I asked twice -- t= he first time it told me it exists and pointed me to a USPS webpage, the seco= nd time it told me (correctly) that it does not exist. When AI can come up with "yes" and "no" for the same query, it obviously is w= orthless. paul --===============5849871943583100385==-- From artgodwin@gmail.com Sat Jan 18 18:56:46 2025 From: Adrian Godwin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:56:30 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <2B7B7146-ADDB-4DE6-8057-E2E9278B86E0@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3777380461396457272==" --===============3777380461396457272== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit AI is useful for getting funding, but nothing else. Always has been. On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 6:51 PM Paul Koning via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > > On 18/01/2025 16:53, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > >> This is what ChatGPT said about me: > > I learned a bit about the near-worthlessness of AI supplied web query > results when I asked Google about international book mail rates. I asked > twice -- the first time it told me it exists and pointed me to a USPS > webpage, the second time it told me (correctly) that it does not exist. > > When AI can come up with "yes" and "no" for the same query, it obviously > is worthless. > > paul --===============3777380461396457272==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Sat Jan 18 19:01:17 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 10:53:37 -0800 Message-ID: <63ffa6b0-022d-49c0-a9d4-578297dfb640@floodgap.com> In-Reply-To: <4a47b94f-9017-4781-b1dd-ac5ef05e45c9@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8297560981822990578==" --===============8297560981822990578== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > I fear that before long, the WWW will be hopelessly polluted by > AI-generated content. "Facts" will become irrelevant. We call this "politics." --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- FOOLS! I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL! ASK ME HOW! -- "Girl Genius" 8/29/07 ------= -- --===============8297560981822990578==-- From hupfadekroua@gmail.com Sat Jan 18 19:10:57 2025 From: hupfadekroua To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] CDC Cyber 18x parts Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 21:10:40 +0200 Message-ID: <32F3E164-C0A3-44E1-882A-F0B360A07B3F@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2388271485531971281==" --===============2388271485531971281== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello all, I=E2=80=98m searching the following CDC parts: 52948476 CM Board extender 91915206 CM Board extender 24614635 ZIF Board extender Of course I do know looking for such kind of items in our days may be some ki= nd of peculiar, but who knows =E2=80=A6 Andreas --===============2388271485531971281==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sat Jan 18 19:13:37 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:13:27 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2480631302412718453==" --===============2480631302412718453== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/18/25 10:56, Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > AI is useful for getting funding, but nothing else. > Always has been. The problem is the chum bucket that everything related to expert systems and genetic algorithms is tossed into along with real LLM programs. For example, yesterday, while informing me that I needed a root canal procedure, my dentist was marveling at the "AI" of dental x-ray processing techniques (he's taking classes). He said, that the computerized version was more adroit at spotting decay and could perform periodontal charting from radiographs without the necessity of a hygienist poking at your gums with a probe. I'd call that more in the realm of image processing and expert systems rather than real AI. --Chuck --===============2480631302412718453==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Sat Jan 18 19:17:40 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 14:17:22 -0500 Message-ID: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6693966948015655559==" --===============6693966948015655559== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 18, 2025, at 2:13=E2=80=AFPM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > ... > He said, that the computerized version was more adroit at spotting decay > and could perform periodontal charting from radiographs without the > necessity of a hygienist poking at your gums with a probe. >=20 > I'd call that more in the realm of image processing and expert systems > rather than real AI. Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What makes t= hem somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track record= of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof. Don= ald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess endgam= e machine. paul --===============6693966948015655559==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Sat Jan 18 19:27:22 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:27:17 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3914107600150603751==" --===============3914107600150603751== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable And DEC used one to help configure systems. It would tell you if your configu= ration would work or if you left anything out. We wanted a Vax 785 with 6 mas= sbuss adapters but it told us the buss was too long and would intermittently = time out. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 18, 2025, at 11:17, Paul Koning via cctalk = wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BF >=20 >> On Jan 18, 2025, at 2:13=E2=80=AFPM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >>=20 >> ... >> He said, that the computerized version was more adroit at spotting decay >> and could perform periodontal charting from radiographs without the >> necessity of a hygienist poking at your gums with a probe. >>=20 >> I'd call that more in the realm of image processing and expert systems >> rather than real AI. >=20 > Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What makes= them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track reco= rd of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof. D= onald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess endg= ame machine. >=20 > paul >=20 --===============3914107600150603751==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sat Jan 18 19:40:41 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:35:00 +0000 Message-ID: <78391d04-9c6d-47be-a904-90908057066e@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5618420662698532485==" --===============5618420662698532485== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/18/25 11:17, Paul Koning wrote: >=20 > Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What makes= them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track reco= rd of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof. D= onald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess endg= ame machine. >=20 ...and we have decades of LLM-generated trash before they develop a similar reputation of working. By the way, whatever happened to discussion of "fuzzy logic" and "genetic algorithms"? --Chuck --===============5618420662698532485==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Sat Jan 18 19:49:47 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:49:38 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <78391d04-9c6d-47be-a904-90908057066e@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8477688193101330470==" --===============8477688193101330470== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable They both died when Dr. Jones Journal stopped publication, as did many other = topics. I miss that Magazine. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 18, 2025, at 11:40, Chuck Guzis via cctalk = wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFOn 1/18/25 11:17, Paul Koning wrote: >>=20 >=20 >> Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What make= s them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track rec= ord of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof. = Donald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess end= game machine. >>=20 > ...and we have decades of LLM-generated trash before they develop a > similar reputation of working. >=20 > By the way, whatever happened to discussion of "fuzzy logic" and > "genetic algorithms"? >=20 > --Chuck >=20 >=20 --===============8477688193101330470==-- From donald@donaldwhittemore.com Sat Jan 18 20:01:34 2025 From: "donald donaldwhittemore.com" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 17:31:13 +0000 Message-ID: <73F17913-DB66-4D43-BFFC-CF978F38957E@donaldwhittemore.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7834053714098878643==" --===============7834053714098878643== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Skynet became self-aware on August 29, 1997, at 2:14 a.m. EDT. --===============7834053714098878643==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Sat Jan 18 20:07:36 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 20:07:28 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB218120A94EA10DD97D384A09E4E52=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6540875834641356259==" --===============6540875834641356259== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Make that Dr. DOBBS =E2=80=A6 Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 18, 2025, at 11:49, Wayne S wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFThey both died when Dr. Jones Journal stopped publication, as did = many other topics. > I miss that Magazine. >=20 > Sent from my iPhone >=20 >>> On Jan 18, 2025, at 11:40, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >>>=20 >>> =EF=BB=BFOn 1/18/25 11:17, Paul Koning wrote: >>>=20 >>=20 >>> Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What mak= es them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track re= cord of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof.= Donald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess en= dgame machine. >>>=20 >> ...and we have decades of LLM-generated trash before they develop a >> similar reputation of working. >>=20 >> By the way, whatever happened to discussion of "fuzzy logic" and >> "genetic algorithms"? >>=20 >> --Chuck >>=20 >>=20 --===============6540875834641356259==-- From wdonzelli@gmail.com Sat Jan 18 20:12:35 2025 From: William Donzelli To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: CDC Cyber 18x parts Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 15:12:19 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <32F3E164-C0A3-44E1-882A-F0B360A07B3F@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0791689081656398150==" --===============0791689081656398150== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Which Cyber 180 are these for? -- Will On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 2:11=E2=80=AFPM hupfadekroua via cctalk wrote: > > Hello all, > > I=E2=80=98m searching the following CDC parts: > > 52948476 CM Board extender > 91915206 CM Board extender > 24614635 ZIF Board extender > > Of course I do know looking for such kind of items in our days may be some = kind of peculiar, but who knows =E2=80=A6 > > Andreas --===============0791689081656398150==-- From pete@dunnington.plus.com Sat Jan 18 20:40:45 2025 From: Pete Turnbull To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 20:27:05 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14698B06D28F49242658C572EDE52=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7920093790655363729==" --===============7920093790655363729== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 18/01/2025 15:36, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > > A little humor for the group. > I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house.  Based on my > experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will > have to worry about any Terminators in the future. My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean my filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" about 15 seconds after it's successfully docked with its charging station. -- Pete Pete Turnbull --===============7920093790655363729==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sat Jan 18 21:30:07 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 14:29:55 -0700 Message-ID: <50de93cf-4166-432a-987e-ef4142b6839e@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6824892109630445257==" --===============6824892109630445257== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-18 1:27 p.m., Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote: > On 18/01/2025 15:36, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: >> >> A little humor for the group. > >> I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house.  Based on my >> experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will >> have to worry about any Terminators in the future. > > My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean > my filter" about 5 minutes after I did that.  More annoyingly, it > insists that "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" > about 15 seconds after it's successfully docked with its charging station. > Time to get a STEAM PUNK VERSION. :) --===============6824892109630445257==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Sat Jan 18 21:34:47 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 21:34:40 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3193020756864865184==" --===============3193020756864865184== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 17/01/2025 14:59, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: >  The high bit indicated laser on/off, and the rest of the bits were a > 15-bit repeat count.  A token of all zero indicates the end of that > raster line.  2 consecutive zero tokens indicates the end of the > entire plot. > That's pretty much the compression method used for GEM .IMG files (from memory)! --===============3193020756864865184==-- From joe@barrera.org Sat Jan 18 21:42:43 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 13:42:28 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <50de93cf-4166-432a-987e-ef4142b6839e@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5453854393426214380==" --===============5453854393426214380== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit There will be Terminators, but they will all have the same bug where they point the gun at their own head while saying Pasta la VISA (brought to you by Carl's Jr). On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 1:30 PM ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-18 1:27 p.m., Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote: > > On 18/01/2025 15:36, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > >> > >> A little humor for the group. > > > >> I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house. Based on my > >> experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will > >> have to worry about any Terminators in the future. > > > > My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean > > my filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it > > insists that "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" > > about 15 seconds after it's successfully docked with its charging > station. > > > Time to get a STEAM PUNK VERSION. :) > > > --===============5453854393426214380==-- From rickb@bensene.com Sat Jan 18 23:19:49 2025 From: Rick Bensene To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 23:10:39 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <63ffa6b0-022d-49c0-a9d4-578297dfb640@floodgap.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1427875139854600491==" --===============1427875139854600491== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From: Cameron Kaiser via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2025 10:54 AM To: Chuck Guzis via cctalk Cc: Cameron Kaiser Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Chuck G. wrote: >> I fear that before long, the WWW will be hopelessly polluted by=20 >> AI-generated content. "Facts" will become irrelevant. To which Cameron K. replied: > We call this "politics." I am compelled to say "Here, here!!!" It could not have been defined any better or more succinctly, although I thin= k you are discrediting AI (tongue in cheek!) -Rick --- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum (and some old computers too) - Not AI generated! https://oldcalculatormuseum.com --===============1427875139854600491==-- From joe@barrera.org Sat Jan 18 23:37:32 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 15:37:16 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4104516700461544080==" --===============4104516700461544080== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Humans can defecate in a river and make it toxic, but the effect is temporary. It takes Technology and PROGRESS to create POPs that will last forever. AI is to political discourse as POPs are to drinking water. But that's fine, as long as you own a lot of tech stocks, either liquid or in your 401(k). "Other people's problems, They overwhelm my mind They say compassion is a virtue, But I don't have the time" On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 3:19 PM Rick Bensene via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > From: Cameron Kaiser via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org] > Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2025 10:54 AM > To: Chuck Guzis via cctalk > Cc: Cameron Kaiser > Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? > > Chuck G. wrote: > >> I fear that before long, the WWW will be hopelessly polluted by > >> AI-generated content. "Facts" will become irrelevant. > > To which Cameron K. replied: > > > We call this "politics." > > I am compelled to say "Here, here!!!" > It could not have been defined any better or more succinctly, although I > think you are discrediting AI (tongue in cheek!) > > -Rick > --- > Rick Bensene > The Old Calculator Museum (and some old computers too) - Not AI generated! > https://oldcalculatormuseum.com > > --===============4104516700461544080==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 05:30:32 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 20:34:30 +0000 Message-ID: <939a298c-99dd-4211-b4f7-38f68fa2b730@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6004095102996127250==" --===============6004095102996127250== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 18/01/2025 18:11, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote: > On 18/01/2025 16:53, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> This is what ChatGPT said about me: > > Is this the latest variation on goolging one's own name ? :-) > > > It doesn't know me at all. I'm assuming that means I'm safe ... for now. > In stack order: It'll make something up about you shortly. It was indeed - I wanted to know what it would say about me and whether it was correct. At least I should know the right answer, although with age my memory is fading. Perhaps I did write Assemblertron? Perhaps I will in the future... --===============6004095102996127250==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 05:30:36 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 20:42:48 +0000 Message-ID: <762b31c2-a93a-4a7b-bdc3-3744c776cc78@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7111590957375042145==" --===============7111590957375042145== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 18/01/2025 19:17, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What > makes them somewhat different is that they actually have a > decades-long track record of working. I remember learning these back > in 1976, from visiting prof. Donald Mickie at the University of > Illinois. We used it to build a chess endgame machine. > paul I'd say yes and no to that. But then I don't consider generative AI to be anything to do with actual Artificial Intelligence either. I wrote about this stuff in the 1990s and called these things Simulated Intelligence, a term which never took off but which I stand by to this day! Around 1981 I wrote what would now be called chatbot in 6502 (on an OSI 500 board - obligatory old computer content) that was placed in our local library for the public to have a go on. Because most people hadn't seen a computer, never mind interacted with one, it seemed intelligent to them. (Think Eliza in 16K - it really wasn't that smart). I'm not sure who started calling this generative stuff "AI" but it was great marketing! --===============7111590957375042145==-- From hupfadekroua@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 09:07:49 2025 From: hupfadekroua To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: CDC Cyber 18x parts Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:07:31 +0200 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2462864219411901006==" --===============2462864219411901006== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, for a 860a based on the list of maintenance supporting tools listed in the 18= x CM maintenance manual uploaded on bitsavers recently. Andreas > Am 18.01.2025 um 22:22 schrieb William Donzelli via cctalk : >=20 > =EF=BB=BFWhich Cyber 180 are these for? >=20 > -- > Will >=20 >> On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 2:11=E2=80=AFPM hupfadekroua via cctalk >> wrote: >>=20 >> Hello all, >>=20 >> I=E2=80=98m searching the following CDC parts: >>=20 >> 52948476 CM Board extender >> 91915206 CM Board extender >> 24614635 ZIF Board extender >>=20 >> Of course I do know looking for such kind of items in our days may be some= kind of peculiar, but who knows =E2=80=A6 >>=20 >> Andreas --===============2462864219411901006==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 19 09:35:11 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 02:35:02 -0700 Message-ID: <9f75053c-07d6-4ede-8644-c4559f8627e0@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <762b31c2-a93a-4a7b-bdc3-3744c776cc78@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3257499198612563174==" --===============3257499198612563174== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-18 1:42 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > Around 1981 I wrote what would now be called chatbot in 6502 (on an OSI > 500 board - obligatory old computer content) that was placed in our > local library for the public to have a go on. Because most people hadn't > seen a computer, never mind interacted with one, it seemed intelligent > to them. (Think Eliza in 16K - it really wasn't that smart). I think it was this guy that started it. https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/original-eliza And yes SOURCE. --===============3257499198612563174==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Sun Jan 19 10:08:03 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:07:54 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5590112317334275286==" --===============5590112317334275286== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:27:05PM +0000, Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote: [...] > My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean my > filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that > "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" about 15 seconds > after it's successfully docked with its charging station. That's "smart" devices for you. My robot vacuum is extremely dumb and after observing it bimbling around the room, I decided that it had so few brains that it could be done with a handful of 74-series chips. Indeed the only reasons that it couldn't have been made in the 1970s is that it's powered by a high-density rechargable battery and doesn't need constant feeding with expensive lantern batteries, it has the obligatory searing-blue LED to tell me it's turned on because apparently moving around and making a racket isn't a big enough clue, and that it's not in that depressing cream and brown colour scheme which was apparently a legal requirement for "white" goods back then. --===============5590112317334275286==-- From ard.p850ug1@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 10:25:01 2025 From: Tony Duell To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 10:24:46 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14698B06D28F49242658C572EDE52=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7702762136566663867==" --===============7702762136566663867== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 5:32 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house. Based on my > experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will > have to worry about any Terminators in the future. I certainly have to bother with terminators. One at each end of the Unibus, one in the last RK05, RL02 or RK07 on its cable, one in the last floppy drive on the cable, one at each end of a thinwire ethernet segment and so on. [Well, this is classiccmp] -tony --===============7702762136566663867==-- From Anders.Gustafsson@pedago.fi Sun Jan 19 11:54:37 2025 From: Anders Gustafsson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] New DRAM (SIMM) board works but gives a parity error, only on cold powerup Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:54:13 +0200 Message-ID: <678CE7E50200002800136ACB@pamir.pedago.fi> In-Reply-To: <173713680723.1298.14262936835982862406@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7098720313424279057==" --===============7098720313424279057== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable OK. As usual was the problem quite evident, once I understood it... I have tw= o A400 boards. =20 =20 On that board I tested with I never took note of switch 8. It was unfortunate= ly set to OFF indicating that there was backup power for memory. Thus the power lost flag was never set, wh= ich caused the parity error on startup. --=20 Med v=C3=A4nlig h=C3=A4lsning Anders Gustafsson, ingenj=C3=B6r --===============7098720313424279057==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 12:33:34 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:33:27 +0000 Message-ID: <5406e67e-40bb-45fe-8c34-7a23803986e7@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4871423960646448937==" --===============4871423960646448937== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 18/01/2025 19:17, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What > makes them somewhat different is that they actually have a > decades-long track record of working. I remember learning these back > in 1976, from visiting prof. Donald Mickie at the University of > Illinois. We used it to build a chess endgame machine. > paul I'd say yes and no to that. But then I don't consider generative AI to be anything to do with actual Artificial Intelligence either. I wrote about this stuff in the 1990s and called these things Simulated Intelligence, a term which never took off but which I stand by to this day! Around 1981 I wrote what would now be called chatbot in 6502 (on an OSI 500 board - obligatory old computer content) that was placed in our local library for the public to have a go on. Because most people hadn't seen a computer, never mind interacted with one, it seemed intelligent to them. (Think Eliza in 16K - it really wasn't that smart). I'm not sure who started calling this generative stuff "AI" but it was great marketing! --===============4871423960646448937==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 19 12:51:09 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 05:50:58 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7515005900483328836==" --===============7515005900483328836== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-19 3:07 a.m., Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:27:05PM +0000, Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote: > [...] >> My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean my >> filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that >> "I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" about 15 seconds >> after it's successfully docked with its charging station. > > That's "smart" devices for you. > > My robot vacuum is extremely dumb and after observing it bimbling around the > room, I decided that it had so few brains that it could be done with a > handful of 74-series chips. Indeed the only reasons that it couldn't have > been made in the 1970s is that it's powered by a high-density rechargable > battery and doesn't need constant feeding with expensive lantern batteries, > it has the obligatory searing-blue LED to tell me it's turned on because > apparently moving around and making a racket isn't a big enough clue, and > that it's not in that depressing cream and brown colour scheme which was > apparently a legal requirement for "white" goods back then. > TTL??? Old relays work better! Thinking of some sort of robot I read about from 1960's book. --===============7515005900483328836==-- From artgodwin@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 13:12:21 2025 From: Adrian Godwin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:12:04 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5406e67e-40bb-45fe-8c34-7a23803986e7@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============9158692089512114112==" --===============9158692089512114112== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 12:42 PM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > I'd say yes and no to that. But then I don't consider generative AI to > be anything to do with actual Artificial Intelligence either. I wrote > about this stuff in the 1990s and called these things Simulated > Intelligence, a term which never took off but which I stand by to this day! > > It's a good description. I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - it's JUST artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but isn't, like artificial turf. I hope that one day we will have machine intelligences. But I'm unsure that merely imitating how they might look is a path to that. --===============9158692089512114112==-- From ard.p850ug1@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 13:49:36 2025 From: Tony Duell To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:49:22 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6126227883152111662==" --===============6126227883152111662== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 12:51=E2=80=AFPM ben via cctalk wrote: > Old relays work better! > Thinking of some sort of robot I read about from 1960's book. Philips publshed a book called 'Practical Robot Circuits, I think in the 1960s. Most of the book described a robot 'dog' that would respond to light and sound, turn to and lick warm food ,and so on. I seem to remember the electronics was based on D-series (1.5V filament) B7G based (7 pin miniature) valves (tubes). In the 1980s a UK magazine called 'Hobby Electronics' published the designs for the HEbot. This had quite simple but ingenious electronics using simple logic chips (4000 CMOS at least in part). Each sensor system had an output to say it was active, these were fed to a priority encoder, the output of which controlled a pair of analogue multiplexers which routed the signal outputs of the highest-priority active sensor to the motor drivers. You can do an awful lot without microcontrollers. -tony --===============6126227883152111662==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 15:25:15 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:32:49 +0000 Message-ID: <02cc86ce-dafa-45ad-9c61-a3c3cff47930@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <9f75053c-07d6-4ede-8644-c4559f8627e0@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8567136378824045654==" --===============8567136378824045654== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 19/01/2025 09:35, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-18 1:42 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > >> Around 1981 I wrote what would now be called chatbot in 6502 (on an >> OSI 500 board - obligatory old computer content) that was placed in >> our local library for the public to have a go on. Because most people >> hadn't seen a computer, never mind interacted with one, it seemed >> intelligent to them. (Think Eliza in 16K - it really wasn't that smart). > > I think it was this guy that started it. > https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/original-eliza > And yes SOURCE. Wow! Thanks. My effort was more like the original than I thought. I was expanding on ideas in a Creative Computing(?) article, which said it was taking a different approach from the "original LISP" version. (IIRC - it was a long time ago). I noticed that people would ask questions, to which variations of "I don't know" were the only possible answer so my implementation would respond with something like "I don't know, [original question]?", which it would then store because they always tested it by asking again. Surely this was machine learning and therefore Artificial Intelligence! :-) Incidentally, this is when I realised the Imitation Game (Turing Test) was no more a proof of AI than winning at chess. Whether you can fool a human depends on the discretion of the said human, and still does. Somewhere, I have an early Eliza written in EMACS ;-) --===============8567136378824045654==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 19 15:38:06 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 08:37:56 -0700 Message-ID: <46d9707a-6ee9-413c-9825-7c89c9bf1791@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0231787512688511377==" --===============0231787512688511377== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-19 6:12 a.m., Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial > intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - it's JUST > artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but > isn't, like artificial turf. > > I hope that one day we will have machine intelligences. But I'm unsure that > merely imitating how they might look is a path to that. I thought that all was covered on the movie, Metropolis. Ask HAL 9000 for real answers. I think self aware is needed 1st and a body, other wise it all just text word games. --===============0231787512688511377==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Sun Jan 19 16:21:19 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 08:21:12 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5025177382308950561==" --===============5025177382308950561== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sun, 19 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: > TTL??? > Old relays work better! > Thinking of some sort of robot I read about from 1960's book. Marvin: And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side. Arthur Dent: Really. Marvin: Oh, yes. I mean, I've asked for them to be replaced, but no-one ever listens. --===============5025177382308950561==-- From gordon+cctalk@drogon.net Sun Jan 19 17:42:47 2025 From: Gordon Henderson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 17:29:03 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7799085559639948166==" --===============7799085559639948166== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sun, 19 Jan 2025, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote: > You can do an awful lot without microcontrollers. A rabbit hole to wander down in this vein is BEAM Robotics... e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics Gordon --===============7799085559639948166==-- From ce.murillosanchez@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 17:47:57 2025 From: Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:39:10 -0500 Message-ID: <5d2e1763-aa27-0255-eed4-5604eb594085@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <78391d04-9c6d-47be-a904-90908057066e@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1542958716266221853==" --===============1542958716266221853== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/18/25 11:17, Paul Koning wrote: >> Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What make= s them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track rec= ord of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting prof. = Donald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a chess end= game machine. >> > ...and we have decades of LLM-generated trash before they develop a > similar reputation of working. > > By the way, whatever happened to discussion of "fuzzy logic" and > "genetic algorithms"? > > --Chuck What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've=20 become an easy way to get published.=C2=A0 Nowadays they make up so many=20 bio-inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are=20 going to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these=20 publications are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. Fuzzy logic is still out there too, and in fact there are mature=20 applications in the field. I usually refuse to review such papers for IEEE.=C2=A0 Some links about the=20 diversity of bio-inspired stuff: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-7673/8/3/278 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341594685_Review_and_Classification_= of_Bio-inspired_Algorithms_and_Their_Applications https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340920306867 carlos. --===============1542958716266221853==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sun Jan 19 18:11:43 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 18:03:49 +0000 Message-ID: <793a505e-0196-4ee5-8c0c-e0ed6d39c753@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <5d2e1763-aa27-0255-eed4-5604eb594085@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2150910649396382554==" --===============2150910649396382554== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've > become an easy way to get published.  Nowadays they make up so many bio- > inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going > to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications > are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was before 2008. --Chuck --===============2150910649396382554==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 19 18:49:35 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:49:26 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <793a505e-0196-4ee5-8c0c-e0ed6d39c753@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8825997316566254220==" --===============8825997316566254220== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-19 11:03 a.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've >> become an easy way to get published.=C2=A0 Nowadays they make up so many b= io- >> inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going >> to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications >> are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. >=20 > I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms > would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was > before 2008. I have no idea what happened 2008, but now everybody plays BITCOIN. As for neural net software, the brain is in 3D not 2D. Flat chips don't cut it. I think the only real way to have AI evolve, is to have a cellular life=20 form with real DNA, and start as worm in a primeval ocean. Stop when you get Trilobites. :) > --Chuck https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/how-to-mine-bitcoin-on= -a-55-year-old-ibm-1401-mainframe/ --===============8825997316566254220==-- From sellam.ismail@gmail.com Sun Jan 19 19:46:16 2025 From: Sellam Abraham To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:45:06 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <793a505e-0196-4ee5-8c0c-e0ed6d39c753@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6686747834267597608==" --===============6686747834267597608== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 10:11 AM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > > > What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've > > become an easy way to get published. Nowadays they make up so many bio- > > inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going > > to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications > > are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. > > I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms > would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was > before 2008. > > --Chuck > Got any links to stories? Sellam --===============6686747834267597608==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sun Jan 19 19:50:52 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 19:50:44 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5109211771632028781==" --===============5109211771632028781== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/19/25 10:49, ben via cctalk wrote: > I have no idea what happened 2008, but now everybody plays BITCOIN. > As for neural net software, the brain is in 3D not 2D. Flat chips don't > cut it. In 2008, the US stock market crashed, mostly due to human stupidity (NINJA mortgages, which were then bundled and securitized). Treasury spent billions of dollars buying up the bad mortgages and engaging in Quantitative Easing so that cash-strapped banks could write new loans. Some of the banks bailed out with government/taxpayer money, instead of writing new loans, bought up bad mortgages which were then sold to the US government at a profit. Nobody went to prison for this. I don't think that any genetic algorithm can predict the depths to which human scheming can descend, particularly when it comes to finance. --Chuck --===============5109211771632028781==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sun Jan 19 20:07:20 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 19:57:30 +0000 Message-ID: <0deaddd9-70af-47ea-8938-21286853db98@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0267298722062254656==" --===============0267298722062254656== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/19/25 11:45, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > Got any links to stories? Lamentably, no. I wonder how many of those programs advised buying up Theranos stock... --===============0267298722062254656==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 21:15:44 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 21:15:38 +0000 Message-ID: <07976107-7c4a-42cc-955c-138267887df9@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <5d2e1763-aa27-0255-eed4-5604eb594085@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0292423703233098057==" --===============0292423703233098057== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 19/01/2025 17:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > Fuzzy logic is still out there too, and in fact there are mature > applications in the field. I'm not sure that I wouldn't describe neural networks as fuzzy logic with a fancy name. --===============0292423703233098057==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Sun Jan 19 21:16:02 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 21:15:54 +0000 Message-ID: <23f36353-b0a2-48b2-af05-944204abbe20@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <46d9707a-6ee9-413c-9825-7c89c9bf1791@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1188719715801385251==" --===============1188719715801385251== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 19/01/2025 15:37, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-19 6:12 a.m., Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > >> I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial >> intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - >> it's JUST >> artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but >> isn't, like artificial turf. >> >> I hope that one day we will have machine intelligences. But I'm >> unsure that >> merely imitating how they might look is a path to that. > > I thought that all was covered on the movie, Metropolis. > Ask HAL 9000 for real answers. I think self aware is needed 1st > and a body, other wise it all just text word games. Now define "self-awareness"! But we're absolutely seeing word games and probability right now. Like the mechanical Turk, there's nothing intelligent in the machine. While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about to see a breakthrough it that either. --===============1188719715801385251==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Sun Jan 19 21:22:05 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:21:58 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <07976107-7c4a-42cc-955c-138267887df9@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4376148352361387992==" --===============4376148352361387992== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> Fuzzy logic is still out there too, and in fact there are mature >> applications in the field. On Sun, 19 Jan 2025, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > I'm not sure that I wouldn't describe neural networks as fuzzy logic > with a fancy name. 35? years ago, one of my grad-school profs was at a seminar with Lofti Zadeh ("Fuzzy Logic") After discussing combinatorial Fuzzy Logic, my prof asked, "Isn't that just probability?" Zadeh responded, "Probably." -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com --===============4376148352361387992==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 19 21:44:59 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:44:52 -0700 Message-ID: <9a293bac-7467-470e-8004-b74e272731f1@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <23f36353-b0a2-48b2-af05-944204abbe20@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4847202756616899532==" --===============4847202756616899532== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-19 2:15 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create > life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about > to see a breakthrough it that either. > You have not seen the stuff way behind in my fridge. :) That is true, the source code for life was lost a few billion years ago. Life is based on carbon compounds (sorry Horta) as mechanical machines. FREE OXYGEN , I think kills any kind of retro life should it happen. Lots of room for computer experimentation there. --===============4847202756616899532==-- From dkelvey@hotmail.com Sun Jan 19 22:36:42 2025 From: dwight To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 22:36:34 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <9a293bac-7467-470e-8004-b74e272731f1@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6180393053033626724==" --===============6180393053033626724== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable What I see now has several issues. One I fear is a thing called fidelity. Lik= e humans passing some massage on through a chain people only worse. No machin= e will recognize that the message got lost, along the way. Right now, we have= no way to determine how many AI levels the information has gone through. I'm also told that it occasionally hallucinates. Not all that surprizing. The= y say they are working on it. Another thing that is bad, is the enormous amount of power consumed in the le= arning process. We already have a serious issue with finding less harmful way= s of generating power. Then, what can we do with a high percentage of the current younger generation= thinking the earth is flat. Computer generated AI should fit right in. Dwight --===============6180393053033626724==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sun Jan 19 23:47:58 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 23:47:46 +0000 Message-ID: <0553317f-297d-4e1b-b3c9-6c5666f3d328@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4291643567783446165==" --===============4291643567783446165== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/19/25 13:21, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >>> Fuzzy logic is still out there too, and in fact there are mature >>> applications in the field. >=20 > On Sun, 19 Jan 2025, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> I'm not sure that I wouldn't describe neural networks as fuzzy logic >> with a fancy name. >=20 > 35? years ago, one of my grad-school profs was at a seminar with Lofti > Zadeh ("Fuzzy Logic")=C2=A0 After discussing combinatorial Fuzzy Logic, my > prof asked, "Isn't that just probability?" > Zadeh responded, "Probably." I recall that Bob Pease was not a fan of fuzzy logic. A bit from the ED archives: https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/digital-ics/article/21= 757343/whats-all-this-fuzzy-logic-stuff-anyhow --Chuck --===============4291643567783446165==-- From cz@bunsen.crystel.com Mon Jan 20 06:55:51 2025 From: Christopher Zach To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:24:55 -0500 Message-ID: <1A9C0DE3-BF90-451F-8103-398EE7771865@bunsen.crystel.com> In-Reply-To: <793a505e-0196-4ee5-8c0c-e0ed6d39c753@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0483749842466279017==" --===============0483749842466279017== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable As you get more ai systems running you just run into the xeroxgraphoc effect = and it all falls down Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 19, 2025, at 1:11=E2=80=AFPM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFOn 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've >> become an easy way to get published. Nowadays they make up so many bio- >> inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going >> to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications >> are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. >=20 > I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms > would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was > before 2008. >=20 > --Chuck >=20 --===============0483749842466279017==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Mon Jan 20 06:55:56 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 21:12:08 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <46d9707a-6ee9-413c-9825-7c89c9bf1791@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8419147366654425632==" --===============8419147366654425632== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 19/01/2025 15:37, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-19 6:12 a.m., Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > >> I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial >> intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - >> it's JUST >> artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but >> isn't, like artificial turf. >> >> I hope that one day we will have machine intelligences. But I'm >> unsure that >> merely imitating how they might look is a path to that. > > I thought that all was covered on the movie, Metropolis. > Ask HAL 9000 for real answers. I think self aware is needed 1st > and a body, other wise it all just text word games. Now define "self-awareness"! But we're absolutely seeing word games and probability right now. Like the mechanical Turk, there's nothing intelligent in the machine. While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about to see a breakthrough it that either. --===============8419147366654425632==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Mon Jan 20 06:56:00 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 21:15:18 +0000 Message-ID: <1d008579-4ba9-4032-b3d2-5f83e5860956@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <5d2e1763-aa27-0255-eed4-5604eb594085@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0580495262411395086==" --===============0580495262411395086== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 19/01/2025 17:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > Fuzzy logic is still out there too, and in fact there are mature > applications in the field. I'm not sure that I wouldn't describe neural networks as fuzzy logic with a fancy name. --===============0580495262411395086==-- From Anders.Gustafsson@pedago.fi Mon Jan 20 09:11:18 2025 From: Anders Gustafsson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 11:10:37 +0200 Message-ID: <678E130D0200002800136B1F@pamir.pedago.fi> In-Reply-To: <173722320995.1298.4164608505110875313@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8510331873689093670==" --===============8510331873689093670== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yes. I tried Operas Aria and asked a bit about HP1000 A-series. I started by = asking the difference between A900 and A400 and got a reply that was partly correct, then followed up with = some specific questions about the A400 that I happen to know rather well. It insisted that it had only 32Mb and= it corrected itself. But the problem as always was that the answer LOOKED ok, but there was no way= , without prior knowledge to weed out the errors. --=20 Med v=C3=A4nlig h=C3=A4lsning Anders Gustafsson, ingenj=C3=B6r --===============8510331873689093670==-- From artgodwin@gmail.com Mon Jan 20 09:49:59 2025 From: Adrian Godwin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:49:43 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1A9C0DE3-BF90-451F-8103-398EE7771865@bunsen.crystel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1562431169625254544==" --===============1562431169625254544== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit They guard against that now by using outdated training data. Not an approach that will work more than once. I think we'd all be happier if AI output had to be marked as such. On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 7:02 AM Christopher Zach via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > As you get more ai systems running you just run into the xeroxgraphoc > effect and it all falls down > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Jan 19, 2025, at 1:11 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > > > >> What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've > >> become an easy way to get published. Nowadays they make up so many bio- > >> inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going > >> to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications > >> are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. > > > > I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms > > would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was > > before 2008. > > > > --Chuck > > > --===============1562431169625254544==-- From cz@alembic.crystel.com Mon Jan 20 14:48:36 2025 From: cz To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:41:19 -0500 Message-ID: <61baa565-0e68-4948-bfdb-e76c7f654b60@alembic.crystel.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6045597178685251871==" --===============6045597178685251871== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit That is not a solution either: It just locks the AI into a 2015 or so time period where they can't adapt to changing writing or speaking styles. All the output is going to sound like an outdated person. I'm already seeing this in "appliance repair" articles that are just AI bots reading other AI bots info and making the results into complete garbage. When you have one site that is a human and 100 sites that are AI copies guess what the probability is that your new "repair site" is going to get accurate data or garbage. What's needed is to enslave humans to write new content to feed the AI systems. :-) On 1/20/2025 4:49 AM, Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > They guard against that now by using outdated training data. Not an > approach that will work more than once. > I think we'd all be happier if AI output had to be marked as such. > > > On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 7:02 AM Christopher Zach via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> As you get more ai systems running you just run into the xeroxgraphoc >> effect and it all falls down >> Sent from my iPhone >> >>> On Jan 19, 2025, at 1:11 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk < >> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: >>> >>> On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: >>> >>>> What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've >>>> become an easy way to get published. Nowadays they make up so many bio- >>>> inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going >>>> to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications >>>> are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. >>> >>> I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms >>> would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was >>> before 2008. >>> >>> --Chuck >>> >> --===============6045597178685251871==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Mon Jan 20 15:24:07 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 08:23:58 -0700 Message-ID: <4df19532-0f76-4415-822c-6e287a7f059f@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <61baa565-0e68-4948-bfdb-e76c7f654b60@alembic.crystel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1729818693550508155==" --===============1729818693550508155== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-20 7:41 a.m., cz via cctalk wrote: > That is not a solution either: It just locks the AI into a 2015 or so > time period where they can't adapt to changing writing or speaking > styles. All the output is going to sound like an outdated person. > > I'm already seeing this in "appliance repair" articles that are just AI > bots reading other AI bots info and making the results into complete > garbage. When you have one site that is a human and 100 sites that are > AI copies guess what the probability is that your new "repair site" is > going to get accurate data or garbage. > > What's needed is to enslave humans to write new content to feed the AI > systems. :-) > That was back with the early internet, when search engines worked, and the internet still had user content. --===============1729818693550508155==-- From jeffrey@vcfed.org Mon Jan 20 21:10:34 2025 From: Jeffrey Brace To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] VCF EAST 2025 CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS! Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:10:09 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0033303685259415999==" --===============0033303685259415999== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Volunteers are the backbone of making VCF East one of the best vintage computer shows. We are in need of volunteers in all areas. VCF East 2025 takes place April 4-6 in Wall, NJ at the InfoAge Science and History Museums. Register to become a volunteer today! Click here to read Volunteer FAQ Thanks! Jeff Brace VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ --===============0033303685259415999==-- From eberhard@allenroad.com Mon Jan 20 21:26:13 2025 From: Martin Eberhard To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 21:26:06 +0000 Message-ID: <173740836622.1304.5090804590972513923@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2413140734578523260==" --===============2413140734578523260== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I'm in the process of restoring a PDP11/20. Here is what is working so far: KA11 PDP11/20 CPU , power supply, programmer's console, etc. 32Kx16 SRAM/ROM board of my own design (Core memory will come later!) KE11-A Extended Arithmetic Element RX211 controller with RX02 drive, cleaned, spindle bearings replaced, ali= gned, tested, and working DL11-W Serial Line Unit with Real-Time Clock DL11 2nd serial port, modified to operate at 19,200 baud VT100, connected to the DL11-W I've written a program that lets me load a raw disk image (via Xmodem protoco= l) from the serial port onto a floppy disk, and verify the write. This works = great, for both single-density and double-density. (It can set the media dens= ity as needed too.) I'm now looking for a bootable RT-11 floppy disk image (just a raw image, e.g= . .IMG) that can boot and run on this limited hardware. The file should be ex= actly 256,256 bytes long if single-density, or 512,512 bytes long of double-d= ensity. (Actually, anything bootable on this hardware would be appreciated!) I'm new to this forum - let me know what is the protocol for giving you my em= ail address... Thanks! Martin E. --===============2413140734578523260==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Mon Jan 20 21:49:39 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:41:17 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7B0D7E1F-3527-43CB-86D7-0880A1776354@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1484652515962412396==" --===============1484652515962412396== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 02:17:22PM -0500, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >=20 >=20 > > On Jan 18, 2025, at 2:13=E2=80=AFPM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > >=20 > > ... > > He said, that the computerized version was more adroit at spotting decay > > and could perform periodontal charting from radiographs without the > > necessity of a hygienist poking at your gums with a probe. > >=20 > > I'd call that more in the realm of image processing and expert systems > > rather than real AI. >=20 > Expert systems have always been considered a kind of AI system. What makes > them somewhat different is that they actually have a decades-long track > record of working. I remember learning these back in 1976, from visiting > prof. Donald Mickie at the University of Illinois. We used it to build a > chess endgame machine. Plus, IIRC, the expert systems usually could dump their decision path on request so one could debug them. With LLMs, if the bullshit gets too bad, you toss out the model, twiddle the training parameters and train again, hoping for the best. Consequently, expert systems - when done well - are actually useful, whereas the current crop of "AI" (LLMs essentially) is great for collecting funding and dazzling the clueless, but not all that useful otherwise. And those setups where neuronal networks are actually useful employ them as powerful and specialized pattern matchers - which works well if done carefully. The next AI winter will surely arrive eventually ;-) Kind regards, Alex. --=20 "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============1484652515962412396==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Mon Jan 20 21:53:06 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:43:25 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <793a505e-0196-4ee5-8c0c-e0ed6d39c753@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8575789936442705851==" --===============8575789936442705851== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 06:03:49PM +0000, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > > > What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've > > become an easy way to get published.  Nowadays they make up so many bio- > > inspired variations of these algorithms that I think that they are going > > to run out of animal names to assign to them. Most of these publications > > are thrash, but there are a handful of genuine applications. > > I recall reading that behavior predictions made by genetic algorithms > would enable one to corner the US stock market. Of course, that was > before 2008. That, of course, includes the bold assumption that the stock market is entirely rational. As the saying goes: Bold strategy, that. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============8575789936442705851==-- From uban@ubanproductions.com Mon Jan 20 21:56:28 2025 From: Tom Uban To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:41:16 -0600 Message-ID: <321a5be9-8068-4cf7-8595-63378ae6ee31@ubanproductions.com> In-Reply-To: <173740836622.1304.5090804590972513923@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6439514633398070917==" --===============6439514633398070917== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/20/25 15:26, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: > I'm in the process of restoring a PDP11/20. Here is what is working so far: > KA11 PDP11/20 CPU , power supply, programmer's console, etc. > 32Kx16 SRAM/ROM board of my own design (Core memory will come later!) > KE11-A Extended Arithmetic Element > RX211 controller with RX02 drive, cleaned, spindle bearings replaced, = aligned, tested, and working > DL11-W Serial Line Unit with Real-Time Clock > DL11 2nd serial port, modified to operate at 19,200 baud > VT100, connected to the DL11-W > I've written a program that lets me load a raw disk image (via Xmodem proto= col) from the serial port onto a floppy disk, and verify the write. This work= s great, for both single-density and double-density. (It can set the media de= nsity as needed too.) > > I'm now looking for a bootable RT-11 floppy disk image (just a raw image, e= .g. .IMG) that can boot and run on this limited hardware. The file should be = exactly 256,256 bytes long if single-density, or 512,512 bytes long of double= -density. (Actually, anything bootable on this hardware would be appreciated!) > > I'm new to this forum - let me know what is the protocol for giving you my = email address... > > Thanks! > Martin E. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but bitsavers.org is a grea= t resource: https://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/rt-11/ Where are you located? --tom --===============6439514633398070917==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Mon Jan 20 22:01:43 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:53:18 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <9a293bac-7467-470e-8004-b74e272731f1@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6326493044110152380==" --===============6326493044110152380== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 02:44:52PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-19 2:15 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > > > While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create > > life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about > > to see a breakthrough it that either. > > > You have not seen the stuff way behind in my fridge. :) I do suspect that the place behind your fridge didn't exactly start as utterly sterizilied and guaranteed to be devoid of life ;-) > That is true, the source code for life was lost a few billion years ago. > Life is based on carbon compounds (sorry Horta) as mechanical machines. > FREE OXYGEN , I think kills any kind of retro life should it happen. > Lots of room for computer experimentation there. Well, it's called the "Oxygen Catastrophe" for reasons. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============6326493044110152380==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Mon Jan 20 22:02:46 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:51:19 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <23f36353-b0a2-48b2-af05-944204abbe20@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6904549905303297828==" --===============6904549905303297828== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 09:15:54PM +0000, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > On 19/01/2025 15:37, ben via cctalk wrote: > > On 2025-01-19 6:12 a.m., Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > > > > > I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial > > > intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - > > > it's JUST > > > artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but > > > isn't, like artificial turf. > > > > > > I hope that one day we will have machine intelligences. But I'm > > > unsure that > > > merely imitating how they might look is a path to that. > > > > I thought that all was covered on the movie, Metropolis. > > Ask HAL 9000 for real answers. I think self aware is needed 1st > > and a body, other wise it all just text word games. > > Now define "self-awareness"! There are theories which speculate that self-awareness is not needed for intelligence, but that is diving into philosophy ... > But we're absolutely seeing word games and > probability right now. Like the mechanical Turk, there's nothing intelligent > in the machine. But there sure is a lot clever marketing around it. > While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create > life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about to > see a breakthrough it that either. There have been various "simulate early (theoretical) earth conditions in the lab to see what happens" and while at least some got all the way to some interesting organic molecules, none of them reached even the most primitive life forms - maybe they just need to refine their experiments and run them for a billion years? ;-) Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============6904549905303297828==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Mon Jan 20 22:12:46 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:12:41 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <321a5be9-8068-4cf7-8595-63378ae6ee31@ubanproductions.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2024467009341093083==" --===============2024467009341093083== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Try here=E2=80=A6 From an old newsgroup Just a note that Jerome Fine collected together a set of 24 RT-11 releases (f= rom V01-15 on a DECtape to V05.07 on an RL02 disk) in the form of a consolida= ted CD-ROM image. You can download the CD-ROM from http://pdp-11.classiccmp.org/RT-11/dists/RT11DV50.ISO.zip Sent from my iPhone On Jan 20, 2025, at 13:56, Tom Uban via cctalk wrot= e: =EF=BB=BFOn 1/20/25 15:26, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: I'm in the process of restoring a PDP11/20. Here is what is working so far: KA11 PDP11/20 CPU , power supply, programmer's console, etc. 32Kx16 SRAM/ROM board of my own design (Core memory will come later!) KE11-A Extended Arithmetic Element RX211 controller with RX02 drive, cleaned, spindle bearings replaced, ali= gned, tested, and working DL11-W Serial Line Unit with Real-Time Clock DL11 2nd serial port, modified to operate at 19,200 baud VT100, connected to the DL11-W I've written a program that lets me load a raw disk image (via Xmodem protoco= l) from the serial port onto a floppy disk, and verify the write. This works = great, for both single-density and double-density. (It can set the media dens= ity as needed too.) I'm now looking for a bootable RT-11 floppy disk image (just a raw image, e.g= . .IMG) that can boot and run on this limited hardware. The file should be ex= actly 256,256 bytes long if single-density, or 512,512 bytes long of double-d= ensity. (Actually, anything bootable on this hardware would be appreciated!) I'm new to this forum - let me know what is the protocol for giving you my em= ail address... Thanks! Martin E. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but bitsavers.org is a grea= t resource: https://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/rt-11/ Where are you located? --tom --===============2024467009341093083==-- From lproven@gmail.com Mon Jan 20 23:37:53 2025 From: Liam Proven To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:36:03 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8110950358948012810==" --===============8110950358948012810== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 at 16:21, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > Marvin: > And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my > left side. > > Arthur Dent: > Really. > > Marvin: > Oh, yes. I mean, I've asked for them to be replaced, but no-one ever > listens. It does strike me that the LLM bots are an effort at Genuine People Personalities™... and are about as desirable... -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 --===============8110950358948012810==-- From eberhard@allenroad.com Mon Jan 20 23:45:37 2025 From: Martin Eberhard To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:45:34 +0000 Message-ID: <173741673400.1304.17225966865922045392@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: <321a5be9-8068-4cf7-8595-63378ae6ee31@ubanproductions.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4944697836710696930==" --===============4944697836710696930== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I'm splitting my time between Silicon Valley and San Juan Island, WA. My PDP1= 1/20 is in WA... (But I have a nicely-running PDP8e in Silicon Valley :-) --===============4944697836710696930==-- From eberhard@allenroad.com Tue Jan 21 00:04:51 2025 From: Martin Eberhard To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:04:46 +0000 Message-ID: <173741788652.1304.165459780964197181@classiccmp.org> In-Reply-To: <321a5be9-8068-4cf7-8595-63378ae6ee31@ubanproductions.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2727600330720109531==" --===============2727600330720109531== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I looked at those images on Bitsavers. As far I understand, an RX211 controll= er can't boot a disk with an RX11 bootstrap program. The RX211 uses DMA to tr= ansfer the data, while the RX11 requires software to transfer the data in a l= oop, one word at a time. Additionally, RT11 (or any other OS) has to be configured for the RX211, diff= erently than for the RX11, for the same reason. (A good driver would look at = the status register and detect whether it is an RX11 or RX211, and adjust acc= ordingly. I don't know if DEC did this or not.) Every single-density image that I could find either does not have a boot load= er (Track 1, sector 1) or it has a boot loader for the RX11 controller. I have not yet found a disk image (single-density or double-density) for an = RX211 that is bootable. This would require both the boot sector to be for the= RX211, as well as the RT11 image itself, configured for an RX211 drive. (Or = configured to detect the drive type and do the right thing...) I'm kind of new the the DEC world (aside from learning PDP11 assembly languag= e in collage...) Any pointers, advice, DISK IMAGES, etc. is greatly appreciat= ed :-) Thanks, Martin E. --===============2727600330720109531==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Tue Jan 21 00:28:27 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:28:20 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173741788652.1304.165459780964197181@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2684652658361852829==" --===============2684652658361852829== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Martin, sent you a Digital Equipment Corp discord invite.=20 You should br able yo get zll you questions answered there. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 20, 2025, at 16:04, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFI looked at those images on Bitsavers. As far I understand, an RX2= 11 controller can't boot a disk with an RX11 bootstrap program. The RX211 use= s DMA to transfer the data, while the RX11 requires software to transfer the = data in a loop, one word at a time. >=20 > Additionally, RT11 (or any other OS) has to be configured for the RX211, di= fferently than for the RX11, for the same reason. (A good driver would look a= t the status register and detect whether it is an RX11 or RX211, and adjust a= ccordingly. I don't know if DEC did this or not.) >=20 > Every single-density image that I could find either does not have a boot lo= ader (Track 1, sector 1) or it has a boot loader for the RX11 controller. >=20 > I have not yet found a disk image (single-density or double-density) for a= n RX211 that is bootable. This would require both the boot sector to be for t= he RX211, as well as the RT11 image itself, configured for an RX211 drive. (O= r configured to detect the drive type and do the right thing...) >=20 > I'm kind of new the the DEC world (aside from learning PDP11 assembly langu= age in collage...) Any pointers, advice, DISK IMAGES, etc. is greatly appreci= ated :-) >=20 > Thanks, > Martin E. --===============2684652658361852829==-- From cz@alembic.crystel.com Tue Jan 21 00:45:01 2025 From: cz To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 19:44:51 -0500 Message-ID: <4effdac7-bb31-4c39-80be-4a47a6fc5f52@alembic.crystel.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181047AA2F2DCF3B776A8F1E4E62=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0625253352367921931==" --===============0625253352367921931== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable For those not on the Discord (it's great) here is my thought: Since the 11/20 has two serial ports, set the second to 176500/300=20 address/vector and hook it to a PC running a TU58 emulator. Then toggle=20 in a TU58 bootstrap, and boot up RT11 on the emulated TU58. Then pop in a floppy and do a format, then copy over all the files with=20 a copy/sys du0:*.* dy0: followed by a copy/boot dy0:rt11fb.sys dy0: and=20 boot up off the floppy. Much simpler than trying to transfer images and whatnot. C On 1/20/2025 7:28 PM, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: > Martin, sent you a Digital Equipment Corp discord invite. > You should br able yo get zll you questions answered there. >=20 > Sent from my iPhone >=20 >> On Jan 20, 2025, at 16:04, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: >> >> =EF=BB=BFI looked at those images on Bitsavers. As far I understand, an RX= 211 controller can't boot a disk with an RX11 bootstrap program. The RX211 us= es DMA to transfer the data, while the RX11 requires software to transfer the= data in a loop, one word at a time. >> >> Additionally, RT11 (or any other OS) has to be configured for the RX211, d= ifferently than for the RX11, for the same reason. (A good driver would look = at the status register and detect whether it is an RX11 or RX211, and adjust = accordingly. I don't know if DEC did this or not.) >> >> Every single-density image that I could find either does not have a boot l= oader (Track 1, sector 1) or it has a boot loader for the RX11 controller. >> >> I have not yet found a disk image (single-density or double-density) for = an RX211 that is bootable. This would require both the boot sector to be for = the RX211, as well as the RT11 image itself, configured for an RX211 drive. (= Or configured to detect the drive type and do the right thing...) >> >> I'm kind of new the the DEC world (aside from learning PDP11 assembly lang= uage in collage...) Any pointers, advice, DISK IMAGES, etc. is greatly apprec= iated :-) >> >> Thanks, >> Martin E. --===============0625253352367921931==-- From amp1ron@gmail.com Tue Jan 21 03:38:44 2025 From: amp1ron@gmail.com To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:37:35 -0500 Message-ID: <010201db6bb5$d0c0a3e0$7241eba0$@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181564AED8216A67AE3A1F9E4E72=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2567381767919876236==" --===============2567381767919876236== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/20/2025 Wayne S wrote: > Try here=E2=80=A6 > From an old newsgroup > Just a note that Jerome Fine collected together a set of 24 RT-11 releases = (from V01-15 on a DECtape to V05.07 on an RL02 disk) in the form of a consoli= dated CD-ROM image. > > You can download the CD-ROM from > > http://pdp-11.classiccmp.org/RT-11/dists/RT11DV50.ISO.zip I didn't write the following, I'm just copying what I saved some time ago. I= t may help you make use of RT11DV50.ISO.zip . -- Ron Subject: RT-11 distribution kits From: Tony Date: 9/24/2021 A few people have asked me about RT-11 distribution kits. Earlier this year I posted the following to the alt.sys.pdp11 USENET newsgrou= p. It may be of use to fellow PiDP11 owners... just merge the relevant disk= s mentioned below into the /opt/pidp11/systems/rt11/boot.ini and boot the CD-= ROM (boot rq0) to make a distribution kit. Tony The following is my posting from alt.sys.pdp11 - Just a note that Jerome Fine collected together a set of 24 RT-11 releases (f= rom V01-15 on a DECtape to V05.07 on an RL02 disk) in the form of a consolida= ted CD-ROM image. You can download the CD-ROM from http://pdp-11.classiccmp.org/RT-11/dists/RT11DV50.ISO.zip If you're using SIMH PDP11 you can access distributions from RT-11 partitions= on the CD-ROM using a SIMH ini file like - ; File rt11.ini for SIMH PDP11 set cpu 11/70, 4M set cpu noidle set throttle 10% set dz disable set hk disable set tm disable set rq enable set rq0 cdrom att rq0 RT11DV50.iso ; This is for copying an install disk to a RL02 disk image ; For older versions use DECtape (tc) or RK05 (rk) set rl enable set rl0 RL02 att rl0 RT11V57.dsk boot rq0 ; end of rt11.ini Unzip the CD-ROM from the zip file into an empty directory with the above rt1= 1.ini and start SIMH PDP11 $ pdp11 rt11.ini PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Current git commit id: 852c0bc1 Disabling XQ /Users/tony/rt11/rt11.ini-7> att rq0 RT11DV50.iso RQ0: 'RT11DV50.iso' Contains RT11 partitions 4 valid partitions, Type: V05, Sectors On Disk: 242406 /Users/tony/rt11/rt11.ini-13> att rl0 RT11V57.dsk RL0: creating new file: RT11V57.dsk Overwrite last track? [N]Y RT-11XM V05.03 ?LD-W-Unable to update disk copy of LD handler .TYPE V5USER.TXT [snip] Each of the CD-ROM four partitions is available as device DU0:, DU1:, DU2: an= d DU3:. There are two files on DU0: called README.1ST and README.2ND you shou= ld examine for instructions and the layout of the CD-ROM. For example, to make a bootable RL02 disk containing the RT-11 V05.07 install= ation kit, copy the disk-image file from DU2:RTV5RL.07 to the RL02 media usin= g - .copy du2:rtv5rl.07 /file DL0: /dev DL0:/Copy; Are you sure? Y Output device is larger; Are you sure? Y Now you have the installation disk on the RL02 in drive DL0:. You can now perform an installation by booting this disk - but to do this you should halt SIMH PDP11 and revise the start-up file to add another RL02 device (as rl1), and boot from rl0. See the appropriate RT-11 installation guide for details (installation normally requires two additional RL02 disks - one to make a backup of the installation disk, and the other to make your working system disk). The release notes are at - http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/rt11/v5.7_Oct98/AA-5286M-TC_RT-11_V5.7= _Release_Notes_Oct98.pdf and you can use this in conjunction with the V5.6 documentation at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/rt11/v5.6_Aug91/ Tony --===============2567381767919876236==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Tue Jan 21 03:53:20 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 19:51:18 -0800 Message-ID: <495a5c5c-d3f0-4fe6-8c24-5b02aef91030@floodgap.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8659444309168775694==" --===============8659444309168775694== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru serial cable, or null? --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- BOND THEME NOW PLAYING: "All-Time High" from "Octopussy" -----------------= -- --===============8659444309168775694==-- From imp@bsdimp.com Tue Jan 21 04:16:48 2025 From: Warner Losh To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 21:16:29 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <495a5c5c-d3f0-4fe6-8c24-5b02aef91030@floodgap.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3896021586705670981==" --===============3896021586705670981== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 8:53 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru serial > cable, or > null? > It's communication port is DCE. And the printer is DTE. What are you connecting? Warner -- > ------------------------------------ personal: > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * > ckaiser(a)floodgap.com > -- BOND THEME NOW PLAYING: "All-Time High" from "Octopussy" > ------------------- > > --===============3896021586705670981==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Tue Jan 21 04:18:15 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 20:18:03 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3996233275665606767==" --===============3996233275665606767== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru serial cabl= e, or > > null? >=20 > It's communication port is DCE. And the printer is DTE. >=20 > What are you connecting? Wiring up to a Linux box. Going to do some SLIP experiments with Venix. Anything special about the wiring required? Thanks! --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- He who Laughs, Lasts. ----------------------------------------------------= -- --===============3996233275665606767==-- From imp@bsdimp.com Tue Jan 21 04:44:44 2025 From: Warner Losh To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 21:44:26 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3161964152263742246==" --===============3161964152263742246== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:18 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru serial > cable, or > > > null? > > > > It's communication port is DCE. And the printer is DTE. > > > > What are you connecting? > > Wiring up to a Linux box. Going to do some SLIP experiments with Venix. > Anything special about the wiring required? > I think you'll need a NULL modem, assuming it's like the SEC Rainbow I have in the basement. At least that's what I use for connecting it to my FreeBSD system. You'll likely need hardware flow control signals too and config. But I've not used the Pro, but Venix has a special serial driver. And i thought Venix didn't have TCP/IP. Warner Thanks! > > -- > ------------------------------------ personal: > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * > ckaiser(a)floodgap.com > -- He who Laughs, Lasts. > ------------------------------------------------------ > > --===============3161964152263742246==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Tue Jan 21 04:49:10 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 20:49:04 -0800 Message-ID: <572ea2c0-0028-4af4-b157-447cf5297d79@floodgap.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5759616788847985961==" --===============5759616788847985961== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > > > DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru serial > > > > cable, or null? > > > > > > It's communication port is DCE. And the printer is DTE. > > > > > > What are you connecting? > > > > Wiring up to a Linux box. Going to do some SLIP experiments with Venix. > > Anything special about the wiring required? >=20 > I think you'll need a NULL modem, assuming it's like the SEC Rainbow I have= in > the basement. At least that's what I use for connecting it to my FreeBSD > system. You'll likely need hardware flow control signals too and config. But > I've not used the Pro, but Venix has a special serial driver. And i thought > Venix didn't have TCP/IP. It doesn't, this is a user-mode experiment I'm working on (a very basic stack for Venix/PRO through Slirp). I'll try a null-modem cable on it first. Thanks! --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- Isn't it odd how Mac users are loyal to Apple, but not always vice versa? = -- --===============5759616788847985961==-- From imp@bsdimp.com Tue Jan 21 05:07:41 2025 From: Warner Losh To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: null modem for DEC Pro 380 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 22:07:13 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <572ea2c0-0028-4af4-b157-447cf5297d79@floodgap.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8920894441932656275==" --===============8920894441932656275== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 9:49 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > > DEC Pro owners: does the DEC Professional use a straight-thru > serial > > > > > cable, or null? > > > > > > > > It's communication port is DCE. And the printer is DTE. > > > > > > > > What are you connecting? > > > > > > Wiring up to a Linux box. Going to do some SLIP experiments with Venix. > > > Anything special about the wiring required? > > > > I think you'll need a NULL modem, assuming it's like the SEC Rainbow I > have in > > the basement. At least that's what I use for connecting it to my FreeBSD > > system. You'll likely need hardware flow control signals too and config. > But > > I've not used the Pro, but Venix has a special serial driver. And i > thought > > Venix didn't have TCP/IP. > > It doesn't, this is a user-mode experiment I'm working on (a very basic > stack > for Venix/PRO through Slirp). I'll try a null-modem cable on it first. Great. I did something similar with Venix on the Rainbow. I'd suggest getting kermit working first to get things working and also explore the speeds to expect. Slirp should be faster than Kermit... and slirp may even fit into i&d.... but the UARTs on DEC gear in that era weren't always built for speed, so good luck. I hope you have better luck getting good performance than i did. 2400 was reliable, 4800 wasn't on venix on the Rainbow (though MS-DOS could do 4800)... Warner Thanks! > > -- > ------------------------------------ personal: > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * > ckaiser(a)floodgap.com > -- Isn't it odd how Mac users are loyal to Apple, but not always vice > versa? -- > > --===============8920894441932656275==-- From cz@bunsen.crystel.com Tue Jan 21 09:20:17 2025 From: Christopher Zach To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:54:37 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181564AED8216A67AE3A1F9E4E72=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0621968495079074837==" --===============0621968495079074837== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Since you have a second dl11 the best move might be to load rt11 from a tu58 = emulator then format some rx02 floppies and go to town.=20 Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 20, 2025, at 5:12=E2=80=AFPM, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFTry here=E2=80=A6 > From an old newsgroup > Just a note that Jerome Fine collected together a set of 24 RT-11 releases = (from V01-15 on a DECtape to V05.07 on an RL02 disk) in the form of a consoli= dated CD-ROM image. >=20 > You can download the CD-ROM from >=20 > http://pdp-11.classiccmp.org/RT-11/dists/RT11DV50.ISO.zip >=20 >=20 > Sent from my iPhone >=20 > On Jan 20, 2025, at 13:56, Tom Uban via cctalk wr= ote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFOn 1/20/25 15:26, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: > I'm in the process of restoring a PDP11/20. Here is what is working so far: > KA11 PDP11/20 CPU , power supply, programmer's console, etc. > 32Kx16 SRAM/ROM board of my own design (Core memory will come later!) > KE11-A Extended Arithmetic Element > RX211 controller with RX02 drive, cleaned, spindle bearings replaced, al= igned, tested, and working > DL11-W Serial Line Unit with Real-Time Clock > DL11 2nd serial port, modified to operate at 19,200 baud > VT100, connected to the DL11-W > I've written a program that lets me load a raw disk image (via Xmodem proto= col) from the serial port onto a floppy disk, and verify the write. This work= s great, for both single-density and double-density. (It can set the media de= nsity as needed too.) >=20 > I'm now looking for a bootable RT-11 floppy disk image (just a raw image, e= .g. .IMG) that can boot and run on this limited hardware. The file should be = exactly 256,256 bytes long if single-density, or 512,512 bytes long of double= -density. (Actually, anything bootable on this hardware would be appreciated!) >=20 > I'm new to this forum - let me know what is the protocol for giving you my = email address... >=20 > Thanks! > Martin E. > I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but bitsavers.org is a gr= eat resource: >=20 > https://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/rt-11/ >=20 > Where are you located? >=20 > --tom >=20 --===============0621968495079074837==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Tue Jan 21 11:03:26 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 04:03:18 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3509518563523700384==" --===============3509518563523700384== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-20 2:51 p.m., Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote: ee a breakthrough it that either. > > There have been various "simulate early (theoretical) earth conditions > in the lab to see what happens" and while at least some got all the way > to some interesting organic molecules, none of them reached even the most > primitive life forms - maybe they just need to refine their experiments > and run them for a billion years? ;-) > It still could be solved as puzzle. You need enzymes to make enzymes or you just end up with primeval soup. It just has to work say 10% in the positive direction of the time for something useful start with. Use that as weird molecule zip and unzip RNA segments. One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then. > Kind regards, > Alex. Now that my PCB boards have shipped, I will go back to primeval computing with 18 bits, when computers were just crawling onto land. They just seem more interesting than today's RISC's. Byte addressing may have been a step backwards do to the loss 1 bit the order code and 1 bit in address ranges. Ben. --===============3509518563523700384==-- From uban@ubanproductions.com Tue Jan 21 15:33:11 2025 From: Tom Uban To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Looking for bootable floppy image for a PDP11/20 Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 09:27:22 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CCY4PR1001MB2181047AA2F2DCF3B776A8F1E4E62=40CY4PR10?= =?utf-8?q?01MB2181=2Enamprd10=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4840509027418341783==" --===============4840509027418341783== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi Wayne, Would you please send me a discord invite too? --tnx --tom On 1/20/25 18:28, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: > Martin, sent you a Digital Equipment Corp discord invite. > You should br able yo get zll you questions answered there. > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Jan 20, 2025, at 16:04, Martin Eberhard via cctalk wrote: >> >> =EF=BB=BFI looked at those images on Bitsavers. As far I understand, an RX= 211 controller can't boot a disk with an RX11 bootstrap program. The RX211 us= es DMA to transfer the data, while the RX11 requires software to transfer the= data in a loop, one word at a time. >> >> Additionally, RT11 (or any other OS) has to be configured for the RX211, d= ifferently than for the RX11, for the same reason. (A good driver would look = at the status register and detect whether it is an RX11 or RX211, and adjust = accordingly. I don't know if DEC did this or not.) >> >> Every single-density image that I could find either does not have a boot l= oader (Track 1, sector 1) or it has a boot loader for the RX11 controller. >> >> I have not yet found a disk image (single-density or double-density) for = an RX211 that is bootable. This would require both the boot sector to be for = the RX211, as well as the RT11 image itself, configured for an RX211 drive. (= Or configured to detect the drive type and do the right thing...) >> >> I'm kind of new the the DEC world (aside from learning PDP11 assembly lang= uage in collage...) Any pointers, advice, DISK IMAGES, etc. is greatly apprec= iated :-) >> >> Thanks, >> Martin E. --===============4840509027418341783==-- From juandelpinoandrade@gmail.com Tue Jan 21 16:23:59 2025 From: Juan del Pino To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Ram and vram Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 17:23:37 +0100 Message-ID: <7A62D7A3-699A-42F3-AEC3-E31E89266C81@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2394211288541923015==" --===============2394211288541923015== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, people: anyone interested? hitachi hb56a19a. 150 TC514400ASJ-70 256KB VRAM Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 900 950 68-Pin SIMM RAM 70ns MT42C8128D= J-7 50 IBM Memory Ram 4MB 1M x 32 B1D1320BA-7 DRAM SIMM 72 PINES 60NS 16MB TI TMS417409ADJ-2E. x2 Thanks --===============2394211288541923015==-- From teoz@neo.rr.com Tue Jan 21 18:57:51 2025 From: Teo Zenios To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Ram and vram Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:50:37 +0000 Message-ID: <2ccca73061441f10076a5dab4b20a187d38429b3@webmail> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5899858476268960089==" --===============5899858476268960089== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit How much for the quadra VRAM and how many are there? -----------------------------------------From: "Juan del Pino via cctalk" To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: "Juan del Pino" Sent: Tuesday January 21 2025 11:24:00AM Subject: [cctalk] Ram and vram Hello, people: anyone interested? hitachi hb56a19a. 150 TC514400ASJ-70 256KB VRAM Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 900 950 68-Pin SIMM RAM 70ns MT42C8128DJ-7 50 IBM Memory Ram 4MB 1M x 32 B1D1320BA-7 DRAM SIMM 72 PINES 60NS 16MB TI TMS417409ADJ-2E. x2 Thanks --===============5899858476268960089==-- From pa0pkg@gmail.com Tue Jan 21 19:26:11 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:54:23 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1059652694088421313==" --===============1059652694088421313== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 21, 2025, at 6:03=E2=80=AFAM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-20 2:51 p.m., Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote: > ee a breakthrough it that either. >> There have been various "simulate early (theoretical) earth conditions >> in the lab to see what happens" and while at least some got all the way >> to some interesting organic molecules, none of them reached even the most >> primitive life forms - maybe they just need to refine their experiments >> and run them for a billion years? ;-) > It still could be solved as puzzle. > You need enzymes to make enzymes or you just end up with primeval soup. > It just has to work say 10% in the positive direction of the time for somet= hing useful start with. Use that as weird molecule zip and unzip RNA segments. > One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Cita= tion needed" as Wikipedia would say. paul --===============1059652694088421313==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Tue Jan 21 19:52:57 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:52:49 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1094284362049279634==" --===============1094284362049279634== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >=20 > Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Ci= tation needed" as Wikipedia would say. >=20 > paul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics --===============1094284362049279634==-- From roger@arrick.com Tue Jan 21 19:59:53 2025 From: roger arrick To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 19:59:44 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0748802857494985911==" --===============0748802857494985911== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable "rejected by mainstream science" ??? Now you might be on to something! =F0=9F=99=82 ________________________________ From: ben via cctalk Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2025 1:52 PM To: Paul Koning ; cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: ben Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: > > Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Ci= tation needed" as Wikipedia would say. > > paul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics --===============0748802857494985911==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 21 22:52:07 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 14:52:01 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7157649735642495886==" --===============7157649735642495886== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then > On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >> Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much >> different? "Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics (-: Well, increased gravity might account for why everything seems more difficult now than when we were young. We used to be able to walk to school in the snow, uphill in both directions. Has the earth's mass increased significantly? If gravity itself has changed, then maybe speed of light has changed also! Is there a substantial increase in the computron density in modern computers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience "Modern flat Earth beliefs propose that Earth is a flat, disc-shaped planet that accelerates upward, producing the illusion of gravity. Proposers of a flat Earth, such as the Flat Earth Research Society, do not accept compelling evidence, such as photos of Earth from space.[13]" An increase in acceleration (third derivative positive) would account for increased gravity. :-) --===============7157649735642495886==-- From wrcooke@wrcooke.net Tue Jan 21 23:04:24 2025 From: wrcooke@wrcooke.net To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 17:59:15 -0500 Message-ID: <1004625737.255766.1737500355659@email.ionos.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4143730413741373377==" --===============4143730413741373377== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On 01/21/2025 5:52 PM EST Fred Cisin via cctalk w= rote: > > > An increase in acceleration (third derivative positive) would account for > increased gravity. > :-) Geez! All this pseudo science! All ya gotta do is follow the REAL science! = Of course gravity has increased since there was nothing here! Now we have a= ll these plants, and bugs, and animals, and 8 billion humans. All that incre= ased mass increases the gravity. And every time a baby is born it gets even = stronger. Pretty soon we will all be crushed under our own weight! You're welcome ;-) Will --===============4143730413741373377==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 21 23:09:46 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:09:39 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1004625737.255766.1737500355659@email.ionos.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3667383570077751399==" --===============3667383570077751399== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >> An increase in acceleration (third derivative positive) would account for >> increased gravity. >> :-) On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, wrcooke(a)wrcooke.net wrote: > Geez! All this pseudo science! All ya gotta do is follow the REAL science= ! Of course gravity has increased since there was nothing here! Now we have= all these plants, and bugs, and animals, and 8 billion humans. All that inc= reased mass increases the gravity. And every time a baby is born it gets eve= n stronger. Pretty soon we will all be crushed under our own weight! > You're welcome ;-) Thank you, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience and, rain and snow surely can't be adequately compensated for by simple=20 evaporation! Note that I did specifically suggest the possibility of increased mass: >> Has the earth's mass increased significantly? If a lower gravity is a significant factor in why life could be created=20 more easily in the past, then perhaps some orbital experiments? --===============3667383570077751399==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Tue Jan 21 23:11:46 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 23:11:39 +0000 Message-ID: <0f83cf46-1e93-423d-820d-1fa1bada0944@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <1004625737.255766.1737500355659@email.ionos.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6621955152931790008==" --===============6621955152931790008== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 21/01/2025 22:59, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote: > >> On 01/21/2025 5:52 PM EST Fred Cisin via cctalk = wrote: >> >> An increase in acceleration (third derivative positive) would account for >> increased gravity. >> :-) > Geez! All this pseudo science! All ya gotta do is follow the REAL science= ! Of course gravity has increased since there was nothing here! Now we have= all these plants, and bugs, and animals, and 8 billion humans. All that inc= reased mass increases the gravity. And every time a baby is born it gets eve= n stronger. Pretty soon we will all be crushed under our own weight! My doctor didn't believe me when I said that of course I was heavier=20 when she weighed me in basement clinic, rather than the first=20 floor(usa)/ground floor(UK)... > > You're welcome ;-) > > Will Dave --===============6621955152931790008==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Tue Jan 21 23:28:23 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:28:17 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <0f83cf46-1e93-423d-820d-1fa1bada0944@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8563097777789277406==" --===============8563097777789277406== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, David Wade via cctalk wrote: > My doctor didn't believe me when I said that of course I was heavier when s= he=20 > weighed me in basement clinic, rather than the first floor(usa)/ground=20 > floor(UK)... At least take your shoes off to reduce the weight. But, hold them in your hand, so that they don't get misplaced. --===============8563097777789277406==-- From lewissa78@gmail.com Wed Jan 22 06:56:22 2025 From: Steve Lewis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:56:05 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4465209363299687246==" --===============4465209363299687246== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Best AI was Edgar in the movie Electric Dreams. Created by accidentally spilling wine into the keyboard - Edgar spent its idle time figuring out what shape of puzzles would help make earthquake proof buildings, while flirting (musically) with the girl next door. In the end, Edgar transcended into cyberspace. I agree with most of the others here: we're doing advanced expert systems, trained and tuned to do specific things. No general purpose intelligence. I'd be ok calling it "augmented intelligence" as those expert systems can help assist in things. Or HIP: Hyper Information Processing - much faster ways to process and present multiple dimensions of data, that can help make decisions, but aren't inherently intelligent. On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 5:28=E2=80=AFPM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, David Wade via cctalk wrote: > > My doctor didn't believe me when I said that of course I was heavier > when she > > weighed me in basement clinic, rather than the first floor(usa)/ground > > floor(UK)... > > At least take your shoes off to reduce the weight. > But, hold them in your hand, so that they don't get misplaced. > --===============4465209363299687246==-- From pa0pkg@gmail.com Wed Jan 22 07:41:40 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:04:58 -0500 Message-ID: <8DD89F97-E6BD-4074-BB95-703D4C970352@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7174786317005141497==" --===============7174786317005141497== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 21, 2025, at 2:52=E2=80=AFPM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >=20 >> Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "C= itation needed" as Wikipedia would say. >> paul >=20 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics Oh, ok. So it's fictional. paul --===============7174786317005141497==-- From jrr@flippers.com Wed Jan 22 23:25:48 2025 From: John Robertson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] TMS9981A - CPU needed... Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2025 15:16:11 -0800 Message-ID: <4e83a2f3-9bae-4eeb-959a-35e26d8252ff@flippers.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0665686427631383830==" --===============0665686427631383830== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Folks! Anyone have one or more of the old TI CPUs? The usual suspects don't stock it (Unicorn, Abra, Jameco...). I have a customers game board in where the CPU was backwards and previously destroyed... In case anyone is curious the game was from Japan - Universal's COSMIC GUERILLA. This is NOT the TMS9918A - video chip - that some folks are trying to emulate with Raspberry Pi(e)s. Thanks! John :-#)# -- John's Jukes Ltd. 7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3 Call (604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games) flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out" --===============0665686427631383830==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Thu Jan 23 15:33:52 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:15:49 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8566922230705358139==" --===============8566922230705358139== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >=20 > >=20 > > Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "= Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. > >=20 > > paul >=20 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia page. Kind regards, Alex. --=20 "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============8566922230705358139==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Thu Jan 23 15:47:40 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 08:44:29 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3544860954208873837==" --===============3544860954208873837== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote: > On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: >> On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >> >>> >>> Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "= Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. >>> >>> paul >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics >=20 > Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics > a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia > page. >=20 > Kind regards, > Alex. How lucky I am that I am not a "mainstream physicist". A true scientist looks at the evidence, not what is discussed by others. I also like the expanding earth theory, vs continental drift. Where is all that energy to move the plates around. --===============3544860954208873837==-- From jbdigriz@dragonsweb.org Thu Jan 23 18:12:08 2025 From: James B DiGriz To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: TMS9981A - CPU needed... Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 12:57:36 -0500 Message-ID: <8a1ab910-3fed-4dd3-b444-13706dc14667@dragonsweb.org> In-Reply-To: <4e83a2f3-9bae-4eeb-959a-35e26d8252ff@flippers.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4480788797718976431==" --===============4480788797718976431== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Ebay seller tvsat_electronic in Poland currently lists  some TMS9981JDL. Don't know about the A variant, but they do stock a lot of even more obscure TI uPs. . Folks I know have had good results purchasing from them. Also ISTR rkn704 in the UK might have had some reasonable as well, maybe still does. HTH, jbdigriz On 1/22/25 18:16, John Robertson via cctalk wrote: > Hi Folks! > > Anyone have one or more of the old TI CPUs? The usual suspects don't > stock it (Unicorn, Abra, Jameco...). I have a customers game board in > where the CPU was backwards and previously destroyed... > > In case anyone is curious the game was from Japan - Universal's COSMIC > GUERILLA. > > This is NOT the TMS9918A - video chip - that some folks are trying to > emulate with Raspberry Pi(e)s. > > Thanks! > > John :-#)# > --===============4480788797718976431==-- From juandelpinoandrade@gmail.com Thu Jan 23 21:11:30 2025 From: Juan del Pino To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Ram and vram Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 22:11:13 +0100 Message-ID: <62D4A88F-1B02-4684-AC90-1C6EFE8CE6FE@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2ccca73061441f10076a5dab4b20a187d38429b3@webmail> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8064372437797297670==" --===============8064372437797297670== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, Ted: 10=E2=82=AC, only one, sorry. > El 21 ene 2025, a las 19:50, Teo Zenios via cctalk escribi=C3=B3: >=20 > How much for the quadra VRAM and how many are there? >=20 > -----------------------------------------From: "Juan del Pino via > cctalk"=20 > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Cc: "Juan del Pino" > Sent: Tuesday January 21 2025 11:24:00AM > Subject: [cctalk] Ram and vram >=20 > Hello, people: >=20 > anyone interested? >=20 > hitachi hb56a19a. 150 > TC514400ASJ-70 > 256KB VRAM Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 900 950 68-Pin SIMM RAM 70ns > MT42C8128DJ-7 50 > IBM Memory Ram 4MB 1M x 32 B1D1320BA-7 > DRAM SIMM 72 PINES 60NS 16MB TI TMS417409ADJ-2E. x2 >=20 > Thanks >=20 --===============8064372437797297670==-- From r_a_feldman@hotmail.com Thu Jan 23 22:37:30 2025 From: Robert Feldman To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 22:37:21 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <173765521009.1298.13404816163593364519@classiccmp.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5104445634749216047==" --===============5104445634749216047== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message: 3 Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 08:44:29 -0700 From: ben Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote: On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Cita= tion needed" as Wikipedia would say. paul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia page. Kind regards, Alex. How lucky I am that I am not a "mainstream physicist". A true scientist looks at the evidence, not what is discussed by others. I also like the expanding earth theory, vs continental drift. Where is all that energy to move the plates around. The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists (Lord Kelv= in) have gotten wrong in the past. See https://www.americanscientist.org/art= icle/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth --===============5104445634749216047==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Thu Jan 23 23:01:14 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:00:58 -0500 Message-ID: <8C066632-B0A3-47C8-9132-557ACA2D5190@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CIA1PR02MB9613A3AAB9211B1D026F04E3B5E02=40IA1PR02MB?= =?utf-8?q?9613=2Enamprd02=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7466811415737649904==" --===============7466811415737649904== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 23, 2025, at 5:37=E2=80=AFPM, Robert Feldman via cctalk wrote: >=20 >=20 > ... >=20 > The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists (Lord Ke= lvin) have gotten wrong in the past. See https://www.americanscientist.org/a= rticle/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth >=20 Absolutely. Lots of earlier physics is either very wrong or actually only an= approximation. (Newtonian gravitation is an example of the latter.) This is why "settled science" is a crackpot notion. Galileo knew better and = explained it very well. paul --===============7466811415737649904==-- From pa0pkg@gmail.com Fri Jan 24 07:31:24 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 17:11:34 -0500 Message-ID: <81E7B466-4735-4C18-822E-0B010851B19A@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0589037828918833020==" --===============0589037828918833020== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 23, 2025, at 10:44=E2=80=AFAM, ben via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote: >> On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: >>> On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>> Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? = "Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. >>>>=20 >>>> paul >>>=20 >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics >> Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics >> a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia >> page. >> Kind regards, >> Alex. >=20 > How lucky I am that I am not a "mainstream physicist". > A true scientist looks at the evidence, not what is discussed by others. Indeed, which is precisely the point. Relativity is extremely well supported= by evidence as far back as 1919. > I also like the expanding earth theory, vs continental drift. > Where is all that energy to move the plates around. In the hot earth core. Ever looked at a volcanic eruption? Lots of energy t= here. Also, "expanding earth" doesn't explain subducting plates. Also, cont= inental drift can be readily measured with modern precision surveying tools. paul --===============0589037828918833020==-- From donald@donaldwhittemore.com Fri Jan 24 07:31:27 2025 From: "donald donaldwhittemore.com" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:12:17 +0000 Message-ID: <0FD040DD-E196-4E59-AC24-F08476B7CAD3@donaldwhittemore.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1578943046603734496==" --===============1578943046603734496== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I don’t trip and fall. I perform gravity checks. --===============1578943046603734496==-- From jrr@flippers.com Fri Jan 24 19:22:55 2025 From: John Robertson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: TMS9981A - CPU needed... Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:22:47 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <8a1ab910-3fed-4dd3-b444-13706dc14667@dragonsweb.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1000093671284282647==" --===============1000093671284282647== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-23 9:57 a.m., James B DiGriz via cctalk wrote: > Ebay seller tvsat_electronic in Poland currently lists  some > TMS9981JDL. Don't know about the A variant, but they do stock a lot of > even more obscure TI uPs. . Folks I know have had good results > purchasing from them. Also ISTR rkn704 in the UK might have had some > reasonable as well, maybe still does. > > HTH, > > jbdigriz Thanks for the information - I may indeed be wrong looking for the "A" variant - the Osborne book does NOT specify that suffix for the 9981, just the 9980 has the 'A'. I can't find the eBay seller tvsat_electronic on eBay.pl at this time - perhaps he has none listed at this time? Other than China (likely fakes) all the other TMS9981JDL on ebay.pl are rather expensive for this old arcade game. John :-#)# > > > On 1/22/25 18:16, John Robertson via cctalk wrote: >> Hi Folks! >> >> Anyone have one or more of the old TI CPUs? The usual suspects don't >> stock it (Unicorn, Abra, Jameco...). I have a customers game board in >> where the CPU was backwards and previously destroyed... >> >> In case anyone is curious the game was from Japan - Universal's >> COSMIC GUERILLA. >> >> This is NOT the TMS9918A - video chip - that some folks are trying to >> emulate with Raspberry Pi(e)s. >> >> Thanks! >> >> John :-#)# >> -- John's Jukes Ltd. 7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3 Call (604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games) flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out" --===============1000093671284282647==-- From henry.r.bent@gmail.com Fri Jan 24 19:40:38 2025 From: Henry Bent To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: TMS9981A - CPU needed... Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:40:22 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4171031233352599292==" --===============4171031233352599292== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 at 14:32, John Robertson via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > I can't find the eBay seller tvsat_electronic on eBay.pl at this time - > perhaps he has none listed at this time? Other than China (likely fakes) > all the other TMS9981JDL on ebay.pl are rather expensive for this old > arcade game. > > https://www.ebay.com/str/tvsatelectronic -Henry --===============4171031233352599292==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 24 20:33:42 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 20:33:35 +0000 Message-ID: <1fd86cba-fff1-402e-834a-a8df68f35727@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <8C066632-B0A3-47C8-9132-557ACA2D5190@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0132730342127972026==" --===============0132730342127972026== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 23/01/2025 23:00, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > On Jan 23, 2025, at 5:37=E2=80=AFPM, Robert Feldman via cctalk=20 > wrote: >> ... >> >> The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists (Lord K= elvin) have gotten wrong in the past. Seehttps://www.americanscientist.org/a= rticle/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth >> > Absolutely. Lots of earlier physics is either very wrong or actually only = an approximation. (Newtonian gravitation is an example of the latter.) > > This is why "settled science" is a crackpot notion. Galileo knew better an= d explained it very well. All science is the best working theory until proven otherwise. However,=20 theories can and disproven, and that's the history of science. No proper scientist believes any theory is the final word. However, they=20 build on theories that have yet to be proven wrong. The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle worked=20 it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat to this=20 day - often because their scripture said otherwise. --===============0132730342127972026==-- From kiwi_jonathan@yahoo.com Fri Jan 24 20:59:47 2025 From: Jonathan Stone To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 20:59:39 +0000 Message-ID: <740415078.4152214.1737752379586@mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <1fd86cba-fff1-402e-834a-a8df68f35727@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0306667817005597266==" --===============0306667817005597266== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =20 On Friday, January 24, 2025 at 12:33:45 PM PST, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle worked > it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat to this > day - often because their scripture said otherwise. Aristotle!?! Eratosthsenes calculated the diameter of the earth from the annu= al vertical shadow in the well at Syene, the shadow of a stick observed at th= e same time in Alexandria, geometry, and the best distance data available at = his time. (Famously, allegedly from professional message couriers -- runners = -- counting steps.) Ancient Greeks inferred that the world was round from, amongst other facts, t= hat the hulls of ships disappeared over the horizon before the masts. (On gen= eral, lower parts disappeared before upper parts, and no matter in which dire= ction the ship went; and the same happened no matter where it's viewed.) And = that the horizon retreats when you climb a mountain, no matter where the moun= tain. And 40% of US adults reject evolution and believe that humans were created in= their current form within the past 10,000 years. (Gallup, 2019) =20 --===============0306667817005597266==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Sat Jan 25 05:33:45 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:50:47 +0000 Message-ID: <4c959a82-3a07-4e71-b127-ba8087da974a@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <8C066632-B0A3-47C8-9132-557ACA2D5190@comcast.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4616030590125558316==" --===============4616030590125558316== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 23/01/2025 23:00, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > On Jan 23, 2025, at 5:37=E2=80=AFPM, Robert Feldman via cctalk=20 > wrote: >> ... >> >> The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists (Lord K= elvin) have gotten wrong in the past. Seehttps://www.americanscientist.org/a= rticle/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth >> > Absolutely. Lots of earlier physics is either very wrong or actually only = an approximation. (Newtonian gravitation is an example of the latter.) > > This is why "settled science" is a crackpot notion. Galileo knew better an= d explained it very well. All science is the best working theory until proven otherwise. However,=20 theories can and disproven, and that's the history of science. No proper scientist believes any theory is the final word. However, they=20 build on theories that have yet to be proven wrong. The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle worked=20 it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat to this=20 day - often because their scripture said otherwise. --===============4616030590125558316==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Sat Jan 25 06:04:30 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 22:04:24 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <4c959a82-3a07-4e71-b127-ba8087da974a@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0728109534996742528==" --===============0728109534996742528== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 24 Jan 2025, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle > worked it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat > to this day - often because their scripture said otherwise. A simple home experiment: Find two points, such a hill/mountain-tops that are visible from each other, but 10 or 20 miles, at least apart east/west.. Set up a vertical tube or slot. When the sun is directly overhead, tell the other person, and see how long it takes before the sun is directly overhead at the other location. if you don't want to use cellphones, since that would not have been available in the past, use smoke signals. I found about a minute to go 15 or 20 miles. 15 or 20 miles in a minute is about 1000 miles an hour. Since the sun's cycle is 24 hours, that would mean that it travels 24,000 miles in a day. And therefore, the circumference of the earth is about 24,000 miles. If you make up some jigs for measuring, and average the readings over a few days, you can get a fairly accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth. Divide by PI if you want the diameter. With visual signaling, instead of cellphones, you might lose a little accuracy, but it was well within the reach of technology for thousands of years. And, it would was close enough to make it obvious that if you want to sail west from europe to the indies, you are going to run out of supplies long before you get there! Unless you are dumb lucky, and happen to bump into some land on the way. Columbus had a bad idea that the earth was MUCH smaller, so he thought that he could make it. He did not prove that the earth is round; that would have to wait for Magellan. And, except for "flat-earthers", educated people knew that the earth was round, and even had a reasonable estimate of how large. --===============0728109534996742528==-- From sellam.ismail@gmail.com Sat Jan 25 13:55:31 2025 From: Sellam Abraham To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 05:55:13 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <4c959a82-3a07-4e71-b127-ba8087da974a@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5420338724647178345==" --===============5420338724647178345== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Can this stop already? Sellam On Fri, Jan 24, 2025, 9:33 PM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 23/01/2025 23:00, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > On Jan 23, 2025, at 5:37 PM, Robert Feldman via cctalk > > wrote: > >> ... > >> > >> The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists > (Lord Kelvin) have gotten wrong in the past. Seehttps:// > www.americanscientist.org/article/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth > >> > > Absolutely. Lots of earlier physics is either very wrong or actually > only an approximation. (Newtonian gravitation is an example of the latter.) > > > > This is why "settled science" is a crackpot notion. Galileo knew better > and explained it very well. > > All science is the best working theory until proven otherwise. However, > theories can and disproven, and that's the history of science. > > No proper scientist believes any theory is the final word. However, they > build on theories that have yet to be proven wrong. > > The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle worked > it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat to this > day - often because their scripture said otherwise. > > > --===============5420338724647178345==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sat Jan 25 14:18:35 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 07:18:26 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2062846573535278129==" --===============2062846573535278129== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-24 11:04 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > And, it would was close enough to make it obvious that if you want to > sail west from europe to the indies, you are going to run out of > supplies long before you get there!  Unless you are dumb lucky, and > happen to bump into some land on the way. The Chinese did the 1st east to west route. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/zheng-he-china-explorer-ships/ > Columbus had a bad idea that the earth was MUCH smaller, so he thought > that he could make it. > Well the fact that HE had a map of the (round) Earth helped a great deal. See the book "1421: The year that China discovered the world", (ebook), and other writings. --===============2062846573535278129==-- From bill.gunshannon@hotmail.com Sat Jan 25 14:57:57 2025 From: Bill Gunshannon To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 09:56:52 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7615589699125946129==" --===============7615589699125946129== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/25/2025 1:04 AM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > On Fri, 24 Jan 2025, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle >> worked it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat >> to this day - often because their scripture said otherwise. > > A simple home experiment: > > Find two points, such a hill/mountain-tops that are visible from each > other, but 10 or 20 miles, at least apart east/west.. > > Set up a vertical tube or slot. > > When the sun is directly overhead, tell the other person, and see how > long it takes before the sun is directly overhead at the other location. > > if you don't want to use cellphones, since  that would not have been > available in the past, use smoke signals. > > > I found about a minute to go 15 or 20 miles. > > 15 or 20 miles in a minute is about 1000 miles an hour. > > Since the sun's cycle is 24 hours, that would mean that it travels > 24,000 miles in a day.  And therefore, the circumference of the earth is > about 24,000 miles. > > If you make up some jigs for measuring, and average the readings over a > few days, you can get a fairly accurate estimate of the circumference of > the earth.  Divide by PI if you want the diameter. > > > With visual signaling, instead of cellphones, you might lose a little > accuracy, but it was well within the reach of technology for thousands > of years. > And, it would was close enough to make it obvious that if you want to > sail west from europe to the indies, you are going to run out of > supplies long before you get there!  Unless you are dumb lucky, and > happen to bump into some land on the way. > > Columbus had a bad idea that the earth was MUCH smaller, so he thought > that he could make it. Or, he knew how big the earth was, but based on maps older than he was, he knew there was another continent between Europe and Asia traveling west and bilked the Spanish royalty into financing his boondoggle. :-) > > He did not prove that the earth is round; that would have to wait for > Magellan. That was never his intention. > And, except for "flat-earthers", educated people knew that the earth was > round, and even had a reasonable estimate of how large. > bill --===============7615589699125946129==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Sat Jan 25 18:05:32 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:05:26 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14694D33E298CA38004DB5E0EDE22=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3361195506033743365==" --===============3361195506033743365== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> He [Columbus[ did not prove that the earth is round; that would have to >> wait for Magellan. On Sat, 25 Jan 2025, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: > That was never his intention. No argument. I was merely putting in a dig at the education system in USA, where "Columbus proved the earth was round" is taught in schools. (as accurate as "Steve3 Jobs invented the first computer") --===============3361195506033743365==-- From dkelvey@hotmail.com Sat Jan 25 20:41:32 2025 From: dwight To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 20:41:14 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CLV8P221MB14694D33E298CA38004DB5E0EDE22=40LV8P221MB?= =?utf-8?q?1469=2ENAMP221=2EPROD=2EOUTLOOK=2ECOM=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8934607748553348246==" --===============8934607748553348246== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > A simple home experiment: > > Find two points, such a hill/mountain-tops that are visible from each > other, but 10 or 20 miles, at least apart east/west.. > This is not sufficient to prove the earth is spherical. This method was used = to calculate the diameter of the earth, already knowing that it was a sphere = and the sun was very far away. To prove it was not flat, one has to use 3 loc= ations. Using just two only helps to prove the stupid flat earther's thought = that the sun was much closer to the flat earth. 3 locations prove that it can= 't be flat because the angle changes too much over distance. It can be done i= n any direction but is easier to do North to South because time of day only n= eeds to be at high noon and distance known. Dwight --===============8934607748553348246==-- From cclist@sydex.com Sat Jan 25 20:55:49 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 20:55:40 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CSA1PR11MB694145240CA9212FADDD4DD2A3E22=40SA1PR11MB?= =?utf-8?q?6941=2Enamprd11=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0556757197635221174==" --===============0556757197635221174== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 1/25/25 12:41, dwight via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> A simple home experiment: >> >> Find two points, such a hill/mountain-tops that are visible from each >> other, but 10 or 20 miles, at least apart east/west.. >> > This is not sufficient to prove the earth is spherical. This method was use= d to calculate the diameter of the earth, already knowing that it was a spher= e and the sun was very far away. To prove it was not flat, one has to use 3 l= ocations. Using just two only helps to prove the stupid flat earther's though= t that the sun was much closer to the flat earth. 3 locations prove that it c= an't be flat because the angle changes too much over distance. It can be done= in any direction but is easier to do North to South because time of day only= needs to be at high noon and distance known. One need only watch a ship approaching shore from any direction to notice that the horizon is curved. --===============0556757197635221174==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Sat Jan 25 22:39:53 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 23:24:31 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8384578409067319326==" --===============8384578409067319326== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 08:44:29AM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > > > On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: > > >=20 > > > >=20 > > > > Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different= ? "Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. > > > >=20 > > > > paul > > >=20 > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics > >=20 > > Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics > > a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia > > page. > >=20 > > Kind regards, > > Alex. >=20 > How lucky I am that I am not a "mainstream physicist". > A true scientist looks at the evidence, not what is discussed by others. >=20 > I also like the expanding earth theory, vs continental drift. Do you use any GNSS-based (e.g. GPS, Baidou, GLONASS, Galileo) services such as dedicated navigation device (e.g. Garmin), navigation app on your phone - or even flying commercially (yes, they primarily depend on GNSS these days, but have backups for when the usual suspects (China and Russia) play silly games). If yes, then you _rely_ on the theories of special and general relativity to be correct - because GNSS service do so to operate correctly. > Where is all that energy to move the plates around. Two sources: remaining heat produced by compression heating from planetary formation and radioaktive decay. Keeps the core and and the inner layers of the planet nicely warm. Kind regards, Alex. --=20 "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============8384578409067319326==-- From cz@alembic.crystel.com Sat Jan 25 23:23:25 2025 From: cz To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 18:23:18 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <81E7B466-4735-4C18-822E-0B010851B19A@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5289550326877220366==" --===============5289550326877220366== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Whelp, it's time to mute cctalk for a few weeks. See you all in Feb! On 1/23/2025 5:11 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >=20 >=20 >> On Jan 23, 2025, at 10:44=E2=80=AFAM, ben via cctalk wrote: >> >> On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote: >>> On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: >>>> On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? = "Citation needed" as Wikipedia would say. >>>>> >>>>> paul >>>> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics >>> Ah, crackpot nonsense: "mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics >>> a crackpot theory for decades" - which is right there on the Wikipedia >>> page. >>> Kind regards, >>> Alex. >> >> How lucky I am that I am not a "mainstream physicist". >> A true scientist looks at the evidence, not what is discussed by others. >=20 > Indeed, which is precisely the point. Relativity is extremely well support= ed by evidence as far back as 1919. >=20 >> I also like the expanding earth theory, vs continental drift. >> Where is all that energy to move the plates around. >=20 > In the hot earth core. Ever looked at a volcanic eruption? Lots of energy= there. Also, "expanding earth" doesn't explain subducting plates. Also, co= ntinental drift can be readily measured with modern precision surveying tools. >=20 > paul >=20 --===============5289550326877220366==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Sat Jan 25 23:31:28 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:31:23 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2639968341044890900==" --===============2639968341044890900== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Because of the simple fact that nobody ever updates the subject line, that can justr as easily be accomplished by filtering out the specific subject. On Sat, 25 Jan 2025, cz via cctalk wrote: > Whelp, it's time to mute cctalk for a few weeks. See you all in Feb! --===============2639968341044890900==-- From als@thangorodrim.ch Sun Jan 26 14:54:54 2025 From: Alexander Schreiber To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:41:50 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <0FD040DD-E196-4E59-AC24-F08476B7CAD3@donaldwhittemore.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5522438068508565509==" --===============5522438068508565509== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 12:12:17AM +0000, donald donaldwhittemore.com via cct= alk wrote: > I don=E2=80=99t trip and fall. I perform gravity checks. And isn't it reassuring to notice that nobody has turned off the gravity by accident? SCNR, Alex. --=20 "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison --===============5522438068508565509==-- From joe@barrera.org Sun Jan 26 19:08:19 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:08:13 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============9147511933308691982==" --===============9147511933308691982== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable UNSBUSCBRIE ^C^C^C^\^C:q!^Z^G^G On 1/25/2025 5:55 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > Can this stop already? > > Sellam > > On Fri, Jan 24, 2025, 9:33 PM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> On 23/01/2025 23:00, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> On Jan 23, 2025, at 5:37=E2=80=AFPM, Robert Feldman via cctalk >>> wrote: >>>> ... >>>> >>>> The answer to your question is one that even mainstream physicists >> (Lord Kelvin) have gotten wrong in the past. Seehttps:// >> www.americanscientist.org/article/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth >>> Absolutely. Lots of earlier physics is either very wrong or actually >> only an approximation. (Newtonian gravitation is an example of the latter= .) >>> This is why "settled science" is a crackpot notion. Galileo knew better >> and explained it very well. >> >> All science is the best working theory until proven otherwise. However, >> theories can and disproven, and that's the history of science. >> >> No proper scientist believes any theory is the final word. However, they >> build on theories that have yet to be proven wrong. >> >> The theory that the earth is flat is clearly disproven. Aristotle worked >> it it was basically spherical, yet crackpots believe it's flat to this >> day - often because their scripture said otherwise. >> >> >> --===============9147511933308691982==-- From joe@barrera.org Sun Jan 26 19:11:17 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:11:08 -0800 Message-ID: <23b5e7b2-4fa4-4614-831b-a6bf47eb6354@barrera.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6148206802425897555==" --===============6148206802425897555== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/25/2025 5:55 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > Can this stop already? Will the circle be unbroken? (Except that some people maintain it's a square) --===============6148206802425897555==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Sun Jan 26 19:40:07 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? not! Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 12:39:59 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <23b5e7b2-4fa4-4614-831b-a6bf47eb6354@barrera.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1327224887349063051==" --===============1327224887349063051== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-26 12:11 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote: > On 1/25/2025 5:55 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: >> Can this stop already? > > Will the circle be unbroken? > > (Except that some people maintain it's a square) I pick 3, the Reuleaux. Ben. PS: Less fiction with this topic, than with AI stuff. --===============1327224887349063051==-- From joe@barrera.org Sun Jan 26 20:30:25 2025 From: "Joseph S. Barrera III" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? not! Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 12:30:10 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7323068615080742057==" --===============7323068615080742057== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > Will the circle be unbroken? > > > > (Except that some people maintain it's a square) > I pick 3, the Reuleaux. > Ben. > Other shapes go boing, boing, boing, boing. Reuleaux triangle goes Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHzeGEHWMjo --===============7323068615080742057==-- From rickb@bensene.com Sun Jan 26 22:29:35 2025 From: Rick Bensene To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 22:29:27 +0000 Message-ID: <41ab9b28940d4de4a1e0b802ef4afba2@bensene.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6888535346343390041==" --===============6888535346343390041== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sellam Abraham wrote > Can this stop already? I am with Sellam on this. The content of these messages reflects virtually n= othing relating to classic computers except perhaps in very limited ways, suc= h as Eliza and classic expert systems. =20 The "scientific" commentary needs to end. Please. -Rick -- Rick Bensene, The Old Calculator Museum https://oldcalculatormuseum.com Beavercreek, Oregon USA --===============6888535346343390041==-- From lproven@gmail.com Mon Jan 27 12:35:42 2025 From: Liam Proven To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 12:35:26 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0659734037762437949==" --===============0659734037762437949== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Sun, 26 Jan 2025 at 14:54, Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote: > > And isn't it reassuring to notice that nobody has turned off the gravity > by accident? "Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.” ― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 227612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 --===============0659734037762437949==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Mon Jan 27 14:37:51 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 06:37:46 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6314439692534829111==" --===============6314439692534829111== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: >> One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then. On Sun, 26 Jan 2025 at 14:54, Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote: > And isn't it reassuring to notice that nobody has turned off the gravity > by accident? On Mon, 27 Jan 2025, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > "Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was > that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a > discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said > dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. > Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, > there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. > It is a door within a door, you see.=E2=80=9D > =E2=80=95 Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (at risk of offending those who are already annoyed by off-topic, . . .) Perhaps, instead of gravity being .5 G back then, it was merely only on=20 half the time? Perhaps being done at a high enough frequency to not be noticed, similarly=20 to SCR "phase control lamp dimming"? Whereas, the catflap may simply be product development/evolution from=20 gates that were sufficiently porous that cats could squeezze through? --===============6314439692534829111==-- From artgodwin@gmail.com Mon Jan 27 14:51:42 2025 From: Adrian Godwin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 14:51:26 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7509144056107645529==" --===============7509144056107645529== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 2:47=E2=80=AFPM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > On Tue, 21 Jan 2025, ben via cctalk wrote: > >> One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then. It may have been only 4.9 m/s^2 but it would still be 1.0 x the acceleration due to gravity, wouldn't it ? > --===============7509144056107645529==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Mon Jan 27 15:27:55 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 16:27:47 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1671249113842860252==" --===============1671249113842860252== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 06:37:46AM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: [...] > Perhaps, instead of gravity being .5 G back then, it was merely only on > half the time? Perhaps being done at a high enough frequency to not be > noticed, similarly to SCR "phase control lamp dimming"? Yoy may jest, but... That old-school dimmer is just doing pulse-width modulation. If you tweak it slightly and make the pulses equal-weight (e.g. by using delta-sigma modulation) and call the pulses "quanta" then you basically have one of the competing credible theories put forwards by proper theoretical physicists on how gravity works. The "high enough frequency" for quantum gravity is of course slightly greater than 50 or 60Hz. --===============1671249113842860252==-- From lists@skogtun.org Mon Jan 27 17:33:05 2025 From: Harald Arnesen To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 18:32:57 +0100 Message-ID: <584f3297-85f2-469e-807f-68400753af55@skogtun.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8820597067400991971==" --===============8820597067400991971== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Fred Cisin via cctalk [2025-01-27 15:37:46]: > Whereas, the catflap may simply be product development/evolution from > gates that were sufficiently porous that cats could squeezze through? Cats don't really need catflags: -- Hilsen Harald --===============8820597067400991971==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Mon Jan 27 19:11:44 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 11:11:39 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3362773991459973275==" --===============3362773991459973275== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >>>> One factor, gravity may have been .5 G back then. On Mon, 27 Jan 2025, Adrian Godwin wrote: > It may have been only 4.9 m/s^2 but it would still be 1.0 x the > acceleration due to gravity, wouldn't it ? And, THAT is why nobody noticed any change, the Gravitometer continued to show "1.0" --===============3362773991459973275==-- From sellam.ismail@gmail.com Mon Jan 27 20:08:39 2025 From: Sellam Abraham To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 12:07:32 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3923992357399844702==" --===============3923992357399844702== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Fuck this shit. I'm out. On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 10:33 AM Peter Corlett via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 06:37:46AM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > [...] > > Perhaps, instead of gravity being .5 G back then, it was merely only on > > half the time? Perhaps being done at a high enough frequency to not be > > noticed, similarly to SCR "phase control lamp dimming"? > > Yoy may jest, but... > > That old-school dimmer is just doing pulse-width modulation. If you tweak > it > slightly and make the pulses equal-weight (e.g. by using delta-sigma > modulation) and call the pulses "quanta" then you basically have one of the > competing credible theories put forwards by proper theoretical physicists > on > how gravity works. > > The "high enough frequency" for quantum gravity is of course slightly > greater than 50 or 60Hz. > > --===============3923992357399844702==-- From cclist@sydex.com Mon Jan 27 21:37:23 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 21:37:13 +0000 Message-ID: <5e9bacf1-793c-4cfb-aeda-b51b87464b03@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0729949649583623516==" --===============0729949649583623516== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Is there any way to temporarily suspend delivery from the list without unsubscribing? --===============0729949649583623516==-- From doc@vaxen.net Mon Jan 27 21:42:00 2025 From: Doc Shipley To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] How enough is Enough? Was Re: Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 15:41:53 -0600 Message-ID: <98507c20-aec3-4ab5-bbfe-b1374fea195d@vaxen.net> In-Reply-To: <5e9bacf1-793c-4cfb-aeda-b51b87464b03@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6377274248778204424==" --===============6377274248778204424== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/27/25 15:37, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > Is there any way to temporarily suspend delivery from the list without > unsubscribing? I have procmail sort CC into its own folder, and when it gets like this I just hit "Mark All Read". That way I can still cherry-pick what I want to read, mostly according to who sent it. IMO this is FAR from the most tedious or furthest off-topic thread we've endured. Doc --===============6377274248778204424==-- From cclist@sydex.com Mon Jan 27 23:02:59 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: How enough is Enough? Was Re: Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 23:02:47 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <98507c20-aec3-4ab5-bbfe-b1374fea195d@vaxen.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6891364205415585996==" --===============6891364205415585996== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/27/25 13:41, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote: > On 1/27/25 15:37, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >> Is there any way to temporarily suspend delivery from the list without >> unsubscribing? > > I have procmail sort CC into its own folder, and when it gets like this > I just hit "Mark All Read".  That way I can still cherry-pick what I > want to read, mostly according to who sent it. > I'll just set up a junk mail rule and toss any posts with this topic into the bit bucket. --===============6891364205415585996==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Tue Jan 28 06:50:06 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: AI? Really? Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 21:47:35 +0000 Message-ID: <98615189-b31f-4486-b334-994ef9656c78@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <5e9bacf1-793c-4cfb-aeda-b51b87464b03@sydex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5978209335613362454==" --===============5978209335613362454== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 27/01/2025 21:37, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > Is there any way to temporarily suspend delivery from the list without > unsubscribing? Most full email clients (e.g. Thunderbird, which I think you're using) have ignore thread and ignore branch (subthread) - right click and prune away. --===============5978209335613362454==-- From kevin_anderson_dbq@yahoo.com Tue Jan 28 21:58:57 2025 From: Kevin Anderson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: How enough is Enough? Was Re: Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:58:50 +0000 Message-ID: <915120279.5622237.1738101530769@mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <915120279.5622237.1738101530769.ref@mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5892071160595769159==" --===============5892071160595769159== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I prefer to use the Daily Digest mode. Then you can quickly glance at the to= pics and decide whether it is worth reading any particular messages. The pai= n comes when you may want to contribute something, as then you need to recons= truct enough of the message of concern in a new composition and reply that wa= y. Kevin Anderson Dubuque, Iowa --===============5892071160595769159==-- From jrr@flippers.com Tue Jan 28 22:40:21 2025 From: John Robertson To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: How enough is Enough? Was Re: Re: AI? Really? Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2025 14:40:10 -0800 Message-ID: <6b9771d8-8abf-419c-a326-f25dfa29e731@flippers.com> In-Reply-To: <915120279.5622237.1738101530769@mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6801589758268912785==" --===============6801589758268912785== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-28 1:58 p.m., Kevin Anderson via cctalk wrote: > I prefer to use the Daily Digest mode. Then you can quickly glance at the = topics and decide whether it is worth reading any particular messages. The p= ain comes when you may want to contribute something, as then you need to reco= nstruct enough of the message of concern in a new composition and reply that = way. > > Kevin Anderson > Dubuque, Iowa I keep my mail messages threaded on Thunderbird - each different subject=20 line forms its own thread so I can ignore the ones that are getting=20 carried away. And I use Thunderbird's Filters to assign each mail list,=20 friend, company I do business with - to a separate directory to review=20 at my leisure... Daily Digest perhaps if just using a phone for email? John :-#)# --===============6801589758268912785==-- From lewissa78@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 08:20:40 2025 From: Steve Lewis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 02:20:25 -0600 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1124350657050283809==" --===============1124350657050283809== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey all! So, I've found myself studying up on RS-232 this year for a few reasons. I'm mulling over doing an RS232 themed talk at June VCF. Not a super exciting topic, but I do think that RS232 has an interesting history: In the SAGE relationship, and as a follow up to (essentially) prior telegraph communication. From what I've read, "50 baud" was a kind of an initial goal to beat, since that's what the top telegraph operators could achieve (in small burst, probably not all day). And those operators did have to also deal with things like start/stop "bits". Maybe it wasn't an intentional goal, but just that it establishes why "50 baud" is generally the lowest we ever see mentioned (or, if you go slower than that, might as well use the older tech). Then 75/110/130 baud to have digital-systems interoperate with classic mechanical teletypes. Going any faster and those systems jam up or overheat? These weren't yet called "serial ports", so I'm not sure what a late 50s system would even call their equipment that facilitate this data exchange (since I'm not sure what kind of crystal-clock they even had yet). Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? hence, that's basically why the first digital to digital system data exchange settled on that baud rate, which was reliable on both 50 and 60Hz power systems, and meaningfully faster than prior 110 baud - so a good milestone to turn it into a product, which was the Bell Model 103?). I couldn't find much details (like a manual) on the Bell 101 equipment (anyone seen one or have a manual?). But I did find the Bell 103 manual - the photo of its innards is grainy, so I don't understand how the Bell 103 did 300 baud without a UART (and one of the pinout lines I see did run power, so not sure if that's-yet RS232 or not; I know RS232 was evolving right at that same time circa 1962). I've about the 1970ish TR1402 initial DIP UART, with anything prior being an experiment (like a full board concept by DEC). I know from 1962, both RS232 and ASCII standards still took maybe another decade to really gain traction as standards (at least, from what I've read). Getting the world to comply with any standard always takes a lot of effort (for a practical reason of everyone still having invested in the older tooling that was still functional). But it's interesting how those two standards are still in use (not in their original form, but least the 1967 revisions) - extending from Baudot.and late 1800s-tech on telegraphs. Does anyone know of any grocery stories using RS232 in the 1960s? I think barcode scanning was just introduced in that era. I can just imagine a smart grocery store owner, in the backroom programming their minicomputer for payroll and inventory management. In FORTRAN and without a CRT? Actually, in the 60s, I think included software would be negotiated with the provider of the computer (well, I'm not sure how that differed between minis and mainframes). I know early microcomputers used RS232 for keyboards (1974-1976 era). The IBM PC keyboard is essentially another form of serial. Well, sorry for the rambling - have other RS232 related questions, but first wanted to focus on the historical aspects (and see if I'm somewhat on the right track at least). -Steve --===============1124350657050283809==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 11:26:11 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:25:56 +0000 Message-ID: <6d8c9013-132c-42f0-a012-275098f63512@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1748503259744108068==" --===============1748503259744108068== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 31/01/2025 08:20, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > Hey all! So, I've found myself studying up on RS-232 this year for a few > reasons. > > I'm mulling over doing an RS232 themed talk at June VCF. Not a super > exciting topic, but I do think that RS232 has an interesting history: In > the SAGE relationship, and as a follow up to (essentially) prior telegraph > communication. > > >From what I've read, "50 baud" was a kind of an initial goal to beat, since > that's what the top telegraph operators could achieve (in small burst, > probably not all day). And those operators did have to also deal with > things like start/stop "bits". Maybe it wasn't an intentional goal, but > just that it establishes why "50 baud" is generally the lowest we ever see > mentioned (or, if you go slower than that, might as well use the older > tech). > > Then 75/110/130 baud to have digital-systems interoperate with classic > mechanical teletypes. Going any faster and those systems jam up or > overheat? These weren't yet called "serial ports", so I'm not sure what a > late 50s system would even call their equipment that facilitate this data > exchange (since I'm not sure what kind of crystal-clock they even had > yet). > > Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind > of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers > collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And > doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around > 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? hence, that's basically > why the first digital to digital system data exchange settled on that baud > rate, which was reliable on both 50 and 60Hz power systems, and > meaningfully faster than prior 110 baud - so a good milestone to turn it > into a product, which was the Bell Model 103?). > > I couldn't find much details (like a manual) on the Bell 101 equipment > (anyone seen one or have a manual?). But I did find the Bell 103 manual - > the photo of its innards is grainy, so I don't understand how the Bell 103 > did 300 baud without a UART (and one of the pinout lines I see did run > power, so not sure if that's-yet RS232 or not; I know RS232 was evolving > right at that same time circa 1962). I've about the 1970ish TR1402 > initial DIP UART, with anything prior being an experiment (like a full > board concept by DEC). > > I know from 1962, both RS232 and ASCII standards still took maybe another > decade to really gain traction as standards (at least, from what I've > read). Getting the world to comply with any standard always takes a lot of > effort (for a practical reason of everyone still having invested in the > older tooling that was still functional). But it's interesting how those > two standards are still in use (not in their original form, but least the > 1967 revisions) - extending from Baudot.and late 1800s-tech on telegraphs. > > Does anyone know of any grocery stories using RS232 in the 1960s? I think > barcode scanning was just introduced in that era. I can just imagine a > smart grocery store owner, in the backroom programming their minicomputer > for payroll and inventory management. In FORTRAN and without a CRT? > Actually, in the 60s, I think included software would be negotiated with > the provider of the computer (well, I'm not sure how that differed between > minis and mainframes). > > I know early microcomputers used RS232 for keyboards (1974-1976 era). The > IBM PC keyboard is essentially another form of serial. > > Well, sorry for the rambling - have other RS232 related questions, but > first wanted to focus on the historical aspects (and see if I'm somewhat on > the right track at least). > > -Steve Hi Steve, I don't find RS232 boring - it's what started my career :-) A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already know but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out: RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data format was used in current loop (often 20mA or 60mA). RS232 (AKA V.24) is only understandable when you realise it was connecting a terminal (or later computer) to a modem. It's very specific, yet like most technology has been subverted for other purposes. I've kept at last one full RS232 modem in my loft (it was government surplus, and I used to to run a BBS in 1980). Things got weird later, particularly with the Hayes Smartmodem, but modems were dumb devices. The lines went straight through. There were two oscillators (for FM) and the appropriate one was switched in by the TX line being high or low. Likewise the data separator looked for a high or low tone and flipped RX between -12V and +12V. These were all individual boards! Then there's the line control board, which operated RI when a high voltage was connected and DTR looped the phone line through. Most of this makes no sense in other applications! RS232, being voltage based, was only suitable for short distances compared to current loop. Basic electronics - voltages drop over distance due to resistance so after a while you don't know what you'll get at the other end. A current flowing through a loop being turned off and on has to be the same when measured at any point on the loop. The "break key", of course, simply broke the current loop while you held it down signalling whatever was required. The speed of transmission is interesting. A purely analogue modem (or current loop) can operate at any speed as long as both ends agree. The original limit was the mechanical terminal. 110 baud makes sense as a target as it's a nice round 10cps for ASCII - start bit, and seven data bits, one parity bit and two stop bits. Two stop bits were necessary for mechanical timing. If you do five bit Baudot with no parity you've got about 75 baud for 10cps. When the V.23 standard was being developed (asymmetric 1200/75) it was considered that 75bps was the fastest typing speed required which is another reason why 50 was the bear minimum and 75 a better target. My the time I was involved 75 was the "standard" for teleprinters so most people couldn't out-type them. UART? Crystal? Much later. Originally the timing came from a fixed speed motor in the terminal. Have a look at how a teleprinter works. It wasn't uncommon to adjust the speed of the motor at both ends to go as fast as it could without errors. And for amusement, someone wrote in the PCW saying they'd heard a salesperson at Radio Shack trying to convince a punter that RS is RS232 stood for Radio Shack. Hope the talk goes well. I assume you're a long way off - otherwise you could borrow some of the kit hereabouts (but it's Very Heavy). Regards, Frank. --===============1748503259744108068==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 11:49:52 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:49:45 +0000 Message-ID: <77a7fb5e-a458-4d82-a235-54d0fb931727@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1423359852612692031==" --===============1423359852612692031== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 31/01/2025 08:20, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > Hey all! So, I've found myself studying up on RS-232 this year for a few > reasons. > > I'm mulling over doing an RS232 themed talk at June VCF. Not a super > exciting topic, but I do think that RS232 has an interesting history: In > the SAGE relationship, and as a follow up to (essentially) prior telegraph > communication. Prior to computers, TTY circuits, or TELEX systems used current loop, typically 60ma. So usually 100volts with a current limiting resistor. This allows long lines, with the high voltage overcoming the inductance in the operating magnet... > From what I've read, "50 baud" was a kind of an initial goal to beat, since > that's what the top telegraph operators could achieve (in small burst, > probably not all day). And those operators did have to also deal with > things like start/stop "bits". Maybe it wasn't an intentional goal, but > just that it establishes why "50 baud" is generally the lowest we ever see > mentioned (or, if you go slower than that, might as well use the older > tech). In Europe I believe we use 45.5 baud. Certainly European hams used 45.5 baud. > Then 75/110/130 baud to have digital-systems interoperate with classic > mechanical teletypes. Going any faster and those systems jam up or > overheat? These weren't yet called "serial ports", so I'm not sure what a > late 50s system would even call their equipment that facilitate this data > exchange (since I'm not sure what kind of crystal-clock they even had > yet). Just expensive to make faster. The IBM2741 could do 300 baud but is I think is rather more complex that a tty. > Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind > of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers > collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And > doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around > 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? hence, that's basically > why the first digital to digital system data exchange settled on that baud > rate, which was reliable on both 50 and 60Hz power systems, and > meaningfully faster than prior 110 baud - so a good milestone to turn it > into a product, which was the Bell Model 103?). so the 2741 used a 103. > I couldn't find much details (like a manual) on the Bell 101 equipment > (anyone seen one or have a manual?). But I did find the Bell 103 manual - > the photo of its innards is grainy, so I don't understand how the Bell 103 > did 300 baud without a UART (and one of the pinout lines I see did run > power, so not sure if that's-yet RS232 or not; I know RS232 was evolving > right at that same time circa 1962). I've about the 1970ish TR1402 > initial DIP UART, with anything prior being an experiment (like a full > board concept by DEC). Why do you need a UART? It just takes serial data and spits it out..... > I know from 1962, both RS232 and ASCII standards still took maybe another > decade to really gain traction as standards (at least, from what I've > read). Getting the world to comply with any standard always takes a lot of > effort (for a practical reason of everyone still having invested in the > older tooling that was still functional). But it's interesting how those > two standards are still in use (not in their original form, but least the > 1967 revisions) - extending from Baudot.and late 1800s-tech on telegraphs. > > Does anyone know of any grocery stories using RS232 in the 1960s? I think > barcode scanning was just introduced in that era. I can just imagine a > smart grocery store owner, in the backroom programming their minicomputer > for payroll and inventory management. In FORTRAN and without a CRT? > Actually, in the 60s, I think included software would be negotiated with > the provider of the computer (well, I'm not sure how that differed between > minis and mainframes). > > I know early microcomputers used RS232 for keyboards (1974-1976 era). The > IBM PC keyboard is essentially another form of serial. Not always. Lots used parallel keyboards. > Well, sorry for the rambling - have other RS232 related questions, but > first wanted to focus on the historical aspects (and see if I'm somewhat on > the right track at least). > > -Steve Dave --===============1423359852612692031==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Fri Jan 31 11:56:19 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 04:56:06 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <6d8c9013-132c-42f0-a012-275098f63512@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5158880579944783245==" --===============5158880579944783245== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 2025-01-31 4:25 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already > know but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out: > > RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data > format was used in current loop (often 20mA or 60mA). > > RS232 (AKA V.24) is only understandable when you realise it was > connecting a terminal (or later computer) to a modem. It's very > specific, yet like most technology has been subverted for other > purposes. I've kept at last one full RS232 modem in my loft (it was > government surplus, and I used to to run a BBS in 1980). Things got > weird later, particularly with the Hayes Smartmodem, but modems were > dumb devices. The lines went straight through. There were two > oscillators (for FM) and the appropriate one was switched in by the TX > line being high or low. Likewise the data separator looked for a high or > low tone and flipped RX between -12V and +12V. These were all individual > boards! > I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? Now every thing seems to be just 3 wire TTL. Before RS232, how many wires where needed for the current loop and did they have standard connector? I can see 2 wire pairs, and ground. --===============5158880579944783245==-- From g4ajq1@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 12:19:15 2025 From: Nigel Johnson Ham To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 07:19:10 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0691159477126887546==" --===============0691159477126887546== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I can provide some details of implementation, but not the design phase, from the early 1970s era. I worked as an FE on a site with three Univac 418s ( 4 us cycle time, 18-bit bus) for Bell Canada from 1971-1975, which were connected to a store-and forward message switcher using Teletype machines with 85A1 controllers.  I believe that the system was installed in 1968. The system drove 64 teletype lines all over Canada, and certainly current-loop was the flavor-du-jour when it came to long distance telegraphy, I remember getting some nasty shocks from the 130VDC on the lines needed to drive the 60 mA current loops. I would say that the current loops themselves were the main factor that limited baud rate - each line had mercury-whetted relays as it left our floor to drive the line down eight floor to the telegraph operating centre. There were no crystals, clocking was done using RCL networks, and one of my routines was to check and adjust the baud rate using a scope on all lines.  There were separate tunable inductors on a card in each serial line controller for actual baud rate and duty cycle.  I know this full well because one Sunday morning, during scheduled down time, I went through and adjusted all these the wrong way - adjusting the baud rate coil for duty cycle and vice versa.  Needless to say, I found God that morning as I panic-strickenly  tried and found my mistake and managed to correct it just before my boss arrived after he was called in due to the delayed startup! AFAIK he never found out what I did, but the yards and yards of console paper with error messages proved I was not making it up!  The console of the 418 was a Teletype machine also, running at 110Baud. Each serial line was controlled by two rows of cards, mounted in a 6U panel 23 inches wide.  There were no UARTS!  There were 16 lines in each CTMC cabinet (Communications Terminal Mode(?) Controller) sometimes called SCS cabinets (Serial Communications Subsystems). Next to the CTMC cabinets, We had  a cabinet full of Bell 103 modems, used for dialling out on to the TWX (Teletypewriter Exchange) network .   I believe there were some modems for the new high-speed 300 baud, but I don't think they were used in production while I was there. Some 300-baud GE Terminettes appeared later which I heard of from old friends. Incidentally, TWX lines were regular telephone lines, and had a regular telephone number iun adidtion to their TWX number.  For example, in Toronto, the (610) 491-xxxx TWX number was translated to (416) 962-xxxx. I really impressed my work mates by dialling in to our maintenence room and waking them up with a lot of Bells during the night shift :-) AFAIK, there were only 3 sites with Univac 418s in Toronto. Ours at Bell, CN/CP Telecom had one doing the same job, and there was one at Police HQ running the traffic lights around the city. One time I had to get parts from the Univac FEs at the other telecom company and showing my Bell ID at the door was strictly guarded while the FE got the parts - such was the competitiveness between telecom companies at 110 Baud! Wonderful memories, thanks for triggering them! cheers, Nigel On 2025-01-31 03:20, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > Hey all! So, I've found myself studying up on RS-232 this year for a few > reasons. > > I'm mulling over doing an RS232 themed talk at June VCF. Not a super > exciting topic, but I do think that RS232 has an interesting history: In > the SAGE relationship, and as a follow up to (essentially) prior telegraph > communication. > > From what I've read, "50 baud" was a kind of an initial goal to beat, since > that's what the top telegraph operators could achieve (in small burst, > probably not all day). And those operators did have to also deal with > things like start/stop "bits". Maybe it wasn't an intentional goal, but > just that it establishes why "50 baud" is generally the lowest we ever see > mentioned (or, if you go slower than that, might as well use the older > tech). > > Then 75/110/130 baud to have digital-systems interoperate with classic > mechanical teletypes. Going any faster and those systems jam up or > overheat? These weren't yet called "serial ports", so I'm not sure what a > late 50s system would even call their equipment that facilitate this data > exchange (since I'm not sure what kind of crystal-clock they even had > yet). > > Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind > of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers > collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And > doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around > 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? hence, that's basically > why the first digital to digital system data exchange settled on that baud > rate, which was reliable on both 50 and 60Hz power systems, and > meaningfully faster than prior 110 baud - so a good milestone to turn it > into a product, which was the Bell Model 103?). > > I couldn't find much details (like a manual) on the Bell 101 equipment > (anyone seen one or have a manual?). But I did find the Bell 103 manual - > the photo of its innards is grainy, so I don't understand how the Bell 103 > did 300 baud without a UART (and one of the pinout lines I see did run > power, so not sure if that's-yet RS232 or not; I know RS232 was evolving > right at that same time circa 1962). I've about the 1970ish TR1402 > initial DIP UART, with anything prior being an experiment (like a full > board concept by DEC). > > I know from 1962, both RS232 and ASCII standards still took maybe another > decade to really gain traction as standards (at least, from what I've > read). Getting the world to comply with any standard always takes a lot of > effort (for a practical reason of everyone still having invested in the > older tooling that was still functional). But it's interesting how those > two standards are still in use (not in their original form, but least the > 1967 revisions) - extending from Baudot.and late 1800s-tech on telegraphs. > > Does anyone know of any grocery stories using RS232 in the 1960s? I think > barcode scanning was just introduced in that era. I can just imagine a > smart grocery store owner, in the backroom programming their minicomputer > for payroll and inventory management. In FORTRAN and without a CRT? > Actually, in the 60s, I think included software would be negotiated with > the provider of the computer (well, I'm not sure how that differed between > minis and mainframes). > > I know early microcomputers used RS232 for keyboards (1974-1976 era). The > IBM PC keyboard is essentially another form of serial. > > Well, sorry for the rambling - have other RS232 related questions, but > first wanted to focus on the historical aspects (and see if I'm somewhat on > the right track at least). > > -Steve -- Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591 --===============0691159477126887546==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 12:31:00 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:30:56 +0000 Message-ID: <64bc1ada-14fe-40b4-8646-ab2de0756a01@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3371782460797482711==" --===============3371782460797482711== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 31/01/2025 11:56, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-31 4:25 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > >> A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already >> know but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out: >> >> RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data >> format was used in current loop (often 20mA or 60mA). >> >> RS232 (AKA V.24) is only understandable when you realise it was >> connecting a terminal (or later computer) to a modem. It's very >> specific, yet like most technology has been subverted for other >> purposes. I've kept at last one full RS232 modem in my loft (it was >> government surplus, and I used to to run a BBS in 1980). Things got >> weird later, particularly with the Hayes Smartmodem, but modems were >> dumb devices. The lines went straight through. There were two >> oscillators (for FM) and the appropriate one was switched in by the >> TX line being high or low. Likewise the data separator looked for a >> high or low tone and flipped RX between -12V and +12V. These were all >> individual boards! >> > I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? > Now every thing seems to be just 3 wire TTL. > Before RS232, how many wires where needed for the current loop > and did they have standard connector? > I can see 2 wire pairs, and ground. Just noticed in the bit you quoted - "RS232 is not serial" - that could be taken the wrong way! The 25-pin D-sub was a recommendation, not a requirement (at least initially). There were 11 pins in the standard but sometimes other pins were used for a synchronous clock and vendor specific stuff. I really keep banging on about it, but RS232 was for controlling a modem and most of the pins are to do with that. RS232 has come to be used to mean (incorrectly) asynchronous serial in general, which ain't helpful. So current loop - it's the same idea as your (analogue) telephone line, and it can be used to transmit over long distances as the current is constant. You can push up the voltage at the start to overcome loop resistance until the current reaches the value you need. And for current loop you need two "pins" - loop in and loop out. It's just transferring a signal; it doesn't need extra pins for controlling a modem or whatever. You send a mark (1) by breaking the loop - the current stops flowing at all points 'cos that the laws of physics. If you think about it, you can have as many listening devices on a current loop as you like. Each will see the character bits in the form of the current coming off and on, and each will print the same. This was used with IBM DCCUs and suchlike to have identical printouts at different stations in a bank. It also means it's half duplex! Although you can have two current loops (four wires) for a full duplex application. IIRC RS-232 was only specified to work over 50 feet (15m) at maximum data rate 19,200. Whether it'd work at higher speeds over that length is questionable. Current loop circuits for teletypes would work over 500m, no problem at all. As long as the current source could have the voltage tweaked up high enough to overcome resistance on the loop. There did come a point where the voltage needed would be too high for safety at the near end, of course. Regards, Frank. --===============3371782460797482711==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Fri Jan 31 12:58:28 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:58:20 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3341685207057158148==" --===============3341685207057158148== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 04:56:06AM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: [...] > I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? > Now every thing seems to be just 3 wire TTL. > Before RS232, how many wires where needed for the current loop > and did they have standard connector? > I can see 2 wire pairs, and ground. The minimal three-wire variant carries *only* payload data, and does not have flow control or other out-of-band control signalling. Relatively complex devices can run a protocol which multiplexes everything to reduce wire count, but this complexity is not always warranted when running extra wires is cheap. There are a half-dozen out-of-band control signals. That makes nine wires, which conveniently fits in the now de facto DE-9 serial port standard. However, some devices are complex enough to want to out-of-band control *data* (e.g. to send a phone number to an autodialler) and so there is an optional secondary channel. This adds "only" five more wires, bringing the total to 14, and so theoretically one could use a DA-15. However, there were other obscure bits of signalling that some devices wanted, and the next standard size is DB-25. It's not always all-or-nothing either: for example, late-model dialup modems use "AT" commands to multiplex the control data stream and some control signals onto the payload data, but still use RTS/CTS for flow control. --===============3341685207057158148==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 13:09:09 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:09:06 +0000 Message-ID: <833813ab-e231-4ef3-b6ce-048a758e1fd7@fjl.co.uk> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2449936260041511685==" --===============2449936260041511685== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 31/01/2025 08:20, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > > > Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind > of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers > collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And > doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around > 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? Almost forgot - why 300 baud? The modem the RS232 was driving was modulating over standard telephone lines, which are obviously audio.The original ones used Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)- basically switching between high and low tones for zero and one. You need a certain amount of tone to be present for a bit to register. Given you want full duplex you need four frequencies (two each for high and low). These were 1080Hz, 980Hz, 1750Hz and 1650Hz - i.e. 100Hz apart for two pairs. The pairs needed a gap of around 600Hz between them so they wouldn't be confused after the telephone system had mangled the sound. In Europe the POTS bandwidth was around 3K, in the USA it was 2K (but not starting at zero) so these frequencies were sufficiently inside the available bandwidth to get to the other side. If you up the bps you come to a point where there won't be enough of the mark frequency to be detected - it won't have enough complete cycles. And that point was basically 300 baud. 980Hz divided by 300 gives about 3 complete cycles to indicate a mark, which is the minimum you need for easy detection by an analogue circuit. Incidentally, the US had Bell 103 at up to 300 baud, Europe and V.21 which was slightly better but used the same frequencies. When originally launched they were used at 110. You also get problems squirting tones through the telephone system it also uses tones for internal signalling and if you send harmonics you'll re-route the call. Bell 212 at 600/1200bps (aka V.22) used more complex QPSK modulation to encode more than one bit per cycle. That's the one that sounded like someone being sick down the phone line, as one of my colleagues put it. Eventually more complex standards got to a total data rate of 56Kbps. Given the telephone network by this time digitised at 64kbps, you'd be breaking the laws of physics if you got a higher rate than that. Getting 56K was pretty impressive in the circumstances. Regards, Frank. --===============2449936260041511685==-- From dave.g4ugm@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 13:38:00 2025 From: David Wade To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:37:52 +0000 Message-ID: <9d4f0036-c6ae-42c8-9d50-6253fc412faf@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8770821496425880045==" --===============8770821496425880045== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 31/01/2025 11:56, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-31 4:25 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > >> A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already >> know but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out: >> >> RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data >> format was used in current loop (often 20mA or 60mA). >> >> RS232 (AKA V.24) is only understandable when you realise it was >> connecting a terminal (or later computer) to a modem. It's very >> specific, yet like most technology has been subverted for other >> purposes. I've kept at last one full RS232 modem in my loft (it was >> government surplus, and I used to to run a BBS in 1980). Things got >> weird later, particularly with the Hayes Smartmodem, but modems were >> dumb devices. The lines went straight through. There were two >> oscillators (for FM) and the appropriate one was switched in by the >> TX line being high or low. Likewise the data separator looked for a >> high or low tone and flipped RX between -12V and +12V. These were all >> individual boards! >> > I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? Lets look at some of the other pins:- RTS/CTS   - Request to send/clear to send - Hardware flow control. DTR/DSR - Is comms up and running RI              - Ring Indicator - a call has arrived TCK/RCK - Used for timing on synchronous links so BI-SYNC/SDLC/HDLC LL/RL       - enable loop back... There is also a secondary channel which can be used for out-of-band control... > Now every thing seems to be just 3 wire TTL. Lots of thinks need hardware handshake... > Before RS232, how many wires where needed for the current loop So RS232 was designed for modems, so audio tones on a phone line. So:- Computer <= RS232=> Modem <= audio on phone line => Modem <=RS232=> Terminal. Confusingly both the computer and terminal are called "Data Terminal Equipment" (DTE) and the modems are data communications equipment or DCE, Current Loop was a physical connection, no modem, so just 2-wires for half-duplex, 4-wires for full duplex. For long lines you can use polar relays.. > and did they have standard connector? No > I can see 2 wire pairs, and ground. > > No ground. Some loops are single-ended, so on-off keying, but in the UK we used double ended, so reverse current direction. Dave --===============8770821496425880045==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 14:06:49 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:06:44 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <9d4f0036-c6ae-42c8-9d50-6253fc412faf@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3656547358223336311==" --===============3656547358223336311== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 31/01/2025 13:37, David Wade via cctalk wrote: > On 31/01/2025 11:56, ben via cctalk wrote: >> I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? > > Lets look at some of the other pins:- > > RTS/CTS   - Request to send/clear to send - Hardware flow control. > DTR/DSR - Is comms up and running > RI              - Ring Indicator - a call has arrived > TCK/RCK - Used for timing on synchronous links so BI-SYNC/SDLC/HDLC > LL/RL       - enable loop back... > > There is also a secondary channel which can be used for out-of-band > control... Actually, RTS and CTS weren't used for hardware flow control initially - think about it - what would they be controlling? The modem was an analogue circuit and there was no way it could pass flow control down the line. With smart modems there was buffering involved, and therefore the need for local flow control other than the XON/XOFF characters which you wanted to pass through to the remote end. RTS could be used to seize a half-duplex line (DCE didn't mean full duplex  modem exclusively), and CTS would be asserted once the line was seized so you could start typing, start the tape reader. > Confusingly both the computer and terminal are called "Data Terminal > Equipment" (DTE) and the modems are data communications equipment or DCE, Indeed much fun was had with that one. As I said it only makes sense for attaching something to a modem :-) Fortunately the main lines come in pairs (DTR/DSR, RTS/CTS, TxD/RxD) so you can make a mirror cable to connect a terminal to a computer port that's expecting a modem (aka a null modem cable). If the computer was expecting a terminal it'd be configured DCE port so the terminal could plug in using a straight through cable. But it's not orthogonal. DCD and RI are from DCE to DTE only. As a V100 didn't have a carrier signal and you didn't need to "ring" the computer it didn't really matter. Regards, Frank. --===============3656547358223336311==-- From pbirkel@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 14:16:33 2025 From: pbirkel@gmail.com To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Seeking a MC75325L Dual Memory Driver Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 04:03:42 -0500 Message-ID: <0bc401db73bf$06bed8c0$143c8a40$@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5170772201196597482==" --===============5170772201196597482== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Follow-up: Vendor now on eBay for Fairchild 75325DC in lots-of-five; they accepted my Best Offer. https://www.ebay.com/itm/333675901157 So now I can get back to making some progress on repairing the H222A in my MM11-DP :-}! From: pbirkel(a)gmail.com Sent: Friday, March 11, 2022 10:01 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Subject: Seeking a MC75325L Dual Memory Driver I have here in my hands a DEC H222A (16Kx18), part of a MM11-DP, that took a blow at sometime in the past. In consequence there are a number of small parts damaged (snapped diode, crushed axial electrolytic, chipped mica capacitor, cracked/broken SIP resister net) but those all appear to be relatively easy to replace. What's not so easy to replace is the MC75325L Dual Memory Driver (L = Ceramic) that was de-lidded in the process :-<. I am wondering whether anyone has one of these ICs in their spare parts drawer that I could acquire? I do see a MC75325P (plastic) on eBay at littlediode_components for ~20USD, plus a surprisingly modest shipping charge (Royal Mail International). UTSOURCE claims to have a supplier of the ceramic part "new", with a significantly higher shipping charge. Before I go with the ceramic part (IMO not the sort of packaging that gets . remarked) I thought that I would check here for alternative sources. Thank you, paul --===============5170772201196597482==-- From frank@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 14:16:41 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:08:43 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2418452317018158761==" --===============2418452317018158761== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 31/01/2025 08:20, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > > > Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind > of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers > collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And > doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around > 3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? Almost forgot - why 300 baud? The modem the RS232 was driving was modulating over standard telephone lines, which are obviously audio.The original ones used Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)- basically switching between high and low tones for zero and one. You need a certain amount of tone to be present for a bit to register. Given you want full duplex you need four frequencies (two each for high and low). These were 1080Hz, 980Hz, 1750Hz and 1650Hz - i.e. 100Hz apart for two pairs. The pairs needed a gap of around 600Hz between them so they wouldn't be confused after the telephone system had mangled the sound. In Europe the POTS bandwidth was around 3K, in the USA it was 2K (but not starting at zero) so these frequencies were sufficiently inside the available bandwidth to get to the other side. If you up the bps you come to a point where there won't be enough of the mark frequency to be detected - it won't have enough complete cycles. And that point was basically 300 baud. 980Hz divided by 300 gives about 3 complete cycles to indicate a mark, which is the minimum you need for easy detection by an analogue circuit. Incidentally, the US had Bell 103 at up to 300 baud, Europe and V.21 which was slightly better but used the same frequencies. When originally launched they were used at 110. You also get problems squirting tones through the telephone system it also uses tones for internal signalling and if you send harmonics you'll re-route the call. Bell 212 at 600/1200bps (aka V.22) used more complex QPSK modulation to encode more than one bit per cycle. That's the one that sounded like someone being sick down the phone line, as one of my colleagues put it. Eventually more complex standards got to a total data rate of 56Kbps. Given the telephone network by this time digitised at 64kbps, you'd be breaking the laws of physics if you got a higher rate than that. Getting 56K was pretty impressive in the circumstances. Regards, Frank. --===============2418452317018158761==-- From bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca Fri Jan 31 15:23:24 2025 From: ben To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 08:23:18 -0700 Message-ID: <5db44607-9aa1-4996-888b-d798891381bc@jetnet.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5776975892967955821==" --===============5776975892967955821== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > RTS could be used to seize a half-duplex line (DCE didn't mean full > duplex  modem exclusively), and CTS would be asserted once the line was > seized so you could start typing, start the tape reader. I wanted to get a REAL computer for a long time, since the 70's and now I have nice 18 bit home-brew design, using 2 1508 CPLD's and 6 74LS219's for the ALU and a 1508 for the control logic. Back then you could get TTY's and other HARD copy output devices and paper tape I/O. Now that have my 1977 computer (It uses 68A50 ACIA's) is there low cost paper tape punch/reader emulator for just a plain 1200 baud serial port? All I have working now is just a serial boot strap and some ram. A TTY emulator would be handy too, for me and all new PDP-8/11/10 emulators coming out. >> Confusingly both the computer and terminal are called "Data Terminal >> Equipment" (DTE) and the modems are data communications equipment or DCE, > > Indeed much fun was had with that one. As I said it only makes sense for > attaching something to a modem :-) > So when did serial printers show up? > Regards, Frank. Once I get better mother board PCB working, I then can work on some kind of disk io, and timer interrupt. No MMU is planned. Ben. --===============5776975892967955821==-- From abuse@cabal.org.uk Fri Jan 31 16:19:13 2025 From: Peter Corlett To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:19:05 +0100 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5db44607-9aa1-4996-888b-d798891381bc@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0196349293197715573==" --===============0196349293197715573== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 08:23:18AM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: [...] > So when did serial printers show up? 1887 if we are to believe Wikipedia's article on teleprinters, although their citation doesn't quite support that date. It's not going to be much later though. The early teleprinters didn't speak RS-232, but that doesn't mean they're not serial printers. A fun factoid is that the modem was invented before the telephone and was intended for the simultaneous transmission of multiple messages down a telegraph line through having a different musical note for each. It wasn't much of a leap of imagination to swap the Morse key for a microphone, and that signalled the end of the electric telegraph. --===============0196349293197715573==-- From classiccmp@fjl.co.uk Fri Jan 31 16:20:01 2025 From: Frank Leonhardt To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 16:19:55 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5db44607-9aa1-4996-888b-d798891381bc@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4923623289808338411==" --===============4923623289808338411== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 31/01/2025 15:23, ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > > I wanted to get a REAL computer for a long time, since the 70's and > now I have > nice 18 bit home-brew design, using 2 1508 CPLD's and 6 74LS219's for > the ALU and a 1508 for the control logic. > > Back then you could get TTY's and other HARD copy output devices > and paper tape I/O. > > Now that have my 1977 computer (It uses 68A50 ACIA's) is there low > cost paper tape punch/reader emulator for just a plain 1200 baud > serial port? All I have working now is just a serial boot strap and > some ram. I've still got a few actual teletypes. Be careful what you wish for. I was going to suggest searching eBay for an ASR33 but I checked and there aren't any. My 1970's computer had a switch on the one ACIA between a Teletype and a a CUTS cassette interface. The latter stored at 30cps. An advantage to the CUTS is that you can't get paper tape easily AFAK (This list is probably the place to ask). I'm not sure how an emulator would look TBH. It wouldn't have the charm of the original, but I do see your point. What were you thinking? Hard copy or VDU? I see you can still buy matrix printers which, with the appropriate driver, could be persuaded to do one character a time. I see on Amazon they now cost a lot more than laser printers! And store "paper tape" as files on a USB stick? Or you could use a cassette, although they're getting hard to find. The FSK circuitry is pretty straightforward (copy it from an OSI 600 board https://osiweb.org/manuals/600revB.pdf Sheet 7). And I don't know where you'd find such an awful keyboard - although you could make one yourself out of 53 key switches. The final touch would be a powerful subwoofer to make the whole house shake when you pressed a key. I'd be up for working on one. If you wanted a purely software emulation then any glass TTY program that was able to record and play back from disk would do the job. I also checked and you can still get electric typewriters. Brother does one with a daisywheel; Silver Reed has a much cheaper dot matrix. I don't know, but I suspect some of them still have computer interfaces. > So when did serial printers show up? For home computers, from memory.... The big one was the Epson FX-80. They tended to have parallel interfaces - cheaper than serial! You could buy a serial board to fit in to them (I've got one knocking around). A Teletype is, of course, a serial printer. And it was all I could afford. £50 at the time, whereas a matrix printer was £200. A few years later people were chucking out teletypes, so I picked up a few more for spares. Regards, Frank. --===============4923623289808338411==-- From cclist@sydex.com Fri Jan 31 17:43:28 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:43:18 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4399511554314578493==" --===============4399511554314578493== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Long before flash drives were a reality,there were Philips cassette-tape based paper tape emulators. I owned a dual-drive one from Techtran. It had the advantage of being able to do high-speed searches and make fast tape-to-tape copies. The commercial embroidery world, like the CNC world was largely paper-tape based. Eventually, there were not only tape-based emulators, but also floppy disk-based ones. Paper tape eventually succumbs to aging and mechanical stress, is difficult to edit and is very low density. One can see the advantage of using later media to accomplish the same end. As far as RS232 and history, I submit that current-loop has more of a place in telegraphy, as it's far more suited to long distances and is less susceptible to signal noise. Many early 1970s serial interfaces offered the choice between 20ma or 60ma current loop or RS232C. --Chuck --===============4399511554314578493==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 31 18:14:17 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:14:01 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <9d4f0036-c6ae-42c8-9d50-6253fc412faf@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8365219950068572823==" --===============8365219950068572823== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 31, 2025, at 8:37=E2=80=AFAM, David Wade via cctalk wrote: >=20 >=20 >=20 > On 31/01/2025 11:56, ben via cctalk wrote: >> On 2025-01-31 4:25 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >>=20 >>> A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already know= but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out: >>>=20 >>> RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data for= mat was used in current loop (often 20mA or 60mA). >>>=20 >>> RS232 (AKA V.24) is only understandable when you realise it was connectin= g a terminal (or later computer) to a modem. It's very specific, yet like mos= t technology has been subverted for other purposes. I've kept at last one ful= l RS232 modem in my loft (it was government surplus, and I used to to run a B= BS in 1980). Things got weird later, particularly with the Hayes Smartmodem, = but modems were dumb devices. The lines went straight through. There were two= oscillators (for FM) and the appropriate one was switched in by the TX line = being high or low. Likewise the data separator looked for a high or low tone = and flipped RX between -12V and +12V. These were all individual boards! Low speed modems are just analog devices that can pass any signal up to whate= ver the design speed limit is. For example, a 103 modem is good up to 300 bp= s, but will happily carry anything less. A 202 modem (see below) is designed= for 1200 but also will work at lower speeds, and has been used at 1260 bps. Faster modems use signalling schemes that involve clocked signal elements. Q= PSK (for the 212 modem) is likely one of these, and for the speeds above that= it is definitely true. So there the modem isn't just an on/off signaling pa= ss-through device. >>>=20 >> I always wondered why one needed a 25 pin connector? >=20 > Lets look at some of the other pins:- >=20 > RTS/CTS - Request to send/clear to send - Hardware flow control. More accurately, for half duplex line control, as others have pointed out. O= n a half duplex circuit the device (DTE) would assert RTS when it wanted to s= end, and when the modem had decided to turn the line in that direction it wou= ld signal CTS to indicate the device can send now. If the device was done, i= t would drop RTS; alternatively (I suppose) the modem could drop CTS on its o= wn initiative to rescind permission to use the line. I once worked on devices that used asynchronous communication, half duplex, m= ultipoint (Harris 2200 display advertising editing terminals, used by newspap= er). That was done with DL-11/E devices, and the modem signaling I just desc= ribed did the direction control. It even worked most of the time, though I'm= quite happy to have dealt with those contraptions only once. > DTR/DSR - Is comms up and running > RI - Ring Indicator - a call has arrived > TCK/RCK - Used for timing on synchronous links so BI-SYNC/SDLC/HDLC > LL/RL - enable loop back... >=20 > There is also a secondary channel which can be used for out-of-band control= ... Or for split-speed communication. Yes, by the time you have all that you're = close to using up 25 pins. Another consideration is that equipment at the ti= me was much larger than nowadays so the connector used was actually quite sma= ll for the time. Some other modems used the V.35 standard (for high speeds) = with a connector whose designation I don't remember that's a whole lot bigger= than the DB25. An example of that is the not so well known Bell 202 modem. That uses FSK si= gnaling like the 103 modem but at higher speed, with a shift of (I think) 100= 0 Hz. Between that and the data rate it ties up the entire voice channel one= way, so if you wanted to use it in full duplex mode you'd need four wires, r= ather than the standard Telco 2 wire circuit. Alternatively you could use tw= o wires half duplex. An example of the latter is the original Ham radio "pac= ket radio" system, which used 202 signaling carrying HDLC frames. A standard= 202 modem would do that just fine since it's a purely analog device, but you= need a separate clock recovery circuit. Another place where 202 signaling is found is in the original PLATO IV termin= al commmications system. That is 1200 bps (or more precisely 1260 which work= s too) outbound to the terminal, and something slow (126 bps) the other way. = When carried over a modem that would use the "1200" baud regular channel of = the 202 outbound, and the secondary channel inbound. There's enough bandwidt= h in the phone line to tuck away an FSK band slice for that slow speed in wha= t's left over from the 1200 bps channel the other way. >> Now every thing seems to be just 3 wire TTL. >=20 > Lots of thinks need hardware handshake... >=20 >> Before RS232, how many wires where needed for the current loop >=20 > So RS232 was designed for modems, so audio tones on a phone line. So:- >=20 > Computer <=3D RS232=3D> Modem <=3D audio on phone line =3D> Modem <=3DRS232= =3D> Terminal. >=20 > Confusingly both the computer and terminal are called "Data Terminal Equipm= ent" (DTE) and the modems are data communications equipment or DCE, >=20 > Current Loop was a physical connection, no modem, so just 2-wires for half-= duplex, 4-wires for full duplex. For long lines you can use polar relays.. I think polar relays go all the way back to telegraph line practice, perhaps = because they improve noise immunity. The current loop serial devices I have = used are all on/off keying, though. Those were ASCII (Teletype model 33 and = some early 300 bps terminals) which use 20 mA loops. Earlier Baudot devices = like the Model 19 use 60 mA loops, at data rates around 45 bps with 5-bit cod= ing. I assume newspaper wire service lines (6 bit code) were current loop to= o but I don't think I ever saw the details. FWIW, another place where you find current loop systems is in industrial cont= rol and sensing systems. Those tend to be analog, described as "4-20 mA loop= " -- for example, a temperature sensor can do this, encoding whatever its tem= perature range is into a current between 4 and 20 mA. The idea behind current loops is that mechanical teleprinters are severely in= ductive loads -- basically you're driving an electromagnet. To get decent wa= veforms the system impedance should be mostly resistive (i.e., moderate phase= shift). So you construct the circuit with a large series resistor and a sup= ply voltage chosen to get the current you want. And yes, the other advantage is that you can go farther by increasing the dri= ve voltage, if the distance is large enough that wire resistance, or circuit = inductance, is significant. I remember our college timesharing system using = current loop terminal runs halfway across campus, well over 1000 feet. One o= f those was for a Beehive editing terminal which was certainly 300 bps and ma= ybe faster. paul --===============8365219950068572823==-- From cliendo@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 18:19:23 2025 From: Christian Liendo To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Microsoft 50 years Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:19:07 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1682024764614252701==" --===============1682024764614252701== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was debating sending this, but Microsoft is part of computing history and fifty years is a milestone. https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-50/ --===============1682024764614252701==-- From lars@nocrew.org Fri Jan 31 18:23:41 2025 From: Lars Brinkhoff To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 18:23:35 +0000 Message-ID: <7wfrkyzvtk.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> In-Reply-To: <5db44607-9aa1-4996-888b-d798891381bc@jetnet.ab.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5952903188684835370==" --===============5952903188684835370== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ben wrote: > A TTY emulator would be handy too, for me and all new PDP-8/11/10 > emulators coming out. There is one already. Oscar Vermeulen included it in the PiPD-10 software. It's cute... for about two minutes. --===============5952903188684835370==-- From lewissa78@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 18:45:15 2025 From: Steve Lewis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:44:58 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6368501112787708807==" --===============6368501112787708807== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Neat stuff. So what got me started (this year) dealing with RS232 is trying to figure out a means for doing file-stream data exchange with the Commander X16 (which is using a dual 16550 modern-make UART and ~14MHz clock). It doesn't have a native terminal software yet with something like YModem implemented. Which I've found YModem faster over "wireless serial connection" (serial adapted to WiFi, so varied data rates over time) and ZModem being faster over wired (null modem) connections (apparently since ZModem has particular ACK-timeout requirements, which favors a reliable data exchange rate). So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of what classic RS232 could do on these systems. And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) 2) Why is it so slow even on modern systems? The answer to the first question is the "magic" of those modern-make USB-serial dongles. I don't fully understand if they're running at 3MHz (since in thier manual I see references to higher clock rates, like 48MHz). But maybe also answer like this: going back to the early teletypes days (pre-Bell 101 era), two systems can talk at "whatever-speed" just as long as they both agree on and achieve that speed (a limit that also involves the cabling between them). In this case, as long as the UARTs can be throttled to within-1%-ish clock speed of each other. But it's still the same RS232 principles even at these super-speeds? (specialized chips, doing the 2-of-3 hits finding start bits, etc, with higher clocks like 12, 15, 20MHz, I see SIIG offering UARTS with 25 and 30MHz clocks). It seems to me that an S-100 system with a ~5MHz serial clock, or a later ISA card with a 7.3727 clock with a 16550, those could be clock divided to support over 115200. But it just ended up that the 1.8432MHz configuration was the most mass-produced and available, because that is what was sufficient for phone lines of the 1980s? (i.e. what the IBM PC did) So I tested a bunch of (relatively modern, post-UART) vintage systems: 4.77MHz PC w/ 1.8MHz/8250, 12MHz 286 (with Unknown), 386/486, and a Pentium all null-modem connected to a modern-make PC - just to verify how fast they should be pushed (download) a data stream. None of them (not even the Pentium) could be clocked past 115.2K on this serial line. (I know the host system isn't dictating the speed, but whatever integrated UART is available-- then the software that controls that UART to clock divide to "commonly defined baud rates"). - As IBM's own PC manual states, it can't be pushed past 9600 reliably (you can, but it starts dropping characters). So despite a UART that can technically achieve 115200, that system can't handle it (settling on a YModem data exchange rate of about 0.9 KBps). - The 286 mustered about 2.3 KBps (that is, the sustained download speed using a very good implemented-in-assembler terminal with YModem, receiving data from a modern make 3GHz PC USB/serial adapter). This was using a 57600 baud connection, so I'm not sure why the 286 couldn't do a little better on throughput. I assume a limitation of its raw speed (12MHz) to compute CRC checks, and then the combined memory/hard drive speed to write received data to disk. Again, the UART could handle up to 115200, but the system could not. - The 486 handled a nice 11.3KBps download at 115200 (null modem, same modern-make laptop and terminal program as above). So the combined performance of its memory, write to disk, and raw 50MHz CPU, it could "out-perform" its UART (or at least match it). - The Pentium was slightly slower, 11.1KBps - but probably because it was also running a GUI (WinXP) at the same time or maybe just due to having a slightly different UART clock (being a laptop, I don't know what specific clock it had. Still, you'd think an IBM ThinkPad would have a fancy ~7MHz clock with 16550 and be able to do better than 115.2K, but nope (at least not with the IBM drivers I could get). Then again, by late 1990s there were many other better solutions for transfering files between systems and "serial ports" on consumer laptops just had to be good enough for the modems/phone lines of their day) - Modern make laptop to modern make (two fancy i7's talking over USB/serial adapters) achieved 45KBps (bytes per second) across a 460K baud connection (ZOC, ZModem). And yes, it's a ridiculous way to transfer a file between two nearby systems these days. It's neat to see RS232 pushed that far, but on the other hand, that's really slow for a modern PC. So that leads to the next question, why was only up to 460K stable? At 921K everything was misinterpreted. It could be the cables (and I do have shorter ones coming, and will test). Those FTDI USB devices (or MAX232) do have a published programming manual, so we could try various clock rates that might net somewhere in between 460K and 921K baud. But thinking through it a bit: USB is 4 wires (2-data), and that device is "emulating" a flow-controlled RS232 connection. So then what protocol is USB using to get its super speeds? Something-NOT-RS232. We can read all about that - but I don't want to get too sidetracked on USB-isms. But it opens a question, could we exchange data faster across traditional "serial port" if we used something different than YModem? (it's just that most vintage systems have an existing KERMIT, X/YModem implementation, and there are other more practical ways to exchange files across modern systems, no one has really looked into improved protocols across RS232? like... dual channel across the RI line? ha!) But whatever that faster protocol is, those vintage systems might not have the MHz horsepower (or memory capacity or speed) to pull it off? And, on the question of "why UART?" Well - hmm, history shows computers exchanged data across long distances prior to the 1970 consumer UART (TR1402A). Flow control makes that connection fairly reliable, and you see those control flow lines listed on the Bell 103 (I tend to think the Bell 101 was kind of maybe a prototype of proof of concept, so far I'm not seeing anything that used it; SAGE identified a specific need, so that Bell 101 maybe motivated thought on what such a thing could be used for). I've also read CRC was also becoming a thing in early 1960s (which helped verify blocks of data, prior to that error correction was just the parity bit). I have to drive for awhile today, I'll ponder on the essence of when/why UARTs became an essential part of these systems. Does a UART become important when two systems are vastly mixed performance? But for other fodder, I'm reading over the async card for the IBM 5110. Page 12 of this IBM 5110 doc has a block diagram of IBMs version of "asynchronous card" - SY31-0552-3_IBM_5110_System_Logic_Manual_197902.pdf And its manual (from 1978) has some interesting paragraphs (plus how that system was apparently obsessed with showing text-mode graphs of the error rates; line quality is apparently still very rough by late 1970's): SY31-0557-0_5110asyncComm_Jan1978.pdf -SteveL On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 10:20=E2=80=AFAM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On 31/01/2025 15:23, ben via cctalk wrote: > > On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > > > > I wanted to get a REAL computer for a long time, since the 70's and > > now I have > > nice 18 bit home-brew design, using 2 1508 CPLD's and 6 74LS219's for > > the ALU and a 1508 for the control logic. > > > > Back then you could get TTY's and other HARD copy output devices > > and paper tape I/O. > > > > Now that have my 1977 computer (It uses 68A50 ACIA's) is there low > > cost paper tape punch/reader emulator for just a plain 1200 baud > > serial port? All I have working now is just a serial boot strap and > > some ram. > > I've still got a few actual teletypes. Be careful what you wish for. I > was going to suggest searching eBay for an ASR33 but I checked and there > aren't any. > > My 1970's computer had a switch on the one ACIA between a Teletype and a > a CUTS cassette interface. The latter stored at 30cps. An advantage to > the CUTS is that you can't get paper tape easily AFAK (This list is > probably the place to ask). > > I'm not sure how an emulator would look TBH. It wouldn't have the charm > of the original, but I do see your point. What were you thinking? Hard > copy or VDU? I see you can still buy matrix printers which, with the > appropriate driver, could be persuaded to do one character a time. I see > on Amazon they now cost a lot more than laser printers! > > And store "paper tape" as files on a USB stick? Or you could use a > cassette, although they're getting hard to find. The FSK circuitry is > pretty straightforward (copy it from an OSI 600 board > https://osiweb.org/manuals/600revB.pdf Sheet 7). > > And I don't know where you'd find such an awful keyboard - although you > could make one yourself out of 53 key switches. The final touch would be > a powerful subwoofer to make the whole house shake when you pressed a key. > > I'd be up for working on one. > > If you wanted a purely software emulation then any glass TTY program > that was able to record and play back from disk would do the job. > > I also checked and you can still get electric typewriters. Brother does > one with a daisywheel; Silver Reed has a much cheaper dot matrix. I > don't know, but I suspect some of them still have computer interfaces. > > > So when did serial printers show up? > > For home computers, from memory.... > > The big one was the Epson FX-80. They tended to have parallel interfaces > - cheaper than serial! You could buy a serial board to fit in to them > (I've got one knocking around). > > A Teletype is, of course, a serial printer. And it was all I could > afford. =C2=A350 at the time, whereas a matrix printer was =C2=A3200. > > A few years later people were chucking out teletypes, so I picked up a > few more for spares. > > > Regards, Frank. > > > --===============6368501112787708807==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 31 18:55:29 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:55:12 -0500 Message-ID: <20863246-22F3-4DE5-A7A4-43FB802B7DC0@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3755258213342810213==" --===============3755258213342810213== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 31, 2025, at 1:44=E2=80=AFPM, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > Neat stuff. So what got me started (this year) dealing with RS232 is > trying to figure out a means for doing file-stream data exchange with the > Commander X16 (which is using a dual 16550 modern-make UART and ~14MHz > clock). It doesn't have a native terminal software yet with something like > YModem implemented. Which I've found YModem faster over "wireless serial > connection" (serial adapted to WiFi, so varied data rates over time) and > ZModem being faster over wired (null modem) connections (apparently since > ZModem has particular ACK-timeout requirements, which favors a reliable > data exchange rate). >=20 > So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with > other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern > PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there > are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of > what classic RS232 could do on these systems. >=20 > And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled > 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: > 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) Sort of no, because RS232 isn't specified for data rates that high. I forgot= what the formal limit is, though actual implementations work well above the = specified speed and distance limits. In my DDCMP work I've done RS232 signal= ing at several hundred kbps. But mostly "not applicable". RS232 isn't a UART standard, or a standard for data at particular speeds. In= stead, it is an electrical signaling standard. The main thing about RS232 is= that it specifies a set of interface signals, and electrical parameters for = the signals. For example: drivers generate bipolar signals within some volta= ge range, receivers handle bipolar signals within another (larger) voltage ra= nge, with overvoltage tolerance, etc. Sometimes people speak of RS232 in connection with TTL or other unipolar sign= aling voltages. That can't be correct because RS232 specifically excludes 0 = volts as a valid signal level. paul --===============3755258213342810213==-- From lewissa78@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 18:55:40 2025 From: Steve Lewis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:55:24 -0600 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7273402935451993620==" --===============7273402935451993620== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable re: on UARTS.. Didn't it basically standardize the process of that task of converting a byte to bits and vice versa, in a fashion specified by RS232? And do so at the above-300-baud rates, since that task was too stressful for 1MHz processors to pull off on its own (in addition to whatever else it was doing, like flashing a cursor on a CRT?)? And the buffer just gave grace time for if one of the systems got overly busy? (like when scrolling said CRT)? Might a UART be an early example of an ASIC? On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 12:44=E2=80=AFPM Steve Lewis = wrote: > Neat stuff. So what got me started (this year) dealing with RS232 is > trying to figure out a means for doing file-stream data exchange with the > Commander X16 (which is using a dual 16550 modern-make UART and ~14MHz > clock). It doesn't have a native terminal software yet with something like > YModem implemented. Which I've found YModem faster over "wireless serial > connection" (serial adapted to WiFi, so varied data rates over time) and > ZModem being faster over wired (null modem) connections (apparently since > ZModem has particular ACK-timeout requirements, which favors a reliable > data exchange rate). > > So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with > other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern > PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there > are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of > what classic RS232 could do on these systems. > > And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled > 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: > 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) > 2) Why is it so slow even on modern systems? > > The answer to the first question is the "magic" of those modern-make > USB-serial dongles. I don't fully understand if they're running at 3MHz > (since in thier manual I see references to higher clock rates, like > 48MHz). But maybe also answer like this: going back to the early teletypes > days (pre-Bell 101 era), two systems can talk at "whatever-speed" just as > long as they both agree on and achieve that speed (a limit that also > involves the cabling between them). > > In this case, as long as the UARTs can be throttled to within-1%-ish clock > speed of each other. But it's still the same RS232 principles even at > these super-speeds? (specialized chips, doing the 2-of-3 hits finding start > bits, etc, with higher clocks like 12, 15, 20MHz, I see SIIG offering UARTS > with 25 and 30MHz clocks). It seems to me that an S-100 system with a > ~5MHz serial clock, or a later ISA card with a 7.3727 clock with a 16550, > those could be clock divided to support over 115200. But it just ended up > that the 1.8432MHz configuration was the most mass-produced and available, > because that is what was sufficient for phone lines of the 1980s? (i.e. > what the IBM PC did) > > > So I tested a bunch of (relatively modern, post-UART) vintage systems: > 4.77MHz PC w/ 1.8MHz/8250, 12MHz 286 (with Unknown), 386/486, and a Pentium > all null-modem connected to a modern-make PC - just to verify how fast they > should be pushed (download) a data stream. None of them (not even the > Pentium) could be clocked past 115.2K on this serial line. (I know the > host system isn't dictating the speed, but whatever integrated UART is > available-- then the software that controls that UART to clock divide to > "commonly defined baud rates"). > > - As IBM's own PC manual states, it can't be pushed past 9600 reliably > (you can, but it starts dropping characters). So despite a UART that can > technically achieve 115200, that system can't handle it (settling on a > YModem data exchange rate of about 0.9 KBps). > > - The 286 mustered about 2.3 KBps (that is, the sustained download speed > using a very good implemented-in-assembler terminal with YModem, receiving > data from a modern make 3GHz PC USB/serial adapter). This was using a > 57600 baud connection, so I'm not sure why the 286 couldn't do a little > better on throughput. I assume a limitation of its raw speed (12MHz) to > compute CRC checks, and then the combined memory/hard drive speed to write > received data to disk. Again, the UART could handle up to 115200, but the > system could not. > > - The 486 handled a nice 11.3KBps download at 115200 (null modem, same > modern-make laptop and terminal program as above). So the combined > performance of its memory, write to disk, and raw 50MHz CPU, it could > "out-perform" its UART (or at least match it). > > - The Pentium was slightly slower, 11.1KBps - but probably because it was > also running a GUI (WinXP) at the same time or maybe just due to having a > slightly different UART clock (being a laptop, I don't know what specific > clock it had. Still, you'd think an IBM ThinkPad would have a fancy ~7MHz > clock with 16550 and be able to do better than 115.2K, but nope (at least > not with the IBM drivers I could get). Then again, by late 1990s there > were many other better solutions for transfering files between systems and > "serial ports" on consumer laptops just had to be good enough for the > modems/phone lines of their day) > > - Modern make laptop to modern make (two fancy i7's talking over > USB/serial adapters) achieved 45KBps (bytes per second) across a 460K baud > connection (ZOC, ZModem). And yes, it's a ridiculous way to transfer a > file between two nearby systems these days. It's neat to see RS232 pushed > that far, but on the other hand, that's really slow for a modern PC. > > > So that leads to the next question, why was only up to 460K stable? At > 921K everything was misinterpreted. It could be the cables (and I do have > shorter ones coming, and will test). Those FTDI USB devices (or MAX232) do > have a published programming manual, so we could try various clock rates > that might net somewhere in between 460K and 921K baud. But thinking > through it a bit: USB is 4 wires (2-data), and that device is "emulating" > a flow-controlled RS232 connection. So then what protocol is USB using to > get its super speeds? Something-NOT-RS232. We can read all about that - > but I don't want to get too sidetracked on USB-isms. But it opens a > question, could we exchange data faster across traditional "serial port" if > we used something different than YModem? (it's just that most vintage > systems have an existing KERMIT, X/YModem implementation, and there are > other more practical ways to exchange files across modern systems, no one > has really looked into improved protocols across RS232? like... dual > channel across the RI line? ha!) But whatever that faster protocol is, > those vintage systems might not have the MHz horsepower (or memory capacity > or speed) to pull it off? > > > And, on the question of "why UART?" Well - hmm, history shows computers > exchanged data across long distances prior to the 1970 consumer UART > (TR1402A). Flow control makes that connection fairly reliable, and you see > those control flow lines listed on the Bell 103 (I tend to think the Bell > 101 was kind of maybe a prototype of proof of concept, so far I'm not > seeing anything that used it; SAGE identified a specific need, so that Bell > 101 maybe motivated thought on what such a thing could be used for). I've > also read CRC was also becoming a thing in early 1960s (which helped verify > blocks of data, prior to that error correction was just the parity bit). > > I have to drive for awhile today, I'll ponder on the essence of when/why > UARTs became an essential part of these systems. Does a UART become > important when two systems are vastly mixed performance? > > But for other fodder, I'm reading over the async card for the IBM 5110. > Page 12 of this IBM 5110 doc has a block diagram of IBMs version of > "asynchronous card" - > SY31-0552-3_IBM_5110_System_Logic_Manual_197902.pdf > > And its manual (from 1978) has some interesting paragraphs (plus how that > system was apparently obsessed with showing text-mode graphs of the error > rates; line quality is apparently still very rough by late 1970's): > SY31-0557-0_5110asyncComm_Jan1978.pdf > > > > -SteveL > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 10:20=E2=80=AFAM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> >> On 31/01/2025 15:23, ben via cctalk wrote: >> > On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >> > >> > I wanted to get a REAL computer for a long time, since the 70's and >> > now I have >> > nice 18 bit home-brew design, using 2 1508 CPLD's and 6 74LS219's for >> > the ALU and a 1508 for the control logic. >> > >> > Back then you could get TTY's and other HARD copy output devices >> > and paper tape I/O. >> > >> > Now that have my 1977 computer (It uses 68A50 ACIA's) is there low >> > cost paper tape punch/reader emulator for just a plain 1200 baud >> > serial port? All I have working now is just a serial boot strap and >> > some ram. >> >> I've still got a few actual teletypes. Be careful what you wish for. I >> was going to suggest searching eBay for an ASR33 but I checked and there >> aren't any. >> >> My 1970's computer had a switch on the one ACIA between a Teletype and a >> a CUTS cassette interface. The latter stored at 30cps. An advantage to >> the CUTS is that you can't get paper tape easily AFAK (This list is >> probably the place to ask). >> >> I'm not sure how an emulator would look TBH. It wouldn't have the charm >> of the original, but I do see your point. What were you thinking? Hard >> copy or VDU? I see you can still buy matrix printers which, with the >> appropriate driver, could be persuaded to do one character a time. I see >> on Amazon they now cost a lot more than laser printers! >> >> And store "paper tape" as files on a USB stick? Or you could use a >> cassette, although they're getting hard to find. The FSK circuitry is >> pretty straightforward (copy it from an OSI 600 board >> https://osiweb.org/manuals/600revB.pdf Sheet 7). >> >> And I don't know where you'd find such an awful keyboard - although you >> could make one yourself out of 53 key switches. The final touch would be >> a powerful subwoofer to make the whole house shake when you pressed a key. >> >> I'd be up for working on one. >> >> If you wanted a purely software emulation then any glass TTY program >> that was able to record and play back from disk would do the job. >> >> I also checked and you can still get electric typewriters. Brother does >> one with a daisywheel; Silver Reed has a much cheaper dot matrix. I >> don't know, but I suspect some of them still have computer interfaces. >> >> > So when did serial printers show up? >> >> For home computers, from memory.... >> >> The big one was the Epson FX-80. They tended to have parallel interfaces >> - cheaper than serial! You could buy a serial board to fit in to them >> (I've got one knocking around). >> >> A Teletype is, of course, a serial printer. And it was all I could >> afford. =C2=A350 at the time, whereas a matrix printer was =C2=A3200. >> >> A few years later people were chucking out teletypes, so I picked up a >> few more for spares. >> >> >> Regards, Frank. >> >> >> --===============7273402935451993620==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 31 19:03:13 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:02:58 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2158376535785766681==" --===============2158376535785766681== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 31, 2025, at 1:55=E2=80=AFPM, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: >=20 > re: on UARTS.. >=20 > Didn't it basically standardize the process of that task of converting a > byte to bits and vice versa, in a fashion specified by RS232? No, RS232 is a way to send binary information between devices, using specifie= d voltage levels and interface conventions. It has nothing to with UARTs. > And do so at the above-300-baud rates, since that task was too stressful > for 1MHz processors to pull off on its own (in addition to whatever else it > was doing, like flashing a cursor on a CRT?)? > And the buffer just gave grace time for if one of the systems got overly > busy? (like when scrolling said CRT)? You can do a UART in software at pretty high speeds if the processor doesn't = have too much else to do. Conversely, a 110 baud UART is very painful in sof= tware on a 4004. > Might a UART be an early example of an ASIC? Yes, I would say so. paul --===============2158376535785766681==-- From wayne.sudol@hotmail.com Fri Jan 31 19:19:07 2025 From: Wayne S To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 19:18:57 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4977529894386015661==" --===============4977529894386015661== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Steve, remember that digital electronics ( I.E. integrated circuits like uart= s) weren=E2=80=99t around during the early days of data transmission. It was= all analog back then, coils, capacitors, and resistors, so then ideas regard= ing fast transmission had to wait for the technology to evolve. Then as ic=E2= =80=99s became available, what you could do with them sparked new ideas. Exam= ple: data compression within the modem using a microprocessor, thus getting h= igher overall throughput than the theoretical maximum of just the modulation = rate.=20 Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 31, 2025, at 10:55, Steve Lewis via cctalk = wrote: >=20 > =EF=BB=BFre: on UARTS.. >=20 > Didn't it basically standardize the process of that task of converting a > byte to bits and vice versa, in a fashion specified by RS232? > And do so at the above-300-baud rates, since that task was too stressful > for 1MHz processors to pull off on its own (in addition to whatever else it > was doing, like flashing a cursor on a CRT?)? > And the buffer just gave grace time for if one of the systems got overly > busy? (like when scrolling said CRT)? >=20 > Might a UART be an early example of an ASIC? >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 12:44=E2=80=AFPM Steve Lewis wrote: >>=20 >> Neat stuff. So what got me started (this year) dealing with RS232 is >> trying to figure out a means for doing file-stream data exchange with the >> Commander X16 (which is using a dual 16550 modern-make UART and ~14MHz >> clock). It doesn't have a native terminal software yet with something like >> YModem implemented. Which I've found YModem faster over "wireless serial >> connection" (serial adapted to WiFi, so varied data rates over time) and >> ZModem being faster over wired (null modem) connections (apparently since >> ZModem has particular ACK-timeout requirements, which favors a reliable >> data exchange rate). >>=20 >> So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with >> other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern >> PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there >> are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of >> what classic RS232 could do on these systems. >>=20 >> And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled >> 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: >> 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) >> 2) Why is it so slow even on modern systems? >>=20 >> The answer to the first question is the "magic" of those modern-make >> USB-serial dongles. I don't fully understand if they're running at 3MHz >> (since in thier manual I see references to higher clock rates, like >> 48MHz). But maybe also answer like this: going back to the early teletypes >> days (pre-Bell 101 era), two systems can talk at "whatever-speed" just as >> long as they both agree on and achieve that speed (a limit that also >> involves the cabling between them). >>=20 >> In this case, as long as the UARTs can be throttled to within-1%-ish clock >> speed of each other. But it's still the same RS232 principles even at >> these super-speeds? (specialized chips, doing the 2-of-3 hits finding start >> bits, etc, with higher clocks like 12, 15, 20MHz, I see SIIG offering UARTS >> with 25 and 30MHz clocks). It seems to me that an S-100 system with a >> ~5MHz serial clock, or a later ISA card with a 7.3727 clock with a 16550, >> those could be clock divided to support over 115200. But it just ended up >> that the 1.8432MHz configuration was the most mass-produced and available, >> because that is what was sufficient for phone lines of the 1980s? (i.e. >> what the IBM PC did) >>=20 >>=20 >> So I tested a bunch of (relatively modern, post-UART) vintage systems: >> 4.77MHz PC w/ 1.8MHz/8250, 12MHz 286 (with Unknown), 386/486, and a Pentium >> all null-modem connected to a modern-make PC - just to verify how fast they >> should be pushed (download) a data stream. None of them (not even the >> Pentium) could be clocked past 115.2K on this serial line. (I know the >> host system isn't dictating the speed, but whatever integrated UART is >> available-- then the software that controls that UART to clock divide to >> "commonly defined baud rates"). >>=20 >> - As IBM's own PC manual states, it can't be pushed past 9600 reliably >> (you can, but it starts dropping characters). So despite a UART that can >> technically achieve 115200, that system can't handle it (settling on a >> YModem data exchange rate of about 0.9 KBps). >>=20 >> - The 286 mustered about 2.3 KBps (that is, the sustained download speed >> using a very good implemented-in-assembler terminal with YModem, receiving >> data from a modern make 3GHz PC USB/serial adapter). This was using a >> 57600 baud connection, so I'm not sure why the 286 couldn't do a little >> better on throughput. I assume a limitation of its raw speed (12MHz) to >> compute CRC checks, and then the combined memory/hard drive speed to write >> received data to disk. Again, the UART could handle up to 115200, but the >> system could not. >>=20 >> - The 486 handled a nice 11.3KBps download at 115200 (null modem, same >> modern-make laptop and terminal program as above). So the combined >> performance of its memory, write to disk, and raw 50MHz CPU, it could >> "out-perform" its UART (or at least match it). >>=20 >> - The Pentium was slightly slower, 11.1KBps - but probably because it was >> also running a GUI (WinXP) at the same time or maybe just due to having a >> slightly different UART clock (being a laptop, I don't know what specific >> clock it had. Still, you'd think an IBM ThinkPad would have a fancy ~7MHz >> clock with 16550 and be able to do better than 115.2K, but nope (at least >> not with the IBM drivers I could get). Then again, by late 1990s there >> were many other better solutions for transfering files between systems and >> "serial ports" on consumer laptops just had to be good enough for the >> modems/phone lines of their day) >>=20 >> - Modern make laptop to modern make (two fancy i7's talking over >> USB/serial adapters) achieved 45KBps (bytes per second) across a 460K baud >> connection (ZOC, ZModem). And yes, it's a ridiculous way to transfer a >> file between two nearby systems these days. It's neat to see RS232 pushed >> that far, but on the other hand, that's really slow for a modern PC. >>=20 >>=20 >> So that leads to the next question, why was only up to 460K stable? At >> 921K everything was misinterpreted. It could be the cables (and I do have >> shorter ones coming, and will test). Those FTDI USB devices (or MAX232) do >> have a published programming manual, so we could try various clock rates >> that might net somewhere in between 460K and 921K baud. But thinking >> through it a bit: USB is 4 wires (2-data), and that device is "emulating" >> a flow-controlled RS232 connection. So then what protocol is USB using to >> get its super speeds? Something-NOT-RS232. We can read all about that - >> but I don't want to get too sidetracked on USB-isms. But it opens a >> question, could we exchange data faster across traditional "serial port" if >> we used something different than YModem? (it's just that most vintage >> systems have an existing KERMIT, X/YModem implementation, and there are >> other more practical ways to exchange files across modern systems, no one >> has really looked into improved protocols across RS232? like... dual >> channel across the RI line? ha!) But whatever that faster protocol is, >> those vintage systems might not have the MHz horsepower (or memory capacity >> or speed) to pull it off? >>=20 >>=20 >> And, on the question of "why UART?" Well - hmm, history shows computers >> exchanged data across long distances prior to the 1970 consumer UART >> (TR1402A). Flow control makes that connection fairly reliable, and you see >> those control flow lines listed on the Bell 103 (I tend to think the Bell >> 101 was kind of maybe a prototype of proof of concept, so far I'm not >> seeing anything that used it; SAGE identified a specific need, so that Bell >> 101 maybe motivated thought on what such a thing could be used for). I've >> also read CRC was also becoming a thing in early 1960s (which helped verify >> blocks of data, prior to that error correction was just the parity bit). >>=20 >> I have to drive for awhile today, I'll ponder on the essence of when/why >> UARTs became an essential part of these systems. Does a UART become >> important when two systems are vastly mixed performance? >>=20 >> But for other fodder, I'm reading over the async card for the IBM 5110. >> Page 12 of this IBM 5110 doc has a block diagram of IBMs version of >> "asynchronous card" - >> SY31-0552-3_IBM_5110_System_Logic_Manual_197902.pdf >> >> And its manual (from 1978) has some interesting paragraphs (plus how that >> system was apparently obsessed with showing text-mode graphs of the error >> rates; line quality is apparently still very rough by late 1970's): >> SY31-0557-0_5110asyncComm_Jan1978.pdf >> >>=20 >>=20 >> -SteveL >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >>=20 >> On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 10:20=E2=80=AFAM Frank Leonhardt via cctalk < >> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: >>=20 >>>=20 >>> On 31/01/2025 15:23, ben via cctalk wrote: >>>> On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: >>>>=20 >>>> I wanted to get a REAL computer for a long time, since the 70's and >>>> now I have >>>> nice 18 bit home-brew design, using 2 1508 CPLD's and 6 74LS219's for >>>> the ALU and a 1508 for the control logic. >>>>=20 >>>> Back then you could get TTY's and other HARD copy output devices >>>> and paper tape I/O. >>>>=20 >>>> Now that have my 1977 computer (It uses 68A50 ACIA's) is there low >>>> cost paper tape punch/reader emulator for just a plain 1200 baud >>>> serial port? All I have working now is just a serial boot strap and >>>> some ram. >>>=20 >>> I've still got a few actual teletypes. Be careful what you wish for. I >>> was going to suggest searching eBay for an ASR33 but I checked and there >>> aren't any. >>>=20 >>> My 1970's computer had a switch on the one ACIA between a Teletype and a >>> a CUTS cassette interface. The latter stored at 30cps. An advantage to >>> the CUTS is that you can't get paper tape easily AFAK (This list is >>> probably the place to ask). >>>=20 >>> I'm not sure how an emulator would look TBH. It wouldn't have the charm >>> of the original, but I do see your point. What were you thinking? Hard >>> copy or VDU? I see you can still buy matrix printers which, with the >>> appropriate driver, could be persuaded to do one character a time. I see >>> on Amazon they now cost a lot more than laser printers! >>>=20 >>> And store "paper tape" as files on a USB stick? Or you could use a >>> cassette, although they're getting hard to find. The FSK circuitry is >>> pretty straightforward (copy it from an OSI 600 board >>> https://osiweb.org/manuals/600revB.pdf Sheet 7). >>>=20 >>> And I don't know where you'd find such an awful keyboard - although you >>> could make one yourself out of 53 key switches. The final touch would be >>> a powerful subwoofer to make the whole house shake when you pressed a key. >>>=20 >>> I'd be up for working on one. >>>=20 >>> If you wanted a purely software emulation then any glass TTY program >>> that was able to record and play back from disk would do the job. >>>=20 >>> I also checked and you can still get electric typewriters. Brother does >>> one with a daisywheel; Silver Reed has a much cheaper dot matrix. I >>> don't know, but I suspect some of them still have computer interfaces. >>>=20 >>>> So when did serial printers show up? >>>=20 >>> For home computers, from memory.... >>>=20 >>> The big one was the Epson FX-80. They tended to have parallel interfaces >>> - cheaper than serial! You could buy a serial board to fit in to them >>> (I've got one knocking around). >>>=20 >>> A Teletype is, of course, a serial printer. And it was all I could >>> afford. =C2=A350 at the time, whereas a matrix printer was =C2=A3200. >>>=20 >>> A few years later people were chucking out teletypes, so I picked up a >>> few more for spares. >>>=20 >>>=20 >>> Regards, Frank. >>>=20 >>>=20 >>>=20 --===============4977529894386015661==-- From wh.sudbrink@verizon.net Fri Jan 31 19:21:56 2025 From: William Sudbrink To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Microsoft 50 years Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:21:12 -0500 Message-ID: <07d301db7415$4af99f10$e0ecdd30$@verizon.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7714490363158669630==" --===============7714490363158669630== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Huh. They don't even show a good picture of the Altair 8800. -----Original Message----- From: Christian Liendo via cctalk [mailto:cctalk(a)classiccmp.org]=20 Sent: Friday, January 31, 2025 1:19 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Cc: Christian Liendo Subject: [cctalk] Microsoft 50 years I was debating sending this, but Microsoft is part of computing history and f= ifty years is a milestone. https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-50/ --=20 This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com --===============7714490363158669630==-- From cam.k801@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 19:25:14 2025 From: Cameron Kelly To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Microsoft 50 years Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:24:59 -0500 Message-ID: <7e1e1b14-d3d7-48d5-8615-23874c31fc1f@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4644000666720710549==" --===============4644000666720710549== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm glad Microsoft is paying respects to their history. It feels like Apple barely does, or acts as if things that they produced before their current product cycle don't exist. On 2025-01-31 1:19 p.m., Christian Liendo via cctalk wrote: > I was debating sending this, but Microsoft is part of computing > history and fifty years is a milestone. > > https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-50/ --===============4644000666720710549==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 31 20:13:28 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:13:12 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM5PR04MB0907381F37BD0B998D6C7DA7E4E82=40DM5PR04MB?= =?utf-8?q?0907=2Enamprd04=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3172521995053989812==" --===============3172521995053989812== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 31, 2025, at 2:18=E2=80=AFPM, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: >=20 > Steve, remember that digital electronics ( I.E. integrated circuits like ua= rts) weren=E2=80=99t around during the early days of data transmission. It w= as all analog back then, coils, capacitors, and resistors, so then ideas rega= rding fast transmission had to wait for the technology to evolve. Then as ic= =E2=80=99s became available, what you could do with them sparked new ideas. E= xample: data compression within the modem using a microprocessor, thus gettin= g higher overall throughput than the theoretical maximum of just the modulati= on rate. True, though "digital electronics" and "integrated circuits" are not directly= related. Digital circuits were first built with relays and with tubes. Wha= t makes them "digital" is that they deal in ones and zeroes rather than with = continuous real-valued signals. paul --===============3172521995053989812==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Fri Jan 31 20:48:47 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:48:40 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <6d8c9013-132c-42f0-a012-275098f63512@fjl.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5280207275889039810==" --===============5280207275889039810== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote: > And for amusement, someone wrote in the PCW saying they'd heard a > salesperson at Radio Shack trying to convince a punter that RS is RS232 > stood for Radio Shack. I have seen a Radio Shack store manager (Albany, California) say exactly that, in response to a customer gripe about TRS80 serial port not completely matching the RS232 spec. --===============5280207275889039810==-- From drb@msu.edu Fri Jan 31 20:51:18 2025 From: Dennis Boone To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:51:13 -0500 Message-ID: <20250131205113.3E01251DBCE@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3710592285182895138==" --===============3710592285182895138== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > So I tested a bunch of (relatively modern, post-UART) vintage > systems: 4.77MHz PC w/ 1.8MHz/8250, 12MHz 286 (with Unknown), > 386/486, and a Pentium all null-modem connected to a modern-make PC - > just to verify how fast they should be pushed (download) a data > stream. None of them (not even the Pentium) could be clocked past > 115.2K on this serial line. (I know the host system isn't dictating > the speed, but whatever integrated UART is available-- then the > software that controls that UART to clock divide to "commonly defined > baud rates"). Most 80s-era UARTs probably don't support going faster than 115.2k, even with a faster clock. In many cases you could generate arbitrary baud rates (up to some limit tied to clock rate) by picking arbitrary divisors, for some rapidly shrinking values of interoperability. The 8250 was deemed a bit pokey at the time, and the 16x50 chips faster, partly because they were somewhat re-engineered, and partly because of the built-in buffering that reduced interrupt rate on the main processor. > - As IBM's own PC manual states, it can't be pushed past 9600 > reliably (you can, but it starts dropping characters). So despite a > UART that can technically achieve 115200, that system can't handle it > (settling on a YModem data exchange rate of about 0.9 KBps). If you replace the brain dead BIOS serial routines, performance goes way up. This is why the FOSSIL drivers came about. You still have the main processor interrupt rate as a limitation, of course, but the FOSSILs were overall much more efficient. De --===============3710592285182895138==-- From drb@msu.edu Fri Jan 31 20:58:01 2025 From: Dennis Boone To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:57:56 -0500 Message-ID: <20250131205756.CE2C451D9EB@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM5PR04MB0907381F37BD0B998D6C7DA7E4E82=40DM5PR04MB?= =?utf-8?q?0907=2Enamprd04=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3991217612147120968==" --===============3991217612147120968== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > Steve, remember that digital electronics ( I.E. integrated circuits > like uarts) weren’t around during the early days of data > transmission. It was all analog back then, coils, capacitors, and > resistors, so then ideas regarding fast transmission had to wait for > the technology to evolve. Then as ic’s became available, what you > could do with them sparked new ideas. Example: data compression > within the modem using a microprocessor, thus getting higher overall > throughput than the theoretical maximum of just the modulation rate. Some dates relevant to this discussion: "First" monolithic IC in the lab: 1960. First PCM multiplexed telephone circuit (T1, 1.544 Mbit/s): 1962. First UART IC: 1972. De --===============3991217612147120968==-- From phb.hfx@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 21:14:46 2025 From: Paul Berger To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:14:39 -0400 Message-ID: <5de96370-a163-43bc-8056-e67a4f215de1@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: =?utf-8?q?=3CDM5PR04MB0907381F37BD0B998D6C7DA7E4E82=40DM5PR04MB?= =?utf-8?q?0907=2Enamprd04=2Eprod=2Eoutlook=2Ecom=3E?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============5954020530801642108==" --===============5954020530801642108== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-31 15:18, Wayne S via cctalk wrote: > Steve, remember that digital electronics ( I.E. integrated circuits like ua= rts) weren=E2=80=99t around during the early days of data transmission. It w= as all analog back then, coils, capacitors, and resistors, so then ideas rega= rding fast transmission had to wait for the technology to evolve. Then as ic= =E2=80=99s became available, what you could do with them sparked new ideas. E= xample: data compression within the modem using a microprocessor, thus gettin= g higher overall throughput than the theoretical maximum of just the modulati= on rate. > > > > Sent from my iPhone > >> Or maybe electro-mechanical some early machines used a brush turned by a=20 synchronous motor over a circular commutator that had segments for each=20 bit.=C2=A0 On transmit when you pressed a key you closed switches connected=20 to the data bit segments and the motor rotated the brush around once to=20 transmit the character.=C2=A0 When receiving the incoming start bit would=20 start the motor and as the brush went around it would pick solenoids to=20 select the correct character and the stop bits(s) would trip the cycle=20 clutch to print the character. Paul. --===============5954020530801642108==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Fri Jan 31 21:31:15 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:31:07 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <9d4f0036-c6ae-42c8-9d50-6253fc412faf@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7244820328452256400==" --===============7244820328452256400== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, David Wade via cctalk wrote: > Lets look at some of the other pins:- > > RTS/CTS   - Request to send/clear to send - Hardware flow control. > DTR/DSR - Is comms up and running > RI              - Ring Indicator - a call has arrived > TCK/RCK - Used for timing on synchronous links so BI-SYNC/SDLC/HDLC > LL/RL       - enable loop back... The first printers that I used on TRS80 were aSilent 700, and later, a DTC300 (Hytype 1 printing terminal) It took a while to figure out the cabling. Interfacing printers to microcomputers was sometimes confusing. Joe Capbells book "The RS232 Solution" was primarily about that. There was even a case where a user handed over computer and printer to a store to get an appropriate cable; after an excessive length of time, the user shot and killed the store owner. The first parallel printers might have been Centronics. Hence the interface and blue ribbon connector being called "Centronics parallel" The Epson MX-80 became one of the most popular; the FX-80 was an enhanced descendent of it. "serial" could be used to refer to only using one signal wire (plus a groun). But, it can also refer to whether the bits were sent one at a time, or in parallel. --===============7244820328452256400==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Fri Jan 31 21:36:36 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:36:31 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3998396062458983956==" --===============3998396062458983956== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > As far as RS232 and history, I submit that current-loop has more of a > place in telegraphy, as it's far more suited to long distances and is > less susceptible to signal noise. Many early 1970s serial interfaces > offered the choice between 20ma or 60ma current loop or RS232C. up to the 5150 "Asynchronous Communication Adapter" The "free" serial adapter used by IBM to discourage use of the eighth slot was probably the same one. --===============3998396062458983956==-- From macro@orcam.me.uk Fri Jan 31 21:38:46 2025 From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 21:30:42 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2242953267149987444==" --===============2242953267149987444== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with > other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern > PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there > are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of > what classic RS232 could do on these systems. >=20 > And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled > 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: > 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) > 2) Why is it so slow even on modern systems? FWIW I was able to get reliable serial communication under Linux of up to=20 3.5Mbps with off-the-shelf proper PCIe UART hardware clocked at 62.5MHz=20 despite that line drivers used with said hardware (soldered onboard) were=20 spec'd for up to 1MHz only[1]. This was with plain PIO interrupt-driven=20 operation, but then the UARTs used had decent FIFO sizes of 128 characters=20 and the FIFO trigger level for the interrupt was reasonably set. Finally at 4.0Mbps data corruption reproducibly triggered, but it was=20 garbled rather than lost characters, so I conclude the reason was either=20 line drivers finally giving up or the transmission frequency hitting the=20 bandwidth limit of the serial communication cable used. That was actually with POWER9 hardware rather than a boring x86 PC, but I=20 don't think the architecture of the system mattered much if at all. > So I tested a bunch of (relatively modern, post-UART) vintage systems: > 4.77MHz PC w/ 1.8MHz/8250, 12MHz 286 (with Unknown), 386/486, and a Pentium > all null-modem connected to a modern-make PC - just to verify how fast they > should be pushed (download) a data stream. None of them (not even the > Pentium) could be clocked past 115.2K on this serial line. (I know the > host system isn't dictating the speed, but whatever integrated UART is > available-- then the software that controls that UART to clock divide to > "commonly defined baud rates"). With slower host hardware and PIO operation this just boils down to=20 interrupt handling latency vs UART FIFO sizes. If a receive interrupt=20 cannot be served in time for the FIFO to keep from overflowing, you'll get=20 dropped characters. If there's no FIFO and all you have is the receive=20 shift register, then it's getting hopeless very quickly, just as it used=20 to be the case with the 8250/16450 UARTs. With DMA (e.g. Zilog Z8530 SCC or some 8250 improvements) you should be=20 able to run at higher baud rates just fine even with slower host hardware=20 as the DMA transfer can continue between the UART and host memory while=20 the CPU gets to serving an interrupt request; that's how synchronous=20 serial protocols normally operate too. References: [1] Maciej --===============2242953267149987444==-- From paulkoning@comcast.net Fri Jan 31 21:50:44 2025 From: Paul Koning To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 16:50:28 -0500 Message-ID: <3DAD564A-3091-4094-81D7-00F205D7A968@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8978627771446285380==" --===============8978627771446285380== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On Jan 31, 2025, at 4:30=E2=80=AFPM, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk wrote: >=20 > On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: >=20 >> So while some protocol gets developed for that system, I experimented with >> other actual vintage system trying to "talk to" a modern PC (where "modern >> PC" is a 3GHz i7 laptop). For the actual task of transferring files, there >> are many other better options, but I still wanted to "push the envelope" of >> what classic RS232 could do on these systems. >>=20 >> And it was interesting that even modern-PC to modern-PC, it only handled >> 460Kbps. But it causes two "opposite" questions: >> 1) How is it even doing over 115.2Kbps? (is that still "RS232"?) >> 2) Why is it so slow even on modern systems? >=20 > FWIW I was able to get reliable serial communication under Linux of up to=20 > 3.5Mbps with off-the-shelf proper PCIe UART hardware clocked at 62.5MHz=20 > despite that line drivers used with said hardware (soldered onboard) were=20 > spec'd for up to 1MHz only[1]. This was with plain PIO interrupt-driven=20 > operation, but then the UARTs used had decent FIFO sizes of 128 characters = > and the FIFO trigger level for the interrupt was reasonably set. >=20 > Finally at 4.0Mbps data corruption reproducibly triggered, but it was=20 > garbled rather than lost characters, so I conclude the reason was either=20 > line drivers finally giving up or the transmission frequency hitting the=20 > bandwidth limit of the serial communication cable used. Was that with an actual RS232 port, i.e., a device using RS232 signal levels,= or a "TTL" logic level serial port? I'm guessing the latter. In my high speed experiments, I found that the limit for RS232 data rates com= es from the relatively slow rise/fall times implemented in RS232 drivers. If= you have a port that uses logic levels the transitions are likely to be much= faster so loss of signal integrity occurs only at much higher speeds. With = the RS232 drivers I have used (MAX3222), 250 kbps is roughly the upper limit. paul --===============8978627771446285380==-- From ard.p850ug1@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 21:52:18 2025 From: Tony Duell To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 21:52:02 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0164807138719486294==" --===============0164807138719486294== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 9:36 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > As far as RS232 and history, I submit that current-loop has more of a > > place in telegraphy, as it's far more suited to long distances and is > > less susceptible to signal noise. Many early 1970s serial interfaces > > offered the choice between 20ma or 60ma current loop or RS232C. > > up to the 5150 "Asynchronous Communication Adapter" > > The "free" serial adapter used by IBM to discourage use of the eighth slot > was probably the same one. It was. The techref shows the jumper to fit so it can assert the data buffer enable signal if it's placed in slot 8 of a 5160. Annoyingly the 5155 cabinet is about 1/4" too small, the async adapter won't fit in slot 8, it bangs into the disk drives. To select between RS232 and current loop you have to remove the card from the machine and turn a jumper block round. A couple of months ago I worked out how to modify the card so that you didn't have to do this Specifically : You don't have to add any components or cut any traces, just add (quite a few) jumper wires. There are no changes to the wiring to the DB25 You can then fit the original IBM jumper block and select RS232 or current loop, the board behaves just like an unmodifed one But you can also fit a specially-wired jumper block, whereupon The board will work in RS232 mode with standard RS232 cables. Or with a specially wired cable (and RTS asserted from the board) it works in current loop mode. I've modified both the boards in my 5155. -tony --===============0164807138719486294==-- From phb.hfx@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 21:55:31 2025 From: Paul Berger To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:55:21 -0400 Message-ID: <8a654c54-7abd-49ea-a17d-e1b912e65d14@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1476288609561307472==" --===============1476288609561307472== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2025-01-31 14:44, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > > But for other fodder, I'm reading over the async card for the IBM 5110. > Page 12 of this IBM 5110 doc has a block diagram of IBMs version of > "asynchronous card" - > SY31-0552-3_IBM_5110_System_Logic_Manual_197902.pdf > > And its manual (from 1978) has some interesting paragraphs (plus how that > system was apparently obsessed with showing text-mode graphs of the error > rates; line quality is apparently still very rough by late 1970's): > SY31-0557-0_5110asyncComm_Jan1978.pdf > > > > -SteveL > > Line quality depended on what you wanted to pay for.=C2=A0 Voice grade lines = have a few problems the main ones being the limited bandwidth and echo=20 suppressors.=C2=A0 But in the late 70s when I started with TP equipment, and = probably earlier you could also get "conditioned" lines that had a much=20 wider bandwidth and no echo suppressors.=C2=A0 I recall=C2=A0 people running = 56K=20 baud and higher synchronous lines, but they did not use RS232 but rather=20 they used a V.35 interface.=C2=A0 Already at that time people where using=20 fancy means to increase speed, I recall modems that used phase shift=20 keying and 90 degree shifts so you could encode 2 bits in every phase=20 shift by shifting by 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees.=C2=A0 In the late 70 early = 80s I know for sure IBM communication controllers supported line groups=20 where the data would be fired down multiple pipes to get=C2=A0 higher=20 throughput. =C2=A0 =C2=A0 I also recall dial-up conditioned lines that had a = special phone set on them that you could use to talk to people at the=20 other end, talking on them was line talking in a tunnel. Paul. --===============1476288609561307472==-- From ard.p850ug1@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 21:57:25 2025 From: Tony Duell To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 21:57:10 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2569887161353218105==" --===============2569887161353218105== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 9:38 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > The first parallel printers might have been Centronics. Hence the > interface and blue ribbon connector being called "Centronics parallel" The first printer that Radio Shack/Tandy sold for the TRS-80 (at least in the UK) -- the 'TRS-80 Line Printer' (it was nothng of the sort, of course) -- was a rebadged Cantronics with the obvious parallel interface. I have the Centronics version here and repair it using the Radio Shack service manual. -tony --===============2569887161353218105==-- From healyzh@avanthar.com Fri Jan 31 22:37:00 2025 From: Zane Healy To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Apple & History (Was: Microsoft 50 years) Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:29:42 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7e1e1b14-d3d7-48d5-8615-23874c31fc1f@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7046841182770181487==" --===============7046841182770181487== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Jan 31, 2025, at 11:24 AM, Cameron Kelly via cctalk wrote: >=20 > I'm glad Microsoft is paying respects to their history. It feels like Apple= barely does, or acts as if things that they produced before their current pr= oduct cycle don't exist. My primary problem is that they do things that are openly hostile to those of= us that have been running on the Mac for 30+ years. Recently I needed to ac= cess some older data, and it turned into a large project when I discovered th= at not only couldn=E2=80=99t newer versions of MacOS not access the floppies,= they couldn=E2=80=99t access Mac CD-R=E2=80=99s. I ended up copying everyth= ing over to a Hard Drive 100=E2=80=99s of floppies and CD=E2=80=99s from DOS = and Mac. Then I discovered that the latest version of Microsoft Office *ON T= HE MAC* can=E2=80=99t read MS Office 4.2 documents (such as MS Word 6.0). In= the end I had to create emulation environments for my old Mac and DOS system= s on my current Mac laptop. It=E2=80=99s been useful having access to the or= iginal dBase databases, rather than trying to access the converted FileMaker = Pro databases. Of course prior to this, in the early days of Mac OS X, they dropped support = for AppleTalk, then AppleTalk printing. Then MacOS 9 apps, and now more rece= ntly 32-bit MacOS Apps.=20 Of course Windows isn=E2=80=99t perfect for Backwards compatibility, a lot of= us have to keep Windows XP running (in my case as a VM on my 2010 Mac Pro), = in order to drive things like vintage film scanners. Zane --===============7046841182770181487==-- From c.murray.mccullough@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 22:41:06 2025 From: Murray McCullough To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Microsoft history Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:40:50 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7644277141413031573==" --===============7644277141413031573== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Microsoft, or is it Micro-Soft or MICROSOFT, is a 50 yr. old trans-national corporation. Whether it has been good or not-so-good for society is debatable but on the financial-side its been very kind to investors(the earliest ones anyways). Capitalism certainly owes Microsoft a good nod! Happy computing. Murray 🙂 --===============7644277141413031573==-- From cisin@xenosoft.com Fri Jan 31 22:52:06 2025 From: Fred Cisin To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Microsoft history Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 14:51:59 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7438535004825930889==" --===============7438535004825930889== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Fri, 31 Jan 2025, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: > Microsoft, or is it Micro-Soft or MICROSOFT, is a 50 yr. old trans-national > corporation. Whether it has been good or not-so-good for society is > debatable but on the financial-side its been very kind to investors(the > earliest ones anyways). Capitalism certainly owes Microsoft a good nod! July 29, 1975 In a letter to Paul Allen, Bill Gates uses the name "Micro-soft" to refer to their partnership. This is the earliest known written reference. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/history/history-of-microsoft-1975 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/history/ --===============7438535004825930889==-- From cam.k801@gmail.com Fri Jan 31 23:01:11 2025 From: Cameron Kelly To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Apple & History (Was: Microsoft 50 years) Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 18:00:55 -0500 Message-ID: <6f3f0bce-54ea-4900-9c25-d583efdb33e7@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3678612660337446576==" --===============3678612660337446576== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yes I was thinking of it from this angle as well. Quickly dropping=20 support for legacy things, such as 32-bit application support under=20 Intel for instance. Apple is starting to come across as a monolithic, dystopian entity where=20 you buy your newest devices, and *anything* regarding the previous cycle=20 of products is quickly disposed of and washed away. You cannot find any=20 semblance of their history on their website, and anything documenting=20 their history is by people like us. It seems like anything regarding a vintage Macintosh or iPod would taint=20 their carefully curated image. On 2025-01-31 5:29 p.m., Zane Healy via cctalk wrote: > On Jan 31, 2025, at 11:24 AM, Cameron Kelly via cctalk wrote: >> I'm glad Microsoft is paying respects to their history. It feels like Appl= e barely does, or acts as if things that they produced before their current p= roduct cycle don't exist. > My primary problem is that they do things that are openly hostile to those = of us that have been running on the Mac for 30+ years. Recently I needed to = access some older data, and it turned into a large project when I discovered = that not only couldn=E2=80=99t newer versions of MacOS not access the floppie= s, they couldn=E2=80=99t access Mac CD-R=E2=80=99s. I ended up copying every= thing over to a Hard Drive 100=E2=80=99s of floppies and CD=E2=80=99s from DO= S and Mac. Then I discovered that the latest version of Microsoft Office *ON= THE MAC* can=E2=80=99t read MS Office 4.2 documents (such as MS Word 6.0). = In the end I had to create emulation environments for my old Mac and DOS syst= ems on my current Mac laptop. It=E2=80=99s been useful having access to the = original dBase databases, rather than trying to access the converted FileMake= r Pro databases. > > Of course prior to this, in the early days of Mac OS X, they dropped suppor= t for AppleTalk, then AppleTalk printing. Then MacOS 9 apps, and now more re= cently 32-bit MacOS Apps. > > Of course Windows isn=E2=80=99t perfect for Backwards compatibility, a lot = of us have to keep Windows XP running (in my case as a VM on my 2010 Mac Pro)= , in order to drive things like vintage film scanners. > > Zane > > > --===============3678612660337446576==-- From cclist@sydex.com Fri Jan 31 23:07:34 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:07:25 +0000 Message-ID: <5c9e4614-6048-4cbe-81c5-a6b03d789104@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8068408971290012598==" --===============8068408971290012598== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 1/31/25 13:57, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote: > On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 9:38 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > >> The first parallel printers might have been Centronics. Hence the >> interface and blue ribbon connector being called "Centronics parallel" > > The first printer that Radio Shack/Tandy sold for the TRS-80 (at least > in the UK) -- the 'TRS-80 Line Printer' (it was nothng of the sort, of > course) -- was a rebadged Cantronics with the obvious parallel > interface. I have the Centronics version here and repair it using the > Radio Shack service manual. Out in the field during the late 60s and 70s, I found that the Dataproducts interface was more common than the Centronics. --Chuck --===============8068408971290012598==-- From cclist@sydex.com Fri Jan 31 23:12:57 2025 From: Chuck Guzis To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:12:49 +0000 Message-ID: <1efb4f3f-2d38-4068-b194-1548f8c164f4@sydex.com> In-Reply-To: <20250131205756.CE2C451D9EB@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============3017962589768031970==" --===============3017962589768031970== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 1/31/25 12:57, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote: > Some dates relevant to this discussion: > > "First" monolithic IC in the lab: 1960. > > First PCM multiplexed telephone circuit (T1, 1.544 Mbit/s): 1962. > > First UART IC: 1972. In the mid 70s, I was project manager for an internal product of a remote (thousands of miles) operator's console. The engineer designing the telecom (asynchronous) interface did not trust the MSI UARTs and insisted on implementing the UART with available random bipolar logic. Since this was pretty much a one-off, I didn't argue. It did work. --Chuck --===============3017962589768031970==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Fri Jan 31 23:14:58 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Apple & History (Was: Microsoft 50 years) Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:14:48 -0800 Message-ID: <59e737d1-2c27-4063-9310-e88da17735f1@floodgap.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6604372380930413103==" --===============6604372380930413103== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Of course prior to this, in the early days of Mac OS X, they dropped=20 > support for AppleTalk, then AppleTalk printing. Then MacOS 9 apps, and=20 > now more recently 32-bit MacOS Apps.=20 And yet Mac OS 9 itself will happily run many programs dating back to System 6 or earlier, thanks to the 68K emulator, though 8.6 was probably the compatibility peak. --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- TRUE HEADLINE: Bomb Victims Still Trying To Pick Up The Pieces -----------= -- --===============6604372380930413103==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Fri Jan 31 23:15:26 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: Microsoft history Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:15:20 -0800 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7401482170279477498==" --===============7401482170279477498== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Microsoft, or is it Micro-Soft or MICROSOFT, You forgot MICROS~1. --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- There are 10 kinds of people: those who read binary, and those who don't. = -- --===============7401482170279477498==-- From spectre@floodgap.com Fri Jan 31 23:20:02 2025 From: Cameron Kaiser To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:19:54 -0800 Message-ID: <8c0e72b9-9cf6-41d1-826c-c59a35d2c2f4@floodgap.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2792810243743641971==" --===============2792810243743641971== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Low speed modems are just analog devices that can pass any signal up to=20 > whatever the design speed limit is. For example, a 103 modem is good up > to 300 bps, but will happily carry anything less. A 202 modem (see=20 > below) is designed for 1200 but also will work at lower speeds, and has=20 > been used at 1260 bps. I'd argue those are differing situations, though. Bell 103 and Bell 101 modems use the same AFSK frequencies, just at different speeds. Bell 202 modems have specific hardware to support Bell 103, effectively two modems in the same cas= e. --=20 ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ = -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.c= om -- Excellent guess, Kreskin. Wrong, but excellent. -- Space Quest 6 ---------= -- --===============2792810243743641971==--