17-Jan-93 11:03:43-MST,798;000000000020
Mail-From: WANCHO created at 17-Jan-93 11:03:39
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 11:03 MST
Message-ID: <WANCHO.12846301848.BABYL@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
From: "Frank J. Wancho" <WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
cc: WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Subject: POSIX TOPS20?
I *know* this is a loaded (and possibly absurd) question. But..
Can anyone with an intimate familiarity of both the IEEE POSIX
standards and TOPS20 tell me exactly where and how TOPS20 falls
short of meeting those standards?
I figure that if non-Unix OSes, such as DEC's VAX/VMS and IBM's MVS,
can be made "POSIX compliant," why not TOPS20? I want to know if it
can be done, how DEC and IBM did it, and if anyone is willing to help
do the same for TOPS20.
--Frank
27-Jan-93 15:59:17-MST,940;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 16:58:17 CST
From: Clive Dawson <clive@mcc.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Utility request
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.728175497.clive@stone.mcc.com>
I need to retrieve some files from the backup tapes written by Dumper
from my demised TOPS-20 system. I know there were at least a couple
of utilities around that would accomplish this on a VMS or Unix system,
but I've lost track of their names or where to get them. Can anybody
supply a pointer to a convenient (i.e. FTPable) source?
Many thanks in advance!
Clive Dawson
MCC
28-Jan-93 10:53:04-MST,1052;000000000020
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From: P{r Emanuelsson <pell@lysator.liu.se>
Message-Id: <199301281752.AA03805@lysator.liu.se>
To: clive@mcc.com
Subject: Re: Utility request
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
You can get an updated version of read20 (for UNIX) from
lysator.liu.se:/pub/pdp10/tops20/read20-921202.tar.Z.
The new features are preservation of the directory tree (old read20 only
extracted into the current dir), lowercasing file names, option to specify
the blocking size (vital if you set the blocking to 10 when dumping for
example) and a number of bug fixes/speedups. I've hacked on it now and then
the last three years. There is still one bug, in that extracted files
can't contain a null byte (forget about extracting .EMACS-files). I might
fix this some day...
/Pell
25-Feb-93 20:43:02-MST,904;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 22:42:36 EST
From: John_Wilson@MTS.RPI.EDU
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL,
ITS-LOVERS@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU,
INFO-PDP11@TRANSARC.COM
Message-ID: <3429511@MTS.RPI.EDU>
Subject: Massbus protocol
Does anyone know where I can get my hands on a Massbus spec?
I've been looking at the RH20 and RP06 prints but they aren't
much help, except for giving me connector pinouts and vague
notions about some of the pins (it all starts with DEM, right?
but who supplies the clocks? are the data and control busses
completely disjoint?). Even if the bus spec may have been
folklore within DEC, at some point someone must have cooked up
a document to send to Sperry Univac when they made the RP07's.
-- John (don't ask) Wilson
10-Mar-93 10:30:44-MST,2199;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 09:04:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: news of the world
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
Message-Id: <MailManager.731783073.7976.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
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This morning, as I have for the past couple of days, I booted TOPS-20 on my
home machine and loaded some software. So what, you ask? After all, I've had
my 2020 systems from as far back as 1985, and this is well-known.
Well, it isn't my 2020 system that got booted this morning. The 2020 has been
up for 1122 hours. No, what I booted this morning is a UNIX process running
on my NeXT.
Yes, Ken Harrenstein has finally gotten his PDP-10 emulator to run TOPS-20.
It's still beta test, but it's coming along nicely. I did the NeXT port, but
it was trivial (almost identical to Ken's SUN-OS/SPARC original).
You may also be interested to know that Dave Moon is working on a Mac port, so
he can run I.T.S. on his Mac PowerBook. However, it isn't very fast (albeit
tolerable) on a 68040, so you'd want to use one of the faster ones (sigh, not
on my PowerBook-100). I think a 486 notebook would probably have more promise
as a TOPS-20 engine.
I imagine that Ken'll be releasing it in the not-too-distant future (don't
worry, it'll be announced when it happens!). So hold those requests for a
little while... Don't ask me, I'm just a beta tester.
TOPS-20 with a basic 4.1 filesystem including sources needs about 65MB for the
simulated RP06, which can of course grow to over 200 MB if you start filling
things up. Time to buy a couple more Fujitsus... :-)
-- Mark --
11-Mar-93 10:36:59-MST,1373;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 93 18:36:44 MET
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Formatting RP07...?
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.731871404.bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
Hi, I have a problem.
Our RP07 is getting a bit shaky, and I'd like to do a reformat of it,
to see if that could improve its look on life.
However, TOPS-20 don't like to format an RP07 (or RA60, or RA81, or
anything except RP0[456]).
Is there any program to format an RP07 for 18-bits? I have some FS packs,
but I thought I'd start by asking on the net before starting to dig through
lots of strange stuff.
I don't think TOPS-20 would appreciate if I formatted the RP07 for 16-bits...
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
CS student at Uppsala University || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
12-Mar-93 06:56:10-MST,1128;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 07:55:05 -0600
From: bodoh@dgg.cr.usgs.gov
Message-Id: <9303121355.AA01143@dgg.cr.usgs.gov>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Hello,
Please remove my name from the tops-20 mailing list. We thought we
were going to "inherit" a DEC 20 from NASA, but it died and nobody could/would
fix it. Thanks...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Tom Bodoh - Sr. systems software engineer, Hughes STX +
+ USGS/EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD, USA 57198 (605) 594-6830 +
+ Internet; bodoh@dgg.cr.usgs.gov (152.61.192.66) +
+ "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!" EL&P +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
12-Mar-93 10:56:17-MST,964;000000000020
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From: He was a dark and stormy Knight. 12-Mar-1993 1253 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil, bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
Subject: RE: Formatting RP07...?
The canonical RP07 formatter is/was DFRPM on the KLAD (FS) pack. DDRPI, the old
reliable RP01/2/3/4/5/6 formatter, won't touch RP07s....
John Francini
Ex-TOPS10 software engineer
Digital Equipment Corporation
Littleton, MA
12-Mar-93 13:40:48-MST,1059;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 21:39:41 +0200 (MET)
From: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: Re: Formatting RP07...?
To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-ID: <731965181.900000.DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.90.0.731871404.bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
I hope that you are running this drive currently, as if you plan to
put it on a KS10/2020, it will not work. The drive is too fast.
If you are indeed running on a KL, you just need a more up to date
version of the KLAD. I think RP07s have been on it for a long time.
You might contact JMR@JMR.NADA.KTH.SE for a copy, they maintained
their own KL at the computer club for a long time and ran RP07s.
You might also think twice before attempting the reformat. RP07s
are known to NOT reformat and then they are useless.
/joe
12-Mar-93 15:19:48-MST,4015;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 12 Mar 93 14:19 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Formatting RP07...?
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <6996374F50AB002B3B@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
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Do you have a KLAD (diagnostic) pack? (I'm assuming this is a KL since
RP07s didn't go on KSs.) The formatter diagnostic is DFRPM, which in
its later versions handled RP07s as well as RP06s. The procedure for
running it is:
Halt the KL. Mount the KLAD pack on RPA0 (you'd probably need to set
some front end switches to mount it elsewhere -- I'm not familiar with
that). At the PAR prompt type M BOO. At the BOO prompt, type DBOOT.
This should load the diagnostic monitor, and eventually give you a CMD:
(or possibly ".>" -- I'm no longer certain) prompt. Type BT. (This
does initialization, and is good to do between any diagnostics you run,
because they sometimes leave things in a non-default state...) You should
get back to the CMD: prompt eventually.
To start the formatter diagnostic, type:
P DFRPM<escape>
(No <return>, just <escape>.)
(There is a chance that DFRPM will ask you for some device info at this
point. If it says:
DEV:T,K,D,P -
answer P, and to:
DISK:[P,PN] -D
type <return>.)
DFRPM will ask:
AUTO-CONFIG? (Y=YES, N=NO, H=HELP) -
Answer N (this will let you select which drive you want to format.) It
should next display a list of what disk devices it finds (and understands),
and after that will ask you which RH the disk you want to format is
connected to:
RH'S =
and it wants the I/O address (i.e. what you'd put in a CONO/CONI). This
is 540 for RH#0, 544 for RH#1, 550 for RH#2, 554 for RH#3 etc. Then DFRPM
will ask:
SELECT DRIVES (0-7, A=ALL, N=NONE) ON RH-nnn =
Answer with the unit number (0-7) of the drive to format. At this point,
go around and write lock all the drives you don't want to touch, including
the KLAD pack, just for safety. DFRPM will ask:
IS THERE DATA ON THE MEDIA THAT MUST BE SAVED Y OR N
You've backed up the drive, right? If you're ready to overwrite it,
answer N. You'll next be asked:
ENTER MODE (DEF,MAN,VAR,HELP) -
(Here you can take a detour if you want to find out which blocks are
already mapped as bad, which can be useful if the current format doesn't
happen to think they're bad, but you want to be on the safe side and not
use them anyway. This is a bit involved -- send me a message if you
want instructions.)
To continue on to formatting, type MAN. Finally, it will ask:
MAN> WHAT TEST (OR HELP):
and to start the formatting process, type PAKINT.
Wait a looong time (30-45 minutes, if I remember correctly). Be sure you
have enough paper in your console printer, because after it formats, it
will check for bad blocks, and print about a page of error message for
each bad block (or other error).
When it's done, it will go back to the WHAT TEST prompt. You can quit
here (take off the KLAD pack, un-write lock your disks, and reboot your
system) or you can use the info on bad blocks you might have collected
before formatting to add those bad blocks back into the BAT table.
If there are problems beyond bad spots on the medium, there are also
diagnostics built into the RP07 itself, which can be useful if you
happen to have the appropriate documentation...
Good luck -- I hope your RP07 isn't too flakey...
Patricia Tressel
Locke Computer Center
University of Washington
pat@fisher.hs.washington.edu
pat@uwalocke.bitnet
(206)543-9275
12-Mar-93 16:14:29-MST,706;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 12 Mar 93 15:14:04 PST
From: William "Chops" Westfield <billw@glare.cisco.com>
To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: Formatting RP07...?
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 11 Mar 93 18:36:44 MET
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.731978044.billw@glare.cisco.com>
I don't know whether refomatting the RP07 will help any. RP07 HDAs seem
to have a finite lifetime, and if I were you I'd start looking for a new
one, along with someone to install it...
BillW
12-Mar-93 21:07:12-MST,1006;000000000020
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From: means@devon.xkl.com (David Means)
Message-Id: <9303130416.AA28340@devon.xkl.com>
To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.ARMY.MIL
In-Reply-To: Johnny Billquist's message of Thu, 11 Mar 93 18:36:44 MET <CMM.0.90.0.731871404.bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
Subject: Formatting RP07...?
There is a way to reformat RP07s on line; you need to find and
figure out how to use D20MON, which is a program that runs diagnostics
in user mode. Once there, I think the diagnostic you need to load is
DFRPM. It will reformat all the known drives in the RP series.
This will, of course, destroy the data on that RP07. I hope you have
somewhere else to park it while this is going on (tape or another RP07).
Good luck.
15-Mar-93 04:53:06-MST,1800;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 12:52:47 MET
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: Formatting RP07...?
In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 12 Mar 1993 21:39:41 +0200 (MET)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.732196367.bqt@Bern.DoCS.UU.SE>
>I hope that you are running this drive currently, as if you plan to
>put it on a KS10/2020, it will not work. The drive is too fast.
We have two -2060 running. :-)
>If you are indeed running on a KL, you just need a more up to date
>version of the KLAD. I think RP07s have been on it for a long time.
So people have informed me. I'm about to try it...
>You might contact JMR@JMR.NADA.KTH.SE for a copy, they maintained
>their own KL at the computer club for a long time and ran RP07s.
Their machines are just collecting dust right now. I'm also a member
of Stacken, but they only run small sun's and such ilk now... :-(
>You might also think twice before attempting the reformat. RP07s
>are known to NOT reformat and then they are useless.
Hmmm, well have to see what happens...
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
CS student at Uppsala University || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
15-Mar-93 17:30:06-MST,2133;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 16:29 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Formatting RP07...?
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <672885359BAB00156C@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
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Re. DFRPM dialogue:
>> DISK:[P,PN] -D
Ignore that D on the end there -- that was a bit of fumble-fingers while
editing.
I generally reformatted my RP07s about 3 times over their lifetimes -- once
when I got them (used), and again later if I started seeing consistent bad
regions that required multiple retries to read. If the problem is just a
localized bad spot on the medium, it will probably reformat ok. If it's
getting, say, header CRC errors, then reformatting won't help. Have you got
SPEAR or SYSERR output from your error log? The error bit will tell you
which sort of error you've got. (I can ask around here and find out where
these bits are documented.) Even without knowing what the error bits mean,
you can probably tell by looking at where the errors occur -- if they're in
little groups around particular spots on the disks, they're most likely
media errors.
Swapping an HDA is painful. We once bought a refurbished HDA (from a
company in California whose name I can probably dig up if you'd like it).
For some reason, we'd called the company after the HDA arrived, and they
asked us "Have you ever done this before?". We replied, "No, but we have
the manual." They said, "Maybe we'd better talk you through it..."
I want my KL back. I even miss the RP07s (can you tell?). Waaaaaah!
Patricia Tressel
Locke Computer Center
University of Washington
pat@fisher.hs.washington.edu
(206)543-9275
15-Mar-93 18:35:33-MST,980;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 02:35:16 +0100
From: Klaus Zeuge <sojge@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
Message-Id: <9303160135.AA06797@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
X-Zippy-Proclaims: LOOK!! Sullen American teens wearing MADRAS shorts and
``Flock of Seagulls'' HAIRCUTS!
X-Dogma: 36 >> 32
To: MRC@Panda.COM
Cc: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
In-Reply-To: Mark Crispin's message of Wed, 10 Mar 1993 09:04:33 -0800 (PST) <MailManager.731783073.7976.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: news of the world
So how and where do I get hold of it?
(BTW, is his name Harrenstein or Harrentien?)
17-Mar-93 07:26:49-MST,726;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 17 Mar 93 09:25 EST
From: JERRY WEINER BBN 617-873-3242 <JWEINER@ccr2.bbn.com>
Subject: NI BUGHLTS
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: @TOPS
Folks,
Anyone know of the cause/fix for DLLBPA BUGHLTS. We are running TOPS-20
Version 7 with all the DEC patches. We run DECNET & IP on the NI. This crashes
happen when IP gets in a state where it won't communicate in either direction.
DECNET & LAT continue to run Okay. We run IPHOST and CYCLE INTERNET. Usually
this cures the IP problem. Other times it crashes the system with the DLLBPA.
Thanx,
Jerry Weiner
22-Mar-93 16:10:21-MST,928;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 11:37:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
Subject: Yuuyuu record uptime
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
Postal: 6158 Lariat Loop NE; Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098
Phone: +1 (206) 842-2385
Message-ID: <12863096131.9.MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
Yuuyuu crashed due to a power sag after 1412 hours, 23 minutes, and 5 seconds
of uptime, almost two months after being rebooted after a two-day power outage
caused by the major windstorm last January. The power sag caused lights to
flicker, but it didn't take down the NeXTs or the digital clocks. I'm sure
that this is not a record uptime for a DEC-20, but is was for Yuuyuu, which
had never before cracked 1000 hours.
-------
23-Mar-93 22:01:12-MST,1193;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 20:56:49 PST
From: "Mark Lottor" <mkl@nw.com>
Message-Id: <2bafea13.nw@nw.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Foonly for sale
Hi -
I have a Foonly-F4 I want to get rid of. It runs TOPS-20 v5 with TCP/IP
(but the hardware is a bit flakey [in fact, so is the software]). It
takes up two full-size 19" racks and uses 10-15 amps (120vac). System
comes with 2 or 3 megawords of RAM, 32 serial ports, ARPANET IMP (1822)
interface, ethernet interface (although it only works in one direction at
the moment), 3 CDC SMD disk drives (360 megs I think, 2 of which are known
to work), a 1/2" Pertec tape drive (800/1600 bpi), spare parts, and full
schematics. If someone doesn't say something soon it will probably be
scrapped for parts. I paid $222 for it and its probably worth more as
surplus junk parts.
-mkl
30-Mar-93 08:57:00-MST,584;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 30 Mar 93 10:53 EDT
From: JERRY WEINER BBN 617-873-3242 <JWEINER@ccr2.bbn.com>
Subject: FYI-SCSI MASSBUSS Disks
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: @tops
Folks,
COMPUCOM in Atlanta John Spencer 404-452-1090
Has available RH10/RH20 plug & play SCSI adapter and disks to replace
RP06/RP07 without any monitor changes.
I am just passing on the info. I have no experience with the devices.
Jerry Weiner
15-Apr-93 06:59:44-MDT,5430;000000000020
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Reply-To: shawn@FENCHURCH.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 93 9:01:38 EDT
From: "Shawn F. Mckay" <shawn@FENCHURCH.MIT.EDU>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Saving a '20
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.734878898.shawn@fenchurch>
Recently our beloved DecSystem-20/65 was placed on the scrap list,
of course to a few of us here this was not acceptable.. I tried to
consider the primary reasons it was placed there and may have come
up with a now proven plan to help others in a similar situation.
When I was thinking about the why, this is the short list that
came directly to mind:
a) Its VERY big. Well, not really to some of us who have seen even
larger systems, but compared to many new high end systems, I suppose
its a valid thought.
b) Its VERY power hungry. In fact, it LOVES to slurp down power from
any place you may plug it in.
c) Its a VERY good electric heater! :-)
d) It makes a LOT of fan noise.
e) Opening its cabinet while the power is on without knowing what you
are doing is a very real threat to human life.
Ok, if I was to be able to keep her I had to find ways to make the above
untrue, and in fact make use of some of her assets. This is what I came
up with:
a) Most of her space is used up by options. She was a fairly nice 20 in
that she had LOTS of terminal lines, and a fancy dual-network front
end '34. I removed ALL the "options" she would not need any more and
resigned myself to the idea she may only really need 1 11 backplane
and 2 serial lines. (CTY/DIAG-MODEM) Perhaps a network card crammed
in their somehow as well. This caused her to free up a LOT of rack
space, without touching any vital organs! :-). We have racks in our
computer room that may not be "pretty" to the naked eye. So I proposed
to put "shelves / slides" into the new free 2.5 / 3 cabinets inside
the 20 and remove the external mounting racks located elsewhere in
our computer room. Placing most of the important / much smaller eqpt
INSIDE this big "pretty" cabinet. :-)
b) As trends would have it, she may no longer run as a 20 but she has some
VERY useful power supplies for the "other" eqpt we may wish to rack
mount in the free racks. With work being done on an emulator for Tops-20
(News of this I am holding my breath for :-)), she may well be able to
once again run Tops-20 from a PC of some sort mounted also inside her
racks. This renders the power issue much more justifiable.
c/d) With its VERY powerful fans, and much smaller thermal load, its able
to cool much more with much less. Rendering the noise / heat issues
DOA. :-)
e) With the EBOX, DTE-11, PDP-11 NOT running, and only using the 110
socketed power supplies with only the "new" eqpt plugged into it,
the power system of the 20 should be fairly safe. Any of the hazardous
eqpt which was needed in the past, will be asleep for now..
f) In using the free rack space in her, without removing or harming
any of her vital organs she attains a certain "hack value" for
the occasional tour :-). In her day, she dominated her machine room
and once again she does this by swallowing most of it whole :-).
(Add an L.E.D. for the right power lamp and the '20 folks who
see but dont hear her will probably be amused :-)).
g) As mentioned above, the overall footprint of eqpt / racks / tables
of the computer room can be reduced. MUCH reduced. With some care
and a little help from a machine shop, the DecSystem-20 will hold
an AMAZING amount of shelved eqpt. And power it all.
h) Although this may not impress people right now, the day may well come
when we can say we are one of the few with a "real" computer room :-)
On the down side, I had to give up a lot: All her disk drives and tape
drives are now gone. Though the front-end still works and has its own
disk drives (floppy), a few things would be needed to bring her back up:
a) A MBUS <-> SCSI controller.
Hard drives, tape drives + software to deal with it all.
b) Modern power supplies for the EBOX / other vital organs.
Though I have removed no power supplies yet, I may have too. :-(
On the light side, she is once again safe. And seen as a part of our
operation in terms of "years". :-)! And with luck someone may be able
to benefit both from this experience, and the spare parts freed up:
4x RP06 disk drives in various conditions (Working -> dead).
1x TU78 Tape drive (Known good)
Mass bus cable (lots, some brand new in package! :-))
Unibus cable (as above)
Serial port ribbon cable. (LOTS! :-)
Misc rack mounting hardware
DH11's, several w/backplanes. Working when removed.
Power supplies, (MANY, all types).
PDP-11 expansion kit (backplane mounting hw/power kit, etc).
PDP-11/45 (Whole, was spare. Thought to work fine)
PDP-11/40 (While, was space. Thought to work fine)
Many other Unibus tidbits.
MANY RP06 packs. Most recently cleaned / inspected.
The above is now available in the M.I.T. Surplus Property Office.
If you have any interest in the above, please feel free to call / write.
Thanks, and long live tops-20! :-)
- Shawn
16-Apr-93 07:52:28-MDT,1508;000000000020
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From: Looking for warmth in all the wrong climates... 16-Apr-1993 0950 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: "fenchurch.mit.edu"@peano.enet.dec.com
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: Saving a '20
I thought I saw -- on this list even -- some info a while back about switching
power supplies that were available to replace that gigantic main
transformer/regulator assembly. Makes the system a pile more efficient, but
admittedly the ECL logic will still gulp great amounts of power and emit great
quantities of heat even so....
Once the PDP-10 emulator is out and available, the real "heart" of the system --
the software -- will once again beat. Although those of us raised on PDP-10
iron love the old bodies (KI10, KL10, and KS10 in my personal experience), it's
the architecture and software that are its heart. Physical CPUs are mere
vessels to contain its essence...
John Francini
[ex-TOPS-10 developer waxing nostalgic for the old days...]
17-Apr-93 01:25:33-MDT,9539;000000000020
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Date: Sat, 17 Apr 93 00:24 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: Massbus to SCSI adapter, and new Massbus drive
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <4DC0D9EA64AF005752@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
X-Envelope-to: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: IN%"tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
Shawn mentioned the need for a Massbus to SCSI adapter. There's a
company in Florida that makes an anything to anything adapter, and they've
put together a Massbus to SCSI version for DEC, which they package with
a read/write optical drive and call the RM06 or RP12. The only problem is
it's VERY expensive. There are two questions I haven't asked yet -- first
is, is it too fast to use with a KS-10, and second is, is there an off-
the-shelf 18 bit version, or only 16 bits. The following info (from Bob
Welzel of DEC, who has very kindly been helping with getting info on the
Alpha and KL microcode for use with our KL-emulator-to-run-on-an-Alpha
project -- I'll post something on this soon) implies that there *would*
be some changes required:
> -The hardware universal controller we talked about is made by
> SETASI, of Hollywood, Florida. The basic device is now
> distributed by DEC, and is called the RM06 ( to replace the
> RP06), and is called RP12 to replace the RP07. To work with
> a DECsystem 10, 20 CPU, it will require a special connector
> block, and some special chip coding. You can contact SETASI,
> at 305-963-1267, and ask for John Jones, or Bud DeFore.
I'm appending the info on the RM06 given me by from our local DEC sales rep.
I haven't really pursued this because an entire Alpha would be cheaper...
One thing that might be interesting to look into is whether one might buy
the interface alone, and plug some other SCSI drive into it.
Patricia Tressel
Locke Computer Center
University of Washington
pat@fisher.hs.washington.edu
pat@uwalocke.bitnet
------------------- DEC sales info on RM06 (long) ------------------------
RM06 INFORMATION SHEET
----------------------
HIGHLIGHTS:
oRemovable Media
oPrice performance
oData integrity and system reliability
oState of art technology with no addition software investment
oFull transparency:can add on or replace!can be relocated!
oSpace and power requirements reduced
OVERVIEW:
The RM06 series is Digital's replacement solution for the RM03,RM05,and RP06
disk drives. The products are designed and manufactured by Setasi , Inc. and
are available for sale and service through Digital.
The RM06 is a universal MASSBUS disk drive packaged as a single drive subsystem.
The product was designed to be a plug compatible replacement for
Digital's existing base of approximately fifteen thousand (15000) removable
media disk subsystems. The types of customers that will be interested in a
replacement solution are the large banks, communication companies and financial
institutions with applications that require high availability and removable
media.
FEATURES:
The RM06 supports full RM03,RM05,or RP06 controller/drive functionality.The
product features are:
oRemovable Media
oSystem transparency to both the operating system and the application.
oIndividual drive emulation
oNearly instant installation and integration, with direct MASSBUS cable
connection.
oAll of the advantages of today's state of the art rewritable, optical
technology, including:
-freedom from head crashes
-long lived media, removable
-superior data integrity
-highly durable removable cartridges
-ISO capacity, compatability and readily available media
-combined reliability of laser optics and magneto-optic
recording
PAGE 2
BENEFITS:
User Configurable: Drive type replacement and unit number is selectable at
an operator level .
Hardware Transparent: 100% plug and play emulation. Can be mixed and matched
with other supported drives on the bus. Number of drives that can be attached
to a bus is limited only by the bus architecture.
Software Transparent: 100% plug and play. Full operation system compatibility,
No software changes.
Power Savings: Power usage is less than 100 watts verses the average drive
being replaced use of 1000 watts
Floor Space Savings (Reference Specifications)
Media Storage Space Savings: The media is similiar in size to a CD, which
replaces two typical rp/rm media packs. ( Reference Specifications)
Simplified Media Management: Media management and transportability becomes
easier and safer because of its size and durability . The rewritable surface is
protected with a special glass coating. This coating, along with an extremely
high coercivity factor, allows for greater reliability during both use and
storage, with retentivity greater than 25 years.
No Head Crashes: Nothing touches the recorded surface. High reliability,
state of the art, laser optical technology provides reduced downtime and
maintenance cost. Cartridge is maintained in a dust proof environment both
during operation and storage.
Performance: Using microprocessor track caching, the performance will meet or
exceed the performance of the existing drive being emulated.
Transportability: Because of the size and weight of the unit and media, both
are easily transportable. The RM06 was also designed so that it can be
plugged into different bus architectures with a simple field upgrade, allowing
it to attach to newer DEC platforms.
PAGE 3
PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS:
Power Requirements: 110VAC @ 1.5Amp
220VAC @ 0.75Amp
Physical Characteristics:
Singe Drive Dimensions: 6"Height x 16"Width x 18"Depth
Weight: 28 Lbs.
Media Dimensions: .5"Height x 5.25"Width x 6"Depth
Weight: 8 Oz.
PRICING/ORDERING:
Part Number Description US CLP
RM06-AA Single Optical Drive, Single Port 20,000
RM06-AB Single Optical Drive, Dual Port 22,500
RM06-CA Dual Port Upgrade 2,500
RM06-DA Media 10 Pack, Certified 2,500
AVAILABILITY:
The Single Optical Unit and media are available now for ordering with lead
times of 30 days.
A quad optical drive unit, rackmountable has also been developed. Production
release will depend on market response for the unit.
SERVICE PRICING:
Part Number Description BMC DSMC Installation
----------- ----------- --- ---- ------------
FS-SET70-TB RM06-AA 110 131 425
FS-SET70-TC RM06-AB 110 131 425
WARRANTY:
1 YEAR RETURN TO FACTORY
PAGE 4
C. QUESTIONS:
What is the actual MB capacity of the drive?
The RM06 product is 640mb , unformatted. When the RM06 is
installed and the personality disk loaded, the drive will
directly replace the existing drive.
Is the host MASSBUS controller (RH11/RH70/RH780) being replaced?
No. The RM06 Unit connects directly to the standard MASSBUS
cables from the host MASSBUS adapter.
What is the reliability/MTBF?
As the RM/RP's get older, their MTBF rates go down because
the drives are reaching their end of life cycle.
Due to the design of this new product, the RM06 starts out with a
much higher MTBF(5X) than the RM/RP product did when it was new.
The design of the new product also uses caching algorithims to read
and write data, which decreases the usage on the mechanical devices
and increases the reliability of the product.
In summary the hardware and software used to create this product,
together provide a highly reliable product in comparison to the
existing RM/RP product that the customer uses today.
This is also reflected by the maintenance charges for the product.
What is the warranty?
One Year Return to Factory
PAGE 5
D. ELECTRICAL CONSUMPTION COMPARISON
PRODUCT KWATT
------- -----
RM06-AA/AB .1KW
RM/RPXX 1KW
EXAMPLE: Customer A has (10) RP06's. On an average, it costs $.10 per
KWATT-Hr which equates to $876/year/drive. The total electrical
cost for customer A is $8760/year.
The RM06 on average costs $87.60/year/drive. The total
electrical cost for Customer A with RM06's is $876/year.
KWATT-Hr rates will vary. This is also based on the drives
being powered up 100% per year.
E. FLOOR SPACE/FOOTPRINT COMPARISON
$ PER SQ $ PER SQ
PRODUCT SQ FT PER FT- CITY FT -RURAL
------- --------- -------- ---------
RM06-XX 2 SQ FT 50 10
RM03/4/5 9 SQ FT
EXAMPLE: Customer A has 10 RP06's each in their own cabinet.
The units are 3'x3' each = 9 square feet per unit.
The total square footage for 10 units is 90.
Using the city calculation, it costing the customer
$4500 per year for those 10 units.
Customer replaces all 10 units with RM06's. RM06's
can be mounted in existing cabinet space on a shelf
or mounted on a table top, 2 high or side by side.
Either way space is greatly reduced depending on
what the customer wants to do.
8-May-93 15:50:01-MDT,3007;000000000020
Mail-From: PANDA created at 8-May-93 15:47:33
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Date: Sat, 8 May 1993 14:44:16 -0800 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
Subject: more KLH10 news
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
Reply-To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Postal: 6158 Lariat Loop NE; Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098
Phone: +1 (206) 842-2385
Message-ID: <12875439996.11.MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
I had an unusual amount of free time last weekend, so I ported the KLH10 to my
Mac PowerBook-100. This was an independent port from Dave Moon's port; Moon
was only concerned with the ITS version and he was developing in MPW C using
native Mac system calls. My port uses THINK C and, modulo the system call to
increase the stack from the puny 4K to 64K, uses the UNIX compatibility
package (in theory, the Mac port could run under UNIX).
The complication was that THINK C uses two-byte ints, and so there were lots of
places where ints were used that should have been a larger type. Also, THINK C
does not do anything reasonable with ``1<<17'' since it won't do any int->long
promotion in this case.......
Anyway, Friday evening, while in my girlfriend's car waiting for a ferry boat,
I got TOPS-20 EDDT to work. It's slow as cold molasses in January, but it
works. I can't describe the thrill of seeing a battery powered device sitting
on my lap running PDP-10 code.
Later on, I got MTBOOT to work. Currently, it's crashing on a RET from SHRSPT
sending it to data. DDT did't work because IBP was broken; BOOT didn't work
because turning on paging was broken. Both were due to int lossage, so I'm
hunting for that old friend.
I don't think the KLH10 will ever be practical on a PowerBook-100 which has a
mere 68000 as its CPU. However, I think other models of PowerBook, which have
68030's, will be alright. I think what I'd like to do is port it to a 486
notebook (what I call a TOIL -- Ten On Intel Laptop).
What sort of interest is there in this community of seeing a TOIL happen? I
think a fair amount of the necessary port (fixing two-byte int problems) is
already in progress. However, I don't have a 486 notebook and my only interest
in having one would be for it to run TOPS-20. Is there enough community
interest to chip in funds to buy a 486 notebook for me to do this port (plus,
I think, there should be some kickback to KLH for originally writing it)?
Another unsolved problem is what's DEC's position on TOPS-10/20 software. They
still own it. It'd be nice if they put it in the public domain, or made it
freeware ala Athena software.
I don't think that TOIL will be useful in a data center application. It'd be
best as a PDP-10 PC. There's another project starting up for a PDP-10 emulator
on Alpha that hopefully will end up giving us a faster KL (and still on DEC
iron!) than a real KL.....
-------
9-May-93 10:00:51-MDT,1467;000000000020
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Date: Sun, 9 May 93 18:00:29 MET DST
From: Per Eriksson <perixon@dsv.su.se>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
Subject: Re: more KLH10 news
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 8 May 1993 14:44:16 -0800 (PDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.4.736963229.perixon@mars>
> What sort of interest is there in this community of seeing a TOIL happen? I
> think a fair amount of the necessary port (fixing two-byte int problems) is
> already in progress. However, I don't have a 486 notebook and my only interest
> in having one would be for it to run TOPS-20. Is there enough community
> interest to chip in funds to buy a 486 notebook for me to do this port (plus,
> I think, there should be some kickback to KLH for originally writing it)?
>
How about starting with a ordinary 486 since notebooks are rather expensive?
> Another unsolved problem is what's DEC's position on TOPS-10/20 software. They
> still own it. It'd be nice if they put it in the public domain, or made it
> freeware ala Athena software.
>
Has DEC made any official respons to the emulators and the use of their code
yet? And any respons from (more or less) commerical people who want to run
T10/T20 in the future?
10-May-93 10:18:01-MDT,1490;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 12:16:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Aaron Wohl <aw0g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil, Mark Crispin <MRC@panda.com>
Subject: Re: more KLH10 news
Cc:
In-Reply-To: <12875439996.11.MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
Mark,
Think C has an option for 4 byte ints. Check Edit/Options.../Compiler
Setttings/4-Byte ints. This for Think C5.0x. I used it to port GNU
diff and some other unix stuff that assumes sizeof(void*)==sizeof(int)==4
Aaron
Aaron Wohl / ham callsign N3LIW / 412-731-6159 / 412-268-5032
10-May-93 12:27:44-MDT,1375;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 11:21:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: Re: more KLH10 news
To: Aaron Wohl <aw0g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Cc: TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
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Aaron (and everyone else telling me about THINK C's 4-byte int switch):
Yes, I know about it. I had tried that long ago when I first ported c-client
to the Mac. The problem is, the C libraries (and in particular ANSI and unix)
use 2-byte ints. You get some truly amazing lossage due to that.
I would like to hunt down the cretin who thought it would be ``efficient'' to
have only two bytes on the stack instead of four, and torture him to the
eternal damnation of debugging all the lossage he caused.
10-May-93 18:11:55-MDT,3591;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 10 May 93 17:10 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <3B2176689BBF00954B@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
X-Envelope-to: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: IN%"tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
Per Eriksson writes:
> Has DEC made any official respons to the emulators and the use of their code
> yet? And any respons from (more or less) commerical people who want to run
> T10/T20 in the future?
DEC is actively encouraging the emulators. They know about KLH and the
Alpha KL (and also about XKL). Reason they're doing this is that DEC Field
Service is running out of spare parts for KLs. Their main way of handling
this has been to try to identify sites that are planning on getting rid of
their KLs, and acquiring those machines as spares. **DON'T LET ANY MORE
KLs GET SCRAPPED! AT LEAST LET DEC HAVE THEM.** Being parted out is
better than being melted down, or tossed on a landfill to rust. If you
have a -10 that's being decommissioned, and you haven't found someone
who actually wants to *run* it, contact DEC Field Service, or, if your
local FS office doesn't know about this program, contact Bob Welzel, who's
in charge of it. His e-mail address is welzel@nyem1.enet.dec.com. They
probably want KSs too.
Anyhow, Bob happened to overhear me talking about the plan for writing an
emulator to run on an Alpha at fall Decus last year, and he thought that
running on an emulator could provide a transition path for sites that can
no longer maintain their KLs, while they move their applications to another
platform. (Of course, I think that they should, for preference, never
get rid of their KLs, or failing that, at least keep running TOPS-10/20
on *something*...) I've given Bob a list of all the "alternative -10"
options (KLH, XKL, Systems Concepts, Compuserve, Alpha KL), and I know
that someone working with Bob has been in contact with Ken regarding KLH.
Of these options, KLH, Systems Concepts (SC-10, SC-30, etc.), and Compuserve
are up and running. I haven't heard how far along XKL is, but they were
planning on having something ready in the first half of this year (can
anyone give a status report?). The Alpha KL is vaporware. But we *are*
going to do it, and we're still aiming for the end of this year. (I'll
post more info later.)
Actually there's another option to add to this list -- I just heard about
another -10 timesharing service besides Compuserve. It's a company in the
Toronto area called Bryker Data Systems (120 Commerce Valley Drive East,
Thornhill, Ontario, L3T 7R2, Canada; phone # (416)882-6161). If I remember
correctly, they have a significant collection of KLs. Unfortunately,
I neglected to ask whether they were running TOPS-10 or -20 or both.
(Mark -- did they contact you? I may have scared them off from posting
on this list by warning them that advertising wasn't appropriate.) Hmmm...
I wonder if they're in the market for more KLs...
Patricia Tressel
Locke Computer Center
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
(206)543-9275
pat@fisher.hs.washington.edu
pat@uwalocke.bitnet
11-May-93 04:45:48-MDT,1946;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 12:45:23 MET DST
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: Aaron Wohl <aw0g+@andrew.cmu.edu>, TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: more KLH10 news
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 10 May 1993 11:21:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.737117123.bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
>Aaron (and everyone else telling me about THINK C's 4-byte int switch):
>
>Yes, I know about it. I had tried that long ago when I first ported c-client
>to the Mac. The problem is, the C libraries (and in particular ANSI and unix)
>use 2-byte ints. You get some truly amazing lossage due to that.
>
>I would like to hunt down the cretin who thought it would be ``efficient'' to
>have only two bytes on the stack instead of four, and torture him to the
>eternal damnation of debugging all the lossage he caused.
I think I'll stick my neck out on a side note to this. No special
flamage to MRC...
I'd like to condemn all those cretins who think that in INT is 4 bytes
to eternal hell. Very many funny things happens when I take such
programs to my 2.11BSD system, and tries to compile them.
The is no guarantee whatsoever that an INT is any particular size!
If you want 4-byte integers, use LONG dammit!
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
CS student at Uppsala University || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
11-May-93 04:53:58-MDT,1801;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 11 May 1993 06:52:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Aaron Wohl <aw0g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@panda.com>
Subject: Re: more KLH10 news (think c)
Cc: TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
In-Reply-To: <MailManager.737058075.260.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
References: <MailManager.737058075.260.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Mark,
On the ANSI lib (and oops if you use it): Copy them to ANSI-I4 and
oops-I4 then change the settings to int 4 for both of them and remove
the objects and rebuild. Think supplies the all the sources to rebuild
both libs. Then change your project to use the rebuilt libs. I use the
ansi lib compiled with 4 byte ints no problem (for gnu diff). At the
same time if data space is running low (you only get 32K of globals) you
might want to check the far data checkbox for your app and libs also.
The port I did of gnu diff is in akutaktak.andrew.cmu.edu [128.2.35.1]
/aw0g/gdiff*. I did a fake unix library that emulates some of the unix
directory libraries that might be usefull.
Aaron
11-May-93 10:25:43-MDT,1036;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 11 May 93 12:18:02 -0400
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From: John Wroclawski <jtw@lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: jtw@mercury.lcs.mit.edu
To: MRC@panda.com
Cc: TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
In-Reply-To: Mark Crispin's message of Mon, 10 May 1993 11:21:15 -0700 (PDT) <MailManager.737058075.260.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: more KLH10 news
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@panda.com>
Aaron (and everyone else telling me about THINK C's 4-byte int switch):
Yes, I know about it. I had tried that long ago when I first ported
c-client to the Mac. The problem is, the C libraries (and in
particular ANSI and unix) use 2-byte ints.
Unless of course you recompile the libraries using the source they
thoughtfully gave you for exactly this reason..
11-May-93 17:08:59-MDT,1226;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 12 May 1993 00:38:44 +0300 (MET-DST)
From: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: Re: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
To: PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-ID: <737156324.640000.DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
In-Reply-To: <3B2176689BBF00954B@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
BRYKER is a very big 20 site. I actually saw their 2 KS-10s that
they got started with a few months back near the back door (they were
headed for the scrap heap.....). BRYKER runs TOPS20, mostly 1022
applications for big banks and the Canadian governmnet.
Theyu also run SC20's (a version of the SC30 with fewer channels...).
They also run KLs, with the SC RH20 adapter.
I must warn everyone however, all these machines are painted VAX
blue so that any tour group thinks they are looking at VAXen.....
I would also like to second the ALPHA port, nothing would make me
happier than in 2010 having someone ask me what TOPS20.FORNAX.COM
is.....
/joe
12-May-93 09:09:05-MDT,1069;000000000020
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From: Home is where the heart is... 12-May-1993 1108 -0400 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
If they're painted "VAX blue" and haven't been RE-painted, then they're actually
DECsystem-1091s running the Orange operating system (TOPS-20) instead of the
Blue one (TOPS-10) they were painted for. Now if only they were highboy
1090-style cabinets, then you'd have something... :-)
John Francini
Ex-TOPS-10 developer
Digital Equipment Corporation
12-May-93 20:08:54-MDT,326;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 12 May 93 20:42 EDT
From: JERRY WEINER BBN 617-873-3242 <JWEINER@ccr2.bbn.com>
Subject: DEAUNA TOPS 20 BUGCHK info
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: @TOPS
12-May-93 20:08:57-MDT,2390;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 12 May 93 20:49 EDT
From: JERRY WEINER BBN 617-873-3242 <JWEINER@ccr2.bbn.com>
Subject: TOPS BUGCHK DEAUNA
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: @TOPS
Folks,
Help me to remember how to convert the STRCOD given in the DEAUNA BUGCHK
back to the name of structure that it happened on. I used to know how to track
it down. The only thing I remember is that the code is only valid while the
system is up. After a reboot the STRCOD will probably be different for the same
disk.
Below is the description of the DEUAN from BUGS.MAC and a sample BUGHCK
from Spear.
Thanx,
Jerry
BUG.(CHK,DEAUNA,DSKALC,SOFT,<DEDSK - Deassigning unassigned disk address>,<<T1,STRCOD>,<T2,SECTOR>>,<
Cause: The disk address being deassigned was never assigned.
Data: STRCOD - Structure Unique Code
SECTOR - Sector Number on Disk Relative to Start of Structure
>,,<DB%NND>)
***********************************************************************
TOPS-20 BUGHLT-BUGCHK
Logged on Sat 8 May 93 08:16:52 Monitor uptime was 0:03:03
Detected on system # 2375.
Record sequence number: 28042.
************************************************************************
Error information:
Date/Time of error: Sat 8 May 93 08:16:49
Errors since reload: 6.
Fork # & Job #: 21,101
User's logged in dir: OPR0
Program name:
Error: BUGCHK
Address of error: 1630217
Name: DEAUNA
Description: DEDSK - Deassigning unassigned disk address
CONI APR: 007740,,000003 =
No error bits detected
CONI PAG: 000000,,660161
DATAI PAG: 700100,,003555
Contents of ACs:
0: 000000,,000000
1: 000000,,540001
2: 000010,,437132
3: 000000,,000000
4: 000000,,000002
5: 000000,,000000
6: 000000,,004551
7: 000000,,000021
10: 701200,,410000
11: 000000,,000170
12: 000000,,610616
13: 000001,,610616
14: 000000,,000000
15: 777456,,375455
16: 777777,,777775
17: 777465,,375464
PI status: 000000,,000177
Additional data items: 2
000000,,540001
000010,,437132
ERA: 602000,,035200 = word #3 Memory read
Base phyiscal memory
address at failure: 35200
***********************************************
13-May-93 07:07:29-MDT,1521;000000000020
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From: yipe::gscott%satire.enet@zk3.dec.com (is it me? 13-May-1993 0858)
To: PEANO::owner-tops-20-dec%SATIRE.enet@zk3.dec.com
Cc: GSCOTT@peano.zk3.dec.com
Subject: RE: TOPS BUGCHK DEAUNA
Resent-To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Resent-Full-Name: Spider Boardman - 381-0448 - USG
Resent-Date: Thu, 13 May 93 09:06:30 -0400
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Jerry,
You want the offset from the start of STRTAB. Zero is PS, all other structures
follow. The easiest way to do this is to do an INFO AVAIL then count down the
mounted disks after PS in OCTAL. You can also use FILDDT to look at the
running monitor and find the structure name in SIXBIT.
Greg
13-May-93 07:50:22-MDT,1724;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 08:39:36 -0500
From: "Mark H. Wood" <IMHW400@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU>
Subject: Re: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Cc: "Mark H. Wood" <IMHW400@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU>
Message-id: <01GY4D04C79400208H@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU>
Organization: Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis
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VAX 11/78x were blue on top like 10s. VAX 8xxx and 6xxx were dark gray on top.
VAX 7000-xxx and 10000-xxx have flat grilles instead of top skins, so they are
solid cream colored, as were VAX 11/750s, /730s, and /725s. What's "VAX blue"?
I remember visiting the Bedford training center machine room and being told
that, that day, the blue machine was running TOPS-20 and the orange machine
TOPS-10. We ran both on one of our pair of (orange) 2060s.
(Did you notice that the d i g i t a l logo has changed from "digital blue"
to brick red? At least, that's the way it comes across my TV after the Nightly
Business Report. Not quite "Chinese red", alas....)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
Internet: IMHW400@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU BITNET: IMHW400@INDYVAX
Should the Irish Rovers do a song about _The Orange and the Blue_?
13-May-93 08:45:15-MDT,1094;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 16:13:10 +0300 (MET-DST)
From: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: Re: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
To: francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-ID: <737298790.90000.DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
In-Reply-To: <9305121506.AA13902@us1rmc.bb.dec.com>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Yes, 1091s running TOPS10 were painted blue (I believe it was called
"blasi blue").
BRYKER takes this painting business very seriously. They really
don't want any reference to the pedigree of the systems (I think
they run about 18 KLs). The paint covers any mention of
DECSYSTEM/DECsystem and they add a new name strip that just says
Digital Equipment Corporation. And I must say that the computer
room looks just like a bunch of hybrid 780s.
All of BRYKER's KLs are 2065s in FCC cabs too.
/joe
13-May-93 09:03:24-MDT,1724;000000000020
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From: Home is where the heart is... 13-May-1993 1103 -0400 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: BRYKER paint job....
From: NARFVX::NMAIL-DAEMON 13-MAY-1993 11:01:10.23
To: FRANCINI
CC:
Subj: Report on failed mail
Errors were detected when processing your mail message
which was entered at 13-MAY-1993 11:00
From: FRANCINI
To: US1RMC::"DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM"
CC: us1rmc::"tops-20.wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
Subj: RE: BRYKER paint job....
----------------
The following error message was returned whilst sending to
address US1RMC::"tops-20.wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
%MAIL11D-E-FATAL: cannot send mail to "tops-20.wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
550 <tops-20.wsmr-simtel20.army.mil>... User unknown
This is a hard error.
No more attempts to send to this address will be made.
----------------
The text of your failed mail message follows:
>They really don't want any reference to the pedigree of the systems (I think
>they run about 18 KLs).
Why? Do they run both TOPS-10 and TOPS-20? Sounds like someone there has an
appearance fetish (and no sense of history)...
Oh well, chacun a son gout...
John
13-May-93 14:38:27-MDT,1552;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 13 May 93 16:38:00 -0400
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From: francini%narfvx.enet@zk3.dec.com (Home is where the heart is... 13-May-1993 1636 -0400)
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: DEC and emulators (was RE: more KLH10 news)
The new digital logo's color is actually _burgundy_ (sort of a darkish pink).
There's a specific Pantone color that corresponds to it, but it escapes me at
this point. "Process blue", the old logo color, is officially history. Also
examine the letters -- they've been slightly modified "to enhance readability"
-- the dots over the i's are round, and the rest of the letters have subtle
changes. The blocks have also been moved together slightly.
This week's Business Week contains a Digital ad featuring the new logo.
Also: the logo is no longer a stencil. In the past, the letters were colored
the same as whatever the logo was placed upon. (So, on a DEC-20, the blocks were
white with orange letters). No more. The blocks are always burgundy when
reproduced in color (black otherwise), and the letters themselves are always
white.
John
13-May-93 14:49:50-MDT,964;000000000020
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From: Home is where the heart is... 13-May-1993 1649 -0400 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: BRYKER paint job....
>They really don't want any reference to the pedigree of the systems (I think
>they run about 18 KLs).
Why? Do they run both TOPS-10 and TOPS-20? Sounds like someone there has an
appearance fetish (and no sense of history)...
Oh well, chacun a son gout...
John
14-May-93 12:10:51-MDT,1184;000000000020
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From: Aron Insinga ZK2-1/Q18 1N24 dtn 381-1928 14-May-1993 1014 <insinga@tle.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Cc: insinga@tle.enet.dec.com
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: BRYKER paint job....
>Sounds like someone there has an appearance fetish (and no sense of history)...
Well, they aren't the only ones concerned with appearances. Many times in the
past DEC has delivered specially-painted systems to OEMs and there is (or was?)
a large display of custom front panels in the silk screen shop in the Mill.
And then there was the machine with the special "stars and stripes" paint job
that we did (for some advertisement if not for some customer).
- Aron Insinga
(developer of the KS10 DPM module microdiagnostic, in a former life)
14-May-93 19:51:09-MDT,3045;000000000020
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1993 03:51:10 +0300 (MET-DST)
From: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: PDP-10 emulator.
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Message-ID: <737427070.690000.DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
I would like to update the list on a recent conversation I had with
Bob Welzel (WELZEL@NYEM1.ENET.DEC.COM) from DEC. He lives in 3
offices, Piscataway NJ, Cherry Hill NJ and Marlboro MA (definitely
new DEC....).
Bob's is trying to wind down the 36 bit world, in addition to other
unnamed tasks, in some orderly manner. He does not seem to care
about spare parts.... He works in some marketing type job and
reports to Rose Ann Giordano (didn't she do LCG a while back?).
He made a passing reference to the PDP-10 ALPHA emulator, and to
the fact that he hoped to assemble some collection of needing LCG
customers and do the project with some possible internal funding
from DEC.
Taking a somewhat risky position (without checking with you all) I
stated the following:
1. The "consortium" idea is a bad one. It will take forever
and probably end up like most overly aggressive DEC LCG
engineering efforts.
2. I stated that there is a loosely knit international
group of old LCG types that could complete the project
quicker than any rational (sic) DEC engineering manager
could ever hope to do internally.
3. The problem with the whole PDP-10 emulator effort to
date is that no one will commit to throwing serious
effort at the project because of the overly litigious
recent past history of DEC, i.e. because everyone was
worried that if they started running TOPS-20 on a
fast RISC system they would be sued by DEC.
Since Bob seems on the surface to be a rare bird at DEC; that being
someone very knowledgeable about the problem we were discussing (he
seems to know definitely the difference between a orange and blue
1091....) and willing to stake out a position and get it
implemented, I suggested the following:
1. A real PDP-10 emulator will appear as soon as DEC puts
all the LCG source code in the public domain. This, I
stated, would actually be good PR in positioning the "new"
DEC in a positive light and could be done at a bargain
basement price....
2. What better technical endorsement of the ALPHA than having
it run as a 2X speed KL (this was stated previously by
someone....), and if it happens quickly, another boost for
the ALPHA PR machine.
3. The whole idea smacks of competence, boldness and all the
things which made DEC great, but which have been obscured
lately.
Bob got off the phone to go get this done. Time will tell....
/joe
17-May-93 09:34:19-MDT,1134;000000000020
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From: Aron Insinga ZK2-1/Q18 1N24 dtn 381-1928 <insinga@tle.enet.dec.com>
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: BRYKER paint job....
>Sounds like someone there has an appearance fetish (and no sense of history)...
Well, they aren't the only ones concerned with appearances. Many times in the
past DEC has delivered specially-painted systems to OEMs and there is (or was?)
a large display of custom front panels in the silk screen shop in the Mill.
And then there was the machine with the special "stars and stripes" paint job
that we did (for some advertisement if not for some customer).
- Aron Insinga
(developer of the KS10 DPM module microdiagnostic, in a former life)
17-May-93 09:38:20-MDT,638;000000000020
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From: johan@Knase.Update.UU.SE (Johan Carlstedt)
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To: TOPS20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
subscribe tops20 Johan Carlstedt
17-May-93 09:42:51-MDT,2005;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 02:30:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: 10 Years Ago Today -- we get the last laugh
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
Message-Id: <MailManager.737631008.5908.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
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On May 17, 1983 at 2PM EDT, Ken Olson decided to cancel Project Jupiter and
not build any more 36-bit computers. ``36 bits are dead, VAX forever! One OS
for all DEC hardware!'', the pundits proclaimed. The VMS crowd chortled with
glee that they would no longer have to deal with unfavorable comparisons
between their environment and TOPS-20. ``VAX jealousy'', it was called.
Well, it is now 1993. VAX is dying. DEC is now supporting four different
operating systems, but nobody spends much time thinking about VMS. Ken Olson
is no longer CEO of DEC.
We're still here, and there is still 36-bit iron running in the world. I have
two operational KS10's. One of them, Yuuyuu, runs around the clock and is
ticking off TOPS-20 cycles now down in my first-floor computer room. With any
luck, it will see the century tick.
Not only that, we're growing.
A KS10 emulator that runs TOPS-20 has appeared for UNIX systems. I've gotten
it as far as running EDDT on a Mac PowerBook. There's talk of a full KL10
emulator for the Alpha. XKL should be announcing their new 36-bit hardware
any day now.
``TOPS-20: A Great Improvement Over Its Successors''
17-May-93 22:48:21-MDT,7116;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 17 May 93 21:48 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: PDP-10 emulator.
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <357A9449F36F006D4E@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
X-Envelope-to: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: IN%"tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
Joe Dempster writes:
> I would like to update the list on a recent conversation I had with
> Bob Welzel (WELZEL@NYEM1.ENET.DEC.COM) from DEC. He lives in 3
> offices, Piscataway NJ, Cherry Hill NJ and Marlboro MA (definitely
> new DEC....).
>
> Bob's is trying to wind down the 36 bit world, in addition to other
> unnamed tasks, in some orderly manner. He does not seem to care
> about spare parts.... He works in some marketing type job and
> reports to Rose Ann Giordano (didn't she do LCG a while back?).
As of fall Decus, Bob wanted not spare parts, but whole, working systems.
His idea was to identify -10 sites that could be easily moved off of
their -10s to some other platform (preferably another *DEC* platform),
and then acquire their -10 for Field Service. I'd guess that there is
probably no purchase involved, but rather a trade-in credit.
> He made a passing reference to the PDP-10 ALPHA emulator, and to
> the fact that he hoped to assemble some collection of needing LCG
> customers and do the project with some possible internal funding
> from DEC.
We're not being paid -- that would complicate matters horribly.
The majority of the folks working on the Alpha KL are employees of the
University of Washington, i.e. Washington state civil service, and
using state property or facilities for personal gain is a severe No-No.
So if we got paid, we couldn't sit in our offices to work on the thing,
couldn't use our e-mail addresses, etc.
However, DEC *is* doing a lot of stuff internally that costs them personnel
time. They've hunted up and sent to us the KL microcode source, and Bob is
trying to find someone with time to answer Alpha questions. Bob has
comissioned both a customer survey, and a feasibility study. So this *is*
costing DEC something.
> 1. The "consortium" idea is a bad one. It will take forever
> and probably end up like most overly aggressive DEC LCG
> engineering efforts.
I think perhaps you misunderstood Bob. Are you refering to the "collection
of...customers"? This is a survey of a small number of very different
sites, to find out what they need in an emulator. I'm very pleased that
they're doing this. Knowing what the users need is (obviously) fundamental
to turning out a satisfactory product.
> 2. I stated that there is a loosely knit international
> group of old LCG types that could complete the project
> quicker than any rational (sic) DEC engineering manager
> could ever hope to do internally.
In the words of Foghorn Leghorn (approximately), "Wait just a doggone
minute there!" Hey. This was *my* idea, and I have first dibs on it.
Yes, I can imagine it sounds like a fun thing to do, but etiquette demands
that others wait to see whether we *don't* do it before taking it away
from us.
That said, I must add that I welcome kibitzing. There is a mailing list,
that will be both a discussion list and a working list -- subscribers will
get to comment on stuff as it happens. As I said before, I'll post our
prospectus as soon as it's ready -- subscription info will be in there.
> 3. The problem with the whole PDP-10 emulator effort to
> date is that no one will commit to throwing serious
> effort at the project because of the overly litigious
> recent past history of DEC, i.e. because everyone was
> worried that if they started running TOPS-20 on a
> fast RISC system they would be sued by DEC.
They're not behaving that way at all that I've encountered.
> 1. A real PDP-10 emulator will appear as soon as DEC puts
> all the LCG source code in the public domain. This, I
> stated, would actually be good PR in positioning the "new"
> DEC in a positive light and could be done at a bargain
> basement price....
Ehem. There is a good, *working* -10 emulator, namely KLH-10. It would
even run on the Alpha under OSF/1 with, most likely, little additional work.
Ken based it on the -10 specification in the Processor Reference Manual,
which is already out there and available.
DEC has valid reasons for hesitating to release *some* LCG code, which is
that some of it ovelaps with current VMS code, in particular, RMS is a
shared product. Us TOPS-10 sites (anyone know a good emoticon for a smug
grin?), of course, always had sources (modulo things like RMS). But it
*would* be nice to have TOPS-20 sources made public. Perhaps DEC might
retain some flavor of copyright, while allowing anyone to use it.
> 2. What better technical endorsement of the ALPHA than having
> it run as a 2X speed KL (this was stated previously by
> someone....), and if it happens quickly, another boost for
> the ALPHA PR machine.
We're waiting for one main thing -- Macro-64 documentation. Our DEC sales
rep is furiously busy processing all of the UW's end-of-the-biennium requests,
and hasn't gotten back to us on this yet. And I'm just finishing up another
large project of the "yesterday would be nice" variety, so until that's done
my time is limited. (It's another fun one -- a package for VMS and Unix that
allows a user to perform their own file restores from backup tapes. We have
35,000 students and about as many staff, and dozens of large machines, so
having human staff handling file restore requests is unreasonable, and leads
to delays of days to never. Anyhow, this package lets the user browse through
the files they've got saved on any of our backup tapes without actually
mounting the tapes, and select the ones they want, then it fires off a script
with commands to do the actual restores. Our Unix systems do their backups
on a beeg tape archive robot, so in that case, the operators don't even need
to mount tapes. If you've seen VMRESTORE, it's rather like that. Coming
soon to a Decus tape near you. Sorry, couldn't resist talking about it.)
Since the Alpha KL prospectus isn't ready, I'll just mention one thing
that I didn't in previous postings, namely who-all is working on it:
People who are actually doing coding are: myself, Bruce Edwards, Ted
Holzman, and Dave Fetrow, all of the UW, and Ned Freed of Innosoft
International. Official Kibitzers are: Ken Harrenstien and Mark Crispin,
neither of whom need any introduction.
-- Patricia Tressel
pat@fisher.hs.washington.edu
pat@uwalocke.bitnet
18-May-93 11:24:56-MDT,2885;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 18 May 93 10:23:57 PDT
From: Rich Alderson <alderson@last-call.cisco.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: PDP-10 emulator.
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 17 May 93 21:48 PST
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.737745837.alderson@last-call.cisco.com>
Pat Tressel writes:
>DEC has valid reasons for hesitating to release *some* LCG code, which is that
>some of it ovelaps with current VMS code, in particular, RMS is a shared
>product. Us TOPS-10 sites (anyone know a good emoticon for a smug grin?), of
>course, always had sources (modulo things like RMS). But it *would* be nice
>to have TOPS-20 sources made public. Perhaps DEC might retain some flavor of
>copyright, while allowing anyone to use it.
A while back, I chaired a DECUS working group under the Site, Management, and
Training SIG, the Mature Products WG. This was in a certain sense a residue of
the Large Systems SIG, blessed by the former officers of same and sponsoring
the 36-bit Q&A and Tops-10/Tops-20 Updates for several symposia after LS went
the way of the Jupiter.
Dave Braithwaite and Linda Feldeisen worked with us closely, to take our
concerns and suggestions regarding the 36-bit product line back to DEC. In
addition, we received cooperation from some of the 12- and 16-bit groups, who
felt that the time was coming when their favourite platforms would meet the
same fate, or that such time had already come.
One of the suggestions we sent to DEC was precisely this; the answer that came
back was that their legal types wouldn't allow it because of liability issues:
Even if DEC explicitly disclaimed any further work on the 36-bit systems, they
could be sued because they were the ultimate source for them.
Another issue was that (some form of) TGHA was in use on VMS as well as the
36-bit systems--a much more closely guarded secret than RMS. With the decline
in fortunes of the VAX groups, though, that may not be quite so difficult a
sell.
Unfortunately, my own involvement with DECUS was cut short by the financial
problems of my then employer, Stanford. The group continued for at least one
more symposium after I was forced to bow out, but may have disappeared by now.
Certainly, the folks who ran the group at the time I was active have moved on
to other activities within DECUS.
Still, it might be worth while checking with some of the SiteSIG folks, and
Dave Braithwaite, and maybe Clive Dawson, to see if anyone carried on further
after I left.
Rich Alderson
P. S. I was the systems manager for the first installation of a Systems
Concepts SC-30M, should anyone wonder about my bona fides.
18-May-93 14:07:54-MDT,5029;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 22:07:37 +0300 (MET-DST)
From: Joe Dempster <DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: ALPHA-KL
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-ID: <737752057.970000.DEMPSTER@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Pat Tressel writes in response to my original posting:
>As of fall Decus, Bob wanted not spare parts, but whole, working systems.
>His idea was to identify -10 sites that could be easily moved off of
>their -10s to some other platform (preferably another *DEC* platform),
>and then acquire their -10 for Field Service. I'd guess that there is
>probably no purchase involved, but rather a trade-in credit.
It seems like we are splitting hairs here. Spare parts in the PDP-10
world come from whole systems.
>We're not being paid -- that would complicate matters horribly.
I never imagined that *anyone* involved in this effort outside of DEC
would receive any funding from them. What I did allude to was that
if DEC tries to do this in any way internally (which you mention they
have already spent some internal money on the project already), considering
the cash crunch they are in, the project risks being canceled at any
time.
>I think perhaps you misunderstood Bob. Are you referring to the "collection
>of...customers"? This is a survey of a small number of very different
>sites, to find out what they need in an emulator. I'm very pleased that
>they're doing this. Knowing what the users need is (obviously) fundamental
>to turning out a satisfactory product.
I firmly believe that the people capable of technically pulling off this
project, in addition to those distinguished individuals you reference,
will do this project:
1. Because there is a firm deliverable. In this day and
age in the computer industry a firm deliverable of
significant importance, which is capable of being
delivered by a small group of people, is rare indeed.
2. They will have something to personally use.
I think the commercial users will only come much later, after the
technology has been proven, which might be considerably after the
XKL machine ships if we don't start things rolling quickly.
>In the words of Foghorn Leghorn (approximately), "Wait just a doggone
>minute there!" Hey. This was *my* idea, and I have first dibs on it.
>Yes, I can imagine it sounds like a fun thing to do, but etiquette demands
>that others wait to see whether we *don't* do it before taking it away
>from us.
This is not a particularly new or untalked about undertaking. What is new
is the opportunity to exploit some third party (DEC) who in my opinion must
be feeling a bit guilty in hindsight for what they did 10 years ago
this month to a perfectly great computer architecture. All they need
to do is throw a few (<10) ALPHA desktop systems at the problem and
the result will speak well of them.
If indeed this project is hosted out of UW, I would hope that all the
source and planning docs would be open for anyone to comment on, use and
contribute to from day 1.
>DEC has valid reasons for hesitating to release *some* LCG code, which is
>that some of it overlaps with current VMS code, in particular, RMS is a
>shared product.
I would hesitate to imagine the commercial viability of a new startup,
building a new operating system, on even available RISC/CISC systems
today, which would even consider implementing a RMS clone file system.
>We're waiting for one main thing -- Macro-64 documentation. Our DEC sales
>rep is furiously busy processing all of the UW's end-of-the-biennium
>requests, and hasn't gotten back to us on this yet.
I don't think someone at the level of a DEC sales rep is where the
timely success or of failure of a project such as this should rest.
>And I'm just finishing up another large project of the "yesterday
>would be nice" variety, so until that's done my time is limited.
>(It's another fun one -- a package for VMS and Unix that allows a
>user to perform their own file restores from backup tapes....
The ALPHA-KL is probably a project which cannot stand the test of
other more important projects.
Speaking from personal experience, the PDP-10 history project was
sunk, or hit a buoy and lost the race...., due to some prime
contributor/organizer at Stanford suddenly deciding he was the
only one the U.S. who could go off and write a new set of
bike racing rules. In hindsight my bench should have been much
deeper. However, once this lesson was learned the fire was no
longer hot enough to rekindle.
I am committed to throwing some of our corporate resources at this
project to see that it gets done. But, we need a plan and quickly.
/joe
Ex LCG Salesman
Ex DEC University Sales Exec.
President, Fornax Computer
18-May-93 18:25:18-MDT,2274;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 18 May 93 17:24 PST
From: Pat Tressel <PAT@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
Subject: DEC-10/20 spare parts
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Message-id: <34D633546D0F006E4E@fisher.hs.washington.edu>
X-Envelope-to: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
X-VMS-To: IN%"tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil"
I'm wrong about DEC needing more spare parts -- looks like they're winding
down their support, as we've long been warned about (sigh). (This seems to be
a change since last December -- not needing spare parts, I mean.) I haven't
yet heard any changes in the policy that allows local DEC Field Service
offices to offer DEC-10/20 support individually, but now's the time to verify
this with your local offices if you're depending on it. Oh, yes...we got a
call just about a week ago from a local Seattle company that offers DEC-10
service -- there will probably be more such alternatives springing up.
(I don't have the company name -- I'll post it later just in case anyone
is interested.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 May 93 22:46:01 -0700
From: "BOB WELZEL @KYO" <welzel.bob@a1.nyem1.pco.MTS.dec.com>
Subject: DECsystem spare parts. 1
Pat;------
As you know, DEC, will, for practical purposes discontinue
offering service for the DECsystem-10,20 family this December.
With this ramp-down of service on these products, we will no
longer need our inventory of spare parts, and are making them
available for sale. If you know of anyone interested in obtaining
DECsystem-10/20 spares, please ask them to contact our program
manager;--
Lianne Deranian
DEC, Merrimack, N.H. ( @MKO )
Phone 603-884-4267
Thanks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have an e-mail address for Lianne Deranian that I know works, but
you might try:
"lianne deranian"@mko.MTS.dec.com
-- Pat Tressel
19-May-93 07:47:23-MDT,1042;000000000020
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From: Alan H. Martin 19-May-1993 0951 <amartin@tle.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Cc: amartin@tle.enet.dec.com
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: PDP-10 emulator.
Perhaps someone at Digital needs to ask for a better legal opinion.
>Another issue was that (some form of) TGHA was in use on VMS as well as the
>36-bit systems--a much more closely guarded secret than RMS. With the decline
>in fortunes of the VAX groups, though, that may not be quite so difficult a
>sell.
This is the first time I've heard the notion that memory diagnostics were a
crucial feature of a PDP-10 simulator.
/AHM
20-May-93 01:34:07-MDT,1424;000000000020
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From: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Message-Id: <9305200733.AA18031@tardis.tymnet.com>
Subject: Re: TGHA
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 0:33:54 PDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
> From: Rich Alderson <alderson@last-call.cisco.com>
>
> Another issue was that (some form of) TGHA was in use on VMS as well as the
> 36-bit systems--a much more closely guarded secret than RMS. With the
> decline in fortunes of the VAX groups, though, that may not be quite so
> difficult a sell.
Ah, yes, The Great Heuristic Algorithm for substuting a replacement bit in for
a failed column of bits in MOS memory. The Colorado School of Mines had the
first KL-1091 to be shipped to Colorado, and its delivery was delayed due
to DEC having problems with their memory diagnostics. We had the only
KL with MOS memory in the Denver area for a while, and had problems with
Field Circus due to that.
--
Joe Smith (408)922-6220 BTNA GNS Major Programs, TYMNET Operations
<jms@tardis.tymnet.com> PO Box 49019, MS-C51, San Jose, CA 95161-9019
20-May-93 07:10:05-MDT,2343;000000000020
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From: is it me? 20-May-1993 0846 <gscott@yipe.enet.dec.com>
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Cc: gscott@yipe.enet.dec.com
Apparently-To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: RE: PDP-10 emulator.
I have noticed two misconceptions about TOPS-20 software I'd like to clear up.
First of all TGHA isn't needed to run TOPS-20, unless you want to simulate
36 bit semiconductor memory single or double bit errors. TGHA was owned by
the 36 bit diagnostic group and was not sutiable for running under 32 bit
systems (although some ideas in TGHA have have appeared in other operating
systems).
RMS-10 and RMS-20 are total rewrites. The RMS-10 was rather limited in
capabilties. RMS-20 was farily close to VAX RMS, except for some of the
lesser used features. RMS-20 was huge and the working versions ran in
their own section in order to leave some room for the calling program :-)
In any case none of the source is shared between 36 bit RMS and any other
RMS.
IMHO, in order to make the KLH-10 viable to the greatest number of customers it
really needs to support at the minimum
KL10 style memory management
Large disks
Full access to Ethernet (NIA20 emulation for IP, DECnet IV, LAT)
Access to larger disks and ethernet doesn't imply that the hardware has to be
emulated; a simple device driver could take the place of the "real" code for
speed of implementation and execution.
For TOPS-20 it also may be desirable to allow SCS to be run to other systems
(for TOPS-20 Common File System); this would allow a big machine to serve disks
to smaller desktop machines, or allow customers to cluster their emulated
systems together, or allow a emulated TOPS-20 cluster to run on a single fast
multi-CPU host (that's SMP TOPS-20!).
Greg Scott
ex-TOPS-20 customer
ex-TGHA (diagnostics engineering) developer
ex-RMS-20 (layered products) developer
ex-TOPS-20 developer
20-May-93 16:58:41-MDT,2068;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 20 May 93 18:56:43 EDT
From: "one score, six and ten 20-May-1993 1846" <praetorius@figs.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: PDP-10 emulator.
>% From: Rich Alderson <alderson@last-call.cisco.com>
> the answer that came
>back was that their legal types wouldn't allow it because of liability issues:
>Even if DEC explicitly disclaimed any further work on the 36-bit systems, they
>could be sued because they were the ultimate source for them.
>% From: Alan H. Martin 19-May-1993 0951 <tle::amartin>
>Perhaps someone at Digital needs to ask for a better legal opinion.
I heartily concur with the latter.
I might cynically suggest that it has more to do with airing code that
exhibits 3 different names for the same register in 1 VT52 screenfull, but
that's a cheap shot, so I won't mention it.
If DEC's lawyers showed as much creativity in this matter as TOPS-20's
authors did wrt naming registers, it wouldn't be a problem.
More constructively, does anyone know where we might look for previous
examples of abandoned code being released? The same issue is being explored
for LMI's code base (on comp.lang.lisp) - but the issue is somewhat different,
since the whole company has disappeared, not just the division (although I'm
tempted to theorize that DEC's lawyers, if asked, would encourage anyone find-
ing a bug in the LMI code to track down the author and hold him responsible,
dead or alive, wherever he may be).
Robt. P.
21-May-93 03:42:19-MDT,2692;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Fri, 21 May 93 11:41:59 MET DST
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: "one score, six and ten 20-May-1993 1846" <praetorius@figs.enet.dec.com>
Cc: tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: PDP-10 emulator.
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 20 May 93 18:56:43 EDT
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.737977319.bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
>>% From: Rich Alderson <alderson@last-call.cisco.com>
>> the answer that came
>>back was that their legal types wouldn't allow it because of liability issues:
>>Even if DEC explicitly disclaimed any further work on the 36-bit systems, they
>>could be sued because they were the ultimate source for them.
>
>>% From: Alan H. Martin 19-May-1993 0951 <tle::amartin>
>>Perhaps someone at Digital needs to ask for a better legal opinion.
>
> I heartily concur with the latter.
>
> I might cynically suggest that it has more to do with airing code that
>exhibits 3 different names for the same register in 1 VT52 screenfull, but
>that's a cheap shot, so I won't mention it.
>
> If DEC's lawyers showed as much creativity in this matter as TOPS-20's
>authors did wrt naming registers, it wouldn't be a problem.
>
> More constructively, does anyone know where we might look for previous
>examples of abandoned code being released?
I don't know if it would be to any help, but HP release the sources
for the operating system for the HP-41 calculator several years ago.
Not exactly the same thing maybe, but what do I know of how lawyers
would look at it.
Anyway, HP released it as "NOMAS" (Not Manufacturer Supported),
meaning, if anybody had problems of any kind, don't ask HP for any
help.
> The same issue is being explored
>for LMI's code base (on comp.lang.lisp) - but the issue is somewhat different,
>since the whole company has disappeared, not just the division (although I'm
>tempted to theorize that DEC's lawyers, if asked, would encourage anyone find-
>ing a bug in the LMI code to track down the author and hold him responsible,
>dead or alive, wherever he may be).
Don't there always exist a clause saying that the company is not
responsible for any damage from using the programs and so on?
29-May-93 17:32:43-MDT,1250;000000000020
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Date: Sat, 29 May 1993 16:23:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: we have MacTOPS-20
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
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At May 29, 4:22 PM PDT, my Mac PowerBook-100 gave its very first @ prompt, via
my port of KLH10 to the Macintosh.
I think the PowerBook-100 (68000 CPU running at 16MHz) easily qualifies as the
*slowest* machine to have ever run TOPS-20. Any of the other PowerBooks would
do a much better job. [A Quadra would do a good job too, but it's a waste of
a Quadra when a SUN-3 or a NeXT can be had on the used market for much less.]
-- Mark --
30-May-93 04:09:03-MDT,702;000000000020
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Date: Sun, 30 May 93 12:00:49 MET DST
From: Peter Lothberg <roll@bsd.stupi.se>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
Subject: Re: we have MacTOPS-20
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 29 May 1993 16:23:00 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.738756049.roll@bsd.stupi.se>
>At May 29, 4:22 PM PDT, my Mac PowerBook-100 gave its very first @ prompt, via
>my port of KLH10 to the Macintosh.
Good show!
-Peter
30-May-93 15:35:22-MDT,1400;000000000020
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From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: autologout bug
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
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There is a bug in the autologout code in the 7.1 version of the EXEC. The
autologout PSI is using a timer that is off by a factor of three. In
EXECSU.MAC, at ALOPSI+9L, replace
MOVE B,[AUTOL3*3*^D1000] ;[4435] AUTOL3 seconds in the future
with
MOVE B,[AUTOL3*^D1000]
Although edit 4435 is attributed to me, I never told Greg to do this.
Instead, I had him change the usage of AUTOL1 in ALOTST in EXEC0.MAC, where
the value was in GTAD% units. Greg evidentally thought that ALOPSI had the
same bug. It doesn't; ALOPSI uses millisecond units so it is right without
the *3.
-- Mark --
30-May-93 19:14:20-MDT,2498;000000000020
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Date: Sun, 30 May 1993 17:47:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: KLH-10 on Mac PowerBook-100
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
Cc: Ken Harrenstien <klh@US.Oracle.COM>
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Well, here's how slow TOPS-20 is on a PB100 (16MHz 68000). Not a very
practical platform for running it, although some tuning is undoubtably
possible. A 68030-based Mac should be much more tolerable.
The test was a simple ``hello, world'' program under TOPS-20. The control was
my 2020. The control deviates in the following ways: (1) twice as much memory
(good -- less swapping), (2) TOPS-20 5.1 (bad -- slower). The program:
TITLE HELLO
SEARCH MONSYM
HELLO: HRROI 1,[ASCIZ/Hello, world!
/]
PSOUT%
HALTF%
END HELLO
For giggles, I also include the timings of KLH10 running on a NeXT (25MHz,
68040). The NeXT has some additional benefits including using a faster memory
system courtesy of GCC (SPARCs uses this too), interrupt-based TTY I/O and
clock (instead of polling), and use of the 32-bit instructions that are only
on the 68020 and better CPUs.
The ``factor'' is how much slower the PB100 was than a 2020.
Milestone PB100 NeXT 2020 Factor
Output ``MACRO: HELLO'' 225 10 6 37.5
Output ``Link: Loading'' 705 24 9 78.3
Output ``[LNKXCT Hello Execution]'' 815 29 12 67.6
Output ``Hello, world!'' 840 30 12 70
Back to EXEC 865 31 13 66.5
The times were taken by visual observation against my watch, so there is some
inaccuracy. However, I think it's fairly safe to say that a PB100 with KLH10
is about 65 times slower than a 2020, and a NeXT is about 2.5 times slower.
The figures suggest that a 68040 is about 16 times faster than a 68000 once
you adjust for clock speed differences. I'll try it on a Quadra in the next
day or two and see how much this reflects reality.
31-May-93 05:29:19-MDT,1803;000000000020
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From: Peter Lothberg <roll@bsd.stupi.se>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>,
Ken Harrenstien <klh@US.Oracle.COM>
Subject: Re: KLH-10 on Mac PowerBook-100
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 30 May 1993 17:47:52 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.738847267.roll@bsd.stupi.se>
> MRC:
> Milestone PB100 NeXT 2020 Factor
>
> Output ``MACRO: HELLO'' 225 10 6 37.5
> Output ``Link: Loading'' 705 24 9 78.3
> Output ``[LNKXCT Hello Execution]'' 815 29 12 67.6
> Output ``Hello, world!'' 840 30 12 70
> Back to EXEC 865 31 13 66.5
>
> The times were taken by visual observation against my watch, so there is some
> inaccuracy. However, I think it's fairly safe to say that a PB100 with KLH10
> is about 65 times slower than a 2020, and a NeXT is about 2.5 times slower.
>
> The figures suggest that a 68040 is about 16 times faster than a 68000 once
> you adjust for clock speed differences. I'll try it on a Quadra in the next
> day or two and see how much this reflects reality.
I have a 'laptoy', wich has a 486/33Mhz and 16M of memory that I bought at the
'K-mart'. It runs BSDI-386/KLH10/Tops-20 5.1 (as MRC's 2020).
Milestone PB100 Laptoy NeXT 2020 Factor
Output ``MACRO: HELLO'' 225 8 10 6 37.5
Output ``Link: Loading'' 705 14 24 9 78.3
Output ``[LNKXCT Hello Execution]'' 815 17 29 12 67.6
Output ``Hello, world!'' 840 18 30 12 70
Back to EXEC 865 19 31 13 66.5
-Peter
1-Jun-93 09:36:19-MDT,813;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 93 05:07:38 PDT
From: carl@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Carl A Baltrunas)
Message-Id: <9306011207.AA07669@tardis.tymnet.com>
To: MRC@Panda.COM, TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
Subject: Re: we have MacTOPS-20
COngratulations.
!!!
So what are the space requirements to bring it all up?
I'd be interested in getting our TYMCOM-X system up on my Mac IIx sometime
in the not too distant future :-) Need to know what space to reserve.
-Carl
1-Jun-93 19:35:45-MDT,1512;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 18:22:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: Quadra KLH-10 timings
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
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For the record, here are the timings on a Mac Quadra 800 for the Hello World
program:
MACRO: HELLO 12 seconds
LINK: Loading 36 seconds
[LNKXCT HELLO execution] 41 seconds
Hello, world! 42 seconds
@ 43 seconds
I'm not sure what speed the Quadra's 68040 is running, but compared to a 25MHz
68040 NeXT with its UNIX clone, there are some interesting comparisons:
1) The NeXT was 20% faster in the initial compiler selection/startup (10/12).
2) The NeXT was 71% faster in compiling (14/24)
3) The NeXT and Mac tied in link and execution times.
I claim that the speed differences are reasonably attributable to operating
system differences, even more so if the Quadra is at 33MHz:
1) the Quadra polls for TTY I/O and clock interrupts.
2) the UNIX filesystem is probably much faster.
1-Jun-93 19:46:03-MDT,1908;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 18:36:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: Re: we have MacTOPS-20
To: Carl A Baltrunas <carl@tardis.Tymnet.COM>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
In-Reply-To: <9306011207.AA07669@tardis.tymnet.com>
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On Tue, 1 Jun 93 05:07:38 PDT, Carl A Baltrunas wrote:
> So what are the space requirements to bring it all up?
>
> I'd be interested in getting our TYMCOM-X system up on my Mac IIx sometime
> in the not too distant future :-) Need to know what space to reserve.
The emulator binary is 222K on a Mac. Its memory size is 3000K. You'll need
about 5000K if you want to run a 512K 2020; I only have 4.5MB free on my
PowerBook (I have a big system file including KanjiTalk plus a RAMdisk) so I
only built for 256K.
For TOPS-20, a basic filesystem is about 18MB. The disk bootstrap is 6K. I'm
emulating an RM03 on the Mac which can grow to about 120MB. An RP06 would be
about a MB or larger and can grow much larger; on the Mac there are no holey
files, so there is an index in the file for each possible sector translating
sector number to seek pointer (with 0 meaning sector not yet created). This
index is also in memory, so the memory image would also grow by a
corresponding amount.
As a guess, I think a 512K 2020 using an RP06 would need 6.5MB and start at
about 20MB on the disk.
1-Jun-93 20:09:29-MDT,2817;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 18:46:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: useful TOPS-20 4.1 patches for emulator users
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
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MONITR.EXE Patch 1: Fix DST rules for 1987 law change
DSTBGN! 1987.
DSTON! 97.
Discussion: 4.1 was released in 1983 when the US rule was that daylight
savings time started on the last Sunday in April. It now begins on the first
Sunday in April, as of 1987. In the absence of a table of multiple rules,
this patch deletes DST understanding for dates prior to 1987 and sets the rule
as starting on the first Sunday in April.
MONITR.EXE Patch 2: Make it possible to use ``sleep'' on notebook
J0NRUN/ JSR BUGHLT NOP
Discussion: Most laptops and notebooks have a ``sleep'' feature which allows
you to turn the machine off and subsequently turn it back on and be in the
same state. Unfortunately, TOPS-20 has a bughalt, J0NRUN in 4.1, which comes
about when it's detected that the swapper hasn't run for too long. This patch
deletes this bughalt.
MONITR.EXE Patch 3: Prevent crashes due to TTY output timing error
TTSND7+4/ XCT TTONOB JRST TTSND7+1
Discussion: There is a timing race in TOPS-20 due to the console being at
infinite speed. The UNIX version of the emulator deliberately slows down the
console to make it work (otherwise output interrupts are dropped); the Mac
version gives the operating system an CTY interrupt at every CTY input poll.
This bughalt is another manifestation of this bug, and happens quite often on
the Mac. This patch makes it treat the error condition (non-existant buffer
but non-zero buffer count) as equivalent to empty buffer.
EXEC.EXE Patch 1: Prevent autologout on slow machines
PAT..! ALO1: 180000.
ALO1+1! ALO2: 30000000.
ALO2+1! ALO3: 1500000.
ALO3+1! PAT..:
ALOTST+3/ SUB A,lit SUB A,ALO1
CMDN5D-7/ MOVE B,lit MOVE B,ALO2
ALOPSI+11/ MOVE B,lit MOVE B,ALO3
Discussion: The three-minute autologout period provided by TOPS-20 is much too
short for slower machines, particularly at system startup. In addition, there
is a bug that the AUTOL1 period is actually only 1 minute, not 3, since it is
in GTAD% units not seconds. This patch multiplies the autologout period by
100, effectively getting rid of it.
2-Jun-93 17:21:52-MDT,1475;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 18:21:32 CDT
From: Clive Dawson <clive@mcc.com>
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Focus Groups at Atlanta DECUS
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.739063292.clive@stone.mcc.com>
Folks,
The Digital U.S. Marketing Group will be conducting several focus
group sessions at the Spring DECUS Symposium in Atlanta next week.
Among the sessions are:
Tuesday, June 8
1:00pm - 4:00pm DEC 10/20 Migration Open Session Rm 216
(1 of 2)
Wednesday, June 9
1:00pm - 4:00pm DEC 10/20 Migration Open Session Rm 216
(2 of 2)
Attendance at these sessions does not require that you be registered
for the Symposium.
It's interesting that DEC has decided to hold these sessions after
several years of silence regarding 36-bit systems. Presumably they
wish to explore migration to AXP systems. In view of the recent
discussions on this list, AXP systems may very well play a part in
the future plans of 10/20 sites, though perhaps not in the manner
they might expect!!
Clive
3-Jun-93 00:54:56-MDT,3083;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 23:54:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: [Ken Harrenstien: KL10B questions]
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
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Can anyone help Ken?
** Begin Forwarded Message **
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1993 03:27:33 -0300 (BST)
From: Ken Harrenstien <klh@us.oracle.com>
Subject: KL10B questions
To: alpha-kl@INNOSOFT.COM
cc: klh@us.oracle.com
Well, I'm now at the point where I've more or less exhausted
the KL10 information available from the PRM and the extended-addressing
info that Pat recently dug up. Unfortunately there are still some
ambiguities and questions that need to be resolved one way or another,
by one of:
(1) asking a knowledgeable person
(2) finding a copy of the KL Engineering Functional Spec
(3) examining the KL10B microcode source
(4) experimentation on a real machine
I'm going to start by trying (1) on this group, since even if you don't
know the answer you'll still need to be aware of the issue. Hopefully
we will find (2) and (3) soon. I don't have access to (4) but that will
also be needed eventually for certain things.
Here's a starter list:
* PRM p.2-78 says "A trap instruction is executed in the same address space
and section as the instruction that caused it." Which instruction exactly
is that when dealing with a XCT chain? PXCT?
(It could either be the original, or the last one.)
* Do BLTBU and BLTUB exist on KL10s?
* What are the exact semantics of PMOVE and PMOVEM? I need at least as
much detail as the PRM would give. What modes are they
legal in? How can they fail?
* Exactly how is a byte pointer's word address incremented by IBP,ILDB,IDPB
for indirect pointers or 2-word global pointers (either IFIW or EFIW)?
* The PRM claims that one-word global BPs are only legal in non-zero sections.
More recent info indicates they are now legal in all sections, altho
two-word BPs are still only valid in non-zero section contexts.
What's the story? Does a P of 077 still cause a MUUO trap?
* What happens if any of the "reserved" (I,X) bits are set in a 2-word BP?
* Would like verification that the 2nd word of a 2-word BP can indeed be
either IFIW or EFIW. What happens if the high 2 bits are both 1; does
this really cause a page trap for the affected instruction?
I also have several questions about the handling of Previous-Context-Section
and MANY questions about the EXTEND instructions, but will save them for
other messages to avoid overload.
--Ken
3-Jun-93 03:51:07-MDT,2116;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 93 11:50:14 MET DST
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>, klh@us.oracle.com
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL>
Subject: Re: [Ken Harrenstien: KL10B questions]
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 2 Jun 1993 23:54:33 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.739101014.bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
>Can anyone help Ken?
A little... :-)
> Well, I'm now at the point where I've more or less exhausted
>the KL10 information available from the PRM and the extended-addressing
>info that Pat recently dug up. Unfortunately there are still some
>ambiguities and questions that need to be resolved one way or another,
>by one of:
>
>(1) asking a knowledgeable person
>(2) finding a copy of the KL Engineering Functional Spec
>(3) examining the KL10B microcode source
>(4) experimentation on a real machine
>
>I'm going to start by trying (1) on this group, since even if you don't
>know the answer you'll still need to be aware of the issue. Hopefully
>we will find (2) and (3) soon. I don't have access to (4) but that will
>also be needed eventually for certain things.
I still have a DECSYSTEM-20 on the net, and I could create accounts
for interested persons on it. Hopefully it will live a long time
yet...
(Depends on if we (the computer club) can get someone (the university)
to continue foot the electric bill...)
Johnny
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
CS student at Uppsala University || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
3-Jun-93 07:12:20-MDT,1040;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 09:12:05 -0400
From: Rick Ace <rick@Panix.Com>
Message-Id: <199306031312.AA18753@sun.Panix.Com>
To: TOPS20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Subject: Re: Focus Groups at Atlanta DECUS
> From: Clive Dawson <clive@mcc.com>
>
> The Digital U.S. Marketing Group will be conducting several focus
> group sessions at the Spring DECUS Symposium in Atlanta next week.
> Among the sessions are:
>
> Tuesday, June 8
> 1:00pm - 4:00pm DEC 10/20 Migration Open Session Rm 216
> (1 of 2)
> Wednesday, June 9
> 1:00pm - 4:00pm DEC 10/20 Migration Open Session Rm 216
> (2 of 2)
Perhaps these sessions will address migration *to* DEC 10/20.
rick ace
3-Jun-93 14:59:16-MDT,1010;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1993 22:59:04 +0200
From: P{r Emanuelsson <pell@lysator.liu.se>
Message-Id: <199306032059.WAA04311@lysator.liu.se>
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: [Fwd: Looking for DECWAR]
[Begin forwarded message]
Subject: Looking for DECWAR
From: Harris Newman <wixer!wixer.bga.com!hsnewman@cactus.org>
Hi, I am looking for the source to a game called DECWAR which runs on top-10
and 20 equipment. I played this game in the early 1980's but have not had
any success finding the source. I believe it was written in ratfor. I saw
your posting that your tops-20 area, and was hoping you still had the source
code or knew where I could get it. Any help would be appreciated!
Harris Newman
hsnewman@wixer.bga.com
4-Jun-93 03:38:58-MDT,1006;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 02:38:27 PDT
From: carl@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Carl A Baltrunas)
Message-Id: <9306040938.AA05700@tardis.tymnet.com>
To: pell@lysator.liu.se, tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Looking for DECWAR]
I think I still have an EXE file for DECWAR somewhere on a tape...
egad... I wonder how many of my 10yr old tapes I can still read?
Anyway... I looked around for the sources long ago, since our
system TYMCOM-X doesn't work the same way with writeable high
segments as does TOPS-10 and DECWAR had interesting results. I
never found the sources and lost interest.
I'm sure we can alwyas decompile the SHR files :-)
-Carl
5-Jun-93 00:35:39-MDT,2164;000000000020
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From: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Message-Id: <9306050635.AA09130@tardis.tymnet.com>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Looking for DECWAR]
To: pell@lysator.liu.se (P{r Emanuelsson)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 23:35:29 PDT
Cc: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
In-Reply-To: <199306032059.WAA04311@lysator.liu.se>; from "P{r Emanuelsson" at Jun 3, 93 10:59 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
> Hi, I am looking for the source to a game called DECWAR which runs on top-10
> and 20 equipment. I played this game in the early 1980's but have not had
> any success finding the source. I believe it was written in ratfor.
Like many others, I have only the executable binary. I got it from a DECUS
tape, the submission was from the University of Texas at Austin, but they
did not release the sources.
.di decwar/op:finds/prdir
DECWAR GG 1 <457> 3-Jun-83 DSKS:[12,10,MISC]
DECWAR SFD 1 <754> 25-Jun-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS]
DECWAR COM 1 <457> 11-Jul-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS,DECWAR]
DECWAR EXE 208 <457> 17-Sep-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS,DECWAR]
DECWAR GRP 7 <457> 17-Sep-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS,DECWAR]
DECWAR HLP 84 <457> 17-Sep-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS,DECWAR]
DECWAR NWS 11 <457> 17-Sep-79 DSKS:[14,10,UTEXAS,DECWAR]
Total of 313 blocks in 7 files
EXIT
.
GG = programs the arrow keys on the GIGI (VK100) to send DECWAR commands.
COM = commented directory listing
EXE = executable binary
GRP = gripe list (bugs and suggestions)
HLP = how to play the gam
NWS = late breaking news
No sources.
--
Joe Smith (408)922-6220 BTNA GNS Major Programs, TYMNET Operations
<jms@tardis.tymnet.com> PO Box 49019, MS-C51, San Jose, CA 95161-9019
29-Jun-93 07:16:28-MDT,1101;000000000020
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From: "Database Architecture, Standards, and Strategy 29-Jun-1993 0913" <berenson@nova.enet.dec.com>
To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Apparently-To: tops20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: In search of MIMIC sources
I'm searching for sources to the MIMIC simulator. If anyone has the
sources, or a lead on them, please send me e-mail.
Thanks!
Hal
.............................................................................
Hal Berenson
Home: 71640.3535@compuserve.com
Work: berenson@nova.enet.dec.com
-- Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are my own and should not be
construed as representing the views of my employer or its employees,
officers, directors, or stockholders. --
6-Jul-93 12:07:27-MDT,879;000000000020
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Date: 06 Jul 1993 14:07:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Betsy Ramsey <RAMSEY@CUA.EDU>
Subject: TOPS-20 Discussion on Usenet
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.MIL
Message-id: <01H083S726KY8WVYXO@CU4300.CUA.EDU>
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There's a "Bring back TOPS-20" thread going on in Usenet newsgroup
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc right now. FYI.
-------
Betsy Ramsey, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
Internet: ramsey@cua.edu Bitnet: ramsey@cua
13-Jul-93 14:54:00-MDT,3577;000000000020
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Date: 13 Jul 1993 16:51:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Edward C Mulrean <MULREAN@CUA.EDU>
Subject: CUA Decommissions DECsystem-10
To: TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Cc: MULREAN@CUA.EDU
Message-id: <01H0I1GJY6DY8Y4ZHO@CU4500.CUA.EDU>
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DECsystem-10 serial # 1205 was decommissioned at The Catholic University
of America this morning, July 13th, ending almost a quarter century of
36-bit computing at CUA.
A decommissioning party was held at the Computer Center last Wednesday,
July 7th. The system was shutdown for timesharing yesterday afternoon
so that diagnostics could be run overnight. The system was powered off
for the last time this morning.
!R CONFIG
!16:11:47(SY)
CONFIG>
!ENAB
!16:11:50(SY)
CONFIG$>
!SHUTDOWN
!16:11:54(SY)
Reason:
!Obsolete
%DECsystem-10 not running
This particular system served the University for sixteen years, and was
running administrative jobs as recently as yesterday morning. Its peri-
pherals will be used at a third party site, and the CPU will be stored
by DEC as a spare.
Below is a chronology of our 36-bit systems and our eventual conversion
to VAX/VMS.
========================================================================
CHRONOLOGY OF EQUIPMENT AND SYSTEMS AT CUA
1969 KA10 (#95) running TOPS-10 installed for academic use
(instruction and research)
1972 Administrative applications moved from IBM system to KA-10
1977 KL10B (#1205) installed, supporting all academic and
administrative use
1982 second KL10B (#3097) installed in SMP configuration
1983 DEC decommmits DECsystem-10/20s
1986 VAX-11/750 and VAX 8650 purchased; one KL (#3097) deinstalled;
remaining KL is upgraded to a KL10D with MG20 MOS memory;
reverse LAT used for terminal server access to KL
1987 Academic conversion complete in January (all instruction and
research use on the VAX); second VAX 8650 purchased; 750
deinstalled; BITNET connection established
1988 Final local edits made to TOPS-10 V7.02 Autopatch 11 monitor;
monitor frozen at this level
1989 First administrative system (Facilities Management) on the VAX;
PATHWORKS being used for microcomputer networking; Internet
connection established, VMS connection via DECnet/Internet
gateway
1990 More administrative systems on the VAX: Registration
1991 Human Resources system, Student Accounts, Admissions all on the
VAX
1992 VAX 4000/500 and 4000/300 replace VAX 8650s; Financial Records,
Orientation systems on VAX; VMS systems run TCP/IP directly
1993 Administrative conversion complete in June (remaining systems
Financial Aid, Resident Life & Food Services, Vehicle System all
on the VAX); KL deinstalled in July
-------
Edward C. Mulrean Internet: mulrean@cua.edu
Manager, Systems Programming BITNET: mulrean@cua
The Catholic University of America Phone: 202-319-5373
Washington, DC, USA
14-Jul-93 10:09:29-MDT,938;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 11:09:06 CDT
From: Clive Dawson <clive@mcc.com>
To: Edward C Mulrean <MULREAN@cua.edu>
Cc: TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil, MULREAN@cua.edu
Subject: Re: CUA Decommissions DECsystem-10
In-Reply-To: Your message of 13 Jul 1993 16:51:20 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.742666146.clive@stone.mcc.com>
Ed-
Congrats on keeping #1205 running this long, and on the nice
obituary. I couldn't help noting that your shutdown took place
exactly one year after I shut down #3536 here at MCC on 7/13/92.
A day to remember...
Regards,
Clive
14-Jul-93 20:26:15-MDT,843;000000000020
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From: carl@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Carl A Baltrunas)
Message-Id: <9307150100.AA03747@tardis.tymnet.com>
To: MULREAN@CUA.EDU, TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Subject: Re: CUA Decommissions DECsystem-10
Ed,
My sincere sympathy for the demise of your last remaining KL. 'Twas a
sad day, I must suppose after nearly 25 years of working on PDP-10s at
Catholic for you.
Twas also a sad day here for me, but that's another message. see next...
-Carl
23-Jul-1993 15:12:35 -0700,616;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 15:09:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: test
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@Panda.COM>
Message-Id: <MailManager.743465392.27664.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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This is a test of the new distribution of TOPS-20 from Panda.COM, replacing
WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL which is going away at the end of September.
24-Jul-1993 23:08:53 -0700,1905;000000000020
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Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 02:07:12 EDT
From: John_Wilson@MTS.RPI.EDU
To: INFO-PDP11@TRANSARC.COM, PDP8-LOVERS@AI.MIT.EDU,
TOPS-20@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Message-Id: <3714790@MTS.RPI.EDU>
Subject: COMPUTER ENGINEERING: a DEC view, etc. etc. etc.
Just in case I wasn't the only one looking for this fine book, it has
in fact gone out of print, the good news is that DEC donated many copies
to the Computer Museum in Boston. Someone was recently selling it on the
net for $30, DEC sold them last year for $25, but the Computer Museum
gift shopt has them right now for $14.95 shrink wrapped.
They told me they have lots more copies (and the Project Whirlwind book
too, $17.95, interesting but very poorly written) and they'll sell them
by mail order too, call (617) 426-2800 x307.
Their used book shelf is mega-cool too, we picked up the 1970 PDP10
processor manual for 49 cents (not bad, RPI's library sent me a bill for
almost $300 the time I tried not returning their copy to see what would
happen!), and the PDP-1 instruction set book for $6. They won't sell
those books by mail though, you have to go in person. We had more fun
buying books than we did in the museum, most of the big iron exhibits
have been torn out (what ever happened to that big chunk of AN/FSQ-7 that
used to be by the entrance? and the only PDP's were an 8/E, and 8/A,
and the front panel from a KA10, lame).
Just for your information. It made *my* day. John
26-Jul-1993 15:47:54 -0700,1772;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 17:36:08 CDT
From: Clive Dawson <clive@mcc.com>
To: John_Wilson@mts.rpi.edu
Cc: INFO-PDP11@transarc.com, PDP8-LOVERS@ai.mit.edu,
TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: COMPUTER ENGINEERING: a DEC view, etc. etc. etc.
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 25 Jul 93 02:07:12 EDT
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.743726168.clive@stone.mcc.com>
>John_Wilson@mts.rpi.edu writes:
> ... We had more fun
buying books than we did in the museum, most of the big iron exhibits
have been torn out (what ever happened to that big chunk of AN/FSQ-7 that
used to be by the entrance? and the only PDP's were an 8/E, and 8/A,
>and the front panel from a KA10, lame).
Back in 1984, when we celebrated the 20th Anniversary of 36-bit
computing at the Fall DECUS Symposium, we had the Stanford PDP-6 on
display. This system was then donated to the Computer Museum. To my
knowledge it has never been displayed at the museum, and, if memory
serves, I've never seen the gift acknowledged in any of the museum's
reports. Does anybody know the actual whereabouts of this system?
Clive
26-Jul-1993 23:38:18 -0700,1087;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 02:34:24 EDT
From: aad@siemens.siemens.com (Anthony A. Datri)
Message-Id: <9307270634.AA02582@lovecraft>
To: INFO-PDP11@transarc.com, PDP8-LOVERS@ai.mit.edu,
TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: COMPUTER ENGINEERING: a DEC view, etc. etc. etc.
I picked up my copy of the DEC bible while at CMU -- it was being used as
a textbook for some EE course or another. I paid $28 in what looks to have
been 1987.
27-Jul-1993 19:43:46 -0700,1523;000000000020
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From: rmsmith@opus.starlab.csc.com (Robert Smith)
Message-Id: <9307280207.AA13254@opus.starlab.csc.com>
Subject: Re: COMPUTER ENGINEERING: a DEC view, etc. etc. etc.
To: aad@siemens.siemens.com (Anthony A. Datri)
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 22:07:18 EDT
Cc: INFO-PDP11@transarc.com, PDP8-LOVERS@ai.mit.edu,
TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
In-Reply-To: <9307270634.AA02582@lovecraft>; from "Anthony A. Datri" at Jul 27, 93 2:34 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
>
> I picked up my copy of the DEC bible while at CMU -- it was being used as
> a textbook for some EE course or another. I paid $28 in what looks to have
> been 1987.
>
I still have my autographed copy - most of us in Hephastus land signed
it for each other cause smudge, John Mac (Yeah John I know I spelled it
wrong) and C. Gordon did not mention us workers....I did Get
Al Kent and Al Kotok's autographs...and Gordon's as well as the most famous
Marty Schwartz, Ted, Bugs, Sully, and the crew...
bob
28-Jul-1993 12:47:58 -0700,1631;000000000020
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Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 17:45:15 EDT
Message-Id: <9307272145.AA008ok@kumiss.cmhnet.org>
From: erd@kumiss.cmhnet.org (Ethan Dicks)
To: INFO-PDP11@transarc.com, PDP8-LOVERS@ai.mit.edu,
TOPS-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Re: COMPUTER ENGINEERING: a DEC view, etc. etc. etc.
:I picked up my copy of the DEC bible while at CMU -- it was being used as
:a textbook for some EE course or another. I paid $28 in what looks to have
:been 1987.
Wow! I spotted a copy of this book in very fine shape at a flea market
in Missouri. The man wouldn't go below $0.50 for it, however.
Quite a tome.
-ethan
2-Aug-1993 20:29:36 -0700,906;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 20:15:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@Panda.COM>
Subject: TOPS-20 list is now at Panda
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@Panda.COM>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.85.9308022043.A12892-0100000@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
This is to announce that the TOPS-20 mailing list and the mailing list
request address are now officially located at Panda.COM. The old
addresses at SIMTEL20 are now forwardings to the new address, and
hopefully will continue to work until SIMTEL20's plug is pulled at the
end of September.
All of the TOPS-20 mailing list archives are at Panda (and at SIMTEL20
for the messages prior to the changeover). They'll be available for FTP
in the near future.
9-Aug-1993 19:50:50 -0700,1216;000000000020
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id AA27216; Mon, 9 Aug 93 19:51:57 CST
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 93 19:51:57 CST
From: Shawn_E_Switenky@engr.usask.ca
Message-Id: <9308100151.AA27216@ludwig.USask.Ca>
To: INFO-PDP11@transarc.com, pdp8-lovers@ai.mit.edu,
tops-20@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Subject: Strike me off of the mailing list.
Please strike me off of the mailing list. I was registered as 874226@watt.usask.ca
Shawn Switenky
Shawn_E_Switenky@engr.usask.ca
25-Aug-1993 14:08:33 -0700,660;000000000020
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(NX5.67d/UW-NDC Revision: 2.27.MRC ) id AA22411; Wed, 25 Aug 93 14:06:59 -0700
Date: Wed 25 Aug 93 14:06:31-PDT
From: Richard Troiano <RICHARD@mathom.xkl.com>
Subject: Literature Available
To: Tops-20@Panda.com
Message-Id: <12904006817.24.RICHARD@mathom.xkl.com>
If you would like to receive a brochure describing a new 36-bit system,
please reply to me with your physical mail address.
Thanks,
Richard Troiano
-------
25-Aug-1993 14:51:51 -0700,1497;000000000020
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To: Richard Troiano <RICHARD@mathom.xkl.com>
Cc: Tops-20@Panda.com
Subject: Re: Literature Available
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Aug 93 14:06:31 PDT."
<12904006817.24.RICHARD@mathom.xkl.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 93 17:50:09 +28716
From: "Dr. Tom Blinn (DTN 381-0646, ZKO3 3X05)" <tpb@zk3.dec.com>
X-Mts: smtp
> If you would like to receive a brochure describing a new 36-bit system,
> please reply to me with your physical mail address.
I'm interested. Home address is
Tom Blinn
6 Mont Vernon Road
Amherst, NH 03031
Work address is
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn
UNIX Systems Group
Digital Equipment Corporation
110 Spit Brook Road -- ZKO3-3/W20
Nashua, New Hampshire 03062
Internet: tpb@zk3.dec.com
Phone: (603) 881-0646
Note:
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
25-Aug-1993 14:54:51 -0700,843;000000000020
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id AA29725; Wed, 25 Aug 93 17:44:35 -0400
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 93 17:44:35 -0400
From: murphy@mv.MV.COM (Dan Murphy)
Message-Id: <9308252144.AA29725@mv.MV.COM>
To: RICHARD@mathom.xkl.com, Tops-20@Panda.com
Subject: Re: Literature Available
> If you would like to receive a brochure describing a new 36-bit system,
> please reply to me with your physical mail address.
Count me in.
Dan Murphy
10 Farm Pond Lane
Hollis, NH 03049
(603-465-7136)
Tnx.
dlm
1-Sep-1993 12:08:01 -0700,1710;000000000020
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(NX5.67d/UW-NDC Revision: 2.27.MRC ) id AA04996; Wed, 1 Sep 93 12:06:10 -0700
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:53:56 -0700 (MDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: the end of an era
To: TOPS-20@Panda.COM
Address: 6158 Lariat Loop NE; Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098
Phone: (206) 842-2385
Message-Id: <12905817691.18.MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
SIMTEL20 is scheduled to cease operations at 4PM, September 30, 1993 local
time (2200 GMT), ``Due to funding constraints, realignment of mission
functions, and Department of Army downsizing''.
The TOPS-20 mailing list has already been moved, for hopefully the last time,
to TOPS-20@Panda.COM. I am also keeping the complete archives of the TOPS-20
mailing list on Panda; I plan on establishing ftp access once Panda's network
link is upgraded (scheduled to happen Real Soon Now). XKL Systems has kindly
taken over the other files in SIMTEL20's TOPS-20 archives, and hopefully will
be posting ftp access information in the near future.
I will miss this machine. It was a big part of many people's lives; not so
much for TOPS-20 as it was for the remarkable library of public domain
software it carries. SIMTEL20 received prominent mention in many books and
magazines, and was perhaps the single best piece of public relations in the
international Internet community the US government ever took. [It has even
been jokingly remarked that USIA should have taken over SIMTEL20!]
-------
1-Sep-1993 14:47:14 -0700,39423;000000000020
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From: mwlwwlw&twwlt 01-Sep-1993 0933 <praetorius@star.enet.dec.com>
To: geb@rational.com, jms@romana.Tymnet.COM
Apparently-To: jms@romana.tymnet.com, geb@rational.com
Subject: Computer History Association of California
Sender: jms@romana.Tymnet.COM
[in case you hadn't seen this:]
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp8,alt.folklore.computers,sci.electronics
Path: jac.nuo.dec.com!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!caen!sdd.hp.com!math.ohio-state.edu!wupost!crcnis1.unl.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news
From: jones@cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones)
Subject: Computer History Association of California
Sender: news@news.uiowa.edu (News)
Message-ID: <1993Aug31.145000.24130@news.uiowa.edu>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1993 14:50:00 GMT
Nntp-Posting-Host: pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Lines: 138
Xref: jac.nuo.dec.com alt.sys.pdp8:340 alt.folklore.computers:18450 sci.electronics:22293
I've just discovered an interesting organization, the Computer History
Association of California, and it's clear that their goals are very much
in keeping with the goals of many of the readers who follow these
newsgroups.
As near as I can figure, they're the first general membership association
devoted to historic preservation of computers. Thus, they may be able
to provide the kind of hacker-centered orientation that is lacking in
places like the Computer Museum and the Smithsonian. Here's a quote
from their newsletter, the Analytical Engine, Volume 1, Number 1:
Ever since the days of ENIAC, the rallying cry of computing has
been _Let's chuck the old stuff to make room for the new
stuff!!_ and hardware is scrapped, with the hardware goes the
documentation, goes the information, leaving only the thin
thread of memory which snaps too. Leaving aside dubious
precursors, electronic computing is fifty-five years old,
microcomputing is less than twenty years old, and we're shedding
the pertinent history by the dumpsterful. The history of
digital computing -- one of the newest core sciences in the
world -- is being destroyed as fast as it's being made.
On April 19, 1993, a few people decided to take a stand by
founding the Computer History Association of California, an
organization that exists to do these things:
* Create awareness of the history of computing as a real,
evolving and valuable phenomenon.
* Prevent the destruction of historically significant
hardware, software and documentation.
* Strengthen the cooperation among existing institutions
that safeguard the history of computing.
* Begin discussions among developers and computer-related
manufacturers about setting up an overall archive -- or at
least agreeing on archiving conventions.
* Ultimately, to help build a coalition that can build and
endow a library and museum for the history of computing in
California.
These people are doing the right thing, with essentially the same goals
that led to the formation of alt.sys.pdp8, but with a broader charter
and a more formal organization. They clearly have a regional focus, but
at the same time, the job they're talking about needs to be done
nationally and internationally.
I feel that we preservationists should support them actively, either by
joining their organization (particularly, those of us in the bay area),
or by referring California hardware and documentation rescue work to them.
They've picked up a significant membership outside of California, but my
long-term hope is that we can get similar local organizations running on
the east coast and in the midwest. We've got the critical mass in both
places, but here in the midwest, we may not have the critical density.
Doug Jones
jones@cs.uiowa.edu
P.S. Here's the CHAC membership form:
-------------------------------------------------
The ANALYTICAL ENGINE, newsletter of the Computer History
Association of California, is published four times a year -- in
January, April, July and October -- at El Cerrito, California.
Subscriptions are available with Association membership at $25
per year. Use the coupon below to subscribe, or contact the
Association at:
US Mail: 1001 Elm Court, El Cerrito, CA 94530-2602
Internet: kcrosby@crayola.win.net
America Online: kcrosby
CompuServe: 72341,2763
FAX: 510/528-5138
-------------------------------------------------
SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE
and share fascinating insights into the vital story of computing
while you build an organization that safeguards our unique
scientific and technical heritage. Just $25 will bring you four
issues of the ANALYTICAL ENGINE -- filled with non-partisan,
technically and historically accurate articles -- and the
satisfaction of preserving the history that you work to create.
____ Yes! I enclose $25. Please enroll me in the Computer
History Association of California for the next year and
send four issues of the ANALYTICAL ENGINE to
____ Internet address: ________________________________________
____ CompuServe ID#: __________________________________________
____ Other gateway: ___________________________________________
____ I would prefer to receive paper copies of the ANALYTICAL
ENGINE. (A paper edition will be produced if the membership
shows sufficient interest.) My mailing address is:
Name: _________________________________________________________
Company: ______________________________________________________
Suite, Box, Mail stop: ________________________________________
Street: _______________________________________________________
City: _____________________ Zip/postcode: ___________________
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____ I will submit an article to the ANALYTICAL ENGINE. (Please
refer to the guidelines for submission, above.)
____ I will help produce the ANALYTICAL ENGINE or do other work
for the Association. Please contact me at:
______________________________________________________________
*****
NOTE: This issue of THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE is being distributed
on the honor system. Please subscribe if you wish to, but for
the moment we can only accept checks or other depositable types
of payment. We hope that, by the end of 1993, we will have con-
cluded arrangements with various online services to accept
payment by VISA or MasterCard. We appreciate your patience.
From: US1RMC::"kcrosby@crayola.win.net" "Kip Crosby" 31-AUG-1993 16:04:36.08
To: kxovax::secrist
CC:
Subj: Re: Computer History Association of California ?
> Is this legit ? If so, I think it's wonderful !
Oh, you bet! It's so legit that even we're surprised.
> I caught a blurb in alt.sys.pdp8....
Probably because Doug Jones tipped us about some PDP-8i/'s
that were being redundant down around Santa Cruz, that we
might be able to save....
> and forwarded it around vmsnet.pdp-11
Great! The more DEC the merrier.
> Tell me what's going on -- I'd love to participate !
You got a deal. The CHAC is, or will shortly be, a nonprofit.
We are largely Internet-based, we have worldwide reach and
nationwide subscribers....only a few so far, but enough to encourage
us. Anybody is welcome to join. Voluntary membership is $25/yr
individual, $75/yr corporate, and $15/yr underflow-income.
You can read what amounts to our statement of purpose, and a
description of our state as of July first, in the newsletter I'll
ASCII-attach to the end of this mail. Since July first we have had
hardware, software, e-mail, and potential members pouring down on
us, and money....certainly not pouring. We've also been
congratulated by the Boston Computer Museum, the Babbage Institute,
the Smithsonian, as well as Sun Microsystems and some other
companies, all of which loudly wondered why there was not such a
thing before this.
Our next newsletter will be out October first and will be a lot
more robust than this one....from here I'm thinking thirty, forty
pages, if everyone comes up with their articles. There may also be
an edition on tree slices if the demand exists; but, to cover
costs, the paper edition will be available only to paying members.
The net.mail edition is shareware.
Thanks for your interest, and I hope we hear from you again.
P. S. We _really like_ getting articles. They can range from the
mildly techie to the strictly touchy/feely/hilarious, _so long as_
they stick to the guidelines, see below. We also accept hardware
but would be even more thrilled by someplace to store same.
Sincerely,
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby kcrosby@crayola.win.net
Computer History Association of California
"History is what you make it...."
cut here before printing
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 1
The ANALYTICAL ENGINE
Newsletter of the Computer History Association of California
ISSN pending
Volume 1, Number 1, July 1993
Kip Crosby, Managing Editor
Jude Thilman, Telecommunications Editor
-------------------------------------------------
EDITORIAL
Welcome to the Analytical Engine, volume one, number one.
This document has three purposes: To present a small sample of
computer history. To convince you that computer history is
worth exploring and preserving. To persuade you that a modest
commitment of your time or money, or both, will help build an
institution and protect some of the most important scientific
information in the world today.
Let me give you one concise example. Remember the Pong machine?
It wasn't much to look at; a black-and-white CRT in a squat,
screaming-yellow plywood box, with a couple of black knobs. But
in the early Seventies it introduced thousands of people -- and,
beyond them, the world -- to the interactive video game. It was
one of the first computer-driven devices to become a memorable
part of our culture.
Of the perhaps 15,000 Pong machines that Atari built, _there are
fewer than a dozen left_ and they are substantially priceless.
Collectors compete to buy them. What happened to the others?
They were displaced, replaced, thrown away. Junked.
Ever since the days of ENIAC, the rallying cry of computing has
been _Let's chuck the old stuff to make room for the new
stuff!!_ and hardware is scrapped, with the hardware goes the
documentation, goes the information, leaving only the thin
thread of memory which snaps too. Leaving aside dubious
precursors, electronic computing is fifty-five years old,
microcomputing is less than twenty years old, and we're shedding
the pertinent history by the dumpsterful. The history of
digital computing -- one of the newest core sciences in the
world -- is being destroyed as fast as it's being made.
Nor can we depend on the voices of the pioneers to fill gaps.
Many of the originators of electronic computing, like Alan
Turing, Atanasoff and Berry, John Mauchly, Wallace Eckert,
Admiral Hopper, and even Bob Noyce and William Shockley, can no
longer be interviewed. The British journalist Chris Evans, who
wanted to be _the_ popular historian of the microcomputer, died
with one of his books half-finished. Computer science has
become a freestanding discipline comparable in stature to almost
any other physical science, and yet its public record lags far
behind the evolving fact. Worthy exceptions like the BBC Press
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 2
book The Dream Machine (reviewed next issue) only underscore the
scale of the general flow into oblivion. A handful of concerned
organizations, like the Association for Computing Machinery, and
individual historians -- Ted Nelson, Jon Palfreman, James
Cortada, for example -- are trying to preserve an irreplaceable
historical record, and frankly fighting a losing battle.
On April 19, 1993, a few people decided to take a stand by
founding the Computer History Association of California, an
organization that exists to do these things:
* Create awareness of the history of computing as a real,
evolving and valuable phenomenon.
* Prevent the destruction of historically significant
hardware, software and documentation.
* Strengthen the cooperation among existing institutions
that safeguard the history of computing.
* Begin discussions among developers and computer-related
manufacturers about setting up an overall archive -- or at
least agreeing on archiving conventions.
* Ultimately, to help build a coalition that can build and
endow a library and museum for the history of computing in
California.
A tall order! But the people who attended the first meeting
left, thought it over, and told friends. The idea went out in
CompuServe mail and Internet mail and voice. And within days we
had --
Projects.
Urgent messages about hardware slated to be scrapped, software
in filing cabinets in storerooms, manuals on pallets waiting to
be recycled.
Right now, today, we have almost no space, almost no money, a
few members, a lot of work to do and a lot of enthusiasm. The
Computer History Association of California could take off and do
its part for the history of science. Or it could end up as a
good idea in a filing cabinet in a storeroom. The difference is
up to me, to us, and to you.
If we can make a good case for ourselves, we won't be alone.
Companies and managers who share our wish to preserve this
history -- their history -- will lend a hand to a serious
effort. The wider public will contribute through annual dues or
subscriptions to this newsletter.
Our potential membership is large, and growing. Computing --
personally and institutionally -- is moving from a
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 3
devil-may-care adolescence to a maturity that embraces social
responsibility. Recycling, waste control, power consumption and
other "green" issues are developing broad constituencies. These
people are the same ones who will recognize, in and through our
Association, steps that can be taken now to prevent a lot of
regret in the next century. The sooner we can alert them to the
need for preservation, the more we can accomplish.
To those of you who want to share in that accomplishment, the
Computer History Association of California makes five promises:
* We will be non-partisan and nonjudgmental. We will strive
to be accurate, interesting and innovative. Our aim must be to
enrich the history of science without distorting it.
* We will work to preserve hardware, software and
documentation, as it becomes available to us, from the full
spectrum of the history of computing.
* We will make the Association's property accessible to all
interested parties as a professional and educational resource.
* We will aggressively pursue funding from the corporations
that made the computer into a fact of modern life -- inviting
them to safeguard the history that they themselves created.
* We will have professional counsel on how to build up and
broaden this organization; how to make time and money most
effective; how to choose and manage exhibits and resources,
and protect them for future generations.
If we succeed in these ambitions, we will do our small part of a
big -- of a great -- job. We will help to affirm the history
of a core science while we live surrounded by its turbulent
origins. Someday, when our descendants respect the pioneers of
computing as they do Galileo, Edison and Goddard, that
affirmation will pay off.
But we are those pioneers. We know this story as no one else
ever will. And we must keep it as our children's heritage --
and as our own.
-------------------------------------------------
PROGRAMMING THE 1401:
An Interview with Leo Damarodas
by Roger Louis Sinasohn
[Author's note: Leo Damarodas has been a programmer since the
days of room-sized computers filled with vacuum tubes. We
first met in the mid '80s when we both worked for Noesis
Computing Company, then known as one of the premier software
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 4
houses in the Hewlett-Packard marketplace.
Today, Leo is an independent consultant, and lives on a sailboat
south of San Francisco. I was recently able to pin him down
and convince him to reminisce about his work with one of the
earliest commercially available mid-size computers, the IBM
1401. ]
_When and how did you get into computers?_
Let's see.... My actual first job was in 1965. I started off
from high school as an electronic technician in the early
'60s,when they were a dime a dozen, and in a period of three
years, I was laid off 18 months. I got a job in one of the
local mills, and went to school nights studying computer
programming, circuitry and design, figuring that if I got a job
in either maintenance or programming, that's where I'd work.
And the mill that I was working at knew of my interest in
computers and moved me into their office as a programmer, once I
graduated.
_Over the years, what have been the biggest changes in the
computer industry?_
(Laughs) Well, let's see. Going from vacuum tubes to
solid-state magnetic core memory -- this is where the
expression core memory comes from. Another big one's
interactive programming; getting away from punched cards. It
affected the way I was working, anyway.
_What has stayed the same?_
The need for programmers. That's never changed. And I don't
think it's ever going to.
_Why do you say that?_
Because I've been hearing as long as I've been in this business
that computers would start programming themselves in the near
future. It hasn't happened yet. I don't really think it will.
_You don't think that artificial intelligence will become
intelligent enough?_
Not with the way computers are being built currently. I mean,
programmers will be put out of business when computers become
sentient. They're going to have to know what they're doing, and
machines don't. It's as if we worried about cars driving
themselves around the streets. Even artificial intelligence
requires programming.
_When I've been working, I've cursed my computer for not doing
what I wanted it to..._
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 5
(Laughs) You want my poem? Is that what you're asking for?
[Quotes:]
"I really hate this gosh-darned thing, I think I'm gonna sell it.
It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it."
_In that connection you've said that you shouldn't want it to start
guessing what you want. You want it to do what you tell it._
Right.
_Why do you say that?_
If it starts trying to second-guess me, and it guesses
wrong....if anything goes wrong with the computer, I'd rather
blame myself than the computer, because to me the computer is a
tool -- nothing more than a glorified screwdriver. And when the
tools start running themselves, then it's time to worry.
Because if computers start doing what they think we want done,
the next step is them doing what they think is best for us. It
is getting to the point where computers become intelligent, but
with present-day circuitry, no matter how many processors you
hook up, it still can't think for itself. It still needs a
program to run.
_You worked on the IBM 1401._
Yeah.
_What was that like?_
Well, at the time, it seemed great, because it was the only
thing I knew -- the first computer I ever worked on. It was a
hundred per cent vacuum tubes....the logic circuitry, the
memory, everything was vacuum tubes. The addressing structure
of the machine only allowed for 16K of memory, and there was no
operating system in the modern sense.
The way into the machine was through reading the machine
instructions. Each instruction portion was a letter, a
readable character, and they made sense. Take some examples, M
was Move; W was Write a print line; P was Punch a card; R was
Read a card. When you executed these instructions, you didn't
need an address, because the card read/punch always worked
memory locations 1 through 80. And the printer always used
memory locations 101 through 232 as the I/O buffer. It was a
really simple machine to work with and a lot of fun in a way.
The only way you could get the machine to do something was put a
deck of cards in the card reader and hit the start button. And
that would read the card deck, load the program into memory, and
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 6
start executing it. It was slow; there was no multi-processing,
no nothing. Just a really simple machine.
_So it was basically one thing at a time, and mostly written in
machine language._
Basically, yeah, but we had ways around that. There was a COBOL
compiler on the program, but we tried to avoid using it,
because to compile a 16K program and get a program deck out
would take something like an hour. But because we could read
the machine instructions, if we had an error, we didn't really
have to go through the compilation. You could take the program
deck and modify the actual machine code, load the program and
run it again. It saved a lot of time.
We also had a language called Autocoder which was a kind of
assembler. It expanded the machine instructions out to more
readable mnemonics, and allowed you to use labels for addresses
and stuff -- use real names. It made the programming a lot
easier. The thing that was really interesting was the COBOL
compiler, which was the only other language, that I knew about
-- I think there was a FORTRAN available too, but I coded
business applications, so FORTRAN wasn't used that much. One of
the features of the COBOL was an ENTER instruction, so that
while you were writing your COBOL code, you could say ENTER
AUTOCODER and start writing Autocoder code right in your COBOL
source, then say ENTER COBOL and start writing COBOL code again.
This was possible because the COBOL compiler didn't generate
machine language -- it generated Autocoder code, and then called
the Autocoder, which converted the COBOL output into machine
language. So it just substituted the Autocoder code in your
COBOL source for the output.
_What sort of applications were you working on?_
Payroll, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger
-- straight business applications. And it was next to
impossible to write any major program without going over 16K.
So you either broke it down into steps -- 16K steps, or you
wrote program overlays. There were instructions that would
allow you to read in the next part of the program. But the
overlays had to be set up in such a way that you performed one
step for all the data, loaded the next step and performed it for
all the data. You couldn't go back and forth between overlays
because the programs had to run from card decks. Data resided
on disk, but not programs. All the data would come in initially
on cards, be transferred to the disk drives on the system, and
the programs could process disk.
_So, for example, a run to print the payroll, how long would it
take that program to produce checks?_
Honestly I don't remember, but a long time, because the only
time we could use for testing was between midnight and eight in
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 7
the morning. The machine was being used the rest of the day to
do production work, and about all they were doing was Accounts
Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, payroll and some
inventory. Not too much more than that.
_What happened if you had a deck that's data to be input, and you
have a deck that's a program -- what happens if you mix them
up? That is, you put the data in as if it were a program?_
One of the things that would happen, if you tried to load the
data in without having the program loaded, was that it would
choke on the first card. You've got to remember there was no
operating system, and this machine's just sitting there, waiting
for a bootstrap program that had to be in the first card. When
you pressed the start button on the console, it read the
bootstrap card and branched to location one. If there wasn't a
valid instruction there for it to execute, it wouldn't do a
thing. The bootstrap program read the rest of the cards in, and
when it got an end-of-cardfile, it branched to the location
where the program was loaded; I forget exactly what part of
memory that was.
_Punched cards had 80 columns, so you could, in theory, have up
to eighty instructions per card. Is that correct?_
In theory you could, if they were instructions that didn't
require addresses. They were single-byte instructions.
_So a small program might fit on a single card?_
Yes, in fact the bootstrap program didn't even take a whole
card. The bootstrap program was about a dozen characters long.
Somewhere I have a framed white poster, about four inches high
and ten or twelve inches long, with that program written on it.
I got it at an HP user group meeting where I walked by a booth
with a sign outside that said "If you know what this is, you're
showing your age." It was the 1401 bootstrap program. It
looked familiar but I couldn't quite remember what it was, and I
said "I don't know what it is, but I should." The guy who was
running the booth knew me and my background, and he said "I
know you should." Maybe three or four weeks after the meeting,
the poster showed up in my mailbox.
_How long did you work with the 1401?_
Only about a year, and I think the machine I worked on was
actually a 1410. 1410's were the ones that had disk drives. I
came in just as they were doing a conversion from the 1401
series to an IBM 360.
_And 360's are still being used today._
I would imagine so. [Editor's note: Our best information is
that at least two System/360s are currently used in California,
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 8
both by private corporations in Greater Los Angeles.] As for
the 1401 series, last I heard, the Department of the Navy was
still running an application on a 1410 a good eight or nine
years ago... In the early eighties, anyway.
[Concluded next issue]
-------------------------------------------------
I Played the ORIGINAL Video Game!
a recollection by Scott Robinson
I went to work at Bolt Beranek and Newman (no comma, please) in
the summer of 1966, as an instrumentation engineer. In those
days the company's activities were roughly equally divided
between acoustics -- both architectural and underwater -- and
computer science. The computer group's main machine was a
PDP-1, which consisted of about six 6 foot racks full of
hardware. It may have had a Remington Rand Fastrand drum
memory; I'm not sure. The company certainly had one of these
beasts later on, a drum about five feet long and two feet in
diameter with a large number of heads. All this was housed on
the lower floor of the (then) new split-level building, adjacent
to the kitchen and the reception area.
The control console for this machine was on the end of the row
of racks; it had a monochrome CRT, about 12 or 14 inch size,
and a row of miniature metal-handled toggle switches to enter
data and addresses when necessary. These switches were used as
the controls for Spacewar. This game was not a time-shared
activity; I suspect that we used the whole machine!
When a game was started, the screen would light up with two
different ship icons against a random background of stars.
There could, optionally, be a sun in the middle exerting
gravitational influence on matter. The gravitational constant
was also players' choice, I think in two steps, "fast" or
"slow." The screen was topologically connected side-to-side and
top-to-bottom; if you exited screen left, you reappeared screen
right, and so on.
Each ship could be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise, fire
reaction engines that eventually ran out of fuel, and fire
missiles of finite range and finite number. The ship obeyed
Newton's laws, accelerating and decelerating under the influence
of its engines and of solar gravitation, if any. Rotation could
be either easy to control (when you had a switch on, the ship
rotated,) or more difficult and realistic (the switches applied
angular acceleration, so that rotation increased or decreased
gradually depending on switch settings). The object, of course,
was to blow the other ship up.
If you were hit, you were dead meat! Falling onto the sun was
comparably ill-advised. Collision of two ships produced a
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 9
vivid, graphically depicted explosion on screen, and both
players were out, whereupon the game restarted.
For those in desperate circumstance, faced perhaps with a
barrage of missiles incoming and too close to dodge, there was
an escape...hyperspace! By rotating in both directions
simultaneously, the ship could be made to vanish and reappear
with unpredictable position and velocity. Your situation might
be improved...but with a catch. The ship might explode upon
re-entry into normal space, and the likelihood increased each
time hyperspace was invoked. I don't think I ever saw anyone
use hyperspace four times in one game without blowing up.
The display was a vector-type CRT and the quality of the
graphics exceptional. The motion was perfectly smooth, with no
aliasing artifacts noticeable.
Although I and others spent many enjoyable evenings playing
Space War, the test word toggle switches used as controls
enjoyed the game much less than we did, and failed with some
regularity. Ultimately the computer folks got tired of
replacing the switches and threw us off the machine.
Nonetheless I take a certain satisfaction in having played one of
the first computer games, an innovative and engaging game with
rigorous simulation of physics in action. As for the hyperspace
feature, haven't you ever felt that you were about to go off
into hyperspace when you tried to rotate both directions at
once?
-------------------------------------------------
NEXT ISSUE * NEXT ISSUE * NEXT ISSUE * NEXT ISSUE
INITIATIVE 1999: Why a lot of hardware will be scrapped at the
turn of the century. Why six years is barely long enough to
prepare for the consequences. Plus: Programming the 1401,
part 2. Smalltalk Then and Now. Palfreman and Swade's Dream
Machine. More....
Downloadable October first -- don't miss it!
-------------------------------------------------
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION
The ANALYTICAL ENGINE solicits manuscripts of 600 to 1000 words
on the general topic of the history of computing. Articles
should be tightly focused on one interesting or illuminating
episode and should be written for a technically literate general
audience. Submissions are welcome from both members and
non-members of the CHAC and a one-year membership, or extension,
will be given for each article published. Article deadlines are
the first of each month prior to publication: June 1 for the
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 10
July issue, September 1 for the October issue, December 1 for
the January issue, and March 1 for the April issue.
Decision of the editors is final but copyright of all published
material will remain with the author.
The preferred document file format is Microsoft Word for DOS or
Windows, but almost any DOS or Macintosh word processor file
will be acceptable. Alternatively, please provide an ASCII
file. Submit manuscripts on DOS 5.25" or DOS or Mac 3.5"
diskettes, or by modem as a file attached to an Internet
message. Please avoid submitting on paper unless absolutely
necessary.
-------------------------------------------------
Can you spare a few minutes a month? The ANALYTICAL ENGINE
urgently needs volunteer help for administration, subscription
fulfillment, proofing and keying. Help keep the ENGINE spinning
-- reply to our Internet or mailing address today.
-------------------------------------------------
The ANALYTICAL ENGINE, newsletter of the Computer History
Association of California, is published four times a year -- in
January, April, July and October -- at El Cerrito, California.
Subscriptions are available with Association membership at $25
per year. Use the coupon below to subscribe, or contact the
Association at:
US Mail: 1001 Elm Court, El Cerrito, CA 94530-2602
Internet: kcrosby@crayola.win.net
America Online: kcrosby
CompuServe: 72341,2763
FAX: 510/528-5138
-------------------------------------------------
SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE * SUBSCRIBE
and share fascinating insights into the vital story of computing
while you build an organization that safeguards our unique
scientific and technical heritage. Just $25 will bring you four
issues of the ANALYTICAL ENGINE -- filled with non-partisan,
technically and historically accurate articles -- and the
satisfaction of preserving the history that you work to create.
Analytical Engine V1#1, July 1993 Page 11
____ Yes! I enclose $25. Please enroll me in the Computer
History Association of California for the next year and
send four issues of the ANALYTICAL ENGINE to
____ Internet address: ________________________________________
____ CompuServe ID#: __________________________________________
____ Other gateway: ___________________________________________
____ I would prefer to receive paper copies of the ANALYTICAL
ENGINE. (A paper edition will be produced if the membership
shows sufficient interest.) My mailing address is:
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____ I will submit an article to the ANALYTICAL ENGINE. (Please
refer to the guidelines for submission, above.)
____ I will help produce the ANALYTICAL ENGINE or do other work
for the Association. Please contact me at:
______________________________________________________________
*****
NOTE: This issue of THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE is being distributed
on the honor system. Please subscribe if you wish to, but for
the moment we can only accept checks or other depositable types
of payment. We hope that, by the end of 1993, we will have con-
cluded arrangements with various online services to accept
payment by VISA or MasterCard. We appreciate your patience.
2-Sep-1993 06:18:04 -0700,1540;000000000020
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Subject: DECWAR
To: mrc@panda.com
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 93 7:34:53 CDT
From: Harris Newman <hsnewman@wixer.bga.com>
Cc: tops-20@panda.com
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
I am looking for the source code to a game called DECWAR which I played on a
Tops-10 machine when I was at the University of Texas in 1981. It was a
multiuser trek like game which featured a command line input. I have been
looking for the source code since then! I have found 1 system which still
has it running, in sweden, but they have no source code. Also, Compuserve
has it in modified form as Megawars.
I would sincerely appreciate your help in finding the source code for DECWAR.
I have also looked throughout the internet, and have found nothing on archie.
Thanks for any leads,
Harris Newman
hsnewman@wixer.bga.com
512-322-3841
5-Sep-1993 01:08:56 -0700,1191;000000000020
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From: carl@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Carl A Baltrunas)
Message-Id: <9309050759.AA18417@tardis.tymnet.com>
To: hsnewman@wixer.bga.com, mrc@panda.com
Subject: Re: DECWAR
Cc: tops-20@panda.com
I still have a copy on tape somewhere of the binaries for Tops-10, and
once tried to get it working under TYMCOM-X, but decided it wasn't
worth the effort once our group of hard-core hackers dropped below a
certain level.. :-(
I never found the source at the time. Clive Dawson (MIGHT) know who to
contact, and I think he's on this list still...
I can run DISEXE or some such on it if that will help, but I suspect
you've tried that already.
-Carl
5-Sep-1993 05:04:08 -0700,1905;000000000020
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Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1993 13:01:25 +0100
From: Alan Greig <ccdarg@vaxd.dct.ac.uk>
To: "cbs%uk.ac.nsfnet-relay::com.tymnet.tardis::carl"@vaxd.dct.ac.uk
Cc: TOPS-20@PANDA.COM, ccdarg@vaxd.dct.ac.uk
Message-Id: <00972175.3A298980.25495@vaxd.dct.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: DECWAR
> From: CBS%UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY::COM.TYMNET.TARDIS::CARL 5-SEP-1993 09:40:25.14
> Subj: Re: DECWAR
> I still have a copy on tape somewhere of the binaries for Tops-10, and
> once tried to get it working under TYMCOM-X, but decided it wasn't
> worth the effort once our group of hard-core hackers dropped below a
> certain level.. :-(
>
> I never found the source at the time. Clive Dawson (MIGHT) know who to
> contact, and I think he's on this list still...
>
> I can run DISEXE or some such on it if that will help, but I suspect
> you've tried that already.
I never had the sources to this but I do remember it was fairly easy
to get the tops-10 binary running under tops-20. Just a matter
of pmaping the shareable/writable high segment but you might have
to make a slight monitor patch to stop the Universe reseting
every time someone control-c's out of the game.
I posted the patch to this list sometime around 1984 if anyone
has archives back that far :-)
--
Alan Greig Janet: A.Greig@uk.ac.dct
Dundee Institute of Technology Internet: A.Greig@dct.ac.uk
Tel: (0382) 308810 Int: +44 382 308810
** Never feed the hand that bites you **
10-Sep-1993 08:43:24 -0700,1923;000000000020
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To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: What does the "PA" in "PA1050" stand for?
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 11:41:12 +28716
From: "Dr. Tom Blinn (DTN 381-0646, ZKO3 3X05)" <tpb@zk3.dec.com>
X-Mts: smtp
During a course on Mach 3.0 that included a description of some of the work
that has been done in OSF/1 AD to move "UNIX" out of the Mach kernel, there
was a description of the technique of using an "emulation library" mapped in
the user's address space to implement part of the UNIX functionality, esp.
the system calls that can either be done entirely in user space or else can
be implemented directly in Mach. Sort of reminiscent of emulating TOPS-10
on TOPS-20..
This naturally reminded me of PA1050, and that got me to thinking that I did
not really remember (or more likely never knew) what the "PA" stood for.
So, I throw myself at the feet of those fellow TOPS-aholics out there to see
if someone else has a better memory (or, more likely, broader knowledge).
Thanks..
Tom
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn
UNIX Systems Group
Mailstop ZKO3-3/W20
Digital Equipment Corporation
110 Spit Brook Road
Nashua, New Hampshire 03062
Internet: tpb@zk3.dec.com
Phone: (603) 881-0646
Note:
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
10-Sep-1993 09:35:46 -0700,4113;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 12:32:45 EDT
From: "Dan Murphy, now at LKG; 226-6765" <murphy@ranger.enet.dec.com>
To: "tops-20@panda.com"@inet.enet.dec.com
Cc: murphy@ranger.enet.dec.com
Apparently-To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: Re. What does the "PA" in "PA1050" stand for?
Well, I can answer that one...
That piece of code was originally referred to as "the compatibility
package" when we created it for TENEX. As I recall, the source
and maybe the original EXE were call PAT.MAC and PAT.EXE, and that
got changed after a while to PA1050. So, it comes from "the
comPAtibility package."
In case anyone doesn't remember, the "1050" comes from the model
number of the "larger" PDP-10 system that DEC was selling circa
1970. The "1040" was smaller and didn't have a disk for file storage,
only dectape. The "big" 1050 had a disk!
dlm
============
From: US1RMC::"tpb@zk3.dec.com" "Dr. Tom Blinn (DTN 381-0646, ZKO3 3X05)" 10-SEP-1993 12:06:08.81
To: tops-20@panda.com
CC:
Subj: What does the "PA" in "PA1050" stand for?
During a course on Mach 3.0 that included a description of some of the work
that has been done in OSF/1 AD to move "UNIX" out of the Mach kernel, there
was a description of the technique of using an "emulation library" mapped in
the user's address space to implement part of the UNIX functionality, esp.
the system calls that can either be done entirely in user space or else can
be implemented directly in Mach. Sort of reminiscent of emulating TOPS-10
on TOPS-20..
This naturally reminded me of PA1050, and that got me to thinking that I did
not really remember (or more likely never knew) what the "PA" stood for.
So, I throw myself at the feet of those fellow TOPS-aholics out there to see
if someone else has a better memory (or, more likely, broader knowledge).
Thanks..
Tom
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn
UNIX Systems Group
Mailstop ZKO3-3/W20
Digital Equipment Corporation
110 Spit Brook Road
Nashua, New Hampshire 03062
Internet: tpb@zk3.dec.com
Phone: (603) 881-0646
Note:
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
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% Subject: What does the "PA" in "PA1050" stand for?
% Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 11:41:12 +28716
% From: "Dr. Tom Blinn (DTN 381-0646, ZKO3 3X05)" <tpb@zk3.dec.com>
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10-Sep-1993 10:04:15 -0700,1273;000000000020
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 10:02:31 PDT
To: tops-20@panda.com
From: Hans Ridder <ridder@zso.dec.com>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, DECwest Engineering
Spam-Content: Negligible
Subject: Re: Re. What does the "PA" in "PA1050" stand for?
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.747680551.ridder@zowie.zso.dec.com>
> As I recall, the source and maybe the original EXE were call
> PAT.MAC and PAT.EXE, and that got changed after a while to PA1050.
I did this once.... I seem to remember that the process of building
PA1050 requires assembling PAT.MAC, then executing PAT.EXE which does
some internal "rearranging" (due to missing linker features?) and then
saves itself (or is manually saved) as PA1050.EXE, similar to the way a
TOPS20 monitor is built.
> dlm
-hans
30-Sep-1993 06:10:14 -0700,1905;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 04:38:35 -0800 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
Subject: sayonara, SIMTEL20
To: TOPS-20@Panda.COM
Postal: 6158 Lariat Loop NE; Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098
Phone: +1 (206) 842-2385
Message-Id: <12913340612.8.MRC@YUUYUU.Panda.COM>
At 4PM, Mountain Daylight Time, today (September 30, 1993), SIMTEL20 will be
shut down. This is a terrible loss for the entire Internet community. Rest
in peace, KL #2936. We loved you, and we will miss you very much.
With the demise of SIMTEL20 comes also the demise of the e-mail link between
my DEC-2020 (Yuuyuu.Panda.COM) and the rest of the world. This link first
appeared in late 1985, using the SUMEX-AIM DEC-20 as a relay. During its
heyday in 1986-1988 it was the hub of an e-mail network that provided service
to Intellicorp, Santa Clara University, NTT in Tokyo Japan, and Stacken in
Stockholm Sweden. In 1989 the link moved to SIMTEL20. In 1991, I purchased a
NeXT with SLIP support (Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM) and it became my primary e-mail
system, but I kept Yuuyuu's link to the world up for historical purposes.
Now, unless some kind person running one of the surviving Internet DEC-20's
(yoo-hoo, XKL?!?) should offer me Cafard service, or I get off my lazy butt and
implement Cafard for UNIX, this will be the last Internet e-mail message from
the famous MRC 2020. It's still alive, though, and I am determined that it
will see the century tick!!!!
-------
8-Nov-1993 00:07:46 -0800,3445;000000000020
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Date: Mon 8 Nov 93 00:02:51-PST
From: Jim Lewinson <Jiml@heap.cisco.com>
Subject: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
To: tops-20@panda.com
Reply-To: jiml@cisco.com
Message-Id: <12923524956.11.JIML@heap.cisco.com>
I am saddened to report the passing of Heap.cisco.COM, cisco
System's last DEC-20. At cisco, Heap represents the end of a line of
DEC-20's that reach back to the early days of the company. I
remember helping to move a DEC-20 from Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner's
garage to the "new" offices at 1360 Willow, where it sat in the lobby
until the landlord fixed the freight elevator. :-)
That machine became Mathom.cisco.COM. With time, another
machine, called Heap, was added to support the Customer Advocacy
department, and Mathom became an Engineering machine. Eventually a
third machine, Hulk, was added to handle overflow from both machines.
Both Hulk and Mathom have departed a while ago, but each passed their
inheritance of data and applications to Heap for caretaking. There
were also a few brain transplants on the way as the machines moved
around: restore the disks on a "brand new" machine [and sometimes
change a few wires on the backplane - System 1022 is fussy about
serial numbers!] Heap spent much of its active life taking care of
E-Mail and Customer data, and since then has held onto the historical
data as new applications came on board that were not able to
initially cope with the whole volume of historical data.
For me, Heap represents the end of a long line of DEC-20's
going back at least 15 years. Heap is the end point of many effors
from many places. I mainly know about the Stanford connections: Heap
was the inheritor of SUDS and TeX work at Stanford CSD, System 1022
database development efforts at Stanford GSB and CSD, and Monitor
development work at Stanford LOTS, EECF, and CSD. I'm sure that the
people that came from SRI brought with them their own local
flavoring. It even owed its very existance on Willow road to
networking efforts at all of those places!
In the short run, Heap is going to go live in a warehouse.
It won't be on the network anymore, but it will be availble to be
powered up if a sudden need to run any 36 bit applications arises.
Long run, I expect it will provide parts to support its cousins. I
don't think any of them live in the area anymore, except for a single
2020 at SRI. ("Bootstrap"?) (It has succeeded in outliving most of
the machine room Vaxen at DEC's Palo Alto SRC, I would expect to DEC
Marketing's chagrin.)
It is survived in Menlo Park by a host of Unix boxes.
Perhaps the closest relative in Menlo Park is a MIPS 6280 that also
demands 3-phase power and won't survive cisco's move to San Jose. I
would expect its spirit to eventually reincarnate in Washington,
where it has a number of friends and loved ones.
Goodbye Heap: We wish you well on your journey, and may a
pleasant rebirth await you.
Jim Lewinson
cisco Systems
[and Stanford GSB Computer Facility]
-------
8-Nov-1993 01:23:44 -0800,1296;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@Panda.COM>
In-Reply-To: <12923524956.11.JIML@heap.cisco.com>
Message-Id: <MailManager.752749369.17290.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
*Sigh*. Can we have a show of hands of how many TOPS-20 systems remain?
SIMTEL20 died in September, and NTT's DEC-20 is apparently also dead. Those
were the last two KL systems that I had accounts on.
Here's my list of still living machines:
Mark Crispin/Panda Programming:
Tonton.Panda.COM KS #4286 (normally powered off/standby for Yuuyuu)
Yuuyuu.Panda.COM KS #4664 (since 1985, the famous MRC 2020)
PowerBook-165c (running KS10 emulator)
NeXTstation (running KS10 emulator)
(Only Yuuyuu is net-accessible, and only via Telnet; e-mail access got cut
when SIMTEL20 died).
XKL Systems:
Mathom.XKL.COM KL #????
As far as I know, that's it, unless Wesleyan's machine is still living.
-- Mark --
8-Nov-1993 02:04:17 -0800,1588;000000000020
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From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 10:54:48 MET
Reply-To: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@Panda.COM>
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.752752488.bqt@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE>
>*Sigh*. Can we have a show of hands of how many TOPS-20 systems remain?
Aida.Update.UU.SE Kl # ??? (Don't remember offhand, I'll have to
check). Runs TOPS-20. However, it also will
soon be turned off because the department
wants to use the computer room for offices
instead. We'll keep both the KL machines here,
and hopes to find a new place to keep them
running.
Johnny
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
CS student at Uppsala University || on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@minsk.docs.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
8-Nov-1993 05:23:54 -0800,1419;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 08:20:14 -0500
Message-Id: <9311081320.AA01467@sandpiper.wesleyan.edu>
From: Douglas Bigelow <dbigelow@sandpiper.wesleyan.edu>
To: TOPS-20@Panda.COM
In-Reply-To: Mark Crispin's message of Mon, 08 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
>> As far as I know, that's it, unless Wesleyan's machine is still living.
Wesleyan's machine, klb.wesleyan.edu, is still alive and well but only
until January, I fear. Oddly enough, one of the things I will
occasionally miss most is access to editors based on TECO, which
seems to be embedded into my brain's ROM. When I have very complex text
manipulations to do, I can do it in TV or EMACS in much less time than it
takes me to remember enough awk or sed.
Last time we went through this "who's still here" exercise (only about 6-9
months ago?), there were quite a few left. Surely they all couldn't have
silently disappeared?
Doug Bigelow
Director of Academic Computing @ Wesleyan
8-Nov-1993 06:28:46 -0800,1286;000000000020
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Reply-To: shawn@FENCHURCH.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 9:28:22 EST
From: "Shawn F. Mckay" <shawn@FENCHURCH.MIT.EDU>
To: MRC@panda.com
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@panda.com>
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.752768902.shawn@fenchurch>
Deep-Thought (A DecSystem-20/65) is asleep safe and sound at MIT EE/CS
where it has always been, its in no danger in the foreseeable future,
and though its RP06 drives are gone and an "option" cab is giving
shelter to some eqpt (modems / hub :-)), none of its vital organs have
been (or will be) harmed.
One day perhaps someone will grace her with a KX/KLH-10 I can place
inside to expose young students to a "real" operating system :-)..
At the moment, she remains the departments beloved "mainframe" :-)
- Shawn
8-Nov-1993 07:14:28 -0800,1522;000000000020
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Received: by panix.com id AA15853
(5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for TOPS-20@Panda.COM); Mon, 8 Nov 1993 10:05:13 -0500
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 10:05:13 -0500
From: Rick Ace <rick@panix.com>
Message-Id: <199311081505.AA15853@panix.com>
To: TOPS-20@Panda.COM, dbigelow@sandpiper.wesleyan.edu
Subject: TECO editors
Douglas Bigelow <dbigelow@sandpiper.wesleyan.edu> writes:
> Wesleyan's machine, klb.wesleyan.edu, is still alive and well but only
> until January, I fear. Oddly enough, one of the things I will
> occasionally miss most is access to editors based on TECO, which
> seems to be embedded into my brain's ROM. When I have very complex text
> manipulations to do, I can do it in TV or EMACS in much less time than it
> takes me to remember enough awk or sed.
Upon leaving Marlboro to work at the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab in 1980,
I found myself in a strange land (PDP-11 Sixth Edition UNIX) with no
acceptable text editors. Have you ever edited with 'ed' on a UNIX box?
So after a few months of grieving over losing TV, I wrote a C version
for UNIX. I am using it now to compose this message. If you would
like a copy of the source and man page, drop me a line.
;X$$
Rick Ace
rick@panix.com
8-Nov-1993 07:45:48 -0800,1266;000000000020
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From: Darn those Red Sox! 08-Nov-1993 1043 <francini@narfvx.enet.dec.com>
To: tops-20@panda.com
Apparently-To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycl
Well, GIDNEY at Digital is still alive, albeit shorn of disks -- including the
one I used to have an account on -- but it lives still:
$ set ho gidney
Unauthorized Access is Prohibited
Gidney, The TOPS-20 Mail System, TOPS-20 Monitor 7(21733)
@logIN (USER) fraNCINI (PASSWORD)
?Does not match directory or user name, or structure not mounted
@logoUT
Killed Job 16, TTY364,
at 8-Nov-93 10:45:31, Used 0:00:00 in 0:00:16
john
8-Nov-1993 09:51:07 -0800,2642;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 12:40:47 +0500
From: rossman@shibuya.East.Sun.COM (Ken Rossman - NYC SSE)
Message-Id: <9311081740.AA03255@shibuya.East.Sun.COM>
To: TOPS-20@Panda.COM, MRC@Panda.COM
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
Content-Length: 1463
...
> Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
> From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
> Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
> To: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@Panda.COM>
>
> *Sigh*. Can we have a show of hands of how many TOPS-20 systems remain?
>
> SIMTEL20 died in September, and NTT's DEC-20 is apparently also dead. Those
> were the last two KL systems that I had accounts on.
>
> Here's my list of still living machines:
>
> Mark Crispin/Panda Programming:
> Tonton.Panda.COM KS #4286 (normally powered off/standby for Yuuyuu)
> Yuuyuu.Panda.COM KS #4664 (since 1985, the famous MRC 2020)
> PowerBook-165c (running KS10 emulator)
> NeXTstation (running KS10 emulator)
> (Only Yuuyuu is net-accessible, and only via Telnet; e-mail access got cut
> when SIMTEL20 died).
>
> XKL Systems:
> Mathom.XKL.COM KL #????
>
> As far as I know, that's it, unless Wesleyan's machine is still living.
Isn't CompuServe still mainly KL-based??? I had heard that somewhere...
Maybe it's no longer true.
Any left at MIT?
How about Stevens Tech?
For the longest time (much longer than it really should have been), there
was one remaining at the Teachers College of Columbia University (still had
some real core memory and a low four digit serial number too), but that
too may well have gone to 36 bit heaven by now...
Ken Rossman, NYC SSE 212-558-9182
45 Broadway, 12th Fl.
New York, NY 10006 Ken.Rossman@East.Sun.COM
8-Nov-1993 10:16:14 -0800,1151;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 13:10:30 -0500
From: gscott@yipe.shr.dec.com
To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
X-Vms-To: SMTP%"tops-20@panda.com"
X-Vms-Cc: GSCOTT
There is apparently at least one 36 bit machine operational at DEC.
After I feared for Gidney's death, Sam Weiner and John Francini tell me that
Gidney (kl2871), formerly the primary TOPS-20 development machines, is still
alive in Nashua, NH (NIO). This system has disks configured so that it can be
run as a TOPS-10 or TOPS-20 system.
Greg Scott (gscott@yipe.shr.dec.com)
Former TOPS-20 developer
8-Nov-1993 12:32:21 -0800,1266;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 15:29:53 -0500
From: weiner@ryn.mro4.dec.com (Sam DPSE&SD/SPE DTN 237-3875 SHR3-2/R28)
Message-Id: <9311082029.AA28220@ryn.mro4.dec.com>
To: gscott@yipe.shr.dec.com, tops-20@panda.com
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
Let's not forget our friends out in Colorado; they will be there until
the end of 1993 last I heard:
Node Volatile Summary as of 8-NOV-1993 15:20:06
Executor node = (WARLOK)
Identification = WARLOK, TOPS-20 7.0 Research System
State = on
Active links = 0
Node Volatile Summary as of 8-NOV-1993 15:24:55
Executor node = (AXAVAX)
Identification = DECnet-10 Version 4.0
State = on
Active links = 0
Sam
8-Nov-1993 12:39:10 -0800,2667;000000000020
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To: gscott@yipe.enet.dec.com
Cc: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: Re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 08 Nov 93 13:10:30 EST."
<9311081813.AA04771@shrnsp.shr.dec.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 93 15:36:25 +28616
From: "Dr. Tom Blinn, 603-881-0646" <tpb@zk3.dec.com>
X-Mts: smtp
> There is apparently at least one 36 bit machine operational at DEC.
>
> After I feared for Gidney's death, Sam Weiner and John Francini tell me that
> Gidney (kl2871), formerly the primary TOPS-20 development machines, is still
> alive in Nashua, NH (NIO). This system has disks configured so that it can be
> run as a TOPS-10 or TOPS-20 system.
Strictly speaking, NIO is Salem, New Hampshire, not Nashua. But it's closer
from here to there than to Shrewsbury :^)..
A quick check of the network registry revealed 13 systems inside Digital
that are claimed to be various KL and KS systems running TOPS-10 or TOPS-20
but probing them to see what they're running is disappointing; several of
those that can be reached are running various versions of VMS and one of
them is apparently an X terminal!
The ones still alive appear to be:
Colorado Springs, CO:
AXAVAX = DECnet-10 Version 4.0
D2C2 = TOPS-20 7.0 Fault Insertion System
WARLOK = TOPS-20 7.0 Research System
Salem, NH:
GIDNEY = DECnet-20 Version 4.0
I was unable to verify that LUNE (TOPS-10) or SOLEIL (TOPS-20) are still
running in Valbonne, France.
Although KL1026 is still registered in Salem (NIO), I believe it has been
retired.
The others of the 13 listed all are something else. We may be a computer
company but we can't keep accurate records of what's connected to our data
network :^)
Tom
Dr. Thomas P. Blinn
UNIX Software Group
Digital Equipment Corporation
Mailstop ZKO3-3/W20
110 Spit Brook Road
Nashua, New Hampshire 03062
Internet: tpb@zk3.dec.com
Phone: (603) 881-0646
Note:
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer or anyone else, living or dead, real or imagined.
8-Nov-1993 13:08:16 -0800,1521;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 15:59:48 -0500
From: gscott@yipe.shr.dec.com
To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: Re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
X-Vms-To: SMTP%"tops-20@panda.com"
X-Vms-Cc: GSCOTT
>Strictly speaking, NIO is Salem, New Hampshire, not Nashua. But it's closer
>from here to there than to Shrewsbury :^)..
Yes, Tom is right on both counts. A slip of the mind.
My apologies to Southern New Hampshire residents, including Gidney. :-)
>I was unable to verify that LUNE (TOPS-10) or SOLEIL (TOPS-20) are still
>running in Valbonne, France.
I believe all of the European 36 bit machines were unplugged months ago.
>Although KL1026 is still registered in Salem (NIO), I believe it has been
>retired.
KL1026 never made it out of MRO. KL1042 (1026's old stablemate)
_was_ in Salem, but since the TOPS-10 disks are now connected to Gidney,
I assume that 1042 has gone to that big computer room in the sky. ;-)
Greg (gscott@yipe.shr.dec.com)
8-Nov-1993 22:04:45 -0800,1767;000000000020
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From: jms@romana.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Message-Id: <9311090555.AA00986@romana.tymnet.com>
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
To: MRC@Panda.COM (Mark Crispin)
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 21:55:10 PST
Cc: TOPS-20@Panda.COM
In-Reply-To: <MailManager.752749369.17290.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>; from "Mark Crispin" at Nov 8, 93 1:02 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
> *Sigh*. Can we have a show of hands of how many TOPS-20 systems remain?
At BT North America's Fremont Data Center, the last 4 of TYMSHARE's KLs
are still running. They are all running TYMCOM-X as their operating
system (X, as in roman numberal 10, as opposed to TYMCOM-IX on the XDS-940
systems). They are slated to be shutdown 31-Dec-93 or 1-May-94, depending
on who is in charge today.
I still occasionally receive mail to my account JMS@F34.TYMNET.COM, but
not as much as I used to.
--
Joe Smith (408)922-6220 BTNA GNS Major Programs, TYMNET Global Network
<jms@tardis.tymnet.com> P.O. Box 49019, MS-C51, San Jose, CA 95161-9019
CA license plate: "POPJ P," Married to the LB, Quantum Leap's #1 net.fan
PDP-10, 36-bits forever! Humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."
8-Nov-1993 22:48:59 -0800,898;000000000020
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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 22:39:09 PST
From: Mark Lottor <mkl@nisc.sri.com>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@panda.com>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@panda.com>
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.2.752827149.mkl@phoebus.nisc.sri.com>
A 2060 is still running at SRI in Menlo Park, CA. It is called
bootstrap.org and is being used by Doug Englebart. It is the
former NIC system.
9-Nov-1993 09:39:31 -0800,1122;000000000020
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From: Sarr Blumson <sarr@citi.umich.edu>
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@panda.com>
Cc: TOPS-20 Hackers and Yackers <TOPS-20@panda.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 93 12:21:35 -0500
Subject: re: Another DEC-20 begins another karmic cycle
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 8 Nov 1993 01:02:49 -0800 (PST)
My spies tell me that there are still a fair number of KLs and KSs (and
maybe even a KI or two) still running at ADP Network Services/Autonet.
Running TOPS-10.
Sarr Blumson sarr@citi.umich.edu
voice: +1 313 764 0253 FAX: +1 313 763 4434
CITI/IFS, University of Michigan, 519 W William, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943
10-Nov-1993 09:22:55 -0800,1288;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 18:16:08 +0200 (MET)
From: John Wilson <WILSON@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Subject: DEC-20 list
To: TOPS-20@PANDA.COM
Message-Id: <752948168.870000.WILSON@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(284)+TOPSLIB(151)@ULLA.FORNAX.COM>
If ADP still has KSes, they must be different ones from the long row
of former ADP KSes at Fornax... painted brown for some reason too...
This isn't a 20 but, does anyone know anything about DEC10.PSU.EDU? I'm
probably sticking my nose where it doesn't belong but, someone told me it
was a KA so I tried it and sure enough, it has the 1,,1 AOBJN but (OK it's
documented so I guess it's a FEATURE), smells like a KA to me.
Incredible. That picture on the back of the 1970 PDP10 Reference Handbook
just makes me DROOL...
A question: does anyone have SUDS sources they'd let me have? I've been
trying in vain to dig them up but I keep barely missing them (don't tell me
they were on Heap...).
John Wilson
10-Nov-1993 11:36:29 -0800,1231;000000000020
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Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 14:34:30 -0500
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From: francini%narfvx.enet@zk3.dec.com (Darn those Red Sox! 10-Nov-1993 1434)
To: TOPS-20@panda.com
Subject: RE: DEC-20 list
According to Bob Hirlinger (RAH@engri.psu.edu) who runs things down there, the
KA is scheduled to be decommissioned. It's an interesting machine -- they
called it the "hybrid computer", or something like that, as it was a KA10
interfaced to an analog computer. They did in fact do some board hackery to
change a few of the instructions around. [I wouldn't be surprised if they
changed the AOBJN instruction as you described...!
john francini
10-Nov-1993 12:20:09 -0800,2013;000000000021
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Date: 10 Nov 1993 15:17:08 -0400 (edt)
From: Bryan J Jensen <BJJ@ecl.psu.edu>
Subject: KA10
To: TOPS-20@PANDA.COM
Message-Id: <01H55IIW3EJ68WY988@ecl.psu.edu>
X-Vms-To: TOPS-20@PANDA.COM
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
DEC10.PSU.EDU is alive and well, but only till next month.
PSUDEC10.bitnet is 18 feet of cabinet overlooking 20 VAXstations.
It looks something like the back row pictured on the back cover
of the 1970 pdp10 reference handbook (move one of those tape drives
back into the row). It consists of:
KA10, serial number 46, arrived here at Penn State in 1968.
128K of MD10 core memory in 2 cabinets (32K broke last week,
I just configured it out with the toggle switches).
Paper tape reader/punch (paper tape is the standard boot device).
8 DECtape drives
TU20 tape drive
There is also a 340 display scope with a Hawley X063X mouse from
The Mouse House. The scope was done for the PDP-6 around 1965,
the mouse was added much later. An electronic schematic package
runs on this device (it works well but for that flicker).
The DEC-10 uses a VAX 11/785 as a disk server.
The old RP03 disks and attached analog computer were trashed last
year for lack of any interest in those pieces.
The machine is being trashed, much to my dismay, because new
management has no appreciation for it. All the VAX 11/785's
and VAX 8550's are going too - no great loss there.
---
Bryan Jensen, Engineering Computer Lab, Penn State University, bjj@ecl.psu.edu
8-Dec-1993 15:22:32 -0800,1055;000000000020
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From: kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu (Kimo B. Yap)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 15:12:14 -0800
Message-Id: <199312082312.PAA07604@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
I'm looking for a copy of the program to read 10/20 BACKUP/DUMPER
tapes under VMS and Mark Crispin thought someone here might have it on-line.
I'd prefer to be able to ftp it if possible. Thanks in advance for any
help/pointers.-kby (formerly @kl1026.dec.com)
8-Dec-1993 17:15:33 -0800,1635;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 12:10:47 +1100 (EST)
From: Huw Davies <cchd@lucifer.latrobe.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
To: "Kimo B. Yap" <kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
Cc: Paul Nankervis <P.Nankervis@latrobe.edu.au>, tops-20@panda.com
In-Reply-To: <199312082312.PAA07604@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
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On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Kimo B. Yap wrote:
> I'm looking for a copy of the program to read 10/20 BACKUP/DUMPER
> tapes under VMS and Mark Crispin thought someone here might have it on-line.
> I'd prefer to be able to ftp it if possible. Thanks in advance for any
> help/pointers.-kby (formerly @kl1026.dec.com)
10BACKUP (a VMS program to read -10 backup tapes) is available via anonymous
ftp from luvs1.latrobe.edu.au in the [.10backup] directory.
Please be patient, luvs1 is a VAXstation-2000.....
Huw Davies | Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
Computing Services | Phone: +61 3 479 1500 Fax: +61 3 479 1999
La Trobe University | I own an Alfa to keep me poor in a monetary
Melbourne Australia | sense, but rich in so many other ways
9-Dec-1993 10:04:06 -0800,2437;000000000020
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From: kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu (Kimo B. Yap)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 09:51:42 -0800
Message-Id: <199312091751.JAA25589@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
To: TOPS-20@PANDA.COM
Subject: Retry of vaxt10 req.
From MAILER-DAEMON@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU Wed Dec 8 16:00:54 1993
From: NeXT Mail Agent <MAILER-DAEMON@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: Returned mail: User unknown
To: kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu
----- Transcript of session follows -----
While connected to Bsd.Stupi.SE:
>>> RCPT To:<tops20@STUPI.SE>
<<< 550 <tops20@STUPI.SE>... User unknown
554 <tops20@STUPI.SE>... 550 User unknown
----- Unsent message follows -----
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From: kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu (Kimo B. Yap)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 15:12:14 -0800
Message-Id: <199312082312.PAA07604@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
To: tops-20@panda.com
Subject: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
I'm looking for a copy of the program to read 10/20 BACKUP/DUMPER
tapes under VMS and Mark Crispin thought someone here might have it on-line.
I'd prefer to be able to ftp it if possible. Thanks in advance for any
help/pointers.-kby (formerly @kl1026.dec.com)
9-Dec-1993 18:46:01 -0800,4872;000000000020
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Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1993 18:17:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Russ Forster 389-3186 <RFORSTER@galaxy.gov.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
To: "Kimo B. Yap" <kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>, cchd@lucifer.latrobe.edu.au
Cc: Paul Nankervis <P.Nankervis@latrobe.edu.au>,
"tops-20@panda.com" <tops-20@panda.com>
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For TOPS-20 tapes there is a program caled SRI_DUMPER (or similar).
I have no idea where you will find it though.
Regards,
Russ Forster (Postmaster), Sr. Technical Analyst, GEMS Group
B.C. Systems Corp., 4000 Seymour Place, Victoria, B.C., V8X 4S8
RForster@Galaxy.GOV.BC.CA Phone: (604) 389-3186 FAX: (604) 389-3412
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Subject: Re: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
Sender: Huw Davies <cchd@lucifer.latrobe.edu.au>
To: "Kimo B. Yap" <kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
Cc: Paul Nankervis <P.Nankervis@latrobe.edu.au>,
"tops-20@panda.com" <tops-20@panda.com>
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On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Kimo B. Yap wrote:
> I'm looking for a copy of the program to read 10/20 BACKUP/DUMPER
> tapes under VMS and Mark Crispin thought someone here might have it on-line.
> I'd prefer to be able to ftp it if possible. Thanks in advance for any
> help/pointers.-kby (formerly @kl1026.dec.com)
10BACKUP (a VMS program to read -10 backup tapes) is available via anonymous
ftp from luvs1.latrobe.edu.au in the [.10backup] directory.
Please be patient, luvs1 is a VAXstation-2000.....
Huw Davies | Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
Computing Services | Phone: +61 3 479 1500 Fax: +61 3 479 1999
La Trobe University | I own an Alfa to keep me poor in a monetary
Melbourne Australia | sense, but rich in so many other ways
--Boundary (ID eBw5Jfwsv72rO+4g1X/wZw)
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Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1993 12:10:47 +1900
From: Huw Davies <cchd@lucifer.latrobe.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
In-reply-to: <199312082312.PAA07604@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
To: "Kimo B. Yap" <kby@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
Cc: Paul Nankervis <P.Nankervis@latrobe.edu.au>, tops-20@panda.com
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Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 23:02:22 +0500
From: Ken.Rossman@East.Sun.COM (Ken Rossman - NYC SSE)
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To: tops-20@panda.com
In-Reply-To: <01H6AAOPSQUEB3XHJX@mr.gov.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Looking for vaxt10 (or whatever it was)
Content-Length: 1383
> On Wed, 8 Dec 1993, Kimo B. Yap wrote:
>
> > I'm looking for a copy of the program to read 10/20 BACKUP/DUMPER tapes
> > under VMS and Mark Crispin thought someone here might have it on-line.
> > I'd prefer to be able to ftp it if possible. Thanks in advance for any
> > help/pointers.-kby (formerly @kl1026.dec.com)
> From: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
>
> 10BACKUP (a VMS program to read -10 backup tapes) is available via
> anonymous ftp from luvs1.latrobe.edu.au in the [.10backup] directory.
> From: RForster@Galaxy.GOV.BC.CA
>
> For TOPS-20 tapes there is a program caled SRI_DUMPER (or similar).
> I have no idea where you will find it though.
And for those who really enjoy the pain of porting a Unix app to VMS,
there's a program called "read20" out there on the net somewhere. Check
with your local archie server for current location, I guess, or I have an
old copy of the source tree lying around here somewhere that I'd be happy
to bundle up and send out.
Mostly does simple stdio stuff, so VMS CC ought to be able to handle the IO
for the most part. Most sophisticated thing I think it does are some
MTOPR%... er, OOPS!... ioctl() calls in there, which could probably be
converted to things that work under VMS easily.
Ken Rossman, NYC SSE 212-558-9182
45 Broadway, 12th Fl.
New York, NY 10006 Ken.Rossman@East.Sun.COM
P.S. -- Hey Russ! Long time...
13-Dec-1993 13:05:35 -0800,3477;000000000020
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Date: Mon 13 Dec 93 13:02:54-PST
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Subject: San Francisco BOF report
To: tops-20@panda.com
Message-Id: <12932842001.22.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Betsy Ramsey asked me to summarize the DECsystem10/DECsystem20 Emulator BOF at
DECUS last week.
This BOF was hosted by Andrew Riebs of Digital's AXP Migration Tools group,
with an eye to discussing the work being done internally at DEC as well as
external efforts. He stated that this effort is intended to become a product.
The folks at Digital are working on "a clean migration path for people stuck in
the KL environment," "an easy path to running applications in the Alpha
environment." To this end, they are preparing a version of the Harrenstein
emulator.
The DEC version works like a KL10B rather than a KS10; initially, it will run
under OSF/1, with OpenVMS operation shortly afterwards. It will run as a user
process on top of the OS, with simulated network connections to allow users
first to log in on the basis OS and then connect to the emulator as if across a
network.
This is not the same mechanism as was being investigated by Pat Tressel's group
at the University of Washington. They were interested in using the Alpha user-
programmable code-space to do a low-level emulation of the KL on which the 36-
bit OSes would run (near-)natively, treating the Alpha as a programmable micro-
engine.
The UW effort has been derailed by budget cuts. Pat Tressel is now at Digital,
but she is not working on Andy Riebs' project.
Andy gave me permission to publish the text of his slides. Each was headed by
the words "KL10 Emulator."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slide 1:
@ What is the KL10 Emulator
- A virtual KL10 System Environment
- Emulates CPU
- Emulates selected devices
- The product
* OSF/1 release followed by
OpenVMS release
* Validation
* Performance
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slide 2:
@ Components of a KL10 System
- cpu
- Memory
- Console front-end
- Channels
- Devices
- Operating systems
- Figure ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slide 3:
@ Components of the KL10
Emulator
- cpu
- Memory
- Console front end
* DTE20
* PDP-11/40
* Emulator user interface
- Channels
* Internal channels and channel
adaptors
- Devices
* Emulator Disks
^ RP06 and RP07 disk drives
* Emulator Tapes
^ TM03 tape drive
- Ethernet Adapter
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The suggested mechanism for using this on a network is to put two ethernet
cards in the Alpha box, dedicating one to the emulator and running multiple
users on one invocation.
Finally, Andy asked me for a brief description of the XKL system, since he and
some others in attendance who had not made it to the XKL BOF the previous
evening.
Rich Alderson
-------
13-Dec-1993 13:08:11 -0800,790;000000000020
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Date: Mon 13 Dec 93 13:03:57-PST
From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Subject: San Francisco BOF report addendum
To: tops-20@panda.com
Message-Id: <12932842192.22.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
I promised Andy Riebs that I would ask this group if anyone has a copy of MIMIC
available, but I didn't think to ask if he wanted his e-mail address splashed
over the net. Reply either to me or tops-20@panda.com, and I'll pass the info
along to him.
Rich
-------
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From: Rich Alderson <ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
Subject: Happy DEC-20 Day!
To: tops-20@panda.com
Message-Id: <12934645146.21.ALDERSON@mathom.xkl.com>
-------
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