[cctalk] Re: C. Gordon Bell, Creator of a Personal Computer Prototype, Dies at 89

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 2:39 PM Paul Koning  wrote:
> As I mentioned, it is not unprecedented; I have a book about book design 
> which talks at some length about choosing the page proportions, and it 
> mentions square pages as one of the recognized choices.  I think it says that 
> it isn't very common, but I don't remember what else it says, for example any 
> particular reason why one might choose this format (or reasons to avoid it).

Here's another example:

https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Illustrated-Double-Helix/dp/1476715491

where there's essentially a normal width book inside but the wider
pages allow for extensive sidebar-style annotations and also provide
more options for graphic layout of illustrations, etc.

[cctalk] Re: C. Gordon Bell, Creator of a Personal Computer Prototype, Dies at 89

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 2:25 PM John Herron via cctalk
 wrote:

> Out of curiosity is the book the size of a floppy disk or some computer
> item at the time? (Any significance or just him being unique?).

Here's an Amazon listing showing what it looked like. Ordinary book
size if not shape.

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Structures-Readings-Examples-McGraw-Hill/dp/0070043574/

[cctalk] Re: C. Gordon Bell, Creator of a Personal Computer Prototype, Dies at 89

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 1:50 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:

> I still have that book, though it's deep in some box.

https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/cgb%20files/computer%20structures%20readings%20and%20examples%201971.pdf

[cctalk] Re: Random items on Pascal #3

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 8:45 AM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
>  I suppose you could pose ESPOL as an example of a language for a machine,

ESPOL was likely a major inspiration for SPL (System Programming
Language) for the Classic stack-based HP 3000 which was used to write
the MPE operating system (there was also no separate assembly
language). The constructs in SPL map pretty much directly onto the
hardware features, and it has an ASSEMBLE(...) statement for in-line
machine code which is used frequently because an SPL programmer knows
what's happening at the machine level and sometimes you just want to
ASSEMBLE(SWAP, DUP) etc.

SPL was a very machine-specific language designed explicitly for its machine.

It was picked up by Tandem (perhaps literally off someone's desk when
they weren't looking) to create TAL which was used to develop Tandem's
original NonStop operating system for their machine which was, er,
"inspired" by the original HP 3000 design.

Later when HP migrated MPE to PA-RISC, there were eventually two
different PA-RISC SPL compilers developed, one (SPLash!) by Allegro
Consultants, and one internally by HP that was used to migrate the
TurboIMAGE DBMS to native code (after their attempt to replace it with
a new HP IMAGE based on a relational kernel crashed and burned),

[cctalk] Re: Random items on Pascal #3

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 6:31 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
> > On May 9, 2024, at 6:43 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk  
> > wrote:
> > ...
> > I've written code in Pascal, as well as Modula-2.  Never liked
> > it--seemed to be a bit awkward for the low-level stuff that I was doing.
>
> Not surprising, since that's not what it is all about.  Both, like their 
> predecessor ALGOL-60 as well as successors like Ada, are strongly typed 
> languages where doing unsafe stuff is made very hard.

HP chose Pascal as their system programming language when they came to
rewrite the HP 3000's MPE Operating System onto PA-RISC to produce
MPE/XL in the mid 80s. It had many extensions to solve the inherent
limitations of standard Pascal, like the ability to have formal
parameters which could receive actual values of any type, extensive
pointer support, well-defined variant records, etc., etc. It remained
the most popular language for writing low-level code inside HP and for
customers as well, even after C became available. C (including GCC
when we got POSIX support) was more commonly used to port open source
stuff to the machine.

We sold an early client-server retail POS system with a Classic MPE
3000 talking to HP-150 IIs over serial ports, which was written in
PASCAL/V on the 3000 and Microsoft Pascal on the HP-150s. Even this
earlier Pascal had sufficient extensions to get done what you needed
to do without issue.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, May 4, 2024 at 12:28 PM W2HX via cctalk  wrote:

> Sure but at $60k per bitcoin it only takes 267 bitcoins to earn a $1M profit 
> on that $15M per year cost! But I have no idea if a machine like that could 
> mine 266 coins in a year or 22/month.

I'm not really sure if Cheyenne could ever mine a single bitcoin at
this point. Bitcoin mining (as I understand it) moved from CPUs (like
Cheyenne, even if it has a lot of them) to GPUs many years ago, and it
has now even been quite a few years since they abandoned the use of
GPUs too. Today it's done on huge clusters of ASIC hash calculators.
You need to be able to do something like 3,000 trillion SHA-256 hashes
per second to make one Bitcoin per day (at least according to a quick
search).

If by "Bitcoin" you mean crypto-mining in general, there's probably
something it could be used for, but it would be horribly inefficient
compared to more modern hardware.

The first uses for Cheyenne that seem to pop to mind (Crypto and AI)
are actually the two WORST applications for it I think. It might still
be reasonably good at the kind of simulations it was acquired to run
(atmospheric sims, etc.)

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:09 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk
 wrote:

> Careful disassembly and transportation could run well into 6 figures all
> by itself.

Just getting it out of NCAR could be a substantial fraction of that.
Per the auction documents it looks like about 100,000 pounds
(~45,000kg) of racks. I think smuggling Nvidia cards would be
substantially more viable.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 7:49 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:

> BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
> version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
> word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
> switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came 
> to be called "F" and "D" float.

Interesting. The original (pre-Series II) HP 3000 systems in the mid
1970s also started with a three (16-bit) word floating point format
and later switched to supporting both 2 and 4 word formats. One of the
only ways you would see this is in the header line that displays when
you run BASIC::

:BASIC

HP32101B.00.26(4WD)  BASIC  (C)HEWLETT-PACKARD CO 1979
>

The "4WD" (as opposed to "3WD") tells you you're on a machine that
uses the four word long floating point.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Sold at $480,085.00.

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
>  wrote:
>
> > Bad news...
>
> But does he have 8,000 of them haha.
>
> Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
> bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
 wrote:

> Bad news...

But does he have 8,000 of them haha.

Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:14 AM KenUnix via cctalk  wrote:

> Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?

The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.

So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 1:30 PM W2HX via cctalk  wrote:

> Someone seems to want it. Bidding is at $250,000 and counting. I guess 
> someone didn’t get the memo about getting just a few nvidia cards!

If you go to Amazon today and buy just the CPUs and RAM, that will
cost you around 21 million dollars. So I imagine those used parts are
still worth substantially more than the current high bid. The close of
the auction should be interesting.

Still pretty sure nobody intends to re-install and run any part of the
whole system, but who knows. Maybe there are other SGI systems still
out there.

[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

It's a different world now with GPU and AI performance, so I strongly
doubt Cheyenne will ever boot again. Somewhat sad that they're doing
such a nice job of de-installing the machine, labeling all the cables
etc. 5PF is just not impressive these days. A single Nvidia card will
do more than that in FP8 I think which is probably good enough for AI
training, and something like 100PF in FP4 for inference. At worst it's
a small handful of Nvidia cards to completely replace that monster.

It has  8,064 commodity CPUs, "E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base
frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)" which may still sell new
(NOS?) for up to $2K each (though it's probably questionable whether
the total future market amounts to anything close to 8K units), and
300TB of standard DDR4 ECC memory. That's probably what people are
bidding on.

The rest of it is likely getting melted. And it's something like 42
racks of stuff.

But tune in for the exciting auction finish at 4PM Pacific. Auction
will continue until 10 minutes elapses without a bid I believe.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

There's also Geoff Graham's BASIC for the Pi Pico.

https://geoffg.net/picomite.html

On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 3:32 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 2, 2024, at 4:23 PM, Gordon Henderson via cctalk 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > I'm told Lua is the new Basic or Python is the new Basic, but the best 
> > thing for me about Basic on the old micros was being able to turn the 
> > computer on and type Basic into it immediately And to that end, I 
> > decided to re-target my C Basic it to a bare metal framework for the 
> > Raspberry Pi I'd been working on - boots to Basic in... well, it's not as 
> > quick as an Apple II or BBC Micro, but under 2 seconds. It's a bit faster 
> > on a Pi Zero as there's no USB to initialise...
>
> That's why I've been playing with FORTH on my Raspberry Pico microcontrollers 
> (Travis Bemann's "Zeptoforth" dialect, to be precise).  It's nice and 
> compact, and it boots in milliseconds.  Multicore, multitasking, lots of 
> library modules... nice.
>
> paul
>
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From
the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings
similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a
first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing
very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary
development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the
Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which
was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for
the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a
migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new
standard Basic across multiple HP platforms.

>From 1980-1986 or so I worked for an HP OEM / ISV whose "ERP" (we
didn't call them that yet) package was written in BASIC on the HP
3000. It was limited to Letter-digit variable names but was quite
performant and had its own API into the IMAGE DBMS etc.

BASIC got used for lots of "serious" development.

[cctalk] Re: Charles Stross, replay the bubble of 1995, alt history plus retrocomp

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 6:34 PM Chris Zach  wrote:

> Seems the USPS was trial building a system where you could bring a
> letter into a Post Office, they would scan it, then send it to another
> post office in MINUTES using a big packet switched network based on
> PDP11/23's connected to RM02's (yes, with Quuniverters)

FedEx did this for a while in '84-'86 and managed to lose $320M in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail

[cctalk] Re: Charles Stross, replay the bubble of 1995, alt history plus retrocomp

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 10:57 AM Chris Zach via cctalk
 wrote:

> It is funny, but truth be told we dodged a massive bullet by going with
> the "Internet" and TCP/IP as opposed to the nightmare of AT Connect,
> IPX, and the blazing speeds of TWO! ISDN B channels.
>
> I was there. I remember X.400, and how NDS was going to be the directory
> system that bound us all together in hell forever. I remember everything...
>
> We missed living in that crap-sack universe by six months or so.

Fortunately, in the US the net wasn't run by the Post Office so the
mammals were out of the bag and fruitfully multiplying long before the
rest of the world caught on and started forming committees to create
camel-shaped dinosaurs to perform the same functions. As a result most
of those things were fairly short-term distractions for most of the
internet as, for example, it quickly became evident that nobody was
going to pay postage on email haha.

[cctalk] Re: PCs in home vs businesses (70s/80s)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 12:23 PM Tarek Hoteit via cctalk
 wrote:
> Do you guys* think that software drove hardware sales rather than the other 
> way around for businesses in the early days?

For medium and large multi-user systems absolutely. At least once we
got out of the era where there basically was no software so as a
business you bought a machine and wrote your own. Which followed the
era in which the machine probably didn't come with an operating system
either lol.

I worked as a developer / system programmer for an HP OEM from
1980-1986 or so. Our company made what would later be called ERP
systems (on the HP 3000) for companies that did warehouse distribution
and retail sales, etc. and covered pretty much all aspects of the
business (Inventory, Order Processing, AP/AR/GL, etc., etc.). These
were the days when a medium sized company may have only owned ONE
central business computer that was used for practically everything.

A customer would start their acquisition process for a new system by
developing an RFP laying out their requirements for software (and
possibly hardware capacity, features etc.) and companies like ours
would respond to these and the selection process would proceed from
there. Some customers started out with hardware manufacturer
preferences, or quite often working with the salespeople of a hardware
vendor, because if you were selling, say, VAXes, you needed the
customer to be able to solve some problem in order to complete a sale
and that usually meant finding a 3rd party software company who could
provide the application software. So how a particular company ended up
with a particular brand of hardware could have multiple explanations,
but generally nobody bought a machine without having a prerequisite
software solution available. It was an endless dance between hardware
vendors and software houses and the potential customers.

As an OEM for HP, we (on paper) resold the HP hardware to the customer
along with the software, and that got us a cut of the hardware sale as
well as software and any application customization (everyone wanted
the system to work THEIR way, and that's how the total functionality
of the software increased over time).

The sales lead times for big system sales were often months long and
the implementation typically would last several months as well so you
ended up having a very close relationship with the customer, people
working on site for weeks or months etc.

There's a lot of very interesting history surrounding all of this, and
it rarely gets considered in the history of medium to large systems.
The applications, how the systems were used day-to-day, and the
customers themselves and their interactions with the systems they ran,
all have really interesting aspects.

But yes, business customers bought solutions, not VAXes, or PR1MEs, or
DGs, or HP 3000s, or IBM Midrange boxes. Each platform had at least a
few key applications that had been developed there (usually by 3rd
parties) that were what actually sold those hardware platforms.

[cctalk] Re: Turbo Pascal Kermit for CP/M

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Mon, Apr 8, 2024 at 2:19 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
 wrote:
> I'm having  bit of fun with my various CP/M systems but I ran into
> what I see as an interesting problem.  I got Turbo Pascal on two
> systems.

If it's an old version of TP that asks "Include error messages
(Y/N)?", did you try saying N?

[cctalk] Re: Seeking out Joe Rigdon / John Lawson

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

If it's the conference with many videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/@hpcalc/videos

Then you could ask Eric as I see him giving a presentation.

Or watch all the videos and see if you can spot anyone.

On Sun, Apr 7, 2024 at 10:54 PM Sellam Abraham via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Hi Tony.
>
> Thank you for the note.
>
> Is there any way to confirm this?  Many people have been seeking out Joe
> and when I tell them I'm told he was spotted alive last year there are
> going to be many questions, and many people wanting to attempt to reach
> him.  More than a few people are very concerned about him as they enjoyed
> varying relationships with him but none have heard from him for 5+ years.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Sellam
>
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2024 at 8:42 PM Tony Duell via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 1:48 AM Sellam Abraham via cctalk
> >  wrote:
> >
> > [Sent privately]
> >
> > >
> > > Has anyone communicated with or know a way to communicate with Joe Rigdon
> > > out of Florida?  Most here should know him as an old-school ClassicCmp
> > > veteran.
> >
> > I have just heard that he attended the HP Handhelds conference last
> > year so is alive and well and still, presumably, interested in such
> > machines. But no way to contact him
> >
> > -tony
> >

[cctalk] Re: Amoeba OS

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2024 at 12:47 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
 wrote:
> On 3/28/2024 1:25 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

>> You can still get one for OpenVMS/x86.

> As of the past few days, that may not be the case anymore.

I believe that's all you can get now and going forward. They're also
going to distribute it in the future as a .vmdk disk image that's
ready to activate and run. No more install media, just the pre-built
VM image to play with, x86 only.

[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Of course I mean Turbo Prolog there, sorry.

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 4:20 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 3:15 PM Just Kant via cctalk
>  wrote:
>
> > So the portions of code belonging to chatgpt which produce the 
> > hallucinations have been isolated?
>
> It's a massive deep neural network, so you can't really isolate
> anything. But there are parameters that you can use to tune it, like
> how quickly it forgets earlier parts of a conversation, etc. and some
> people speculate that they tweaked something like that which resulted
> in the recent issues.
>
> > Which languages were used to build it?
>
> One could say Python, but that mostly sits on top of C++, which then
> invokes CUDA (or TPU or similar) code, but at the bottom it's all just
> matrix multiplication.
>
> Polog and other Logic Programming tools aren't applicable to Machine
> Learning approaches which is all anyone is interested in for "AI"
> these days. If you want to make a rules-based expert system, and you
> know what all the rules are, then Prolog might still be a useful tool.
> Turbo Pascal is even still available as its originators took it back
> from Borland and made it into Visual Prolog for Windows which has a
> free personal edition (the commercial license is only 100 euros too).
> Also there's GNU Prolog if you just want to futz around with Prolog.

[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 3:15 PM Just Kant via cctalk
 wrote:

> So the portions of code belonging to chatgpt which produce the hallucinations 
> have been isolated?

It's a massive deep neural network, so you can't really isolate
anything. But there are parameters that you can use to tune it, like
how quickly it forgets earlier parts of a conversation, etc. and some
people speculate that they tweaked something like that which resulted
in the recent issues.

> Which languages were used to build it?

One could say Python, but that mostly sits on top of C++, which then
invokes CUDA (or TPU or similar) code, but at the bottom it's all just
matrix multiplication.

Polog and other Logic Programming tools aren't applicable to Machine
Learning approaches which is all anyone is interested in for "AI"
these days. If you want to make a rules-based expert system, and you
know what all the rules are, then Prolog might still be a useful tool.
Turbo Pascal is even still available as its originators took it back
from Borland and made it into Visual Prolog for Windows which has a
free personal edition (the commercial license is only 100 euros too).
Also there's GNU Prolog if you just want to futz around with Prolog.

[cctalk] Re: Forth on the HP 3000: Alternate History

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 5:53 AM Rodney Brown via cctalk
 wrote:

> Anthony Pepin provided a Forth to the HP3000 Contributed Library in
> September 1982, though I think his looks like a virtual machine, I don't
> remember trying it in the day.

> Thanks to Gavin Scott's "system" and J. David Bryan's SIMH HP-3000 emulator,
> I can look at it now.

In related news, we're not too many days away from Dave releasing
update 13 of the HP 3000 SIMH, which can simulate an IMB / HP-IB I/O
based HP 3000 Series 58 and that means we can now run all versions of
MPE V/E up to and including Release 40, the very last release of
Classic MPE which is even Y2K compliant (cough, for the next four
years, cough). MPE fans can expect a complete MPE V/E Release 40
turnkey version in the very near future.

> As Anthony Pepin observed, Forth implementations at the time assumed a
> von Neumann architecture. The HP 3000 with a Harvard architecture implying
> read-only code with a different address space, needs more thought.

I wouldn't call the classic 3000 a Harvard architecture. It's just
that its designers probably knew the issues surrounding self-modifying
code and decided that all executable code was going to be reentrant
and shareable which means it never has to be swapped "out", does not
require separate VM backing store (it's swapped in directly out of the
program file or SL library file), etc. so it has to be "read only"
under execution.

The ideas of dynamically generated code, JITs, etc. just hadn't caught on yet.

Besides FORTH etc., this caused issues for things like APL\3000 which
was developed at HP Labs in the mid 70s. They made it the world's
first dynamically compiled APL, but ran into the read-only-code
limitations and so they decided to target a virtual "eMachine" rather
than native code and then interpret that intermediate code at runtime.
They even included a couple new CPU instructions in the APL microcode
to accelerate the dispatch of the virtual machine instructions.
Unfortunately APL\3000 suffered from performance issues which pretty
much doomed it (which is sad because it would really have shined as
later machines got faster and wider).

But now in retrospect I wonder why they (and others) didn't just say
"Ok guys, we need to dynamically emit and modify code now please." and
solve the problem properly.

It seems like it would be a relatively small amount of code to
implement effective workarounds, even in the extant MPE software and
hardware environment. One thought would be to provide a big SL library
file full of code segments that are nothing but NOOPs, and then have
the application choose one of them and just write the code directly
into the segment in the SL file and then dynamically load it. A few
more lines of code to update the code segment in memory if it's
already present. "ZOMG! Hax! Privileged Mode!" you may cry, but geez,
all this stuff that looked scary at the time sure looks really trivial
compared to what we have to deal with now.

The Classic 3000 is a neat architecture and back in the day we always
figured out a way to do whatever we needed to.

Gavin

[cctalk] Re: Unknown Viewsonic monitor flashes Red-Blue-Green-White

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 5:46 PM Van Snyder via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> I was given a 22-inch Viewsonic monitor.

CRT or LCD?

Viewsonic made both. The 22" CRTs were high end and very nice. The 22"
LCDs are generally pretty ordinary.

If it is a CRT, is the face of the display completely flat?

If LCD then it might be in some self-test mode waiting for a signal.
What happens if you feed it?

[cctalk] Re: Vintage Computer Fest Midwest "DECnut" pizza party

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 4:49 PM ste...@malikoff.com steven--- via
cctalk  wrote:
> Here in Oz, VAX has been a popular brand of vacuum cleaner for many decades. 
> We had one until recently.
> https://www.vax.com.au/

http://catb.org/jargon/html/V/VAX.html

[cctalk] Language Creators Charity Fundraiser (Seattle Sept 19th)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

This sounds kinda fun (via the Adafruit weekly Python on
microcontrollers newsletter):

https://pydata.org/language-creator-fundraiser/

Panelists:
Adele Goldberg - Smalltalk
Guido Van Rossum - Python
Anders Hejlsberg - Turbo Pascal, C#, TypeScript
James Gosling - Java

"PyData Seattle presents its inaugural charity event. The event will
feature the creators of C#, Java, Perl, Python, TypeScript, and
Smalltalk in a conversation about programming language design.

The charity event brings together this unique group of computer
science pioneers, unlike any event held before. These great minds come
together for what will surely be a fantastic night of discussion as
the panel delves into the past and future of programming language
creation. The event will attract innovators and engineers from
Seattle, the nation’s fastest-growing technology hub.

The event is a benefit for Last Mile Education Fund and NUMFOCUS."

General admission $229, Students $75.

12:00 - 4:00 PM September 19th, 2023
Cinemark Lincoln Square, Cinemas and IMAX
700 Bellevue Way NE, Suite 310 Bellevue WA 98004

[cctalk] Re: NewtonOS

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 7:38 PM David Arnold via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Some of you might recall that Apple released a series of machines based
> on the Newton OS in the early 1990s.

BTDT, got the shirt.

https://i.imgur.com/pgFDNrO.png

[cctalk] Re: PDP-8/L $15,000

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 6:22 AM Peter Coghlan via cctalk
 wrote:
> You reckon someone in Moscow is wishing they heard about this trick a week 
> ago?

They instead chose the ever-popular Simplified Planetary Landing
Approach Trajectory.

[cctalk] Re: Apple 1

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

I feel like people are over-thinking the Apple 1 thing.

Apple made a lot of people rich, and I think the number of rich Apple
people who want to be able to throw parties and say stuff like, "Oh,
yes, that's my Apple I that I paid a million dollars for."
substantially exceeds the number of extant Apple I systems.

I don't think this phenomenon is applicable to very many other products.

G.

[cctalk] Re: Little Databases

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

P.S. This is a nice podcast (with transcript) interview with Richard
Hipp, the SQLite main/original developer:

https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 10:56 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 9:34 PM Sellam Abraham via cctalk
>  wrote:
> > Surely you hyperbole.
>
> https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html
>
> "Since SQLite is used extensively in every smartphone, and there are
> more than 4.0 billion (4.0e9) smartphones in active use, each holding
> hundreds of SQLite database files, it is seems likely that there are
> over one trillion (1e12) SQLite databases in active use."
>
> (Also the current number for estimated smartphones in use is rapidly
> approaching 7 billion now.)
>
> "[...]But our best guess is that SQLite is the second mostly widely
> deployed software library, after libz."
>
> SQLite really is just an amazing and magical thing.

[cctalk] Re: Little Databases

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 9:34 PM Sellam Abraham via cctalk
 wrote:
> Surely you hyperbole.

https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html

"Since SQLite is used extensively in every smartphone, and there are
more than 4.0 billion (4.0e9) smartphones in active use, each holding
hundreds of SQLite database files, it is seems likely that there are
over one trillion (1e12) SQLite databases in active use."

(Also the current number for estimated smartphones in use is rapidly
approaching 7 billion now.)

"[...]But our best guess is that SQLite is the second mostly widely
deployed software library, after libz."

SQLite really is just an amazing and magical thing.

[cctalk] Re: Little Databases

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 9:21 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 8/18/23 9:06 PM, Adam Thornton wrote:
> > So it doesn't support concurrent access by multiple users,
>
> I used to think the same thing.
>
> But, I seem to recall reading an authoritative article, likely on
> SQLite's site, talking about how it is possible to have multiple
> processes but the same and / or different users access the same SQLite
> database file (almost) concurrently.

My understanding is:

Concurrent access is fine, except that as soon as one writer begins
updating things SQLite will take a lock on the whole database so
another writer is going to wait until the first transaction is
committed or rolled back before its own transaction can proceed. This
also means you can't get a locking issue that could roll back your
transaction unexpectedly due to a conflict.

And there is now the BEGIN CONCURRENT option which defers locking
until COMMIT time, so multiple concurrent writers can just go at it,
but it only works well if each writer is changing different data
(records that don't share index pages etc.). At COMMIT time, it checks
to see if any of the database pages that the transaction was based on
(read or written) have changed since the start of the transaction and
if so, the COMMIT fails and you have to roll back and try again which
of course makes the application code more complex.

https://www.sqlite.org/cgi/src/doc/begin-concurrent/doc/begin_concurrent.md

Overall, I think SQLite is one of the best things ever. Not even Open
Source licensed, it's explicitly in the Public Domain. It now
implements the vast majority of the SQL standards and you're unlikely
to find something you need that it can't do. If you don't need
client-server access and don't need a zillion concurrent users, then
it's often the best choice. Just the lack of any installation,
configuration, startup/shutdown or other management requirements makes
it pretty much "implement and forget". It has billions of
installations and on the order of a trillion databases in use.

The O'Reilly SQL Pocket Guide (4th Ed.) covers SQLite, SQL Server,
Oracle, and PostgreSQL making it a handy resource for comparing those
systems.

[cctalk] Re: Wireless phone

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Marty's book is pretty good...

https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Cord-Phone-Transformed-Humanity/dp/194812274X

On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 8:23 AM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> That would be cell phone, right?  Wireless phones have been around for much 
> longer, but those earlier ones weren't cellular.  The key innovation is 
> seamless handoff between cells, as opposed to the call being tied to a 
> particular base station for the duration.
>
> paul
>
> > On Apr 3, 2023, at 9:15 AM, Murray McCullough via cctalk 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > On April 3, 1973 the first wireless phone call was made and Moore’s Law has
> > now led to the smart-phone being ubiquitous to our lives: Computer
> > technology and cell phone technology marching hand-in-hand.
> >
> >
> > Happy computing and talking about it!
> >
> >
> > Murray 
>

[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 9:38 PM Ethan Dicks via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> We had an Amdahl in the middle of a multi-thousand-square-foot
> computer room (one of several) at work 25 years ago.

Heh, of the limited number of big Mainframe data centers I got to
visit, every one had one big red Amdahl box among a vast field of IBM
hardware. Once you had enough IBM systems IBM just assumed you were
their bitch now and would pay whatever they asked for further systems.
The solution was to buy a single Amdahl system thus getting your IBM
sales rep summerily replaced with a much humbler one.

G.

[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 7:01 PM Jon Elson via cctalk
 wrote:
> On 3/10/23 13:00, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

> > You mean DOS/360 as opposed to OS/360?

> MFT was Multiprogramming with a Fixed number of Tasks, MVT
> was Multiprogramming with a Variable number of Tasks.

And all the OS/360 variants were so late that they introduced three
other operating systems as a stopgap to allow IBM to actually ship
systems that were usable by customers. First came Basic Operating
System/360 (BOS/360), which was pretty much cards in and out (plus
printer), Tape Operating System/360 (TOS/360) which was what it
sounded like, and then a bit later in June 1966, Disk Operating
System/360 (DOS/360).

DOS was fully expected to just fade away once OS/360 was completed as
it was assumed everyone would quickly upgrade, but in typical customer
fashion it Simply Would Not Die and even lives on today a z/VSE. DOS
was for some time the most popular operating system in the world.

On the original question, yeah sure, there were/are "frames" holding
things, but also IBM's word mainframe really just means "Big-ass
computers made by IBM" and they like to get testy when someone calls
something from another manufacturer a mainframe. So this is the
definition assumed by anyone who has drunk enough of the IBM Coolaid
(and the related myths about robustness and security).

I'm a software person so I'm much more interested in the functionality
and applications of a system when comparing them. So for example an HP
3000 "minicomputer" in retrospect was comparable to a mainframe
because you did pretty much all the same things you would do on an IBM
MVS system and many of them in very similar ways (the MPE OS and even
some of the CPU hardware design like the two-bit Condition Code and
Channel / Selector Channel setup were very clearly inspired by IBM).
If you were a huge bank or Sears, etc. then you bought a mainframe
because that was really your only option, but if you were a little
bank in Guatemala,a medium sized wholesale distributor, consumer
electronics, maternity clothing, or drugstore retail chain, etc. then
you bought something like a 3000 and did all the same stuff (COBOL,
block mode online terminals, batch, etc.) just way cheaper and more
easily.

Of course all these things were about the performance of a $1
microcontroller of today, so that seems like an acceptable
categorization too :)

G.

[cctalk] Re: Typing class in high school

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

I took typing as a high school elective in like 1979. I never learned
to type. To this day, I can type really fast and accurately as long as
I don't think about what I'm doing.

G.

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 5:42 PM Chris via cctalk  wrote:
>
>  Trimble! I believe that was my drill seargent typing teacher's name was. My 
> idiot friend who sat in front (maybe even in a different class) would call 
> her Ms. Tremble. Because she made him do that.

[cctalk] Re: Inline Serial Device?

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 4:46 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
 wrote:
> If they do it probably costs about $500.  Blackbox is not the company
> they used to be.

That sounds like exactly the kind of company they used to be :P

I just wanted to mention that back when we did POS systems, we had
cash drawers that were operated off of an RS232 port not by looking at
the data stream but simply by triggering off the DTR line. The drawer
contained basically a capacitor and a solenoid. So if you have control
over the serial port on the "commanding" end, that sort of thing can
be an option for triggering physical devices.

G.

[cctalk] 50 Years of the HP 3000

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Well, here we are. If you boot up a classic HP 3000 system and simply
hit return when it asks you for the date and time, it will default to:

HP32002E.01.00
WHICH OPTION ? COO
ANY CHANGES? N

DATE (M/D/Y)?
WED, NOV  1, 1972, 12:00 AM
LOG FILE NUMBER 64 ON
*WELCOME*
:HELLO OPERATOR.SYS;HIPRI
0:00/13/SP#6/SPOOLED OUT
0:00/#S1/14/LOGON FOR: OPERATOR.SYS,OPERATOR ON LDEV #20
HP3000 / MPE V  E.01.00 (BASE E.01.00).  WED, NOV  1, 1972, 12:00 AM

which is exactly 50 years ago today. November 1972 was the month that
the very first HP 3000 systems were shipped to customers. Shortly
after this, those initial deliveries were all hastily recalled when it
quickly became clear that they were not yet capable of living up to
their specifications. The 3000 however would go on to recover from
this event and eventually became one of HP's most successful and
profitable product lines, and one of the most beloved computer systems
of all time, regularly beating out IBM, DEC, DG, and others in
customer satisfaction surveys.

For some stories about the earliest days of the platform, I refer you
to the words of Bob Green http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/classic.html
and Bill Foster http://www.teamfoster.com/hewlett-packard who were
there.

The original "Classic" CISC HP 3000 systems live on today through Dave
Bryan's most excellent SIMH simulation
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/hp/ and I have a turn-key setup which
will let you have your own 1980-vintage HP 3000 system up and running
in a couple minutes which is downloadable from my Google Drive at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vaNUrmfs2aQpjdQijG4PZmJaNu3hfcz
(Save the zip file using the download link in the upper right then
extract it anywhere convenient and see the README file for further
instructions) This only includes a SIMH binary for Windows, but you
can also build a SIMH executable from Dave Bryan's source above for
your platform of choice and use the rest of my infrastructure.

MPE Forever.

G.

[cctalk] Re: Connecting a physical terminal via LAN to Serial Port

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sun, Jul 31, 2022 at 2:29 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
> Yet another one is Raspberry Pico,
>
> Neither of these come standard with Ethernet, though I've seen option cards.  
> In the case of Pico, it seems possible to do 10 Mb/s Ethernet in software 
> using its PIO controller, though I haven't made the attempt.

For an extra $1 now you can get integrated WiFi (and Bluetooth but
there isn't any BT software support yet)  in the form of the $5 Pi
Pico W, so that's one route to talking to an IP network for IoT or
something like this.

A neat thing about the Pico is that you can do hard real-time
interface protocols using its PIO (Programmable I/O) channels and DMA
and still implement the whole thing in MicroPython.

Re: Who/what is Molecular Electronics Branch Electronic Technology Division

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Perhaps: "Molecular Electronics Branch, Electronic Technology
Division, Air Force Avionics Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base, Ohio."

On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 5:31 PM ED SHARPE via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Who/what is Molecular Electronics Branch Electronic Technology Division 
> thanks Ed#
>
> Sent from the all new AOL app for Android

Re: Slashed letter O, unslashed letter zero

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 2:44 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
 wrote:
> We did have one old-timer who slashed letter O.  We talked to the
> keypunchers, and solved it by a discussion, and having him put his name in
> red LARGE on every sheet.

Forgive me, but is this not why we had a place on the coding forms
explicitly for this purpose, as seen in:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/FortranCodingForm.png

where "Punching Instructions" consisted of example pairs of a writer's
hand lettered graphic and how it should actually be punched?

I would have thought this was a fully solved problem from really early on.

G.

Re: DEC Tape TU56 head pictures

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 10:11 AM Mike Katz via cctalk
 wrote:
> I'm still not sure how to clean the front of the head where the tape
> touches the head.  Any ideas?

Back in the day there was "Tape Head Cleaner" Which was a little tin
of trichlorotrifluoroethane (a.k.a. Freon 113) where you screwed the
cap off and it had a rod with a fluffy ball on the end inside, and you
would slather that all over the heads of 9-track tape drives etc. It
evaporated almost instantly. Of course after evaporating it floated up
and destroyed the ozone layer, so probably not super obtainable these
days.

A search for "Tape Head Cleaner" suggests there are similar modern
formulations used for HiFi equipment etc. that might be applicable.

Re: Typing in lost code

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 11:31 AM Noel Chiappa via cctalk
 wrote:
> See:
>
>   https://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf
>
> Someone's already done the specialist OCR to deal with faded program listings.

Neat. Though all the complex character recognition part of that work
is now like 15-20 lines of Python code (using either Keras or
PyTorch).

Re: Typing in lost code

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 9:11 AM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
> One consideration is the effort required to repair transcription errors.  
> Those that produce syntax errors aren't such an issue;
> those that pass the assembler or compiler but result in bugs (say, a mistyped 
> register number) are harder to find.

You can always have it "turked" twice and compare the results.

This is also the sort of problem that modern Deep Machine Learning
will just crush. Identifying individual characters should be trivial,
you just have to figure out where the characters are first which could
also be done with ML or you could try to do it some other way (with a
really well registered scan maybe if it's all fixed-width characters).

I think if I had a whole lot of old faded greenbar etc. I would
consider manually converting a few pages then setup a Kaggle
competition for it and maybe invest a bit of money as a prize. Someone
may even have done this already (there have certainly been a number of
"OCR historical documents" competitions), but I didn't spend too much
time searching. I'm sure you're not the only one who has had this
problem to solve.

Re: Getting files from HP 3000l ll business noretapes (was: Re: HP 2000 TSB and FORTRAN)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 5:28 AM ED SHARPE  wrote:
> Simulated  series III yes more power efficient than the real  series III

And about 42 times faster and four times the max memory and more disk
space than you could ever afford, and it takes like no memory to speak
of on the host and uses zero CPU when idle so yeah :)

Re: Getting files from HP 3000l ll business noretapes (was: Re: HP 2000 TSB and FORTRAN)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Ed,

Maybe you could take a vacation to Oregon and meet up with Keven
Miller and get him to convert your tapes to SIMH format for you while
you watch and then wipe any intermediate storage to your satisfaction.
Or just come up with some sort of non-disclosure agreement that would
meet your requirements (bonus points for using a 1980s HP Confidential
Disclosure Agreement form (which no manager at HP could ever fill out
correctly)).

http://www.3kranger.com/3ktapes.shtm

And then when you get home you can make a nice virtual simulated
Series III and restore whatever you want to play with.

Beware of the possibility of delamination and other issues for old
9-track tapes depending on age/manufacturer/storage. Another reason it
might be good to get help from someone with experience in reading very
old tapes.

It would be fun to see the Forum up and running again.

Gavin

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 7:13 PM ED SHARPE via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Heh!  Now that I have calmed down..I  do wish I had kept a  separate dump of  
> just bbs systems. For 2000 and 3000. And the multi user space war game.
> Actually the 3000 full volume of everything I ever did or said  was 
> discovered in the garage at home 1  year or maybe more back.
> The 800 bpi  tapes for 2000 I knew I had somewhere. But onlyvtefound again 
> last winter and...  in reality it was a miracle they were  saved.
> We haveca Hp 918 that  was recently put of service  And a hp 37 that I assume 
> that still bopys boots  that were graciously  contributed  but the big 
> stumbling block is. TAPEDRIVES!   WELL.I HAVE A DDS-3 CART ON 918 BUT NO 
> WORKEE WITH REEL TAPES @
> I AM GETTING PRETTY. OLD NOW  BUT IN THE FEW YEARS I HAVE LEFT WOULD LIKE TO 
> GET BOTH BBS SYSTEMS BACK OUT THERE
> THE 2000 VERSION  HAD A REGULAR VERSION. THAT MIGRATED INTO A FANITSY  THEMED 
> VERSION BOTH SHOLD BE ON 800 bpi TAPE(This tape set had hardest storage 
> conditions
> The 3000 version  should gave  both converted versions of the 2000  bbs's. 
> Plus The Forum/3000. massive even more  and no non nonsense  but even more   
> massave in features and refinement.
> Security is totally killer on all.There us no way I would be able to recreate 
>  these systems  now due to some brain slowing  but if you have not noticed  I 
> do not type well at all.. part coordination  part tfu hand and finger 
> movement( thanks to those who take time to decipher  what I type ( I worked 
> had to make  this and previous message  readable )
> Anyway seems maybe easiest way  is with simulators  once we get a 800 1600 
> built tape drive on it..
> As always any help ...ideas..hardware appreciated But keep in mind.  Transfer 
> has to take place HERE!Ed Sharpe archivist For SMECC
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: problem in HP 3000 System 37

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

P.S. The HP Museum has the CE handbook for the 37 and Micro 3000, but
it's in the 3000 Micro XE section. You can find it by searching within
the Documents page linked at the bottom of the left side navigation
bar.

3000-37-MicroFamily_CEServiceHandbook_30457-90039_200pages_Feb89.pdf

On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 8:02 AM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> The red light on your disk drive is not promising I think, but you
> should be able to get some output to the terminal before it tries to
> talk to the disk.
>
> You should have the terminal turned on before you power on the SPU. In
> the video it looks like the latch mechanism on the terminal power
> button may be broken as the button pops right back out and the
> terminal does not appear to power on. If you hold the power button on
> the terminal down does the display come up with function key labels on
> screen etc.? If so, try turning the SPU key on while the terminal is
> on (self test may take a little while, but it has been several decades
> since I turned on a 37 so I don't recall exactly).
>
> You can watch Lee Courtney's Series 37XE power up video on YouTube
> which might be helpful.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGtEvZRMPIk
>
> On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 6:26 AM Iban Cardona via cctalk
>  wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > some weeks ago I've  purchased a System 37 in ebay. This unit was ebay in
> > the year 2020 and the owner was made this video too:
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1CZKQtaoSo
> >
> > When I power up the displays shows a 1. Sometimes if I stop and start fast
> > the display shows a 2, but in all the cases all the leds stills lighted.
> >
> > The voltages on the power supply are OK, and in general I the unit have a
> > good look, I don't see corrosion or leakages from capacitors.
> >
> > Looking the SPU training PDF of Bitsavers/HPMuseum , looks that maybe is
> > related with a ROM or the WCS.
> >
> > Somebody have more info about this error, or know if is possible get some
> > schematics / service manual?
> >
> > Thanks a lot
> >
> > Iban

Re: problem in HP 3000 System 37

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

The red light on your disk drive is not promising I think, but you
should be able to get some output to the terminal before it tries to
talk to the disk.

You should have the terminal turned on before you power on the SPU. In
the video it looks like the latch mechanism on the terminal power
button may be broken as the button pops right back out and the
terminal does not appear to power on. If you hold the power button on
the terminal down does the display come up with function key labels on
screen etc.? If so, try turning the SPU key on while the terminal is
on (self test may take a little while, but it has been several decades
since I turned on a 37 so I don't recall exactly).

You can watch Lee Courtney's Series 37XE power up video on YouTube
which might be helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGtEvZRMPIk

On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 6:26 AM Iban Cardona via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> some weeks ago I've  purchased a System 37 in ebay. This unit was ebay in
> the year 2020 and the owner was made this video too:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1CZKQtaoSo
>
> When I power up the displays shows a 1. Sometimes if I stop and start fast
> the display shows a 2, but in all the cases all the leds stills lighted.
>
> The voltages on the power supply are OK, and in general I the unit have a
> good look, I don't see corrosion or leakages from capacitors.
>
> Looking the SPU training PDF of Bitsavers/HPMuseum , looks that maybe is
> related with a ROM or the WCS.
>
> Somebody have more info about this error, or know if is possible get some
> schematics / service manual?
>
> Thanks a lot
>
> Iban

Re: Compilers and languages (Was: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 6:07 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
 wrote:

> One of the rites of passage (not necessarily the only one) in "computer
> science" education is that every grad student invents a new language, and
> writes a compiler.  The compiler is not considered finished until the
> current iteration of that compiler was written in that language and
> compiled by that iteration of the compiler.

It's an interesting language classification as to whether the primary
/ reference implementation of the language is written in itself or
not. For example, the primary Python implementation is CPython written
primarily in C, and Java is primarily C++ (certainly both have
substantial libraries that are written in the language however, and
there exist implementations of both that are written in themselves I
believe like PyPy for Python).

For languages that aren't written in themselves it means that some of
the core language developers may primarily be C/C++ programmers which
might have some impact on the language's design and/or implementation.

Another interesting question is whether the currently shipping version
of a language written in itself was compiled using the same version of
itself or the previous version. I recall HP compilers generally being
built with the previous version (at least the last time I looked which
was probably in another century).

Re: Serial Multisession

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

The patent goes into considerable depth on the "preferred embodiment"
with descriptions of the protocol with flow control etc. and it looks
like it could be pretty easy to reverse engineer if the actual
implementation is similar to the description in the patent. If one had
a working example to play with of course. Could be a fun little
project.

The flow control is kinda interesting. The receiver sends "transmit
credits" to the sender who will consume them in the process of sending
data and then stop until more credits are received.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 4:25 PM Glen Slick via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> >
> > Also supported by the VT420, VT510, VT520, VT525
> >
>
> Actually as far as I can tell the VT510 does not support TD/SMP
> (Terminal Device/Session Management Protocol). No mention of multiple
> sessions in this VT510 manual as there are in this VT520 manual.
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt5xx/
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt5xx/598-0013866_VT510_Installation_Nov96.pdf
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt5xx/EK-VT520-IN_VT520_Installation_and_Operating_Information_Apr94.pdf

Re: IBM 1620; was: Early Programming Books

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 1:43 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk
 wrote:
> For some (jprobably hallucinatory) reason, I thought there was a project
> at CHM to replace the 1620 core stack with semiconductor memory.   Guess
> that never happened.

Oh yeah, that was like 12 years ago? I believe they had gotten the
1620 CADET (“Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try”) running, but there was
something original they didn't have working (could have been the core)
that they had implemented in a little semiconductor board stuck in it.
IIRC the system was in operating condition at the time. But I had
forgotten I ever knew this until you mentioned it.

Re: Early Programming Books

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

A few years later, but Iverson's A Programming Language (1962) was
written before APL was actually implemented and is all about a
symbolic mathematical notation for expressing operations. From the
preface via Wikipedia:

"Applied mathematics is largely concerned with the design and analysis
of explicit procedures for calculating the exact or approximate values
of various functions. Such explicit procedures are called algorithms
or programs. Because an effective notation for the description of
programs exhibits considerable syntactic structure, it is called a
programming language."

So I would definitely include it in the category of books you're asking about.

On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 3:44 AM Paul Birkel via cctech
 wrote:
>
> I know of two early computer (in the stored program sense) programming
> books.
>
>
>
> 1951: Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer
> (Wilkes, Wheeler, & Gill)
>
> 1957: Digital Computer Programming (McCracken)
>
>
>
> What others were published prior to the McCracken text?
>
>
>
> Excluded are lecture compendia and symposia proceedings, such as:
>
>
>
> 1946: Moore School Lectures
>
> 1947: Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating
> Machinery
>
> 1951: Proceedings of a Second Symposium on Large-Scale Digital
> Calculating Machinery
>
> 1953: Faster Than Thought, A Symposium On Digital Computing Machines
>
>
>
> These were principally about designs for, and experience with, new hardware.
>
>
>
> I'm curious about texts specifically focused on the act of programming.
> Were there others prior to McCracken?
>
>
>
> paul
>
>
>

Re: Funky electronics chain Fry’s is no more (Seattle Times)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 10:07 PM Al Kossow via cctalk
 wrote:
> The worst were the Fry's sales people on the floor that would ignore you, 
> then badger
> you to let them write a sale up so they'd get sales credit if you made the 
> mistake
> of asking them where something was.

And of course that process required them to get you over to the
computer, ask for your phone number, enter the item#, and wait for the
LaserJet to spit out the proto-invoice. The dumb/lazy ones would then
hand you the paper along with the item and tell you to show it to the
cashier. Of course you had the item so you could just throw the paper
away and they would get nothing. The crafty ones though would give you
the invoice and then walk the item up to behind the register area
where the cashier would have to go retrieve it so you were stuck.
Basically you wanted to avoid interacting with them if possible.

The fact that most stores had the ability to have 80 active cashiers
has to be some sort of record, though I don't think I ever saw the
registers on the far side get much use even at Christmas.

And then there was the "Fry's seal of quality" as we called the
return/restock slip plastered to items on the shelf that had already
been returned (at least) once. No sane person ever touched those
unless completely desperate.

My first Fry's story though comes from the early 1980s when I was
visiting HP in Cupertino and went to the original Sunnyvale Fry's and
only had a check for payment and they weren't going to take an out of
town check until they asked what I was in the bay area for and I said
"visiting HP" and then it was "oh, that will be fine then". It says
something about HP's reputation at the time that even their customers
were considered more trustworthy by a Fry's manager.

I also remember on that visit that the aisle-long magazine rack at
Fry's had many different nerdy publications but only two which rated
an entire double column of rack slots. They were Byte and Penthouse
IIRC.

We all had a love/hate relationship with Fry's, but they were an
institution and will be missed.

Serial numbers intelligence

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Wayne after Ed:
> As to the number sold, you should be able to get a sense of it by collecting 
> serial numbers from those who have them - once you get enough of them (maybe 
> 20 or so) you should get a sense of about where the numbering started and 
> where it ended.

I'm curious to what degree people have used serial number intelligence
gathering and countermeasures in the industry. Like were/are there
market research firms that would go to Fry's and record numbers off of
boxes to try to extrapolate sales for things like printer consumables,
and whether companies like HP ever took measures to try to obfuscate
the potential information content of their product serial numbers.

I always thought this could be a fun business idea.

You could do the same thing with similar data like fast food
restaurant receipt numbers etc. It might be a good model for
crowd-sourced data collection.

Re: APL\360

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 6:11 AM Peter Corlett via cctalk
 wrote:
> Secondly, beyond BODMAS, the meaning and precedence of random symbols is
> unclear to casual readers.

An issue that plagues other operator-rich languages, but not APL since
APL follows a strict right-to-left evaluation order for ALL operators
(no BODMAS in sight). You can use parentheses to affect it, but it's
not as hard to figure out a complex APL expression as one might
naively expect at first glance.

The symbols did greatly limit the growth of APL in its early years
just because it made the cost of entry higher so not as many people
were exposed to it, and it also suffered the related "small
proprietary language" issue that has plagued pretty much every
language whose developers tried to get rich off the language itself.

Re: APL\360

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 9:05 AM Kevin Jordan via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> If you would like to re/experience APL, four classic implementations are
> available on five machines running at the Nostalgic Computing Center
> :

There's also HP's APL\3000 running on your own virtual 1979 HP 3000
Series III with the HP 2641A APL Display Station Terminal, included in
my turnkey HP 3000 simulator setup which is still up on my Drive for
now:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bmXvHkBLbUeLAid73EJ4H1yQ2uwXQuRu

APL is still a going concern in a few places, and there's an active
ACM APL SIG for it, as well as a few actively supported and evolving
commercial implementations. I did a presentation on APL\3000 (which is
a functional duplicate of IBM's APL.SV) for the APL SIG a while back.
There's also an APL WIKI at https://aplwiki.com/ with lots of
historically interesting information.

G.

Re: tty and video displays

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Now I want to know if you have a list of the Burroughs APL
overstrikes, since HP included many more overstrike characters in the
HP 2641A than the ones that they needed for APL\3000, including (or so
I'm lead to believe) all the Burroughs extended I/O quad overstrikes,
presumably to maximize the market for the terminal and/or because they
thought they might implement the same functionality at some point. So
it would be interesting to know what was actually missing.

The overstrike character ROM for the HP 2641A includes 63 characters,
but (IIRC) only something like 21 are used in APL\3000.

P.S. My HP 2641A emulation will be in the next official MAME release
thanks to F.Ulivi who merged it into his existing HP 2645A driver and
got it submitted upstream.

G.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:28 PM Stan Sieler via cctalk
 wrote:

> That meant that we couldn't use the terminal at Burroughs, because our APL
> had a few overstrikes that weren't in the table.

Re: Apple 1 and memorabilia up for auction in Boston (NOT on Epay)

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

The last two photos if you scroll down show the board populated in
presumably its current condition.

But it's an interesting question of why there are all these bare board
photos. I suspect "qualified bidders" will want to carefully peruse
the report of the restoration that is apparently available to them.

And since when are buyer's premiums 25%? Yeesh! But then if you need
to ask the price...

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 10:24 AM W2HX via cctalk  wrote:
>
> What am I missing? The picture shown on RR auctions shows the board with no 
> chips?
>
> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk  On Behalf Of Adrian Stoness via 
> cctalk
> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 10:32 PM
> To: Ali ; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic 
> Posts 
> Subject: Re: Apple 1 and memorabilia up for auction in Boston (NOT on Epay)
>
> this is up on RR auction
> https://www.rrauction.com/bidtracker_detail.cfm?IN=6001
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 9:30 PM Ali via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
> > > Of interest to the early apple fans on here:
> > >
> > > https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/93832586_apple-1-computer-with-
> > > original-box-signed-by-steve
> >
> > I wanted to see the box and accessories But alas no picture of the
> > goods.
> >
> > -Ali
> >
> >

Re: Votrax Type N Talk or PSS, Intextalker, Microvox

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

I had an RS-232 Votrax and also the Heathkit EE-3403 Speech Synthesis
course for the ET-3400 Microprocessor Trainer, which came with an
SC-01 chip as one of the parts if I recall correctly. Both long ago
faded away through downsizing here sadly.

I do still have the test-to-speech input file from 1988 that was used
to have the Votrax sing the 12-days-of-Christmas at the company
holiday party that year, and the HP 3000 utility to feed it out a
serial port.

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 8:37 AM Tony Aiuto via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 7:05 AM Jules Richardson via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > On 12/1/20 7:28 PM, Tony Aiuto via cctalk wrote:
> > > Oh.. That brings back memories. We had a Votrax with a serial interface
> > in
> > > the computer room.
> > > I configured it as a printer so I could yell into the room..
> > >
> > > echo Hey Alan. Look at the console and change the tape to the one
> > requested
> > > | lpr -Pvotrax
> >
> > That's actually... useful. I've never really known what people did with
> > them, beyond the occasional little bit of amusement.
> >
>
> There was certainly amusement too. We would hide the box in one of the
> cabinets
> and have it play things to noob users who were in the room alone.
>
> I've got a serial-interfaced one based around an RCA 1802 which I last had
> > hooked up to an Apple II a few years ago, but it's one of those "cool to
> > have" things rather than really serving any purpose.
> >

Re: Toaster Flyer - proprietary drives?

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 11:17 AM Jules Richardson via cctalk
 wrote:
> The big question is whether in a Flyer environment the drives run custom
> microcode or will have been LLFed to something other than a "standard" 512
> byte block size - I believe that the Flyer was really pushing the
> boundaries of what was possible when it was current, and the majority of
> drives on the market just didn't have the necessary throughput (I see a
> "Newtek approved" sticker on one of the Seagates). I know that the storage
> was considered "proprietary", but I don't know if that just means that the
> filesystem was Flyer-specific (i.e. not AFFS), or if there was more to it
> than that.

Have you been through the old Flyer forums at:

https://forums.newtek.com/forumdisplay.php/101-Amiga-Video-Toaster-Flyer-FAQ-s/

the FAQ posts and the sub-forums there for the Flyer look like they
contain lots of hints at least, like:

https://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php/6258-Does-the-Flyer-Work-With-Current-SCSI-Drives

"Platforms: 2000 3000 3000T 4000 4000T

Yes, the Flyer will work with most current SCSI drives. The Flyer's
minimum requirement is for SCSI-2 Fast hard drives, since the Flyer
uses SCSI-2 Fast controllers. Current generation drives will negotiate
with the host controller to which they are attached, to discover what
mode the controller itself uses. The drive will then adjust to operate
as though it were just a SCSI-2 Fast hard drive." [...]

etc.

Re: Control Data 449 Special Miniature Computer from 1967?

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Or was it really just a calculator? The mode list in the ad kinda
suggests it wasn't programmable so the human operator may have been
required to be the program and the rest of the "system".

On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 4:23 AM rice43 via cctalk  wrote:
>
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: "Steve Malikoff via cctalk" 
> To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
> Sent: Friday, 16 Oct, 2020 At 08:02
> Subject: Control Data 449 Special Miniature Computer from 1967?
> I was idly browsing early editions of Computer World journal on Google
> newspapers and found an announcement
> and picture of the '449', an experimental aerospace computer built by
> Control Data in 1967 and touted as
> "the world's smallest computer" at 4" x 4" x 9", of which the logic part
> is a 4" cube and the rest is the battery.
> It's on page 3 of Computer World Sep 20 1967:
> https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=v_xunPV0uK0C=19670920=frontpage=en
> 
> It seems to me it may have been an analogous machine to the Apollo AGS
> perhaps and would like to know a bit more
> about it, but I've only been able to find a brief mention of the '449-2
> Special Miniature Computer' and
> that's it. Archive.org hasn't turned up anything. I'm just curious about
> the tech used, no doubt it used DIPs
> or flatpack micrologic and a tiny core plane?
> Steve.
> The only source i can see shows that prototypes were shipped to the US
> Military. I imagine, from the pretty limited instruction set shown on
> the article you linked, that  it was primarily used for ballistics
> calculations for, say, missiles or mortars. Being what i assume was a
> military contract, i don't imagine many of these prototypes were made,
> and details would be classified.
> With the technology of the time, I can't imagine it had much memory even
> compared to other small machines like the PDP-8 and AGC. The limited
> instruction set would help keep the physical size down, but also limit
> it's usefulness in general applications.
> I'd suspect it was TTL based, like other (very) late 60's machines, with
> a very limited amount of core memory.
> https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/your-engineering-heritage-what-is-a-minicomputer/
>

Re: Old mainframes in Finland

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 7:29 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
> The sculpture skeleton also still exists, quite amazingly.

Seems to be doing even better than that...

http://senster.agh.edu.pl/

Re: cc:Mail

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

P.S. As far as I can recall I never connected my 200LX up to our
cc:Mail even though I carried a 95/100/200 around with me pretty much
all the time in those days.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 3:13 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:
>
> My recollection of the cc:Mail SMTP Gateway (that now sounds like the
> right name to me) was that it was definitely bidirectional with
> respect to SMTP/internet traffic. There were differences in that
> inbound and outbound processing were rather different internally IIRC,
> but that was pretty much transparent to the user. My recollection of
> cc:Mail itself was that it was indeed a full server that clients
> interacted with over a network connection. I *think* we ran it on
> Netware with IPX/SPX as the client network transport in those days
> (but again my memory could be faulty), and eventually got the SMTP
> Gateway to get internet gateway connectivity and it ran on a minimal
> PC system as a dedicated server. I seem to recall waiting a year or
> more for the SMTP Gateway to finally become available. It seemed like
> a rather half-assed solution compared to the Lotus Notes gateway etc.
> which I think may have run as native Netware NLMs rather than needing
> the kludgy PC gateway. This would all have been in like 1990-95-ish
> give-or-take I think.
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 2:57 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk
>  wrote:
> >
> > On 10/7/20 1:46 PM, Tomas By wrote:
> > > Well, theoretically, you could have another program that emulates
> > > the PO server side.
> >
> > I think that we have different understandings of what the Post Office is
> > in older email systems.
> >
> > To me, the Post Office, is a collection of files that live in a
> > directory structure.  Said file / directory structure is then directly
> > accessed by the email client.  As in the email client reads from and
> > writes to files, meaning that it does not talk to a program / daemon /
> > service across the network.  It's just that this collection of files &
> > directories lived on a common network drive.
> >
> > > It does not need to anything other than get the mails and talk to
> > > the client
> >
> > But, based on my understanding, the cc:Mail client doesn't talk to a
> > server.  It reads / writes files directly.  Hence the need to have
> > something else, e.g. the gateway, communicate between the P.O. and the
> > rest of the world.
> >
> > I don't see how you can avoid the P.O.'s file / directory structure.
> >
> > Maybe I'm wrong.
> >
> > > (over PC serial port).
> >
> > Hum.  That make make things more entertaining.
> >
> > Is the serial port for communications between the cc:Mail client and the
> > cc:Mail P.O.?  Or is the serial port how you will need  to
> > interface with the rest of the world?
> >
> > > My understanding is that the SMTP gateway is out from PO only.
> >
> > I don't know.  The MS-Mail SMTP gateway that I messed with was both
> > inbound from the world and outbound to the world.  But the cc:Mail
> > gateway could easily have been different.  Of course, SMTP is not the
> > same thing as pulling from POP3 or IMAP.  But, fortunately fetchmail (et
> > al.) can act as the gateway between POP3/IMAP and SMTP to talk to
> > another gateway between SMTP and cc:Mail P.O.
> >
> > Moving parts (read: things that can go wrong), there are a lot of them.  ;-)
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Grant. . . .
> > unix || die

Re: cc:Mail

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

My recollection of the cc:Mail SMTP Gateway (that now sounds like the
right name to me) was that it was definitely bidirectional with
respect to SMTP/internet traffic. There were differences in that
inbound and outbound processing were rather different internally IIRC,
but that was pretty much transparent to the user. My recollection of
cc:Mail itself was that it was indeed a full server that clients
interacted with over a network connection. I *think* we ran it on
Netware with IPX/SPX as the client network transport in those days
(but again my memory could be faulty), and eventually got the SMTP
Gateway to get internet gateway connectivity and it ran on a minimal
PC system as a dedicated server. I seem to recall waiting a year or
more for the SMTP Gateway to finally become available. It seemed like
a rather half-assed solution compared to the Lotus Notes gateway etc.
which I think may have run as native Netware NLMs rather than needing
the kludgy PC gateway. This would all have been in like 1990-95-ish
give-or-take I think.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 2:57 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 10/7/20 1:46 PM, Tomas By wrote:
> > Well, theoretically, you could have another program that emulates
> > the PO server side.
>
> I think that we have different understandings of what the Post Office is
> in older email systems.
>
> To me, the Post Office, is a collection of files that live in a
> directory structure.  Said file / directory structure is then directly
> accessed by the email client.  As in the email client reads from and
> writes to files, meaning that it does not talk to a program / daemon /
> service across the network.  It's just that this collection of files &
> directories lived on a common network drive.
>
> > It does not need to anything other than get the mails and talk to
> > the client
>
> But, based on my understanding, the cc:Mail client doesn't talk to a
> server.  It reads / writes files directly.  Hence the need to have
> something else, e.g. the gateway, communicate between the P.O. and the
> rest of the world.
>
> I don't see how you can avoid the P.O.'s file / directory structure.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong.
>
> > (over PC serial port).
>
> Hum.  That make make things more entertaining.
>
> Is the serial port for communications between the cc:Mail client and the
> cc:Mail P.O.?  Or is the serial port how you will need  to
> interface with the rest of the world?
>
> > My understanding is that the SMTP gateway is out from PO only.
>
> I don't know.  The MS-Mail SMTP gateway that I messed with was both
> inbound from the world and outbound to the world.  But the cc:Mail
> gateway could easily have been different.  Of course, SMTP is not the
> same thing as pulling from POP3 or IMAP.  But, fortunately fetchmail (et
> al.) can act as the gateway between POP3/IMAP and SMTP to talk to
> another gateway between SMTP and cc:Mail P.O.
>
> Moving parts (read: things that can go wrong), there are a lot of them.  ;-)
>
>
>
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die

Re: cc:Mail

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

These may all be dead short-circuited neurons, but IIRC there was a
cc:Mail Gateway or Internet Gateway special product you needed to buy
that would run on a dedicated PC box (under DOS?) and would talk in
turn to your cc:Mail post office server and the 'net to exchange email
messages in and out. It had the semi-annoying habit of retaining
plaintext copies of all incoming or outgoing messages (one or the
other, I forget which). There was also some non-trivial configuration
setup required on both the Gateway and cc:Mail servers to explain all
this to cc:Mail. I think there was some sort of route name or gateway
name specified with email addresses, possibly with a comma after the
internet address, but like I said those brain cells are almost gone.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 9:04 AM Tomas By via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> And one more thing,
>
> Am wondering about the possibility of setting up an interface between
> modern Unix email and the embedded client for cc:Mail on the HP 200LX.
>
> Various versions of cc:Mail are available from archive.org and
> vetusware.com, but the missing link seems to be the "client" type
> connection from the cc:Mail post office to the internet, i.e. for the
> PO machine to connect periodically and collect mail, rather than just
> acting as a server.
>
> Have not been able to find much technical information about cc:Mail. I
> did see a Lotus development kit for sale somwhere but seems to have
> lost the link.
>
> Does anybody here know anything about this? Are there any books or
> technical documents on cc:Mail available anywhere?
>
> /Tomas

Re: VT525 power switch

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

If it's small, something like Sugru might work.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Eric Dittman via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> I have a VT525 that I couldn't turn off.  I took it apart and there's
> an adapter that connects the metal rod off the button on the front to
> the power switch inside.  The adapter has crumbled and it feels like
> it was wax but it may have just been some plastic that has severely
> deteriorated.
>
> Before I try to work up some kind of replacement, has anyone already
> designed a 3D-printed replacement?  I don't have a 3D printer but do
> have a friend that could print one for me.  Otherwise, I'll see if I
> can come up with something.
> --
> Eric Dittman

Re: HP 3000, APL\3000, the HP 2641A APL Display Station, and stuff.

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Eric wrote:
> There was IBM APL\1130 version 2, introduced in 1969.

It's actually sorta annoying when you discover how much HP copied from
IBM in those days. The first giveaway is that APL\3000 has a backslash
in the product name when everything else was a forward slash as in
BASIC/3000, FORTRAN/3000, and even RPG/3000 (which was another
functional copy of an IBM product), and of course this is likely
because of APL\360. Most people, even inside HP, started calling it
APL/3000 almost immediately though.

APL\3000 is supposed to be a functional superset of IBM APL SV
(APL\360 with Shared Variables etc.) and HP advertised it as such.

The other one that took me a while to notice is the HP 2641A APL
Display Station that came out after the 2640 and 2645. That
out-of-order numbering was kind of interesting until you discover that
the IBM Selectric-based printing terminal with the APL type ball was
the IBM 2741 (sigh).

Re: Datasheet / Info for Motorola SC5330 IC?

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

Josh wrote:
> https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aqb36sqnCIfMpIVXm5draSrWHGMzJg

Would these potentially be the sense amp / comparators for the core? I
wonder if they were anything like:

https://datasheetspdf.com/pdf-file/1092342/Motorola/MC1711L/1

which might have a similar application and take +15 and -7 on L
package pins 11 and 4 respectively with ground on pin 12.

Being another Motorola design from what looks like a similar time
period, I wonder if there could be a similarity in pinouts by some
chance?

Re: Shipping via USPS Los Angeles is STALLED

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

USPS (and UPS SurePost which is USPS last-mile-ish) have been delivering
on schedule or often ahead of schedule to here in the Chicagoland area over the
last month or so. USPS service has been excellent, with sometimes two
deliveries per day (regular mail and small packages and a separate overflow
package delivery. Zero issues across a couple dozen shipments.

HP 3000, APL\3000, the HP 2641A APL Display Station, and stuff.

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

As some people here are aware, I have spent probably too much time this summer
hacking on J. David Bryan's excellent Classic HP 3000 simulator and trying to
build up the ultimate classic 1980s HP 3000 system (virtually speaking).

I started with the MPE V/R KIT that's widely available and expanded that into a
5x120MB HP 7925 disc system and configured things like the system directory
size and all the system tables to make a fully functional multi-user server.

I then set about collecting as much old MPE software as I could find, which
included Keven Miller's collection of the old Contributed Software Library tapes
which were conveniently available in SIMH format. This is a huge trove of cool
stuff including most of the classic mini/mainframe games (Dungeon, Warp,
Advent, etc., etc.) and even a little game called DRAGONS that was written in
1980 by a guy named Bruce Nesmith when he was in college and he used it
to get a job at TSR and went on to write parts of many classic D products
and eventually landed at Bethesda where among other things he was the
lead designer for another little game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I was
able to track Bruce down and give him a copy of the system with his 40 year
old game running on it. The CSL tapes also include other amazing goodies
that people developed and gave away over the years, including a FORTH and
LISP, as well as most of the system and utility programs that people used to
run their 3000 shops. It's quite fun to explore.

I was curious how far we could push the 3000 simulator, so I hacked all
the memory bank registers to be six bits instead of four bits, and we
now have a simulated HP 3000 Series III that supports 8MB of memory, 4x
more than any physical system ever did. I started trying to do the same thing
for giant disc drives, but MPE turned out to have too much knowledge of
what the supported disc models look like to make it practical. Bummer.

Since I met my first HP 3000 in 1980 (40 years ago this month), people would
talk about what was probably the most rare and exotic HP software subsystem
ever produced, APL\3000. APL on the 3000 was a project started at HP Labs
in Palo Alto in the early 1970s. They were likely motivated by the success IBM
was having with mainframe APL timesharing services. This would be the first
full APL implementation on a "small" (non-mainframe) computer. It would be the
first APL with a compiler (and a byte-code virtual machine to execute the
compiled code), it would include an additional new language APLGOL (APL
with ALGOL like structured control statements), and it managed to support
APL workspaces of unlimited size through a clever set of system CPU
microcode extensions that provided a flat 32-bit addressing capability (on
a 16-bit machine where every other language was limited to a 64KB data
segment).

Because APL required these extra special CPU instructions that you got as
a set of ROM chips when you bought the $15,000 APL\3000, and because
APL ultimately failed as a product (another story in itself) and thus HP never
implemented these instructions on their later HP 3000 models, I never saw
it run on a real HP 3000, but over the years we talked about wouldn't it be
cool to find a way to get APL running again.

With assistance and moral support from Stan Sieler and Frank McConnell
and others, I was ultimately able to reverse-engineer the behavior of the
undocumented ten magic APL CPU instructions needed to get it to run and
implement them as part of the MPE unimplemented instruction trap and now
APL\3000 runs again for the first time in ~35 years. Somewhat ironically, this
implementation method could have been used back in 1980 as I didn't
actually end up changing the hardware simulation code at all, and it should
also run (if a bit slowly) on any physical classic architecture 3000.

So that was cool and all, but what is APL without all the weird overstruck
characters and whatnot? APL\3000 supports the use of plain ASCII terminals
through blecherous trigraphs like "QD for the APL quad character, but this
is hardly satisfying. So the quest was on to find a solution. Back in 1976 when
APL\3000 was released, there was a companion HP terminal in the 264x line,
the HP 2641A APL Display Station, which was basically an HP 2645A with
special firmware and APL character set ROMs that supported all the APL
special characters as well as overstrikes (the terminal would take XY
and lookup to see if it had a character to represent Y overstriking X and if
so it would show that on the display, and if that got transmitted to the host it
would convert it back into the original three character overstriking sequence).

I briefly looked into the idea of hacking QCTerm or Putty or something, but
then I found out from Curious Chris that an HP 2645A emulator already existed
in the MAME emulator system! Since the '41 is basically just a '45 with modified
firmware, and Bitsavers had both the character set ROMs as well as the
firmware ROMs from