Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mattis Lind]

Here is a scan of another EDU marketing document:

1,000,000 Students

http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/EDU/DEC-1.000.000-STUDENTS.pdf

Lyle Bickley helped me with OCR and de-skew. Thanks!

/Mattis

Den ons 23 jan. 2019 kl 20:16 skrev Mattis Lind :

> Here is the scan of EDU #7
>
>
> http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/EDU/Digital-EDU-7-newsletter.pdf
>
> It is scanned in 600dpi color so it is big. Please anyone that has good
> tools might squeeze it a bit without loosing resolution and color.
>
> Reading it quickly it is an issue that edited by David Ahl and Sally Bower
> (who appear on page 5). On the centrefold there are some typical (I think)
> David Ahl pictures that I recognize from 101 Computer Games. (I had a bad
> copy which my father brought home from work when I was a kid. Remember
> typing in Game of life on the home built terminal connected to a 6800
> system running some BASIC)
>
> I notice on the last page there som small text in very fine print "Printed
> in U.S.A. 0103 00173 2669/F 14 25" comparing this with the other EDU
> material which seems to be printed by the same company I deduce that 00173
> most likely indicate the year 1973.
>
> It make sense since all these EDU brochures was sent with a cover letter
> dated 1973-11-27 to a school, in Stockholm, Sweden, Åvaskolan in Täby.
>
> Hope you enjoy it!
>
> It will take some time to get the rest scanned. I need to scan them in the
> flatbed scanner since I don't want to destroy them in the process.
>
> /Mattis
>
> Den ons 23 jan. 2019 kl 15:08 skrev Paul Koning :
>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 23, 2019, at 1:54 AM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump :
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:
>> >
>> > On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:
>> >
>> > In article <
>> cabr82sjodd8hhsgzjy8o_l5uqc3j1orjb7ht90vizykjdq0...@mail.gmail.com>,
>> >Mattis Lind  writes:
>> >
>> > I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest
>> (and if
>> > it isn't scanned already by someone else):
>> >
>> > https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
>> >
>> > I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
>> >
>> > I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I
>> never heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a
>> short lived early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.
>> >
>> >
>> > paul
>> >
>> >
>> > Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS
>> flyer in full pdf.
>> >
>> > http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf
>> >
>> > Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that
>> this one is the same vintage.
>> >
>> > /Mattis
>> >
>> >
>> > Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:
>> >
>> > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history
>> >
>> > I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
>> > by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
>> > MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
>> > that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
>> > There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
>> > Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).
>> >
>> > http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg
>> >
>> > I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
>> > probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
>> > months later.
>> >
>> > Brett
>>
>> Interesting that there is no date on that document.  The term "RSTS-11"
>> makes it clear we're talking about RSTS V4 or earlier.  For that matter, so
>> does the hardware configuration: a boatload of DL11s for the user terminals
>> rather than a DH11 or DZ11 mux, because V4 only supported single line
>> interfaces.
>>
>> It's not clear if this is V4 or an older version. 24kW memory is a
>> minimal V4 configuration, pretty marginal actually but possibly ok for 8
>> users max.  (In college I used V4A on a 28kW machine, 16 terminal lines, 16
>> users max though it tended to crash at around 12.)  The feature list
>> doesn't mention some V4 (optional) features like "record I/O" so it's
>> possible this was actually V3.
>>
>> I also found the term "PDP-11/21" interesting.  Has that been used
>> anywhere else?  It's pretty clearly an 11/20 configuration.
>>
>> paul
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Rhialto]

On Fri 25 Jan 2019 at 17:36:37 +, Bailey, Scott wrote:
> This abused several interesting features of the TRS-80?s Radio Shack
> Level II BASIC? One (that I?ve never encountered anywhere else) was
> that you didn?t have to put spaces in the code, and eliminating each
> space saved a byte of memory. The following was perfectly legal and
> readable if your eye was practiced:
> 
> 100 FORI=1TO10
> 110 PRINTI
> 120 NEXTI

I grew up with Commodore Basic (which was a version of Microsoft Basic,
and to keep it vaguely relevant to this list, it was apparently written
on a PDP-10 using its assembler and weird macros). That version also had
that phenomenon.

In fact, the first version even completely ignored spaces when it was
tokenizing the keywords. This had sometimes mysterious effects:
if you wrote IF ST AND 16 THEN ..., it would get misparsed as IF S TAN D
16 THEN... and report a ?SYNTAX ERROR. This problem was fixed in a later
version. (workaround: write 16 AND ST) Apparently many people wrote GO
TO instead of GOTO, and a new keyword GO was introduced specifically to
keep that working. Which led to another bug: when LISTing a program with
the new GO keyword (which was assigned the next-higher token value),
using the older BASIC, the LIST routine would show to have an off-by-1
error and stop LISTing with an error message.

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- "What good is a Ring of Power
\X/ rhialto/at/falu.nl  -- if you're unable...to Speak." - Agent Elrond


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Bailey, Scott]

Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say. ;-)

I’m not sure where my copy is now, but 101 Basic Computer Games really 
jump-started my programming, and in my opinion the Star Trek game was the best 
game in the book. I ended up adapting it to run on my [okay, my Dad’s LOL] 
TRS-80 (Model 1, Level II, eventually a whopping 32KB of memory), and of course 
it wasn’t big enough so it got expanded, adding more features like persistent 
galaxy state (saved between sessions) and multiplayer capability. (Not 
simultaneously, of course, but the concept of multiple ships of which one was 
actively in use by the current player.)

This abused several interesting features of the TRS-80’s Radio Shack Level II 
BASIC… One (that I’ve never encountered anywhere else) was that you didn’t have 
to put spaces in the code, and eliminating each space saved a byte of memory. 
The following was perfectly legal and readable if your eye was practiced:

100 FORI=1TO10
110 PRINTI
120 NEXTI

Now imagine more complex lines. After all, running them all together eliminates 
unneeded line numbers and saves even more memory:

100 FORI=1TO10:PRINTI:NEXTI

Then you eliminate all of the comments, because they’re pure overhead… When I 
still ran out of room, I started converting some functions into machine code 
(by hand, using a Z80 reference book) and POKEing them into memory…

Luckily, I went to college and encountered a VAX-11/780, at which point I 
recoded the whole mess in VAX-11 BASIC, took advantage of the expansive VT100 
display real estate, and began abusing (as they became available) indexed 
files, shared global sections, and the lock manager to make real multiplayer 
gaming workable.

Despite all of that, the heredity of the game is evident, including the 
coordinate system: (see the compass in the upper right corner!)

[cid:image001.jpg@01D4B4AA.9B972180]

That brings me back around to the point of this note. In VAX BASIC, 
fundamentally unchanged since some point prior to 1985, my course logic looks 
like this:

!
! Return a real course from point (x1,y1) to point (x2,y2)
! using Star Trek course notation.
!
function single course(long x1,y1,x2,y2)
declare long x,y
declare single temp
on error go back
x = x2-x1   ! Calculate offset P1 -> P2
y = y2-y1   ! Std. Cartesian system
if x='0'L then
  if y>'0'L then
course = 3.0! Straight up
exit function
  else
course = 7.0! Straight down
exit function
  end if
else
  temp = atn(real(y)/real(x))*57.2958   ! Calculate angle in degrees
  if x<='0'L then
temp = temp+180.0   ! Correct for quadrant
  else
if y<'0'L then
  temp = temp+360.0
end if
  end if
end if
course = temp/45.0+1.0  ! Convert to proper notation
end function

My guess is that this algorithm is more or less what you expected to find 
before you started digging into the code. (Originally this used bytes, but as 
memory became cheaper and access more convoluted, I promoted things to improve 
alignment.)

But here’s the punchline: I realized, as I was reading through your excerpt, 
that the algorithm used by the original game is EXACTLY the same that I used in 
my head to “estimate” courses when I was playing my game and I didn’t have the 
time to ask the computer for the course before getting shot myself. I don’t 
remember learning it from the original code, but I’m sure that’s where it came 
from.

If I had to guess – and I am – I’d say the original implementation might not 
have had trig functions available (when did BASIC acquire them?), and this is a 
pretty decent approximation. At least for the limited size and high granularity 
of a 64-sector quadrant. Certainly I could do it rapidly in my head, and I can 
testify that the results pretty much always match the “obvious” calculation, if 
you can aim and shoot fast enough that the target hasn’t moved!

Those were the days,

Scott


From: Simh 
mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com>> On 
Behalf Of Will Senn
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 10:22 AM
To: Clem Cole mailto:cl...@ccc.com>>
Cc: Simh mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>>; Bryan Davies 
mailto:bryan.e.dav...@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for 
public access)

On 1/21/19 3:55 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
Anyway, the point is that simple computer games in BASIC were being passed 
around between people (as paper tapes), particularly if you had acccess to 
multiple different brands of computers.You always had the source code, in 
those days so it was really not big deal.  In fact, my memory is that one of 
the new things that you could do on the PDP-10 was >>compile<< your basic 
program, or at least leave it 

Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Brett Bump]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:





On Jan 23, 2019, at 1:54 AM, Mattis Lind  wrote:



onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump :


On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:

On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:

In article ,
   Mattis Lind  writes:

I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
it isn't scanned already by someone else):

https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg

I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!

I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I never 
heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a short lived 
early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.


paul


Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS flyer in 
full pdf.

http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf

Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that this one is 
the same vintage.

/Mattis


Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history

I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).

http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg

I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
months later.

Brett


Interesting that there is no date on that document.  The term "RSTS-11" makes 
it clear we're talking about RSTS V4 or earlier.  For that matter, so does the hardware 
configuration: a boatload of DL11s for the user terminals rather than a DH11 or DZ11 mux, 
because V4 only supported single line interfaces.

It's not clear if this is V4 or an older version. 24kW memory is a minimal V4 
configuration, pretty marginal actually but possibly ok for 8 users max.  (In college I 
used V4A on a 28kW machine, 16 terminal lines, 16 users max though it tended to crash at 
around 12.)  The feature list doesn't mention some V4 (optional) features like 
"record I/O" so it's possible this was actually V3.

I also found the term "PDP-11/21" interesting.  Has that been used anywhere 
else?  It's pretty clearly an 11/20 configuration.

paul


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No, I never saw the 11/21 reference before either.  The machine was
an 11/20 with 28k of memory when I was working with it.  There was a
copy of DOS-11 V08-02 (which was the distro medium for RSTS V4A), a
couple of data disks and a copy of RT-11 V2 (all RK05 packs).  When
I got a hold of the machine the RK03 Diablo drives barely ran and I
replaced them with RK05's.  Some genius in the math department had
RT-11 running one day and /ZE'ed the pack.  I told him he just blew
away the distribution pack (not the DK1 pack).  He denied this and
showed me how PIP was still running (till he hit control-c).

I remember getting a number of DL11's and pulling the caps out so we
could make them run (woohoo) all the way up to 2400 baud.  I wrote a
program that spit the alphabet out to that device until we could get
the pot dialed in (away went the ASR33's and in with the VT-52s).

It was so much fun at the time considering the rest of the college
had 1 TRS-80 and 1 or 2 Apple II's.  But Paul was pretty accurate in
that I think we had a max of 3 VT52s and the LA36 console.

Brett
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

On 1/23/19 1:16 PM, Mattis Lind wrote:

Here is the scan of EDU #7

http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/EDU/Digital-EDU-7-newsletter.pdf

It is scanned in 600dpi color so it is big. Please anyone that has 
good tools might squeeze it a bit without loosing resolution and color.


It's beautiful, even if it's big - PDF's are such a pain, but very 
convenient. Thanks for sharing.


I wonder if anyone's doing anything remotely as high quality as this 
newsletter for educational computing, these days...


Will

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mattis Lind]

Here is the scan of EDU #7

http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/EDU/Digital-EDU-7-newsletter.pdf

It is scanned in 600dpi color so it is big. Please anyone that has good
tools might squeeze it a bit without loosing resolution and color.

Reading it quickly it is an issue that edited by David Ahl and Sally Bower
(who appear on page 5). On the centrefold there are some typical (I think)
David Ahl pictures that I recognize from 101 Computer Games. (I had a bad
copy which my father brought home from work when I was a kid. Remember
typing in Game of life on the home built terminal connected to a 6800
system running some BASIC)

I notice on the last page there som small text in very fine print "Printed
in U.S.A. 0103 00173 2669/F 14 25" comparing this with the other EDU
material which seems to be printed by the same company I deduce that 00173
most likely indicate the year 1973.

It make sense since all these EDU brochures was sent with a cover letter
dated 1973-11-27 to a school, in Stockholm, Sweden, Åvaskolan in Täby.

Hope you enjoy it!

It will take some time to get the rest scanned. I need to scan them in the
flatbed scanner since I don't want to destroy them in the process.

/Mattis

Den ons 23 jan. 2019 kl 15:08 skrev Paul Koning :

>
>
> > On Jan 23, 2019, at 1:54 AM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump :
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:
> >
> > On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:
> >
> > In article <
> cabr82sjodd8hhsgzjy8o_l5uqc3j1orjb7ht90vizykjdq0...@mail.gmail.com>,
> >Mattis Lind  writes:
> >
> > I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and
> if
> > it isn't scanned already by someone else):
> >
> > https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
> >
> > I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
> >
> > I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I
> never heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a
> short lived early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.
> >
> >
> > paul
> >
> >
> > Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS
> flyer in full pdf.
> >
> > http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf
> >
> > Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that this
> one is the same vintage.
> >
> > /Mattis
> >
> >
> > Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history
> >
> > I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
> > by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
> > MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
> > that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
> > There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
> > Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).
> >
> > http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg
> >
> > I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
> > probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
> > months later.
> >
> > Brett
>
> Interesting that there is no date on that document.  The term "RSTS-11"
> makes it clear we're talking about RSTS V4 or earlier.  For that matter, so
> does the hardware configuration: a boatload of DL11s for the user terminals
> rather than a DH11 or DZ11 mux, because V4 only supported single line
> interfaces.
>
> It's not clear if this is V4 or an older version. 24kW memory is a minimal
> V4 configuration, pretty marginal actually but possibly ok for 8 users
> max.  (In college I used V4A on a 28kW machine, 16 terminal lines, 16 users
> max though it tended to crash at around 12.)  The feature list doesn't
> mention some V4 (optional) features like "record I/O" so it's possible this
> was actually V3.
>
> I also found the term "PDP-11/21" interesting.  Has that been used
> anywhere else?  It's pretty clearly an 11/20 configuration.
>
> paul
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

On 1/21/19 3:55 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
Anyway, the point is that simple computer games in BASIC were being 
passed around between people (as paper tapes), particularly if you had 
acccess to multiple different brands of computers.    You always had 
the source code, in those days so it was really not big deal.  In 
fact, my memory is that one of the new things that you could do on the 
PDP-10 was >>compile<< your basic program, or at least leave it in 
some form that some one could not see what you had done.   But the HP 
and GE system, you just loaded the program and typed 'list' - often 
after turning on the paper tape punch the ASR33.


Clem


Wow

So, I dug a bit and found the code is practically everywhere  and when 
folks extended it, they were pretty specific about what they extended. 
Take the code for the library computer's calculator for distance and 
direction... it's nearly untouched in other versions - prolly cuz it's a 
little convoluted (seems like some translation from rectangular to polar 
coordinates and back again using standard trig functions would have 
worked and been MUCH easier to understand...


In reviewing the SPACWR code, and comparing it to STTR1 which preceded 
it and SUPERTREK which came later, I came across this bit of library 
computer code for calculating direction and distance from one sector in 
a quadrant to another. It seems like basic trig would have been easier, 
but the author chose another route, pun intended. In the code where the 
direction is calculated, though, it looks like there are at least 2 
bugs. But, seeing as all of the versions use basically the same exact 
logic, I must be missing something and I am hoping y'all know something 
about the interpreter that makes this magically ok, or can read it 
better than I and tell me that it's actually ok, as is (maybe the bugs 
don't materially effect the outcome) or this was a well known quirk of 
the system that was beloved by all oldtimers :).


I'm running this in RSTSV06C-03, but STTR1 was written for an HP 
calculator or something and SUPERTREK was written for a Data General 
Nova 800 w/32K of core, so I don't think it's a system specific issue, 
but rather a straight up logic problem.


Below is the code and it's pretty self contained.

The 2 bugs are these:

1. Lines 4880, 5250, and 5270 refer to H8. H8 is effectively constant 0, 
set in 4880 and again in 5270, the check in 5250 will never evaluate 
true. It looks like it was meant to break out of the loop early, but 
there aren't any other uses of it elsewhere in the code - but it's 
persistent - appearing in many versions of the code, doing nothing.


2. The more pernicious, or at least annoying to me bug is the test in 
line 5140, X is always less than zero here. So the path from 5140 to 
5190 is never executed.


I don't want to fix anything until I'm sure it's broken. I don't 
particularly care for the method used here, but if it works...


Here's what the vector's get translated into (the direction, a real 
number between 1 and 8.999etc that is calculated), for reference:



 4  3  2
  \ ^ /
   \^/
5 - 1
   /^\
  / ^ \
 6  7  8

This is the code followed by my annotations for what they're worth 
(usually I put them in column 90, but that wouldn't look good in email, 
so I just split 'em):


4880 PRINT:H8=0
4881 REM *** PHOTON TORPEDO DATA CODE BEGINS HERE
4900 FOR I=1TO3
4910 IF K(I,3)<=0 THEN 5260
4920 C1=S1:A=S2:W1=K(I,1):X=K(I,2)
4960 GOTO 5010
4970 PRINT"YOU ARE AT QUADRANT ( "Q1","Q2" )  SECTOR ( "S1","S2" )"
4990 INPUT "SHIP AND TARGET COORDINATES ARE:";C1,A,W1,X
5010 X=X-A:A=C1-W1
5030 IF X<0 THEN 5130
5031 IF A<0 THEN 5190
5050 IF X>0 THEN 5070
5051 IF A=0 THEN 5150
5070 C1=1
5080 IF ABS(A) <= ABS(X) THEN 5110
5085 V5=C1+(((ABS(A)-ABS(X))+ABS(A))/ABS(A))
5090 PRINT "DIRECTION ="V5
5100 GOTO 5240
5110 PRINT "DIRECTION ="C1+(ABS(A)/ABS(X))
5120 GOTO 5240
5130 IF A>0 THEN 5170
5140 IF X=0 THEN 5190
5150 C1=5:GOTO 5080
5170 C1=3:GOTO5200
5190 C1=7
5200 IF ABS(A)>=ABS(X) THEN 5230
5210 PRINT "DIRECTION ="C1+(((ABS(X)-ABS(A))+ABS(X))/ABS(X))
5220 GOTO 5240
5230 PRINT "DIRECTION ="C1+(ABS(X)/ABS(A))
5240 PRINT "DISTANCE ="SQR(X**2+A**2)
5250 IF H8=1 THEN 5320
5260 NEXT I
5270 H8=0
5280 INPUT "DO YOU WANT TO USE THE CALCULATOR";A$
5300 IF A$="YES" THEN 4970
5310 IF A$<>"NO" THEN 5280
5320 GOTO 1270
5321 REM *** END OF LIBRARY COMPUTER CODE

!  One Scenario that works to help illustrate (direction is 3)

! SECTOR MAP (SIMPLIFIED)
!
!   | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 1 |   |   | K1|   |   |   |   |   |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 2 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 3 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 4 |   |   | E |   |   |   |   |   |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 5 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
!    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
! 6 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
!    

Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 23, 2019, at 1:54 AM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump :
> 
> 
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:
> 
> In article 
> ,
>Mattis Lind  writes:
> 
> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
> it isn't scanned already by someone else):
> 
> https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
> 
> I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
> 
> I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I never 
> heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a short lived 
> early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.
> 
> 
> paul
> 
> 
> Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS flyer in 
> full pdf. 
> 
> http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf
> 
> Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that this one 
> is the same vintage. 
> 
> /Mattis
>  
> 
> Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history
> 
> I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
> by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
> MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
> that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
> There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
> Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).
> 
> http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg
> 
> I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
> probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
> months later.
> 
> Brett

Interesting that there is no date on that document.  The term "RSTS-11" makes 
it clear we're talking about RSTS V4 or earlier.  For that matter, so does the 
hardware configuration: a boatload of DL11s for the user terminals rather than 
a DH11 or DZ11 mux, because V4 only supported single line interfaces.

It's not clear if this is V4 or an older version. 24kW memory is a minimal V4 
configuration, pretty marginal actually but possibly ok for 8 users max.  (In 
college I used V4A on a 28kW machine, 16 terminal lines, 16 users max though it 
tended to crash at around 12.)  The feature list doesn't mention some V4 
(optional) features like "record I/O" so it's possible this was actually V3.

I also found the term "PDP-11/21" interesting.  Has that been used anywhere 
else?  It's pretty clearly an 11/20 configuration.

paul


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mattis Lind]

onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump :

>
>
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>
>>
>> On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:
>>>
>>> In article >> mail.gmail.com>,
>>>Mattis Lind  writes:
>>>
>>> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and
 if
 it isn't scanned already by someone else):

 https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg

>>>
>>> I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
>>>
>>
>> I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I
>> never heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a
>> short lived early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.
>
>
>>
>> paul
>>
>

Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS flyer
in full pdf.

http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf

Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that this
one is the same vintage.

/Mattis


>
> Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history
>
> I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
> by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
> MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
> that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
> There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
> Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).
>
> http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg
>
> I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
> probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
> months later.
>
> Brett
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Brett Bump]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:





On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:

In article ,
   Mattis Lind  writes:


I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
it isn't scanned already by someone else):

https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg


I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!


I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I never 
heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a short lived 
early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.

paul


Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11=history

I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).

http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg

I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
months later.

Brett
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 22, 2019, at 7:40 PM, Al Kossow  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/22/19 11:05 AM, Richard wrote:
> 
>>> this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the 
>>> book, where're those?
>> 
>> I've asked the software librarian at the Computer History Museum, Al
>> Kossow, if he is aware of any in existence.
> 
> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102750880
> 
> I'm actually a software curator here.
> 
> 
> ___
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Cool. Is that a physical item that is being described? If so, is there a 
digital representation of the item available, if not, how does one access the 
item?

Regards,

Will
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Al Kossow]

On 1/22/19 11:05 AM, Richard wrote:

>> this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the 
>> book, where're those?
> 
> I've asked the software librarian at the Computer History Museum, Al
> Kossow, if he is aware of any in existence.

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102750880

I'm actually a software curator here.


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 22, 2019, at 4:04 PM, Mattis Lind  wrote:
> 
> 
> Den tis 22 jan. 2019 kl 20:06 skrev Richard :
>> In article ,
>> Will Senn  writes:
>> 
>> > this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the 
>> > book, where're those?
> 
> 
> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if 
> it isn't scanned already by someone else):
> 
> https://i.imgur.com/3G3wGJj.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/GJnFFt7.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/om5kjd1.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/AJefLIa.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
> https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
> 
> /Mattis
>  

Wow. High quality. It would be great to have more of these saved somewhere like 
bitsavers. 

>> 
>> I've asked the software librarian at the Computer History Museum, Al
>> Kossow, if he is aware of any in existence.  Al is the main person
>> behind bitsavers, so he usually has a good idea of what's around and
>> what's not, including what hasn't been scanned yet.
>> -- 
>> "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
>> The Terminals Wiki 
>>  The Computer Graphics Museum 
>>   Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 
>> ___
>> Simh mailing list
>> Simh@trailing-edge.com
>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard  wrote:
> 
> In article 
> ,
>Mattis Lind  writes:
> 
>> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
>> it isn't scanned already by someone else):
>> 
>> https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
> 
> I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!

I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I never 
heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a short lived 
early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.

paul

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Ron Pool]

There are 21 volumes of RSTS Professional at 
http://www.rsts.org/autoindex.php?dir=rstspro .  Later versions were renamed 
VAX RSTS Professional.

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Richard]

In article ,
Mattis Lind  writes:

> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
> it isn't scanned already by someone else):
>
> https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg

I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
The Terminals Wiki 
 The Computer Graphics Museum 
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mike Markowski]

On 1/22/19 5:04 PM, Mattis Lind wrote:


I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and 
if it isn't scanned already by someone else):


https://i.imgur.com/3G3wGJj.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/GJnFFt7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/om5kjd1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AJefLIa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg

/Mattis


These are great, Mattis.  Thanks for scanning, and I'd love to see more! 
 (And am happy to help with scanning.)  I haven't found any 
repositories of similar online.  Please share, if any on the list know 
of a source.


Thanks,
Mike Markowski
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mattis Lind]

Den tis 22 jan. 2019 kl 20:06 skrev Richard :

> In article ,
> Will Senn  writes:
>
> > this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the
> > book, where're those?
>


I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
it isn't scanned already by someone else):

https://i.imgur.com/3G3wGJj.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/GJnFFt7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/om5kjd1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AJefLIa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lll0LwA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg

/Mattis


>
> I've asked the software librarian at the Computer History Museum, Al
> Kossow, if he is aware of any in existence.  Al is the main person
> behind bitsavers, so he usually has a good idea of what's around and
> what's not, including what hasn't been scanned yet.
> --
> "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <
> http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
> The Terminals Wiki 
>  The Computer Graphics Museum 
>   Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 
> ___
> Simh mailing list
> Simh@trailing-edge.com
> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Richard]

In article ,
Will Senn  writes:

> this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the 
> book, where're those?

I've asked the software librarian at the Computer History Museum, Al
Kossow, if he is aware of any in existence.  Al is the main person
behind bitsavers, so he usually has a good idea of what's around and
what's not, including what hasn't been scanned yet.
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
The Terminals Wiki 
 The Computer Graphics Museum 
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Harald Arnesen]

Tim Shoppa [21.01.2019 23:51]:

> As to comments that seem to have shrunk, look at for example the
> shrinkage of the original comment block from Mayfield's 1972 HP program
> library version of STAR TREK, to the 1973 RSTS SPACWR version in the Ahl
> collection. With most vintage BASIC interpreters there was a runtime
> penalty to putting large comment blocks at the start of your program -
> maybe the HP 3000 BASIC was a true compiler?

I learned programming on such a machine, around 1983. We started with
BASIC, then got on to COBOL, Pascal and some Fortran.

There were both an interpreter and a compiler for HP3000 BASIC.
-- 
Hilsen Harald
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

On 1/21/19 5:09 PM, Al Kossow wrote:


On 1/21/19 2:51 PM, Tim Shoppa wrote:


As to which came first, the book or the tape

Some background on Ahl and where this comes from is here:

https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/66_Dave_tells_Ahl__the_hist.php




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Thanks for the link. Fascinating story. Pioneering for sure. While DEC 
was innovative in their own right, they didn't see the PC coming, it 
would seem...


Will

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

Clem and others,

Thanks for the links and information. I would like to see even more of 
the tapes and books from the early days made available (most modern 
stuff is brought to life in the digital era and captured, but the old 
stuff mostly only lives in notebooks, booklets, books, binders and tapes 
that individuals possess). Thankfully, there's been a lot collected over 
the years, but there's plenty still out there in jeopardy of not being 
preserved. The 101 games book in bitsavers is great (the tape's even 
better), but it's only one of many editions. Also, in my reading up on 
this stuff, it appears that there was a DEC EDU newsletter before the 
book, where're those? If y'all have them or something like them in your 
basements, get them scanned before they rot away - or send them to 
someone who will scan them in, these things are getting scarce and are 
part of our (computing folks) historical record.


Regards,

Will



On 1/21/19 5:26 PM, Clem Cole wrote:

Will here is your answer:

/... I also put together a bunch of games I had written and
collected from others and put them into a book, 101 Basic Computer
Games. Six years later, in 1979, this became the first
million-selling computer book ever."/

ᐧ

On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 6:09 PM Al Kossow > wrote:




On 1/21/19 2:51 PM, Tim Shoppa wrote:

> As to which came first, the book or the tape
Some background on Ahl and where this comes from is here:


https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/66_Dave_tells_Ahl__the_hist.php




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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

Will here is your answer:

*... I also put together a bunch of games I had written and collected from
others and put them into a book, 101 Basic Computer Games. Six years later,
in 1979, this became the first million-selling computer book ever."*

ᐧ

On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 6:09 PM Al Kossow  wrote:

>
>
> On 1/21/19 2:51 PM, Tim Shoppa wrote:
>
> > As to which came first, the book or the tape
> Some background on Ahl and where this comes from is here:
>
>
> https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/66_Dave_tells_Ahl__the_hist.php
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Al Kossow]

On 1/21/19 2:51 PM, Tim Shoppa wrote:

> As to which came first, the book or the tape
Some background on Ahl and where this comes from is here:

https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/66_Dave_tells_Ahl__the_hist.php




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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tim Shoppa]

The spot-checks I've done show the DECTape to be identical in content and
spacing to the tapes I have containing DECUS RSTS-11-013 and RSTS-11-014.

As to which came first, the book or the tape, look at this comment in
GAMES.BAS from the tape:

100 %:%," CATALOG OF GAMES AND RECREATIONS ON RSTS":%
110 %,"FOR MAXIMUM ENJOYMENT OF THESE GAMES, YOU SHOULD HAVE A"
120 %,"COPY OF THE BOOK, '101 BASIC COMPUTER GAMES' BY DAVID AHL.":%

As to comments that seem to have shrunk, look at for example the shrinkage
of the original comment block from Mayfield's 1972 HP program library
version of STAR TREK, to the 1973 RSTS SPACWR version in the Ahl
collection. With most vintage BASIC interpreters there was a runtime
penalty to putting large comment blocks at the start of your program -
maybe the HP 3000 BASIC was a true compiler?

Tim


On Sun, Jan 20, 2019 at 9:14 PM Will Senn  wrote:

> Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I’m curious as to the provenance of
> the tape. Where’d you find it and do you know when it’s from? The reason
> I’m asking is that I just spent a day typing in and debugging/working to
> comprehend the program SPACWR.BAS from the not so great scanned pages of
> 101 BASIC Computer Games off of bitsaver. As I was running the result on my
> SIMH PDP 11 running RSTS/E V06C-03, I made another run at finding the
> original source and came across this thread. I downloaded the RL01 and
> mounted in my RSTS 9.6 environment which was sysgen’d with RL support,
> loaded up the code and printed it out for a comparison. I was shocked how
> close my read of the scans were to the version here. Part of my surprise
> was naturally related to the restoration process, but the other came from
> the fact that the code from this tape doesn’t mention David Ahl, Mary Cole
> or Ida Potel, whereas they are credited in the source code in 101 games for
> minor work and debugging. As far as I can tell, other than whitespace, the
> only differences between my restored version from the 101 games scan and
> this version, is the additional attribution- which makes me wonder if Ahl,
> et. al., made ANY meaningful contribution worthy of attribution to the
> program.
>
> So, when was the tape created, before 101 games or after and who, exactly
> should have credit for the version therein?
>
> Later,
>
> Will
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jan 23, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Tony Nicholson 
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies 
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and
>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>>
>>
> Bryan (and all).
>
> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student
> when I discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying
> DECtape.
>
> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of
> the DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
>
> The book is at -
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
>
> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH -
> after some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax
> (spaces between keywords etc).
>
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either
> and run them!
>
> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some
> fiddling and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
>
> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks)
> you can -
>set rl enable
>set rl0 rl01
>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
>
> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and
> look in DL0:[100,100]
>
> The zip file is
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
>
> Tony
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2019 at 6:46 PM Will Senn  wrote:

> Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I’m curious as to the provenance of
> the tape.
>
An interesting question that I think that is going to be very hard because
of time and what we now call 'Open Source.'   I personally consider Ahl as
the editor and collector of those games; not the author as the fact is
versions of many of them ran of non-DEC systems before he wrote the book.
My first introduction to computers was in my father's office running
Darthmouth BASIC under GE Mark III on an ASR33 in the later 60s.   Dad was
teaching Math and a intro to computer course at a prep-school in LA and
then in a different school outside of Philadelphia starting in 67.

The game I personally liked the most was the Horse Racing game on the GE
Mark III.  We played a number of them when we were allowed too, as a 12
year old those games were magical.  It is also what got me interesting in
computing and how a computer worked.   I must have studied the sources to
'Races' for hours, asking my dad questions.   I was so proud when I wrote
my first ( BASIC ) program; shortly there after.

Another data point, a year or so later, to save money my Dad switched the
school in Philly from GE  to an HP2000 timesharing system from a local
provider (who's name I do not remember). One reason, I remember is that he
was able to increase our access to three ASR33's instead of one (110 baud,
dial-up with an accostic coupler for the phone) for the same budget.

But to your question, pretty much the same games from the Mark III were on
the HP system too, definitely Races, Blackjack and a Poker game too (there
were others too but those where what stuck in the brain of the 12 yr old
me).   I also remember Dad had an account on a PDP-10 of some type which we
could use for special project that did not work well on the HP.  I was
starting to try actually to do real math on the computer and was trying to
write an root solver using newton's method (in BASIC and later HP2000
assembler).  But along the way, I saw the first versions of the DEC BASIC
on the PDP-10.

The DEC version of Basic was different/more advanced then Dartmouth Basic
of the HP 2000 and GE -- DEC had added some level of typing, i.e. 26
integer variables and number of other extensions, maybe more dimensions for
arrays (I've forgotten the details) than the original Dartmouth Basic had.
But when Dad got me my first PDP-10 account, I remember one of the first
things I looked for was the games directory, and most of what I had seen
before on the GE and HP systems was there also.

FWIW: I later saw Ahl's book from Digital Press in college and thought it
was pretty nifty.  It was eventually republished by someone else (maybe
even number of times), but I did not buy a copy of it until much later and
was from one of those editions.   In fact, I may have still have my old
copy; although the version was after it had been translated to the
Microsoft Basic for the Apple and CP/M systems on the early 1980s (which
were all based on the DEC dialects with their extensions, not the simplier
pure Darthmouth - 'Kemeny and Kurtz version
' of
the 1960s).   As other have pointed out, even DEC the dialects were
sometimes a little different between each other - that was normal in those
days.Funny, by the time I had the money to be able to buy the book, I
had started to lose interesting in playing games on the computer, or for
that matter writting them and I had definitely drifted from BASIC.  But
running BDS C on a CP/M machine was harder and so many things just used
basic at that point; plus I did not yet an C compiler for my Apple II which
I was then using more as a terminal to remote UNIX boxes.

Anyway, the point is that simple computer games in BASIC were being passed
around between people (as paper tapes), particularly if you had acccess to
multiple different brands of computers.You always had the source code,
in those days so it was really not big deal.  In fact, my memory is that
one of the new things that you could do on the PDP-10 was >>compile<< your
basic program, or at least leave it in some form that some one could not
see what you had done.   But the HP and GE system, you just loaded the
program and typed 'list' - often after turning on the paper tape punch the
ASR33.

Clem





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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tim Shoppa]

DECUS tapes RSTS-11-13 and RSTS-11-14 (contributed by of course David H
Ahl) contain many 1973 versions of the games that made it into the
original  BASIC Computer Games book.

http://pdp-11.trailing-edge.com/rsts11/

I've never done a one-to-one mapping of all the games but I don't think
they're an exact map to the ones that appeared in the book.

Interesting note about the history of this entry: the DECtape I read these
from, was obviously assembled from the paper tapes, as several of the games
were exactly reversed (end-to-end) because the paper tape had been sent
through the reader backwards.

Tim.


On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 8:39 AM Tony Nicholson 
wrote:

>
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 10:46 AM Will Senn  wrote:
>
>> Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I’m curious as to the provenance of
>> the tape. Where’d you find it and do you know when it’s from?
>>
>
> The original (corrupted) Dectape image is at
>
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/rsts/SeattlePacificCollege/158_ahl_basic_games.dta.gz
>
> Since RSTS (and RSTS/E) natively access files from DECtape in DOS-11
> format only - I found the home block was offset in the image file (If I
> recall it was not on a block boundary).  A snip of these superfluous bytes
> made it readable.  The location of the original file suggests it came from
> Seattle Pacific College.  Someone at bitsavers (Al Kossow) may know more
> about the DECtape's provenance.
>
> Tony
>
> On Jan 23, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Tony Nicholson 
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies 
>> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and
>>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>>>
>>>
>> Bryan (and all).
>>
>> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student
>> when I discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying
>> DECtape.
>>
>> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of
>> the DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
>>
>> The book is at -
>>
>> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
>>
>> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH -
>> after some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax
>> (spaces between keywords etc).
>>
>> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS
>> level 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from
>> either and run them!
>>
>> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some
>> fiddling and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
>>
>> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks)
>> you can -
>>set rl enable
>>set rl0 rl01
>>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
>>
>> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and
>> look in DL0:[100,100]
>>
>> The zip file is
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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>>
>>
>
> --
> Tony Nicholson 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 10:46 AM Will Senn  wrote:

> Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I’m curious as to the provenance of
> the tape. Where’d you find it and do you know when it’s from?
>

The original (corrupted) Dectape image is at

http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/rsts/SeattlePacificCollege/158_ahl_basic_games.dta.gz

Since RSTS (and RSTS/E) natively access files from DECtape in DOS-11 format
only - I found the home block was offset in the image file (If I recall it
was not on a block boundary).  A snip of these superfluous bytes made it
readable.  The location of the original file suggests it came from Seattle
Pacific College.  Someone at bitsavers (Al Kossow) may know more about the
DECtape's provenance.

Tony

On Jan 23, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Tony Nicholson 
wrote:

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies 
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and
>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>>
>>
> Bryan (and all).
>
> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student
> when I discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying
> DECtape.
>
> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of
> the DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
>
> The book is at -
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
>
> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH -
> after some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax
> (spaces between keywords etc).
>
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either
> and run them!
>
> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some
> fiddling and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
>
> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks)
> you can -
>set rl enable
>set rl0 rl01
>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
>
> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and
> look in DL0:[100,100]
>
> The zip file is
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
>
> Tony
>
>
>
> ___
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> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>
>

-- 
Tony Nicholson 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Will Senn]

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I’m curious as to the provenance of the 
tape. Where’d you find it and do you know when it’s from? The reason I’m asking 
is that I just spent a day typing in and debugging/working to comprehend the 
program SPACWR.BAS from the not so great scanned pages of 101 BASIC Computer 
Games off of bitsaver. As I was running the result on my SIMH PDP 11 running 
RSTS/E V06C-03, I made another run at finding the original source and came 
across this thread. I downloaded the RL01 and mounted in my RSTS 9.6 
environment which was sysgen’d with RL support, loaded up the code and printed 
it out for a comparison. I was shocked how close my read of the scans were to 
the version here. Part of my surprise was naturally related to the restoration 
process, but the other came from the fact that the code from this tape doesn’t 
mention David Ahl, Mary Cole or Ida Potel, whereas they are credited in the 
source code in 101 games for minor work and debugging. As far as I can tell, 
other than whitespace, the only differences between my restored version from 
the 101 games scan and this version, is the additional attribution- which makes 
me wonder if Ahl, et. al., made ANY meaningful contribution worthy of 
attribution to the program.

So, when was the tape created, before 101 games or after and who, exactly 
should have credit for the version therein?

Later,

Will

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Tony Nicholson  
> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies  
> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and 
>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>> 
> 
> Bryan (and all).
> 
> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student when I 
> discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying DECtape.
> 
> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of the 
> DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
> 
> The book is at -
> 
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
> 
> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH - after 
> some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax (spaces 
> between keywords etc).
> 
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level 
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either 
> and run them!
> 
> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some fiddling 
> and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
> 
> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks) you 
> can -
>set rl enable
>set rl0 rl01
>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
> 
> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and look 
> in DL0:[100,100]
> 
> The zip file is 
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Hunter Goatley]

On 1/28/2018 3:43 PM, khandy21yo wrote:
There is a project on gitnub called BLISS-M. Is it comparable with any 
version of bliss discussed here?


That's Matt Madison's attempt to create a BLISS that could be used on 
Linux and other systems. It's been a while since he last updated it, so 
I'm not sure what its current status is. The last time I tried to build 
it, I didn't have a new enough Linux system to get it to build. I was 
just looking at that yesterday, thinking that I should give it another 
go sometime.


(For non-VMS people, Matt wrote a number of pretty major freeware 
products in BLISS back in the day, most notably MX and NETLIB.)


Hunter

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tim Shoppa]

At one point in the  80’s/90’s several of the standard VMS command line tools 
were PL/1. I’m thinking in particular of the Error Log Formatter 
(ANALYZE/ERROR) but I recall some other ANALYZE/ sources being PL/1 as well.

I seem to recall DUMP and maybe some tape utilities were in Pascal.

The talk at DECUS was that Digital purposefully made sure every language was 
represented in VMS sources!

In the 2000s I recall a lot of the PL/1 and BLISS system sources had been 
converted to C. I’m guessing the conversion had to be done because not enough 
staff knew PL/1 or BLISS anymore.

Tim

> On Jan 29, 2018, at 4:24 AM, Jordi Guillaumes Pons 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
> j...@jordi.guillaumes.name
> HECnet: BITXOW::JGUILLAUMES
> 
> 
>> 
>> IIRC, DECC added #pragma linkage for that.  But that only matters in kernel 
>> code - any user mode JSB linkage  in the VAX calling standard has a 
>> corresponding CALL linkage.  
> 
> 
> Just as side info…
> 
> IBM added a different C compiler to zOS (MVS) to do systems stuff. They call 
> it “Metal-C” and comes with a different RTL and assorted header files to 
> invoke the MVS macros and address its control blocks.
> 
> I don’t know anyone who uses it. We toke a look into it and went back to 
> using assembler to interface with the system.
> 
> IBM itself still uses PL/X as systems implementation language., which as far 
> as I know has not been made available to the public until relatively recent 
> times. As the name hints at, it’s a PL/I derivative tailored for systems and 
> low level stuff (although the “regular” PL/I can do it without too much 
> changes).
> 
> 
> Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
> j...@jordi.guillaumes.name
> HECnet: BITXOW::JGUILLAUMES
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Jordi Guillaumes Pons]

Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
j...@jordi.guillaumes.name
HECnet: BITXOW::JGUILLAUMES


> 
> IIRC, DECC added #pragma linkage for that.  But that only matters in kernel 
> code - any user mode JSB linkage  in the VAX calling standard has a 
> corresponding CALL linkage.


Just as side info…

IBM added a different C compiler to zOS (MVS) to do systems stuff. They call it 
“Metal-C” and comes with a different RTL and assorted header files to invoke 
the MVS macros and address its control blocks.

I don’t know anyone who uses it. We toke a look into it and went back to using 
assembler to interface with the system.

IBM itself still uses PL/X as systems implementation language., which as far as 
I know has not been made available to the public until relatively recent times. 
As the name hints at, it’s a PL/I derivative tailored for systems and low level 
stuff (although the “regular” PL/I can do it without too much changes).


Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
j...@jordi.guillaumes.name
HECnet: BITXOW::JGUILLAUMES


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Timothe Litt]

On 28-Jan-18 18:38, Hunter Goatley wrote:
> On 1/28/2018 3:49 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>> It's more or less a dead language, unless you are in a very specific
>> environment. So no, most likely it is not worth learning, if you are
>> thinking that you might work with it.
>
Agree.
> If you're writing code that's strictly for VMS and will never be used
> anywhere else, BLISS is a fine choice, if you're interested in
> learning it.
>
Agree.
>> Compared to C? Well, it is similar, I'd guess/say.
>
> BLISS-32 was designed as an operating systems language, so you can
> easily do things in BLISS that you can't do in C. On VAX, you could
> write subroutines that could be called via JSB instructions in MACRO,
> for example.
>
Generally agree.  But it's not a bright line.

IIRC, DECC added #pragma linkage for that.  But that only matters in
kernel code - any user mode JSB linkage  in the VAX calling standard has
a corresponding CALL linkage. 

But BLISS does it in the language proper; including allocating storage
in specific PSECTs.  And with its macros, it is much easier to do those
sorts of things portably.

The C language standard leaves a lot to the implementers' imagination -
or creative interpretation.  BLISS doesn't.

If I need to access device registers portably, I'll take BLISS over the
varying implementations of C's constant, readonly, and volatile.

> On the other hand, C has the C RTL. BLISS has no RTL, so be prepared
> for lots of calls to LIB$ and friends and system services.
>
Which are problematic/impossible in inner modes.  Then again, the C RTL
for inner modes is a late addition, and has restrictions.

You have to know your environment with either language. 

POSIX C provides a rich user-mode function library. 

BLISS requires that you provide your own.  But in the VMS environment,
that's done for you (see starlet.req, lib.req).  That's richer - but
hardly portable.   Then again, the only other targets are DEC/OSF1,
TOPS-10/20 & PDP-11s.  Which, except for this community, probably aren't
of interest.

If you stick with user mode, the details are different, but the
languages are roughly comparable (especially if you include the XPORT
library for BLISS).

It's all academic unless you are working in one of the supported
environments.

> Hunter



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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Timothe Litt]

On 28-Jan-18 18:32, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 4:43 PM, khandy21yo  > wrote:
>
>
> Never had BLISS on anything until long after it would have been
> useful. So how does BLISS compare to C as a systems programming
> language? Is it worth learning at this late date?
>
>
> ​I'll try to answer your questions in verse order - probably not worth
> learning; except for some education value and the ability to read and
> really understand any BLISS code you might come upon (if the later is
> something you really need/want to do).
>
> Armando Stetner, of the TIG (Telephone Industries Group in MKO) once
> made a set of 'BLISS is Ignorance' buttons which he gave to a lot of
> people (I still have mine).   While I loved the language, I loathed it
> too.  ​I'm in a interesting position here, because I learned BLISS
> before I learned C, since I was CMU type at the time and a student of
> Wulf and his wife.
>
> 40 years later, I've written way more C then BLISS.  But as Tim
> was saying there were some things about BLISS which I still miss -
> primarily the macro system and the way conditional compilation was
> handled.   It was much more sane that C's preprocessor; and the PDP-11
> optimizer (discussed in the Green Book) made the Ritchie C compiler
> see almost like a toy.
>
> Remember, part of there design of the language was with software
> engineering in mind.  Parnas et al was publishing and there was a lot
> of thought about what made for good programs.  Hence, no goto. 
> Similarly, it included a macro and conditional compilation system -
> which I think was something that really made BLISS and C much more
> useful than say PASCAL.    In fact, people wrote macro systems like m4
> and RATFOR so that PL/1 and FORTRAN could be conditionally compiled in
> a manner than was reasonable.  I've always said, for really SW
> engineering you need to have it (the problem with C/C++ is that it
> gets abused and some resulting code is worse because of it).
>
> The CMU BLISS compiler had one of my favorite errors of all time BTW.
>   You could use single letter like i, j, and k for loop variables, but
> if your real variable were less than 6 chars, you could get an
> 'unimaginative variable name' warning.  So for real system programs,
> expressions tended to actually have meaning and code was readable and
> easy to understand.
>
> BTW, like C, everything in BLISS is an expression and I think that
> worked well.  Also for the PDP-10 at least, it is had no language
> runtime (by the time of Alpha I think that was not wholly true).  
> There were a ton of associated libraries, but the compiler did
> everything.   C never really quite got to that because the Ritchie
> compiler was much smaller, so Dennis put a lot into the runtime under
> the covers.  Frankly, as a user since you are always using libraries,
> I never saw much of a difference.
>
> BLISS suffered one major design error (which was self inflicted and is
> an example of theory vs. practice) and a number of smaller ones that
> became sort of a death of thousand cuts.
>
> The big issue is the Wulf's choice of a 'store into' and 'contents of'
> operators vs. the traditional 'assignment' and C style pointer
> indirection.  His theory is 100% correct and it made the language much
> cleaner and >>once you understood it<<; much more regular.  C ended up
> with *, &, -> and a dot operator to handle different linguistic items.
>   BLISS is much more compact and from a >>compiler's writers
> standpoint<< mathematically explicit (which is what Bill was of
> course).  The idea was that if the language was consistent it make for
> better programs. The problem is that in practice, humans do not read
> code the same way as a compiler and the BLISS conventions take a lot
> of getting used to.   Plus if you are 'multi-lingual' your brain has
> to switch between the two schemes.   [Bill would later admit privately
> at least, it was great concept that in practice, just did not pan out].
>
> And finally, in the days of the old drum printers, if you ever look at
> printouts you will see a certain amount of 'bouncing' of text in a
> line, caused by the head solenoids firing a little early or late.  
> This means tops and bottoms of characters were often cut off and small
> symbols (like the period) might not be seen at all on the paper
> (although if you looked carefully you might see a small indentation
> from where is was supposed to have been -- I have examples of this
> effect in some old listings BTW).  We used to say, if your program did
> not work, get a pepper shaker and a sponge  then pour a few dots and
> remove a few others, and it would start to work ;-)
>
> On the smaller side, there were things like the N different exits.  
> IIRC Wulf used to say that was a bad idea and he should have supported
> labels and then allowed and 'exit' to got to a label.   The language
> took the Algol BEGIN/END 

Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Hunter Goatley]

On 1/28/2018 3:49 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

It's more or less a dead language, unless you are in a very specific 
environment. So no, most likely it is not worth learning, if you are 
thinking that you might work with it.


If you're writing code that's strictly for VMS and will never be used 
anywhere else, BLISS is a fine choice, if you're interested in learning it.



Compared to C? Well, it is similar, I'd guess/say.


BLISS-32 was designed as an operating systems language, so you can 
easily do things in BLISS that you can't do in C. On VAX, you could 
write subroutines that could be called via JSB instructions in MACRO, 
for example.


On the other hand, C has the C RTL. BLISS has no RTL, so be prepared for 
lots of calls to LIB$ and friends and system services.


Hunter


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 4:43 PM, khandy21yo  wrote:

>
> Never had BLISS on anything until long after it would have been useful. So
> how does BLISS compare to C as a systems programming language? Is it worth
> learning at this late date?
>

​I'll try to answer your questions in verse order - probably not worth
learning; except for some education value and the ability to read and
really understand any BLISS code you might come upon (if the later is
something you really need/want to do).

Armando Stetner, of the TIG (Telephone Industries Group in MKO) once made a
set of 'BLISS is Ignorance' buttons which he gave to a lot of people (I
still have mine).   While I loved the language, I loathed it too.  ​I'm in
a interesting position here, because I learned BLISS before I learned C,
since I was CMU type at the time and a student of Wulf and his wife.

40 years later, I've written way more C then BLISS.  But as Tim was saying
there were some things about BLISS which I still miss - primarily the macro
system and the way conditional compilation was handled.   It was much more
sane that C's preprocessor; and the PDP-11 optimizer (discussed in the
Green Book) made the Ritchie C compiler see almost like a toy.

Remember, part of there design of the language was with software
engineering in mind.  Parnas et al was publishing and there was a lot of
thought about what made for good programs.  Hence, no goto.  Similarly, it
included a macro and conditional compilation system - which I think was
something that really made BLISS and C much more useful than say PASCAL.
 In fact, people wrote macro systems like m4 and RATFOR so that PL/1 and
FORTRAN could be conditionally compiled in a manner than was reasonable.
I've always said, for really SW engineering you need to have it (the
problem with C/C++ is that it gets abused and some resulting code is worse
because of it).

The CMU BLISS compiler had one of my favorite errors of all time BTW.   You
could use single letter like i, j, and k for loop variables, but if your
real variable were less than 6 chars, you could get an
'unimaginative variable name' warning.  So for real system programs,
expressions tended to actually have meaning and code was readable and easy
to understand.

BTW, like C, everything in BLISS is an expression and I think that worked
well.  Also for the PDP-10 at least, it is had no language runtime (by the
time of Alpha I think that was not wholly true).   There were a ton of
associated libraries, but the compiler did everything.   C never really
quite got to that because the Ritchie compiler was much smaller, so Dennis
put a lot into the runtime under the covers.  Frankly, as a user since
you are always using libraries, I never saw much of a difference.

BLISS suffered one major design error (which was self inflicted and is an
example of theory vs. practice) and a number of smaller ones that became
sort of a death of thousand cuts.

The big issue is the Wulf's choice of a 'store into' and 'contents of'
operators vs. the traditional 'assignment' and C style pointer
indirection.  His theory is 100% correct and it made the language much
cleaner and >>once you understood it<<; much more regular.  C ended up with
*, &, -> and a dot operator to handle different linguistic items.   BLISS
is much more compact and from a >>compiler's writers standpoint<<
mathematically explicit (which is what Bill was of course).  The idea was
that if the language was consistent it make for better programs. The
problem is that in practice, humans do not read code the same way as a
compiler and the BLISS conventions take a lot of getting used to.   Plus if
you are 'multi-lingual' your brain has to switch between the two schemes.
[Bill would later admit privately at least, it was great concept that in
practice, just did not pan out].

And finally, in the days of the old drum printers, if you ever look at
printouts you will see a certain amount of 'bouncing' of text in a line,
caused by the head solenoids firing a little early or late.   This means
tops and bottoms of characters were often cut off and small symbols (like
the period) might not be seen at all on the paper (although if you looked
carefully you might see a small indentation from where is was supposed to
have been -- I have examples of this effect in some old listings BTW).  We
used to say, if your program did not work, get a pepper shaker and a sponge
 then pour a few dots and remove a few others, and it would start to work
;-)

On the smaller side, there were things like the N different exits.   IIRC
Wulf used to say that was a bad idea and he should have supported labels
and then allowed and 'exit' to got to a label.   The language took the
Algol BEGIN/END and Algol68 idea of spelling word backwards to note the end
of a something (SET TES, NSET TESN ...).And of course because
the implementation of the language was done originally on the PDP-10 and
then later moved to create a PDP-11 target but 

Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

It's more or less a dead language, unless you are in a very specific 
environment. So no, most likely it is not worth learning, if you are 
thinking that you might work with it.


Compared to C? Well, it is similar, I'd guess/say.

  Johnny

On 2018-01-28 22:43, khandy21yo wrote:
There is a project on gitnub called BLISS-M. Is it comparable with any 
version of bliss discussed here?


Never had BLISS on anything until long after it would have been useful. 
So how does BLISS compare to C as a systems programming language? Is it 
worth learning at this late date?




Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A

 Original message 
From: Phil Budne 
Date: 1/28/18 1:59 PM (GMT-07:00)
To: simh@trailing-edge.com, p...@ultimate.com, fsword...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh 
for public access)


I wrote:
 > I found BLISS-11 sources and binaries in decus catalog item 10-325:
 > directory [43,50325] in (The DECUS catalog numbers are decimal

catalog number is 10-213 (decimal)
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[khandy21yo]

There is a project on gitnub called BLISS-M. Is it comparable with any version 
of bliss discussed here? 
Never had BLISS on anything until long after it would have been useful. So how 
does BLISS compare to C as a systems programming language? Is it worth learning 
at this late date?


Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
 Original message From: Phil Budne  Date: 
1/28/18  1:59 PM  (GMT-07:00) To: simh@trailing-edge.com, p...@ultimate.com, 
fsword...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: 
PDP11 on Simh for public access) 
I wrote:
> I found BLISS-11 sources and binaries in decus catalog item 10-325:
> directory [43,50325] in (The DECUS catalog numbers are decimal

catalog number is 10-213 (decimal)
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Phil Budne]

I wrote:
> I found BLISS-11 sources and binaries in decus catalog item 10-325:
> directory [43,50325] in (The DECUS catalog numbers are decimal

catalog number is 10-213 (decimal)
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Timothe Litt]

On 28-Jan-18 13:45, Tim Stark wrote:
> Folks,
>
> There is BLISS source codes for TOPS-20 in pdp-10.trailing-edge.com.
>
> There is a free copy of BLISS compilers for VAX and Alpha in Freeware CD 
> dist. 
>
> There is a online version of  The Design of an Optimizing Compiler on CMU 
> website.
>
> I have a question for you.  Does anyone know any documents to learn how to 
> write BLISS codes?
>
>
There is an internal course called BLISS Primer.  It may be on-line; if
not, when I get around to sending more stuff to CHM, I'm sure it will be.

In the TOPS-10 & -20 software notebooks, there are the BLISS-36 Language
Guide, Installation manual, User Guide

TOPS-10 also has the XPORT manual.  XPORT is a library for writing
portable code; including user-mode IO.  Don't know why it's not in the
TOPS-20 set (or maybe I missed it.)

The language guide is pretty readable, if you know another programming
language.

The paper that I referenced earlier gives some context and history.



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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Hunter Goatley]

On 1/28/2018 12:45 PM, Tim Stark wrote:


I have a question for you.  Does anyone know any documents to learn how to 
write BLISS codes?


It's also helpful to look at BLISS code. You can find all of the 
freeware programs in my VMS archive that are written in BLISS by going 
to this page and choosing BLISS for the Language.


http://vms.process.com/fileserv_search.html

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--
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Hunter Goatley]

Hi, Tim.


I have a question for you.  Does anyone know any documents to learn how to 
write BLISS codes?


I'd recommend Matt Madison's "Introduction to BLISS" paper that he wrote 
back in 1993. Postscript and PDF files can be downloaded from here:


http://vms.process.com/ftp/vms-freeware/fileserv/bliss-intro.zip

You may also be interested in the original article by Wulf that 
introduced BLISS. You can find a PDF and Postscript files that I 
formatted here:


http://vms.process.com/ftp/vms-freeware/fileserv/bliss-intro.zip


--
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--
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goathun...@goatley.com

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tim Stark]

Folks,

There is BLISS source codes for TOPS-20 in pdp-10.trailing-edge.com.

There is a free copy of BLISS compilers for VAX and Alpha in Freeware CD dist. 

There is a online version of  The Design of an Optimizing Compiler on CMU 
website.

I have a question for you.  Does anyone know any documents to learn how to 
write BLISS codes?

Thanks,
Tim

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Phil Budne
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 12:09 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for 
public access)

Paul Koning wrote:
> As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; 
> the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember 
> which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other?

BLISS-11 was written in BLISS-10 (and both were written at C-MU), and
BLISS-11 was the jumping off point for COMMON BLISS.  I think sources for both 
'B10 and 'B11 are on PDP-10 DECUS tapes.

BLISS-16 was a member of the COMMON BLISS family.  I don't ever remember seeing 
an EXE for it on a PDP-10, but I was never a COMMON BLISS fan.  I hacked on 
FINE at Stevens Tech (the computing center had a copy of BLISS-36, the PDP-10 
COMMON BLISS compiler, but it wasn't available to the unwashed masses).  When I 
went to DEC, I worked on FORTRAN-10/20, which was also in BLISS-10.  I was down 
in Marlborough
(MR1-2) and don't recall ever seeing COMMON BLISS sources.

I do recall a mention (perhaps in a published article?) of the existence of a 
"cut down" version of BLISS-16 that could run on an '11.

I once sang in a chorus with someone who had worked on COMMON BLISS.
ISTR he said he was a contractor, not a DEC employee.

My boss on the F10 project was Sara Murphy, one of the original F10 developers, 
and I have some recall that she had been involved in a fancy BASIC for TOPS-20 
(I _think_ it was called BP2, but I could be wrong).

phil
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

below.. at bit off topic from simulators  sorry

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 3:35 PM, Hunter Goatley 
wrote:

> On 1/26/2018 2:22 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:
>
>>
>> BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the
>> DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.
>>
>
> Indeed! I was fortunate to get access to BLISS in college thanks to DEC's
> CSLG program, but it was their second-most expensive compiler license
> (after Ada), so virtually no one outside of DEC used it. When they
> originally released Alpha, they weren't planning to make the BLISS compiler
> available, but I and others worked to try to get DEC to change that. As I'm
> sure you know, in the end, they released it with a free license for both
> VAX and Alpha (and Itanium), but it was far too late for most people to
> have any interest in adopting it. I still do some BLISS coding, but I'm one
> of the few that I know of still doing it.


​Yup it was hard to for $5K / cpu to compete with $100 plus you got the
sources and could run it on any system - - certainly for any university.
And what DEC failed to understand was both the power of the new
microprocessors and that university hacker types would want to mess with
the compiler itself.

Tim - while I agree BLISS at the time was a more complete/better language
--- the difference in the quality of the code that they generated was night
and day - assuming you have made it self hosting etc... but . I have
also wondered if "free" would have been good enough though.   Access to the
sources so you could retarget it was a huge thing that helped C spread.  In
my own case, in the summer of 1979 when we go the experimental parts at
Tektronix that would later become the 68000, I wanted/needed an HLL to mess
with it.   What did I do? I hacked on the Ritchie C compiler and made a
crude backend -- good enough for an OS guy to do his work.

A year or so after that, when we did the TCP implementation, we needed a
HLL for our Vax (running VMS).  I did manage to get Tek to buy a BLISS
license for it.   But I remember all of us be amazed that DEC was trying to
charge so much for it.

Clem
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Timothe Litt]

On 26-Jan-18 15:54, Rich Alderson wrote:
>> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:35:18 -0600
>> From: Hunter Goatley 
>> On 1/26/2018 2:22 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:
>>> BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the 
>>> DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.
>> Indeed! I was fortunate to get access to BLISS in college thanks to 
>> DEC's CSLG program, but it was their second-most expensive compiler 
>> license (after Ada), so virtually no one outside of DEC used it. When 
>> they originally released Alpha, they weren't planning to make the BLISS 
>> compiler available, but I and others worked to try to get DEC to change 
>> that. As I'm sure you know, in the end, they released it with a free 
>> license for both VAX and Alpha (and Itanium), but it was far too late 
>> for most people to have any interest in adopting it. I still do some 
>> BLISS coding, but I'm one of the few that I know of still doing it.
> In fact, when Digital announced the free licensing for BLISS-32 and BLISS-16,
> I immediately got in touch with our contact within Digital (help me out, Tim,
> what was Dick's last name?  the guy who helped XKL get the 36-bit stuff and
> introduced you and me in Marlboro) about getting BLISS-36 released the same
> way.  There may not have been a large market for it, but I wanted to make sure
> that XKL's customers had access if they wanted it.
Dick Greeley.  Former product manager in HPS, by then in the corporate
licensing group.
> Rich
>



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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:35:18 -0600
> From: Hunter Goatley 

> On 1/26/2018 2:22 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:

>> BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the 
>> DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.

> Indeed! I was fortunate to get access to BLISS in college thanks to 
> DEC's CSLG program, but it was their second-most expensive compiler 
> license (after Ada), so virtually no one outside of DEC used it. When 
> they originally released Alpha, they weren't planning to make the BLISS 
> compiler available, but I and others worked to try to get DEC to change 
> that. As I'm sure you know, in the end, they released it with a free 
> license for both VAX and Alpha (and Itanium), but it was far too late 
> for most people to have any interest in adopting it. I still do some 
> BLISS coding, but I'm one of the few that I know of still doing it.

In fact, when Digital announced the free licensing for BLISS-32 and BLISS-16,
I immediately got in touch with our contact within Digital (help me out, Tim,
what was Dick's last name?  the guy who helped XKL get the 36-bit stuff and
introduced you and me in Marlboro) about getting BLISS-36 released the same
way.  There may not have been a large market for it, but I wanted to make sure
that XKL's customers had access if they wanted it.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Hunter Goatley]

On 1/26/2018 2:22 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:


BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the 
DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.


Indeed! I was fortunate to get access to BLISS in college thanks to 
DEC's CSLG program, but it was their second-most expensive compiler 
license (after Ada), so virtually no one outside of DEC used it. When 
they originally released Alpha, they weren't planning to make the BLISS 
compiler available, but I and others worked to try to get DEC to change 
that. As I'm sure you know, in the end, they released it with a free 
license for both VAX and Alpha (and Itanium), but it was far too late 
for most people to have any interest in adopting it. I still do some 
BLISS coding, but I'm one of the few that I know of still doing it.


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Timothe Litt]

On 26-Jan-18 15:12, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2018-01-26 20:26, Clem Cole wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Johnny Billquist > > wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Right. As far as I know, BLISS-16 only ran under VMS.
>>
>> Hmm I'd be careful here.   As I understand it,​ Hobbs has implied
>> they did the work on the 10 to start with because at the time TLG was
>> using PDP-10s.   As one of the language designers, I'd believe him. 
>> That said, what saw the light of day as product I can not say, I was
>> not paying attention to that in those days.   Phil or Tim might know.
>
> Looked around some more, and it seems both BLISS-16 and BLISS-32 could
> be run under the PDP-10. Oh well. Never seen or heard about that in
> real life, but I guess it must have existed at one point then.
>
I used both in real life. 

I don't believe either was released externally.

BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the
DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.

> Johnny
>



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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 20:26, Clem Cole wrote:



On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:



Right. As far as I know, BLISS-16 only ran under VMS.

Hmm I'd be careful here.   As I understand it,​ Hobbs has implied they 
did the work on the 10 to start with because at the time TLG was using 
PDP-10s.   As one of the language designers, I'd believe him.  That 
said, what saw the light of day as product I can not say, I was not 
paying attention to that in those days.   Phil or Tim might know.


Looked around some more, and it seems both BLISS-16 and BLISS-32 could 
be run under the PDP-10. Oh well. Never seen or heard about that in real 
life, but I guess it must have existed at one point then.


Johnny

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>
> Right. As far as I know, BLISS-16 only ran under VMS.

Hmm I'd be careful here.   As I understand it,​ Hobbs has implied they did
the work on the 10 to start with because at the time TLG was using PDP-10s.
  As one of the language designers, I'd believe him.  That said, what saw
the light of day as product I can not say, I was not paying attention to
that in those days.   Phil or Tim might know.

BTW -- fun side story, the BLISS "code comment" (C Pragmas if you will for
folks that don't speak a dead language) you will see in some old CMU system
code for C.mmp and Cm* is marked 'BOH'  -- which means 'Buzz-Off-Hobbs'
telling him to turn his damned optimizer and listen to us kernel guys.
ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 18:08, Phil Budne wrote:

Paul Koning wrote:

As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; 
the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember 
which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other?


BLISS-11 was written in BLISS-10 (and both were written at C-MU), and
BLISS-11 was the jumping off point for COMMON BLISS.  I think sources
for both 'B10 and 'B11 are on PDP-10 DECUS tapes.


Hmm, the sources could be fun to check.


BLISS-16 was a member of the COMMON BLISS family.  I don't ever
remember seeing an EXE for it on a PDP-10, but I was never a COMMON
BLISS fan.  I hacked on FINE at Stevens Tech (the computing center had
a copy of BLISS-36, the PDP-10 COMMON BLISS compiler, but it wasn't
available to the unwashed masses).  When I went to DEC, I worked on
FORTRAN-10/20, which was also in BLISS-10.  I was down in Marlborough
(MR1-2) and don't recall ever seeing COMMON BLISS sources.


Right. As far as I know, BLISS-16 only ran under VMS.


I do recall a mention (perhaps in a published article?) of the
existence of a "cut down" version of BLISS-16 that could run on an '11.


That would be uBLISS (or Micro BLISS). As far as I know/heard, it got as 
far as working, but it was abandoned as people decided it would not ever 
become good enough to actually be used for any development.

I have a manual/documentation for uBLISS, but nothing of the actual code.


I once sang in a chorus with someone who had worked on COMMON BLISS.
ISTR he said he was a contractor, not a DEC employee.

My boss on the F10 project was Sara Murphy, one of the original F10
developers, and I have some recall that she had been involved in a
fancy BASIC for TOPS-20 (I _think_ it was called BP2, but I could be
wrong).


Yes. That would be the BASIC+2 for TOPS-20. It's written in BLISS, and 
have nothing to do with the BASIC+2 for PDP-11. Except, I guess, that 
they tried to be compatible.


  Johnny

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 26, 2018, at 12:08 PM, Phil Budne  wrote:
> 
> Paul Koning wrote:
>> As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; 
>> the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember 
>> which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other?
> 
> BLISS-11 was written in BLISS-10 (and both were written at C-MU), and
> BLISS-11 was the jumping off point for COMMON BLISS.  I think sources
> for both 'B10 and 'B11 are on PDP-10 DECUS tapes.

Thanks.  I've never used it, but I ran into it when looking at the CMU PDP-11 
ALGOL-68 implementation.  I had some DECtapes of that code, only the runtime 
library if I remember right.  They seem to have disappeared, and I don't know 
if that compiler has been preserved.  Note that ALGOL-68 is an entirely 
different language than ALGOL-60; in a number of areas it served as inspiration 
for C++.

paul

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

Bliss-11 was for the pdp10. Bliss-16 was for VMS.
I believe it Bliss-11 that came from CMU.

  Johnny 


Paul Koning  skrev: (26 januari 2018 17:37:28 CET)
>
>
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:15 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>> RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally
>came from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based
>(also remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
>
>Are you talking about BASIC-PLUS-2?  RSTS BASIC-PLUS dates from 1970,
>and was written under contract for DEC by Evans, Griffiths & Hart
>("EGH").  It is essentially a P-code compiler, to use terminology that
>didn't appear until later; it doesn't generate any machine code.  And
>as far as I know, it is not based on any BASIC implementation for any
>other system.
>
>As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from
>Carnegie-Mellon; the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers,
>but I don't remember which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and
>VAX for the other? 
>
>   paul

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Phil Budne]

Paul Koning wrote:
> As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; 
> the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember 
> which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other?

BLISS-11 was written in BLISS-10 (and both were written at C-MU), and
BLISS-11 was the jumping off point for COMMON BLISS.  I think sources
for both 'B10 and 'B11 are on PDP-10 DECUS tapes.

BLISS-16 was a member of the COMMON BLISS family.  I don't ever
remember seeing an EXE for it on a PDP-10, but I was never a COMMON
BLISS fan.  I hacked on FINE at Stevens Tech (the computing center had
a copy of BLISS-36, the PDP-10 COMMON BLISS compiler, but it wasn't
available to the unwashed masses).  When I went to DEC, I worked on
FORTRAN-10/20, which was also in BLISS-10.  I was down in Marlborough
(MR1-2) and don't recall ever seeing COMMON BLISS sources.

I do recall a mention (perhaps in a published article?) of the
existence of a "cut down" version of BLISS-16 that could run on an '11.

I once sang in a chorus with someone who had worked on COMMON BLISS.
ISTR he said he was a contractor, not a DEC employee.

My boss on the F10 project was Sara Murphy, one of the original F10
developers, and I have some recall that she had been involved in a
fancy BASIC for TOPS-20 (I _think_ it was called BP2, but I could be
wrong).

phil
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:15 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:
> 
> ...
> RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came from 
> the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also remember the 
> PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).

Are you talking about BASIC-PLUS-2?  RSTS BASIC-PLUS dates from 1970, and was 
written under contract for DEC by Evans, Griffiths & Hart ("EGH").  It is 
essentially a P-code compiler, to use terminology that didn't appear until 
later; it doesn't generate any machine code.  And as far as I know, it is not 
based on any BASIC implementation for any other system.

As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; 
the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember 
which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other? 

paul

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> On 2018-01-26 01:03, Tony Nicholson wrote:
>> Definitely BASIC-Plus on RSTS!  You may need to replace the “&” with “PRINT” 
>> in some of the files.
> 
> Which should tell you that it's not for BASIC+ on RSTS/E. :-)
> Also, : for separating statements is, as far as I remember, also not in 
> BASIC+, which instead uses \, just like BASIC+2.

Not true.  BASIC-PLUS, at least starting with RSTS V5 or thereabouts, 
*supports* BP2 syntax as an alternate option.  But it does not insist on it and 
it still supports the old syntax as well.  Here is RSTS V10.1:

list
BPTEST  11:30 AM26-Jan-18
10 & "hi there" :
   & "line 2, with  continuation"
20 end

Ready

run
BPTEST  11:30 AM26-Jan-18
hi there
line 2, with  continuation

Ready

For BP2, & as shorthand for PRINT is not allowed, : must be replaced by \, and 
continuation lines must be & rather than .  If you do that, the file 
will still work with BASIC-PLUS in RSTS/E (but not on V4A).

paul


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> Cool. Thanks. Downloaded and unpacket.
> Anyone interested and on HECnet can now find them on MIM::DU:[101GAMES]
> 
> Looked a little at one or two files. BASIC+2 do not like them. The code uses 
> special shorts, functions and specifics that don't match.
> I wonder if BASIC+ accepts them either, or if this might be from some other 
> BASIC dialect that DEC had at some point.
> 
> If I have plenty of time at some point, I might sit down and write a 
> converter for them to BASIC+2 style.

There is a converter to do that for RSTS, I believe it was included as a 
standard tool.  Can't remember the name.  The line ending conventions can be 
done by running it through TECO (read with /B+ and save with /B2).  But other 
details, like the use of colon rather than backslash as statement separator 
you'll have to do by hand.

BASIC-PLUS and BASIC-PLUS-2 are different languages.  It's not hard to write a 
program acceptable to both, but source text that predates the release of 
BASIC-PLUS-2 are likely to need work.  And sufficiently old ones (like ones 
written for RSTS V4A) definitely will, because in those version, BASIC-PLUS did 
not yet support the -2 compatible syntax.

paul


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, I already have a tool to convert old "noextend" basic+ to the newer
"extend" format.

It is 'b1filter.cc' in the src directory of

git clone http://github.com/khandy21yo/btran.git

it handles the end-of-line stuff as well as the '&' for print.  There are
some things it doesn't handle, like missing semi-colons in PRINT statements.

There are some of the '101 basic ganmes' in the 'examples' directory, as
well as a 'unbac' which might be useful for some.


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:58 PM, khandy21yo  wrote:

> Rsts basic+ has two modes. Extend and noextend,
>
> Noextend is the original mode, where 'line continues with a linseed and
> ends with a return. The & character works as a shortcut for print.
> Statements were separated with a colon :
>
> Extend mode was changed things around. It was a later addition. 'line
> continues used the &, statement separator was the /, and shortcuts were
> gone.
>
> Put a line at the front of the code like '1 noextend and they may work
> fine as is.
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
>
>  Original message 
> From: Clem Cole 
> Date: 1/25/18 6:15 PM (GMT-07:00)
> To: Johnny Billquist 
> Cc: Simh 
> Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for
> public access)
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>  I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment.
>
>
> I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at
> one point was in MRO (Marlboro).Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was
> 36-bit land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're
> right there had been many 8s in the Education stream.
>
> That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father
> who was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time
> period) were most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up
> lines - with GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own
> entry in the computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).
> DEC's customers that were trying to get into that business were mostly
> supported by PDP-10s, not small systems.
>
> RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came
> from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also
> remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
>
> I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10
> documentation I have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone
> book.'  I do have later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be
> after the book described was published.
>
> Clem
>
>
> ᐧ
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[khandy21yo]

Rsts basic+ has two modes. Extend and noextend,
Noextend is the original mode, where 'line continues with a linseed and ends 
with a return. The & character works as a shortcut for print. Statements were 
separated with a colon :
Extend mode was changed things around. It was a later addition. 'line continues 
used the &, statement separator was the /, and shortcuts were gone.
Put a line at the front of the code like '1 noextend and they may work fine as 
is.



Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
 Original message From: Clem Cole  Date: 1/25/18 
 6:15 PM  (GMT-07:00) To: Johnny Billquist  Cc: Simh 
 Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was 
Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access) 


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
 I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment. 
I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at one 
point was in MRO (Marlboro).    Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was 36-bit 
land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're right there 
had been many 8s in the Education stream.
That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father who 
was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time period) were 
most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up lines - with 
GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own entry in the 
computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).   DEC's customers 
that were trying to get into that business were mostly supported by PDP-10s, 
not small systems.
RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came from 
the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also remember the 
PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10 documentation I 
have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone book.'  I do have 
later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be after the book 
described was published.
Clem

ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>  I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment.


I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at one
point was in MRO (Marlboro).Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was
36-bit land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're
right there had been many 8s in the Education stream.

That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father
who was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time
period) were most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up
lines - with GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own
entry in the computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).
DEC's customers that were trying to get into that business were mostly
supported by PDP-10s, not small systems.

RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came
from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also
remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).

I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10
documentation I have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone
book.'  I do have later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be
after the book described was published.

Clem


ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

Yeah, as far as I can recall he was at EduSystems. Didn't really reflect that 
they might have had their own dialect. But that would make sense.

  Johnny 


Al Kossow  skrev: (26 januari 2018 01:59:57 CET)
>
>
>On 1/25/18 4:52 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>> Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's
>under OS/8 without changes as well.
>
>Edusystem BASIC?
>
>Didn't he come out of that world?
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Al Kossow]

On 1/25/18 4:52 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's under 
> OS/8 without changes as well.

Edusystem BASIC?

Didn't he come out of that world?


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 01:34, Warren Young wrote:
On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:44 PM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:



I wonder if...this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC
had at some point.

I believe we're using these BASIC programs as-is in our OS/8 
distribution . 1975 is late in the 
PDP-8's lifetime, but also right at its peak of use, especially in 
education, since the microcomputer revolution had just barely gotten 
rolling by that point.


Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's 
under OS/8 without changes as well.
I also checked another file, and found a comment that they should all 
work on RSTS/E and RSTS-11, except for SPACWR and another one, and of 
course I did most of my examination on SPACWR.
So that explains it. That specific file have more issues. Maybe the 
others will work fine in BASIC+ then.


  Johnny

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 01:03, Tony Nicholson wrote:
Definitely BASIC-Plus on RSTS!  You may need to replace the “&” with 
“PRINT” in some of the files.


Which should tell you that it's not for BASIC+ on RSTS/E. :-)
Also, : for separating statements is, as far as I remember, also not in 
BASIC+, which instead uses \, just like BASIC+2.


Clem's suggestions of something for Tops-10 could possibly be right, but 
I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment. I was thinking 
that maybe BASIC-11 might match, but I've never used that implementation.


  Johnny



Tony

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 11:00, Clem Cole > wrote:


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:

  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at
some point.


​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
ᐧ

--
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

Definitely BASIC-Plus on RSTS!  You may need to replace the “&” with
“PRINT” in some of the files.

Tony

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 11:00, Clem Cole  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some
>> point.
>>
>
> ​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
> ᐧ
>
-- 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some point.
>

​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

Cool. Thanks. Downloaded and unpacket.
Anyone interested and on HECnet can now find them on MIM::DU:[101GAMES]

Looked a little at one or two files. BASIC+2 do not like them. The code 
uses special shorts, functions and specifics that don't match.
I wonder if BASIC+ accepts them either, or if this might be from some 
other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some point.


If I have plenty of time at some point, I might sit down and write a 
converter for them to BASIC+2 style.


  Johnny

On 2018-01-25 20:39, Tony Nicholson wrote:
On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:18 AM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:


Since the disk pack contains basic sorces, this could also probably
be used on rsx systems, but then we need a different file system.
Care to create a disk in rt11 format, since that is pretty much the
common file system that all oses have tools to read/write?


An RT-11 format RL01 with the 56 files from the DECtape is in a zip file at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hXBmOUL_dNQaYP6qH9vQ8VVe0KrLoNut/view?usp=sharing

When trying it on other systems be aware that in some of the BASIC-Plus 
source files there are continuation lines prefixed by  line 
endings (normal lines have ).


Also (in case you're wondering) there are only 56 files - since this was 
the maximum number of files that would fit on a DOS-11 format DECtape.


Was there a second DECtape with the remaining games from the book?  If 
not, one of these days when i get a round tuit - I should type them in!


Have fun!

Tony


Johnny


Tony Nicholson > skrev: (24 januari 2018
21:23:21 CET)

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Bryan.e.davies
> wrote:

Ok thanks for the verification. I'll download and unzip again.

Attached pic is the PDP emulator on the VT100 at CCH.


Sorry about the mix-up with RSTS disk formats.  I knew it was
different for older versions.

I've just made a RSTS level 0.0 format RL01 disk image so you
can use this on older versions of RSTS/E (verified and written
using RSTS/E V7.0-07). You can get a zip file containing this at


https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iRczp1kYITHuH6zYNImtZgtguw_g66V/view?usp=sharing



and I also added it (rl01-games-rsts0-0.dsk) to the original zip
file that I shared.

If anyone needs this on an RK05 image to run under older
versions of RSTS/E (like V4B or V06C) - e-mail me privately (or
use the DECtape image which I know also works)!

And to Mark Abene - yes I think the book from bitsavers was an
early version of the book by Dave Ahl - before he left DEC to
start Creative Computing magazine.

Tony


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--
Tony Nicholson >



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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:18 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> Since the disk pack contains basic sorces, this could also probably be
> used on rsx systems, but then we need a different file system. Care to
> create a disk in rt11 format, since that is pretty much the common file
> system that all oses have tools to read/write?
>

An RT-11 format RL01 with the 56 files from the DECtape is in a zip file at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hXBmOUL_dNQaYP6qH9vQ8VVe0KrLoNut/view?usp=sharing

When trying it on other systems be aware that in some of the BASIC-Plus
source files there are continuation lines prefixed by  line endings
(normal lines have ).

Also (in case you're wondering) there are only 56 files - since this was
the maximum number of files that would fit on a DOS-11 format DECtape.

Was there a second DECtape with the remaining games from the book?  If not,
one of these days when i get a round tuit - I should type them in!

Have fun!

Tony


>
>
>
Johnny
>
>
> Tony Nicholson  skrev: (24 januari 2018
> 21:23:21 CET)
>
>> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Bryan.e.davies > > wrote:
>>
>>> Ok thanks for the verification. I'll download and unzip again.
>>>
>>> Attached pic is the PDP emulator on the VT100 at CCH.
>>>
>>
>> Sorry about the mix-up with RSTS disk formats.  I knew it was different
>> for older versions.
>>
>> I've just made a RSTS level 0.0 format RL01 disk image so you can use
>> this on older versions of RSTS/E (verified and written using RSTS/E
>> V7.0-07).  You can get a zip file containing this at
>>
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iRczp1kYITHuH6zYNImtZgtguw_
>> g66V/view?usp=sharing
>>
>> and I also added it (rl01-games-rsts0-0.dsk) to the original zip file
>> that I shared.
>>
>> If anyone needs this on an RK05 image to run under older versions of
>> RSTS/E (like V4B or V06C) - e-mail me privately (or use the DECtape image
>> which I know also works)!
>>
>> And to Mark Abene - yes I think the book from bitsavers was an early
>> version of the book by Dave Ahl - before he left DEC to start Creative
>> Computing magazine.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
> --
> Skickat från min Android-enhet med K-9 Mail. Ursäkta min fåordighet.
>



-- 
Tony Nicholson 
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Bryan.e.davies 
wrote:

> Ok thanks for the verification. I'll download and unzip again.
>
> Attached pic is the PDP emulator on the VT100 at CCH.
>

Sorry about the mix-up with RSTS disk formats.  I knew it was different for
older versions.

I've just made a RSTS level 0.0 format RL01 disk image so you can use this
on older versions of RSTS/E (verified and written using RSTS/E V7.0-07).
You can get a zip file containing this at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iRczp1kYITHuH6zYNImtZgtguw_g66V/view?usp=sharing

and I also added it (rl01-games-rsts0-0.dsk) to the original zip file that
I shared.

If anyone needs this on an RK05 image to run under older versions of RSTS/E
(like V4B or V06C) - e-mail me privately (or use the DECtape image which I
know also works)!

And to Mark Abene - yes I think the book from bitsavers was an early
version of the book by Dave Ahl - before he left DEC to start Creative
Computing magazine.

Tony
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Bryan Davies]

Very many thanks for this Tony.   It should be exactly what I need.

Unfortunately I've downloaded the RL zip and attached it in Simh but RSTS
won't mount it.It gives an 'Offline or Write Locked? error.   I've also
tried the Writeenable switch but without success.   I'll continue to
investigate but I'm posting here in case anyone else has any suggestions.



On 24 January 2018 at 00:00, Tony Nicholson 
wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies 
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and
>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>>
>>
> Bryan (and all).
>
> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student
> when I discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying
> DECtape.
>
> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of
> the DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
>
> The book is at -
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
>
> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH -
> after some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax
> (spaces between keywords etc).
>
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either
> and run them!
>
> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some
> fiddling and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
>
> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks)
> you can -
>set rl enable
>set rl0 rl01
>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
>
> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and
> look in DL0:[100,100]
>
> The zip file is https://drive.google.com/file/d/
> 1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 7:00 PM, Tony Nicholson  
> wrote:
> 
> ...
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level 
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either 
> and run them!

Note that a 1.2 format disk requires a sufficiently recent RSTS to use it.  
"flx" will produce disks in any of the three formats, though.  For example, you 
need level 0 if you want RSTS 7 or older to make sense of the bits.

paul

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Mark Abene]

That's great! Was this the same book by David Ahl?


On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 4:00 PM, Tony Nicholson  wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 11:37 PM, Bryan Davies 
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I just need to get it all in a nice neat box, connect up he VT100, and
>> download some games and things for the guests to use.
>>
>>
> Bryan (and all).
>
> I first encountered RSTS/E in 1975 on a PDP-11/45 when I was a student
> when I discovered a book "101 Basic Computer Games" with an accompanying
> DECtape.
>
> Recently I tracked down a copy of the book in PDF format and an image of
> the DECtape (that had to be fixed-up so that it was readable) on bitsavers .
>
> The book is at -
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf
>
> I now have this running on RSTS/E V10.1 and RSTS V06C-03 under SIMH -
> after some minor edits to fix changes to the Basic-Plus source file syntax
> (spaces between keywords etc).
>
> I've zipped-up the fixed DECtape image (DOS format) and an RL01 RSTS level
> 1.2 format disk image (label=GAMES) that you can copy the games from either
> and run them!
>
> The RL01 disk image is easiest (since DECtape support requires some
> fiddling and correct pdp11 unibus 18-bit model selection).
>
> In your SIMH .ini file (assuming you have sysgen'ed some RL type disks)
> you can -
>set rl enable
>set rl0 rl01
>att rl0 rl01-games.dsk
>
> Then once RSTS/E is up as a privileged user just "MOUNT DL0: GAMES" and
> look in DL0:[100,100]
>
> The zip file is https://drive.google.com/file/d/
> 1IgZkafQABxWUXeuEkeq1GjkBe3sF2Zgx/view?usp=sharing
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
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>
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