I hate the new mail system

OK, it's official. I rarely criticize mail interfaces, because they're usually mostly innocuous. However, today's change makes life a lot more difficult. In the past, it was simple to direct a reply to an individual instead of to the list because the originator's address was right there in the

RE: I hate the new mail system

From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 1:52 PM > "reply all" seems to put the original sender and the list in the "to:" > field.. Thanks, Dave, Dennis, and js. I had no reason to reply (all) to any of these

RE: Re: Architectural diversity - was Re: Pair of Twiggys

From: ben Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 6:28 PM > On 3/16/2017 5:16 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: >> From: Chuck Guzis >> Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 6:08 PM >>> And people who weren't there can't understand why FORTRAN was the closest >>> thing to a "portable" language... >> Not

RE: I hate the new mail system

From: Jay West Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 1:31 PM > We've been in the process of moving our datacenter. As a result, changing > headers on this list has been the last thing on my mind priority-wise. > Add to that, we still have a few machines to move that will require >

RE: Fwd: Re: Architectural diversity - was Re: Pair of Twiggys

From: Chuck Guzis Sent: Friday, March 17, 2017 11:27 AM > On 03/17/2017 11:09 AM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> and, although we don't know when YOU were playing it, the march had >> been around half a century, so was probably playing on the radio to >> inspire Backus. Does that mean that

RE: Trip to CHM - Hotel/Restaurant Advice

From: Rick Bensene Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2017 2:18 PM > What I'm asking for is help/recommendations in terms of a good hotel to > stay at that is relatively close to the museum. I don't want to be in a > luxury hotel, nor do I want to be in a dive. I'd also like to be in a > place that has

RE: Bitsavers size

From: Shoppa, Tim Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:49 AM > Ben asks: >> Just how big is the server? >> As a wish list, I've always wanted that as a offline set of DVD's for the >> common stuff. > The bitsavers archive is 267 Gbytes. > So at 4.7G per DVD, it comes out to almost 60 DVD's. > I

RE: If C is so evil why is it so successful?

From: allison Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2017 3:18 PM > BASIC, why is that the most universal language implemented on nearly every > micro and many other systems. Because it was the language offered on the GEIS timesharing system when a private boys' school in Seattle decided to teach

RE: tape baking (Rob Jarratt)

From: Michael Thompson Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2017 7:41 AM > A while ago the Living Computers: Museum + Labs borrowed my LP20 controller > so they could clone the boards for one of their PDP-10s. Since they went > through that effort they must have a big line printer. LP27, specifically. An

RE: Extracting files off “unknown” 8 inch disks. Any thoughts…

From: Eric Smith Sent: Friday, May 05, 2017 3:27 PM > On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 3:02 PM, allison via cctech > wrote: >> In the PDP-10 realm not less than a handful Tops10. ITC, more. > TOPS-10 doesn't have any filesystems for floppy disks, though the KL10 > front-end

RE: DEC archives

From: Rod Smallwood Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 8:39 AM > Stop this Policy and Budget nonsense and accept gracefully the help you > have been offered. You speak as if this were Al's personal decision and policy. It is not. Museums are expected to adhere to a set of standards of care for

RE: Extracting files off “unknown” 8 inch disks. Any thoughts…

From: Terry Stewart Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 2:41 PM > Just tying up some unfinished business. Right at the beginning of this > thread I said... >> Guys in the building next door to me (a Science lab) have found some 8 inch >> floppy disks. They want to see what’s on them, or at least to

markup vs. word processing [ was RE: RIP Jerry Pournelle, the first author to write a novel on a computer Earl...]

I met Jerry once, at a BYTE-sponsored conference held at McCormick Place in Chicago. Colorful. I already knew his writing, of course. He will be missed. Now: From: Guy Sotomayor Jr Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2017 4:59 PM > I think it all depends upon how you define “word processing”. For

RE: The origin of the phrases ATA and IDE [WAS:RE: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC]

From: Chuck Guzis Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2017 1:46 PM > As an aside, I picked up a 1986 Wren II full-height manual that discussed the > drive and its various interfaces. Sadly, IDE isn't one, but SCSI is referred > to as "SASI Subset"; i.e. "SCSI (SASI subset)" I believe that you're

RE: Details about IBM's early 'scientific' computers

From: Rick Bensene Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 11:59 AM Grumpy Ol' Fred wrote: >> Yes, 1968-1973 had time-sharing for personal computing, but not "personal >> computers" > While the definition of the term "personal computer" varies depending on who > is using the term, these machines,

Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

Happy DEC-10 Day! It is my honor to announce that we at Living Computers: Museum + Labs are releasing to the computing community our Massbus Disk Emulator and all the associated software. This device connects via Massbus cables to the RH10 and RH20 interfaces on KI-10 and KL-10 systems, to the

RE: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

From: Noel Chiappa Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 11:12 AM >> From: Kip Koon >> Back in the day when Bill Gates and company 1st started out ... a B/W photo >> of a young Bill Gates bending over the operator at what looked like a very >> small computer. Maybe it was just a terminal. I don't

CDC 6000 series transistors [was RE: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?]

From: Paul Koning Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 12:07 PM > True if you have a TTL machine. 6600 is discrete transistor, and the actual > transistor specs are nowhere to be found as far as I have been able to tell. > But that doesn't directly relate to gate level emulation. If you have gate >

RE: Old newsreader source code

From: Seth Morabito Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2018 9:23 AM > As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in 1989, what software were you > using? 1988-89 is about when I started reading Usenet newsgroups. At first, I used rn under Ultrix (on a VAX 3600, the staff Ultrix system at LOTS), but soon

RE: DEC RSX-11D and its COBOL compiler?

From: Paul Koning Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 6:47 AM > I once saw an RSX-15 kernel listing, which had a lot of very familiar > looking data structures -- it implied that RSX-11/D had its origins, > at least as far as overall design is concerned, in RSX-15. RSX-15 was the predecessor of

RE: Whence 556?

From: Shoppa, Tim Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2018 10:35 AM > The 729 CE manual quotes 555 BPI. I’m not sure when it became 556. > http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/magtape/729/223-6845_729_CEman_1959.pdf > The IBM 728 was 248 BPI. Before that it was the nice round number 200 BPI. > I

RE: Thicknet/10base5 Test Segment: The Cable is In!

From: Chuck Guzis Sent: Friday, June 29, 2018 3:43 PM > On 06/29/2018 02:30 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote: >> When we wired up two different locations for terminals at Software >> Results Corp in the 80s, the furthest runs were 250' or so. 9600 >> baud, from VT100s back to Emulex and DEC

RE: SDS 940 BASIC (was Re: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?)

From: Al Kossow Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2017 9:04 AM > On 10/25/17 11:55 AM, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote: >> Noel, do have a reference for "some commercial time-sharing system in the >> Boston area"? From Paul Allen's autobiography, the Harvard system wa

RE: DL10 documentation

From: Noel Chiappa Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 5:07 AM > From: Phil Budne >> I remember finding documentation on MC for "KLDCP" the original DEC >> front-end software (suitably defaced) which DEC later replaced with a >> modified version of RSX-11 > MC, on the other hand, ran KLDCP ('KL

RE: 3420 tape drive

From: Pmungai Njau via cctalk Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 6:06 AM > Am looking for the above tape to read and covert some old tapes from > ebcidic to ASCII format. How can I get the tapes in Kenya. Hi, Paul, You do not need an IBM tape drive to convert from EBCDIC to ASCII; all tape drives

RE: Foonlies

From: Lars Brinkhoff Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 11:28 AM > Al Kossow wrote: >>> SUPERFOONLY DESIGNED 1968-71 >>> 10,000 TTL IC'S >>> 3 MIPS >> Was this ever built? 10K ICs would have been bigger than the Livermore S-1. > This says the Superfoonly was designed. Doesn't say it was

RE: Writing emulators (was Re: VCF PNW 2018: Pictures!)

From: Guy Sotomayor Jr Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 11:24 AM >> On Feb 21, 2018, at 10:59 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk >> wrote: >> Typically you'd emulate the I/O device functionality, regardless of whether >> that is implemented in gates or in co-processor firmware.

SimH DECtape vs. Tops-10 [was RE: Writing emulators [Was: Re: VCF PNW 2018: Pictures!]]

From: Paul Koning Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 6:41 AM > And while there is roughly-accurate simulation of DECtape in SIMH (presumably > for TOPS-10 overlapped seek to work?) It's not for Tops-10. SimH only provides the KS-10 processor[1], so DECtape is not a possible peripheral.

RE: Australian Computer Museum in trouble.

From: Toby Thain Sent: Friday, July 27, 2018 11:31 AM > Or I may be confusing with other Australian evictions: > https://www.theage.com.au/technology/chips-are-down-for-computer-museum-20030520-gdgsdr.html > The Villawood location seems to be distinct from the warehouses that the > ACMS

RE: Bug-for-bug compatibility [was RE: SimH DECtape vs. Tops-10 [was RE: Writing emulators [Was: Re: VCF PNW 2018: Pictures!]]]

From: Doug Ingraham Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 9:53 AM > This is a great story! And it probably indicates that when developing the > Toad-1 this particular diagnostic was never run from an original DEC generated > tape or the Toad-1 would have failed the diagnostic. Alternatively

Bug-for-bug compatibility [was RE: SimH DECtape vs. Tops-10 [was RE: Writing emulators [Was: Re: VCF PNW 2018: Pictures!]]]

From: Paul Koning Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 12:19 PM >> On Feb 26, 2018, at 12:06 PM, Doug Ingraham via cctalk >> > wrote: >> The purpose of an emulator is to accurately pretend to be the original >> hardware. It doesn't matter that the original OS runs on a

RE: Old Classiccmp archive

From: Dennis Boone via cctalk Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2018 2:50 PM >> Does anyone have an archive of classiccmp that goes back to the 90's? >> If so, could I ask you to "hunt down" an old message of mine? I once >> wrote a "reminiscence" of connecting to the ARPANET when I was a kid >> that I

RE: Ethernet names...

From: Noel Chiappa Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2018 5:49 AM >> From: Eric Smith >> 3 Mbps was sometimes referred to as experimental Ethernet, but AFAIK >> the only official name was "Ethernet". >> The best way to refer to it is probably "3 Mbps Ethernet". That's what almost we call it here at

RE: Which DEC machine made use of th pre Flip-Chip board?

From: Noel Chiappa Sent: Friday, December 21, 2018 5:19 AM >> From: Mattis Lind >> I cannot figure out which early machine it comes from. > They're called 'System Modules': > http://gunkies.org/wiki/System_Module > and they were used from the PDP-1 through (I think) the PDP-7; at least,

RE: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR

From: Fred Cisin Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2019 6:57 AM On Sat, 29 Jun 2019, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: >> US currency is very confusing to me. All the notes seem to be the same size >> and colour, so you can't readily sort them. I mean, I know America doesn't >> believe in helping people when

mid-range IBM systems [was RE: IBM Series/1]

From: Jay West Sent: Monday, August 05, 2019 10:38 AM > I used to run a system at Anheuser-Busch in the late 80's, ISTR it was a > 4331, 4341, or 4381. The 4331, 4361 and 4341 are slightly more than waist high. The 4381 is a high-boy cabinet.

RE: getting your data from yahoo

OK, Yahoo took more than 24 hours, but finally handed me a link to download my e-mail. It's a 462MB .archive file. zcat tells me that it's multipart, and only unloads the first part (which contains about 10 messages as .eml files). What tool do I use to look at the contents of this

RE: getting your data from yahoo

From: Richard Schauer Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2019 7:08 AM On Sat, 2 Nov 2019, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote: >> What tool do I use to look at the contents of this verschlagener file? > I also asked for and got one of these files. Mine took something like 30 > hours, and g

IBM 1500 [was RE: Vintage Computer Warehouse Liquidation]

From: William Donzelli Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2019 6:45 PM > PICTURES! PICTURES! PICTURES! >> I have been unable to find anything about the 4505 display station. Does >> anyone know any details about this item? It resembles an IBM 2260, but the >> keyboard is not built-in, as in the 2260.

RE: 50 yrs. ago today

From: Liam Proven Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:01 AM > On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 at 17:32, Chuck Guzis via cctalk > wrote: >> 50 years ago, inter-computer communication was common enough that it was >> a standard option in most vendors' catalogs. >> Maybe you've got a digit wrong? > Tim

RE: DEC RP04 service manual available

> From: Noel Chiappa > Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2019 10:10 AM >> From: Evan Koblentz >> I know of two RP04 drives in the wild. One belongs to a private > > collector. VCF has the other. > Right, but does VCF need it scanned? > Oh, one other place that might have one: the MIT MC KL10 had a

RE: LISP implementations on small machines

From: Mark Kahrs Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2019 7:24 PM > The first implementation was done for the 7090 by McCarthy (hence CAR and > CDR --- Contents of Address Register and Contents of Decrement Register). In the 70x series of IBM scientific systems (704, 709, 7040, 7090, 7044, 7094), the

RE: Make behavior on TOPS20 Panda distribution

From: David Griffith Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 2:41 AM > I've successfully managed to get a simulated TOPS20 environment going with > networking. Now there's a new strange hitch: the behavior of make. Would > someone please look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong? > For a simple

RE: Computing Folklore [Was: Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available]

From: Classic CMP Sent: Friday, April 17, 2020 9:21 AM > I suspect that most of you will have spent at least a little time on Andy > Herzfeld’s Folklore - https://folklore.org > Like or loathe Apple (and Mr Jobs in particular) it’s an interesting read, > and the way the

Living Computers: Museum + Labs

Hello, everyone, As I'm sure all of you are aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a crisis with devastating effects on many cultural organizations, and more especially on those which rely on public gatherings and special events to achieve their mission. Since before we opened to the public

RE: Living Computer Museum

Just to make sure everyone knows that we haven't lost our minds: Nothing is going in the skip/dumpster/e-waste recycling bin. It's a long pause, that's all. Rich Alderson ex-Sr. Systems Engineer/Curator emeritus Living Computers: Museum + Labs 2245 1st Ave S Seattle, WA 98134 Cell: (206)

RE: On: raising the semantic level of a program

From: Chuck Guzis Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 4:51 PM > It's noteworthy that on the Univac 1100 series, a "byte" could be 6, 9 > or 12 bits, but not 8. (36 bit words). The PDP-10 had similar issues, > such as the "packed" string format of 5 7-bit characters per word, with > one bit unused. Of

Re: Adventures online

Well, they started with the PDP-10 ZORK, and used PDP-10 (architecture) systems to develop many of the others... Rich Alderson ex-Living Computers: Museum + Labs http://www.panix.com/~alderson/ Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 23, 2020, at 10:26, Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk > wrote: > > Chuck

Re: Adventures online

> On Jul 23, 2020, at 10:47, Chuck Guzis via cctalk > wrote: > > On 7/23/20 10:25 AM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: >> Chuck Guzis wrote: >>> Well, if one wanted to stay historically accurate, one would use a >>> PDP-10. >> >> It's not Crowther's Adventure, but the Infocom games. > > Infocom's

Re: Early Programming Books

> Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2021 22:19:02 -0600 > From: ben via cctalk > LISP still can't be compiled. May I respectfully suggest that you don't know WTF you're talking about? LISP compilers have existed for decades. One of the *early* MIT AI Lab papers by Guy Steele is a comparison of the compiler

Re: IBM 1620; was: Early Programming Books

> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2021 16:02:20 -0400 > From: Paul Koning via cctalk >> On Jun 21, 2021, at 3:52 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> On 6/21/21 11:53 AM, Paul Koning wrote: >>> Perhaps you were thinking about the CDC 6500 at the late lamented LCM? >>> That got some replacement stacks, which was an

Re: Massbus - was: Re: VAX 11/750

> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:37:25 -0800 > From: Josh Dersch via cctalk > On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 12:27 PM Al Kossow via cctalk > wrote: >> On 2/25/21 10:43 AM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: >>> Oh this is fun stuff. Is there a specification write-up anywhere on the >>> MASSBUS overall? >>

Re: Toad1 XKL version of TOPS20 v7

> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:26:43 -0400 > From: Bob Smith via cctalk > I have noted that the Computer History Museum has a number of donations from > XKL re Toad1. Look again. That system, the documentation, and the backup tapes, were donated by HEWLETT-PACKARD CORPORATION, not by XKL. Tim

Happy DEC-20 Day!

...and a joyful Winter Solstice Festivalof your choosing to you all! Rich

3phase power for VAXen [was Re: VAX 780 on eBay]

> Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2022 13:19:51 -0800 > From: Guy Sotomayor via cctalk > On 1/1/22 10:40 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>> On Jan 1, 2022, at 1:12 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk >>> wrote: >>> This: >>> https://www.ebay.com/itm/275084268137 >>> The starting price is expensive, but

Re: 3phase power for VAXen [was Re: VAX 780 on eBay]

> Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2022 14:44:00 -0800 > From: Van Snyder via cctalk > On Tue, 2022-01-04 at 17:17 -0500, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote: >> Paul Allen wanted me to acquire a VAX-11/780 for his >> collection > John Zabolitzky has an operating VAX -- I don't know

[cctalk] Re: datapoint 2200 programming

> Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 23:08:23 -0500 > From: Steve Lewis via cctalk > I recall the story by Paul Allen - they had developed a BASIC, but didn't > have a boot loader to load it, and Paul wrote one while on the airplane to > MOS. MITS, not MOS. Messrs. Allen, Gates, and Davidoff wrote their

[cctalk] Re: Minicomputer front panel.

> Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2022 18:09:47 +0100 > From: Joshua Rice via cctalk > The Cray was often coupled witha DG nova for bootstrapping, which very much > did have a front panel on it. Indeed, many models of PDP-10 were bootstrapped > by PDP-11's with front panels, even if the PDP-10 lacked one. The

[cctalk] Re: Bendix G-15 Restoration

> Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 19:25:38 + > From: Mike Begley via cctalk > The folks at the Living Computer Museum + Labs in Seattle were working on a > restoration of one of these, or another, similar Bendix machine. They remain > closed (who knows if they will ever reopen), but there might be a

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

> Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2022 14:57:07 -0700 > From: Ali via cctalk > I agree that is exactly the behavior I want. However, none of the devices > that have been suggested seem to do that i.e. connecting a Lantronix UDS1100 > to the dumb terminal does not provide a usable telnet CLIENT interface. The

[cctalk] Re: AI applied to vintage interests

> Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2023 11:46:33 -0800 > From: Jay Logue via cctalk > //On 1/16/2023 6:05 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote: >> They write songs, create works of art. They can do a lot of stuff. The >> question in my mind is can these AI appliances make guesses and are they any >> good at it. >>

[cctalk] Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)

First, let me thank Sellam and Tom for inviting me to comment on this topic. LCM+L closed its doors to the public in March 2020, at the height of the initial pandemic (in the sense that it had become clear that the Covid-19 virus was not a passing thing), because our entire mission was to make

[cctalk] Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)

> Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2022 21:50:42 -0700 > From: Sellam Abraham via cctalk > I'm hoping Rich Alderson will pipe in and give us the actual story as to > what's going on with the LCM and its collection, but there's a possibility > that he may be legally constricted from giving comment at this time.

[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini

Jumping in late because the list blew up so badly on this topic. Yes, others have already commented on these things, but I'll add my US$0.02 worth anyway. > Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2023 16:00:05 -0600 > From: Steve Lewis via cctalk > Actually, to answer my own question: if "main frame" refers to the

[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini

Still catching up. > Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2023 06:39:16 + > From: Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk > I believe the term minicomputer was first applied to the PDP-8. It was kind > of retroactively applied going back to the PDP-1. Whether the PDP-10 is a > mini is sometimes hotly debated. IBM people

[cctalk] HAPPY DEC-20 DAY!

Happy DEC-20 Day! My late friend Mark always noted that TOPS-20 (and the DECSYSTEM-20 on which it runs) was a great improvement on its successors. I wish you all a joyous Winter Solstice Festival, however you may choose to celebrate it.

[cctalk] The Atomic Energy Commission [was Re: Re: Odd IBM mass storage systems]

> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 15:28:34 -0300 > From: Paul Berger via cctalk > The 1360 was apparently developed at the request to Atomic Energy Commission > (AEC), I  would guess a forerunner of the DOE.   There where apparently only > 5 built 3 for the AEC and 2 for the NSA. The United States