Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Chuck Guzis via cctech]

On 8/5/21 8:23 AM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:
>
> Also, before starting (after baking and cool-down) I unspool maybe 25
> feet of tape onto a clean surface to make sure it isn't sticking.  If it
> does, I let it sit for a few hours, and then bake it again.  Have not
> had to bake for additional time very often, and in those cases, it ended
> up not helping as much as one might like.

...and think twice before you attempt recovering data from 80's Wabash
tape (or floppies).  Pure agony.

--Chuck

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Paul Koning via cctech]

Perhaps the work could be split up: reading the track waveforms is the one step 
that requires special hardware (and the skill to handle the tape with minimal 
damage).  Given a collection of recovered waveforms, the data recovery can then 
be done by anyone.

paul

> On Aug 5, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Jay Jaeger via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> I know Paul well (we were contemporaries at U. WI).  He does not do that very 
> often.  He did not indicate any issue with a fire at the building that 
> contains his collection when I last spoke with him.
> 
> He does not actually read "blocks".  He reads the tape in an *analog* 
> fashion, and then processes the results with software.  That is how he 
> recovered the IBM 1410 system tapes and diagnostics, for example.
> 
> To be honest, I doubt that this content would be such that he would be likely 
> to volunteer.
> 
> JRJ
> 
> On 8/4/2021 3:11 PM, Van Snyder wrote:
>> Paul Pierce mailto:p...@teleport.com>> read some 7-track 
>> and 9-track tapes for me about twenty years ago. He was in Portland, OR at 
>> the time. His "lab" was on the east side of the Willamette river, so maybe 
>> it didn't get burned down.
>> I don't know whether he still has a setup to read tapes. His software would 
>> read blocks forward and backward, including the parity frames, and make 
>> corrections.
>> Van Snyder
>> On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 09:25 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:
>>> James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9
>>> Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a
>>> couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era
>>> before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to
>>> read them.
>>> 
>>> Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape
>>> images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into
>>> ASCII if that is desirable).
>>> 
>>> I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such
>>> that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be
>>> before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake"
>>> it first before trying to read it.
>>> 
>>> Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on
>>> a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).
>>> 
>>> So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to
>>> contact me.
>>> 
>>> JRJ
>>> 
>>> On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:
 Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
 one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
 around 1978 at SLAC.
 
 For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
 at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
 insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
 level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
 code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
 its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.
 
 In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM
 S/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I
 gathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an
 intermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the IBM
 PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I
 like language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never fully
 completed for reasons unknown to me.
 
 Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where
 I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated.  But
 the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k
 assembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have
 been the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he insisted on
 developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc).  This was
 before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to
 just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac,
 NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We have a pretty good
 collection of m68k code
 (
 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html
 
 ), but nothing
 earlier.
 
 Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
 code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
 source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
 CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
 exists on the tape.
 
 - jim
 

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jay Jaeger via cctech]

On 8/5/2021 9:28 AM, James Liu wrote:

On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 10:25 AM Jay Jaeger  wrote:




Thanks, Jay (and others) for offering your assistance.  I've asked
Chuck to have a look at the tape, and we'll see how it goes.



Great!


Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on
a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).


I can't say I know much about IBM systems, but apparently Strubbe, who
was doing the port and who I got the tape from, was no fan of
IEBUPDTE.  I wonder if IEBUPDTX was his attempt at an improvement.



Sounds likely.



- jim



JRJ

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jay Jaeger via cctech]

Yeah, well, the first part is the hard part - setting it all up and 
making recording.  The second part is more or less trivial, once the 
software was done.


One of the 1410 tapes had a persistent parity error - that one I was 
able to figure out from knowledge of the machine, instruction set, etc.


JRJ

On 8/5/2021 8:14 AM, Paul Koning wrote:

Perhaps the work could be split up: reading the track waveforms is the one step 
that requires special hardware (and the skill to handle the tape with minimal 
damage).  Given a collection of recovered waveforms, the data recovery can then 
be done by anyone.

paul


On Aug 5, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Jay Jaeger via cctech  wrote:

I know Paul well (we were contemporaries at U. WI).  He does not do that very 
often.  He did not indicate any issue with a fire at the building that contains 
his collection when I last spoke with him.

He does not actually read "blocks".  He reads the tape in an *analog* fashion, 
and then processes the results with software.  That is how he recovered the IBM 1410 
system tapes and diagnostics, for example.

To be honest, I doubt that this content would be such that he would be likely 
to volunteer.

JRJ

On 8/4/2021 3:11 PM, Van Snyder wrote:

Paul Pierce mailto:p...@teleport.com>> read some 7-track and 9-track 
tapes for me about twenty years ago. He was in Portland, OR at the time. His "lab" was on 
the east side of the Willamette river, so maybe it didn't get burned down.
I don't know whether he still has a setup to read tapes. His software would 
read blocks forward and backward, including the parity frames, and make 
corrections.
Van Snyder
On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 09:25 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:

James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9
Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a
couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era
before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to
read them.

Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape
images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into
ASCII if that is desirable).

I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such
that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be
before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake"
it first before trying to read it.

Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on
a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).

So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to
contact me.

JRJ

On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:

Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
around 1978 at SLAC.

For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.

In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM
S/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I
gathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an
intermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the IBM
PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I
like language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never fully
completed for reasons unknown to me.

Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where
I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated.  But
the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k
assembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have
been the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he insisted on
developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc).  This was
before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to
just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac,
NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We have a pretty good
collection of m68k code
(
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html

), but nothing
earlier.

Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
exists on the tape.

- jim

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jay Jaeger via cctech]

Some thoughts

On 8/4/2021 4:14 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote:

Whoever does it, I have a few suggestions when it comes to 40+ year old
tapes.

1) Bake the thing at 58C for a day or two.  It might just prevent you
from staring at a tape stuck to the head and a pile of brown dust at the
bottom of the drive.  (Before you start, make note of the brand and type
of tape; some are much worse than others).  If you're uncertain, check
back here and I'll tell you what I know.



I have found that generally baking more than 12 hours has not made much 
 additional difference.  I have been baking mine at 120F/50C.



2) If you're determined to use a SCSI drive, initially turn off
automatic retries (shoe-shining).   With sticky tape, you can do a lot
of damage to the tape.  Retries can come later when you're confident
about the condition of the tape.



Good idea.  Also, if one notices it is sticking or squealing, STOP and 
evaluate the situation before letting it go further.



3)  Should the tape turn out to be sticky, don't try to clean it--it
will only foul up the cleaning equipment (I'm assuming a tape cleaning
machine here).   Coat the tape with cyclomethicone.  At least it won't
stick to anything and you'll get a chance to do a good read.



Folks are also doing that with floppies, though so few of my floppies 
have stuck (and those that did didn't have anything that wasn't already 
archived earlier file by file rather than image) that I haven't had to 
resort to that.



4) If you have a choice of read speeds, use the lowest speed to start
with.  Make sure that you can deal with tape errors.

5) Forget using a streamer--they're just not suited to dealing with
fragile tape.


My HP 88780B is a streamer, but also has a feed side tension arm.  I 
generally read good tapes end to end without any stopping.  I have had 
no problems with breaking or stretching tape - in the rare case where a 
tape did stick badly to a head even after baking (1980's era tape or two 
- they were just awful), the drive stopped immediately when it "overfed" 
from the feed side which stopped the drive, just as a "standard" drive 
(two tension arms or vacuum columns) would.




If you're not equipped to deal with this, don't attempt it.  A tape
written 10 years ago, is not the same as one written 40-60 years ago.
The 1980s, in particular, were responsible for some truly wretched
stock.  I thank my lucky stars that cellulose acetate never made it as
computer tape base.  Curiously, tapes from the 1960s and 70s can be less
of a problem than those from the 80s and 90s.



That timeframe has been my experience as well (but I'd add that the 
early to mid 1970's tapes have generally been no problem at all), 
generally, but I don't think that is curious at all.  It was a result of 
the coatings used during those latter eras by some manufacturers. 
Before that, those coatings were not used.  Somewhere I kept a record of 
which brands and series I found to be problematic, but I seem to have 
lost track of it.



My .02 for what it's worth.
--Chuck




Also, before starting (after baking and cool-down) I unspool maybe 25 
feet of tape onto a clean surface to make sure it isn't sticking.  If it 
does, I let it sit for a few hours, and then bake it again.  Have not 
had to bake for additional time very often, and in those cases, it ended 
up not helping as much as one might like.


JRJ

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[James Liu via cctech]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 10:25 AM Jay Jaeger  wrote:
>
> James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9
> Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a
> couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era
> before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to
> read them.
>
> Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape
> images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into
> ASCII if that is desirable).
>
> I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such
> that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be
> before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake"
> it first before trying to read it.

Thanks, Jay (and others) for offering your assistance.  I've asked
Chuck to have a look at the tape, and we'll see how it goes.

> Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on
> a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).

I can't say I know much about IBM systems, but apparently Strubbe, who
was doing the port and who I got the tape from, was no fan of
IEBUPDTE.  I wonder if IEBUPDTX was his attempt at an improvement.

As for CDC Schoonschip, old reports indicate that it consisted of
about 25k lines of COMPASS code along with 1k lines of FORTRAN for
handling I/O.  At the time (1960's), Tini may have been right about
making the most of the hardware, especially memory limitations, by
coding in assembly.  For example, I think Schoonschip packed a lot of
data into bitfields which FORTRAN may not be so adept at handling.
However I think he hung on to this sort of "high level languages
cripple the computer" mentality for too long.  Then again, he was
quite the character.

Stephen Wolfram has some interesting musings on Schoonschip at

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/01/tini-veltman-1931-2021-from-assembly-language-to-a-nobel-prize/

> So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to
> contact me.
>
> JRJ
>

- jim

-- 
James T. Liu, Professor of Physics
3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040
Tel: 734 763-4314Fax: 734 763-2213Email: jim...@umich.edu

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jay Jaeger via cctech]

I know Paul well (we were contemporaries at U. WI).  He does not do that 
very often.  He did not indicate any issue with a fire at the building 
that contains his collection when I last spoke with him.


He does not actually read "blocks".  He reads the tape in an *analog* 
fashion, and then processes the results with software.  That is how he 
recovered the IBM 1410 system tapes and diagnostics, for example.


To be honest, I doubt that this content would be such that he would be 
likely to volunteer.


JRJ

On 8/4/2021 3:11 PM, Van Snyder wrote:
Paul Pierce mailto:p...@teleport.com>> read some 
7-track and 9-track tapes for me about twenty years ago. He was in 
Portland, OR at the time. His "lab" was on the east side of the 
Willamette river, so maybe it didn't get burned down.


I don't know whether he still has a setup to read tapes. His software 
would read blocks forward and backward, including the parity frames, and 
make corrections.


Van Snyder

On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 09:25 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:

James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9
Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a
couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era
before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to
read them.

Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape
images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into
ASCII if that is desirable).

I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such
that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be
before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake"
it first before trying to read it.

Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on
a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).

So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to
contact me.

JRJ

On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:

Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
around 1978 at SLAC.

For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.

In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM
S/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I
gathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an
intermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the IBM
PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I
like language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never fully
completed for reasons unknown to me.

Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where
I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated.  But
the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k
assembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have
been the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he insisted on
developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc).  This was
before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to
just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac,
NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We have a pretty good
collection of m68k code
(
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html
 
), but nothing
earlier.

Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
exists on the tape.

- jim

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Chuck Guzis via cctech]

Whoever does it, I have a few suggestions when it comes to 40+ year old
tapes.

1) Bake the thing at 58C for a day or two.  It might just prevent you
from staring at a tape stuck to the head and a pile of brown dust at the
bottom of the drive.  (Before you start, make note of the brand and type
of tape; some are much worse than others).  If you're uncertain, check
back here and I'll tell you what I know.

2) If you're determined to use a SCSI drive, initially turn off
automatic retries (shoe-shining).   With sticky tape, you can do a lot
of damage to the tape.  Retries can come later when you're confident
about the condition of the tape.

3)  Should the tape turn out to be sticky, don't try to clean it--it
will only foul up the cleaning equipment (I'm assuming a tape cleaning
machine here).   Coat the tape with cyclomethicone.  At least it won't
stick to anything and you'll get a chance to do a good read.

4) If you have a choice of read speeds, use the lowest speed to start
with.  Make sure that you can deal with tape errors.

5) Forget using a streamer--they're just not suited to dealing with
fragile tape.

If you're not equipped to deal with this, don't attempt it.  A tape
written 10 years ago, is not the same as one written 40-60 years ago.
The 1980s, in particular, were responsible for some truly wretched
stock.  I thank my lucky stars that cellulose acetate never made it as
computer tape base.  Curiously, tapes from the 1960s and 70s can be less
of a problem than those from the 80s and 90s.

My .02 for what it's worth.
--Chuck

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Van Snyder via cctech]

Paul Pierce  read some 7-track and 9-track tapes for
me about twenty years ago. He was in Portland, OR at the time. His
"lab" was on the east side of the Willamette river, so maybe it didn't
get burned down.
I don't know whether he still has a setup to read tapes. His software
would read blocks forward and backward, including the parity frames,
and make corrections.
Van Snyder
On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 09:25 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:
> James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9
> Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a
> couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era
> before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying
> to read them.
> Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape
> images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into
> ASCII if that is desirable).
> I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such
> that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be
> before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely
> "bake" it first before trying to read it.
> Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used
> on a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).
> So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free
> to contact me.
> JRJ
> On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:
> > Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape
> > fromone of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was
> > probably madearound 1978 at SLAC.
> > For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the
> > 1960'sat CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or
> > lessinsisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or
> > other highlevel languages would just get in the way and slow things
> > down.  Thecode was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the
> > 1970's, butits future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC
> > hardware.
> > In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to
> > IBMS/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as
> > Igathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to
> > anintermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the
> > IBMPL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the
> > PL/Ilike language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never
> > fullycompleted for reasons unknown to me.
> > Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's
> > whereI'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be
> > updated.  Butthe update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided
> > on m68kassembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably
> > would havebeen the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he
> > insisted ondeveloping his own toolchain (assembler, linker,
> > etc).  This wasbefore my time at Michigan, but basically he ported
> > Schoonschip tojust about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun,
> > Atari, Amiga, Mac,NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We
> > have a pretty goodcollection of m68k code(
> > http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html), but
> > nothingearlier.
> > Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I
> > likecode as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also
> > have CDCsource, but that is less obvious until we can see the
> > contents.  TheCDC source is historically the most relevant, and I
> > am hoping itexists on the tape.
> > - jim

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jay Jaeger via cctech]

James, I am located in Madison WI.  I would need to fire up my SCSI 9 
Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a 
couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era 
before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to 
read them.


Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape 
images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into 
ASCII if that is desirable).


I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such 
that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be 
before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake" 
it first before trying to read it.


Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on 
a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE).


So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to 
contact me.


JRJ

On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:

Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
around 1978 at SLAC.

For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.

In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM
S/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I
gathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an
intermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the IBM
PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I
like language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never fully
completed for reasons unknown to me.

Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where
I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated.  But
the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k
assembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have
been the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he insisted on
developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc).  This was
before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to
just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac,
NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We have a pretty good
collection of m68k code
(http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html), but nothing
earlier.

Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
exists on the tape.

- jim

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Paul Koning via cctech]

> On Aug 2, 2021, at 8:45 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> On 8/2/21 8:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:
>> Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  
> 
> Happy to contirubte.
> 
>> For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
>> at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
>> insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
>> level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
>> code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
>> its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.
> 
> Which CDC FORTRAN?  RUN, maybe--but FTN extended was pretty darned good
> in optimizing and scheduling instructions. A lot of work went into that one.

He did say "in the 1960s" so it may have been an early one without the high 
quality optimizations that grew over time.

> As a matter of fact, when we COMPASS scriveners came up against a nasty
> loop that we wanted to optimize for the 6600, one approach was to code
> it in FORTRAN to see what the compiler would do with it and then work
> from there.   Some of the optimizations were quite startling,
> particularly with the "UO" option selected.
> 
> If you've never written and hand-optimized 6600 code, it could be a
> daunting task.

So I learned, having to do it on a 6400 -- which is quite a lot easier.  But I 
learned a lot from reading the OS source code, stuff like the analog of memcpy 
that used both the boolean and shift units for transfer operations so it could 
do two of them one cycle apart.

paul

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Chuck Guzis via cctech]

On 8/2/21 8:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote:
> Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  

Happy to contirubte.

> For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
> at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
> insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
> level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
> code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
> its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.

Which CDC FORTRAN?  RUN, maybe--but FTN extended was pretty darned good
in optimizing and scheduling instructions. A lot of work went into that one.

As a matter of fact, when we COMPASS scriveners came up against a nasty
loop that we wanted to optimize for the 6600, one approach was to code
it in FORTRAN to see what the compiler would do with it and then work
from there.   Some of the optimizations were quite startling,
particularly with the "UO" option selected.

If you've never written and hand-optimized 6600 code, it could be a
daunting task.

Did you know that parts of FTN are written in FTN?  I recall the
COMMON/EQUIVALENCE processor written as a mess of assigned GOTO
statements (state machine) and being utterly bereft of commentary."Don't
touch it--you might break something!"

FORTRAN was CDC's bread-and-butter language for years, as it was the
universal choice of number-crunchers everywhere during the 60s through
80s.  And CDC excelled at number-crunching.

My .02 for what it's worth.
--Chuck

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Paul Koning via cctech]

> On Aug 2, 2021, at 11:11 AM, James Liu via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
> one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
> around 1978 at SLAC.
> 
> For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
> at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
> insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
> level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.

Depending on what he was trying to do that may well be a valid assessment.  CDC 
Fortran was known to be pretty good, but Fortran  is not the obvious answer for 
implementing interpreters or other language processors, which this sounds like.

> ...
> Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
> code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
> source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
> CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
> exists on the tape.

Just to make sure you're aware of this: if it is CDC source code, you can run 
that on the DtCyber emulator.  That's a full 6000 / 170 series machine emulator 
which can run almost all CDC 6000 series software and operating systems.  Not a 
180 (for NOS/VE) system, nor an implementation of the 7600 architecture, but I 
assume you're not dealing with peripheral processor code anyway.  DtCyber is 
open source; a fork of it has been running the PLATO system for over 10 years 
now.  Copies of NOS are also openly available (by permission of the owners, not 
bootleg copies).

paul

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[James Liu via cctech]

Thanks for feedback and offers to assist.  I received the tape from
one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made
around 1978 at SLAC.

For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's
at CERN on the CDC 6600.  My understanding is that he more or less
insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high
level languages would just get in the way and slow things down.  The
code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but
its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware.

In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM
S/360 and S/370.  It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I
gathered.  The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an
intermediate PL/I like language.  But then, instead of using the IBM
PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I
like language in IBM assembly.  This conversion was never fully
completed for reasons unknown to me.

Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where
I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated.  But
the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k
assembly.  (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have
been the natural language of choice.)  Moreover, he insisted on
developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc).  This was
before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to
just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac,
NeXT, and others I am not familiar with).  We have a pretty good
collection of m68k code
(http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html), but nothing
earlier.

Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like
code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion.  It may also have CDC
source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents.  The
CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it
exists on the tape.

- jim

-- 
James T. Liu, Professor of Physics
3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040
Tel: 734 763-4314Fax: 734 763-2213Email: jim...@umich.edu

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Tom Uban via cctech]

Hi Jim,

I have a 9track drive hooked to my old Sun IPX which may be able to read your 
tape.
I am in Valapraiso IN if you are up for a drive.

Best,

--tom


On 7/30/21 1:02 PM, James Liu via cctech wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been lurking for a few years, but thought I'd finally speak up
> as I just received a 9 track tape purportedly containing the source
> code to Schoonschip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip).  This
> is a 2400' reel recorded at 1600 bpi based on the labels, and a
> cursory examination suggests that it is still in pretty good shape
> (although I am not sure how it was stored over the years).  Here is a
> picture of the tape:
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JgY8QdVDchxubUz39jYn86gEczSvFhcZ/view?usp=sharing
>
> We no longer have any equipment that can read the tape, so I was
> wondering if anyone may be willing to help or if anyone had
> suggestions on where to go to get it read.  Thanks!
>
> - jim
>

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Al Kossow via cctech]

If you care about what is on that tape, send it to Chuck for recovery.

I wouldn't trust someone without a lot of experience in tape
prep and recovery with something I thought was important.

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Chuck Guzis via cctech]

On 7/31/21 8:08 AM, Jon Elson via cctech wrote:

I'll add a thought that if this is a CDC 6000-system tape written in the
1970s, it could well be 7-track, regardless of the manufacturer's label.
 Up through the 1970s, 7 track tape drives were very common on CDC systems.

--Chuck

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Chuck Guzis via cctech]

On 7/31/21 8:08 AM, Jon Elson via cctech wrote:

> Where are you?  I have a CDC Keystone drive that worked last time I
> fired it up,
> 
> and I have it interfaced  to a Linux PC.  I'm in Missouri.

I wonder if the OP is in the Netherlands, Schoonschip being a Dutch product.

In any case, I'd advise you to determine what brand media the thing
uses.  I'm struggling now with a Wabash "Mira" tape and it isn't pretty.

About the same as Wabash floppies of the same time.

--Chuck

Re: Help reading a 9 track tape

[Jon Elson via cctech]

On 7/30/21 1:02 PM, James Liu via cctech wrote:

Hi,

I have been lurking for a few years, but thought I'd finally speak up
as I just received a 9 track tape purportedly containing the source
code to Schoonschip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip).  This
is a 2400' reel recorded at 1600 bpi based on the labels, and a
cursory examination suggests that it is still in pretty good shape
(although I am not sure how it was stored over the years).  Here is a
picture of the tape:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JgY8QdVDchxubUz39jYn86gEczSvFhcZ/view?usp=sharing

We no longer have any equipment that can read the tape, so I was
wondering if anyone may be willing to help or if anyone had
suggestions on where to go to get it read.  Thanks!

Where are you?  I have a CDC Keystone drive that worked last 
time I fired it up,


and I have it interfaced  to a Linux PC.  I'm in Missouri.

Jon