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Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413052 is a reply to message #412946] Fri, 14 January 2022 21:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: ant

Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> On 1/13/2022 12:23 AM, Ant wrote:

>> Prodigy. Do you still remember your ID? Mine was TGSV85B since I was a
>> teen(ager) back then before I discovered BBSes and then Internet on PCs!
>> http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html for my detailed history! ;)

> I've got a client who still uses a prodigy email address. Every once
> in a while the fish will get swallowed by another fish, and sometimes
> we'll have to reconfigure. I think now they're owned by Yahoo, which
> is in turn owned by a venture capitalist.

I never had Prodigy for Internet. I didn't get on the Internet until
1993 with my friend's university shell account. ;)

--
Aw, The Expanse TV show is already over. D: Slammy new week quieting down? :D
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413054 is a reply to message #412946] Fri, 14 January 2022 22:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
> We did a lot of COBOL on a 32K 360/30. One big report program I had to code
> overlays. It was my first experience with overlays and I didn’t do a very
> good job of structuring it. I’d love to take what I know now and rewrite
> it. PL/I was more problematic.

trivia: end of semester after taking 2 semester hr intro
fortran/computers, I was hired as student programmer to reimplement 1401
MPIO (tape<->unit record) on 360/30 (64k, run os/360 PCP) .. given 360
princ-ops, assembler, bunch of hardware manuals and got to design my own
monitor, device drivers, interrupt handlers, error recovery, storage
management, etc ... within a few weeks had a 2000 card assembler program
run "stand-alone", loaded with BPS loader. I then added assemble option
that would generate version used os/360 GET/PUT/DCB macros. Stand-alone
version assembled (360/30, os/360 PCP) in 30mins ... GET/PUT/DCB version
assembled in an hour ... most of the added time was the DCB macros
.... could watch it in the console lights when it was doing the DCB
macros.

the univ. shutdown the datacenter over the weekend and I had the place
all to myself, although monday morning classes could be difficult after
48hrs w/o sleep. the univ. had been sold 360/67 (for tss/360) to replace
709/1401, the 360/30 temporarily replaced 1401 in transition to
360/67. TSS/360 never came to production fruition and so ran 360/67 as
360/65 with os/360. Within year of taking intro class, I was hired
fulltime responsible for os/360.

Three people from cambridge science center came out last week of Jan1968
to install CP67 (virtual machine precursor to VM370) ... it never really
was production at the univ. but I got to play with it in my 48hr window
when univ. shutdown datacenter on the weekend and I had it all to
myself. At that time, all the CP67 source were files on OS/360 (and
assembled on OS/360. The assembled text decks for the system were
arraigned in a card tray with BPS loader in the front. The BPS loader
would be IPLed and the CP67 initiliazing routine (CPINIT) would write
the memory image to disk for "system" IPL. A few months later, they
shipped a version where all the source files were on CMS and assembled
on CMS.

I started by rewriting a lot of CP67 pathlengths significantly cutting
time for running OS/360 in virtual machine. Old (1994 afc) post with
part of 1968 SHARE presentation on the reduction in CP67 pathlength.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

OS jobstream on bare machine 323secs, originally running in CP67 virtual
machine 856secs, CP67 overhead 533 CPU secs. After some of the
pathlength rewrite, runtime: 435 secs, CP67 overhead 112 CPU secs
.... reducing CP67 CPU overhead from 533 to 112 CPU secs, reduction of
421 CPU secs.

I continued to do pathlength optimization along with a lot of other
stuff, dynamic adaptive resource management & scheduling algorithm, new
page replacement algorithms, optimized I/O for arm seek ordering and
disk&drum rotation, etc.

At some point, I also started reorganizing a lot of the fixed kernel to
make parts of it pageable (to reduce the fixed memory requirements) and
ran into a problem with the BPS loader. Part of making pieces of kernel
pageable was splitting some modules up into 4k segments, which increased
the number of TXT ESD entry symbols. The BPS loader had a table limit of
255 ESD entry symbols ... and I had all sorts of difficulty keeping the
pageable kernel reorganization under 256 ESD symbols. Later after
graduating and joining IBM Science Center, I was going through a card
cabinet in the attic storage area ... and ran across the source for the
BPS loader ... which I immediately collected and modified to support
more than 255 ESD symbols.

trivia: in morph of CP67->VM370 ... they greatly simplified and/or
dropped lots of CP67 features, including SMP multiprocessor support and
much of the stuff I had done as undergraduate in the 60s. When I joined
IBM, one of my hobbies was advanced production operating systems for
internal datacenters ... the datacenters were then moving off of 360/67
to increasing numbers of 370s w/vm370. I spent part of 1974 putting a
lot of the dropped CP67 stuff back into VM370 until I was ready to start
shipping my CSC/VM for internal datacenters in 1975.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413055 is a reply to message #413047] Sat, 15 January 2022 10:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Robin Vowels is currently offline  Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 8:58:35 AM UTC+11, John Levine wrote:
> According to Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>> that was kludged onto the Univac 9300's multiplexer channel. It
>> had a servo-driven capstan and a 256-byte core buffer which it
>> tried to keep half full, and it would run at up to 2000 frames
>> per second to do so. It wasn't often we were able to accept data
>> at that speed - but I just had to write a program that did so, so I
>> could watch the tape fly through the machine at 200 inches per second.
> The fastest paper tape reader I ever used only ran at 300 fps, attached
> to a PDP-10, but I've seen the rebuilt Colossus at Bletchley Park
> whose tape reader runs at 5000 cps reading an endless loop. It's
> pretty impressive, even 75 years later.

KDF9's paper tape reader ran at 1,000 cps. and could stop between
characters.
DEUCE used the same paper tape reader at 850 cps.
IBM S/360 paper tape reader also ran at 1000 cps,
but when "upgraded" with spooling, its speed dropped to 500 cps.
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413056 is a reply to message #412946] Sat, 15 January 2022 12:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
D.J. is currently offline  D.J.
Messages: 821
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:43:20 -0700, Peter Flass
<peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>> According to Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net>:
>>>> > The first computer I owned was an 80286 based box with 4MB of
>>>> > RAM and two 20MB MFM drives that I got an RLL controller for and ran at
>>>> > 38MB each. It ran DR-DOS, XENIX-286 and Smalltalk V (which launched
>>>> > under DOS and then took over in protected mode).
>>>> >
>>>> > The first computer I used was an 1BM-1130 with 4K words of core
>>>> > (yes real beads on wires core), three 1.5MB disks, a 1442 card reader
>>>> > and a 1403 printer (not the N1 so no coffee thrown round the room).
>>>>
>>>> Wow, that’s a BIG 1130. Did you have 32K memory also?
>>>
>>> It had 4K words so yes 32K bytes -
>>
>> The 1130 was a 16 bit machine so 4K was 8K bytes.
>>
>>> there was also a paper tape
>>> reader/punch that I'm pretty sure wasn't IBM but I forget what it was. The
>>> biggest single box was the channel box for the printer.
>>
>> IBM resold some other people's peripherals, like the 1627 which was a Calcomp drum
>> plotter. The 1134 paper tape reader doesn't look like an IBM produect but I don't
>> know who made it.
>>
>> In theory you could run an 1130 from paper tape rather than cards but I
>> never heard of anyone trying it.
>>
>
> From comments I’ve seen, I think paper tape was more popular in Rightpondia
> than in the US, for some reason. It was also obviously better for
> typesetting applications. I never saw it either.

When I was at university, around 1977, I saw a papertape device, they
told us it was a computer, that could be setup to run lights and
sounds for a theatrical production in the main university theater.

It could be sped up, or slowed down, some if the actors sped up a
scene or slowed down a scene.
--
Jim
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413058 is a reply to message #413048] Sat, 15 January 2022 16:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2022-01-14, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Jan 2022 21:16:03 GMT
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> and it would run at up to 2000 frames
>> per second to do so. It wasn't often we were able to accept data
>> at that speed - but I just had to write a program that did so, so I
>> could watch the tape fly through the machine at 200 inches per second.
>
> Wow! that's very fast paper tape. Keep fingers well clear, that
> speed would bring paper cuts to a whole new level of oops.

Actually, we ran into a totally different problem when we finally got
a job where we had to read large volumes of data directly from paper
tapes to disk. The reader had no tape-spooling facilities; you'd
place a roll of paper tape into a compartment in the machine, and
the tape, once read, would spew out the side, where we'd place a
large trash bin to collect it (and subsequently rewind it with a
hand-cranked gadget). Running a large roll of tape through the
reader at full speed built up a static charge large enough to
generate a spark which would crash the computer. I rigged a
grounded chain of paper clips so that the tape would hit it
while coming out of the reader. Even then we had to set up
a kettle in the room so that the cloud of steam would help
to bleed off the charge.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413064 is a reply to message #413051] Sun, 16 January 2022 11:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: John W Gintell

On 1/14/22 5:54 PM, Dan Espen wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 2022-01-14, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In theory you could run an 1130 from paper tape rather than cards but I
>>>> never heard of anyone trying it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> From comments I’ve seen, I think paper tape was more popular in Rightpondia
>>> than in the US, for some reason. It was also obviously better for
>>> typesetting applications. I never saw it either.
>>
>> In general it wasn't very common, but when I was working in a service
>> bureau a lot of our customers did accounting on adding machines with
>> a paper tape punch attached. I became the local paper tape guru,
>> figuring out how to handle the various formats that came in.
>> We had a third-party paper tape reader, made by Regnecentralen,
>> that was kludged onto the Univac 9300's multiplexer channel. It
>> had a servo-driven capstan and a 256-byte core buffer which it
>> tried to keep half full, and it would run at up to 2000 frames
>> per second to do so. It wasn't often we were able to accept data
>> at that speed - but I just had to write a program that did so, so I
>> could watch the tape fly through the machine at 200 inches per second.
>
> IBM sold a keypunch machine that could be driven from paper tape.
> One place I worked we got adding machine paper tapes from our branch
> offices, fed the paper tape into the keypunch and punched cards then
> fed the cards into the 1442 on the 1440.
>
My first computer was an IBM 1620 with paper tape input and output. We wrote
our programs on paper, punched cards, and then used a card-to-paper tape
converter. 1961.
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413081 is a reply to message #413011] Wed, 19 January 2022 19:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: lawrenabae

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:14:12 -0500
> Freddy1X <freddy1X@indyX.netX> wrote:
>
>> My computer does EXACTLY what my programs tell it to do! ;-)
>
> I've never had my hands on a computer that ran *only* my code, the
> closest would probably be prototype Torches forty years ago that had code
> from just three of us.

I spent many years programming on "bare metal", where there were zero
bytes of executable code that I (or later, my team) did not write, but
you could unplug the cartridge with my code and plug in someone else's.

Later, I did a ton of embedded-system programming where I wrote 90+% of
the code, except for a couple of RS485 "network" subroutines that an
office-mate wrote.

--NK1G

echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413085 is a reply to message #413081] Thu, 20 January 2022 16:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Vir Campestris

On 20/01/2022 00:17, Lawrence Statton (NK1G) wrote:
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:14:12 -0500
>> Freddy1X <freddy1X@indyX.netX> wrote:
>>
>>> My computer does EXACTLY what my programs tell it to do! ;-)
>>
>> I've never had my hands on a computer that ran *only* my code, the
>> closest would probably be prototype Torches forty years ago that had code
>> from just three of us.
>
> I spent many years programming on "bare metal", where there were zero
> bytes of executable code that I (or later, my team) did not write, but
> you could unplug the cartridge with my code and plug in someone else's.
>
> Later, I did a ton of embedded-system programming where I wrote 90+% of
> the code, except for a couple of RS485 "network" subroutines that an
> office-mate wrote.
>
You've now reminded me that I have actually run code on a computer that
only I wrote.

Initial boot rom code.

It's quite a challenge to put an error code out saying that the RAM
isn't working ;)

Andy
Re: Is this group only about older computers? [message #413086 is a reply to message #413085] Thu, 20 January 2022 16:52 Go to previous message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: J. Clarke

On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 21:44:10 +0000, Vir Campestris
<vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 20/01/2022 00:17, Lawrence Statton (NK1G) wrote:
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:14:12 -0500
>>> Freddy1X <freddy1X@indyX.netX> wrote:
>>>
>>>> My computer does EXACTLY what my programs tell it to do! ;-)
>>>
>>> I've never had my hands on a computer that ran *only* my code, the
>>> closest would probably be prototype Torches forty years ago that had code
>>> from just three of us.
>>
>> I spent many years programming on "bare metal", where there were zero
>> bytes of executable code that I (or later, my team) did not write, but
>> you could unplug the cartridge with my code and plug in someone else's.
>>
>> Later, I did a ton of embedded-system programming where I wrote 90+% of
>> the code, except for a couple of RS485 "network" subroutines that an
>> office-mate wrote.
>>
> You've now reminded me that I have actually run code on a computer that
> only I wrote.
>
> Initial boot rom code.
>
> It's quite a challenge to put an error code out saying that the RAM
> isn't working ;)

In the operating systems course at UCONN we each had a bare LSI-11
that we had to make do a variety of assigned tasks. Copying the code
into the LSI-11's memory was performed by a larger PDP-11, I was never
really clear on how the transfer was performed.
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