Wow, this brings back memories. When I was a kid I remember visiting
a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8. The 500 was a vacuum
tube and nixie display machine. That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
dollars just to warm it up. I think that the PB 250 was one of the
first machines built using transistors. I assume that all of you know
what a PDP-8 is. I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework. Note that the PB
250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.
Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz. Maybe he
can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.
Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
from home. Does anyone else out there know anything about it? It's a
vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.
Jon
> From: Stuff Received
> I had always thought of a delay line as a precursor to a register (or
> stack) for storing intermediate results. Is this not an accurate way of
> thinking about it?
No, not at all.
First: delay lines were a memory _technology_ (one that was inherently
serial, not random-access). They preceded all others.
Second: registers used to have two aspects - one now gone (and maybe the
second too). The first was that the _technology_ used to implement them
(latches built out of tubes, then transistors) was faster than main memory -
a distinction now mostly gone, especially since caches blur the speed
distinction between today's main memory and registers. The second was that
registers, being smaller in numbers, could be named with a few bits, allowing
them to be named with a small share of the bits in an instruction. (This one
still remains, although instructions are now so long it's probably less
important.)
Some delay-line machines had two different delay line sizes (since size is
equivalent to average access time) - what one might consider 'registers' were
kept in the small ones, for fast access at all times, whereas main memory
used the longer ones.
Noel
> From: Bakul Shah
> one dealt with it by formatting the disk so that the logical blocks N &
> N+1 (from the OS PoV) were physically more than 1 sector apart. No
> clever coding needed!
An old hack. ('Nothing new', and all that.) DEC Rx01/02 floppies used the
same thing, circa 1976.
Noel
After my posting on Sat, 10 Dec 2022 17:42:14 -0700 about the recent
work on kermit 10.0, some readers asked why a serial line connection
and file transfer tool was still of interest, and a few others
responded with use cases.
Modern kermit has for several years supported ssh connections, and
Unicode, as well: here is a top-level command list:
% kermit
(~/) C-Kermit>? Command, one of the following:
add define hangup msleep resend telnet
answer delete HELP open return touch
apc dial if orientation rlogin trace
array directory increment output rmdir translate
ask disable input pause run transmit
askq do INTRO pdial screen type
assign echo kcd pipe script undeclare
associate edit learn print send undefine
back enable LICENSE pty server version
browse end lineout purge set void
bye evaluate log push shift wait
cd exit login pwd show where
change file logout quit space while
check finish lookup read ssh who
chmod for mail receive statistics write
clear ftp manual redial status xecho
close get message redirect stop xmessage
connect getc minput redo SUPPORT
convert getok mget reget suspend
copy goto mkdir remote switch
date grep mmove remove tail
decrement head msend rename take
or one of the tokens: ! # ( . ; : < @ ^ {
Here are the descriptions of connection and character set translations:
(~/) C-Kermit>help ssh
Syntax: SSH [ options ] <hostname> [ command ]
Makes an SSH connection using the external ssh program via the SET SSH
COMMAND string, which is "ssh -e none" by default. Options for the
external ssh program may be included. If the hostname is followed by a
command, the command is executed on the host instead of an interactive
shell.
(~/) C-Kermit>help connect
Syntax: CONNECT (or C, or CQ) [ switches ]
Connect to a remote computer via the serial communications device given in
the most recent SET LINE command, or to the network host named in the most
recent SET HOST command. Type the escape character followed by C to get
back to the C-Kermit prompt, or followed by ? for a list of CONNECT-mode
escape commands.
Include the /QUIETLY switch to suppress the informational message that
tells you how to escape back, etc. CQ is a synonym for CONNECT /QUIETLY.
Other switches include:
/TRIGGER:string
One or more strings to look for that will cause automatic return to
command mode. To specify one string, just put it right after the
colon, e.g. "/TRIGGER:Goodbye". If the string contains any spaces, you
must enclose it in braces, e.g. "/TRIGGER:{READY TO SEND...}". To
specify more than one trigger, use the following format:
/TRIGGER:{{string1}{string2}...{stringn}}
Upon return from CONNECT mode, the variable \v(trigger) is set to the
trigger string, if any, that was actually encountered. This value, like
all other CONNECT switches applies only to the CONNECT command with which
it is given, and overrides (temporarily) any global SET TERMINAL TRIGGER
string that might be in effect.
Your escape character is Ctrl-\ (ASCII 28, FS)
(~/) C-Kermit>help translate
Syntax: CONVERT file1 cs1 cs2 [ file2 ]
Synonym: TRANSLATE
Converts file1 from the character set cs1 into the character set cs2
and stores the result in file2. The character sets can be any of
C-Kermit's file character sets. If file2 is omitted, the translation
is displayed on the screen. An appropriate intermediate character-set
is chosen automatically, if necessary. Synonym: XLATE. Example:
CONVERT lasagna.txt latin1 utf8 lasagna-utf8.txt
Multiple files can be translated if file2 is a directory or device name,
rather than a filename, or if file2 is omitted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clem Cole mentions kermit in connection with the question raised about
the uses of the cu utility.
As an FYI, Kermit's author, Frank da Cruz, is preparing a final
release, version 10.0, and I've been working with him on testing
builds in numerous environments. There are frequent updates during
this work, and the latest snapshots can be found at
https://kermitproject.org/ftp/kermit/pretest/
The x-YYYYMMDD.* bundles do not contain a leading directory, so be
careful to unpack them in an empty directory. The build relies on a
lengthy makefile with platform-specific target names, like irix65,
linux, and solaris11: the leading comments in the makefile provide
further guidance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good day all, this may be COFF instead, but I'm not joined over there yet, might need some Warren help/approval.
In any case, received that 3B20S 4.1 manual in good shape, unpacked it, and out fell a little tri-fold titled "The Office Automation System (OAS) Editor-Formatter (ef) Reference Card" emblazoned with the usual Bell Laboratories, non-disclosure note abut the Bell System, and a nice little picture of a terminal I can't identify as well as the full manual for this OAS leaning against it: "The Office Automation System (OAS)" with a nice big Bell logo at the bottom of the spine.
The latter is likely a manual I spotted in a video once and couldn't make out the name/title at the time, thought I was seeing another long-lost UNIX manual. I've never heard of this before, and Google isn't turning up much as Office Automation System appears to be a general industry term.
I seem to recall hearing about ef itself once or twice, some sort of pre-vi screen editor from Bell methinks? Not super familiar with it though, I just seem to recall reading about that before somewhere.
Anywho, dealing with a move in the near future that is hopefully into a home I own, so pretty distracted from that scanning I keep talking about, but hopefully when I'm settled in in a few months I can setup a proper scan bench in my new place and really go to town on things.
- Matt G.
Exciting development in the process of finding lost documentation, just sealed this one on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/385266550881?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-235…
After the link is a (now closed) auction for a Western Electric 3B20S UNIX User's Manual Release 4.1, something I thought I'd never see and wasn't sure actually exited: print manuals for 4.x.
Once received I'll be curious to see what differences are obvious between this and the 3.0 manual, and this should be easy to scan given the comb binding. What a nice cover too! I always expected if a 4.x manual of some kind popped up it would feature the falling blocks motif of the two starter package sets of technical reports, but the picture of a 3B20S is nice. How auspicious given the recent discussion on the 3B series. I'm particularly curious to see what makes it specifically a 3B20S manual, if that's referring to it only having commands relevant to that one or omitting any commands/info specific to DEC machines.
Either way, exciting times, this is one of those things that I had originally set out to even verify existed when I first started really studying the history of UNIX documentation, so it's vindicating to have found something floating around out there in the wild. Between this and the 4.0 docs we now should have a much clearer picture of that gulf between III and V.
More to come once I receive it!
- Matt G.
I finally got myself a decent scanner, and have scanned my most prized
relic from my summer at Bell Labs - Draft 1 of Kernighan and Ritchie's "The
C Programming Language".
It's early enough that there are no tables of contents or index; of
particular note is that "chapter 8" is a "C Reference Manual" by Dennis
dated May 1, 1977.
This dates from approx July 1977; it has my name on the cover and various
scribbles pointing out typos throughout.
Enjoy!
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OvgKikM8vpZGxNzCjt4BM1ggBX0dlr-y?us…
p.s. I used a Fujitsu FI-8170 scanner, VueScan on Ubuntu, and pdftk-java
to merge front and back pages.
