29 Jun
2023
29 Jun
'23
1:14 p.m.
Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
Enjoy,
Arnold
29 Jun
29 Jun
1:36 p.m.
Many thanks.
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:14, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
Enjoy,
Arnold
8:40 p.m.
+1 👍
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 3:37 AM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks.
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:14, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
Enjoy,
Arnold
9:04 p.m.
Clem's +1 caught my attention, so I looked into the referenced docs. I
saw the rather simple (conceptually) m6 processor described in tech note
54. I like its understandable.
Why is it called m6? Just curious.
Will
On 6/29/23 09:40, Clem Cole wrote:
+1 👍
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 3:37 AM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks.
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:14, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
Enjoy,
Arnold
1 Jul
1 Jul
11:28 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 11:05 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Clem's +1 caught my attention, so I looked into
the referenced docs. I saw the rather simple (conceptually) m6 processor described in tech
note 54. I like its understandable.
Why is it called m6? Just curious.
I'll take a stab at that; I presume it's due to the naming convention
for macro processors from Bell Labs. Consider m4, which itself was
written as, "an extension of a macro processor called M3 which was
written by D. M. Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer; M3 was in turn
based on a macro processor implemented for [1]." (from, "The M4 Macro
Processor" by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, as distributed with
4.3BSD; reference [1] is to "Software Tools" by Kernighan and
Plauger).
Anyway, once you've got M3 and M4, you've got a naming convention; I'd
think it a safe bet that there was an M5 that was an internal
experiment, and that M6 was simply the next in line and was
interesting enough to be documented in a tech report.
- Dan C.
Aside: the AP-3 minicomputer came up on this list a few years ago,
when Dag Spicer of the Computer History Museum was looking for
information about it. Near as folks could figure, it was the computer
portion of a Bendix "stereoplotter" for creating terrain maps and the
like (Adam Sampson figured that part out; others derived Bendix from
part numbers taken from a US Air Force spare parts requisition
document I found).
On 6/29/23 09:40, Clem Cole wrote:
+1 👍
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 3:37 AM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks.
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:14, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
>
> Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
>
> I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
> duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
> set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
>
> Enjoy,
>
> Arnold
2 Jul
2 Jul
12:03 a.m.
Anyway, once you've got M3 and M4, you've
got a naming convention; I'd
think it a safe bet that there was an M5 that was an internal
experiment, and that M6 was simply the next in line and was
interesting enough to be documented in a tech report.
Only problem there is m6 predates m3 and m4. Th m6(I) page first appears in V2 and there
is a published reference from 1972. Software Tools, from which m3 derives, was 1976, and
m4 was then introduced in V7 (which is also the first research version since V2 without m6
somewhere in the manual.)
Here's a rough history of the m6 manpage:
https://gitlab.com/segaloco/mandiff/-/commits/v6/man6/m6.6
- Matt G.
12:42 a.m.
On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 2:03 PM segaloco <segaloco(a)protonmail.com> wrote:
Oops. Very well, then: stab my stab with a fork, for it is dead.
- Dan C.
Anyway, once
you've got M3 and M4, you've got a naming convention; I'd
think it a safe bet that there was an M5 that was an internal
experiment, and that M6 was simply the next in line and was
interesting enough to be documented in a tech report.
Only problem there is m6 predates m3 and m4. Th m6(I) page first appears in V2 and there
is a published reference from 1972. Software Tools, from which m3 derives, was 1976, and
m4 was then introduced in V7 (which is also the first research version since V2 without m6
somewhere in the manual.)
Here's a rough history of the m6 manpage:
https://gitlab.com/segaloco/mandiff/-/commits/v6/man6/m6.6
29 Jun
29 Jun
9:14 p.m.
On a related note, I just read cstr 99 - Bell's computing research
history and one of Doug's early articles was mentioned:
M. D. McIlroy, "Macro Instruction Extension of Compiler Languages,"
Communications of the
ACM 3 (April 1960), pp. 214-220.
It's discussing the general extensibility that macros provide and I was
interested to obtain a copy to read at leisure. I found it over on ACM's
digital library:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/367177.367223
But, the copy's not that great on my deteriorating eyesight. Does
anybody have a cleaner copy?
Lately, I've been vastly improving my vi/vim skills and part of that
process is shifting from an ad-hoc process to a move, act, repeat
mentality (thank you Drew Neil for that revelation) and macros are
consonant with this line of thinking :).
Will
On 6/29/23 09:40, Clem Cole wrote:
+1 👍
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 3:37 AM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks.
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:14, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Available at https://www.skeeve.com/bell-labs-cstrs.tar.gz
Warren and Brantley and anyone else, feel free to retrieve.
I have two sets - both are in the tarball so there are undoubtedly
duplications. If someone else can curate them into single canonical
set that'd be helpful, I just don't have the time right now.
Enjoy,
Arnold
539
days inactive
541
days old
7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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arnold＠skeeve.com -
Clem Cole -
Dan Cross -
Noel Hunt -
segaloco -
Will Senn