8 Apr
2022
8 Apr
'22
10:48 p.m.
I personally lost two friends and former colleagues recently that these
list probably wants to know about.
I just heard from Lynne Jolitz, Bill's wife. It seems he passed away
about a month ago after a long illness. Most of you know he was the
original force behind the BSD 386 development. I know little more than
what I have just reported at this time, but will pass on any info as I
learn it.
Also in other news, not Unix related, but PDP-11 and the computer graphics
world. We lost Jack Burness a few weeks ago. Jack was the author of the
original "Moonlander" for the PDP-11 with which many of us wasted many
hours trying to pick up "a Big Mac with fries" at "Mare Assabet."
[Note: There
was no WWW/Wikipedia in those days to find it, but to look up Assabet
River, so many people naively thought it was a legitimate lunar landmark -
its the River that the DEC Maynard bldg sits]. He was a larger than life
person [his joke's mailing list was a whos-who of the computer industry -
it was an honor to be on it]. We all have a passel of stories about Jack.
I have written separately about Jack a number of times and if you have
never looked at the source to Moonlander, you own it yourself to read it.
Remember he wrote it as a throw-away demo for the GT-40 for trade show [his
integer transcendental funcs are quite instructive]. As one of the folks
on the Masscomp Alumni list put it, 'Jack was someone that just does not
deserve to die.'
This is the announcement Maureen published in the DEC Alumni list.
************************** January 20, 2022 ********************************
Our sincere condolences to Maureen Burness and all friends in CXO and
elsewhere on the passing of her husband, *Jack Burness*, 75, Colorado
Springs, who left us on January 20, 2022. Maureen said: With his bigger
than life personality, humor, and intellect, he was loved and respected by
so many people, including his devoted family. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1946,
he received his Engineering Degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and
was employed by DEC, Maynard in the early days and then here in Colorado
Springs. Many of you knew he had a huge appetite for the outdoors of
Colorado and Martha’s Vineyard and joined him in his sometimes-disastrous
adventures.
9 Apr
9 Apr
12:29 a.m.
On Fri, 8 Apr 2022, Clem Cole wrote:
[...]
Also in other news, not Unix related, but PDP-11 and
the computer
graphics world. We lost Jack Burness a few weeks ago. Jack was the
author of the original "Moonlander" for the PDP-11 with which many of us
wasted many hours trying to pick up "a Big Mac with fries" at "Mare
Assabet." [Note: There was no WWW/Wikipedia in those days to find it,
but to look up Assabet River, so many people naively thought it was a
legitimate lunar landmark - its the River that the DEC Maynard bldg
sits]. He was a larger than life person [his joke's mailing list was a
whos-who of the computer industry - it was an honor to be on it]. We all
have a passel of stories about Jack. I have written separately about
Jack a number of times and if you have never looked at the source to
Moonlander, you own it yourself to read it. Remember he wrote it as a
throw-away demo for the GT-40 for trade show [his integer
transcendental funcs are quite instructive]. As one of the folks on
the Masscomp Alumni list put it, 'Jack was someone that just does not
deserve to die.'
I have fond memories of playing it on the GT-40, and if Andrew Hume is
reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and modifying it
for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also implemented reverse
gravity...
Eventually DEC Field Circus stopped replacing GT-40 switch registers if
they'd suspected that they were used for playing it :-)
The GT-40 had a primitive loader; it was Craig McGregor of the CSU (UNSW)
who used it to download an 8-bit loader for things like Lunar Lander (I
only wrote a simple "Life" program for it, using the light-pen).
-- Dave
12:44 a.m.
On Sat, 9 Apr 2022, Dave Horsfall wrote:
I have fond memories of playing it on the GT-40, and
if Andrew Hume is
reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and modifying
it for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also implemented
reverse gravity...
Oops; reverse gravity (for the Sun) was implemented for Space Wars (or
whatever it was called; this was ~40 years ago, so don't expect my memory
to be the best).
-- Dave
7:49 a.m.
Dave Horsfall wrote:
I wonder how many GT40 Spacewar implementations there were?
I have seen two: one from MIT, the other from Stanford.
I have fond
memories of playing it on the GT-40, and if Andrew Hume
is reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and
modifying it for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also
implemented reverse gravity...
Oops; reverse gravity (for the Sun) was implemented
for Space Wars (or
whatever it was called; this was ~40 years ago, so don't expect my memory
to be the best). 
10:07 a.m.
The PDP-11/40 in the University of Toronto's Computer Research Facility
(CRF) had a GT-40, and the lead EE prof there loved the screen editor RT-11
provided for it. I never used it, but I was intrigued. (I did land the LM a
few times, though. More than a few.)
Across the raised floor aisle was the PDP-11/45, which ran Unix from 5PM to
8AM if I remember right, RT-11 the rest of the time, until some date around
1976 or 1977 (?), when Unix became an unstoppable force for innovation.
-rob
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 4:35 PM Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Dave Horsfall wrote:
memory
I have
fond memories of playing it on the GT-40, and if Andrew Hume
is reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and
modifying it for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also
implemented reverse gravity...
Oops; reverse gravity (for the Sun) was implemented
for Space Wars (or
whatever it was called; this was ~40 years ago, so don't expect my to be the best).
I wonder how many GT40 Spacewar implementations there were?
I have seen two: one from MIT, the other from Stanford.
1:10 p.m.
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022, 2:10 AM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The PDP-11/40 in the University of Toronto's
Computer Research Facility
(CRF) had a GT-40, and the lead EE prof there loved the screen editor RT-11
provided for it. I never used it, but I was intrigued. (I did land the LM a
few times, though. More than a few.)
Across the raised floor aisle was the PDP-11/45, which ran Unix from 5PM
to 8AM if I remember right, RT-11 the rest of the time, until some date
around 1976 or 1977 (?), when Unix became an unstoppable force for
innovation.
Also the approximate date of the rt11 emulation being viable on Unix...
Warner
-rob
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 4:35 PM Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Dave Horsfall wrote:
memory
I have
fond memories of playing it on the GT-40, and if Andrew Hume
is reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and
modifying it for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also
implemented reverse gravity...
Oops; reverse gravity (for the Sun) was implemented
for Space Wars (or
whatever it was called; this was ~40 years ago, so don't expect my to be the best).
I wonder how many GT40 Spacewar implementations there were?
I have seen two: one from MIT, the other from Stanford.
11:20 a.m.
If I recall there was a GT40 up on the fourth floor of UMCP's CS
building. I don't remember spacewar, but there was a luner lander game
where you tried to land near the lunar McDonalds (if you crashed in to
it, it chided you for destroying the only McDonalds on the moon).
------ Original Message ------
From: "Lars Brinkhoff" <lars(a)nocrew.org>
I wonder how many GT40 Spacewar implementations there
were?
I have seen two: one from MIT, the other from Stanford.
6:23 p.m.
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 5:29 AM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
If I recall there was a GT40 up on the fourth floor of
UMCP's CS
building. I don't remember spacewar, but there was a luner lander game
where you tried to land near the lunar McDonalds (if you crashed in to
it, it chided you for destroying the only McDonalds on the moon).
That's Jack's Moonlander.
10 Apr
10 Apr
12:14 p.m.
On 9 Apr 2022, at 17:23, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 5:29 AM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com
<mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
If I recall there was a GT40 up on the fourth floor of UMCP's CS
building. I don't remember spacewar, but there was a luner lander game
where you tried to land near the lunar McDonalds (if you crashed in to
it, it chided you for destroying the only McDonalds on the moon).
That's Jack's Moonlander.
It is OK for you Americans. We ran the GT40 in Scotland about 1974 (2nd year undergrad).
When the astronaut got out and said “a big mac to go” we had absolutely no idea what he
was talking about!
“a big mac” meant nothing and “to go” was just bad grammar. Worse grammar than the split
infinitives in star trek.
I am sure we did not have a Macdonalds in Scotland at that time. We did have KFC under
the uni - many a late-night chew while solving programming problems ….
But Macdonalds? They were well into the 80s…...
It was years later before any of us actually understood what was being said, but yes, a
great way to spend debugging hours in the early hours of the morning.
I can only just remember the use of the light pen - was that for thrust? I have no
recollection of any keyboard inputs.
Iain
3:40 p.m.
Knowing Jack, I think I safely say he would have been amused by the
different reactions. Just remember when he wrote that I do not think there
was a mikyd’s anywhere close to Maynard. Jack was a child of the Bronx
which made his love of the outdoors all the more real. Maynard (Mare
Assabet) really was desolate in comparison.
On Sun, Apr 10, 2022 at 6:14 AM Dr Iain Maoileoin <
iain(a)csp-partnership.co.uk> wrote:
On 9 Apr 2022, at 17:23, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 5:29 AM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
If I recall there was a GT40 up on the fourth
floor of UMCP's CS
building. I don't remember spacewar, but there was a luner lander game
where you tried to land near the lunar McDonalds (if you crashed in to
it, it chided you for destroying the only McDonalds on the moon).
That's Jack's Moonlander.
It is OK for you Americans. We ran the GT40 in Scotland about 1974 (2nd
year undergrad).
When the astronaut got out and said “a big mac to go” we had absolutely
no idea what he was talking about!
“a big mac” meant nothing and “to go” was just bad grammar. Worse grammar
than the split infinitives in star trek.
I am sure we did not have a Macdonalds in Scotland at that time. We did
have KFC under the uni - many a late-night chew while solving programming
problems ….
But Macdonalds? They were well into the 80s…...
It was years later before any of us actually understood what was being
said, but yes, a great way to spend debugging hours in the early hours of
the morning.
I can only just remember the use of the light pen - was that for thrust?
I have no recollection of any keyboard inputs.
Iain
9 Apr
9 Apr
1:14 a.m.
i do fondly remember the gt-40 and the many hours playing on it.
and i do remember the DEC engineers being bothered about replacing the registers.
On Apr 8, 2022, at 3:29 PM, Dave Horsfall
<dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
I have fond memories of playing it on the GT-40, and if Andrew Hume is
reading this he'll remember reverse-engineering the code and modifying it
for three-play operation; I think Peter Ivanov also implemented reverse
gravity...
Eventually DEC Field Circus stopped replacing GT-40 switch registers if
they'd suspected that they were used for playing it :-)
The GT-40 had a primitive loader; it was Craig McGregor of the CSU (UNSW)
who used it to download an 8-bit loader for things like Lunar Lander (I
only wrote a simple "Life" program for it, using the light-pen).
-- Dave
1:53 a.m.
I've never met anyone who did more than play on a gt40, myself included. I
suspect it was something DEC sales loved, but maybe it made a lot less
profit than vt52s, decwriters and other io devices attached to your normal
11 chassis.
Perhaps some architects made good use of it?
2:28 a.m.
George Michaelson wrote:
I've never met anyone who did more than play on
a gt40, myself included. I
suspect it was something DEC sales loved, but maybe it made a lot less
profit than vt52s, decwriters and other io devices attached to your normal
11 chassis.
Perhaps some architects made good use of it?
Inside DEC they were used (with DEC-20s) to run the Stanford SUDS CAD software.
p
4:03 a.m.
Feels like a good fit. If they'd got into the right hands in a uni they'd
have been doing the same thing, but my personal sense was they mostly got
to CS departments, small volumes went to people with real world 2D and 3D
design drive, and when commodity high res scan displays went mass market
then CAD bust out and rotring pen shares went south.
There was this weird dichotomy that architecture schools would have
analogue computers because air conditioning engineers used them, but they
had to walk to the computer centre to do programming (this was my
experience at Leeds uni basically)
Vector graphics were sweet-as. People liked pixels better.
More people would have experienced vector scan as asteroids or the tank
game that made it into video game parlours but by then 75% plus of the
cabinets were raster displays.
The Tektronix 4010 at York was almost always free, people went to the apl
decwriter before they'd use it. I really loved it!
On Sat, 9 Apr 2022, 10:54 am Phil Budne, <phil(a)ultimate.com> wrote:
George Michaelson wrote:
I've never met anyone who did more than
play on a gt40, myself
included. I
suspect it was something DEC sales loved, but
maybe it made a lot less
profit than vt52s, decwriters and other io devices attached to your
normal
11 chassis.
Perhaps some architects made good use of it?
Inside DEC they were used (with DEC-20s) to run the Stanford SUDS CAD
software.
p
12:46 p.m.
Hi,
Dave Horsfall wrote:
Eventually DEC Field Circus stopped replacing GT-40
switch registers
if they'd suspected that they were used for playing it :-)
Andrew Hume wrote:
i do remember the DEC engineers being bothered about
replacing the
registers.
There's nothing at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre)#Lunar_Lander_…
about the switch registers being worn by playing Burness's Moonlander.
What's the connection?
There are a couple of links from that section to interesting pages with
quotes from Burness,
https://www.acriticalhit.com/moonlander-one-giant-leap-for-game-design
https://www.technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/
which include a photo that's captioned as Burness and Moonlander from
circa '74:
https://www.acriticalhit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/unnamed-LG-2.png
--
Cheers, Ralph.
12:51 p.m.
There was a hack to stop the game and reload fuel and go 4000 to continue.
Maybe people who did not expect the front console to be used so heavily
broke the funky rocker switches.
G
On Sat, 9 Apr 2022, 8:46 pm Ralph Corderoy, <ralph(a)inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
Hi,
Dave Horsfall wrote:
Eventually DEC Field Circus stopped replacing
GT-40 switch registers
if they'd suspected that they were used for playing it :-)
Andrew Hume wrote:
i do remember the DEC engineers being bothered
about replacing the
registers.
There's nothing at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre)#Lunar_Lander_…
about the switch registers being worn by playing Burness's Moonlander.
What's the connection?
There are a couple of links from that section to interesting pages with
quotes from Burness,
https://www.acriticalhit.com/moonlander-one-giant-leap-for-game-design
https://www.technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/
which include a photo that's captioned as Burness and Moonlander from
circa '74:
https://www.acriticalhit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/unnamed-LG-2.png
--
Cheers, Ralph.
4:30 p.m.
the connection is that these are switch registers on the front panel.
they ae designed for occasional use, not for long sessions with
multiple people flipping them on and off for hours on end.
they did last well, but its certainly not what they were designed for.
On Apr 9, 2022, at 3:46 AM, Ralph Corderoy
<ralph(a)inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
Hi,
Dave Horsfall wrote:
Eventually DEC Field Circus stopped replacing
GT-40 switch registers
if they'd suspected that they were used for playing it :-)
Andrew Hume wrote:
i do remember the DEC engineers being bothered
about replacing the
registers.
There's nothing at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre)#Lunar_Lander_…
about the switch registers being worn by playing Burness's Moonlander.
What's the connection?
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16 comments
11 participants
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Lars Brinkhoff -
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Ralph Corderoy -
Rob Pike -
Ron Natalie -
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