I?m just going to guess (I have no experience with this architecture) ? would that mean either file corruption ? or possibly the last record needs to be padded out with ?empty? blocks to be the same size as the others?
Hi All,
somebody scanned documents for me in .pdfs.
Looking into them, they are pages of jpgs embedded in .pdf ..
(100 pages resulting in 350MBytes ...)
Any easy way to convert them into some b/w .pdf file?
It is all text, no drawings ...
Pointers?
Thanks
Being stuck at home, was musing the idea to look into some graphics
software from the '70's, or early 80's ...
Looking for some wire frames, hidden line removal, 3d graphics...
Any pointers?
View month ago or longer, somebody on this list recovered some large
package of FORTRAN code, and wanted to invest it, but I think it was
posted under a wrong subject, so I can't find it anymore ...
THANKS!
Subject line says it all. The Lambda uses this as its disk controller and
it's looking like the one in mine needs some debugging. There doesn't seem
to be any documentation for this controller out there. There are docs for
the Interphase SMD 2180 on Bitsavers but it appears to be a very different
board.
Thanks!
Josh
> From: Neil Thompson <albiorix at gmail.com>
>
> I'm convinced that Dijksta (and anyone else who came out with similar
> comments were full of horseshit. In my opinion, it's the ability to
> translate a real world "thing" into an algorithm that is the essense of
> programming, and anyone who has managed to learn (particularly on their
> own, as many of us did) that ability has learned something that transcends
> the language (or tool) you use to implement the algorithm.
There's definitely truth to this. The main thing that makes a good
programmer isn't memorization of language features or syntax, it's
good mental organization and thinking habits; the ability and practice
of really *thinking through* the steps involved in solving a problem,
building a solid mental model of the relevant data structures and
algorithms, and then breaking those down into component steps until
one arrives at a suitable representation in native-language
operations. If someone has a good understanding of that, they can
apply it (with varying amounts of blood, sweat, and tears) in any
language; if they don't, there's no language in the world that can
impart it to them (no matter *what* the flavor-of-the-decade Savior Of
All Programming Forever is - "Try Swift! It's the new Pascal!")
*That said,* there are definitely some languages that are more
conducive to building these habits than others (and, within each
group, many that emphasize different aspects more or less strongly.) I
can't speak to COBOL as I've never had cause to get any experience
with it, but I would say that BASIC (as in, the old-school,
unstructured BASICs of the Bad Old Days) really does teach you a bunch
of habits that you end up needing to un-learn as soon as you start
working with better languages (not even *newer* languages - ALGOL and
Lisp both predate it.)
Line-#-and-GOTO programming imposes the same burden of bookkeeping and
space-management on the programmer as direct machine-code monitor
hacking and the most primitive assemblers, but without any rational
explanation as to why, so that any novice attempting to create a
program of any real complexity ends up being instilled with a
superstitious dread over the ludicrous non-question of where to put
things - do I space statements N numbers apart? What if I need to add
more than N-1 intervening statements later!? Should I place my
subroutines on even 1000s for easy reference? Will the line numbers
even go high enough!? - the lack of scoped/local variables or any
parameter-passing mechanism for GOSUB makes any non-trivial
modularization nearly impossible, and the READ/DATA structure is just
flat-out demented.
And all that mental exhaustion *before* the newbie even gets to the
*real* challenges of learning to program!
Now, Dijkstra was a self-important ponce given to wild all-or-nothing
proclamations and manifestos (manifestes? Manifesti?) and even if we
give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his statements
quoted here were meant tongue-in-cheek they're still pretty
ridiculous. And God knows the Appointed Language Messiah in that great
holy war, Pascal, was its own special breed of Hell for novices and
experts alike (array size as type qualifier? Just kill me now...) And
it's definitely true that plenty of people can and did learn to
program in BASIC and still went on to learn better and do Good Things
down the line. But there absolutely are such things as bad programming
languages.
On Apr 6, 2020, at 10:00 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
>
> They play with the
> pennies to discover that they can roll around, and learn that they're not
> food or nasal suppositories,
I was with you up till here, but wait, what?
I?m one of those kids who was just the right age.
Five years older and I would have been in the Car Club, and would have ended up being a damn good mechanic without a lot of career opportunities.
Five years later and not every damn computer on the planet would have come with a BASIC interpreter in ROM and who knows what my tinkering instinct would have led to.
But I, born in 1971, had an Atari 2600 and its BASIC programming cartridge, and in the fall on 1982 I got a VIC-20, and sometime in 1983 my parent bought me an Apple //e.
So I did grow up with Microsoft BASIC as my first language, and, sure, it doesn?t lend itself well to structured programming, but then when I wanted to know ?well how do you do _that_?? I ended up in 6502 assembly, and picked up P-System PASCAL and Logo along the way. Then in the summer of ?89 I interned in a physics department, and got OK at Turbo Pascal and sort-of-vaguely-able-to-write C.
College brought REXX on (IBM VM/CMS; I didn?t get an Amiga until the 2010s, well after its relevance) and Perl and Scheme and SPARC assembly, and grad school (both for irrelevant degrees: Ancient Mediterranean Civilization and History?but wait, there?s a footnote) 680x0 assembly and Java. (The footnote is, well history of computing, so I got a lot of deep-dive stuff into other languages and architectures.) Since then, whatever I needed to learn when I needed to learn it. I?ve programmed COBOL for money, which has joined the ranks of things I?m not super-proud to have done for money but hey it paid the bills when I needed it.
Since then?Python, C, Go, TypeScript, whatever was needed. These days it?s mostly Python.
But really what it was was that I was lucky enough to be in that small age window where computers were, one the one hand, something middle-class families could afford while still being capable of doing cool things, and on the other hand, simple enough that a smart adolescent could pretty much understand them more-or-less in their entirety.
Adam
At 16:12 05-04-20, you wrote:
>On 4/5/20 6:28 PM, geneb via cctalk wrote:
>>On Sun, 5 Apr 2020, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
>>
>>>I'm convinced that Dijksta (and anyone else who came out with similar
>>>comments were full of horseshit.? In my opinion, it's the ability to
>>>translate a real world "thing" into an algorithm that is the essense of
>>>programming, and anyone who has managed to learn (particularly on their
>>>own, as many of us did) that ability has learned something that transcends
>>>the language (or tool) you use to implement the algorithm.? When I first
>>>started programming professionally, we had "programmers" (or sometimes
>>>designers) who specified the algorithms and "coders" who implemented them.
>>>That never worked well
>>Yep.? You can write horrible code in /any/ language. ;)
>>BTW, I scanned & uploaded this last week.? Oddly relevant.
>>https://archive.org/details/cobolcodingform
>
>I still have lots of them. And Printer Output Forms. And Fortran
>Programming Forms. And all kinds of other Programming forms. And
>Flow Chart Forms. You know all that stuff we actually used to
>engineer programs before the software engineers came along and said
>we were all doing wrong.
>
>bill
Ran into a bunch of my FORTRAN programs from over
50 years ago as well as the obligatory flowcharts
I would do first before writing a single line of
code. Code written in pencil so could erase
errors and only then would I use a keypunch for
final version. Also a few FORTRAN coding
forms. Back then, with sometimes a 48 hour delay
between submitting my card deck and getting
program output, it was well worth spending an
hour or two to print out contents of cards and
carefully check that there weren't missing commas
and or other errors that would mean correcting
the stupid mistake and resubmitting ones card deck.
Never got into COBOL as my main interest was
real-time computing and so next step up was
access to PDP-8 which had FOCAL and quickly
learned that programming in assembler was the way
to go. Still like assembly language programming
and suspect my early experience of learning to
code in an environment where there wasn't really
a dividing line between software and hardware
(people would build custom boards for
PDP-8's/PDP-11's to speed up data acquisition)
that the biggest change I made in my programming
style was to switch to VB as it allowed me to
easily create the graphical interface I needed
but still let me link to C or Assembler routines
in my VB6 code until windoze became too locked
down to be of any use. Still haven't got all my
VB6 programs running under Wine on Linux but at least Linux has FORTRAN and C.
Part of what I've noticed is that I can't sit
down at a keyboard and write code (as one is
supposed to do nowadays) and it turns into a
total mess. I still use flowcharts when I'm
dealing with tricky code and the nice thing about
flowcharts is that one can easily create a
hardware state machine from them. Was nice in
1970's, but now a Propeller chip, even using
interperted Spin code, works far faster than the
TTL state machines I used to make. Other
paleo-programmer related deficits include being
totally unable to use RDB and still make use of
linked lists and hash tables to create my
databases as have been doing this for 50
years. Software Tools was probably the most
important book I read in 1983 as it got me out of
my rut of writing a massive FORTRAN program to do
a specific task that I'd have no idea how to
modify even 6 months later to small useful tools
that could be strung together. Back then
engineers I worked with would have total disdain
for Comp-Sci types who would still be working out
their code indentation scheme while we would
already be using a quickly written throwaway
program to perform a particular task.
The other thing I should bring up is that my wife
is after me to get rid of a lot of my old
books. While rumaging through the attic of my
shop found boxes of old computer books which I'd
like to keep but have been told that if I haven't
looked at them in 15 years that it's unlikely I
will in future. Will check in see if some of
them have been scanned onto bitsavers or other
sites but have 68000 programming books, 6502 and
other microprocessor related books as well as
lots of Mac books when I just had to get into the
guts of a Mac to do what I wanted. Have a number
of PDP-11 Unibus cards which likely won't use and
will have to get all of that sorted out. Once
have a list of what I've got will post it on my
web site. I live in Kamloops, BC if there's
anyone on this list who lives close by who's interested.
A few hours ago I started looking at three "smart" light switches that
need LEDs replaced, and switched on the soldering iron, and ... nope.
It's a Weller WP80 and it seems the sensor in the heating element has
died. I discovered that only after resetting and then dismantling the
control unit to check it out with a DVM, of course.
Clearly I need either a new WP80 element, or a new soldering iron. I
could get a WSP80 for far less than the cost of a new element for the
WP80, but I'd get the element faster. So which, if any, is the better
iron? What would you guys do?
I begrudge paying UKP 92 for a new element. That's the cheapest I could
find -- /half/ the most expensive price -- but just seems ludicrously
extortionate for what amounts to a piece of swaged stainless steel tube
with a short length of resistance wire and an even shorter length of
thermocouple wire inside it. I could buy a whole new solder station
with more bells and whistles, albeit of a "lesser brand", for less.
--
Pete
Pete Turnbull
For those interested in playing with Jim's emulator, a few resources:
Bitsavers has some doco and bits:
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/prime/http://bitsavers.org/bits/Prime/
I have been assembling what I hope will be the definitive Prime info
site. It's not complete, but contains manuals scanned by, among
others, AEK and Jim Wilcoxson, as well as material from my Prime-using
past, etc. I have more documentation and software to add as I have
time.
https://sysovl.info/reference_prime.html
Of particular use might be this writeup on installing PRIMOS Revs 22 or
23 on the emulator. It's set up for the old demo version of the
emulator, so needs a fair amount of updating, but may help get you
started. I'll work on it soonish.
https://sysovl.info/reference_prime_drb_installing_primos.html
De
From: Tom Uban
> Does anyone have information on having a replacement PDP-11/05 key made?
Google is your friend; here:
https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/05#Keys
I don't recall if there's anough info there to create new keys without an
original to copy. At one point I made a run of copies (after posting a call
here); I suppose I could do so again.
Noel
>According to the Ref Manual, that's the one I was looking for.
>Now to mount the RL on RSTS and see what it takes to build it
>there. I'll let the list know how I make out in case someone
>else is interested.
>
>bill
The RL02 image is RSX Files-11, and I?m not sure if you can mount that with RSTS. I could move it to a RT-11 formatted RL02 or if your RSTS system is on HECnet I can put it where you could get it that way. I looked for the original DOS-11 formatted DEC distribution tape but can?t find it at this time. Let me know if you need anything.
Mark
I mistakenly bought some memory thinking it was for a VAXstation 4000 VLC.
It turns out that it isn't. It physically fits a VAXstation 4000 Model 60,
but putting it in that machine the machine fails to power up. The part
number is 50-19464-02, and I am unable to identify what machine it works in.
Can anyone tell me where to find out?
Thanks
Rob
I'm working on restoring an LMI Lambda, which is missing both its tape
drive and its disk drive. If anyone has a Cipher F880 9-track drive or a
Fujitsu Eagle SMD drive, drop me a line. Be nice if they were in working
condition, but so long as they're repairable I can work with 'em.
Thanks!
Josh
This might be of interest to many of the people on the list.
paul
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>
>> Also, ACM has currently opened up all of its digital archives during these pandemic times, ... https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch
I know this doesn't count as a general purpose computer, but does
anybody have detailed technical information about the Monroe 7860
business calculator/printer? I think it was produced in the early 1980's.
Specifically, I'm looking for information about the rom OS for this
machine. e.g. are there more built-in commands like "dir". Maybe,
is there a basic interpreter I can get at?
On the hardware side, does anybody know about the mag stripe paper
that the machine is supposed to work with? It appears to store user
data on the mag stripe on the paper that it prints on...interesting
idea, although limited.
Thanks.
Bill Newman
Just in the middle of getting a fresh OpenVMS install set up on my
VAXStation (the original having been done years ago when I barely had
any idea what I was doing,) and looking through various repositories
for interesting software to put on there, and I got to thinking about
something I recalled reading about a few years back.
I know from the book "Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice"
- http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/BitsOfHistory.pdf
- that, back when, there were two implementations of Smalltalk-80 for
VAXen - the first was Unix-based, done by an independent research
group, while the second ran under VMS and was actually developed
within DEC. This version - VAX/Smalltalk-80 - was headed up by Stoney
Ballard and Stephen Shirron; anybody know if there's a surviving copy
out there, if it was ever available outside DEC to begin with?
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:58:46 -0400
> From: Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com <mailto:bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com>>
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>>
> Subject: APL-11
> Message-ID:
> <MWHPR22MB0878D888143DFB8F78B81AE2EDCB0 at MWHPR22MB0878.namprd22.prod.outlook.com <mailto:MWHPR22MB0878D888143DFB8F78B81AE2EDCB0 at MWHPR22MB0878.namprd22.prod.outlook.com>>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
>
> Haven't given up on DIBOL. May try installing the RT-11 version and
> see if it runs.
>
> But now another language of interest has reared its ugly head. :-)
>
> Anybody have an image of the tape for APL-11? Manual claims it
> runs on all of the PDP-11 OSes and it is another language from
> my past that I haven't touched (other than to read some programs
> out of curiosity) in more than two decades.
Bill,
I have the APL-11 V2.1 source files on a RL02 disk image. I will make it available at http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip <http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip>
Once you mount the disk image with Simh, the are two ready to run task images that will run under RSX11M or M+
In [201,200]APL6OK.TSK and APL7OK.TSK that are the REAL*4 and REAL*8 versions of APL-11. On the disk are the
Original .MAC sources as well as files from a RSX SIG tape that modified APL-11 for I/D under RSX11M+ that increased
The workspace (.BXWA from ~30000 to ~60000 bytes). It also contains a character set for Vt220 for the APL character set.
When you install the APL task experiment with the /INC to maximize the available workspace, On my system, I can
INS APL6.TSK/INC=37000 to max the workspace for the single precision version.
Also, the scanned APL-11 reference manual can be downloaded at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf <http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf>
and the APL11 installation guide at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf <http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf>
The RSX SIG files that have the info to change APL-11 to an I/D RSX11M+ task are at [370,360] on the RL02 disk. I remember having this work back in the mid-1980s butI have not been able to get it to work today. If I link it with ODT it seems to blow up when the first overlay is loaded. If anyone could help with that I?d really appreciate it!
Best,
Mark
>
> I have the source to something called APL-11 for Unix but it is
> not the same thing. Actually, not even close. :-)
>
> Would love to see a few pointers.
>
> Oh, and in case anyone is curious about my endeavors....
> The SIMH system I am using now is based on the 11/70 and was built
> with only 2M of memory. Why you would do that under SIMH where there
> is really no memory constraint at all, I can not fathom. I used to
> have a bunch of 11/44's and that has been my favorite since my original
> 11/24 system died long, long ago./ I am going to configure a SIMH
> System using the 11/44 as my model and then reinstall everything in
> order to have a really good system for playing with this stuff.
>
> Sure wish there was a way to find some of the third party stuff from
> the sourcebooks. A lot of nice software that should have been saved
> for historical reasons, if nothing else, has been lost.
>
> bill
There's been a lot of discussion of late about replacing power supply
capacitors in DEC power supplies. I have a BA123 and I believe that it uses
an H7260 power supply. I feel like it might be a good idea to replace the
capacitors before a disaster occurs. I haven't been able to find a
schematic for the H7260 and I'm wondering which/how many caps need to be
replaced. Does anyone know what specific part# to replace them with? I'd
prefer to purchase the replacements before I dig in to the machine, that
way I don't have to remove the power supply twice.
I also own a BA23. Does anyone know if that power supply uses the same caps
as the H7260 and how many are required for that supply?
Does anybody have a maintenance print or service manual for the DEC H7874?
This is the power supply used in the BA4xx and R400x cabinets. As you might
guess, I have one that tries to power up but shuts down after a second.
Probably a bad capacitor (or several), but this thing is ridiculously
complicated and not all that easy to disassemble, either. I'd like to be
able to trouble shoot it rather than just firing the proverbial parts cannon
at it. FWIW, none of the electrolytic (of which there are many) have
obviously failed - no leaking, no bulges, etc. Of course, that proves
fairly little.
Thanks,
Bob Armstrong
>Problem with that is all the files get jumbled into one directory
>and I am sure the build will want them in the right proj,uid locations
>in order to work. I am thinking a backup tape may do the job. SPD's
>seem to say that later versions of RSX and RSTS had compatible BACKUP
>formats. We'll see. If that don't work there is always kermit. :-)
>It must be possible because the installation manual says the
>installation tape works for all four PDP-11 OSes.
Bill,
I?ve looked extensively to see if I can find the original distribution tape image and can?t find it.
At one point DEC donated the APL-11 to DECUS and I think that is when I got it back in 1984 or so. The files I have include the Macro-11 source code which as near as I can tell was not on the DEC distribution when it was a layered product. I now think that the copy of APL-11 I have must have come from a restored backup tape from my old system.
In the DEC distribution, it was a DOS-11 tape which could be read by all the PDP-11 OSes as you say. I just attempted to create a DOS-11 tape similar to the DEC distribution, but when I try to run the installation against it I get a task build of APL that doesn?t work. It immediately exits and I think is due to some differences between the auto overlay code in RSX11M+ V4.6 and the V2.1 M+ that I used to have. I added the .MAC files and .CMD files (for assembly, and linking) to the tape and make it available at:
http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.tap <http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.tap>
Let me know if that works for you. It may build under RSTS fine.
A backup plan to make it available is that also on the same web site are two disk images for the PiDP-11/70 folks that is a complete RSX11M+ V4.6 ready to run under Simh. On the DU1 disk image in [201,50] and [201,200] are all the APL-11 files I have. That system also installs a working APL-11 for RSX.
Mark
Bill,
The APL-11 files on DECUS RSX85A are not a complete distribution but a modified version that was intended to run under I/D on M+.
I have the APL-11 V2.1 source files on a RL02 disk image. I will make it available at http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip
Once you mount the disk image with Simh, the are two ready to run task images that will run under RSX11M or M+
In [201,200]APL6OK.TSK and APL7OK.TSK that are the REAL*4 and REAL*8 versions of APL-11. On the disk are the
Original .MAC sources as well as files from a RSX SIG tape that modified APL-11 for I/D under RSX11M+ that increased
The workspace (.BXWA from ~30000 to ~60000 bytes). It also contains a character set for Vt220 for the APL character set.
When you install the APL task experiment with the /INC to maximize the available workspace, On my system, I can
INS APL6.TSK/INC=37000 to max the workspace for the single precision version.
Also, the scanned APL-11 reference manual can be downloaded at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf
and the APL11 installation guide at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf
The RSX SIG files that have the info to change APL-11 to an I/D RSX11M+ task from RSX85A are also at [370,360] on the RL02 disk. I remember having this work back in the mid-1980s but I have not been able to get it to work today. If I link it with ODT it seems to blow up when the first overlay is loaded. If anyone could help with that I?d really appreciate it!
Best,
Mark
Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more time on our computers, if that were possible. I have just completed the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New Zealand. You can view the restoration story and find appropriate resources here: https://pdp-8.nz <https://pdp-8.nz/>
While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list. I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
--------------//----------------
brendan at mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883
Haven't given up on DIBOL. May try installing the RT-11 version and
see if it runs.
But now another language of interest has reared its ugly head. :-)
Anybody have an image of the tape for APL-11? Manual claims it
runs on all of the PDP-11 OSes and it is another language from
my past that I haven't touched (other than to read some programs
out of curiosity) in more than two decades.
I have the source to something called APL-11 for Unix but it is
not the same thing. Actually, not even close. :-)
Would love to see a few pointers.
Oh, and in case anyone is curious about my endeavors....
The SIMH system I am using now is based on the 11/70 and was built
with only 2M of memory. Why you would do that under SIMH where there
is really no memory constraint at all, I can not fathom. I used to
have a bunch of 11/44's and that has been my favorite since my original
11/24 system died long, long ago./ I am going to configure a SIMH
System using the 11/44 as my model and then reinstall everything in
order to have a really good system for playing with this stuff.
Sure wish there was a way to find some of the third party stuff from
the sourcebooks. A lot of nice software that should have been saved
for historical reasons, if nothing else, has been lost.
bill
I just stumbled over https://legacyos.org/ and checking here for what
you say about it only to find out that it seems like you missed it.
Have you all missed it or is it just not interesting ?
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Techwiz, Peter Sjoberg GPG key (42DDDDDD) on keyserver & homepage
Key fingerprint = EB81 3135 1636 576A DA83 826B 2455 0E88 42DD DDDD
Homepage: http://www.techwiz.ca/~peters
Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/henahadu/
Enigma: http://meinEnigma.com
Since I am forced to stay at home more than I would like I though I would
check some more PSUs. One I wanted to check was the H7109-C from one of my
VAXstation 4000 VLC machines. I found a leaked capacitor and some other high
ESR ones, so I will replace those. However, I also noticed a ceramic disk
capacitor that appears to be split all around the edge. Is that a known
failure mode?
Regards
Rob
