Classic programming

From: Eric Christopherson Sent: Friday, August 07, 2015 9:18 AM As others have noted, there are a lot of subjective unstateds in your basic question. I do a lot of my daily programming in PDP-10 assemblers, usually Macro-20 but when working on WAITS it's FAIL and on ITS it's MIDAS. In addition, I occasionally program in MIT TECO, to keep my hand in as the maintainer of the original EMACS (RMS said so). One project got sidetracked by an operating system that is too modern: The DECsystem-1070 (KI-10 processor) is running Tops-10 v6.03A, in which executable programs are created in .EXE format. Even the most recent version, 7.05, can execute programs in the older form (two segment files, a .LOW and a .HGH or .SHR depending on sharability of the high segment code). This affects the use of an old FORTRAN compiler to implement a vintage on-line game, DECWAR, in which the .SHR segment is writable, and each player's stats (up to 12 players at a time) are kept there. What I have to do, when higher priority projects permit, is to install a copy of the linker, and probably Macro-10 as well, from v5.03, which came before the .EXE file format was defined. A year earlier, to get the KI-10 going, I had to program in PAL on our PDP-8/e to add capabilities to PIP10, because the 8/e was the only system in the museum with working DECtape drives which could read and write on PDP-10 format DECtapes. So yeah, not a lot of mainstream use of the languages involved, and yeah, I like doing it. That's a good thing, because otherwise my job could be deadly. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/