17 Apr
2020
17 Apr
'20
2:48 p.m.
At 10:00 AM 4/17/2020, Bob Smith <bobsmithofd at gmail.com> wrote:
...I believe sometime in the late 70s, maybe as late as
1980, a prof
associated with UMass wrote a paper describing an extension of the
PDP8 called 8/X or 8X.
...I believe, my memory is fuzzy, that it was a prof nnmed Stone or
Stoner (perhaps Harold S) who lead the effort and had his name on the
paper.
That is probably Harold S. Stone, whom I knew as a Stanford prof in
the early 1970s and did some corporate consulting with. Brilliant
guy. From 1974 to 1984 he was at UMass Amherst, so your memory isn't
fuzzy at all. He also worked at the IBM Yorktown Heights research
center. He was the author of several books and many papers about
computer architecture, algorithms, and interfaces.
Unfortunately I don't remember him working on a PDP-8 extension, and
a quick search of the ACM Digital Library turned up nothing. As far
as I know he's still alive at the age of 82.