Nigel,
I first learned assembly on a straight-8. Also learned about repair with
the same machine (1974).
As for fun time wasters back then there was a DECUS paper tape that could
compute n! up to 200! exactly. I remember that I could start it before
lunch, come back, and then about 15 minutes later it would start printing
all the digits for 200!.
Enjoy your 8,
Marc Howard
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 2:59 PM Nigel Johnson via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Brings back memories! My first 6800 cross assembler
came to me as 2000
Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11
but the card reader was on the PDP-8.
The only common peripheral was paper tape. One night, the Chief
Engineer and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape,
and fed it directly into the PDP11 tape reader. X-on X-off was handled
by hitting the stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was
faster than the reader. The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the
floor, which we carefully prevented from tangling. Somehow OS/8 managed
to not crash with the constant start/stop.
Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled
perfectly on the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham
repeater controller!
The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year
and we often have fun talking about the good old days!
cheers,
Nigel Johnson
On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan
McNeill via cctech
wrote:
> 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.
I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long
long time ago. I also
learned
how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could
play morse code from a
file
instead of a paper tape for our University club
station. ;)
--------------//----------------
brendan at mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883
73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
--
Nigel Johnson
MSc., MIEEE
VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
You can reach me by voice on Skype: TILBURY2591
If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route
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Nigel Johnson <nw.johnson at ieee.org>
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