13 Oct
2009
13 Oct
'09
3:41 a.m.
Hi.
I was browsing ebay and found these two auctions:
http://cgi.ebay.com/PDP8-PDP-8-pdp8e-Source-Printout_W0QQitemZ290359238887
http://cgi.ebay.com/PDP8-PDP-8-pdp8e-TECO-Source-Printout_W0QQitemZ29035927…
I don't know if source listings where normally distributed or if this is
a rare find, perhaps even something that should go to a museum. Is this
source readily available?
If not, I hope whoever buys it will scan it an preserve it, I'm
considering doing it myself.
Kind Regards,
Pontus.
14 Oct
14 Oct
12:55 p.m.
Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
Hi.
I was browsing ebay and found these two auctions:
http://cgi.ebay.com/PDP8-PDP-8-pdp8e-Source-Printout_W0QQitemZ290359238887
http://cgi.ebay.com/PDP8-PDP-8-pdp8e-TECO-Source-Printout_W0QQitemZ29035927…
I don't know if source listings where normally distributed or if this is
a rare find, perhaps even something that should go to a museum. Is this
source readily available?
If not, I hope whoever buys it will scan it an preserve it, I'm
considering doing it myself.
Kind Regards,
Pontus.
No replies? surely someone must know if this unique or available to
anyone with a set of OS/8 tapes?
Kind Regards,
Pontus.
1:05 p.m.
From: Pontus
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 9:55 AM
Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
> I was browsing ebay and found these two auctions:
> I don't know if source listings where normally
distributed or if this is
> a rare find, perhaps even something that should go to a museum. Is this
> source readily available?
> If not, I hope whoever buys it will scan it an
preserve it, I'm
> considering doing it myself.
No replies? surely someone must know if this unique or
available to
anyone with a set of OS/8 tapes?
Kind Regards,
Pontus.
I took at look at this. It appears to be a localized version of the OS, along
with some other utilities. I would bid on it, but I don't want to get into a
bidding war (cf. the thread on DECtape madness).
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at livingcomputermuseum.org
http://www.pdpplanet.org/
http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/
1:12 p.m.
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Rich Alderson wrote:
[re ebay items 290359238887 and 290359274421]
I took at look at this. It appears to be a localized
version of the OS,
along with some other utilities. I would bid on it, but I don't want to
get into a bidding war (cf. the thread on DECtape madness).
So, Al... Would the Museum be interested in either of these printouts?
I'm considering buying them for the Museum if nobody else is interested in
doing so.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
1:27 p.m.
David Griffith wrote:
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Rich Alderson wrote:
[re ebay items 290359238887 and 290359274421]
I wouldn't spend much money on it. We have several versions on DECtape.
I took at look at this. It appears to be a
localized version of the
OS, along with some other utilities. I would bid on it, but I don't
want to get into a bidding war (cf. the thread on DECtape madness).
So, Al... Would the Museum be interested in either of these printouts?
I'm considering buying them for the Museum if nobody else is interested
in doing so.
1:16 p.m.
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Rich Alderson wrote:
I took at look at this. It appears to be a localized
version of the OS,
along with some other utilities. I would bid on it, but I don't want to
get into a bidding war (cf. the thread on DECtape madness).
The thing I noticed is that the mods seem to have been done by the group at
OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). I'd really love to see
details on OMSI's involvement with DEC computers. I spent a lot of my
childhood there, and I can guarentee I never saw any sign of any DEC
computers during the timeframe they'd have been doing such things.
Zane
1:36 p.m.
On Oct 14, 2009, at 1:32 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Does anyone have documentation for OMSI BASIC for OS/8? I used that in
college but haven't been able to find any documentation on the net.
I'd really love to see
details on OMSI's involvement with DEC computers.
OMSI Pascal for the PDP-11 (which became Oregon Software)
A quick Google scan shows up PILOT, BASIC, and RSTS utilities
from there as well. 
10:06 p.m.
DEC had quite a place at OMSI in at least in the 1973 through late
1970's timeframe.
OMSI had a Straight-8, with quite a bit of RAM, one of the fixed head
disk drives (was it RA32?), a few DECTape drives, and a Tektronix 4002
as a console terminal, as well as a Centronix dot matrix printer, and if
I recall correctly, even one of the small Calcomp drum plotters. I
don't know what happened to the Straight-8, but it was quite heavily
used when I was there. OMSI had computer programming classes and used
the 8 for teaching assembly and BASIC programming.
They also had a rather heavily configured PDP 11/45 running some fairly
early version of RSTS, with a dial-in modem bank, and a number of
terminals in a "terminal room" as well as a terminal in a museum exhibit
that was connected to the 11. OMSI did a lot of development work,
especially related to development of a PASCAL compiler on the 11. I
also know that they did quite a bit of modification to OS/8 on the PDP
8. I remember seeing source listings for both OS/8 and RSTS on
green-line paper around the place. They also had a number of those DEC
logic labs, along with tons of software and documentation for the 8 and
11.
I once found a bug in RSTS that allowed me to capture PPN's and
passwords from any dial-up terminal. I ended up finding the [1,2]
(systems operator) password at one point, and due to teenage foolishness
on my part, ended up getting caught. OMSI had DEC Systems Engineers all
over this issue, sending some of their expert RSTS guys to OMSI figure
out the bug and get rid of it. OMSI apparently had some pretty good
pull with DEC, and I believe was well-supported by DEC.
Eventually, the folks that were involved with the development of PASCAL
ended up spinning off their own company called Oregon Software, and
ended up taking over OMSI's 11/45, but leased services back to OMSI at a
very low rate. I'm not at all sure of how the whole business deal
worked, but at around that time, I graduated from high school and went
to work at Tektronix, and he much more computer toys to play with at Tek
then OMSI had, and kind of lost touch with the whole thing.
One person that I fondly remember was a man who was the head of the
computing department at OMSI at the time was named Rusty Whitney. I was
involved with him when I got caught for "breaking in" to the OMSI RSTS
system. He was really great in dealing with the situation. I Googled
him just now, and found his Linked-In page:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rusty-whitney/8/93/397
He was the founder of Oregon Software. I'd bet that he has some great
stories to tell about those days.
I'm going to try contacting him to see if he remembers the whole RSTS
hacking situation.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:16 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: RE: OS8 Source listing
The thing I noticed is that the mods seem to have been done by the
group at
OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). I'd really love to see
details on OMSI's involvement with DEC computers. I spent a lot of my
childhood there, and I can guarentee I never saw any sign of any DEC
computers during the timeframe they'd have been doing such things.
Zane
11:17 p.m.
In article <B9639BAE3F34504E83FEEDD71D4AFB46282CF2 at mail.bensene.com>,
"Rick Bensene" <rickb at bensene.com> writes:
I once found a bug in RSTS that allowed me to capture
PPN's and
passwords from any dial-up terminal. [...]
As a 14 yr. old I once found a bug in RSTS. It turns out that when
you submitted a batch job, it ran as user BATCH which was a priveleged
user. Oops. I then proceeded to run a batch job that ran PASSWD and
listed out all the accounts and their plaintext passwords :-).
I discussed the interesting "bug" I found with some other users who
wanted me to keep it quiet, but I reported it to the admins.
I was rewarded by being made a priveleged user and being only 14 I
abused it, of course :-). There was a CUSP called WATCH that would
use PEEK to snoop the output buffers of another user's terminal. You
could watch on your terminal what was coming out on their terminal.
We had a locally modified version called FORCE that would also map
your keyboard input into their input buffer. I ran FORCE and gave
some random users a hard time by typing line-noise into their input
just to be a pest.
I lost my priveleged user status for that :-), IIRC.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
15 Oct
15 Oct
3:40 p.m.
On 10/14/09, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
OMSI had a Straight-8, with quite a bit of RAM, one of
the fixed head
disk drives (was it RA32?)...
Probably a DF32. "R" for disks came a short time later (like with the
RF08 or RK8). The "F" means "fixed" in DEC's naming scheme, while
"A"
would mean it's an SDI disk (RA60, RA70, RA80, RA81, RA92...)
-ethan
16 Oct
16 Oct
10:01 a.m.
New subject: OMSI PDP-8 (was OS8 Source listing)
On 10/14/09, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
> OMSI had a Straight-8, with quite a bit of RAM(er...core something
like 24K?),
one of the fixed head
disk drives
(was it RA32?)...
Probably a DF32. "R" for disks came a short time later (like with the
RF08 or RK8). The "F" means "fixed" in DEC's naming scheme,
while "A"
would mean it's an SDI disk (RA60, RA70, RA80, RA81, RA92...)
10:43 a.m.
New subject: OMSI PDP-8 (was OS8 Source listing)
On 10/16/09, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
The DF32 carries its own controller in the primary unit - there's room
behind the faceplate for several "system blocks" of 8 single-sided
modules or cable paddle cards. The "master" DF-32 has a full load of
slots and modules to implement the IOTs and the 3-cycle databreak
logic. The expansion drives, also called DS-32, have fewer slots and
modules because it's only the logic necessary to read/write the drive
and talk to the master.
The likely reason they were afraid of power failures is that the heads
do not retract on a DF32. They land right on their tracks. Too many
spin-down/spin-up cycles is bad. The drives, in fact, have the
ability to disengage power to the logic while leaving the motor
spinning - you can do basic maintenance without a complete power-down.
You can hook up just a single DF32 to any negibus machine with just a
large wad of cables - there are a few modules inside the CPU for bus
interfacing and the CPU component of the 3-cycle databreak, but I
think (since I do have this gear) that there's no "controller" between
the first drive and the CPU, unlike, say, an RK8 or TC08.
On 10/14/09, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
> OMSI had a Straight-8, with quite a bit of RAM(er...core something
like
24K?), one of the fixed head disk drives (was it RA32?)...
Probably a DF32.
Yup, that's it...DF32. It was housed in a full-height rack. I recall
the controller filled quite a bit of the rack...seemed the controller
was more complex than the Straight-8. I remember that the folks there
were always very afraid of power failures. I was there once when the
power did bounce a bit, and everyone got very nervous that the drive
might crash. It seemed to make it through OK. Another thing I remember is that one time something
went awry with the
DECTape controller. A DEC FSE came to fix it. Turned out it was
something with the power supply for the controller. The power supply
was replaced, but somehow a connection got swapped somewhere, and when
it was powered up, the controller let out all of its magic smoke. It
took a couple of weeks before the controller was fixed.
Oof! If it was an R-series-based controller (contemporary with the
CPU), the voltages coming off the PSU are +10V and -15V. Swapping
anything around would likely blow a *lot* of stuff up. An M-series
controller (built after, say, 1968), would be +5V and GND for sure,
and probably still the -15V here and there - still not good to mix up.
Somewhere around here I have a DECTape from that
system...I took an
assembly language programming class there and my class project (printing
text banner pages on the Centronix printer) files were on the tape.
That would be an interesting tape to find. Unless it's been stored in
an uninsulated attic or in a barn, I'd expect it could still be read -
they are very robust. I don't presently have a DECtape drive up and
running, but many people on the list do and could help, once you run
across it again.
-ethan
11:14 a.m.
New subject: OMSI (was: OS8 Source listing)
Thanks Rick,
Where on earth was this stuff hidden away? I'm trying to picture
where they'd have had the room. My parents were in the Tek Rock club
so I spent a lot of time back then at OMSI, including places that
weren't normally open to the public.
I miss the old OMSI. The new OMSI is a shadow of its former self as
far as I'm concerned. All the Cool stuff they used to have is pretty
much gone with a couple exceptions. We've been to the Children's
Museum a couple times in the last few years, and they only use a
small fraction of the space in the old OMSI building. The only good
things I see about OMSI having moved is the parking and the sub.
Sadly they've allowed the Mercury Capsule replica to be destroyed by
kids as it's no longer sealed up.
Zane
At 7:06 PM -0700 10/14/09, Rick Bensene wrote:
DEC had quite a place at OMSI in at least in the 1973
through late
1970's timeframe.
OMSI had a Straight-8, with quite a bit of RAM, one of the fixed head
disk drives (was it RA32?), a few DECTape drives, and a Tektronix 4002
as a console terminal, as well as a Centronix dot matrix printer, and if
I recall correctly, even one of the small Calcomp drum plotters. I
don't know what happened to the Straight-8, but it was quite heavily
used when I was there. OMSI had computer programming classes and used
the 8 for teaching assembly and BASIC programming.
They also had a rather heavily configured PDP 11/45 running some fairly
early version of RSTS, with a dial-in modem bank, and a number of
terminals in a "terminal room" as well as a terminal in a museum exhibit
that was connected to the 11. OMSI did a lot of development work,
especially related to development of a PASCAL compiler on the 11. I
also know that they did quite a bit of modification to OS/8 on the PDP
8. I remember seeing source listings for both OS/8 and RSTS on
green-line paper around the place. They also had a number of those DEC
logic labs, along with tons of software and documentation for the 8 and
11.
I once found a bug in RSTS that allowed me to capture PPN's and
passwords from any dial-up terminal. I ended up finding the [1,2]
(systems operator) password at one point, and due to teenage foolishness
on my part, ended up getting caught. OMSI had DEC Systems Engineers all
over this issue, sending some of their expert RSTS guys to OMSI figure
out the bug and get rid of it. OMSI apparently had some pretty good
pull with DEC, and I believe was well-supported by DEC.
Eventually, the folks that were involved with the development of PASCAL
ended up spinning off their own company called Oregon Software, and
ended up taking over OMSI's 11/45, but leased services back to OMSI at a
very low rate. I'm not at all sure of how the whole business deal
worked, but at around that time, I graduated from high school and went
to work at Tektronix, and he much more computer toys to play with at Tek
then OMSI had, and kind of lost touch with the whole thing.
One person that I fondly remember was a man who was the head of the
computing department at OMSI at the time was named Rusty Whitney. I was
involved with him when I got caught for "breaking in" to the OMSI RSTS
system. He was really great in dealing with the situation. I Googled
him just now, and found his Linked-In page:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rusty-whitney/8/93/397
He was the founder of Oregon Software. I'd bet that he has some great
stories to tell about those days.
I'm going to try contacting him to see if he remembers the whole RSTS
hacking situation.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
> bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
> Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:16 AM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: RE: OS8 Source listing
>
>
>
>
> The thing I noticed is that the mods seem to have been done by the
> group at
> OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). I'd really love to see
> details on OMSI's involvement with DEC computers. I spent a lot of my
> childhood there, and I can guarentee I never saw any sign of any DEC
> computers during the timeframe they'd have been doing such things.
>
> Zane
>
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
15 Oct
15 Oct
3:24 a.m.
I took at look at this. It appears to be a localized version of the OS, along
with some other utilities. I would bid on it, but I don't want to get into a
bidding war (cf. the thread on DECtape madness).
I will back down and let you have it. I think you are in a better
position in preserving and appreciating this.
I doesn't sound like its a big deal anyway.
Kind Regards,
Pontus.
5393
days inactive
5396
days old
15 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
dbetz＠xlisper.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
legalize＠xmission.com -
pontus＠Update.UU.SE -
RichA＠vulcan.com -
rickb＠bensene.com