7 Apr
2016
7 Apr
'16
1:07 p.m.
A friend has a large set of paper tape which seems to be from a DG User
group (not sure about that, but label on box sort of implies that).
The tape pile is fanfold about 10" across in a DG box specially made for
such use.
We hope to have a reader to digitize it soon, but wonder if anyone knows
of such a program? We just have the labels which say that is what the
tape has to go on.
More photos and the like later. I know that more info would be helpful,
but figured I'd ask first.
thanks
Jim
7 Apr
7 Apr
2:31 p.m.
Star Trek was a quite common BASIC (game ?) program on at least the HP 2000
time share systems, I've seen quite a few variations, on ran on RT-11.
Be quite careful with the tape, the folds can be quite fragile depending on
how and where the tape was stored.
When I had my 'computer room' set up (its now put away for a major house
remodel) I had an optical reader that I modified so I could vary the read
speed down to pretty much zero CPS just for this reason.
-pete
On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:07 PM, jwsmobile <jws at jwsss.com> wrote:
A friend has a large set of paper tape which seems to
be from a DG User
group (not sure about that, but label on box sort of implies that).
The tape pile is fanfold about 10" across in a DG box specially made for
such use.
We hope to have a reader to digitize it soon, but wonder if anyone knows
of such a program? We just have the labels which say that is what the tape
has to go on.
More photos and the like later. I know that more info would be helpful,
but figured I'd ask first.
thanks
Jim
9:51 a.m.
New subject: Space Travel (was Re: Data General Nova Star Trek)
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016, Pete Lancashire wrote:
Star Trek was a quite common BASIC (game ?) program on
at least the HP 2000
time share systems, I've seen quite a few variations, on ran on RT-11.
That reminds me of the "Space Travel" game/sim that Ken Thompson wrote for
the first copy/iteration of Unix.
Did anyone ever actually run/see that? There are some screenshots online but
I'm curious how the original Unix on that old PDP was hitting a framebuffer.
I'm really curious to know how Ken & Dennis approched it, and how far off
from today's crazy graphics interfaces was it.
-Swift
4:08 p.m.
New subject: Space Travel (was Re: Data General Nova Star Trek)
On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016, Pete Lancashire wrote:
I was just looking at that graphics system; Multics had a monitor system
called XRAY that could see into memory and display live data on a PDP-8
with a 338 display. Looking at the space war source, it seems that it used
an earlier iteration of the 338, but with the same basic architecture. It
was a vector graphics display, the controller reading a command list from
memory consisting on X/Y/intensity values being fed to ADCs connected an
oscilloscope or monitor.
I have some code that does an X-11 emulation of the Atari Tempest vector
graphics display; I'm thinking of wedging it into the simh PDP8 code to
emulate the 338 and PDP-1 displays.
DECUS has PDP-8 software that runs on the 338, and the spacewar source is
available, so that should be emulatable as well.
-- Charles
Star Trek was a quite common BASIC (game ?)
program on at least the HP
2000
time share systems, I've seen quite a few
variations, on ran on RT-11.
That reminds me of the "Space Travel" game/sim that Ken Thompson wrote for
the first copy/iteration of Unix.
Did anyone ever actually run/see that? There are some screenshots online
but
I'm curious how the original Unix on that old PDP was hitting a
framebuffer.
I'm really curious to know how Ken & Dennis approched it, and how far off
from today's crazy graphics interfaces was it.
9:35 p.m.
New subject: Space Travel (was Re: Data General Nova Star Trek)
On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 04:08:42PM -0700, Charles Anthony wrote:
I have some code that does an X-11 emulation of the Atari Tempest vector
graphics display; I'm thinking of wedging it into the simh PDP8 code to
emulate the 338 and PDP-1 displays.
That woyld be fun :) I could perhaps be used for future PDP-12
and LINC emulators as well.
I have read just a little about the 338. I believe it is more or
less a dedicated PDP-8. Can you say how it compares with other
vector displas, such as VC8E?
Thanks,
Pontus
8 Apr
8 Apr
5:33 a.m.
New subject: Space Travel (was Re: Data General Nova Star Trek)
On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:35 PM, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 04:08:42PM -0700, Charles
Anthony wrote:
That is my understanding as well.
I haven't actually ever seen any of these beasts; I'm just doing on
documentation that I can find, so I am very likely wrong on some points.
There is a 338 programming manual at
https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_decpdp8gragmgOct66_2439011/DEC-08-G61B…
with
a the display list opcodes.
The VC8E programming is discussed at
http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/man/vc8e.html.
The VC8E has about 8 IO commands, and uses 12 bit coordinates.The commands
boil down to set X, set Y and set intensity to 0 or 1.
The 338 uses 13bit coordinates; the display has 10 bit resolution. The 338
has scaling, 8 intensity levels, delta move, character ROM, and a 36 page
programming manual.
There is a description of the VR14/VC8E at
http://www.pdp8.net/vr14/vr14info.shtml.; it describes the VC8e as 50K dots
per second ont the VR14 monitor, and the 338 as 300K DPS, and mentions that
the 338 had a character ROM.
http://www.chdickman.com/pdp8/spacewar/ built his own VC8/I for his PDP-8
and runs the PDP-8 version of space war on it. He lists the IOT
instructions for the VC8/I; they are similar to the 338.
-- Charles
I have some code that does an X-11 emulation of the Atari Tempest vector
graphics display; I'm thinking of wedging it into the simh PDP8 code to
emulate the 338 and PDP-1 displays.
That woyld be fun :) I could perhaps be used for future PDP-12
and LINC emulators as well.
I have read just a little about the 338. I believe it is more or
less a dedicated PDP-8. Can you say how it compares with other
vector displas, such as VC8E?
7:02 a.m.
New subject: Space Travel (was Re: Data General Nova Star Trek)
On Fri, Apr 08, 2016 at 05:33:43AM -0700, Charles Anthony wrote:
http://www.chdickman.com/pdp8/spacewar/ built his own VC8/I for his PDP-8
and runs the PDP-8 version of space war on it. He lists the IOT
instructions for the VC8/I; they are similar to the 338.
Ohh, that looks very doable, I already have the Posibus interface. This
goes on my neverending TODO-list.
/P
7 Apr
7 Apr
10:29 p.m.
Hi Jim,
short version: Yes, I can confirm existence of such a software and
I'd be highly interested in a copy. Of course I can
offer digitizing it ;-)
longer version: I am preserving various Rolm (later Loral) 16 bit
machines which are hardened, military machines widely comaptible
to the DG hardware (1602 compatible to Nova and MSE14/Micro is the
hardened Eclipse). If interested, have a look at my logbook...
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/TimeLine.html#HDDsim
...datecodes 10/20/2014 to 12/15/2014 and 2/3/2015 to 2/28/2015.
Together with two friends (both maintaining a 1602B and native
DG hardware) we built a harddisc simulator to run advanced
software (e.g. RDOS). During my efforts I rescued some paper tapes
from Rolm (diagnostics)...
http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/EB-RolmTapes.jpg
...and among these serious, mighty tapes was one labeled
"Star Trek 1/2". I digitized it, but without the second part
it is of nut much use, so I am sure that such a game existed
for DG hardware. From the first tape I can tell, that it is
not just the BASIC listing, but native machine code and there
is a copyright message dating 1969-1973 ;-)
The tape pile is fanfold about 10" across in a DG
box specially made for such
use.
On some occasions I had trouble reading the 30+ years old
oiled black tapes due to some holes on the folds being
obscured at the from debris of the ageing paper...
The very best from Germany,
Erik.
11 May
11 May
11:44 a.m.
On 4/7/2016 1:07 PM, jwsmobile wrote:
A friend has a large set of paper tape which seems to
be from a DG
User group (not sure about that, but label on box sort of implies that).
Thanks to
Erik Baigar, I have gotten his paper tape reader and have made
one pass on reading the tapes. The originals belong to Sherman Foy.
Also Charles Anthony made a pass at writing a video based reader (which
I still would love to see).
There are notes on this dropbox share of the data. I would like to host
it with either bitsavers or Jay or both when I get cleaned up versions
of the tapes.
Any suggestions about running this, or what it is, or corrections to my
reading (see notes.txt in the share) would be appreciated. Also if
someone would be so kind as to give a nice writeup of how to get the
goods to run this on simh or some other accessible simulator I'd like to
add that to the info.
There are photos of the tape and the reader as well.
I have not documented the labels on the tapes as of yet, but one of the
tape files has a better explanation of the tapes than that anyway. I
will document the tape info when I finish the reading process.
Thanks
Jim
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18q1hpfknbeviip/AAAFgRrBXgygAFfNbBuPzXGva?dl=0
1:40 p.m.
Also watch out for rubber bands. Before turning to hard
crunchy stuff that yo can brush off, they go through a gooey
stage that can dry up and stick layers together.
Dwight
________________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of jwsmobile <jws at
jwsss.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 11:44:32 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Data General Nova Star Trek
On 4/7/2016 1:07 PM, jwsmobile wrote:
A friend has a large set of paper tape which seems to
be from a DG
User group (not sure about that, but label on box sort of implies that).
Thanks to
Erik Baigar, I have gotten his paper tape reader and have made
one pass on reading the tapes. The originals belong to Sherman Foy.
Also Charles Anthony made a pass at writing a video based reader (which
I still would love to see).
There are notes on this dropbox share of the data. I would like to host
it with either bitsavers or Jay or both when I get cleaned up versions
of the tapes.
Any suggestions about running this, or what it is, or corrections to my
reading (see notes.txt in the share) would be appreciated. Also if
someone would be so kind as to give a nice writeup of how to get the
goods to run this on simh or some other accessible simulator I'd like to
add that to the info.
There are photos of the tape and the reader as well.
I have not documented the labels on the tapes as of yet, but one of the
tape files has a better explanation of the tapes than that anyway. I
will document the tape info when I finish the reading process.
Thanks
Jim
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/18q1hpfknbeviip/AAAFgRrBXgygAFfNbBuPzXGva?dl=0
2918
days inactive
2952
days old
9 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
charles.unix.pro＠gmail.com -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
erik＠baigar.de -
jws＠jwsss.com -
pete＠petelancashire.com -
pontus＠Update.UU.SE -
swiftgriggs＠gmail.com