3 Nov
2014
3 Nov
'14
1:57 a.m.
On 10/11/2014 04:06 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Penfield High, NY where I attended, had a 19" cabinet with an HP-2114B
(B?) and a ASR-33 console. There was also an HP-2761A Optical Mark
reader, and I'm not sure the printer.
At the time I used it, there were 4 "consoles" running and time slicing
was done on each line of basic. The card reader was one input, and the
printer was the output. The ASR-33 was the only interactive terminal the
previous year, but new this year were two crt serial terminals. They
were not the HP branded terminals.
There was a paper tape punch and a reader. The punch was disconnected
and sitting over on a shelf.
As I recall there was a dual 8" floppy drive inside the cabinet.
There was no login on the terminals. Files starting with an exclamation
point where invisible to directory listings.
I've not found a time-shared basic that matched this type of
configuration. Dick Stover (now deceased) was the systems operator for a
number of different schools in upstate New York that ran similar setups.
Is the HP24160A you mention a software system? or the bundling of
specific hardware? both? Is the BASIC multi-user?
There was a grading program in the system that, as I recall, was
triggered by a CALL -151 command in basic. Thus a teacher would include
the magic card that triggered the app, then include a card marked with
the correct answers, then as many cards to be graded as they liked. I
don't recall how this was ended. Might have been a special end card. The
printer would then print a grade report for each card. All other
processing on the other "consoles" would halt until the grading was
complete. Then the BASIC time slicing would resume where it left off.
I have some partial source listings from back then of the D&D program we
were working on. It used a number of "chained" programs to do: map
generation, map navigation, battle encounters, inventory management,
etc. We had functions to pack and unpack date into floats as I don't
recall the BASIC supporting direct integers.
I'd be very interested in any source that might be this version of
BASIC. I've looked at the Montana State University basic, but this does
not look like what I recall. Sources for some of this up on my site:
http://rikers.org/hp2100/
check out the "msu" directory.
I have:
HP-2116A (non-functional, yes, that's an A, not a B or a C)
HP-2100A (not powered up)
HP-2108A (functional)
HP-2112A (functional)
HP-7900 (broken chassis)
HP-7901 * 2 (never powered up)
HP-2748B Paper Tape reader
HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader
Geek porn:
http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware
I'd trade it all for a functional HP-2114B :) I loved the touch
sensitive switched on that model. I'm in SLC Utah if anyone wants to see
any of this.
On 2014-Oct-11, at 1:57 AM, Rik Bos wrote:
>>> Just noticed recently that the source from 1970 for the single-user HP BASIC
>> has appeared on bitsavers (thanks Al), so working on getting that going now.
>> Nice to have some period software for the machine.
Direct link?
>> That was OCR'd from a listing that
purchased from HP in 1971 so that I could
>> hack on the BASIC interpreter that was running on the 2114 at my high school.
Same source? Got a link?
Probably
Educational Basic HP24160A, there was a special configuration of
the HP 2114A/B combined with the HP 2748A paper tape reader and a HP 2760A
optical mark card reader and a HP 2752A Teleprinter delivered to schools and
Universities.
The whole combination without the Teleprinter was built in a 19"cabinet with
a small drawer at the top, it's purpose was to learn children and students
Basic.
The Educational basic differs from stand-alone HP 24000A Basic, it can read
a special kind of marked cards (HP 02760-9051) with basic commands on it.
Haven't seen any mention or support for the card reader in either the interpreter or
the PBS (Prepare Basic System) device configuration .. seems to be the standard version.
I remember the special BASIC mark-sense cards from the 9830 + 9869A/7261A card reader at
the high school I went to. 
3 Nov
3 Nov
6 a.m.
On 11/3/14 1:57 AM, Tim Riker wrote:
I'd be very interested in any source that might be
this version of
BASIC.
It should be in the HP software collection in
bitsavers.org/bits/HP/HP_1000_software_collection/
6:24 a.m.
Tim wrote....
-----------
I've not found a time-shared basic that matched this type of configuration. Dick
Stover (now deceased) was the systems operator for a number of different schools in
upstate New York that ran similar setups.
Is the HP24160A you mention a software system? or the bundling of specific hardware? both?
Is the BASIC multi-user?
------------
I seem to recall in one of my early hardbound HP systems sales books a listing for a
system like this. It was a sort-of timeshared basic, but only used punched cards for
input. It will take some digging but I will see if I can find this.
J
PS - good to hear from you Tim, LTNS!
1:55 p.m.
On 2014-Nov-03, at 1:57 AM, Tim Riker wrote:
There is a missing attribution in the reply quoting, the reply about the source and OCRing
was from Guy Sotomayor - Shiresoft <ggs at shiresoft.com>.
The BASIC being mentioned and linked above however, is a single-user interpreter, not a
multi-user or time-shared system ..doesn't sound like the sys you are looking for.
8" floppies on a 2114 sounds very unusual, I've never heard of support for
floppies for the 2116/15/14 procs - floppies came after the prime market life of those
procs. Don't know if a later I/O floppy interface would have been backwards compatible
to the early procs.
Penfield High, NY where I attended, had a 19" cabinet with an HP-2114B
(B?) and a ASR-33 console. There was also an HP-2761A Optical Mark
reader, and I'm not sure the printer.
At the time I used it, there were 4 "consoles" running and time slicing
was done on each line of basic. The card reader was one input, and the
printer was the output. The ASR-33 was the only interactive terminal the
previous year, but new this year were two crt serial terminals. They
were not the HP branded terminals.
There was a paper tape punch and a reader. The punch was disconnected
and sitting over on a shelf.
As I recall there was a dual 8" floppy drive inside the cabinet.
There was no login on the terminals. Files starting with an exclamation
point where invisible to directory listings.
I've not found a time-shared basic that matched this type of
configuration. Dick Stover (now deceased) was the systems operator for a
number of different schools in upstate New York that ran similar setups.
Is the HP24160A you mention a software system? or the bundling of
specific hardware? both? Is the BASIC multi-user?
There was a grading program in the system that, as I recall, was
triggered by a CALL -151 command in basic. Thus a teacher would include
the magic card that triggered the app, then include a card marked with
the correct answers, then as many cards to be graded as they liked. I
don't recall how this was ended. Might have been a special end card. The
printer would then print a grade report for each card. All other
processing on the other "consoles" would halt until the grading was
complete. Then the BASIC time slicing would resume where it left off.
I have some partial source listings from back then of the D&D program we
were working on. It used a number of "chained" programs to do: map
generation, map navigation, battle encounters, inventory management,
etc. We had functions to pack and unpack date into floats as I don't
recall the BASIC supporting direct integers.
I'd be very interested in any source that might be this version of
BASIC. I've looked at the Montana State University basic, but this does
not look like what I recall. Sources for some of this up on my site:
http://rikers.org/hp2100/
check out the "msu" directory.
I have:
HP-2116A (non-functional, yes, that's an A, not a B or a C)
HP-2100A (not powered up)
HP-2108A (functional)
HP-2112A (functional)
HP-7900 (broken chassis)
HP-7901 * 2 (never powered up)
HP-2748B Paper Tape reader
HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader
Geek porn:
http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware
I'd trade it all for a functional HP-2114B :) I loved the touch
sensitive switched on that model. I'm in SLC Utah if anyone wants to see
any of this.
On 10/11/2014 04:06 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
This is the link to what (I) was referring to:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/hp/2116/BASIC_Jan70/
On 2014-Oct-11, at 1:57 AM, Rik Bos wrote:
>>> Just noticed recently that the source from 1970 for the single-user HP BASIC
>> has appeared on bitsavers (thanks Al), so working on getting that going now.
>> Nice to have some period software for the machine.
Direct link? >> That
was OCR'd from a listing that purchased from HP in 1971 so that I could
>> hack on the BASIC interpreter that was running on the 2114 at my high school.
Same source? Got a link? Probably Educational Basic HP24160A, there was a
special configuration of
the HP 2114A/B combined with the HP 2748A paper tape reader and a HP 2760A
optical mark card reader and a HP 2752A Teleprinter delivered to schools and
Universities.
The whole combination without the Teleprinter was built in a 19"cabinet with
a small drawer at the top, it's purpose was to learn children and students
Basic.
The Educational basic differs from stand-alone HP 24000A Basic, it can read
a special kind of marked cards (HP 02760-9051) with basic commands on it.
Haven't seen any mention or support for the card reader in either the interpreter or
the PBS (Prepare Basic System) device configuration .. seems to be the standard version.
I remember the special BASIC mark-sense cards from the 9830 + 9869A/7261A card reader at
the high school I went to.
4 Nov
4 Nov
1:33 p.m.
On 11/03/2014 02:55 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
The BASIC being mentioned and linked above however, is
a single-user interpreter, not a multi-user or time-shared system ..doesn't sound like
the sys you are looking for.
No disk support then?
8" floppies on a 2114 sounds very unusual,
I've never heard of
support for floppies for the 2116/15/14 procs - floppies came after
the prime market life of those procs. Don't know if a later I/O
floppy interface would have been backwards compatible to the early
procs.
Our admin Dick Stover was quite a guy. He enhanced the BASIC in a lot of
ways. I remember discussing having him add true integer variables, but
he didn't end up doing that one. I do think he added directly the
support for the other terminals and perhaps the call interface for
grading. I wish I had a tape dump of his sources, but I suspect they
have all be destroyed.
This felt very different from the traditional HP TSB experience. I
suspect he had no access to that code.
Does the single user card based version support storage devices at all?
The drives on this system were inside the rack in a locked cabinet. I
recall him opening them, removing the floppies and cleaning the drives.
We were not allowed to mess with them.
No idea what drive they used or what interface. This was around
1978-1981 so there would have been a number of choices including HP-IB.
It may have been 5 1/4 inch drives for all I can recall. I have no
pictures of the original system, but old friends from school also recall
this internal removable drive storage and the "CHAIN" support in BASIC
that allowed switching to another BASIC app off disk while keeping
variables in memory.
3706
days inactive
3707
days old
4 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
Tim＠Rikers.org