Charles Lasner [Was: Re: LINC-8]

[Bob Smith]

Rick Merrill is doing well last time I exchanged comments with him.
We wired in 8 engineering, DecComm11, and LCG together over the years.
I will have to rattle his cage just for fun now.
bb

On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 12:29 PM Lyle Bickley via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:58:59 -0400
> Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> >       NL7776                  /SETUP -2
> >       TAD     (-7776)         /COMPARE TO EXPECTED VALUE
> >       SZA CLA                 /SKIP IF OK
> >       JMP     IMA8S           /JUMP IF RETARDED BROTHER
> >
> > /     IF WE GET HERE, WE'RE NOT A PDP-8/S.
> >
> > Ok, that made me laugh.....
>
> Charles and I have many emails over the years going back and forth regarding
> OS/8 vs. P?S/8.
>
> He was one of those folks that when you sent him a five line email, you would
> often get a five page response. Charles was definitely opinionated - but often
> proven to be right.
>
> Both Charles and Merrill (author of FOCAL) teased me when I got my PDP-8/S
> running. It was definitely SLOW (8/S where S=Slow). Merrill told me that DEC
> management was furious when FOCAL displayed which kind of 8 it was running on.
> Management wanted folks to think all 8's were totally compatible.
>
> Charles designed P?S/8 to run in a 4K PDP-8 - making it feasible to run on a
> basic 8/S (OS/8 requires a minimum of 8K). I hope it gets "released" someday :)
>
> I'll miss Charles and his passion for P?S/8.
>
> Lyle
>
> --
> > On 4/27/2020 10:40 AM, Pontus Pihlgren via cctalk wrote:
> > > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 09:08:24AM -0500, John H. Reinhardt via cctalk
> > > wrote:
> > >> Charles Lasner.  He passed the weekend of April 3rd due to
> > >> complications from the COVID-19 virus.  I'm fuzzy on his exact
> > >> biography, but he was big in the development of OS/8 for the PDP-8 at
> > >> DEC.  His current project was an update of OS/8 which he called
> > >> P?S/8.  Apparently he owned multiple LINC-8's according to comments on
> > >> the Facebook group.
> > >
> > > He also worked onKermit-12, for instance the code that identifies which
> > > PDP-8 machine it is running on. It is quite fun to follow that code. It
> > > can, impressively, separate between a PDP-5, LINC-8, PDP-12, Straight-8,
> > > 8/S, 8/I, 8/L, 8/E, 8/A, 6100 and 6120.
> > >
> > > Here, search for "MACHINE,.-."
> > > http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftp/d/k12mit.pal
> > >
> > > A lot of PDP-8 know-how and trivia went with him, sorry to see him go.
> > >
> > > /P
> > >
>
>
>
> --
> 73   NM6Y
> Bickley Consulting West Inc.
> https://bickleywest.com
>
> "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"