BASIC environment ending with "run complete", and slashed 'O' characters?

[Jules Richardson]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for that! I'd mentioned this over on Facebook, where I'd also been 
able to post a photo of the transcript, and someone there pointed out that 
the BASIC listing uses single quotes around strings (what I'd expect to be 
ASCII 27h) rather than the double quotes that BASIC typically uses 
(expected ASCII 22h).

Is that at all "meaningful" in any way? Did CDC BASIC use (or at least 
allow) single quotes instead of double? Or was the teletype maybe 
configured to print a single quote when encountering ASCII 22h, normally a 
double? Obviously I don't know why anyone would actually want that behavior.

The only other thing I can think of is that the listing I have is a "fake" 
- i.e. not a true dump of a program run at all, but something that someone 
typed by hand, and they used the wrong quotes. That's a surprising error if 
so, but if this was educational material I suppose it's possible that it 
was simply a text file containing the listing followed by the supposed 
output, subsequently dumped to a teletype.

Jules


On 4/26/22 09:24, Paul Koning wrote:
> Apparently so.  The word from a CDC experts list is that the "run complete" message is not from BASIC itself (which is indeed a CDC product) but rather from the time sharing executive, called TELEX in KRONOS and early NOS, and IAF in later versions of NOS.
> 
> As for the slashed letter O, that's strange.  Certainly it is not CDC practice; the only place I ever ran into this is with IBM, I always considered it an example of IBM doing things the weird way.  So it sounds like whoever bought those Teletype machines had them configured in that non-standard way for some reason.  Normal, as far as I know, was slashed digit zero.
> 
> MECC is a U. Minnesota KRONOS/NOS system with a bunch of local mods, but BASIC and TELEX are both part of the base system as supplied by CDC.
> 
> 	paul
> 
>> On Apr 26, 2022, at 3:05 AM, Raymond Wiker via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Kronos <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Kronos>, perhaps?
>>
>>> On 26 Apr 2022, at 03:08, Jules Richardson via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps a long shot, but I've got an old piece of paper here showing a BASIC listing followed by a program run where the BASIC environment terminates with "run complete" - does that behavior ring any bells with anyone? I'm mildly curious what machine it may have come from.
>>>
>>> The other interesting thing is that the output is from a teletype and the zero characters appear with no slash, while the uppercase 'O' characters do have a diagonal slash through them (e.g. the 'run complete' mentioned above comes out as 'RUN C0MPLETE') - certainly not unheard of, but I think doing the opposite had become typical practice by what, very early 1970s?
>>>
>>> At the top of the page there is a paragraph as follows (all in uppercase on the printout, obviously, and with slashed 'O' characters):
>>>
>>> "The following output is an example of BASIC language and the resulting run of a program. A punched paper tape of the program is included in the kit. This output was produced on a teletype."
>>>
>>> I don't know if that means anything to anyone? I have no idea what "the kit" was but am guessing that the printout I have was once part of some kind of educational material.
>>>
>>> I do have another printout from the MECC timeshare system (dated 78/9/1) which may have originated with the same teletype - it's different paper stock, but has the same slashed 'O' characters. The welcome message on that says 'Kronos 2.12-439', if that's meaningful...
>>>
>>> cheers
>>>
>>> Jules
>>>
>>
>