nigwil_ · HackerTrans

vor 2 Jahrendiscuss

screen capture of the present day PERQ emulator running a demo shown originally at SIGGRAPH 1982

https://imgur.com/gallery/3-rivers-computer-corporation-perq...

nigwil_

vor 2 Jahrendiscuss

Richard Cornwell's emulator is implemented within the OpenSimH framework, and forms the basis of PiDP-10:

https://github.com/rcornwell/sims/tree/master?tab=readme-ov-...

From the GitHub entry: The KA10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 4.5, 5.03 and 6.03, ITS and WAITS. The KI10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 6.03 with VMSER. The KL10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 6.03-7.03, ITS and Tops 20 V2-V7. The KS10 sim has successfully run Tops 10, Tops 20 and ITS.

PiDP-10 can run a variety of PDP-10 operating systems, although the front-panel is specific to the early KA10 model.

nigwil_

vor 2 Jahrendiscuss

Or a video introduction if you prefer: https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI?si=yJCX-CS1T6zsYiLY

nigwil_

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

The reason some of us MTBers switched: a single outing with rim-brakes in wet/muddy/dusty conditions would grind a set of pads to nothing (adding $25+ per outing for replacements), along with the wheel rim being ground thin to the point where the wheel wall would fail. Disc brakes last repeated use in adverse conditions and braking force remained consistent over many hours.

nigwil_

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

MPW had an interesting About box animation too. I recorded this back in 2011 using vMac emulator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJn3qxK9Br0

nigwil_

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

save a click: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Detailed exposition here:

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/B5000_5500_5700/Organick_...

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

I think it is worth mentioning that this was Robert Dewar's second or third Ada implementation (depending on how you want to count them). Robert was involved with the original Ada/Ed implementation from the late 1970s/early 1980s at NYU (targeting VAX minicomputers), and the re-implementation of that into a C-based implementation that ran on MS-DOS. Ada/Ed was the first validated Ada implementation, and it used SETL as its implementation language which Robert was actively involved in through the 1970s (so he had a long track record of language implementations).

What we are missing about the Ada story is the long line of languages and tools that inspired the Green design that lead to Ada, that is the language LIS (Pascal/Simula inspired) and its toolchain that Jean Ichbiah and associates used as inspiration for the Ada design.

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Excel Versus Excel! EVE...

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

https://pushbx.org/ecm/8086tiny/doc.html

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Could use Automator with AppleScript:

  x@Mac-mini-M1 ~ % cat ClearClipboard.scpt 
  on run
   tell application "System Events" to set the clipboard to ""
  end run
  x@Mac-mini-M1 ~ %

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Unisys has been very supportive of our efforts to find and preserve early Burroughs software and generously provided corporate time to arrange licensing and provide copies of anything they still had. Burroughs B5000 series now has a rich library of software and several emulator implementations (web-browser, simh and standalone). However the B6000/7000 family software recovery is sparse with critical pieces still missing, we are unable to bootstrap a working MCP as yet.

nigwil_

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

"In the case of CHERI, this was to change the user-visible abstract machine exposed by hardware in a way that hasn’t been done for mainstream hardware since the PDP-11." - the authors should take the time to familiarise themselves with the Burroughs B6700 (designed in the 1960s) which provided tagged memory, and a similar mechanism to CHERI architectural capabilities through the B6700 descriptor mechanism.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems_descriptors

The PDP-11 minicomputer was a low-cost and undoubtably successful for its time system but a low bar for architectural sophistication or an exemplar for state of the art in computer architecture particularly in terms of memory design.

CHERI is a welcome development in producing safer systems, but it is packaging ideas that have been around for 50+ years, long overdue of course, but finally hardware costs have commoditised such that these ideas can be baked into mass produced hardware.

nigwil_

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Dave Ackley explores this aspect here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiqMGhn9rk

nigwil_

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

"PCI-e is descendant from Infiniband which in turn is decendant from ServerNet ..." When you say PCIe descended from IB, at the signalling layer or a higher layer? Can you suggest a starting place to understand this lineage please, was it in the PCIe standards group discussions? I've not heard of this relationship before and I'm not having much luck finding the original discussion.

nigwil_

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I asked Wilm in Sep-2020 and three were produced as a one-off build, Wilm did not indicate any intention to produce more.

nigwil_

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

In computing history claims like "first" and "commercial success" need to be qualified and defined, and therein things become difficult since timing and thresholds matter to meet a generally acceptable standard of either claim.

In the 1960s, several companies were selling commercial database management systems (as a distinct product), for example: IBM IMS, Univac DMS and General Electric IDS. These ideas were established to a level that there was a database standard committee known as CODASYL active from 1959 onward.

There is a good overview of the 1960s here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-0-387-3474...

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