HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Assembler Formats (was: CS Hackers?)
Date: 10 Apr 92 18:19:43 GMT
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1992Apr10.192508.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
>Scadds of 6/10/20 macro used the failing conditional to insert large
>comment blocks
>
>~Paul

PDP-8 version:

	XLIST	OFF

	IFNDEF	ON	<ON=	0>
	IFNDEF	OFF	<OFF=	1>

	XLIST	ON

	...


	XLIST	ON;	IFZERO	1	<

This stuff is printed and ignored.

					>;	XLIST	ON


The ON and OFF parts aren't needed, but I did that so if I need to see why
 something isn't coming out correctly, just changing the definition of OFF 
will reveal what's actually happening.  (XLIST 1 turns it off, and XLIST 0 
turns listing output on again.  XLIST {no arg} is dangerous - it flips!
BTW, all lines with XLIST on them don't print!

I use the feature for things like conditional version info:

	XLIST	OFF

	IFZERO	REV-1	<
	XLIST	ON;	IFZERO	1	<
This is revision 1
					>	;XLIST	OFF
			>

	IFZERO	REV-2	<
	XLIST	ON;	IFZERO	1	<
This is revision 2
					>	;XLIST	OFF

	... {other cases}

	XLIST	ON

btw, some assemblers are so stupid that they cross reference the comments
done this way :-).  (Two references to "this" , "is", and "revision".)

cjl
From: colombo@bronco.fnal.gov (Rick Colombo - Fermilab)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Slashed o's (o's, not zeros)?
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:21:11 GMT
Organization: Fermilab Computing Division

> 	A question for those who, unlike me, are old enough to possibly
> remember:  Last summer, I came across a sf short story (sorry, I forget
> who wrote it, maybe someone can fill it in for me) named "Watchdog", in
> which the 'o' was slashed.  What caught my eye was a footnote (from the
> original story) which said something to the effect that "it was common
> computing practice for printers to slash o's so that there would be no
> confusion with zeroes".  Well, as far as I can remember (~10 yrs), I've
> only seen _zeroes_ slashed, and never o's (except, of course, in those


It must be an I#M thing.  I learned to slash O's (oh) in my first jobs in
the early 70's on I#M machines.  When I switched to DEC gear in the late
70's, I had to re-learn to slashed the 0's (zeros) instead.


 ___________________________________________________________________________
 *****  *   *  From the e-net desk of: Rick Colombo CD/DCD/DSG    *    *
 *      **  *  Fermi Nat'l Acc'l Lab   708-840-8225 Fermilab     * *   *
 ***    * * *  P.O. Box 500   MS 369   Feynman Computer Center  *****  *
 *      *  **  Batavia, Ill. USA 60510 Colombo@fnal.fnal.gov    *   *  *****
 *  Sure to get `Flamed' if I didn't cross all my i's and dot all my t's ;-)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Space Shuttle Computers
Organization: Taronga Park BBS
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 02:34:45 GMT

In article <1992Apr3.011844.26946@nas.nasa.gov> eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) writes:
>Space and flight qualification: this is serious stuff.  How often do you
>write code which has lives depending on it?

I've done it. I'd rather not do it again. Too much stress.
-- 
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S (+1 713 568 1032 Trailblazer)24 20 S 12 T (Peter da Silva)24 45 S showpage
From: kevind@pogo.wv.tek.com (Kevin Draz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Disk and Drive incompatible....
Keywords: Disk 3.5 5.25 Formatting
Date: 11 Apr 92 08:31:26 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville,  OR.

In article <1992Apr10.060630.15107@u.washington.edu> pollock@milton.u.washington.edu (Joe Pollock) writes:
>
>My understanding is that there are a couple of factors involved here.
>The 5.25" HD disk is a higher permeability magnetic oxide than LD,
>which means it takes a greater magnetic energy to magnetize the 
>oxide.  LD drives vary in their ability to deliver here - but the
>situation is marginal at best.  The result is unreliability.
>

I was told this was just the opposite - HD heads need to change flux
polarity more rapidly than LD, therefore a _lower_ field current is used in
the head gap.  The media "mu" factor is therefore also lower, requiring a
lower gauss field to completely realign the oxide in question.

This is also why, I was told, some types of drives (Such as SyQuest
removable platter devices) can read the LD disks in an HD drive, but not
write them - the HD head can't bias hard enough to "override" the LD
information.

I got this, and other fascinating info about RLL vs MFM, etc., from a
factory engineer from [big Winchester company], on their 1988 "our drives are
perfectly reliable - and just to prove it to you, we're going to have a
manditory replacement of all those we sold to you in the last year." world
tour, when we had 80% failure within six months on certain SCSI drive
mechanisms we OEM'd.

It seems that the spacers which separate the several platters in the
Winchester are made of aluminum.  For tolerance reasons, these spacers,
which are glorified, thick flat-washers, are machined rather than stamped.
Machining uses oil.  The washers, of course, were washed in solvent, but the
aluminum is semiporous and would absorb the oil, like a sponge.  Now, with
some heat and centripedal acceleraton [centrifugal force in laymans terms],
the oil would form a microfilm on the very precision media surface.  The
head, when the drive was parked, would form a vacuum seal to the platter,
with the breakaway coefficient greater than the starting torque of the
motor...

BTW, also related to me was the priviso that for this reason, HD & LD disks
are different, and should not be used interchangeably.  My own experience
bears this out - it works - sometimes, and not reliably.
-- 
----
kevind@pogo.wv.tek.com  | For most software publishers, quality is job 1.01.
Tektronix Color Printers|                            -- MacWeek Magazine
From: Jay.Ashworth@f160.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Jay Ashworth)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: me vs. vi survey *please read*
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 11:55:00 EDT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/160 - Hacker's Haven, Clearwater FL

In a msg of <Friday April 10 1992>, Christopher Davis wrote to All:

 CD> No, not sure. I'll ask him Monday.  (I *am* sure he uses Excel, though.)
 CD> --
 CD> Christopher Davis <ckd@eff.org> |    ECONOMIC OBSERVATIONS DEPARTMENT
 CD> System Manager & Postmaster     |  "There's always something going out
 CD> Electronic Frontier Foundation  |      business in Central Square"
 CD> +1 617 864 0665  NIC: [CKD1]    |   -Rita Marie Rouvalis

Must be nice... :-)

Cheers,
-- jra

--  
Internet: Jay.Ashworth@f160.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG
UUCP: ...!uunet!ndcc!tct!psycho!160!Jay.Ashworth
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From: ralph@falcon.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Becker-Szendy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computer-related auto license tags
Date: 7 Apr 92 19:04:25 GMT
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Seen a few days ago on I280 in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara, in the
afternoon, on the way home: Blue Porsche 91{1,2}, 70s vintage, looked
like in pretty good shape, with license plate MC68000. May have been
an Apploid (the location is quite close to the headquarters of the
great lawsuit company with the roundish fruit as a logo). Most
probably not an Intel employee (they hang our more towards Milpitas,
plus that plate would probably be grounds for dismissal and torture).

-- 
Ralph Becker-Szendy                          RALPH@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center                      RALPH@SLACVM.BITNET
M.S. 95, P.O. Box 4349, Stanford, CA 94309                    (415)926-2701
My opinion. This is not SLAC, Stanford U, or the US DoE speaking. Just me.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: Computers as heat sources
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 15:15:00 GMT

	Last year, on of the supply fans tripped off for the air handling
	unit in my office, (and 4 other rooms.)

	We spent the whole year being heated by an old PDP11/10, with 2
	RK05 drives.
	

+---_      Frank R. Borger - Physicist     Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
|__|_)  Michael Reese  - Univ. of Chicago  Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
|  | \ _  Center for Radiation Therapy
|     |_)   2929 South Ellis Avenue        Bachelor; A man who never made the
      |_)   Chicago, Illinois 60616        same mistake once! 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Slashed o's (o's, not zeros)?
Organization: Taronga Park BBS
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 03:57:15 GMT

OK, everyone. On the terminal you're reading this on RIGHT NOW.

Are 0's slashed (mine are).
Are O's slashed (mine aren't).
Do you have fat O's and narrow 0's? (I have skinny O's and it's annoying).

Quick quiz: do you know offhand what Courier does? Hershey? Lucida Sans
Typewriter?
-- 
/F{findfont exch scalefont setfont}def /S{moveto show}def /T{/Times-Roman F}def
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/Courier F(`-_-')488 40 S ( 'U` )488 30 S 6 T (+1 713 568 0480 2400/n/8/1)24 27
S (+1 713 568 1032 Trailblazer)24 20 S 12 T (Peter da Silva)24 45 S showpage
From: pollock@milton.u.washington.edu (Joe Pollock)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Disk and Drive incompatible....
Keywords: Disk 3.5 5.25 Formatting
Date: 10 Apr 92 06:06:30 GMT
Organization: The Evergreen State College

In article <1992Apr9.233422.22209@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>
>I have never seen any problems with 3.5" disks, but as Mike said only with 
>5.25" it doesn't work at all.  If the HD drive wrote on it there is no
>problem, but when the LD drive writes or formats it, it becomes quite
>unreadable.  Apparently the media saturates or is otherwise overloaded by
>the greater writing current in the LD drives.  Never got an error-free disk
>format this way.
>
>cjl

My understanding is that there are a couple of factors involved here.
The 5.25" HD disk is a higher permeability magnetic oxide than LD,
which means it takes a greater magnetic energy to magnetize the 
oxide.  LD drives vary in their ability to deliver here - but the
situation is marginal at best.  The result is unreliability.

In addition, the HD head writes a narrower track.  It cannot erase
the wider track created by an LD head, so writing to an LD disk
formatted on an LD drive - and probably containing data written by
an LD drive - is also unreliable, especially when read on an LD
drive.  Since the HD track is narrower, it may leave data in the
"guard band" area between tracks, making the next read unreliable
on an HD drive, as well.

Using a 5.25" HD drive to format and write an LD disk usually works
quite well, if the objective is to transfer data to a computer with
only LD drives.

BTW - I have taken disks badly trashed by various combinations of
the above, run them through a bulk tape demagnetizer, and ended 
up with error-free media (when used in the appropriate drives) when
FORMAT reported 200K+ in bad blocks.

When your campus has all combinations of floppy drives, and the
bookstore stocks four different types of disk, and the clerks know
no more than the users... :-(

Anyone remember the old days of the 720K 5.25" disks, and problems
with "Elephant" brand disks?
From: grog@adagio.UUCP (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Assembler Formats (was: CS Hackers?)
Date: 9 Apr 92 10:15:00 GMT
Organization: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany

In article <1992Apr8.135831.15991@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:
>DEC style required...

>IBM style didn't require...

SPURT, the assembler for the UNIVAC 494, must have the distinction of
being the strangest-looking assembler format I have ever seen.
Basically, there were two fields, label and operation (the latter
including comments).  Within the operation field, blanks had no
meaning, and the separators were * and '. The resultant code looked
like:

ERRCHK	0			'SAVE RETURN ADDRESS HERE
	ENT*A*U(ERROR)*AZERO	'CHECK UPPER HALF OF ERROR WORD
	ENT*Q*W(ABORT)*SKIP	'ERROR: ABORT CODE IN Q AND ON
	JP*W(ERRCHK)		'NO, EXIT AGAIN
	ENT*A*L(ERROR)		'ERROR CODE IN A
	SLJ*PANIC		'AND PANIC

Note also the liberal use of the inbuilt skip code that was in almost
every 494 instruction word. Sometimes these chains could go on
interleaving for 10 instructions or more.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Lehey		         | Public access UNIX available - try BSDI 
 LEMIS         			 | out on our machine! Mail and news 
W-6324 Schellnhausen 2           | connections available
Germany				 | Fax: +49-6637-1489
Tel: +49-6637-1488               | Mail: grog%lemis@Germany.Eu.net
From: afc@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Greg Flint)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Slashed o's (o's, not zeros)?
Date: 14 Apr 92 22:49:08 GMT

In April 1971, my output printed on Control Data Corp model 501 printers used
"fat" oh's and slender zero's.  On a Teletype [KSR Model 33 ?] output [yellow
woodpulp paper off a roll] from that era, I see no difference in the example
"10 FORMAT (...."

In my first programming class [FORTRAN IV] at Purdue in the fall of 1970,
I was taught to slash oh's by the professor.  He recently had left the military
[Army or Air Force, I forget which] where the coding practice was to slash
oh's.

I first encountered slashed zero's in the PLATO IV manual on the TUTOR
language published in 1974.  [I was a guinea pig -- we didn't call them
beta tester's back then -- for the program.]

I next encountered slashed zero's in the late '70s on DEC equipment.
===============================================================================
Greg Flint    | Purdue University Computing Center | afc@klaatu.cc.purdue.edu
Systems Pgmr, | 1408 Mathematical Science Building | flint@purccvm.bitnet
Supercomputer | West Lafayette, IN 47907-1408      | purdue!klaatu.cc!afc
  Group       | PHONE: 317-494-1787                | FAX: 317-494-0566
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: ftit@arno.engin.umich.edu (Sergej Roytman)
Subject: Re: Writing Comments (was: CS Hackers?)
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 13:45:49 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Originator: ftit@arno.engin.umich.edu


In article <151@adagio.UUCP>, grog@adagio.UUCP (Greg Lehey) writes:
|In article <1992Apr8.141552.16458@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:
|
|
|However, coding style is really a religious issue. When shall we start
|a fight about where to put the {}s?

Why, that's obvious -- use K&&R style, modified for short tabs:

 while(1){
  for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2); 
  foo(bar, baz, FRED);
  if(frob) goto eeg;             /* HAH! */
 }

Isn't that what you all use?

:-) :-) :-)

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Greg Lehey		         | Public access UNIX available - try BSDI 

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|  ftit@engin.umich.edu   |   "... a stainless steel rat in the       |
|    (Sergej Roytman)     |  ferroconcrete wainscoting of Internet"   |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Say no to four-line .sigs.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: wcsjc@alfred.carleton.ca (John Coughlin)
Subject: Re: CP-6?
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 18:37:02 GMT

In <1992Apr14.180334.17156@cunews.carleton.ca> mikey@superior.carleton.ca (Mike McFaul) writes:

>The biggest problem
>it had was the debugger on CP-6 (Control Program 6), called DELTA;
>originally an assembly language debugger from CP-V (Control Program 5)
>which has annotated statement types (this group of assembler
>instructions is a 'WHILE' statement, another is an 'ASSIGNMENT'...).

Eh?  This statement is confusing.  CP-V DELTA was very different from
CP-6 DELTA.  The former was almost a mirror image of PDP-11 ODT (I
have always wondered about that) and certainly had no source statement
type annotations.  CP-6 DELTA was far more powerful.  It also had the
"PLUGH" command, which produced a procedure call traceback.  PLUGH was
supposed to stand for "Procedure List Used to Get Here", but we all
know what it's _really_ from.
From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Mel: Fact or Fiction?
Date: 17 Apr 92 19:16:44 GMT
Organization: SCTC

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) asks about Mel:

>... was an intermediate level we might call almost an assembler, meaning
>some of the accoutrements of an assembler, perhaps something akin to a
>rudimentary debugger with mnemonic input at least or somesuch, or was it just
>ones and zeroes punched on cards/tape?

Maintining a program in binary... hmmm. It would be a really ugly task
on papertape since you wouldn't have interactive facilities for
editing the tape, just a teletype. Too easy to misplace a char
and foul the whole thing up. Cards, on the other hand, would be
pretty reasonable, especially if the machine supported a binary
loading mode with the load address appearing on each card.
You could use a vanilla card punch to patch individual words
without necessarily crunching other things. And you could add
cards later in the deck to patch out instructions loaded earlier.

As far as the question about debuggers, we should be able to infer the
answer by looking at what was available for similar machines. Drum
machines in the '60s were used by people who needed cheap computing
cycles, a similar market to DEC's for minicomputers.

In the _mid_ 1960s DEC's PDP-9 came with a state of the art (i.e.
primitive) version of the DDT debugger. It understood how to display
and modify memory (octal format only) and it understood symbolic names
for opcodes. This was pretty trivial since the instruction format
consisted of 4 bits of opcode, one for indirect, and 13 for address.
There was _no_ facility for user defined symbols (i.e. address labels,
variables, entry points) that I can remember.  If you wanted mnemonics
for addresses, you assigned addresses with mnemonic numeric values.
Personally, I liked location 2000 as a starting point for variables.

I remember using an interactive debugger in the mid '70s on a
timesharing system; we were all thrilled out of our socks when the
author patched in a primitive table for supporting user defined
symbols. Good old PIRTN.

If Mel didn't have a console based debugger, he probably had a dumper
procedure loaded with his program. Then you just restart the computer
in the dumper if the program goes south. The dumper then prints the
contents of memory in readable form on your printer.

Rick.
smith@sctc.com       arden hills, minnesota
From: levin@star-trek.bbn.com (Joel B Levin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Mel: Fact or Fiction?
Date: 7 Apr 92 16:57:06 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: archive.bbn.com

smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:

|And lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:

|>1964 doesn't seem real to date the drum-memory machines.  Perhaps the story
|>starts in 1964 and flashs back for most of its time-line.  Any company making
|>non-core memory machines by then was already dead or dying.

|I believe IBM was still pushing 650s in 1960; I have some PR material
|from back then. The Bendix and Librascope machines would still have been
|less than 10 years old in '64.

I used (didn't program, though) a Bendix G-15 in the summer of '65.

	/JBL
=
Nets: levin@bbn.com  | "How does a mouse let me move the cursor anywhere 
 or {...}!bbn!levin  |  I want?"  "What are address busses?"  "How do 
pots: (617)873-3463  |  icons work?"              --Time-Life Books
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Ben Feen)
Subject: Re: Easter Egg FAQ list
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Chicago, IL
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 23:17:45 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.023552.17396@thoth.rent.com> azog@thoth.rent.com (Billy D'Augustine) writes:
>Theres a television show, here in NJ, on channel 9, called 'Super Force'.
>Part of the story is that this one guy who was a computer genius died,
>so they turned him into AI, and they show him on (whats supposed to be)
>computer screens, but its real trashy. Basiclly they just fuzz the
>guys picture real bad, and pass that off...
>
>At one point, they had this girl catch a computer virus! From answering
>a telephone call that was meant for a fax machine!
>
Ha.  I was up late one night, and turned on some UHF station and saw a show
called "Neon Rider".  Basic premise:  Kid in a wheelchair, apparently in finan-
cial difficulty, but who owns a '386 with an 80 MB HD and a 9600 baud modem.
The kid spends  his time """Hacking""" (Note triple quotes for sarcasm). Every
BBS he calls looks like Prodigy. My favorite line:  The kid dials up a computer
that belongs to a gambling ring, and begins downloading their betting files,
apparently at upwards of 115.2kbaud.  Two of the bookies are standing there...
Crook #1: Stop him!
Crook #2: I CAN'T!

Funny, I've always found the power switch handy...

-- 
Mail whos@ddsw1.mcs.com. | Whos at ddsw1? | Yes! | What? | No, whos! | Huh? |
Who? | Who what? | No, whos@ddsw1.mcs.com!  | Where? | DDSW1! | Who's there?|
Right! | Right? | Yes! | Oh, right@ddsw1.mcs.com? | No, WHOS@ddsw1.mcs.com! |
That's what I wanna find out! | What? | Who! | He's at ddsw1! | AAAAAAAAAGH!|
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au
Subject: Re: CS Hackers?
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 16:13:56 GMT

In article <1992Mar24.073341.13722@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>, dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:
> In article <1992Mar23.194728.10389@exu.ericsson.se>, exuhag@exu (James Hague) writes:
>>The bottom line is:  if it works and it works well, the who cares
>>how it was done?
> 
> Everyone who has to pay for it.
And if you are the vendor, they are paying YOU for YOUR mega-hog code!
Of course you can then sell him more memory and a faster CPU ( and the OS
upgrade he has to have to run the new CPU :-( )

~Paul
From: kevind@pogo.wv.tek.com (Kevin Draz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computer-related auto license tags
Keywords: license plates
Date: 11 Apr 92 08:40:36 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville,  OR.

I saw "MS-DOS" plates on a 1968 AMC Gremlin with fuzzy dice on the rearview
mirror, and a two-tone primer paint job.

.
.
.
Just Kidding!

-- 
----
kevind@pogo.wv.tek.com  | For most software publishers, quality is job 1.01.
Tektronix Color Printers|                            -- MacWeek Magazine