HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.lang.apl
Subject: IBM PC APL, vintage 1983
Summary: Can't make it run!
Date: 31 Jul 92 06:10:16 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

The other day I picked up a copy of IBM PC APL, vintage 1983, originally
produced by the IBM Madrid Scientific Center.  

I can't make it run.  It hangs at startup and won't respond to the keyboard.
The most authentic machine I've tried it on was a PC with DOS 3.3 and
a few TSRs.

Am I going to have to go back to DOS 2.1 to make this interesting piece
of software work?  Or do I have a corrupted disk?  Anyone still running it?

-- Michael Covington, occasional software antiquary
-- 
==========================================================================
Michael A. Covington, Ph.D. |  mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu  |  ham radio N4TMI
Artificial Intelligence Programs | U of Georgia | Athens, GA 30602  U.S.A.
==========================================================================
From: drake@drake.almaden.ibm.com (Sam Drake)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: IBM vs. world terminology (was: What does dd stand for?)
Date: 31 Jul 92 06:15:32 GMT
Organization: IBM Almaden Research Center

In article <1992Jul30.072308.25535@msc.cornell.edu> maynard@esther.msc.cornell.edu (Maynard J. Handley) writes:
>In article <jimf.712425000@centerline.com>, jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
>writes:
>>To hell with the nomenclature, I've tried to actually use some
>>SAA-compliant programs.  I don't know which wizard designed their
>>scrollbars but I hope he's now in the salt mines.
>>
>Aha- is THIS why the scrollbars on aixterms on RS6000s are such a pain.?
>Lord, if this is what SAA is like, no wonder it has such unanimously
>negative reviews.

No, aixterm scrollbars have nothing to do with SAA.  Rather, aixterm 
dates from X10 days (remember X10?), when scroll bar semantics were
quite un-standardized.  As I understand it, aixterm for X10 was MIT
xterm, but radically modified to emulate the IBM RT's "hft" terminal.

When X11 came out, they would either take the new xterm and re-do all
the hft support, or they could port the X10 aixterm to X11.  The latter
was chosen.

Current releases of AIX provide both IBM aixterm (for those who want hft
emulation) and vanilla MIT xterm (for those who don't).


Sam Drake / IBM Almaden Research Center 
Internet:  drake@almaden.ibm.com    BITNET:  DRAKE at ALMADEN
From: bob@olwejo.UUCP (Bob Kupiec)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: computers in (bad) movies
Date: 21 Jul 92 17:48:22 GMT
Organization: Olwejo - Private UNIX System

In <1992Jul20.173625.22851@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>, rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM writes:
>In article <578@olwejo.UUCP> bob@olwejo.UUCP (Bob Kupiec) writes:
>>In article <allan.711144811@kitscoty> allan@cs.UAlberta.CA (Allan Sullivan) writes:
>>>I remember an old made-for-tv movie a few years back (It was a Canadian
>>>movie...) The basis of the story was a hacker who wrote an 'intelligent'
>>>program which was able to think for itself. The computer program
>>
>>The program was called "P-1".  And the movie was called "Hide-and-Seek".
>
>The computer scenes for Hide and Seek were filmed at the offices of
>I.P. Sharp Associates in Toronto the Good, aka Hogtown. I was
>present for some of the filming, and picked up the following 
>while schmoozing with the crew, and doing bits of "consulting" work: 

What I do remember was a "Telesat" dish outside of the "switching station",
and a shot of the CN tower.

Oh, and the credits to the film do say "with thanks to I.P. Sharp
Associates".

>So, truth is stranger than bad film...
>>
>>>The one scene I remember most clearly was a scene which took place
>>>inside the reactor control room... In the background, the computers
>>>in the control room were...  Guess what... 
>>>
>>>               Commodore 64s!!!!!
>>
>>Yes, there were C-64's in the control room.
>
>It's possible that you saw HDS (Human Designed Systems) hds-104 or hds-108
>APL terminals there, and mistook them for Commodes. The IPSA system 
>is an extremely large APL system (Supplies all of Reuters numeric historical
>data, among other things), and the system monitors were typically
>APL-based software, displaying on APL terminals.       
>If there were 308x-class machines in the background(through the glass
>wall), then the IPSA machine room was in fact there along with the
>hds10x's. There were never any Commodores in the IPSA machine room,
>although I did have an Exidy SOrceror in there for a few years, which I
>had hooked up to an Amdahl V6-II as a hardware monitor for channel and
>processor measurements.

Well, they must have used them all though the movie.  They were in the
control room, the classroom, the "reactor", and the mobile control room.

I never saw the C= logo on anything, but there was a "Green-Yellow-Orange-Red"
horizontal stripe on the keyboards and monitors.  What logo is this?  HDS?

-- 
Bob Kupiec - Olwejo System Admin. - N3MML   !: uunet!cs.widener.edu!olwejo!bob
UUCP: olwejo!bob@cs.widener.edu             Internet: kupiec@hp800.lasalle.edu
School: LaSalle University, 20th St. & Olney Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19141-0150
   -=-=-=-   Self-Quote: "I'm DOS-free: never had it, never will."   -=-=-=-
From: dsands@binoc.bih.harvard.edu (Daniel Zev Sands)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computer Relics (Was: 9 track data storage?)
Date: 22 Jul 92 16:15:47 GMT
Organization: Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston Mass., USA

Paper tape.  Ahh the sweet memories.  I remember programming in BASIC
on a Teletype connected to my high school's PDP-8.  There was no
storage available so you HAD to store your program on paper tape.  I
remember arguing about whether it was better to FOLD the tape (so you
could store it in a notebook) or to ROLL it (so you could rubber band
it or TRY to stuff it into a film canister).  The tape was encoded
with holes--seven or eight across, I believe--each row representing
one character.  If the tape ripped (go forbid) you'd lose only a few
characters but it could really screw up the program you were trying to
load.  Just to make things even riskier, the electromechanical reader
frequently misread.  But the din of that noisy reader and the puncher
was nothing compared with the racket of the teletypes themselves.
 
All things considered, I'll take my PC any day.
 
- Danny

-- 
--	Daniel Z. Sands, MD			Beth Israel Hospital
	dsands@binoc.bih.harvard.edu		Center for Clinical Computing
  	Voice:  (617) 732-5925			350 Longwood Ave.
  	FAX:    (617) 277-9792			Boston, MA  02115
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Mitel Name
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 18:15:58 GMT

I just heard from a friend that the name for Mitel came from
"Mike and Terry's Lawnmowers".  Evidently, the two founders supported
themselves by selling lawnmowers while they were working on product #1 in
the garage.

Anybody know if this is true, and/or if any other companys got their names
in such a roundabout way?

I'm personally suspicious, because Mitel sounds like so many other
electronics/telecommunications companies - Intel, Novatel, and the like.
-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@geovision.gvc.com or {uunet,cognos,revcan}!geovision!pt
(This is not an official opinion of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
I used to homebrew computers, now I homebrew beer.  Is this progress?
From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: IBM vs. world terminology (was: What does dd stand for?)
Date: 29 Jul 92 15:27:11 GMT
Organization: The MITRE Corporation

valdis@vttcf.cc.vt.edu (Valdis Kletnieks) writes:

>The IBM S/360 models 65 and 95 (and maybe others) had a bizzare
>creature called an "imprecise interrupt".  

I don't recall ever getting an abend 0C0 on a /65.  It was certainly
possible on both the /91 and /95 because they were pipelined systems
in which the processor could have executed a subsequent instruction
before an earlier one triggered the program check.

>                         Anyhow, I seem to remember that it was
>possible to belly-up the machine by doing a stray store into non-
>existent memory, then doing an SVC - and then the opsys would die
>because it would take an unexpected interrupt *after* the SVC switched
>to the kernel context...

H'mmm...that sounds more like someone didn't properly install the slow 
memory box on your /65.  Slow memory, aka "Large Capacity Storage" or
LCS, was offered in two flavors: a 2361 model 1 with one megabyte, or
a model 2 with two meg.  The CPU option plugging should have been set
up to establish the highest valid memory address; an attempt to store
beyond this limit should have immediately gotten a program interrupt
type 5 (addressing exception).

Unlike many more recent systems which just throw out an address on a
common bus and hope that somebody fields it, the older mainframes used
a central bus controller which accepted memory reference requests from
both the CPU and I/O channels, then routed the request to the appropriate
memory device.  The BCU had the responsibility for recognizing when it
was presented with an illegal address.

Ah, LCS.  The early 2361 boxes were shipped with the actual core planes 
in a separate, specially-designed box to prevent damage to them during
shipment; they were installed in the box after arrival at the customer's
site.  IBM later decided that this wasn't necessary, but as late as
1970 the 2361 frames were being shipped enclosed in special shock-mounted
cradles.

Joe Morris / MITRE
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: johana!tsw@apple.com (Tom Watson)
Subject: Re: The Turn of The Century<tm>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 01:45:02 GMT
Organization: FBN/GRQ Ink.

In article <a1ou02sS1aDk01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes) writes:
> 
> jra@f160.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Jay Ashworth) writes:
> >
> > The last estimate I heard was that there was $46B(!)
> > or so of COBOL code that was gonna break on 01/01/2000.
> > Something about `00' being an invalid year...?
> 
> "What will happen when the 32-bit Unix date goes negative
>  in mid-January 2038 does not bear thinking about."
>                                       -- Henry Spencer
I suppose you hope that everyone has followed the ANSI standards and
changed their time_t's to 'unsigned'.  Then we have to wait another
bunch of years (68 or so) by which time all the people responsible will be
long gone from computers, or computers will be long gone in the form we
know them of today.  Just ask any watcher of Star Trek (any type).

(*SIMLE*)
---------
Tom Watson
johana!tsw@apple.com
From: colombo@bronco.fnal.gov (Rick Colombo - Fermilab)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Non Unix-OS's
Date: 30 Jul 92 15:32:47 GMT
Organization: Fermilab Computing Division

In article <9207291418.AA17748@thep.lu.se>, magnus@THEP.LU.SE (Magnus Olsson) writes:
> 
> The term "non-Unix OS" is of course ambiguous, but I mean systems that
> are *radically* different from both BSD and System V. I'd like to bundle
> Unix-lookalikes such as Linux and OSF/1 with Unix, as well.
> 
> There are several borderline cases - Domain OS/Aegis is rather
> different from Unix, but makes a pretty good job at pretending it's
> Unix anyway. And what should we say about Mach, which is not Unix but
> is based on it and _to the user_ very similar to 4.3 BSD?
> 


Is Unix really Unix???   How many unix-lookalikes or borderline case
Unix OS's are you going to allow and still consider them to be the same?

Due to purchasing from the lowest bidder, we have to work with: IBM, SGI,
SUN, DEC, etc.  Hardly all the same unix OS, just try and develop an
application that has to run on all these unix platforms.

And why must all unix commands be so cryptic, I thought we got away from
terse languages decades ago.  Unix sure trashed the term *user friendly*.

 ___________________________________________________________________________
 *****  *   *  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: hellmann@cs.scarolina.edu (Douglas R Hellmann)
Subject: Re: Computers killing people? (WAS Re: 9 track data storage???)
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:31:28 GMT

comrade@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Peter Cooper) writes:

>I wonder if being killed by a falling VAX 11/750 counts?  It *could*
>happen where I am.  The old vax lives on the top floor of a building
>that has had rather severe termite problems, and the VAX may well be
>past the safe loading limit.  Anyway, below the VAX is a student tavern,
>often playing loud enough movement that the floor moves measurably.  I
>can just see the headlines:

>Falling VAX kills 20.

>I live in hope.

>Peter
>-- 
>email:  comrade@uniwa.uwa.edu.au   snail:  Peter Cooper, box 22
>fax:    +61 9 380 1041                     Guild of Undergraduates
>phone:  +61 9 380 3929                     University of Western Australia
>"It was the banana that did it!" - Julia Marley

I wonder if they would try to make VAXes illegal then, since people get
killed by them.  Makes as much sense as making guns illegal.

Doug Hellmann
hellmann@cs.scarolina.edu
From: azog@world.std.com (Azog Thoth)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Typical Unix apps
Date: 30 Jul 92 23:35:23 GMT
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die

Now I relize that this question if most likely a loaded one. Theres no
typical much of anything in the world of computers... (where I use my
Atari for MIDI, some use it for DTP, as an example)

Anyways, Im just curious as to some of the more common applications
that run on a relativly ballsy machine, such as a SPARC IPX, or 
R4000.

Myself, I consider myself an enthuiast and bad speller. My small and
slow AT&T 3b1 is used mostly for news and mail (which dont work anymore,
since I need a new feed). I dont program. Mostly I collect machines
to learn new hardware and OS, and dont really run anything serious
on any of them. But I cant imagine someone having something like an 
Alpha machine for a toy... (regardless that the Alphas arent in
as populous).

What are your hefty machines used for?

Thanx

-- 
Billy D'augustine
azog@world.std.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: syswtr@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu
Subject: Re: 9 track data storage?
Organization: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 19:49:25 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.181435.16972@news.columbia.edu>, lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
> 
> I have heard of apocryphal stories about FastRand drums getting loose while 
> spinning and mowing down whatever was in its path.  Anyone out there
> can relate to a specific story?
> 
  How about the little guys called 'drum'.  Like the FH1732 (or somethink
like that), head/track spinning at 7200 RPM...

Willy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Subject: Re: IBM vs. world terminology (was: What does dd stand for?)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:43:10 GMT

ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig) writes:

>Why is it that MVS terminology is so different from the rest of the
>world? Look at a few examples:

>file		dataset

And how long as "file" been the only acceptable term?  "data set" dates 
back at least to the early development of the S/360 operating systems
around 1960 or so.  Standard terminology wasn't as well defined back then,
and IBM happened to choose a term which didn't become a de facto standard.
(I'm not saying that the marketing considerations didn't enter into its
choice, however...)

>disk		DASD

Direct Access Storage Device.  'Way back then there were non-disk devices
which were used for direct access; drums, for example, which were the only
high-performance medium (and priced to match...).  "DASD" is a generic
term; it just happens that disk technology is the only surviving direct-
access medium.

>formatting	DASDi

DASDI == "DASD Initialization".  This is *not* the same as formatting; DASDI
provides the basic formatting of a volume (writing volume labels, home
addresses/R0, and the VTOC); in IBM systems the actual formatting of the
data records occurs only when the data set (sorry; "file") is written
to the disk.  

>core dump	abend

Not the same.  An abend (ABnormal END) is an externally-forced abort of
a process (cf. what you get with ^C or CTRL-BREAK).  An abend may or may
not generate a core dump, depending on the reason for the abend and
whether or not the user has requested that a dump be taken.

>booting		IPL

IPL == Initial Program Load.  Older IBM systems just used the word "LOAD"
for the function; can anyone on the net provide information about the
prevelence of the word "boot" on other systems?  See also my note above
about "file" vs. "dataset" and remember that the S/360 and its progeny 
have their origins in 1960 or so and have used the same terms that were
in the initial release in 1964.

>directory	partitioned data set (well, sort of, anyway)

Huh?   A PDS (IBMspeak) is not the same as a directory (restoftheworldspeak).
In UNIX terms a PDS is the rough equivalent of a directory plus the
files it points to.  For that matter, the word "directory" is used to 
name the index portion of a PDS.

Joe Morris / MITRE
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: nolan@twg.com (Nolan Hinshaw)
Subject: Re: Today's Games Destined to be Classics
Keywords: Sigh
Reply-To: nolan@twg.com
Organization: Somewhere West of Nowhere
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 16:57:11 GMT


In article <BrunFB.n49@watserv1.waterloo.edu>, dp35@mc1adm.UWaterloo.ca (Greg Moore) writes:
[game drivel deleted]
|>
|>But then again...1975...Pong.
|>

Bah! It's gotta be Spacwar on a LINCtape! Nuttin' can touch it!

--
Nolan Hinshaw
Internet: nolan@twg.com			Dingalingnet: (415)962-7197	
"... necrophilia doesn't really hurt anybody."  Rick Gordon

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: tvv@tandem.com (Tom Van Vleck)
Subject: Mad drums
Reply-To: VanVleck_Tom@tandem.com
Organization: Tandem Computers Inc, Cupertino CA
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 18:32:00 GMT

Charles Lasner writes:
>I have heard of apocryphal stories about FastRand drums getting loose while 
>spinning and mowing down whatever was in its path.  Anyone out there
>can relate to a specific story?

I think this may be an urban legend.

I first heard it from a Bryant salesman in 1959 thus: An experimental
drum, half a ton of machined aluminum in a vacuum box at 14K rpm.
Somebody opened the door & the drum hopped its bearings and began
wandering like a top through the lab, smashing everything.

(I suspect that anytime there's a big piece of rotating machinery,
people wonder about its gyroscope nature.. wonder if that guy on the
bike has trouble cornering when his hard disk is spinning?)

-- Tom Van Vleck <vanvleck_tom@tandem.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: waigh@csri.toronto.edu (Geoffrey Waigh)
Subject: Re: Did the 80186 exist?
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:53:22 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.000006.27461@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes:
>>In article <1992Jun26.183126.17648@shell.shell.com> pace@fmcrunch
>(Stephen O. Pace) writes:
>>    My question is, was there a 186?  Was this a minor revision of the 8086?
>>    Did it die a quick death when the 286 came out?  How different was the
>>    instruction set?
>
>Certainly it did!  I think that it must have died quick when the 286
>came out - I don't think there was much time between them.
>
>They were used at University of Waterloo for the Real Time Programming
>course, and the last time I was through the M&C building back in June,
>they seemed to still be ticking away in the Real Time lab.  I don't
>know who made 'em, but they used a C by Computer Innovations...

Intel is still tweaking the 186 (80C186-16 was the fastest I've used)
and it is a popular chip in the embedded controller world.  - About a
year or two ago, I was waiting upto 6 months to get some of the new
versions (We were buying small quantities and they were on allocation
and chips aren't distributed as well in Canada.)  As for Computer
Innovations compilers, C86v2.3 was nice for a K&R compiler (very
stable - mediochre optimization) but then they felt that embedded compiler
market was too small and shifted to the "It compiles for IBM PCs and that
is all people need" mentality.  They also put out a disasterous C86Plus
compiler that was buggy and bloated (needed >640K for all but the smallest
sources.)

Geoffrey Waigh            (All accounts are forwarded to the address below)
g9gwaigh@cdf.utoronto.ca  (but this address will stick around at least a year)
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:10981 comp.sys.tandy:1211
From: 9125113g@lux.latrobe.edu.au (Mitch Davis)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.sys.tandy
Subject: TRS-80 tapes
Summary: Person in Melb. Australia needs a TRS-80 tape for testing
Keywords: TRS-80 TAPE
Date: 22 Jul 92 23:12:25 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University

Dear All:

I am planning to write a program for the IBM which reads TRS-80 cassette
tapes.  I plan to poll the fire input of the joystick board, or have an
ISR which handles signal changes on a line of the serial port.

I have no TRS-80 tapes, so I need one to do testing with.

Could some kind person (preferably in the Melbourne area) send me a
TRS-80-written tape so that I can test my software.

Address:

Mitch Davis
10/1072 Whitehorse Rd
Box Hill, Victoria, Australia 3128.

Warning: You run the risk of being liked forever after!

Mitch.
From: grog@adagio.UUCP (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: You know you've been hacking too long...
Date: 24 Jul 92 17:23:50 GMT
Organization: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany

In article <110@mccoy.dbaccess.com> steve@dbaccess.com (Steve Suttles) writes:
>in article <1WIHFC4@taronga.com>, peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) says:
>> 
>> In article <1992Jul19.161326.867@dscomsf.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
>>>Anyone else logged onto a machine to issue a `show time' command when
>>>one is wearing a perfectly good watch?
>> 
>> Well, I have had a clock in the room with my computer for some weeks now and
>> I *still* use the "date" command to see what time it is.
>>
>Has anyone else had the unpleasant experience of having to work on several
>machines, not all in the same time zones, and because of routinely needing
>to check timestamps on this file or another, -known- what the current time
>was from a `show time' command, and been wrong?

Not quite, maybe because I didn't trust the times on the machines. But
one day I was working late (in Frankfurt, Germany), and used my
roommate's terminal to start a shell on a system in Cupertino, and
then did the equivalent of a cd to her local directory (this was on a
Tandem, and the result was almost the same as being in the other
system). Then, of course, I forgot about it and went home. The next
morning, she came in and started working. After about 10 minutes, she
said to me "Boy, is the machine slow today".
-- 
Greg Lehey                       | Tel: +49-6637-1488              
LEMIS                            | Fax: +49-6637-1489
Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany
*** NOTE ***: Headers are mangled - reply to grog%lemis@Germany.EU.net
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers