HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: brentw@coopsol.com (Brent Williams)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Wang 2200 MVP
Date: 3 Sep 92 00:22:58 GMT
Organization: Cooperative Solutions, Inc.

devin@telerama.pgh.pa.us (Slumbering Pachyderm) writes:

>A friend of mine has recently acquired a Wang 2200 MVP computer.  He's
>managed to get it to do various things, but he's completely lacking
>documentation.  It sounds like a cool system -- multiuser operation,
>etc., but we can't get it to do much beyond the inventory control
>application that appears to be built into it.

>If you know anything about the Wang 2200 series, or (better yet) have
>any documentation, especially technical docs for this kind of machine,
>please send me some mail about it.

>Does anyone know what kind of CPU it runs on?  What is the OS?

I paid my way through college and made a nice living for 
years programming these things. Here are some tidbits, dredged up
from the dustbin of my mind:

It's a proprietary CPU.  The operating system is a BASIC language 
interpreter.  Period.  End of story.  Most capabilities that you 
would associate with a real operating system are completely absent
in the 2200 series.  But the 2200 series started life as an advanced
BASIC-language programmable calculator in the early '70's.  The first
model in the series (which I used) supported a whopping 4K of memory.
The 2200T model supported a whopping 16K of memory and you could even
hang a 10mb disk drive (weight: 250lb, cost: $13,000) on the thing, 
which was infinitely nicer than the 2 256kb 8 1/2" floppy drives that 
were the principal storage medium on the 2200A through 2200C processors.
The 10mb disk drive was 5mb fixed and 5mb removable, on 14" diameter
cartridges.  It's nice to see that technology has progressed a little
bit in disk drives -- this technology was unreliable as hell.

For 1975 technology, the Wang BASIC language was 'way 
cool compared to other minicomputers of the day.  The multi-user 
capabilities are almost non-existent, and were only worth using if 
you had experienced single user on a Wang 2200B, C, T, or VP.  Basically,
all the multi-user capabilities meant was that you could access up to 8K 
of shared memory between user processes.  You had to use that to hold global
variables and do your own record or file locking.  The file system was 
unbelievably primitive, allowing you to create a file of a given size
then never expand it after that.  Memory was restricted to a maximum of 64KB
per terminal session.  Basically, the MVP was a bunch of single processors
crammed into one box, with just some minor hacks to support this small 
amount of shared memory to do multi-processor things.

It's so far from what we would consider a real computer that it's 
probably not worth trying to get it to work for anything else.  I may 
still have a set of manuals for the thing that you can copy if you'd like.

-brent

-- 
Brent Williams/Cooperative Solutions Inc., San Jose CA   (408) 377-0300
brentw@coopsol.com
Cooperative Solutions makes Ellipse, a development environment for
industrial strength graphical client/server business applications.
From: fetrow@biostat.washington.edu (David Fetrow)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: SAGE
Date: 26 Aug 92 03:42:17 GMT
Organization: Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Univ. of Wash.

In article <1992Aug25.203217.12677@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:
>dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin)  writes:
>
>>Some of the blinken-lights from SAGE appeared in the submarine in Voyage
>>to the Bottom of the Sea.
>

 ..and Lost in Space..and Time Tunnel....

>I'd never heard this before. How did this happen? I didn't think SAGE
>was decommissioned long enough ago to be used in that show. Or did
>they really use a mockup to look like a Real Computer?

 Definitely the same kind of panels. I took a good long look at McChords'.
The PR type who showed me it even said so (well, he said "Star Trek" but
he was wrong). The same panels may have been used in other machines but I've
never seen one as big and detailed before or since.
 
 Knowing the TV production company involved it is guaranteed they got it cheap,
possibly from some film via IBM. Somone wired in a sequencer to all the
bulbs to make it look like it was working.

 This isn't the "Seaview"'s computer panel with the big square lights but
a LOT of little lamps in a unit maybe 1.5 meters up and maybe 3 meters long
which is often found in the backround when a generic computer is needed
for some scene in a show from the 60's or 70's.

 It's almost as ubiquetous as burned out DEC-looking parts used in the Timelords
most advanced computers as shown in "Dr. Who" :-).

-- 
 - dave fetrow-					fetrow@biostat.washington.edu

     Those who don't know OS history are condemmed to repeat it.
       ...of course, you could do worse.....and we have proof!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: samw@bucket.rain.com (Sam Warden)
Subject: Re: Spaghetti (was Re: Branching in HLL vs. Assembler (was Re: The need for an assembler))
Organization: Rick's Home-Grown Un*x
Date:  4 Sep 92 17:06:34 GMT

magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:

>So, is Wirth a fascist (in the hackish sense, of course, I'm certainly
>not implying anything about his political views!)? I suppose it's up
>to _you_ to decide that for yourself. I agree with much of what he
>does in theory, but I tend to find the practical implementations of
>his ideas a bit stifling in the Real World (tm).
 
As I understand it, Pascal (and presumably BASIC as well) were 
designed to circumscribe student programs so that nothing that
got past the compiler could crash the institution's one-and-only
batch mainframe.  Not a bad idea for its time but pretty 
irrelevant today.  Unfortunately this produced a legion of
programmers who wanted to stick with their first language for
everything.  Pascal and BASIC were kludged and hacked into
`working' languages, and we got the mess we have today.  ;-)
 
I propose that this phenomenon is a fatal flaw in the otherwise
attractive idea of `teaching' languages, in general.
-- 
 
samw@bucket.rain.com (Sam Warden) -- and not a mere Device.
 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: What You See Is All You Get
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
	<1992Aug23.154135.25297@news.uiowa.edu>
	<1992Aug25.113242.6137@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 11:47:41 GMT

TK> == Thomas Koenig <ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> 

 TK> And, btw, I have heard LaTeX described as a YCAGWYW - system - you
 TK> can't always get what you want.

But if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.

What the user wants and what the user should want are not always
synonymous.  I used to do resume design (on WYSIWYG systems) but I
always used tabs, style sheets, etc, where possible.

Then there were the people who used spaces to center and indent... in
proportional fonts.  Ack.  Barf.
--
Christopher Davis * ckd@eff.org * System Administrator, EFF * +1 617 864 0665
            ``Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ti Kwan Leep.
            Approach me that you might see.'' -- The Master
From: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Indentation
Date: 29 Aug 92 18:40:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Advanced Computer Concepts BBS, New Rochelle, NY 914-654-1981
Reply-To: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 

To: sammy@anagld.analytics.com

SB> .Again, these rules are meant to produce code that will be maintainable for
  > .years to come.  Maintenance programmers spend way too much time figuring o
  > .what variable names really mean or what the original programmer was TRYING
  > .do.  Programmers all too often code like e.e.cummings wrote poetry.  If yo
  > .have to figure out the meaning of a line of code then it is wasted time (f
  > .a financial point of view).  CODE SHOULD BE WRITTEN TO BE MAINTAINED!

Bravo!!

We're in (almost) complete accord.  I use much the same bracket style,
and also believe in significant and uniform naming conventions.  Try
the following.  (Drummed into all our customers by my former
employer...)

Variables are composed of a prefix, root, and postfix.

Prefixes: b        byte
          c        count
          ch       char
          i        index
          n        number
          o        offset (into array)
          p        pointer
          rg       array of
          sb       string of bytes (array)
          sn       selector (x86 addr)
          sa       segment addr (x86)
          ra       offset
          fh       file handle
             etc.

Suffixes: Ret        returned from call
          Max
          Min

These are compounded...
        pFoo is a pointer to Foo
        ppFoo is a pointer to a pointer to Foo
        ppFooRet is a pointer to where the pointer to Foo will be
                returned by the called process
        nLinesMax is the maximum number of Lines
        cLines  current count of Lines
        rgchFileName is an array of characters making up the File Name.
        rgsnLists is an array of selectors to the Lists...

And so far into the night.  It passes enough information so that it's
easy to spot if the wrong kind of variable is being passed to a routine.
Makes code quite readable and maintainable.  Try it, you'll like it!
<~>

        D/

 * OLX 2.2 * Dick.Zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com
                                                                     
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis)
Subject: You know you've been using X too long...
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 04:34:28 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville

I dreamed two nights ago that I had found the man pages on the world, and
in them was a list of the widget hierarchy of everything I could see.
I though, "Wow!  Now I don't have to live with the developer's *terrible*
taste in colors anymore!", and prompty decided to make the rivers a deep red,
and the skies shades of grey, by thinking "*River*background: #FF0000" and
"*Sky*background: #808080".

I think I've been hacking X too long...

-- 
lrwx------   1 aldavi01 emacsstu       9 Jun  6 12:43 .signature -> /dev/null
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: wcsjc@alfred.carleton.ca (John Coughlin)
Subject: Re: Better dead than IBM?
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 01:40:00 GMT

Inferior, But Marketable.
-- 
Flesh: John Coughlin                            Elvis ate my Cadillac
Net: wcsjc@ccs.carleton.ca     Vox: +1 613 957-2851     Fax: 990-7370
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: ae@sei.cmu.edu (Arthur Evans)
Subject: Re: Better dead than IBM
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 13:12:15 GMT

fstuart@eng.auburn.edu (Frank Stuart) asks what IBM stands for.

    Itsy Bitsy Machine

of course.

Art Evans
From: spitzak@gree.Eng.Sun.COM (Bill Spitzak)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What You See Is All You Get
Date: 26 Aug 1992 08:28:00 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems
Distribution: world
Reply-To: spitzak@gree.Eng.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: gree

I think "what you see is all you get" was a jab at a much more serious problem
than the inability to programatically change the font of all your chapter headings.
Especially in "mac rip off" word processors for the IBM that came out in the
year after the Mac did, your output was really *physically limited* to what
could be drawn on the screen.  Many could not position characters on output
at other the 1/72 inch increments, since to do so would mean the output was
something that could not be represented on the screen!  This meant the output
was much uglier than even the chintziest text-only word processor could produce.

Bill Spitzak


Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:13457 comp.unix.misc:3455
From: scjones@thor.sdrc.com (Larry Jones)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: GOTOs
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:27:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep03.104918.10823@bnr.uk>, agc@bmdhh298.bnr.ca (Alan Carter) writes:
> 
> communicate()
> {
> from_the_top:
>    if(!init_rs232()) goto from_the_top;
>    if(!init_modem()) goto from_the_top;
>    if(!dial_number()) goto from_the_top;
>    if(!log_on()) goto from_the_top;
>    if(!do_the_business()) goto from_the_top;
> }
> 
> This kind of thing is a pig to do with cutesy structured loops, 

Actually, C makes it quite simple to do that with a cutesy structured
loop:

communicate()
{
   while (!init_rs232() ||
          !init_modem() ||
          !dial_number() ||
          !log_on() ||
          !do_the_business()) {}
}

Thanks to the "," and "?:" operators, you can even do a fair amount of
processing inside the cutesy loop, making it even cutsier.
----
Larry Jones, SDRC, 2000 Eastman Dr., Milford, OH  45150-2789  513-576-2070
Domain: lawrence.jones@sdrc.com               IBMMAIL: USSDR7DR at IBMMAIL
I must have been delirious from having so much fun. -- Calvin
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Flash illiteracy; was: Re: Deutsches Museum (was: Zuse Computers
From: bankst@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Timothy Banks)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 00:41:08 GMT
Organization: Victoria University of Wellington

In article <1992Aug27.040325.14733@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)

>
>I have been asked whether one needs flash to photograph a solar eclipse.

	Yep - reminds me of Halley Comet Fever. The number of queries
	we had asking if a flash should be used when photographing the
	comet was amazing! Some people must have amazing cameras....
	:-) 



-- 
  Timothy Banks, Physics Department, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ.
       bankst@kauri|rata|matai.vuw.ac.nz, banks@beagle.phys.vuw.ac.nz.
    "He's dead, Jim!" "OK, you take the tricorder, I'll take the wallet!"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Keywords: Pascal
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 07:33:12 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.181713.11812@allegro.com> sieler@allegro.com (Stan Sieler) writes:

>You are confusing an implementation with the definition of the language.
>I have never had "stack dirt" in Pascal's I have used, including some on
>intrinsically stack-based machines (e.g.: Classic HP3000), as well as on
>register based machines (e.g.: PA-RISC based HP3000).

Can't say what an implementation you are using does/does not have, but the
language allows other implementation with the problem to exist and not
believe they have anything to clean up for.  The test for the condition is 
whether it's possible to transfer out of a loop, and then go back in with
out losing any context, or to transfer out of an inner nesting without losing
the context of some outermost structures.

>
>I would be interested in hearing if Wirth had a "hidden agenda", and if so,
>what it was.  When I teach about Pascal, I explain the dumb design decisions
>(e.g.: numbers instead of names for labels, lack of a "exit" or "return") as
>unfortunate consequences of making the task of writing the original compiler
>easier.  (E.g.: if your compiler is recursive descent, if it sees a number
>at the start of a statement, it *knows* it is a label.  If it is LL/LR/etc,  
>you don't have to lookahead to resolve what "foo" is at the start of
>a statement: you *know* it can't be a label, and your symbol table tells
>you if it is a procedure call or an assignment statement.)

Why do I want a language where I have to help the compiler out by using
odd syntax for labels?  Why would I want to use a language where you need
FORWARD statements because it doesn't do enough passes to do it without me?
I have used much "smarter" assemblers than PASCAL's :-).

Let's just say that it was "convenient" that the major weak spot of the
language became the lynch-pin of an academic "political" event.  (Indeed
poorly-formed GOTOs could be harmful.)

cjl

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: artn@bert.eecs.uic.edu (Ellyn Sandor)
Subject: Re: Apple /// (and MANY other computers)
Keywords: antique
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 17:48:10 GMT

	I've got a TI-99, a few laptops, a sinclair, but the real
collector's item:

	Intel 4/40, circa 1975, serial number 001

	With manuals, a blank board, papertape software (no way to load
it without an ASR-33 teleltype), built in EPROM burner, key switch. 4 bit
processor (either a 4004 or a 4040, I am not clear which), led's, rocker
switches.

	Any offers?

	It's my pride and joy, but if someone made a real good offer...

			sbm
-- 
--
Stephan Meyers | artn@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu
(Art)^n Laboratories, inventors of the Stealth Negative PHSCologram
(312) 567-3762
From: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The need for an assem
Date: 31 Aug 92 12:23:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Advanced Computer Concepts BBS, New Rochelle, NY 914-654-1981
Reply-To: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 

CL> .OK, we all know that there is a segment of our industry cranking out poor
  > .HLL code, and there is another segment doing a better job.  Anyone want to
  > .counter the statement that *most* of those in the first segment are also
  > .somehow good assembly programmers?  Let me be the first :-).

CL> .If my remark is so self-serving, then let me see either of you defend how
  > .ignorance of assembler helps your hll skills.

It neither helps nor hinders.  Being a "good programmer" is a function
of knowledge and ability to use algorithms and problem solving
techniques.  A good programmer will be a good programmer whether using
ASM, C, SNOBOL, SmallTalk, APL, COBOL, or whatever.

And a good programmer that knows and uses only C will be able to pick up
ASM and use it better than a poor programmer that's spent his life doing
nothing but ASM.  Experience in using a language gets you over the
learning curve of syntax and vocabulary.  Bill Buckley is going to be
well spoken no matter what language he uses...  It's what he says
and how he says it that counts, not the language he uses.

        D/

 * OLX 2.2 * Real Pilots enjoy NDB approaches to minimums!  Inverted!!
                                                                                                
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
From: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Reply-To: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Organization: Snake Island Research Inc, Toronto
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 04:36:55 GMT

In article <1992Aug24.154746.22780@news.eng.convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>From the keyboard of lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen):
>:To put it bluntly, very few langauges handle strings as elegantly as BASIC
>:does. (Snobol, in particular, handles them better, but I don't have a Snobol

Well, APL and J have the following primitives for strings:
 take: First n characters
 drop: all but first n characters
   with negative n, you get last n and all but last n characters, respectively.
 index: Any set of characters from the array, using an array of indices.
 rotate: rotate string either way
 reverse: reverse characters in string.

Now, these primitives also happen to work on arrays (character, boolean,
integer, floating, complex, recursive) of ANY rank, so you
can, for example:
  TAKE the first n columns of an table of characters
  rotate each column of a table of characters up to the first non-blank
    (handy for assemblers...)
  drop leading blanks
  transpose arrays

and so on. A major virtue of APL and J is regularity: primitives are
defined (so are user-defined functions...) on arbitrary data types of
arbitrary rank and size, so you don't need to loop, nor do you need
to know which function to use for a particular data type: You rotate
anything, transpose anything, etc.


Robert Bernecky      rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.com  bernecky@itrchq.itrc.on.ca 
Snake Island Research Inc  (416) 368-6944   FAX: (416) 360-4694 
18 Fifth Street, Ward's Island
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2B9 
Canada
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: Computers killing peo
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:19:51 GMT

In article <3894.168.uupcb@ssr.com> dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin)  writes:
>TO> .With a SERIAL port, maybe. But very unlikely. Few printers have
>  > .the transmit data line hooked up.
>
>You run printers with serial interfaces that don't support XON/XOFF
>interface?  Strange...  Which printers don't support this??

Unfortunately, most of the IBM-PC world does it this way :-(.  The printer
usually is ready, and accepts chars spewing out the port at the rate of
the connection until the buffer gets say, 3/4 full.  At that point, it
lowers one of the handshakes like CTS which makes the PC end unable to
complete the latest function, thus preventing the latest application
program from outputting any more.  Eventually the printer catches up, and
when the buffer gets, say 1/4 full only, raises CTS so the host can proceed.

Notice that this kludge violates standard RS-232 protocol.  As proof,
do it over a modem-modem connection :-).  (Dropping that signal makes the
phone call hang up.)

cjl
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:13066 alt.religion.computers:550
From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (D. J. Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Good source code to read?
Date: 25 Aug 92 22:12:59 GMT
Organization: IR

I pointed out that the halting problem is decidable in practice. You can
write a compiler which takes a program and certain specified variables
and produces a halting executable. The executable uses twice as much
memory for those variables, and runs at one-third speed, but if the
variables loop then the executable will stop sometime during the first
loop.

Hubert Yamada alludes to two programs, one of which counts in
multi-precision up to 2^100 and repeats, the other of which counts up to
2^100 and halts. Naturally, the halting executable will have to run a
very long time before detecting this loop. But *in practice* you
wouldn't trace that counter.

---Dan
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Branching in HLL vs. Assembler (was Re: The need for an assembler)
From: don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (Don Stokes)
Date: 1 Sep 92 10:45:33 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Wolery

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
> a)	That's ludicrous since no code does a GOTO the middle of a module
> therefore the largest thing to worry about is the size of the module you
> are working on where the label exists.

Which can be quite large.

I once worked on (RSTS/E BASIC-PLUS) programs excreted from a program 
generator which would GOSUB out of the mainline into a subroutine, GOTO
back into the mainline, GOTO back into the subroutine and drop safely 
out the other side.  The subroutine might be called again while executing
the mainline from the subroutine....

Hairy stuff.  Fun to deal with -- as long as you remembered to take two 
asprin before starting....

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                        don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre            don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand              +64-4-495-5052
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers