From dave at horsfall.org Sat Nov 2 06:36:39 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 07:36:39 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! Message-ID: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave From crossd at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 07:12:23 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 17:12:23 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known > vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a > metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was > accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). > A > temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". > > Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. > This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake he made 31 years ago. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 2 07:55:19 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 14:55:19 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: +1. Well said Dan. We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error and we all learned from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on it. On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:13 PM Dan Cross wrote: > On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > >> The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known >> vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out >> a >> metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was >> accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). >> A >> temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". >> >> Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. >> > > This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring > to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, > but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone > on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there > really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake > he made 31 years ago. > > - Dan C. > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 07:49:05 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 17:49:05 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known > vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a > metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was > accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). > A > temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". > > Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. > > -- Dave > One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 08:25:15 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 18:25:15 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 5:56 PM Clem Cole wrote: > +1. Well said Dan. > > We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error > and we all learned from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on > it. > > On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:13 PM Dan Cross wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: >> >>> The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known >>> vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out >>> a >>> metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was >>> accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network >>> first). A >>> temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". >>> >>> Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. >>> >> >> This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring >> to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, >> but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone >> on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there >> really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake >> he made 31 years ago. >> >> - Dan C. >> > The father of the person who wrote the worm was a Unix pioneer, Bob Morris. He coauthored a paper on Unix password security with Ken Thompson. He was working for the NSA when the worm was unleashed. As told in The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll was an early suspect, and it caused Bob Morris no small amount of embarrassment and angst to discover that the culprit was his own son. I'm sure that Bob was proud of his son's accomplishments -- but not that one. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wlc at jctaylor.com Sat Nov 2 16:44:51 2019 From: wlc at jctaylor.com (William Corcoran) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 06:44:51 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> References: , , <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> Message-ID: <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> My comments were not directed to A. P. Garcia. I regret my error. Bill Corcoran On Nov 2, 2019, at 2:36 AM, William Corcoran > wrote: Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. Bill Corcoran On Nov 1, 2019, at 5:49 PM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall > wrote: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wlc at jctaylor.com Sat Nov 2 16:35:02 2019 From: wlc at jctaylor.com (William Corcoran) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 06:35:02 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. Bill Corcoran On Nov 1, 2019, at 5:49 PM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall > wrote: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 17:31:36 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 03:31:36 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> References: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, 2:44 AM William Corcoran wrote: > My comments were not directed to A. P. Garcia. > > I regret my error. > > Bill Corcoran > > > > On Nov 2, 2019, at 2:36 AM, William Corcoran wrote: > > Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all > kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of > our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young > Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply > doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that > the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, > there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. > > Bill Corcoran > > No worries. It's worth mentioning on a Unix mailing list that RTM coauthored xv6, an x86 reimplementation of the v6 kernel. It sort of carries the torch of the Lions book by teaching future generations about the internals of operating systems and the Unix way. And that is a beautiful thing. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 12:05:11 2019 From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 09:05:11 +0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! Message-ID: >From: Clem Cole >To: Dan Cross >Cc: Computer Old Farts Followers , Dave Horsfall , >The Eunuchs Hysterical Society >Bcc: >Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 14:55:19 -0700 >Subject: Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! >+1. Well said Dan. > >We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error and we all learned >from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on it. Of course after having had my monthly Windows update session I really wonder if we learned from it. Cheers, uncle rubl From clemc at ccc.com Sun Nov 3 14:21:18 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 21:21:18 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Oh I think we have learned. We still have a WSU’s to go On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 7:05 PM Rudi Blom wrote: > >From: Clem Cole > >To: Dan Cross > >Cc: Computer Old Farts Followers , Dave Horsfall < > dave at horsfall.org>, >The Eunuchs Hysterical Society > >Bcc: > >Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 14:55:19 -0700 > >Subject: Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! > >+1. Well said Dan. > > > >We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error > and we all learned >from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on > it. > > Of course after having had my monthly Windows update session I really > wonder if we learned from it. > > Cheers, > uncle rubl > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 17:05:28 2019 From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 14:05:28 +0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: +1 Maybe I was a bit negative but then I did mention WINDOWS System Updating. Anyone here who studied there by the way? Have fun. On 03/11/2019, Clem Cole wrote: > Oh I think we have learned. We still have a WSU’s to go > > On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 7:05 PM Rudi Blom wrote: > >> >From: Clem Cole >> >To: Dan Cross >> >Cc: Computer Old Farts Followers , Dave Horsfall < >> dave at horsfall.org>, >The Eunuchs Hysterical Society >> >Bcc: >> >Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 14:55:19 -0700 >> >Subject: Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! >> >+1. Well said Dan. >> > >> >We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error >> and we all learned >from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back >> on >> it. >> >> Of course after having had my monthly Windows update session I really >> wonder if we learned from it. >> >> Cheers, >> uncle rubl >> > -- > Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual > From michael at kjorling.se Tue Nov 5 08:10:13 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 22:10:13 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: On 4 Nov 2019 15:27 -0500, from crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross): > On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 1:58 PM Bakul Shah wrote: >> I am surprised no one mentioned *The Shockwave Rider *by John Brunner, >> published in 1975. Excerpt: > > In the 1983 movie "Wargames", at the very end as the staff at NORAD > desperately try and disable the rogue artificial intelligence hell-bent on > starting World War III, at one point they make a suggestion to send a > "tapeworm" into the system", but it's judged too risky. In the 1984 movie _2010_, it seems using a tapeworm was more of a standard, if unusual, procedure for solving a very different problem. Copying from > Dr. Chandra: I've erased all of HAL's memory from the moment the > trouble started. > > Dr. Vasili Orlov: The 9000 series uses holographic memories, so > chronological erasures would not work. > > Dr. Chandra: I made a tapeworm. > > Dr. Walter Curnow: You made a what? > > Dr. Chandra: It's a program that's fed into a system that will hunt > down and destroy any desired memories. > > Dr. Floyd: Wait... do you know why HAL did what he did? > > Dr. Chandra: Yes. It wasn't his fault. I also suggest to migrate this part of the discussion to COFF as it has very little to do with UNIX history per se. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor) From grog at lemis.com Tue Nov 5 09:00:55 2019 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 10:00:55 +1100 Subject: [COFF] Manipulating time_t values (was: Unix half-billion years old 1985) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191104230055.GH68439@eureka.lemis.com> [Moved to COFF] On Monday, 4 November 2019 at 16:59:22 -0500, John P. Linderman wrote: > I wrote a near-trivial "timestamp" command to make it easier to do time > arithmetic > > TZ=udt timestamp > 119 11 04 21 50 06 18204 1572904206 Mon Nov 4 21:50:06 2019 > TZ=udt timestamp 0 > 70 01 01 00 00 00 0 0 Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 > ... FreeBSD has this functionality in date(1): TZ=UTC date -r 500000000 Tue 5 Nov 1985 00:53:20 UTC TZ=UTC date -r 1500000000 Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:40:00 UTC Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bakul at bitblocks.com Tue Nov 5 09:50:18 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 15:50:18 -0800 Subject: [COFF] Manipulating time_t values (was: Unix half-billion years old 1985) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 05 Nov 2019 10:00:55 +1100." <20191104230055.GH68439@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20191104230055.GH68439@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20191104235025.C0548156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> On Tue, 05 Nov 2019 10:00:55 +1100 Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > > [Moved to COFF] > > On Monday, 4 November 2019 at 16:59:22 -0500, John P. Linderman wrote: > > I wrote a near-trivial "timestamp" command to make it easier to do time > > arithmetic > > > > TZ=udt timestamp > > 119 11 04 21 50 06 18204 1572904206 Mon Nov 4 21:50:06 2019 > > TZ=udt timestamp 0 > > 70 01 01 00 00 00 0 0 Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 > > ... > > FreeBSD has this functionality in date(1): > > TZ=UTC date -r 500000000 > Tue 5 Nov 1985 00:53:20 UTC > TZ=UTC date -r 1500000000 > Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:40:00 UTC Shouldn't that be Tue 5 Nov 1985 00:52:57 UTC Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:39:23 UTC given that this is UTC (which is 37 seconds behind TAI)? Sorry :-) From imp at bsdimp.com Tue Nov 5 13:07:07 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 20:07:07 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Manipulating time_t values (was: Unix half-billion years old 1985) In-Reply-To: <20191104235025.C0548156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <20191104230055.GH68439@eureka.lemis.com> <20191104235025.C0548156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 4, 2019, 5:00 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > On Tue, 05 Nov 2019 10:00:55 +1100 Greg 'groggy' Lehey > wrote: > > > > [Moved to COFF] > > > > On Monday, 4 November 2019 at 16:59:22 -0500, John P. Linderman wrote: > > > I wrote a near-trivial "timestamp" command to make it easier to do time > > > arithmetic > > > > > > TZ=udt timestamp > > > 119 11 04 21 50 06 18204 1572904206 Mon Nov 4 21:50:06 2019 > > > TZ=udt timestamp 0 > > > 70 01 01 00 00 00 0 0 Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 > > > ... > > > > FreeBSD has this functionality in date(1): > > > > TZ=UTC date -r 500000000 > > Tue 5 Nov 1985 00:53:20 UTC > > TZ=UTC date -r 1500000000 > > Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:40:00 UTC > > Shouldn't that be > Tue 5 Nov 1985 00:52:57 UTC > Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:39:23 UTC > given that this is UTC (which is 37 seconds behind TAI)? > The delta was closer to 18 in 1985 and 36 on 2017. But that doesn't matter. Sorry :-) > No. POSIX says leap seconds do not exist for the computation of these numbers. Greg's numbers are POSIXly correct. Warner _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dot at dotat.at Tue Nov 5 21:13:12 2019 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 11:13:12 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Manipulating time_t values (was: Unix half-billion years old 1985) In-Reply-To: References: <20191104230055.GH68439@eureka.lemis.com> <20191104235025.C0548156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: Fans of time_t numerology might like my silly palindromic twitter bots, https://twitter.com/time_t_emit https://twitter.com/time_x_emit https://twitter.com/time_o_emit https://twitter.com/time_b_emit Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ Thames, Dover, East Wight: Cyclonic 3 to 5, becoming northerly 5 to 7 later. Slight or moderate. Thundery showers. Good, occasionally moderate. From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 10 08:09:53 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2019 09:09:53 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Gene Amdahl Message-ID: We lost computer architect Gene Amdahl on this day in 2015; responsible for "Amdahl's Law" (referring to parallel computing), he had a hand in the IBM-704, the System/360, and founded Amdahl Corporation (a clone of the 360/370 series). -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 11 06:41:00 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 07:41:00 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy Birthday, Donald Michie and Robert Fano! Message-ID: Donald Michie, a computer scientist, was born in 1923; he was famous for his work in AI, and also worked at Bletchley Park on the "Tunny" cipher. And Robert Fano, computer scientist and Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, was born on this day in 1917. He worked with Claude Shannon on Information Theory, was involved in the development of time-sharing computers, and was Founding Director of Project Mac, which became MIT's AI Lab. -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 11 07:46:41 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 08:46:41 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memorium: Douglas Rain Message-ID: We lost him on this day in 2018; he was the voice of the rogue computer HAL on "2001" (hence the tenuous computer connection). -- Dave, who can't do that From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 12 01:05:02 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 10:05:02 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Gene Amdahl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: According to my friend Russ Robulen (his coworker, lead on the 360/50, worked on /91 and later lead for the IBM ASC), Amdahl wanted the byte to be 7-bits for S/360, but Fred Brook's overruled him. Brooks was said to have thrown Amdahl out his office and told him "not come back unless it was a power of 2", as "he could not program it sanely otherwise." Amdahl semi-won the 24/32 bit war. Brooks let he have a 24 bit basic word, only if it stored it as 32 bits and ensured that all pointers were stored in the same. Russ says that Amdahl always thought both choices were a terrible waste of hardware. Gordon Bell later said, those two choices were the most important in S/360's lasting impact. Clem On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 5:10 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > We lost computer architect Gene Amdahl on this day in 2015; responsible > for "Amdahl's Law" (referring to parallel computing), he had a hand in the > IBM-704, the System/360, and founded Amdahl Corporation (a clone of the > 360/370 series). > > -- Dave > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 07:38:02 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 08:38:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Gene Amdahl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Clem Cole wrote: > According to my friend Russ Robulen (his coworker, lead on the 360/50, > worked on /91 and later lead for the IBM ASC),  Amdahl wanted the byte > to be 7-bits for S/360, but Fred Brook's overruled him.  Brooks was said > to have thrown Amdahl out his office and told him "not come back unless > it was a power of 2", as "he could not program it sanely otherwise."  >  Amdahl semi-won the 24/32 bit war.   Brooks let he have a 24 bit basic > word, only if it stored it as 32 bits and ensured that all pointers were > stored in the same.  Russ says that Amdahl always thought both choices > were a terrible waste of hardware.   Gordon Bell later said, those two > choices were the most important in S/360's lasting impact. Interesting; I'll try and summarise that for my calendar. In the meantime I'm glad that Brooks' view prevailed, having worked with byte-less 12-bit (PDP-8) and 60-bit (CDC); I don't remember the word length of the Burroughs series. -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 09:38:15 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:38:15 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] WWW proposal anniversary Message-ID: In 1990 a certain Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir) published a proposal for the World Wide Web (often confused with the Internet by newbies). -- Dave From cym224 at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 09:38:39 2019 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 18:38:39 -0500 Subject: [COFF] WWW proposal anniversary In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42e6650e-dc01-06d9-7a4e-96528ff470e2@gmail.com> On 11/11/19 18:38, Dave Horsfall wrote: > In 1990 a certain Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir) published a proposal for > the World Wide Web (often confused with the Internet by newbies). > > -- Dave And my usual question (answered in Sir Tim's book): What box hosted the first webserver outside CERN (and what language was it written in)? N. From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 10:03:21 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 11:03:21 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] WWW proposal anniversary In-Reply-To: <42e6650e-dc01-06d9-7a4e-96528ff470e2@gmail.com> References: <42e6650e-dc01-06d9-7a4e-96528ff470e2@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > And my usual question (answered in Sir Tim's book): What box hosted the > first webserver outside CERN (and what language was it written in)? I'd amend my notes accordingly if I knew the answer. -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 13 11:11:56 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:11:56 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: (Narrowly diverted in time to COFF from TUHS when I saw Warren's email, so I hope Warner is on it.) On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Warner Losh wrote: > POSIX can't even recognize that leap seconds exist :( There's a movement afoot to abolish leap seconds because they are "inconvenient" or something; that will upset the astronomers and other people who care about the exact time. > All is not lost, though; use strncpy() instead of strcpy() etc.  > > strncpy has two issues. First, it doesn't guarantee NUL termination. > Second, it always writes N bytes. It's for a fixed width data field, not > a variable length string whose buffer size is known. strlcpy is much > better, but still has some issues... Yeah, I knew about the NUL termination (or lack of it) - I didn't think to mention it. When I use it, I copy n-1 bytes and plant the NUL in there myself (depending on how I'm using it). And I wasn't aware of strlcpy() - thanks. Too many functions to keep track of these days.... Trivia: curious to see how Australia's "talking clock" (long gone in favour of NTP, alas) handled the leap second, I recorded it (it puts a gap before the last beep). It can be heard (and seen!) over on www.horsfall.org/leapsecond.webm . And yes, that old long-haired hippie is me... -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 13 11:14:48 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:14:48 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 13 Nov 2019, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Trivia: curious to see how Australia's "talking clock" (long gone in favour > of NTP, alas) handled the leap second, I recorded it (it puts a gap before > the last beep). It can be heard (and seen!) over on > www.horsfall.org/leapsecond.webm . Jeeze; that didn't take long :-) Yes, I monitor my logs... -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 13 15:57:47 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:57:47 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Per Brinch Hansen! Message-ID: Computer scientist Per Brinch Hansen was born on this day in 1938; he was known for his work on "monitors" (now known as operating systems), concurrent programming, parallel processing, etc. -- Dave From peter at rulingia.com Wed Nov 13 18:37:26 2019 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:37:26 +1100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <5d8d9933-1213-3f07-02e0-f3ad5c293de4@kilonet.net> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> <5d8d9933-1213-3f07-02e0-f3ad5c293de4@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <20191113083726.GF50716@server.rulingia.com> On 2019-Nov-12 17:49:46 -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: >On 11/12/2019 5:41 PM, Robert Clausecker wrote: >> Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully all learned from Pascal >> is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything >> useful without copying the entire string. Keep in mind that C doesn't have a "string" type. The use of a NUL terminated char array is purely convention. There's nothing to stop someone using a length-prefixed array (though there's virtually no standard library support for that). >> Rob Pike and friends showed >> how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a >> builtin slice type which is essentially a structure >> >> struct slice(type) { >> type *data; >> size_t len, cap; >> }; That approach would have incurred a 12-byte overhead for each string or vector on a PDP-11 - that would have been a substantial disincentive on a memory-constrained system. >And none of that stops some programmer from doing slice.cap=255 - or is >it read-only? ;) Slices and strings are built-in types in Go. They can be modelled as the above structure but that is an implementation detail. It is possible to reduce the capacity of a slice (but not a string) but attempting to increase it will result in a runtime exception ("panic" in Go speak). -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 963 bytes Desc: not available URL: From clemc at ccc.com Thu Nov 14 00:17:09 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:17:09 -0500 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> Message-ID: Moving to a COFF On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 4:16 AM Thomas Paulsen wrote: > 'T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 bootstrap > compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's > founder) wrote.' > Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector TECO started as that for PDP-1 or maybe TX-1 (at MIT I believe). But over time, TECO became the primary text editor on the PDP-10's for many, many people in the ARPA community. I learned it as my second, PDP-10 text editor (I learned a line editor, who's name I forget, that was similar to the IBM's editor when I got my first PDP-10 account, but quickly moved to TECO). FWIW: The original EMACS was a set of TECO macros. The historical truth is that besides being the primary text editor, it was so rich in function that TECO became for the PDP-10 what Jon Bentley describes as a 'little language' and was used for all sorts of small hacks. The later Unix world created other tools, be it sed, later awk, and the like. But for the PDP-10 world, TECO very much that low level engine that a lot of people used. When BLISS was written, CMU did not have UNIX (and thus nor any of the UNIX tools - as I had a small hand in making UNIX happen @ CMU in the early 1970s). But when I arrived, the two PDP-10's (CMU-A and CMU-B) reigned supreme as primary CS (and EE) systems, along with the CMU hacked version of IBM's TSS running on the 360 for everyone else (and where I got my first real programming job), plus CMU's own TSS/8 on couple of PDP-8s that were scattered about. FWIW: Chuck used the PDP-10's for his work as a grad student. He also is famous for being the first PhD to produce his thesis on a 'laser printer', the CMU XGP (it was not a laser as today, it was modified FAX machine made by Xerox). The fun story is that CMU's administration would not accept his thesis originally because the library wanted the 'originals' to put in the archives. It took 6-9 months for his thesis advisor (Bill Wulf) to convince the library, that they had the originals. Anyway, the use of TECO in such a manner was very much the way things were done in those days, so the legend is very much possible. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lars at nocrew.org Thu Nov 14 01:06:19 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 15:06:19 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Clem Cole's message of "Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:17:09 -0500") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> Message-ID: <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Clem Cole wrote: > TECO started as that for PDP-1 or maybe TX-1 (at MIT I believe). But > over time, TECO became the primary text editor on the PDP-10's for > many, many people in the ARPA community. I think PDP-1. As far as I know, no surviving copy has emerged. Not even Dan Murphy has one. And not just the PDP-10. I think just about every DEC computer had a version of TECO, right? From clemc at ccc.com Thu Nov 14 01:32:29 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:32:29 -0500 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 10:06 AM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > And not just the PDP-10. I think just about every DEC computer had a version > of TECO, right? > Very likely. There were a lot of implementations, but it had grown in size, that address space was an issue. I do have memories of a simple TECO for RT-11, but the EMACS macros did not load/could not run (I've forgotten why). VAX/VMS eventually had a TECO which best I can tell, begat EDT, but that was after my time. BTW: I remembered the name of the line editor for the PDP-10 I had learned before I used TECO: SOS - Son of Stopgap (I want to say the name of the IBM/TSS text editor was REDIT, but that's probably wrong). I do remember that going from the IBM system editor to SOS was very easy, the commands were similar. And, a flavor of SOS also ran on VAX/VMS before TECO or EDT arrived. As I had to relearn it, when we worked on the first VAX, since SOS was the only editor. But by that time, I had learned ed (1) and the UNIX tools and had mostly migrated away from the PDP-10. I remember being annoyed because I wanted to use regular expressions on the VAX editor, and had come to realize how much of the UNIX tool kit had become accustomed in my workflow. Clem ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grog at lemis.com Thu Nov 14 08:31:01 2019 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 09:31:01 +1100 Subject: [COFF] TECO (was: History of m6?) In-Reply-To: <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> On Wednesday, 13 November 2019 at 15:06:19 +0000, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > I think just about every DEC computer had a version of TECO, right? I don't recall seeing it on our PDP-8 and -12. Does anybody else? Presumably they were too small for it, but the -8 made up a large part of DEC's production. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From lars at nocrew.org Thu Nov 14 15:47:40 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 05:47:40 +0000 Subject: [COFF] TECO In-Reply-To: <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> (Greg Lehey's message of "Thu, 14 Nov 2019 09:31:01 +1100") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <7wwoc3huv7.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wroteÖ >> I think just about every DEC computer had a version of TECO, right? > I don't recall seeing it on our PDP-8 and -12. Does anybody else? I found this: "TECO, the text editor, was included in the standard OS/8 distributions and is a general purpose language (the Emacs editor began as a set of TECO macros!). The story of TECO on the PDP-8 is convoluted. Russ Hamm implemented TECO under his OS8 (without a slash) system, and then gave a listing to Don Baccus at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) who, along with Barry Smith ported it to PS/8. This was the beginning of what became Oregon Software, later famous for OMSI Pascal. Richard F. Lary and Stan Rabinowitz made OS/8 TECO more compatible with other versions of TECO, and the result of this work is the version distributed by DECUS (catalog number 110450 is the manual). RT-11 TECO for the PDP-11 is a port of this code." http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/faqs/ From lars at nocrew.org Thu Nov 14 20:53:21 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:53:21 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Thomas Paulsen's message of "Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:26:39 +0100") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <7wblteiva6.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> I suggest continuing this on COFF. Thomas Paulsen wrote: > I have a account on a remote twenex PDP10. There is a editor named > emacs. This is a very archaic piece of software. It doesn't know any > teco commands no matter how I tried. I'm pretty sure that this is > teco-emacs. Yes, it should be TECO Emacs. Normal use of Emacs rarely needs TECO commands. To get a TECO minibuffer type Meta-Altmode (Esc Esc). You should get a small window at the top of the terminal in which you can enter TECO commands. Execute them with double altmode as you would in any TECO. > I draw my own conclusions from these observations which are far away > from all these myths. I try to stay with the facts. I actually use TECO Emacs almost daily, and I have built it from sources. Some other information is based on email conversations among those who wrote Emacs. From clemc at ccc.com Fri Nov 15 00:40:09 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 09:40:09 -0500 Subject: [COFF] TECO In-Reply-To: <7wwoc3huv7.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> <7wwoc3huv7.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 12:47 AM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Richard F. Lary and Stan Rabinowitz made OS/8 TECO more compatible > Oh boy - there are two names from the past ;-) > with other versions of TECO, and the result of this work is the > version distributed by DECUS (catalog number 110450 is the > manual). RT-11 TECO for the PDP-11 is a port of this code." > I sent a message to Richie and Jack Burness. The last statement is a little worrisome, as 'porting' PDP-8 assembler to the PDP-11 was really not done in my experience. Jack (Graphics) and Richie (OS) worked for the late Lorin Gale on the SW for the PDP-12 - which was based on the PDP-8 and then later rewrote a lot of things for Strecker's PDP-11. But, my experience is it was always a rewrite/modeled after more than a 'port'. FWIW: I also thought it was the late Kent Blackett that did much of the RT-11 work, but I'm not sure which is why I asked Jack and Richie who should remember. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Fri Nov 15 01:00:04 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:00:04 -0500 Subject: [COFF] TECO (was: History of m6?) In-Reply-To: <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 11:24 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Wednesday, 13 November 2019 at 15:06:19 +0000, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > I think just about every DEC computer had a version of TECO, right? > > I don't recall seeing it on our PDP-8 and -12. Does anybody else? > Presumably they were too small for it, but the -8 made up a large part > of DEC's production. > Lar's comment about Richie and Stan having worked on a PDP-8 version sounds reasonable. I don't know Stan's full story as I never worked with him closely, but Lorin Gale hired Richie and Jack into DEC out of Brooklyn Poly to work on the PDP-12 in about 1972; where they had been PDP-10 hackers as students/roommates (and nearly 50 years, multiple children and marriages later, still nearly inseparable/often hard to tell apart). Anyway, the PDP-8 was the development system for the 12. So Richie wanting a more compatible TECO would be something he could/would have created. My memory is that TECO-8 was sort of like the PC's micro-emacs in that is was written in the key/model after it's namesake, using TECO-10 in syntax and commands, but very limited and much smaller and could run on a more resource limited system. It was certainly true for TECO-11 the PDP-10's macros (EMACS) would not work there and I think the same was true for TECO-8. That said, I did not mess with either enough, as I came late the PDP-8/12 work, and really started with PDP-11s and Vaxen. So we would need to talk to a few people a little older, like Richie or Jack Burness who were there. Clem -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.winalski at gmail.com Fri Nov 15 02:35:03 2019 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 11:35:03 -0500 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7wblteiva6.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <7wblteiva6.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On 11/14/19, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > To get a TECO minibuffer type Meta-Altmode (Esc Esc). You should get a > small window at the top of the terminal in which you can enter TECO > commands. Execute them with double altmode as you would in any TECO. I used to think that "Emacs" stood for "escape-meta-alt-control-shift". :-) It's too finger-busy with all that alt, escape, and meta stuff for my taste. -Paul W. From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Nov 15 10:01:00 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 17:01:00 -0700 Subject: [COFF] TECO In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7wy2wjke8k.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <20191113223101.GA98220@eureka.lemis.com> <7wwoc3huv7.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 7:40 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 12:47 AM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > >> >> Richard F. Lary and Stan Rabinowitz made OS/8 TECO more compatible >> > Oh boy - there are two names from the past ;-) > > >> with other versions of TECO, and the result of this work is the >> version distributed by DECUS (catalog number 110450 is the >> manual). RT-11 TECO for the PDP-11 is a port of this code." >> > I sent a message to Richie and Jack Burness. The last statement is a > little worrisome, as 'porting' PDP-8 assembler to the PDP-11 was really not > done in my experience. Jack (Graphics) and Richie (OS) worked for the late > Lorin Gale on the SW for the PDP-12 - which was based on the PDP-8 and then > later rewrote a lot of things for Strecker's PDP-11. But, my experience > is it was always a rewrite/modeled after more than a 'port'. FWIW: I > also thought it was the late Kent Blackett that did much of the RT-11 work, > but I'm not sure which is why I asked Jack and Richie who should remember. > I used TECO on a RSTS/e system in the early 80s, but it's visual mode and 'line noise' mode (the visual mode was akin to Emacs, but it wasn't emacs as it had funky key bindings). Had a huge teco-11 manual printed that I marked up. Was all in on TECO. Went to college. The TECO on the TOPS-20 machine was so different I hardly recognized it. Didn't matter, though, since I fell in love with Emacs and rarely needed to type in raw TECO commands to get things done.... I don't know if we ran the RT-11 TECO under RSTS/e system or not. The installation had an odd mix of RT-11 and RSX-11 binaries and sources and it was kinda hard to understand what was going on with the system as a mere user that tried to PIP everything he could to the DECWRITER for later study... I'm kinda disappointed that it wasn't a Unix shop, but at the time AT&T made it far too expensive for small mom&pop shops like the one I worked in to run Unix commercially... :( Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sat Nov 16 07:54:59 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 08:54:59 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD Message-ID: Weird day... Computer architect Gene Amdahl was born in on this day in 1922; he had a hand in the IBM 704 and the System/360, founded Amdahl Corporation (maker of /360 clones), and devised Amdahl's Law in relation to parallel processing. But we lost Jay W. Forrester in 2016; another computer pioneer, he invented core memory (remember that, with its destructive read cycle?). Oh, and LSD was first synthesised in 1938 by Dr. Hofmann of Sandoz Labs, Switzerland; it had nothing to do with Berkeley and BSD, man... -- Dave From krewat at kilonet.net Sat Nov 16 08:26:44 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 17:26:44 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> On 11/15/2019 4:54 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Computer architect Gene Amdahl was born in on this day in 1922; he had > a hand in the IBM 704 and the System/360, founded Amdahl Corporation > (maker of /360 clones), and devised Amdahl's Law in relation to > parallel processing. How did Amdahl get away with making 360 clones? I would have thought that IBM would have crushed his bones into dust. art k. From dave at horsfall.org Sat Nov 16 08:42:47 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 09:42:47 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 15 Nov 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote: > How did Amdahl get away with making 360 clones? I would have thought > that IBM would have crushed his bones into dust. Clones in the way that they were able to run OS/360; that's about all that I can remember. Hitachi also came out with a clone, as did no doubt many other manufacturers; after all, the instruction set was public knowledge... I dimly recall that some opcodes had undocumented side-effects, so in theory (and likely in practice) OS/360 could detect whether it was running on a clone, and "fail to proceed" (in Rolls Royce terms). My favourite /360 instruction on our customised system was "SVC 254" which got you supervisor mode (long story, depending upon the statute of limitations). The operators and I had a love-hate relationship i.e. they loved to hate me :-) Soon after I got a job with them i.e. better to keep me inside the tent than out... -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 16 09:19:46 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:19:46 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 5:27 PM Arthur Krewat wrote > > How did Amdahl get away with making 360 clones? I would have thought > that IBM would have crushed his bones into dust. > There were a number of things going on. Remember the world was different. First and foremost, was that IBM was so big and other large firms were getting out the business such as GE and Xerox. As I understand it from my IBM friends that were there at the time was that IBM was concerned that the justice dept would go after them. The amount of business Amdahl bleed off was small compared to what IBM was making, so I suspect that it played into any business decisions. Amdahl legitimized a lot of IBM's practices and in many ways, and as the Harvard Business School teaches, "It is always better to have a small weak competitor than none at all." At the time the price difference (certainly for universities) was huge. I remember when CMU was making the decision to replace the IBM 360/67, IBM bid a 370/168 an Amdahl a 470/v7 and DEC a PDP-20 (DEC won). IIRC: The difference in quotes between IBM and Amdahl was a factor of two. DEC was cheaper still, although, in the end, CMU had to buy 2 of them to do what they had been doing with the 360 previously. Also, remember the IBM OS's were published and thus all the sites had the full sources. It was built on-site for that specific installation and each site tended to have made small local mods. PTF's (Program Temporary Fixes - *aka* patches) came out from IBM as the source and you applied the PTFs yourself (my memory was for most PFTs we had about a 2-3 month lag from recent from IBM before we had them in to the system). But folks took the original code whole cloth and changed it too. For instance, CMU took the TSS source which did not work (crashed every few hours) after a year or so, had fixed it to work reliably enough to be the system running on the 360/67 24/7. On the other hand, U Mich took the TSS sources and rewrote it completely to create MTS. The IBM/MIT team created the precursor to VM. Also, the user-level code like compilers was reasonably movable between different OS (for instance my first paying programming job was in the CMU's IBM shop moving York/APL which was written for OS/360 to CMU's TSS). Also, a lot of Amdahl customers ran MTS, not the basic IBM OS. Also, at one point I was told by one of my former CMU co-workers who has moved to IBM to work on TSS, that there were more TSS customers on Amdahl equipment than IBM. But IBM kept the TSS group alive for a long time. [I'm not sure what the relationship was for support to be honest as I never lived it]. Note from my later LCC days, I was also under the impression that a lot of TSS sites were the ones that AIX/370 targeted to get them back into the IBM fold. But it also took a lower-cost model of the 370 before that happened because they were targeting University types. Finally, folks with Amdahl machines just looked at the PTFs and reimplemented them if they used an IBM specific trick (how they got them I'm not sure). I do remember that it was not unusual for SHARE (the IBM user's group) to have Amdahl specific PTFs and often fixes/updates to the IBM code that came from folks rewriting them. I don't know how that all worked. I just got a stack of PTFs and had to deal with them, but I do remember some came from IBM some from SHARE and in the later seeing comments about running on Amdahl. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From krewat at kilonet.net Sat Nov 16 09:47:55 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:47:55 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <846cd708-4872-18fc-d222-8a3f123e46fe@kilonet.net> On 11/15/2019 6:19 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > As I understand it from my IBM friends that were there at the time was > that IBM was concerned that the justice dept would go after them.  The > amount of business Amdahl bleed off was small compared to what IBM was > making, so I suspect that it played into any business decisions. Now I understand ;) I was so isolated from IBM in my early life, that I didn't really get involved with them until the early 2000's. That was on RS-6000's and AIX on the hardware side, and then IBM outsourcing on the system administration side at one of my Fortune 100 customers. They were still the elephant in the room, but they didn't seem as predatory as I had heard. art k. From peter at rulingia.com Sat Nov 16 17:23:54 2019 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 18:23:54 +1100 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> On 2019-Nov-16 09:42:47 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: >On Fri, 15 Nov 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote: >> How did Amdahl get away with making 360 clones? I would have thought >> that IBM would have crushed his bones into dust. > >Clones in the way that they were able to run OS/360; that's about all that >I can remember. Hitachi also came out with a clone, as did no doubt many >other manufacturers; after all, the instruction set was public >knowledge... More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description of the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced the S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company announced a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and implementations were expected to precisely comply with the architecture (no more finding undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing code that depended on them). This meant that clone makers could build a clone that accurately emulated a S/360. >I dimly recall that some opcodes had undocumented side-effects, so in >theory (and likely in practice) OS/360 could detect whether it was running >on a clone, and "fail to proceed" (in Rolls Royce terms). AFAIR, the only "implementation defined" instruction was DIAGNOSE, OS/360 could presumably tell what it was running on by checking particular DIAGNOSE function. (VM/370 was paravirtualised and used DIAGNOSE to communicate with the hypervisor - CP). In the early PC era, it was not uncommon for applications to verify they were running on a genuine IBM PC by looking for the copyright notice in the BIOS - which clone makers countered by placing a "not" before an equivalent copyright notice. -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 963 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 17 00:36:35 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 01:36:35 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? (fwd) Message-ID: Meant to go to the list... -- Dave ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 07:23:19 +1100 (EST) From: Dave Horsfall To: Paul Winalski Subject: Re: [COFF] [TUHS] History of m6? On Thu, 14 Nov 2019, Paul Winalski wrote: > I used to think that "Emacs" stood for > "escape-meta-alt-control-shift". :-) It's too finger-busy with all > that alt, escape, and meta stuff for my taste. Hey, that's a bit old :-) Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 17:28:41 +0000 From: Benjamin Huntsman To: "tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org" Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix taste (Re: terminal - just for fun) >> EMACS - eight megs and constantly swapping :) >I like my own version: "Enough Memory? A Concept Strange!" I thought it stood for Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift :) I thought I came up with it independently, but obviously it was in the back of my mind. -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Sun Nov 17 02:25:11 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 11:25:11 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: Btw the way diagnose instruction worked was it used jumps into the microcode. Very cool. I still have a TILT deck that is a 4 card program written using mostly 360/67 diagnose instructions. FYI. The “DAT” (data address translation-aka the vm unit) was a separate box attached to the side of the CPU which was filled with incandescent lamps. Also remember that the console bell on the 360 was a large fire alarm style bell This program spelled TILT on the lights of the DAT box and sent a bell char to the console every .5 sec like a large pinball machine. Sadly it was a standalone program that we could only run at night but very cool none the less. Clem On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 2:24 AM Peter Jeremy wrote: > On 2019-Nov-16 09:42:47 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > >On Fri, 15 Nov 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote: > >> How did Amdahl get away with making 360 clones? I would have thought > >> that IBM would have crushed his bones into dust. > > > >Clones in the way that they were able to run OS/360; that's about all > that > >I can remember. Hitachi also came out with a clone, as did no doubt many > >other manufacturers; after all, the instruction set was public > >knowledge... > > More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description of > the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced the > S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company announced > a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and implementations > were expected to precisely comply with the architecture (no more finding > undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing code that depended > on them). This meant that clone makers could build a clone that accurately > emulated a S/360. > > >I dimly recall that some opcodes had undocumented side-effects, so in > >theory (and likely in practice) OS/360 could detect whether it was > running > >on a clone, and "fail to proceed" (in Rolls Royce terms). > > AFAIR, the only "implementation defined" instruction was DIAGNOSE, OS/360 > could presumably tell what it was running on by checking particular > DIAGNOSE function. (VM/370 was paravirtualised and used DIAGNOSE to > communicate with the hypervisor - CP). > > In the early PC era, it was not uncommon for applications to verify they > were running on a genuine IBM PC by looking for the copyright notice in the > BIOS - which clone makers countered by placing a "not" before an equivalent > copyright notice. > > -- > Peter Jeremy > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 17 07:01:23 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 08:01:23 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, computer mouse! Message-ID: On this day in 1970 computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart was awarded the patent for the computer mouse. It was a fugly thing: just a squarish box with two wheels underneath it mounted at right-angles and a button. Ergonomic it wasn't... -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 17 15:14:10 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:14:10 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, Peter Jeremy wrote: > More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description > of the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced the > S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company > announced a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and > implementations were expected to precisely comply with the architecture > (no more finding undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing > code that depended on them). This meant that clone makers could build a > clone that accurately emulated a S/360. Ah, I'd forgotten about the APL documentation; thanks! Talk about giving away the keys to the kingdom: Amdahl, Fujitsu, Hitachi... > AFAIR, the only "implementation defined" instruction was DIAGNOSE, > OS/360 could presumably tell what it was running on by checking > particular DIAGNOSE function. (VM/370 was paravirtualised and used > DIAGNOSE to communicate with the hypervisor - CP). Another point I had forgotten :-( Yep, the DIAG instruction was utterly implementation-dependent, and thus OS/360 could tell whether it was running on a clone or not. Cut me some slack; I turned 67 last month :-( > In the early PC era, it was not uncommon for applications to verify they > were running on a genuine IBM PC by looking for the copyright notice in > the BIOS - which clone makers countered by placing a "not" before an > equivalent copyright notice. I remember the days of the "grey imports" (or "gray" for the Americans); if it ran Flight Simulator and not labelled "IBM" then it was technically illegal; shortly afterwards if it did *not* run FS then nobody would buy it :-) How things change... -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 19 02:42:59 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 11:42:59 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:14 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, Peter Jeremy wrote: > > > More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description > > of the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced the > > S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company > > announced a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and > > implementations were expected to precisely comply with the architecture > > (no more finding undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing > > code that depended on them). This meant that clone makers could build a > > clone that accurately emulated a S/360. > > Ah, I'd forgotten about the APL documentation; thanks! Talk about giving > away the keys to the kingdom: Amdahl, Fujitsu, Hitachi... > The cat was already out and poking around with the publishing of: IBM 360 Principles of Operation, DOC A22-6821-0 . The APL version of spec just gave it more area to roam. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bakul at bitblocks.com Tue Nov 19 04:45:13 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 10:45:13 -0800 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> Are you guys talking about “A formal description of System/360” by Falkoff, Iverson and Sussenguth? It uses an APL like notation but not exactly a S/360 emulator in APL! Much more concise than the S/360 POP. http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/class.files.cs2321.html/falkoff.pdf >> On Nov 18, 2019, at 8:43 AM, Clem Cole wrote: >  > > >> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:14 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: >> On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, Peter Jeremy wrote: >> >> > More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description >> > of the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced the >> > S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company >> > announced a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and >> > implementations were expected to precisely comply with the architecture >> > (no more finding undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing >> > code that depended on them). This meant that clone makers could build a >> > clone that accurately emulated a S/360. >> >> Ah, I'd forgotten about the APL documentation; thanks! Talk about giving >> away the keys to the kingdom: Amdahl, Fujitsu, Hitachi... > > The cat was already out and poking around with the publishing of: IBM 360 Principles of Operation, DOC A22-6821-0. The APL version of spec just gave it more area to roam. > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 19 05:19:19 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 14:19:19 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> References: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> Message-ID: I never said or tried to imply that it anything more than an architectural description. But I was saying S/360 was publically described before that in the principles of operation by IBM. At that point, you were fine to clone it. In fact, this is what put Ken O at Cal Data out of business a few years later when he cloned the PDP-11 ISA (from the processor handbook descriptions) and cloned the Unibus which had only been described in schematics. Thus Ken was careful later to only make bus repeaters/Caches and the like at his new firm Able Computer (although he built, but I do not believe he ever actually sold, a M68010 on a 22-bit QBUS at one point). As it turns out, under those rules, its possible Amdahl might have been in violation of IBM's IP, but again the difference was that the amount of money he was taking from IBM was small, and IBM was (correctly worried) about the Justice Dept. I fact a few years later IBM was enjoined for monopolistic practices (1969 and vacated without merit in 1980: https://web.archive.org/web/20100408174629/http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/library/collections/manuscripts/findingaids/ibmantitrustpart2.ACC1980.htm ). ᐧ On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 1:45 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > Are you guys talking about “A formal description of System/360” by > Falkoff, Iverson and Sussenguth? It uses an APL like notation but not > exactly a S/360 emulator in APL! Much more concise than the S/360 POP. > > http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/class.files.cs2321.html/falkoff.pdf > > On Nov 18, 2019, at 8:43 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > >  > > > On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:14 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: > >> On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, Peter Jeremy wrote: >> >> > More than just the instruction set - IBM published a formal description >> > of the S/360 (in APL in the IBM Systems Journal issue that announced >> the >> > S/360). The S/360 was (I believe) the first case where a company >> > announced a computer architecture (rather than an implementation) and >> > implementations were expected to precisely comply with the architecture >> > (no more finding undocumented instructions and side-effects and writing >> > code that depended on them). This meant that clone makers could build >> a >> > clone that accurately emulated a S/360. >> >> Ah, I'd forgotten about the APL documentation; thanks! Talk about giving >> away the keys to the kingdom: Amdahl, Fujitsu, Hitachi... >> > > The cat was already out and poking around with the publishing of: IBM > 360 Principles of Operation, DOC A22-6821-0 > . The > APL version of spec just gave it more area to roam. > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peter at rulingia.com Wed Nov 20 06:21:01 2019 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 07:21:01 +1100 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> References: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <20191119202101.GF74610@server.rulingia.com> On 2019-Nov-18 10:45:13 -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: >Are you guys talking about “A formal description of System/360” by >Falkoff, Iverson and Sussenguth? It uses an APL like notation but not >exactly a S/360 emulator in APL! Much more concise than the S/360 POP. > >http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/class.files.cs2321.html/falkoff.pdf I was referring to exactly that but didn't have the reference handy. Note that it's not "an APL like notation", it's the APL defined by Ken Iverson in "A Programming Language"[1]. And, no-one said it was an "emulator". [1] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Books/APROGRAMMING%20LANGUAGE -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 963 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cym224 at gmail.com Wed Nov 20 09:17:29 2019 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2019 18:17:29 -0500 Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: <20191119202101.GF74610@server.rulingia.com> References: <9FA0B3E9-0E66-4724-BF6C-AF60EF5EE784@bitblocks.com> <20191119202101.GF74610@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: On 19/11/2019, Peter Jeremy wrote: > On 2019-Nov-18 10:45:13 -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: >>Are you guys talking about “A formal description of System/360” by >>Falkoff, Iverson and Sussenguth? It uses an APL like notation but not >>exactly a S/360 emulator in APL! Much more concise than the S/360 POP. >> >>http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/class.files.cs2321.html/falkoff.pdf > > I was referring to exactly that but didn't have the reference handy. > Note that it's not "an APL like notation", it's the APL defined by Ken > Iverson in "A Programming Language"[1]. And, no-one said it was an > "emulator". > > [1] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Books/APROGRAMMING%20LANGUAGE > > -- > Peter Jeremy Blaauw and Brooks documented an enormous number of architectures that way: https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Blaauw-Computer-Architecture-Concepts-and-Evolution/PGM629.html N. > From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 22 05:48:24 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 06:48:24 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In Memoriam: Jay W. Forrester, happy birthday Gene Amdahl, and LSD In-Reply-To: References: <99f46273-e2a4-4a82-f827-8c00fb48f633@kilonet.net> <20191116072354.GA74610@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Nov 2019, Clem Cole wrote: > The cat was already out and poking around with the publishing of:  IBM > 360 Principles of Operation, DOC A22-6821-0. The APL version of spec > just gave it more area to roam. Yeah, I know about PrincOps; it went into excruciating detail, leading to the observation that IBM manuals were designed to impress rather than inform... -- Dave From cym224 at gmail.com Sun Nov 24 02:03:53 2019 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 11:03:53 -0500 Subject: [COFF] WWW proposal anniversary In-Reply-To: References: <42e6650e-dc01-06d9-7a4e-96528ff470e2@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/11/19 19:03, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > >> And my usual question (answered in Sir Tim's book): What box hosted >> the first webserver outside CERN (and what language was it written in)? > > I'd amend my notes accordingly if I knew the answer. Apologies for my delay but as I read "Weaving the Web" over 10y ago, I wanted to be accurate in my response. (This meant finding the book in my library.) So here are some relevant passages. [p. 32, 1st para. et seq.] Our first target, humble beginning that it was, would be the CERN telephone book. The phone book existed as a database on CERN's aging mainframe. [I recall a comment about hundreds of researchers logged into the mainframe for the sole purpose of looking up telephone numbers but I can't find it again. [...] I got my simple server to run on the mainframe, then chopped it in two, so that the essential HTTP-related Internet functions were done by mode code (written in C language) and Bernd was left to write the rest of the server in his favorite [sic] language, "REXX." [p. 45, last para, cont. next page] When Paul returned to SLAC he shared the Web with Louse Addis, the librarian who oversaw all the material produced by SLAC. She saw it as godsend for their rather sophisticated but mainframe bound library system, and a way to make SLAC's substantial internal catalogue of online documents available to physicists worldwide. Louise persuaded a colleague who developed tools for her to write the appropriate program, and Louise's management SLAC had the first Web server outside of CERN. N. From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 25 11:35:22 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 12:35:22 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] RIP Brian Kantor WB6CYT Message-ID: I heard we lost Brian Kantor WB6CYT recently. Those in the Amateur radio community (esp. packet radio) will have heard of him of course, but apparently he also had a hand in SMTP and NNTP (remember them?) both used heavily many years ago, along with IPIP. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/11/24/0051236/brian-kantor-internet-and-amprnet-pioneer-wb6cyt-sk-dies -- Dave VK2KFU From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 26 07:48:26 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 08:48:26 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] EDSAC replica switched on Message-ID: A replica of EDSAC, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, was switched on at Bletchley Park on this day in 2014; EDSAC was the first practical general purpose stored program electronic computer (and how's that for hair-splitting?). -- Dave From mparson at bl.org Tue Nov 26 23:22:34 2019 From: mparson at bl.org (Michael Parson) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 07:22:34 -0600 Subject: [COFF] EDSAC replica switched on In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <088fb8557db376bfdb0ad6aeb3dca3ad@bl.org> On 2019-11-25 15:48, Dave Horsfall wrote: > A replica of EDSAC, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, > was switched on at Bletchley Park on this day in 2014; EDSAC was the > first practical general purpose stored program electronic computer > (and how's that for hair-splitting?). The youtube channel has a few videos on the EDSAC, including a couple specifically about this build. https://youtu.be/C97MtJWDNX8 https://youtu.be/Yc945sNB0uA -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX KF5LGQ From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 27 14:22:14 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 15:22:14 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Ada Lovelace Message-ID: Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, was lost to us in 1852 from uterine cancer. Regarded as the first computer programmer and a mathematical prodigy (when such things were unseemly for a mere woman), she was the daughter of Lord Byron, and a friend of Charles Babbage. -- Dave From sauer at technologists.com Thu Nov 28 07:25:50 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 15:25:50 -0600 Subject: [COFF] further off topic w.r.t. Unix - NTBACKUP [was Re: Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: [clearly not Unix related, so posting to COFF] On 11/27/2019 1:31 PM, John Foust wrote: > The tougher task was trying to find contemporary tools that could process the data stream from an old NTBACKUP, especially a stream with corruption from missing chunks, as I wasn't in the mood to try to rebuild an NT machine with SCSI to let NTBACKUP deal with the drive directly, and I think it would probably fail harder on direct drive errors. If I recall correctly, the XP Pro* version of NTBACKUP is compatible with, and an improvement over, the NT4 version in dealing with tapes and will also deal with file images of tapes. I will probably remember a lot better soon, because I want to look for some files that I thought I had archived on disk but seem to have lost. If I have them, they're on DDS-2 or DDS-3. Again, IIRC, SCSI is not hard to deal with with XP. An old Dell, with Dell XP install CD, should be relatively easy to setup with various Adaptec cards. I don't know about other brands w.r.t. license keys. I plan to use a Dell Dimension 8300 that I used to look at some Dell UNIX DDS-2 cartridges. It dual boots Fedora & XP, but I still need to verify that XP doesn't need anything more for the HP DAT drive I have, and dig out cartridges that might have what I want. My recollection is the NT4 required tape drive specific drivers but that XP does not. Lastly, again IIRC, Microsoft removed and/or broke NTBACKUP when Vista came out. CHS *XP Home didn't have NTBACKUP, but the Pro binary works on Home. -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 29 05:12:47 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 06:12:47 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Maurice Wilkes Message-ID: We lost Sir Maurice Wilkes FRS FREng on this day in 2010; he was known for his work on EDSAC, microprogramming, etc. -- Dave