24 Sep
2019
24 Sep
'19
7:45 p.m.
Hello All.
Believed lost in the mists of time for over 30 years, the Georgia Tech
Software Tools Subsystem for Prime Computers, along with the Georgia Tech
C Compiler for Prime Computers, have been recovered!
The source code and documentation (and binary files) are available in a
Github repo: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/gt-swt.
The README.md there provides some brief history and credits with respect
to the recovery, and w.r.t. the subsystem and C compilers themselves.
Credit to Scott Lee for making and keeping the tapes and driving the
recovery process, and to Dennis Boone and yours truly for contributing
financially. I set up the repo.
For anyone who used and/or contributed to this software, we hope you'll
enjoy this trip down memory lane.
Feel free to forward this note to interested parties.
Enjoy,
Arnold Robbins
(On behalf of the swt recovery team. :-)
24 Sep
24 Sep
9:29 p.m.
Awesome!!! Arnold, you're a saint!!!!
D
On 9/24/19 12:45 PM, Arnold Robbins wrote:
Hello All.
Believed lost in the mists of time for over 30 years, the Georgia Tech
Software Tools Subsystem for Prime Computers, along with the Georgia Tech
C Compiler for Prime Computers, have been recovered!
The source code and documentation (and binary files) are available in a
Github repo: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/gt-swt.
The README.md there provides some brief history and credits with respect
to the recovery, and w.r.t. the subsystem and C compilers themselves.
Credit to Scott Lee for making and keeping the tapes and driving the
recovery process, and to Dennis Boone and yours truly for contributing
financially. I set up the repo.
For anyone who used and/or contributed to this software, we hope you'll
enjoy this trip down memory lane.
Feel free to forward this note to interested parties.
Enjoy,
Arnold Robbins
(On behalf of the swt recovery team. :-)
25 Sep
25 Sep
6:17 a.m.
Thanks Deborah. But if you want to send flowers, send them to Scott
Lee; he's the one who had the tapes and drove getting them recovered.
"All" I did was get things usable for github. :-)
Arnold
Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer(a)solar.stanford.edu> wrote:
Awesome!!! Arnold, you're a saint!!!!
D
On 9/24/19 12:45 PM, Arnold Robbins wrote:
> Hello All.
>
> Believed lost in the mists of time for over 30 years, the Georgia Tech
> Software Tools Subsystem for Prime Computers, along with the Georgia Tech
> C Compiler for Prime Computers, have been recovered!
>
> The source code and documentation (and binary files) are available in a
> Github repo: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/gt-swt.
>
> The README.md there provides some brief history and credits with respect
> to the recovery, and w.r.t. the subsystem and C compilers themselves.
>
> Credit to Scott Lee for making and keeping the tapes and driving the
> recovery process, and to Dennis Boone and yours truly for contributing
> financially. I set up the repo.
>
> For anyone who used and/or contributed to this software, we hope you'll
> enjoy this trip down memory lane.
>
> Feel free to forward this note to interested parties.
>
> Enjoy,
>
> Arnold Robbins
> (On behalf of the swt recovery team. :-)
26 Sep
26 Sep
5:59 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
I see mention of an emulator in the GitHub repo, but I don’t see any emulator that is
available.
Am I reading this wrong?
All that is mentioned is a telnet address to something that just drops.
From: Deborah Scherrer
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:46 AM
To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime
Computers
Awesome!!! Arnold, you're a saint!!!!
D
On 9/24/19 12:45 PM, Arnold Robbins wrote:
Hello All.
Believed lost in the mists of time for over 30 years, the Georgia Tech
Software Tools Subsystem for Prime Computers, along with the Georgia Tech
C Compiler for Prime Computers, have been recovered!
The source code and documentation (and binary files) are available in a
Github repo: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/gt-swt.
The README.md there provides some brief history and credits with respect
to the recovery, and w.r.t. the subsystem and C compilers themselves.
Credit to Scott Lee for making and keeping the tapes and driving the
recovery process, and to Dennis Boone and yours truly for contributing
financially. I set up the repo.
For anyone who used and/or contributed to this software, we hope you'll
enjoy this trip down memory lane.
Feel free to forward this note to interested parties.
Enjoy,
Arnold Robbins
(On behalf of the swt recovery team. :-)
6:03 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
I see mention of an emulator in the GitHub repo, but I
don’t see any
emulator that is available.
I see this:
Welcome to the Prime Computer 50-series emulator, running Primos rev 24.0!
Login as user guest, password pr1me
Hit a few returns and Ctrl-q if it appears "stuck"; some bots are hitting the
emulator
After logging in, use the Prime HELP command for assistance.
You are welcome to create a directory under GUEST for your files.
The emacs terminal type is xterm
The line erase character is ?
There are other Primos revs running on ports 8001-8007
Prime manuals at: http://yagi.h-net.msu.edu/prime_manuals/prirun_scans
To report bugs or contact the author, send email to prirun(a)gmail.com
Enjoy your time travels! -Jim Wilcoxson aka JIMMY
Login please.
login guest
Password?
GUEST (user 2) logged in Thursday, 26 Sep 19 02:03:08.
Welcome to PRIMOS version 24.0.0.r15
Copyright (c) Computervision, Corp. 1993.
Last login Tuesday, 24 Sep 19 19:58:08.
Warning! There was 1 failed attempt to login under this id since the
last successful login.
OK,
6:08 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
I now get this:
All available connections are in use.
Connection to host lost.
I guess progress.
Oh well, I guess it’s not possible to distribute the emulator?
From: Lars Brinkhoff
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2019 2:03 PM
To: Jason Stevens
Cc: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime
Computers
I see mention of an emulator in the GitHub repo, but I
don’t see any
emulator that is available.
I see this:
Welcome to the Prime Computer 50-series emulator, running Primos rev 24.0!
Login as user guest, password pr1me
Hit a few returns and Ctrl-q if it appears "stuck"; some bots are hitting the
emulator
After logging in, use the Prime HELP command for assistance.
You are welcome to create a directory under GUEST for your files.
The emacs terminal type is xterm
The line erase character is ?
There are other Primos revs running on ports 8001-8007
Prime manuals at: http://yagi.h-net.msu.edu/prime_manuals/prirun_scans
To report bugs or contact the author, send email to prirun(a)gmail.com
Enjoy your time travels! -Jim Wilcoxson aka JIMMY
Login please.
login guest
Password?
GUEST (user 2) logged in Thursday, 26 Sep 19 02:03:08.
Welcome to PRIMOS version 24.0.0.r15
Copyright (c) Computervision, Corp. 1993.
Last login Tuesday, 24 Sep 19 19:58:08.
Warning! There was 1 failed attempt to login under this id since the
last successful login.
OK,
6:13 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
Hi.
The emulator is not at all related to GT-SWT. You can contact
the guy who did it --- read the full message Lars quotes below.
Arnold
Jason Stevens <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
I now get this:
All available connections are in use.
Connection to host lost.
I guess progress.
Oh well, I guess it’s not possible to distribute the emulator?
From: Lars Brinkhoff
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2019 2:03 PM
To: Jason Stevens
Cc: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime
Computers
I see mention of an emulator in the GitHub repo,
but I don’t see any
emulator that is available.
I see this:
Welcome to the Prime Computer 50-series emulator, running Primos rev 24.0!
Login as user guest, password pr1me
Hit a few returns and Ctrl-q if it appears "stuck"; some bots are hitting the
emulator
After logging in, use the Prime HELP command for assistance.
You are welcome to create a directory under GUEST for your files.
The emacs terminal type is xterm
The line erase character is ?
There are other Primos revs running on ports 8001-8007
Prime manuals at: http://yagi.h-net.msu.edu/prime_manuals/prirun_scans
To report bugs or contact the author, send email to prirun(a)gmail.com
Enjoy your time travels! -Jim Wilcoxson aka JIMMY
Login please.
login guest
Password?
GUEST (user 2) logged in Thursday, 26 Sep 19 02:03:08.
Welcome to PRIMOS version 24.0.0.r15
Copyright (c) Computervision, Corp. 1993.
Last login Tuesday, 24 Sep 19 19:58:08.
Warning! There was 1 failed attempt to login under this id since the
last successful login.
OK,
6:23 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
Jason Stevens wrote:
Oh well, I guess it’s not possible to distribute the
emulator?
From what I hear, the main problem is that it's
not possible to
distribute PRIMOS. Which is a shame; it does have Emacs so it must
be a
nice operating system.
This this thread is branching off topic anyway, I'll just quickly
mention that I'm currently working on "Small ITS". An ITS-like
operating system for the MIT Logo group PDP-11/45. "PDP-11" <- see,
almost back on topic. Sorry, those who are curious may contact me
privately.
6:27 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Jason Stevens wrote:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
It was bizarre and ugly. The only thing that made it anywhere
near usable were the Software Tools.
There's a reason Prime died pretty quickly once Unix started to
spread. The architecture also was strange; the characters used
mark parity (8th bit always on).
My 2 cents.
Arnold
Oh well, I guess it’s not possible to distribute
the emulator?
From what I hear, the main problem is that it's not possible to
distribute PRIMOS. Which is a shame; it does have Emacs so it must be a
nice operating system. 
1:28 p.m.
New subject: [COFF] [was TUHS] Pr1me and GT-SWT
At the risk of this drifting, it probably should move over to the COFF
mailing list, which I have CC'ed. I'll do this one last one here so
people not yet on COFF that want to follow up can see it.
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 2:27 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
It was bizarre and ugly. The only thing that made it
anywhere
near usable were the Software Tools.
Amen... (more in a minute)
There's a reason Prime died pretty quickly once Unix started to
spread. The architecture also was strange; the characters used
mark parity (8th bit always on).
Yeah, it was an interesting box. Fast and cost-effective for its time and
an excellent Fortran system which why they did as well as they did.
My 2 cents.
Arnold
You probably know this but you folks had a huge influence on the Pr1mates.
So much so when Bill P, Paul L, and Michael S. left Pr1me to create
Apollo, the used your version of the SWT as their first command system for
Aegis (*a.k.a.* DOMAIN OS). They did not quite get it that they needed a
real UNIX, so they roped tjt and myself from Masscomp went we all formed
Belmont (*a.k.a.* Stellar in a later renaming). But they did recognize it
was useful and people wanted to use that style of interface, not something
dreamed up specific to that machine.
I remember trying to explain to Bill the difference - he's a vision guy,
but primarily a hardware type, although one of the most amazing people I
have ever known. IMO: Leach never really understood the Unix ideas of
being simple (which is one of the reasons why Windows has that
forsaken registry sin from Aegis, he brought it with him from Apollo to
MSFT). I used to argue with him about it in the 1980s (he hated/thought
ASCII text files were terrible and he should control everything in some
framework or privileged API).
6:09 a.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
It has always worked for me, or I wouldn't have put it in the README.
Sounds like a network issue on your end.
(Now, why someone would go out of their way to work on Primos is another
question. I *never* used it directly, but only via the SWT subsystem.
At Georgia Tech, we logged straigt into SWT.)
Arnold
Jason Stevens <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
I see mention of an emulator in the GitHub repo, but I
don’t see any emulator that is available.
Am I reading this wrong?
All that is mentioned is a telnet address to something that just drops.
From: Deborah Scherrer
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:46 AM
To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime
Computers
Awesome!!! Arnold, you're a saint!!!!
D
On 9/24/19 12:45 PM, Arnold Robbins wrote:
Hello All.
Believed lost in the mists of time for over 30 years, the Georgia Tech
Software Tools Subsystem for Prime Computers, along with the Georgia Tech
C Compiler for Prime Computers, have been recovered!
The source code and documentation (and binary files) are available in a
Github repo: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/gt-swt.
The README.md there provides some brief history and credits with respect
to the recovery, and w.r.t. the subsystem and C compilers themselves.
Credit to Scott Lee for making and keeping the tapes and driving the
recovery process, and to Dennis Boone and yours truly for contributing
financially. I set up the repo.
For anyone who used and/or contributed to this software, we hope you'll
enjoy this trip down memory lane.
Feel free to forward this note to interested parties.
Enjoy,
Arnold Robbins
(On behalf of the swt recovery team. :-)
1:28 p.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
On 26/09/2019, Jason Stevens <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote (in part):
All that is mentioned is a telnet address to something
that just drops.
Some home routers drop incoming telnet.
N.
2:54 p.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
El jue., 26 sept. 2019 15:29, Nemo <cym224(a)gmail.com> escribió:
On 26/09/2019, Jason Stevens
<jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote (in
part):
I got connected without problem a coupoe of days ago. REMEMBER that you
*must* telnet to "em.prirun.com:《port_number》", being the port to use one
of the series from 8001 to 8007. There is one different version of PRIMOS
running at everyone of these ip ports.
Cordiales saludos / Best Regards / Salutations / Freundliche Grüße
-----
Sergio Pedraja
Skype: spedraja(a)gmail.com
All that is mentioned is a telnet address to
something that just drops.
Some home routers drop incoming telnet.
3:48 p.m.
New subject: Recovered!!! The Georgia Tech Software Tools Subystemfor Prime Computers
I did use the port number. It didn't work as it was either full or just dropping.
It's too off topic anyways, I guess it'll be some other obscure thing with a C
compiler, I guess.
I guess the excitement is that it's written in Fortran? I assume it's like
those Unix emulation packages for VMS. Although I've never seen one of those either.
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 10:54 PM +0800, "SPC" <spedraja(a)gmail.com> wrote:
El jue., 26 sept. 2019 15:29, Nemo <cym224(a)gmail.com> escribió:
On 26/09/2019, Jason Stevens <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote (in part):
All that is mentioned is a telnet address to something
that just drops.
Some home routers drop incoming telnet.
I got connected without problem a coupoe of days ago. REMEMBER that you *must* telnet to
"em.prirun.com:«port_number»", being the port to use one of the series from 8001
to 8007. There is one different version of PRIMOS running at everyone of these ip ports.
Cordiales saludos / Best Regards / Salutations / Freundliche Grüße
-----
Sergio Pedraja
Skype: spedraja(a)gmail.com
1671
days inactive
1673
days old
13 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Arnold Robbins -
arnold＠skeeve.com
-
Clem Cole -
Deborah Scherrer -
Jason Stevens -
Lars Brinkhoff -
Nemo -
SPC