[TUHS] Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[Rob Pike]

Well, if you're sharing educational bootstrapping stories, Heinz, if I
remember right you were the first person I saw in person from Bell Labs,
when you gave a talk at the University of Toronto about Bell's work on
ARPANET around 1977.

-rob


On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 4:08 PM Heinz Lycklama <heinz at osta.com> wrote:

> Jon, I found the documentation for SNAP and FSNAP
> which both ran on the DDP-516 multiprogramming
> operating system. Both documents were written in
> the summer/fall of 1970, and the FSNAP language
> is based on SNAP programming language, but I'm not
> sure if this SNAP language was the same as the one
> you used on the PDP-8. I'll send you the two documents
> in a separate email so you can tell if the two SNAP's
> are one and the same. We are talking 52 years ago now.
> Let's see if you can remember.
>
> Heinz
>
> P.S. Coincidentally I learned much of my system level
>      programming on a PDP-8 computer during my
>      student graduate days in the late 1960's.
>
>
>
> On 12/13/2022 9:14 AM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> > Wow, this brings back memories.  When I was a kid I remember visiting
> > a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
> > There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8.  The 500 was a vacuum
> > tube and nixie display machine.  That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
> > seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
> > dollars just to warm it up.  I think that the PB 250 was one of the
> > first machines built using transistors.  I assume that all of you know
> > what a PDP-8 is.  I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
> > arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework.  Note that the PB
> > 250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.
> >
> > Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
> > 516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz.  Maybe he
> > can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.
> >
> > Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
> > from home.  Does anyone else out there know anything about it?  It's a
> > vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.
> >
> > Jon
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20221214/559befc7/attachment.htm>