What was the TOPS-10 DATE75 fix?
Tim Shoppa
DECTapes for customers. Because all the tapes I've been
asked to read are from 1974 or earlier, I've just been using
the pre-DATE75 12-bit date format, where the date is
represented as ((Y-1964)*12.+M-1)*31.+D-1, where "Y" is
the year, "M" is the month (1-12), and "D" is the day of
the month (1-31).
This format broke on 4-Jan-1975, when the date representation
overflowed 4095 and no longer fit in 12 bits. I know that the
date was extended to 15 bits by the DATE75 patches, but I
don't know how these extra 3 bits fit into the TOPS-10
DECTape format, or if they even did make it into the DECTape
format spec. Does anyone have a copy of the TOPS-10 DECTape
format spec that officially says where these three bits go?
--
Tim Shoppa Email: sho...@trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Megan
>This format broke on 4-Jan-1975, when the date representation
>overflowed 4095 and no longer fit in 12 bits. I know that the
>date was extended to 15 bits by the DATE75 patches, but I
>don't know how these extra 3 bits fit into the TOPS-10
>DECTape format, or if they even did make it into the DECTape
>format spec. Does anyone have a copy of the TOPS-10 DECTape
>format spec that officially says where these three bits go?
Bit 35 of the first 66 words (0 through 65) of the directory block
contains the high order three bits of the 15-bit creation date of
each file on the DECtape. The high order three bits of the 15-bit
creation date for file 1 are contained in bit 35 of words 0, 22,
and 44. Word 44 contains the first (most significant) digit, word
22 contains the second and word 0 contains the third.
The bits for file 2 are in 1, 23, 45... and so on...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
jmfb...@aol.com
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>In my business, I'm called upon to read old TOPS-10
>DECTapes for customers. Because all the tapes I've been
>asked to read are from 1974 or earlier, ...
Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you
pick off those tapes? We used to treat magtapes with
kid gloves (and still lose bits because we looked at
them the wrong way) but we were never concerned about
our treatment of DECtapes.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Tim Shoppa
>
> In article <36444B15...@trailing-edge.com>,
> Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>
> >In my business, I'm called upon to read old TOPS-10
> >DECTapes for customers. Because all the tapes I've been
> >asked to read are from 1974 or earlier, ...
>
> Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you
> pick off those tapes?
Remarkably good. 14" disk packs and 8" floppies from the same
era usually read without any difficulty, too, though I wouldn't
want to use any of this older media more than is absolutely
necessary - oxide tends to start flaking off the disks after
20-25 years.
What can be a problem are 7-track and 9-track 1/2" tape. Many
brands of tape, from the 60's through the 90's, become gummy
if not stored under absolutely pristine environmental conditions.
This gumminess isn't a problem if the tape is read from beginning
to end without any start/stop cycles or retries, so recovery
efforts concentrate very much on smooth, continuous tape motion
and signal processing techniques that maximize the data recovered
on the first try.
The only brand of tape where I never have the gumminess problem
is 3M 700/Blackwatch. It seems that Imation continues to
manufacture this stuff, and that is a Good Thing.
John Wilson
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> Just out of curiousity, how good is the data that you
>> pick off those tapes?
>
>Remarkably good.
I second that. I've had no trouble reading data off DECtapes from the early
1970s either, well except for the DECtape hardware itself!
John Wilson
D Bit
jmfb...@aol.com
Well, there is that :-). I remember field service types
telling stories about DECtape readability with great awe
in their voices. The treatment of these tapes included
throwing the tapes in the back of their station wagon
and forgetting about them until needed again. Of course,
these tapes went through winter and summer seasons, getting
heated and frozen on a regular basis. There were also
stories about animals, tape crunching [literally, not
figuratively], etc.
I was just curious about the time element since we couldn't
test that back then :-).
Thanks for the info.
Tim Shoppa
>
> Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> writes:
>
> >This format broke on 4-Jan-1975, when the date representation
> >overflowed 4095 and no longer fit in 12 bits. I know that the
> >date was extended to 15 bits by the DATE75 patches, but I
> >don't know how these extra 3 bits fit into the TOPS-10
> >DECTape format, or if they even did make it into the DECTape
> >format spec. Does anyone have a copy of the TOPS-10 DECTape
> >format spec that officially says where these three bits go?
>
> Bit 35 of the first 66 words (0 through 65) of the directory block
> contains the high order three bits of the 15-bit creation date of
> each file on the DECtape. The high order three bits of the 15-bit
> creation date for file 1 are contained in bit 35 of words 0, 22,
> and 44. Word 44 contains the first (most significant) digit, word
> 22 contains the second and word 0 contains the third.
>
> The bits for file 2 are in 1, 23, 45... and so on...
And to think that a few weeks ago some crybabies were
complaining about the ordering of the bits in the RT-11
date word :-).
Thanks Megan - I never would've figured this out on my
own. Is this something you figured out by yourself, or is
it documented in the TOPS-10 books and/or the DATE75 release
notes?
Megan
>And to think that a few weeks ago some crybabies were
>complaining about the ordering of the bits in the RT-11
>date word :-).
No kidding... :-)
>Thanks Megan - I never would've figured this out on my
>own. Is this something you figured out by yourself, or is
>it documented in the TOPS-10 books and/or the DATE75 release
>notes?
I wish I could take credit for figuring it out... but I didn't.
I simply checked my manuals (of which I have a number since I
am working on 'yet another pdp10 emulator'(tm)). It is documented
in the 1973, orange, decsystem10 assembly language handbook
(third edition). ppg 537-538
Tim Shoppa
>
> >Thanks Megan - I never would've figured this out on my
> >own. Is this something you figured out by yourself, or is
> >it documented in the TOPS-10 books and/or the DATE75 release
> >notes?
>
> I wish I could take credit for figuring it out... but I didn't.
> I simply checked my manuals (of which I have a number since I
> am working on 'yet another pdp10 emulator'(tm)). It is documented
> in the 1973, orange, decsystem10 assembly language handbook
> (third edition). ppg 537-538
1973, you say? I was under the impression that the DATE75
patches - and the general conversion to a 15-bit date format -
didn't occur until late 1974, but the appearance of a 15-bit date
format in the 1973 books means that the work began long before
that.
Can somebody educate me about when the DATE75 issues began to
be dealt with inside DEC?
Megan
>1973, you say? I was under the impression that the DATE75
>patches - and the general conversion to a 15-bit date format -
>didn't occur until late 1974, but the appearance of a 15-bit date
>format in the 1973 books means that the work began long before
>that.
I just checked my 1971, blue pdp10 reference handbook, second
edition, ppg 3-247 to 3-249, and there is only the reference to
the 12-bit date... so we have it bracketed (at least in terms
of when it was published).
jmfb...@aol.com
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>Megan wrote:
>>
>> >Thanks Megan - I never would've figured this out on my
>> >own. Is this something you figured out by yourself, or is
>> >it documented in the TOPS-10 books and/or the DATE75 release
>> >notes?
>>
>> I wish I could take credit for figuring it out... but I didn't.
>> I simply checked my manuals (of which I have a number since I
>> am working on 'yet another pdp10 emulator'(tm)). It is documented
>> in the 1973, orange, decsystem10 assembly language handbook
>> (third edition). ppg 537-538
>
>patches - and the general conversion to a 15-bit date format -
>didn't occur until late 1974, but the appearance of a 15-bit date
>format in the 1973 books means that the work began long before
>that.
Of course it began long before that. It wasn't a trivial
change. Among other things, it changed the format of the
RIBs (I can't remember if this was the cause of the invention
of the extended RIB).
>
>Can somebody educate me about when the DATE75 issues began to
>be dealt with inside DEC?
>
The first time I encounted the phrase was when I typed up the
functional specification for the TOPS10 Notebook set. The
spec was written by Rick Corbin. I typed it up in RUNOFF
format in 1972. So I suspect that the spec was shipped to
the customers as an update to the Notebook set in late '72
or early '73.
When I began working for CS/2, DEC's internal Computer Services
group, one of my jobs was collecting the system usage data
from all the -10s used for timesharing. One of those -10s
was System 514/546 up on ML5-5. The system usage data was
collected in files named FACT.SYS. There was a program
called FACTPR.SAV that converted the mixed mode data in
those files into SIXBIT records.
To test all the TOPS10 software for DATE75 bugs, the TOPS10
Monitor group brought their systems up with dates of a decade
later. So, on the day of 11Dec1973, the system was really
brought up with a date of 11Dec1983. There was a problem..
picture an emoticon here renewing the swearing tirades that
were produced by this problem. 1984 happened to be a leap
year (1974 was not). Thus, when I ran the FACTPR program
on data produced after 28Feb1974, the sortable Julian dates
were wrong. The cross billing programs who read this data
got really, really screwed up.
Another problem was that the FACT files' format also changed to
store the date in a full word. To signify that this was a
new FACT file datum, the type code of the entry was bumped up
a bit. For instance, a LOGIN entry of the old date format style
had the code 100, left justified in word one. If the LOGIN entry
had the new date style, then the type code was 101. Don Lewine
put up the LOGIN program that wrote the new data entires. He
didn't bump the type code. That was when I became quite proficient
editing binary mixed mode data using FILDDT.SAV. I was _not_
allowed to mess with any code that Don Lewine wrote (and neither
was anybody else) so I got to do all that editing for a
number of months.
I might be able to remember a few more stories but I'm all
sworn out :-).
Eric Werme - replace nospam with werme
>This format broke on 4-Jan-1975, when the date representation
>overflowed 4095 and no longer fit in 12 bits. I know that the
>date was extended to 15 bits by the DATE75 patches, but I
>don't know how these extra 3 bits fit into the TOPS-10
>DECTape format, or if they even did make it into the DECTape
>format spec. Does anyone have a copy of the TOPS-10 DECTape
>format spec that officially says where these three bits go?
I don't have the official data, but I have code I used through
1978 in my TULIP documentation. (Tulip was a very nice I/O
package that used user UUOs. The instructions below that start
with W are Tulip Write instructions):
70 ;SYMBOLS WE NEED:
71 000000 DTA==0 ;IO CHANNEL FOR DECTAPE
72 000100 PDLLEN==100 ;LENGTH OF PUSHDOWN LIST
73 000200 DIRSIZ==200 ;SIZE OF DTA DIRECTORY BLOCK
74 000144 DIRADR==^D100 ;ADDRESS OF DIRECTORY BLOCK
75 000026 MAXFIL==^D22 ;MAX # OF FILES THAT WILL FIT ON A TAPE
76 001102 TAPLEN==^D578 ;# OF BLOCKS ON A DECTAPE
77 000000 DIRBYT==0 ;RELATIVE ADDR OF DIRECTORY BYTE MAP (5 BIT BYTES)
78 000123 DIRFIL==^D83 ;RELATIVE ADDR OF FIRST FILENAME
79 000151 DIREXT==^D105 ;RELATIVE ADDR OF EXTENSION/DATE WORD
80 000177 DIRLBL==^D127 ;RELATIVE ADDR OF LABEL WORD
TULIP4 - VERSION 4(3) - PROGRAM 4 FOR TULIP MANUAL MACRO %50(272) 04:11 13-JAN-75 PAGE 17
EXAMPL MAC 11-JAN-75 00:12 RIC WERME, OCTOBER 1974
562 ;COLLECTED ALL THE DATA WE NEED, PRINT THE HEADER NOW
563 DISIX [[SIXBIT\D&IRECTORY %#&F&REE: % BLOCKS, % FILES#!\]
564 PUSHJ P,DATTIM;PRINT DIRECTORY HEADER. FIRST DATE AND TIME
565 WDEC FILSIZ ;THEN THE FREE BLOCKS
566 400072' 001 10 0 00 401002' WDEC FREFIL] ;AND THE FREE FILES
567 400073' 332 01 0 05 000177 SKIPE T1,DIRLBL(P1) ;DOES THIS TAPE HAVE A LABEL?
568 DISIX [[SIXBIT\T&APE &ID: %#!\]
569 400074' 001 10 0 00 401011' WNAME T1]
570 400075' 001 03 0 00 003212 W2CHI CRLF ;SEPARATE HEADER FROM DATA
571
572 400076' 200 01 0 00 000643' MOVE T1,FREFIL ;CHECK TO SEE IF ANY REASON TO PRINT
573 400077' 306 01 0 00 000026 CAIN T1,MAXFIL ; DIRECTORY. SAY EMPTY IF NO FILES WRITTEN
574 400100' 001 10 0 00 401017' ZERDIR: DISIX [CPOPJ##,,[SIXBIT\D&IRECTORY EMPTY###!\]]
575 400101' 201 04 0 00 000001 MOVEI T4,1 ;MAKE INDEX INTO FILSIZ FOR BLOCKS USED
576 ;NO NEED TO SAVE P1 NOW, USE IT AS AOBJN WORD
577
578 ;NOW PRINT OUT INFO FOR EACH FILE
579 400102' 336 00 0 05 000123 DIRLOP: SKIPN DIRFIL(P1) ;DOES THIS FILE EXIST?
580 400103' 254 00 0 00 400115' JRST DIRAOB ;NO, TRY NEXT
581 400104' 135 01 0 00 401020' LDB T1,[POINT 12,DIREXT(P1),35];GET LOW 12 BITS OF CREATION DATE
582 400105' 201 02 0 00 000001 MOVEI T2,1 ;CHECK THE BYTE MAP FOR THE TOP 3 BITS
583 400106' 612 02 0 05 000000 TDNE T2,DIRBYT(P1)
584 400107' 435 01 0 00 010000 IORI T1,1B23 ;BRING UPTO 1985
585 400110' 612 02 0 05 000026 TDNE T2,DIRBYT+MAXFIL(P1)
586 400111' 435 01 0 00 020000 IORI T1,1B22 ;UPTO 2007
587 400112' 612 02 0 05 000054 TDNE T2,DIRBYT+<2*MAXFIL>(P1)
588 400113' 435 01 0 00 040000 IORI T1,1B21 ;UPTO 2051 (FOR THE PDP-10 IN THE SMITHSONIAN)
589 DISIX [[SIXBIT\%.% % %#!\]
590 WSIX 6,DIRFIL(P1);FILE
591 WSIX 3,DIREXT(P1);AND EXTENSION
592 WDEC 3,FILSIZ(T4);THEN LENGTH
593 400114' 001 10 0 00 401023' PUSHJ P,DATTHN] ;AND CREATION DATE
594 400115' 201 04 0 04 000001 DIRAOB: MOVEI T4,1(T4) ;POINT TO NEXT FILE NUMBER
595 400116' 253 05 0 00 400102' AOBJN P1,DIRLOP ;AND LOOP FOR NEXT FILE
596 400117' 002 00 0 00 401030' DIRXIT: WSIX [SIXBIT\##!\] ;ADD A LITTLE SPACE
597 400120' 263 17 0 00 000000 POPJ P, ;OR RETURN WHEN DONE
886 ;SUBROUTINE TO PRINT EITHER CURRENT DATE (ENTER AT DATPRT) OR DATE
887 ;PASSED IN T1 (ENTER AT DATTHN). USES T1-T3
888
889 400400' 047 01 0 00 000014 DATPRT: DATE T1, ;GET TODAY'S DATE
890 400401' 231 01 0 00 000564 DATTHN: IDIVI T1,^D<12*31> ;T1_YEAR-64
891 400402' 231 02 0 00 000037 IDIVI T2,^D< 31> ;T2_MONTH-1, T3_DAY-1
892 400403' 004 02 0 03 000001 WDECI 2,1(T3) ;DAY
893 400404' 010 01 0 02 400447' WNAME MONTAB(T2) ;.MONTH.
894 400405' 004 00 0 01 000100 WDECI ^D64(T1) ;AND YEAR
895 400406' 263 17 0 00 000000 POPJ P, ;AND RETURN
The above should be viewed in 132 column monospace, of course....
-Ric
--
<> Eric (Ric) Werme <> The above is unlikely to contain <>
<> ROT-13 addresses: <> official claims or policies of <>
<> <jr...@mx3.qrp.pbz> <> Compaq Computer Corp. <>
<> <jr...@plorecbegny.arg> <> http://www.cyberportal.net/werme <>
D. Peschel
Eric Werme - replace nospam with werme <> wrote:
>I don't have the official data, but I have code I used through
>1978 in my TULIP documentation. (Tulip was a very nice I/O
>package that used user UUOs. The instructions below that start
>with W are Tulip Write instructions):
While you're at it, could you post another message containing a line printer
and some greenbar paper, so I can read your first message?
Are those ^D sequences entered as control characters or as digraphs?
-- Derek
John Wilson
D. Peschel <dpes...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>Are those ^D sequences entered as control characters or as digraphs?
^D means decimal.
John Wilson
D Bit
D. Peschel
Hmph... it would be hard to find a more perfect example of "the right answer
to the wrong question". That answer doesn't shed any light on my question,
which was whether the assembler recognized Control-D, or caret followed by D,
as the decimal command. (And showing these two characters in your message
can't possibly illustrate how they would have been produced originally.)
-- Derek
Tim Shoppa
> Hmph... it would be hard to find a more
> perfect example of "the right answer
> to the wrong question". That answer
> doesn't shed any light on my question,
> which was whether the assembler recognized
> Control-D, or caret followed by D,
> as the decimal command.
Caret followed by D. Caret-followed-by-letter is quite
common on the various DEC macro assemblers as a way of
expressing a unary operator.
> (And showing these two characters in your message
> can't possibly illustrate how they
> would have been produced originally.)
I guess the #1 question in the TECO FAQ (assuming that one
existed) would be "I'm typing double dollar sign, but it's still
just sitting there"!
John Wilson
D. Peschel <dpes...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>which was whether the assembler recognized Control-D, or caret followed by D,
>can't possibly illustrate how they would have been produced originally.)
Duh! Sorry, I misread your question and thought you were trying to make
things more complicated than they are. As Tim said, circumflex-letter is
typed using printing characters, even DEC isn't weird enough to use control
characters in a language whose syntax uses printing characters for everything
else! MIDAS is either more or less confusing than MACRO-10 in this regard,
depending on how you look at it, since it uses circumflex-letter to mean
the ASCII value of the corresponding control character.
John Wilson
D Bit
D. Peschel
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>Caret followed by D. Caret-followed-by-letter is quite
>common on the various DEC macro assemblers as a way of
>expressing a unary operator.
Aha. Thanks.
>> (And showing these two characters in your message
>> can't possibly illustrate how they
>> would have been produced originally.)
>
>I guess the #1 question in the TECO FAQ (assuming that one
>existed) would be "I'm typing double dollar sign, but it's still
>just sitting there"!
Well, ASCII really has no unique visual representation for each of its char-
acters. (And even if you pick a representation, you then may have to repre-
sent that representation, and so on.)
-- Derek
Antonio Carlini
In article <72aeru$h4e$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, dpes...@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) writes:
|>Hmph... it would be hard to find a more perfect example of "the right answer
|>to the wrong question". That answer doesn't shed any light on my question,
|>can't possibly illustrate how they would have been produced originally.)
Never having used MACRO-10 I cannot say for certain, but the other DEC
assemblers that I've used require that input as two characters exactly as
you see it on the screen, i.e. caret and then D. The only time I've seen
any sort of exception to that was TECO where <ESC><ESC> (that's two
consecutive presses of the key marked ESCAPE or its equivalent) was echoed
as $$ and is commonly represented as $$ in both manuals and e-text.
Hopefully that helps (and if it turns out to be the wrong answer for MACRO-10
at least it's the right answer for MACRO-32 ...)
Antonio
--
Antonio Carlini Mail: car...@marvin.enet.dec.com
DECnet-Plus for OpenVMS Engineering
Digital Equipment Corporation Worton Grange, Reading, England
(Reply-To: address mangled in header)
jmfb...@aol.com
car...@krakar.enet.dec.com (Antonio Carlini) wrote:
>
>In article <72aeru$h4e$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>,
dpes...@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) writes:
>|>Hmph... it would be hard to find a more perfect example of "the right
answer
>|>to the wrong question". That answer doesn't shed any light on my
question,
>|>which was whether the assembler recognized Control-D, or caret followed
by D,
>|>as the decimal command. (And showing these two characters in your
message
>|>can't possibly illustrate how they would have been produced originally.)
>
>Never having used MACRO-10 I cannot say for certain, but the other DEC
>assemblers that I've used require that input as two characters exactly as
>you see it on the screen, i.e. caret and then D. The only time I've seen
>any sort of exception to that was TECO where <ESC><ESC> (that's two
>consecutive presses of the key marked ESCAPE or its equivalent) was echoed
>as $$ and is commonly represented as $$ in both manuals and e-text.
Sigh! The proper name for the caret was up-arrow. The manauls showed
the ESCAPE key as a dollar sign within a circle (the encircling
was all done by hand before the galleys were sent to the printers).
Likewise, a <cntrl-C> was presented as
an up-arrow C with a circle drawn around it. Representing keys
that were hit simultaneously in our documentation was always a
bug-a-boo and several artform techniques were tried over the
years. There were always some people who didn't get it.
>
>Hopefully that helps (and if it turns out to be the wrong
>answer for MACRO-10
>at least it's the right answer for MACRO-32 ...)
MACRO-10 took the character after the up-arrow argument to
define the base of the number. So, if I wanted to make
sure that the person reading the code understood that a
number was to be decimal, I would write MOVEI T1,^D10
There were times when it was important to view a number
as decimal rather than octal (which was the default).
Chris Ward
>Sigh! The proper name for the caret was up-arrow. The manauls showed
>the ESCAPE key as a dollar sign within a circle (the encircling
>was all done by hand before the galleys were sent to the printers).
>Likewise, a <cntrl-C> was presented as
>an up-arrow C with a circle drawn around it. Representing keys
>that were hit simultaneously in our documentation was always a
>bug-a-boo and several artform techniques were tried over the
>years. There were always some people who didn't get it.
The proper name for the caret, was the caret. But what really happened was
that the ascii code for the caret (^) was an up arrow and it was changed!
The model 33 and 35 teletypes that we used actually did have an up-arrow,
which meant that it all matched the documentation, since in many cases the
developers of the PDP-10 used these machines to develop everything. The
33's and 35's were also upper case only
machines, as was the LA30 (or was it 35), the original Decwriter. The LA36
had lower case.
Sarr J. Blumson
>
>Sigh! The proper name for the caret was up-arrow.
For the terminally young, "proper" means that's how it printed on a 1964
vintage Model 35 Teletype. This may actually be one of the differences
between the 1962(?) and 1968(?) [I probably have the years wrong] ASCII
standards.
--
--------
Sarr Blumson sa...@umich.edu
voice: +1 734 764 0253 home: +1 734 665 9591
ITD, University of Michigan http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sarr/
519 W William, Ann Arbor, MI 48103-4943
Donald Tees
That is the way that I remember it to. The double caret *after*
a variable was "power of", and before "base".
^D25=^O31
2^^8=256
Peter da Silva
Sarr J. Blumson <sa...@umich.edu> wrote:
>For the terminally young, "proper" means that's how it printed on a 1964
>vintage Model 35 Teletype. This may actually be one of the differences
>between the 1962(?) and 1968(?) [I probably have the years wrong] ASCII
>standards.
That and back-arrow (_).
--
This is The Reverend Peter da Silva's Boring Sig File - there are no references
to Wolves, Kibo, Discordianism, or The Church of the Subgenius in this document
"The GCOS GERTS interface is so bad that a description here is inappropriate.
Anyone seeking to use this interface should seek divine guidance."
Chris Ward
>Sarr J. Blumson <sa...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>For the terminally young, "proper" means that's how it printed on a 1964
>>vintage Model 35 Teletype. This may actually be one of the differences
>>between the 1962(?) and 1968(?) [I probably have the years wrong] ASCII
>>standards.
>
>That and back-arrow (_).
>
assignment operator (Focal? AID? Joss?), and was certainly more clear to
non-Fortran educated persons....
John Wilson
Peter da Silva <pe...@taronga.com> wrote:
>In article <gah22.6156$fS.20...@news.itd.umich.edu>,
>Sarr J. Blumson <sa...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>For the terminally young, "proper" means that's how it printed on a 1964
>>vintage Model 35 Teletype. This may actually be one of the differences
>>between the 1962(?) and 1968(?) [I probably have the years wrong] ASCII
>>standards.
>
>That and back-arrow (_).
Was the horrible Altmode confusion part of the ASCII spec, or was
it Teletype Corp's fault? Originally Altmode (which had its own key,
I think it corresponds to } in the new ASCII although it may have varied)
was different from Escape (CTRL/SHIFT/K), which meant that TECO had to be
patched depending on what flavor of terminal you had.
John Wilson
D Bit
Tim Shoppa
For some reason, I though Altmode corresponded with what is
now ~ (tilde).
Looking this up in the TECO-11 V40 manual, I see that we're
both right - it's a floor wax *and* a dessert topping! :
Some older terminals may have no ESCape key, but instead
a key labelled ALTMODE or PREFIX which sends TECO a character
whose ASCII value is 175 or 176. In such a case, TECO
will treat these characters as if they were typed in as an
ESCape (octal 33), provided lower to upper case conversion is
enabled.
Note that many newer DEC terminals - those using DEC LK201
descended keyboards - don't have a proper escape key, but
that the tilde key is easily pressed into operation as a
substitute with TECO.
Bill Westfield
Some older terminals may have no ESCape key, but instead
a key labelled ALTMODE or PREFIX which sends TECO a character
whose ASCII value is 175 or 176. In such a case, TECO
will treat these characters as if they were typed in as an
ESCape (octal 33), provided lower to upper case conversion is
enabled.
Ah hah! So that's where the Hazeltine-2000 terminal (worshipped by all
us high school hackers in the mid-70s) got the idea to use tilde as the
lead-in character for cursor positioning and such!
BillW
--
(remove spam food from return address)
Eric Fischer
> Was the horrible Altmode confusion part of the ASCII spec, or was
> it Teletype Corp's fault? Originally Altmode (which had its own key,
> I think it corresponds to } in the new ASCII although it may have varied)
> was different from Escape (CTRL/SHIFT/K), which meant that TECO had to be
> patched depending on what flavor of terminal you had.
In the original ASCII specification (see CACM, August, 1963) ESC was
the position now occupied by ~ (for compatibility with an existing
Department of Defense 8-bit code), and the character now used for ESC
was S3 (one of eight information separators, S0...S7). The other
control characters in the upper positions were ACK (now |), an
unassigned control function (now }), and DEL (still DEL). The revision
of ASCII could have maintained compatibility with the old ESC by
leaving out a punctuation mark, and one of the proposed revisions did
work this way (see CACM, April, 1965), but in the end ESC was moved,
apparently so that non-English languages could replace punctuation with
letters and still have a contiguous range of characters assigned to the
alphabet.
eric
Huw Davies
: I remember that. It was used in several languages available on the 10 as an
: assignment operator (Focal? AID? Joss?), and was certainly more clear to
: non-Fortran educated persons....
Far more importantly :-) it was the assignment operator for Bliss-10....
--
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.D...@latrobe.edu.au
Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479 1999
La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer to be played
Melbourne Australia 3083 | in the air, the sky would be green"
Arargh!
<bi...@flipper.cisco.com> wrote:
>Ah hah! So that's where the Hazeltine-2000 terminal (worshipped by all
>us high school hackers in the mid-70s) got the idea to use tilde as the
>lead-in character for cursor positioning and such!
>
>BillW
I think I still have a working 2000-C.
I can't imagine why I kept that boat anchor.
arargh
jmfb...@aol.com
cc...@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) wrote:
>Chris Ward (c...@idt.net) wrote:
[about back arrow character]
>: I remember that. It was used in several languages available
>:on the 10 as an
>: assignment operator (Focal? AID? Joss?), and was certainly more clear to
>: non-Fortran educated persons....
>
>Far more importantly :-) it was the assignment operator for Bliss-10....
>
I thought no swearing was allowed :-). IIR, backarrow was also
used in MACRO-10 as a bit shift operator.
Backarrow was also the character used to separate the input and
output phrases on a command line (it was later replace by equal
sign). For instance, in the olden days, to copy a file from
one place to another one would type:
R PIP
FOO.OUT_FOO.IN
^C
That underscore really should be a backarrow. I mourned the day
that character was lost because I used it to teach newbies how
to figure out which side was the output side.
/BAH
Mike Albaugh
: Some older terminals may have no ESCape key, but instead
: a key labelled ALTMODE or PREFIX which sends TECO a character
: whose ASCII value is 175 or 176. In such a case, TECO
: will treat these characters as if they were typed in as an
: ESCape (octal 33), provided lower to upper case conversion is
: enabled.
: Ah hah! So that's where the Hazeltine-2000 terminal (worshipped by all
: us high school hackers in the mid-70s) got the idea to use tilde as the
: lead-in character for cursor positioning and such!
_Worshipped_?!? How? Did you sacrifice a goat to them
daily. That's about what it took to keep those ^&%*& things
running :-) Or maybe U.C. Berkeley just got a really bad batch.
My most vivid memory of them (as an "Instrument Shop" guy tasked
with keeping all the terminals in Cory Hall running, just 'cuz
I mentioned having rebuilt a couple Model 15's :-) was that the
problems were most often with the core memory, and that was
split over two boards, and even a _good_ system wouldn't run
if either of those boards was on an extender. Can you say
"Swap till you drop"? :-)
That said, I'd wager that they were the only video
terminal ever hooked to a machine with tubes and a drum main-
memory, via a bit-boffing software UART... :-)
Mike
| alb...@agames.com, speaking only for myself
Tony Wingo
>The proper name for the caret, was the caret. But what really happened was
>that the ascii code for the caret (^) was an up arrow and it was changed!
>The model 33 and 35 teletypes that we used actually did have an up-arrow,
>which meant that it all matched the documentation, since in many cases the
>developers of the PDP-10 used these machines to develop everything. The
>33's and 35's were also upper case only
>machines, as was the LA30 (or was it 35), the original Decwriter. The LA36
>had lower case.
And remember that SHIFT-O was originally a backwards pointing arrow, then
later changed to an underscore. Thus many commands that originally looked
like:
PIP FOO <- BAR
(where <- was a single character) ended up being typed as
PIP FOO _ BAR
which lacks the same semantic impact.
-t
Alan H. Martin
>In article <36485...@news.wizvax.net>, John Wilson <wil...@dbit.com> wrote:
>>In article <728quc$19k8$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>,
>>D. Peschel <dpes...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>>>Are those ^D sequences entered as control characters or as digraphs?
>>
>>^D means decimal.
>
>to the wrong question". That answer doesn't shed any light on my question,
>which was whether the assembler recognized Control-D, or caret followed by D,
>as the decimal command. (And showing these two characters in your message
>can't possibly illustrate how they would have been produced originally.)
Does the attached solve your problem?
/AHM
TITLE MACRO %53B(1252) 24-JUN-88
SUBTTL EDIT BY MCHC/JBC/EGM/MFB/PY/HD/TL/RJF
...
SUBTTL CHARACTER STATUS TABLE
DEFINE GENCS (OPLVL,ATOM,AN,SQUOZ,OPTYPE,SEQNO)
<BYTE (6)OPLVL (9)ATOM (3)AN (6)SQUOZ,OPTYPE,SEQNO>
;OPLVL PRIORITY OF BINARY OPERATORS
;ATOM INDEX TO JUMP TABLE AT CELL1
;AN TYPE OF CHARACTER
; 1=OTHER, 2=ALPHA, 4=NUMERIC
;SQUOZ VALUE IN RADIX 50
;OPTYPE INDEX TO JUMP TABLE AT EVXCT
;SEQNO VALUE IN SIXBIT
CSTAT:
...
GENCS 00,10,1,00,00,76 ;'^'
...
CELL: SETZB AC0,RC ;CLEAR RESULT AND RELOCATION
SETZB AC1,AC2 ;CLEAR WORK REGISTERS
...
LDB V,[POINT 4,CSTAT(C),14] ;GET CODE
XCT .+1(V) ;EXECUTE, INDEX VIA BITS 11,12,13,14 OF CSTAT TABLE
...
JRST QUAL ;10; "^"
...
QUAL: CALL BYPASS ;[664] SKIP BLANKS, GET NEXT CHARACTER
...
CAIE C,'D' ;"D"?
JRST NUMER1 ;NO, FLAG NUMERIC ERROR
ADDI AC2,2
QUAL8: ADDI AC2,6
QUAL2: ADDI AC2,2
PUSH P,FR ;[613] PUSH CURRENT FLAGS
PUSH P,CURADX ;[613] PUSH CURRENT RADIX
HRRM AC2,CURADX ;[613]
CALL CELLSF
POP P,CURADX ;[613] RESTORE TO ORIGINAL RADIX
QUAL2A: POP P,FR ;[613] RESTORE FLAGS
...
END BEG
--
Alan Howard Martin AMa...@ZKo.DEC.Com
J. Chris Hausler
>Ah hah! So that's where the Hazeltine-2000 terminal (worshipped by all
>us high school hackers in the mid-70s) got the idea to use tilde as the
>lead-in character for cursor positioning and such!
>
My little family of H1420's had a dip switch option as to
which code to use as the "lead-in" character, tilde or
escape
Chris
J. Chris Hausler
>Chris Ward (c...@idt.net) wrote:
>: I remember that. It was used in several languages available on the 10 as an
>: assignment operator (Focal? AID? Joss?), and was certainly more clear to
>: non-Fortran educated persons....
>
>Far more importantly :-) it was the assignment operator for Bliss-10....
Chris
Bill Westfield
_Worshipped_?!? How? Did you sacrifice a goat to them
daily. That's about what it took to keep those ^&%*& things
running :-) Or maybe U.C. Berkeley just got a really bad batch.
Heh. I do recall they had quite a bit of electronics in there.
At LIRICS, there were no PTYS available to "us", so we used to
do tricks with the "transmit screen" capability. There was a "game"
called a can-war, where students (who all shared a PPN per school) would
try to cancel each other jobs (REALLY frowned upon if not pre-arranged!)
I wrote a macro hack that would find the other jobs logged in (there was
a UUO for this, IIRC), display it on the screen together with the CANCEL
comamnd and a "continue", start the transmit screen, and exit. It was
a cute hack. We lost, once, which was very impressive...
Smith and O'Halloran
Bill Westfield <bi...@flipper.cisco.com> wrote:
>Ah hah! So that's where the Hazeltine-2000 terminal (worshipped by all
>us high school hackers in the mid-70s) got the idea to use tilde as the
>lead-in character for cursor positioning and such!
It surprized the heck out of me when moved the H2000 from one room
to another, plugged it in, and had yesterday's SYSTAT show up on the
screen. The durn thang had core memory!
"Three Days Of The Condor". Robert Redford. PDP-8. Hazeltine 2000.
-Joe
--
INWAP.COM is Joe and Sally Smith, John and Chris O'Halloran and our cats
See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10, "ReBoot", "Shadow Raiders"/"War Planets"
Aguinaldo Campos Jr
and we did a fortran program that allocated a terminal in a remote room in
an infinite loop reading all the logins and passwords and writing back to a
file and reporting to the user that he entered a worng password and then
deallocating tty.
Bill Westfield escreveu na mensagem <54iugka...@flipper.cisco.com>...
> [Hazeltine-2000]
>
> _Worshipped_?!? How? Did you sacrifice a goat to them
> daily. That's about what it took to keep those ^&%*& things
> running :-) Or maybe U.C. Berkeley just got a really bad batch.
>
>Heh. I do recall they had quite a bit of electronics in there.
>At LIRICS, there were no PTYS available to "us", ...
Sarr J. Blumson
Smith and O'Halloran <in...@best.com> wrote:
>
>It surprized the heck out of me when moved the H2000 from one room
>to another, plugged it in, and had yesterday's SYSTAT show up on the
>screen. The durn thang had core memory!
Hard though it may be to believe now, back then core was the _cheap_ form
of memory.
Foobar T. Clown
>
> Huw Davies <cc...@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au> writes:
>
> >Far more importantly :-) [the old 7-bit Teletype backarrow] was the
> >assignment operator for Bliss-10....
>
> Not to mention the Algol I first learned.
You were Looky!
*WE* had to learn Algol-60 on a batch system, and keypunch our programs
on IBM 026 machines. The only punctuation we could use was +-.,()$*'
and =. We had to use dollar signs instead of semicolons, and we had to
use parentheses instead of square brackets, and don't even get me
started with all the .GT. and .LT. syntax for all the missing operators.
Now you kids got them trigraphs. That's a fancy word, innit!
TRYgraphs. Oh Oh! pardon me, I have to pop on over to my WORKstation
and type some TRYgraphs.
Joe Morris
>It surprized the heck out of me when moved the H2000 from one room
>to another, plugged it in, and had yesterday's SYSTAT show up on the
>screen. The durn thang had core memory!
There have been some really wierd terminal designs running around the
industry. One of the odder ones was used in the HDS ("Human Designed
System") series that used the concepts of APL as its design base, including
the ability to store a latent expression that was executed whenever
the terminal was powered on. The documentation warned about the dangers
of setting the latent expression to a string that disabled the interfaces.
I'm not sure if it used core or not; my manual for it is long gone.
Oh yes -- the documentation used the term "latent expression"; it isn't
my invention.
And for the APL-challenged readership, in an APL workspace you could
define an APL string that was executed whenever the workspace was
loaded, somewhat analogous to the "AutoOpen" macro in MS Office documents.
This was called the "latent expression".
Joe Morris
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
"Foobar T. Clown" (foo...@gazonk.del) writes:
>
> *WE* had to learn Algol-60 on a batch system, and keypunch our programs
> on IBM 026 machines. The only punctuation we could use was +-.,()$*'
> and =. We had to use dollar signs instead of semicolons, and we had to
> use parentheses instead of square brackets, and don't even get me
> started with all the .GT. and .LT. syntax for all the missing operators.
And the IBM 360 Algol compiler required that you put quotes around
identifiers! Thank god for PL/1.
Charles Richmond
>
> I guess the #1 question in the TECO FAQ (assuming that one
> existed) would be "I'm typing double dollar sign, but it's still
> just sitting there"!
>
I have good news and bad news. The good news: there *is* a TECO FAQ at
<http://wwwdeanza.fhda.edu/TECO/faq.html>. The bad news: it has nothing to
do with the TECO text editor. It is a discussion of the TEchnical
COmmunication classes at DeAnza College.
In another vein...someone posted that the LA36 DecWriter printed upper case
and lower case text. While this is true (the LA36 is the *only* DecWriter I
ever used), I feel it only fair to point out that the lower case letters had
*no* descenders. So it was very *funky* lower case.
A few months ago I saw a DecWriter in a thift store for $12 US. I would have
bought it, but the stand weighed a *ton*, and I did *not* have a truck to drag
it home.
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Tim Shoppa
>
> Tim Shoppa wrote:
> >
> > I guess the #1 question in the TECO FAQ (assuming that one
> > existed) would be "I'm typing double dollar sign, but it's still
> > just sitting there"!
> >
> I have good news and bad news. The good news: there *is* a TECO FAQ at
> <http://wwwdeanza.fhda.edu/TECO/faq.html>. The bad news: it has nothing to
> do with the TECO text editor. It is a discussion of the TEchnical
> COmmunication classes at DeAnza College.
I've been half-tempted to write a TECO FAQ, but I think
that the fact that I'm only familiar with the DEC TECO's would
quickly earn me some enemies. ITS-derived TECO's should be
included to be fair :-).
That said, most of the DECish information that might go into a FAQ
is already on-line. The most convenient source of information
is Pete Siemsen's DECUS tape which picks off a lot of useful
TECO stuff from previous DECUS contributions and symposium tapes; a
broken-out copy of this tape is available online
from
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/teco/
Dr. Peter Kittel
>Peter da Silva wrote in message <72clqs$9...@bonkers.taronga.com>...
>>
>>
>I remember that. It was used in several languages available on the 10 as an
>assignment operator (Focal? AID? Joss?), and was certainly more clear to
>non-Fortran educated persons....
Some Algol implementations used the back arrow for variable assignments,
instead of the two-character version (like in Pascal) a:=b+5;
--
Best Regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail:
Private Site in Frankfurt, Germany \X/ peterk @ combo.ganesha.com
David Fetrow
Tony Wingo <twi...@bearriver.com> wrote:
>
>And remember that SHIFT-O was originally a backwards pointing arrow, then
>later changed to an underscore. Thus many commands that originally looked
>like:
>
> PIP FOO <- BAR
>
>(where <- was a single character) ended up being typed as
>
> PIP FOO _ BAR
>
>which lacks the same semantic impact.
Several languages from around that time still use _ in this fashion.
At least one group (S/Splus/R) also allow "<-" as a substitute.
I really liked that convention as "=" is not what a mathematician
would expect. Hmmm, I suppose making a quick font substitution in
an xterm variant would let me get "_" looking the way I want for
S code again.
--
-David Fetrow, System Programmer, Biostat, U of Washington (206)-685-2376
RCW 19.149 notice: Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.
Dennis J. Minette
Donald Tees wrote in message <72c9ml$amt$1...@news.igs.net>...
>
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote in message <72c4og$ic7$3...@ligarius.ultra.net>...
>
>
>That is the way that I remember it to. The double caret *after*
>a variable was "power of", and before "base".
>^D25=^O31
There is that ubiquitous Christmas = Halloween expression again!
>2^^8=256
>
>>MACRO-10 took the character after the up-arrow argument to
>>define the base of the number. So, if I wanted to make
>>sure that the person reading the code understood that a
>>number was to be decimal, I would write MOVEI T1,^D10
>>There were times when it was important to view a number
>>as decimal rather than octal (which was the default).
>
>
>
Mel Wilson
"Dennis J. Minette" <dennis_...@email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>Donald Tees wrote in message <72c9ml$amt$1...@news.igs.net>...
>>a variable was "power of", and before "base".
>>^D25=^O31
>There is that ubiquitous Christmas = Halloween expression again!
Remember Nov. 27: International Techie Day.
Have YOU given your techies a long, puzzled look today?
Regards. Mel.
Alexandre Pechtchanski
Will someone _please_ let me on the joke? Pretty please?
[ When replying, remove *'s from address ]
Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY
Donald Tees
Alexandre Pechtchanski wrote in message <36640493.601826288@Rockyd>...
>>>>Dec25=Oct31
>>
>>>There is that ubiquitous Christmas = Halloween expression again!
The line is: Why can't a programmer tell Christmas from Halloween?
Because Dec. 25 is equal to Oct. 31.
(Decimal 25 is equal to Octal 31)
Alexandre Pechtchanski
Actually, I meant a joke about "international techie day" and why is it November
27th. (That old one I knew in 1970's, when it was probably brand new). Sorry
for mis-formulated query.
Alistair J. R. Young
Mel Wilson <mwi...@interlog.com> (== mwilson)
praised Shub-Internet thus:
> Remember Nov. 27: International Techie Day.
EVERY day is International Techie Day!
> Have YOU given your techies a long, puzzled look today?
(At least if that's the criterion.)
Alistair
--
Computational Thaumaturge -- Sysimperator, dominus retis deusque machinarum.
e-mail: avata...@arkane.demon.co.uk WWW: http://www.arkane.demon.co.uk/
Wanted: Interested parties to join development of a free, non-Unixalike OO
operating system. Email <laura-...@arkane.demon.co.uk>.
Donald Tees
>Actually, I meant a joke about "international techie day" and why is it
November
>27th. (That old one I knew in 1970's, when it was probably brand new).
Sorry
>for mis-formulated query.
<g> it is a bit hoary. When you get the other, tell me.
Mel Wilson
alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) wrote:
>On 26 Nov 1998 11:19:06 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) wrote:
>
>>In article <#LouoNzF#GA.214@upnetnews05>,
>>"Dennis J. Minette" <dennis_...@email.msn.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>Will someone _please_ let me on the joke? Pretty please?
I think we should grab it while it's still available. Nov. 27 is the
only remaining day that techies can enjoy as the equal of Christmas AND
Hallowee'n.
There was another .. Sept. 34 .. but it only happened once, in
Usenet, in the 1980's sometime, and will never happen again, since it is
now September the umpty-thousandth of 198mumble.
Regards, and I hope your International Techie Day was a good one.
Mel.
Alexandre Pechtchanski
I guess I finally got that, but it looks like too long line of conversions (what
on PhysTech [=Soviet MIT or CalTech, name your preference] was called "third
order joke"). O^31 (=> 31 base Oct => 31 base 8) = D^25 (=> 25 base Dec => 25
base 10) = 27 base 11 (=> no proper notation, but 11th month happen to be
November).
Now I can rest.
colinc...@my-dejanews.com
remember Oct is eight, Dec is ten and Nov is nine, from their Latin roots. I
guess Undecember would be confusing and Duodecember is right over the top.
--
Ecc. 12:13-14
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Gene Wirchenko
[snipped previous]
>I guess I finally got that, but it looks like too long line of conversions (what
>on PhysTech [=Soviet MIT or CalTech, name your preference] was called "third
>order joke"). O^31 (=> 31 base Oct => 31 base 8) = D^25 (=> 25 base Dec => 25
>base 10) = 27 base 11 (=> no proper notation, but 11th month happen to be
>November).
That's 27 base *9* which is 25 base 10. Maybe, it's a
fourth-level joke as October: base 8 but 10th month, November: base 9
but 11th month, and December: base 10 but 12th month.
>Now I can rest.
Nope!
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Marco S Hyman
> That's 27 base *9* which is 25 base 10. Maybe, it's a
> fourth-level joke as October: base 8 but 10th month, November: base 9
> but 11th month, and December: base 10 but 12th month.
I believe the ROMAN calendar put the new year in March, thus
October was the 8th month, November the 9th month, and December
the 10th month. That's why the Oct/Nov/Dec names.
// marc (who hopes his beliefs are correct :-)
Jeffrey S. Dutky
>
> I believe the ROMAN calendar put the new year in March, thus
> October was the 8th month, November the 9th month, and December
> the 10th month. That's why the Oct/Nov/Dec names.
>
No, the original Roman calander had only 10 months, but some were
added later, in honor of some emperors or popes (July is named
for pope Julian and August for St. Augustin, or something like
that) once you remove the two erzatz months (and redistribute
the excess days to the other months) you have Sept., Oct., Nov.,
and Dec., in the right places. The earliers months (some of
them at least) are clearly named for Roman gods and such.
- Jeff Dutky
Richard Lamb
Nahh, it was just FUNNY.
And, I thought, TIMELY, what?
Alexandre Pechtchanski wrote:
>
> On 1 Dec 1998 10:32:51 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) wrote:
>
> >In article <36640493.601826288@Rockyd>,
> >alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) wrote:
> >>On 26 Nov 1998 11:19:06 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article <#LouoNzF#GA.214@upnetnews05>,
> >>>"Dennis J. Minette" <dennis_...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>There is that ubiquitous Christmas = Halloween expression again!
> >>>
> >>>Remember Nov. 27: International Techie Day.
> >>>Have YOU given your techies a long, puzzled look today?
> >
> >>Will someone _please_ let me on the joke? Pretty please?
> >
> > I think we should grab it while it's still available. Nov. 27 is the
> >only remaining day that techies can enjoy as the equal of Christmas AND
> >Hallowee'n.
> > There was another .. Sept. 34 .. but it only happened once, in
> >Usenet, in the 1980's sometime, and will never happen again, since it is
> >now September the umpty-thousandth of 198mumble.
> >
> > Regards, and I hope your International Techie Day was a good one.
> > Mel.
>
> I guess I finally got that, but it looks like too long line of conversions (what
> on PhysTech [=Soviet MIT or CalTech, name your preference] was called "third
> order joke"). O^31 (=> 31 base Oct => 31 base 8) = D^25 (=> 25 base Dec => 25
> base 10) = 27 base 11 (=> no proper notation, but 11th month happen to be
> November).
Richard Lamb
Brendan Keith
> No, the original Roman calander had only 10 months, but some were
> added later, in honor of some emperors or popes (July is named
> for pope Julian and August for St. Augustin,
Julius and Augustus Caeser, no?
That "originally 10 months, some added later" sounds a bit off, too.
I'll look it up.
--
Brendan Keith
lee...@kettering.edu
> alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) wrote:
>
> [snipped previous]
>
> >I guess I finally got that, but it looks like too long line of conversions (what
> >on PhysTech [=Soviet MIT or CalTech, name your preference] was called "third
> >order joke"). O^31 (=> 31 base Oct => 31 base 8) = D^25 (=> 25 base Dec => 25
> >base 10) = 27 base 11 (=> no proper notation, but 11th month happen to be
> >November).
>
> That's 27 base *9* which is 25 base 10. Maybe, it's a
> fourth-level joke as October: base 8 but 10th month, November: base 9
> but 11th month, and December: base 10 but 12th month.
Actually, it's nowhere near as complicated as that. October means "the 8th
month" (oct comming from the Latin word for 8) and December means "the
tenth month". Similarly, November means "the ninth month". September
through December were actually the 7th through 12th months of the old
calendar. July and August were added later and named after Julius and
Augustus Ceasar. They were added before September but the names of
September through December were kept. Thus the ninth month is actually
named "the seventh month" and so on. Therefore, October->the 8th
month->base 8, December->"the tenth month"->base 10, November->"the ninth
month"->base 9. QED.
____________________________________________________________________________
|
"A little nonsense now and then, | "If it walks out of the fridge, let
Is relished by the wisest men." | it go" -- John Dougherty
--W.W. | "If it loves you it will come back."
| -- Ian Davis
__________________________________|_________________________________________
Theta Xi
Kappa Sigma
Alexandre Pechtchanski
>In article <36641a68.672961802@Rockyd>,
> alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) wrote:
>> On 1 Dec 1998 10:32:51 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) wrote:
>>
>> >In article <36640493.601826288@Rockyd>,
>> >alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) wrote:
>> >>On 26 Nov 1998 11:19:06 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>Remember Nov. 27: International Techie Day.
>> >>>Have YOU given your techies a long, puzzled look today?
>> >
>> >>Will someone _please_ let me on the joke? Pretty please?
>> >
>> > I think we should grab it while it's still available. Nov. 27 is the
>> >only remaining day that techies can enjoy as the equal of Christmas AND
>> >Hallowee'n.
>> > There was another .. Sept. 34 .. but it only happened once, in
>> >Usenet, in the 1980's sometime, and will never happen again, since it is
>> >now September the umpty-thousandth of 198mumble.
>> >
>> > Regards, and I hope your International Techie Day was a good one.
>> > Mel.
>>
>> I guess I finally got that, but it looks like too long line of conversions
>(what
>> on PhysTech [=Soviet MIT or CalTech, name your preference] was called "third
>> order joke"). O^31 (=> 31 base Oct => 31 base 8) = D^25 (=> 25 base Dec => 25
>> base 10) = 27 base 11 (=> no proper notation, but 11th month happen to be
>> November).
>> Now I can rest.
>>
>Er, not quite yet. 27 base 11 would be 29 base 10. The Nov 27 works when you
>remember Oct is eight, Dec is ten and Nov is nine, from their Latin roots. I
>guess Undecember would be confusing and Duodecember is right over the top.
Oops! <furiously blushing> Now I _finally_ understand why my high-school math
teacher loved to remind us that arithmetic is _the most_ difficult part of math.
(And boasting about PhysTech roots, at that... Shame on me - bad Alex, bad! - no
cookies tonight ;-)
Jeffrey S. Dutky
>
> Jeffrey S. Dutky wrote:
> > July is named for pope Julian and August for St. Augustin,
>
> Julius and Augustus Caeser, no?
Yes, July and August are named for Julius and Augustus Caeser.
(I really should keep reference materials near the computer!)
> That "originally 10 months, some added later" sounds a bit off,
> too. I'll look it up.
Yeah, after I thought about it a bit, the "10 month" thing didn't
make a whole lot of sense (the word month refers to the moon, I
assume because a month is supposed to be the length of a lunar
cycle) but that is what I remember. Besides, it makes Sept.-Dec.
work out correctly. Still, you would expect something more like
13 divisions in a year where the divisions are based on lunar
cycles. Of course, the Roman Empire was under no obligation to
be entirely logical. Maybe they thought that 10 months was a
nice round number, and that's what everyone was going to use
because they said so. (It's GOOD to be the empire)
- Jeff Dutky
barnacle
>ge...@vip.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>
>> That's 27 base *9* which is 25 base 10. Maybe, it's a
>> fourth-level joke as October: base 8 but 10th month, November: base 9
>> but 11th month, and December: base 10 but 12th month.
>
>October was the 8th month, November the 9th month, and December
>the 10th month. That's why the Oct/Nov/Dec names.
>
Dunno when the roman new year was, but the emperors Julian (Julius?) and
Augustus wanted months named after themselves AFIAK, hence the shift of the
later months
barnacle
nailed-barnacle.home.ml.org
bma...@iglou.com
On 1998-11-30 alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu(AlexandrePechtchanski) said:
>On 26 Nov 1998 11:19:06 -0500, mwi...@interlog.com (Mel Wilson)
>wrote:
>>In article <#LouoNzF#GA.214@upnetnews05>,
>>"Dennis J. Minette" <dennis_...@email.msn.com> wrote:
>>>Donald Tees wrote in message <72c9ml$amt$1...@news.igs.net>...
>>>>That is the way that I remember it to. The double caret *after*
>>>>a variable was "power of", and before "base".
>>>>^D25=^O31
>>>There is that ubiquitous Christmas = Halloween expression again!
>>Remember Nov. 27: International Techie Day.
>>Have YOU given your techies a long, puzzled look today?
>> Regards. Mel.
>Will someone _please_ let me on the joke? Pretty please?
Which joke? "Christmas=Halloween"? "^D25"=decimal or December 25,
"^O31"=octal or October 31.
Net-Tamer V 1.08X - Test Drive
Kin Hoong CHUNG
: Brendan Keith wrote:
:> Jeffrey S. Dutky wrote:
:> > July is named for pope Julian and August for St. Augustin,
:> Julius and Augustus Caeser, no?
: Yes, July and August are named for Julius and Augustus Caeser.
:> That "originally 10 months, some added later" sounds a bit off,
:> too. I'll look it up.
: Yeah, after I thought about it a bit, the "10 month" thing didn't
: make a whole lot of sense (the word month refers to the moon, I
: assume because a month is supposed to be the length of a lunar
: cycle) but that is what I remember. Besides, it makes Sept.-Dec.
: work out correctly. Still, you would expect something more like
: 13 divisions in a year where the divisions are based on lunar
: cycles. Of course, the Roman Empire was under no obligation to
: be entirely logical. Maybe they thought that 10 months was a
: nice round number, and that's what everyone was going to use
: because they said so. (It's GOOD to be the empire)
More likely they replaced the names of _two_ of the months with what
we now have. I am pretty sure that their year started in March, as I
seem to remember a story that February is as short as it is because
it was the last month of the Roman year (and was shortened so Augustus
had a month as long as Julius). For some reason I don't understand,
it appears that the Romans did not like the end of the year...
Cheers,
Kin Hoong
D. Peschel
Kin Hoong CHUNG <khc...@maths.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
>More likely they replaced the names of _two_ of the months with what
>we now have. I am pretty sure that their year started in March, as I
>seem to remember a story that February is as short as it is because
>it was the last month of the Roman year (and was shortened so Augustus
>had a month as long as Julius). For some reason I don't understand,
>it appears that the Romans did not like the end of the year...
You're mixing up three separate things.
1) Two months changed their names -- Quintillis and Sextillis became
July and August.
2) The beginning of the year changed from March to January (at least as far as
the election of consuls went, or something like that). Oddly, the British
adopted/continued the Roman practice of putting the beginning of the year at
March 25.
3) Two months (January and February) were added. Previously the calendar DID
only have ten months, with about the same lengths as now. The remaining part
of the year (which has a long name which I forget) was not divided because
there was no need. The calendar was used to aid agriculture, and nothing much
happens in the winter, agriculturally speaking.
The timing of those changes may have been the same, but the events were still
separate. Don't even mention the screw-ups in leap years -- that's another
issue! (OK, mention it, and I'll get to it in my next post.)
-- Derek
William Hamblen
: More likely they replaced the names of _two_ of the months with what
: we now have. I am pretty sure that their year started in March, as I
: seem to remember a story that February is as short as it is because
: it was the last month of the Roman year (and was shortened so Augustus
: had a month as long as Julius). For some reason I don't understand,
: it appears that the Romans did not like the end of the year...
Januarius and Februarius were "not part of the year" for some reason.
Probably because no crops were growing. The old Roman calendar was a
luni-solar calendar with intercalations added whenever the priests felt
the need to keep the calendar in step with the seasons. Things were in
such a confused state by Julius Caesar's time he was able to decree his
reform without causing civil war.
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>2) The beginning of the year changed from March to January (at least as far as
>the election of consuls went, or something like that). Oddly, the British
>adopted/continued the Roman practice of putting the beginning of the year at
>March 25.
Oddly, Tolkien did the reverse in LOTR. Gondor made the year
start with March 25 instead of January 1 after the One Ring was
destroyed on March 25, 3021 TA.
Setting things up for the Romans, perhaps?
[snip]
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1998-12-04 dpes...@u.washington.edu(D.Peschel) said:
:2) The beginning of the year changed from March to January (at
:least as far as the election of consuls went, or something like
:that). Oddly, the British adopted/continued the Roman practice of
:putting the beginning of the year at March 25.
OOOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!
*That's* why the financial year starts on April the 6th...
OK, here's the updated story. In 1753, we adopted the Gregorian calendar
(only 171 years late; it's possible this is a guideline for our entry
timetable to monetary union, but I digress). Unfortunately, this annoyed
just about everyone. The workers were upset because their landlords
required a full month's rent from them whilst refusing to pay them for
the 11 missing days' work. The landlords and capitalists were upset
because the government did the same with taxes; thus, they refused to
pay until 365 days had elapsed, which punted the new financial year
forward to April 6.
--
Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
Martin Ibert
<du...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>No, the original Roman calander had only 10 months, but some were
>added later, in honor of some emperors or popes (July is named
>for pope Julian and August for St. Augustin,
AFAIK, July celebrates Julius Caesar, and August is named after his
successor, emperor Augustus.
>once you remove the two erzatz months
AARRGHHH! ^^^^^^
If you mean "Ersatz" (meaning "substitute" or "surrogate"), please say
so. Thank you.