> > For years the Boston Computer Museum had SpaceWar on public display, running > > on a PDP-1.
> Yeah, it looked like that, didn't it.
> Now, think about it a little. How much power does a PDP-1 use? How > many BTUs? How often would the hardware have broken down if they'd had > it running all the time, and what would the cost of all that been? > Since when did that museam have that kind of budget?
> They didn't actually run the PDP-1 itself except on rare occasions, as I > understand it. What was actually happening was that a Mac was driving > that display and those controllers at the Museam.
Baloney. It ran.
I will grant you that they didn't run it often, but I recall one Thanksgiving my father was in the Boston area visiting me, and we went to the Computer Museum. The PDP-1 was there, shut down. I found a youngling docent in the area and asked him if we could see the thing operate, and he explained, as you just did, that it only ran on special occasions. I explained to him that I ran that darned machine for two years, ergo my being there made it a special occasion. Seeing the look in my eye he didn't feel like arguing, so he turned the machine on and attempted to boot Spacewar on it. No go; the CPU booted, but no spaceships or sparkly star on the Type 30 display. He tried again, same thing. After the third failure I stepped over the velvet rope and started opening up skins and wiggling connectors. The docent panicked, and ran off looking for Security. By the time he got back, accompanied by a guard, the PDP-1 was booted and my father and I were playing Spacewar on the accumulator switches. What had happened was that the power connection feeding AC to the CRT's high-voltage supply had come loose - again! - and once I got it mated up everything was fine. The docent stood there with his mouth wide open, and I said to him, "Kid, I told ya'. I *ran* this machine for two years. I know every damned loose connection in it." The guard threw back his head and laughed, and the docent wandered away shaking his head. I guess after awhile the staff at the Boston Computer Museum got used to see all kinds of serious gnurds wander through...
Trust me, Howard, whatever other mickey mouse(tm) things may have been cobbled together behind the scenes and the Boston Computer Museum, the Type 30 display on the PDP-1 was not one of them. Perhaps your being there just wasn't a special enough occasion for them.
> One last thing. How did the games written for this machine compare with the > arcade type written (like Space Invaders in 1978)? Only reason I ask it is > because of some of varations of SpaceWar sound quite impressive.
MESS will emulate a DEC PDP-1 and run spacewar. (It won't run anything else :) Download it and try it yourself!
-- Britain set up Iraq in 1922. The area had been three separate provinces-Basra, Baghdad and Mosul-which were part of the Ottoman Empire run from Turkey. Britain's rulers wanted the territory after oil reserves were discovered there in the late 19th century.
In article <b3u8kt$4o...@news.utelfla.com>, "Geoffrey G. Rochat" <777geoff...@777pkworks777.777com777> wrote:
> Baloney. It ran.
I didn't say it didn't. I said that it was rare that they actually ran it. Usually it was a Mac running an emulation. I saw it "running" that way on multiple occasions.
> I will grant you that they didn't run it often, but I recall one > Thanksgiving my father was in the Boston area visiting me, and we went to > the Computer Museum. The PDP-1 was there, shut down. I found a youngling > docent in the area and asked him if we could see the thing operate, and he > explained, as you just did, that it only ran on special occasions. I > explained to him that I ran that darned machine for two years, ergo my being > there made it a special occasion. Seeing the look in my eye he didn't feel > like arguing, so he turned the machine on and attempted to boot Spacewar on > it. No go; the CPU booted, but no spaceships or sparkly star on the Type 30 > display. He tried again, same thing. After the third failure I stepped > over the velvet rope and started opening up skins and wiggling connectors. > The docent panicked, and ran off looking for Security. By the time he got > back, accompanied by a guard, the PDP-1 was booted and my father and I were > playing Spacewar on the accumulator switches. What had happened was that > the power connection feeding AC to the CRT's high-voltage supply had come > loose - again! - and once I got it mated up everything was fine. The docent > stood there with his mouth wide open, and I said to him, "Kid, I told ya'. > I *ran* this machine for two years. I know every damned loose connection in > it." The guard threw back his head and laughed, and the docent wandered > away shaking his head. I guess after awhile the staff at the Boston > Computer Museum got used to see all kinds of serious gnurds wander > through...
Good story, yeah.
Okay, what's a "docent", and what's a "gnurds"?
> Trust me, Howard, whatever other mickey mouse(tm) things may have been > cobbled together behind the scenes and the Boston Computer Museum, the Type > 30 display on the PDP-1 was not one of them. Perhaps your being there just > wasn't a special enough occasion for them.
I wasn't suggesting that my attendance -was- important enough for them to run it. I didn't seriously consider asking them to power it up.
Explain the lack of any noise from the PDP-1 when I played Spacewar "on" it, and the little Mac "wait" watch cursor which popped up sometimes between games, then.
-- Today, on Paper-view: The World Origami Championship
> I didn't say it didn't. I said that it was rare that they actually ran > it. Usually it was a Mac running an emulation. I saw it "running" that > way on multiple occasions.
> Good story, yeah.
It's even true.
> Okay, what's a "docent", and what's a "gnurds"?
"Docent" can be found in any decent English language dictionary. For "gnurds" do a Google search for "Jargon File." Alternate spellings (not my preference) are nurds and nerds.
> > Trust me, Howard, whatever other mickey mouse(tm) things may have been > > cobbled together behind the scenes and the Boston Computer Museum, the Type > > 30 display on the PDP-1 was not one of them. Perhaps your being there just > > wasn't a special enough occasion for them.
> I wasn't suggesting that my attendance -was- important enough for them > to run it. I didn't seriously consider asking them to power it up.
> Explain the lack of any noise from the PDP-1 when I played Spacewar "on" > it, and the little Mac "wait" watch cursor which popped up sometimes > between games, then.
I dunno what you thought you were playing Spacewar on, or what you might have been told you were playing Spacewar on, but it sure wasn't a PDP-1 with a Type 30 graphics display. Your description strongly hints it was a standard Mac raster-scanned display, and there's no way a Type 30 graphics display could handle that. (See my previous threadlet regarding raster vs. point-plotting vs. vector displays.) Take a look at the PDP-1 Handbook on Al Kossow's site (http://www.spies.com/~aek/pdf/dec/pdp1/) and look for the Type 30 display toward the end. My guess is that that's not what you were in front of at the Boston COmputer Museum when you played Spacewar, although the PDP-1 connected to a Type 30 were, in fact, on display for awhile. Through one Thanksgiving anyway...
I do have an old Mac Classic in my retrocomputer collection that runs a decent version of Spacewar, and my teenaged son whups me at it with some frequency. Perhaps that is what they had you playing at the Boston Computer Museum, as porting Spacewar to other computers has been a standard hack for several generations of programmers. But if the Boston Computer Museum led you to believe you were actually on the PDP-1 when you were playing Spacewar, rather than on a more modern machine that happened to be sitting close to the PDP-1 and its writeup on Spacewar, then shame on 'em!
"philicorda" <philicordaNOOOS...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message... > MESS will emulate a DEC PDP-1 and run spacewar. (It won't run anything else > :) > Download it and try it yourself!
Ah, maybe when it can run a few of the other PDP-1 programs! :-)
Still Geoffrey brought up a very good point about emulating those machines & that is you can't emulate the way the original screen operated.
In article <b3ukbj$qr...@news.utelfla.com>, "Geoffrey G. Rochat" <777geoff...@777pkworks777.777com777> wrote:
> It's even true.
Didn't mean to suggest I thought otherwise, sir!
> "Docent" can be found in any decent English language dictionary. For > "gnurds" do a Google search for "Jargon File." Alternate spellings (not my > preference) are nurds and nerds.
Geez, make me lean over for my hardcopy dictionary. mmm... okay, got it. I'll leave "gnurds" alone for now 'cause I'm just not in the mood.
> I dunno what you thought you were playing Spacewar on, or what you might > have been told you were playing Spacewar on, but it sure wasn't a PDP-1 with > a Type 30 graphics display. Your description strongly hints it was a > standard Mac raster-scanned display, and there's no way a Type 30 graphics > display could handle that.
Yes, that's what I was saying. It was round, and fairly large, but it wasn't actually running on the PDP-1 it was purportedly attached to. I don't know what happened when they actually wanted to use it with the PDP-1. As I recall, the PDP-1 was in a kind of a corner. This display was out at the end of a low cabinet perpendicular to one of the walls. It's been a few years, though. Kinda "no kidding", y'know? Next time I'm out at Mountain View, I'll see if I can check it out. No, that's pointless, as I'm not likely to get out there again any time soon. I'll just contact the Museam directly and ask 'em what the story is with the setup as it was in Boston, and as it is now.... sent. I'll update when I have more info.
I'm not disputing what you're saying, sir. I'm just trying to iron out the difference between what I saw and what you're telling me was there.
> I do have an old Mac Classic in my retrocomputer collection that runs a > decent version of Spacewar, and my teenaged son whups me at it with some > frequency. Perhaps that is what they had you playing at the Boston Computer > Museum, as porting Spacewar to other computers has been a standard hack for > several generations of programmers. But if the Boston Computer Museum led > you to believe you were actually on the PDP-1 when you were playing > Spacewar, rather than on a more modern machine that happened to be sitting > close to the PDP-1 and its writeup on Spacewar, then shame on 'em!
Yes. That's effectively my take on it. :-)
-- Today, on Paper-view: The World Origami Championship
> >> Depends for whom they work. Some places want you 24/7 and > >> wonder why you're partially dead. :)
> > As it said once in Dilbert (the comic strip):
> > "Having a personal life is like stealing from the company."
> I'm reminded of the lovely line from the Clive James/Pete Atkin song > "Session Man's Blues": "They want me to work on the afternoon after I'm > dead".
Haven't you ever seen the fake memo that says: "Death is *no* excuse for *not* coming into work, unless you are the one who died. Then you have to give two weeks notice."
-- +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond <richm...@plano.net> | +-------------------------------------------------------------+
>> > For years the Boston Computer Museum had SpaceWar on public display, >running >> > on a PDP-1.
>> Yeah, it looked like that, didn't it.
>> Now, think about it a little. How much power does a PDP-1 use? How >> many BTUs? How often would the hardware have broken down if they'd had >> it running all the time, and what would the cost of all that been? >> Since when did that museam have that kind of budget?
>> They didn't actually run the PDP-1 itself except on rare occasions, as I >> understand it. What was actually happening was that a Mac was driving >> that display and those controllers at the Museam.
>I will grant you that they didn't run it often, but I recall one >Thanksgiving my father was in the Boston area visiting me, and we went to >the Computer Museum. The PDP-1 was there, shut down. I found a youngling >docent in the area and asked him if we could see the thing operate, and he >explained, as you just did, that it only ran on special occasions. I >explained to him that I ran that darned machine for two years, ergo my being >there made it a special occasion. Seeing the look in my eye he didn't feel >like arguing, so he turned the machine on and attempted to boot Spacewar on >it. No go; the CPU booted, but no spaceships or sparkly star on the Type 30 >display. He tried again, same thing. After the third failure I stepped >over the velvet rope and started opening up skins and wiggling connectors. >The docent panicked, and ran off looking for Security. By the time he got >back, accompanied by a guard, the PDP-1 was booted and my father and I were >playing Spacewar on the accumulator switches. What had happened was that >the power connection feeding AC to the CRT's high-voltage supply had come >loose - again! - and once I got it mated up everything was fine. The docent >stood there with his mouth wide open, and I said to him, "Kid, I told ya'. >I *ran* this machine for two years. I know every damned loose connection in >it." The guard threw back his head and laughed, and the docent wandered >away shaking his head. I guess after awhile the staff at the Boston >Computer Museum got used to see all kinds of serious gnurds wander >through...
>Trust me, Howard, whatever other mickey mouse(tm) things may have been >cobbled together behind the scenes and the Boston Computer Museum, the Type >30 display on the PDP-1 was not one of them. Perhaps your being there just >wasn't a special enough occasion for them.
Charles Richmond wrote: > Haven't you ever seen the fake memo that says: "Death is *no* > excuse for *not* coming into work, unless you are the one who > died. Then you have to give two weeks notice."
This, of course, brings to mind the one which says something like:
It has come to the attention of management that people dying on the job are failing to fall down. This makes is difficult to tell the difference between them and the otherwise normal movement of the staff. In the future, will all employees dying on the job please fall down.
> "philicorda" <philicordaNOOOS...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message...
> > MESS will emulate a DEC PDP-1 and run spacewar. (It won't run anything > else > > :) > > Download it and try it yourself!
> Ah, maybe when it can run a few of the other PDP-1 programs! :-)
> Still Geoffrey brought up a very good point about emulating those machines & > that is you can't emulate the way the original screen operated.
Aye.
The mame vector driver does a decent job with open GL and a high res screen. You can mess around with intensity, flicker, beam width and transucency parameters to get it looking pretty authentic. I think it emulates phosphor decay as well. It supports the cabinet space wars, but not the original pdp version.
-- Britain set up Iraq in 1922. The area had been three separate provinces-Basra, Baghdad and Mosul-which were part of the Ottoman Empire run from Turkey. Britain's rulers wanted the territory after oil reserves were discovered there in the late 19th century.
> >>> > For years the Boston Computer Museum had SpaceWar on public display, > >>> > running on a PDP-1.
> It's at Moffett now. It's hoped to be on display eventually in Mtn. View.
> We had Slug Russell give a talk last year about it.
I don't want you to think I'm too pushy or anything (<large toothy grin>), but I *do* have a more-than-just-a-little proprietary feeling toward that PDP-1.
Circa 1976, the MIT Electronics Research Society, an anarchical group of mostly Course 6 (that's Electrical Engineering to the lay world) students hold up in room 20B119 of the lost-and-lamented Building 20, grabbed the PDP-1 from MIT's Surplus Property Office, where is sat after having been decommissioned from Building 26. We grabbed it to keep Bertha, our beloved PDP-7, company. What we got was the 6-rack system and a huge MIT home-brew four-port core memory rack. The four ports were intended to be connected to the PDP-1, to a PDP-7 for I/O support, one port was spare, and the fourth port was to be tied to a massive RAMDAC fixed-head drum, IIRC some 3' in diameter and about 6' long. We declined to get the drum because we realized it had spun at 3600 RPM on the same bearings since circa 1963 without external lubrication, and we didn't want to find out what would happen if the bearings seized. (After all, Building 20 was a "temporary" barracks thrown up to house the Rad Labs during WWII, and the interior walls were only Masonite. Not much defense against shrapnel and an awful lot of angular momentum.) We just used the PDP-1 port on the memory, and our mass storage was the array of Microtape (as DECtape was originally called) on the PDP-1. (Microtape drives, BTW, allowed one to control the feed and takeup drive motors of each of the drives individually, and one could do all sorts of interesting, if useless, things by looping a single tape through and around the heads and idled tape spools of several drives, powering just the motors at the ends.) We had all sorts of glorious plans to tie in the PDP-7 and run a multi-processor Spacewar (the -1 had a Type 30 display, the -7 had a 340 display processor), but we never got around to it. But we did get the PDP-5 we acquired at about the same time to run.
The four-port memory rack was a mass of wire wrap, and off one wire wrap pin was a length of hookup wire, curled into a helix, with a toe-tag tied on the end that said "DO NOT REMOVE!" For once we actually followed instructions, and left the thing on there. We figured that it might have been one of those "Do Not Remove Under Penalty Of Law" things that you see sewn into mattresses or something. (Hey, this was back in the days of Watergate and J. Edgar. *Anything* was possible, and a good supply of paranoia was a healthy thing to have, particularly if you were a long-haired college student. We realized it was best to never meddle unnecessarily in the affairs of dragons, for we were crunchy and good with ketchup.) We did some investigating, and discovered the wire had a definite purpose. It seems that the memory, designed by a cabal of grad students, used a 4-state asynchronous arbiter, and it was a devil to debug; the thing kept going metastable. Until one day, when somebody noticed that if a 'scope probe were clipped onto this point the metastability would go away. Apparently the 'scope probe added just enough loading to unbalance the too-well-balanced arbiter. But since probes for Tek 535 'scopes were expensive, somebody had the bright idea of making a 'scope probe emulator out of a piece of hookup wire, and that did the trick.
The 6-rack system we got had been under the auspices of Prof. Jack Dennis, and to him this was a research machine. So the thing had been hacked to the point were is had in it everything from the original PNP germanium System Modules, featuring Diode-Capacitor-Diode (DCD) logic, to Schottky TTL. The original PDP-1 front panel still operated, but other than providing a PTR: to boot from was there mainly for nostalgia. Opening the door to the first rack behind the original front panel revealed the "real" front panel, which was a full 6' rack worth of switches, dials and indicators, both incandescent and LEDs. Talk about blinkenlights, it was GORGEOUS. At the bottom of that were, IIRC, some four mil-spec circular connectors that trailed off on long, thick cables to what looked like button boxes. These were auxiliary front panels. It seems that Jack had hacked this thing so that it behaved like at least five virtual computers, and these were front panels for subsidiary virtual machines. It was the most bizarre amalgamation of digital circuitry and weird software I've ever seen in my entire life, and that includes the time I wrote banking code for Citibank in assembler on IBM Series/1s.
That being said, I have a bit of a bone to pick with The Computer Museum. (I love the irony of that name. As though there's only one!) The PDP-1 as we got it was not what you might call "well documented." When MITERS traded the thing back to DEC for rights to pick through DEC's salvage bin (Hey, we were young! What did we know? But we did manage to scrounge enough parts to build the fourth most powerful computing center on campus, rivaling that of the Civil/Mechanical Engineering Joint Computer Facility. Which really pissed them off, 'cause they had to *pay* for their stuff...), DEC unhacked the thing back to nearly pristine state, which is how it was presented at the Boston Computer Museum. And I know the machine was running there. But the machine is not running, nor is it runnable, presently. And that should not be. It was in fine shape when it moved out there. Indeed, when MITERS acquired the massively-hacked, undocumented machine as a very large collection of pieces, over the course of a couple of weeks a fellow named David Feldsenthal, a perennial Freshman who was the only person I know to flunk out of MIT more times than I did, put the thing back together largely on his own. Now, I grant you Dave was a genius. (And Dave, if you're reading this, you're welcome. Get in touch, guy. It's been awhile.) And I grant you that the circuitry was no doubt rather "forgiving" of Dave's ministrations, but still and all he pulled it off with aplomb.
So how come you guys ain't got the thing up and running Spacewar? You've only had the thing for years! If you need the dox for reference, they're all up on Al Kossow's website. That's a heckovalot more help than Dave had.
Geoffrey G. Rochat Vice President, Rhode Island Computer Museum (www.osfn.org/ricm) Member, RetroComputing Society of Rhode Island (www.osfn.org/rcs)
"philicorda" wrote in message... > > Still Geoffrey brought up a very good point about emulating those machines > > & that is you can't emulate the way the original screen operated. > Aye. > The mame vector driver does a decent job with open GL and a high res screen. > You can mess around with intensity, flicker, beam width and transucency > parameters to get it looking pretty authentic. I think it emulates phosphor > decay as well. > It supports the cabinet space wars, but not the original pdp version.
Fair enough then. But what's this caper about only running Spacewars!? Perhaps when it can run a few other programs I'll take a look. Surely the writers of this emulator have written this emulator to only play Spacewars!
> Fair enough then. But what's this caper about only running Spacewars!?
Well, you can shoot things. It's more fun than running LISP. :)
It would be nice to emulate it more fully, as you say, but doing the tape punch/reader, mag tape, control panel etc is a bit tricky.
-- Britain set up Iraq in 1922. The area had been three separate provinces-Basra, Baghdad and Mosul-which were part of the Ottoman Empire run from Turkey. Britain's rulers wanted the territory after oil reserves were discovered there in the late 19th century.
In article <b418dc$hf...@news.utelfla.com>, Geoffrey G. Rochat <777geoff...@777pkworks777.777com777> wrote:
>I don't want you to think I'm too pushy or anything (<large toothy grin>),
None taken.
>but I *do* have a more-than-just-a-little proprietary feeling toward that >PDP-1. .... >So how come you guys ain't got the thing up and running Spacewar? You've >only had the thing for years! If you need the dox for reference, they're >all up on Al Kossow's website. That's a heckovalot more help than Dave had.
Several reasons. 1) It's not yet in its permanent home. Right now, this is most important. 2) Priorities 1, Whereas the Museum got an IBM 1620 running again, there are factions between preservation vs. sample function. We have these debates over other significant artifacts: Xerox Altos, the Enigma machine, etc. The 1620 happened because it had a serious, fanatic group of IBMers. How often it runs is pretty infrequent. 3) Priorities 2, take the same list, Alto, Enigma, and internally prioritize that list.
In article <3e64072...@news.ucsc.edu>, eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote:
> >>> How many BTUs? How often would the hardware have broken down if they'd > >>> had > >>> it running all the time, and what would the cost of all that been?
> Boy you sound like a humanist historian. > Look but don't touch.
Not my intention. Read what I said, rather than what you're implying.
-- Today, on Paper-view: The World Origami Championship
"philicorda" <philicordaNOOOS...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message... > > Fair enough then. But what's this caper about only running Spacewars!? > Well, you can shoot things. It's more fun than running LISP. :)
Careful, the creator of LISP maybe reading this. Naturally, I haven't used LISP, so cannot base an opinion on it.
> It would be nice to emulate it more fully, as you say, but doing the tape > punch/reader, mag tape, control panel etc is a bit tricky.
Well it didn't stop someone writing an EDSAC emulator. That's older again, so I guess the same sort of readers are used to load in a program?
I'm not particular sceptical about how accurate the emulation is in terms of readers or hardware accessories (as long as some sort of emulation can be done of it). The Screen seems to be more important (particularly if it can be done). The programs could just be a file on the system. But it's a bit disappointing that someone has written a PDP-1 emulator which doesn't support all the software written for the original machine. Hopefully, they'll make sure some improvements are made for it.
"Ross Simpson" <yeah_whatever> wrote in message <news:3e601025$0$27765$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>... > curiosity I was wonderning which language it would have used. The book also > talks about a few other games which were written for it (Mouse-in-a-Maze > being one), however would anyone know how many & was this machine mostly > used as a games machine or could it used some serious applications?
The Mouse in the Maze program was written for the TX-0, and I don't think it was ever ported to the PDP-1. The TX-0 was created at MIT in 1958 to test a 64K-word transistorized core memory. I wouldn't be surprised if the DEC people used ideas from the TX-0 instruction set to create the PDP-1 instruction set, but they really aren't the same.
There are other games for the PDP-1, though I don't know of any besides Spacewar that use the CRT. I've seen listings for solitaire (with cards, not pegs) and Jotto (which I think is like Mastermind but you have to guess a five-letter word instead of four colors). And some of the games that were popular at the time were ported. See David Ahl's _BASIC Computer Games_ books for the kind I mean -- Hunt the Wumpus, 3-D tic-tac-toe, etc. Those are just examples; I don't remember which ones really were ported.
All the non-CRT games use a typewriter connected to the computer, which types about ten characters a second.
Most programs were written in machine language. The stock PDP-1 only had 4K words of memory and it would be hard to fit another language in. There is a LISP interpreter that runs in 4K, and LISP would be great for certain types of games, but I don't know of an actual example. There is also a FORTRAN compiler that would be good for porting the BASIC games. I doubt it runs in 4K though.
MIT only had a few PDP-1s, max, and lots of people wanted to use them, so by definition they had as many uses as people wanted. The stories you hear are mostly about the programmers who wanted to push the machine to its limits in any way they could. (Writing games counts as pushing the machine to its limits, but so does writing a word processor, operating system, or FORTRAN. They even changed the hardware when they thought that would be useful.) But other people used the machine to do calculations and only needed to know about their area of expertise.
I don't know how things were at other PDP-1 sites, but I imagine they were similar. It would be silly to spend all that money just to play games, or even to write them (who would you sell them to?), but on the other hand there was no hourly or monthly fee, so it would be natural to do some game playing.
> One last thing. How did the games written for this machine compare with the > arcade type written (like Space Invaders in 1978)? Only reason I ask it is > because of some of varations of SpaceWar sound quite impressive.
1978 is about twenty years after the PDP-1 came out. Computer technology changed a great deal in that time, and costs went down, so things that weren't practical (like having a bit-mapped screen) became practical. Video-game writers also have different goals than research scientists, so the programs will be different.
"Ross Simpson" <yeah_whatever> writes: > Careful, the creator of LISP maybe reading this. Naturally, I > haven't used LISP, so cannot base an opinion on it.
"Derek Peschel" <dpesc...@eskimo.com> wrote in message... > > curiosity I was wonderning which language it would have used. The book also > > talks about a few other games which were written for it (Mouse-in-a-Maze > > being one), however would anyone know how many & was this machine mostly > > used as a games machine or could it used some serious applications?
> The Mouse in the Maze program was written for the TX-0, and I don't think > it was ever ported to the PDP-1. The TX-0 was created at MIT in 1958 > to test a 64K-word transistorized core memory. I wouldn't be surprised > if the DEC people used ideas from the TX-0 instruction set to create > the PDP-1 instruction set, but they really aren't the same.
Ah okay. Yes I probably misinterpreted what the book states. Which is that 'Mouse-in-a-Maze, Spacewar! & other games around that period' were all public domain games.
However the site I printed some information on about the TX-0, PDP-1 & Spacewar! described how the hackers took programs which ran on the TX-0 to the PDP-1. I don't think I would have misinterpreted that, however on the same note Mouse-in-a-Maze wasn't described as being one (if I recally correctly).
> There are other games for the PDP-1, though I don't know of any besides > Spacewar that use the CRT. I've seen listings for solitaire (with cards, > not pegs) and Jotto (which I think is like Mastermind but you have to guess > a five-letter word instead of four colors). And some of the games that > were popular at the time were ported. See David Ahl's _BASIC Computer Games_ > books for the kind I mean -- Hunt the Wumpus, 3-D tic-tac-toe, etc. > Those are just examples; I don't remember which ones really were ported.
Well BASIC was quite made when the PDP-1 came out, but yeah I get the idea! :-)
> All the non-CRT games use a typewriter connected to the computer, which > types about ten characters a second.
The ones with 'END TRANSMISSION' on the end? Or was it 'DISENGAGE'? (I've watched too many old movies with computers in).
> >> Fair enough then. But what's this caper about only running > >> Spacewars!?
> > Well, you can shoot things. It's more fun than running LISP. :)
> Surely someone, somewhere, is coding up Spacewar in Common Lisp even as > we speak...
> ...and if not, I darned well want to know the reason why not!
Somewhere on the web, I saw a version of Spacewar! coded in Logo by Alan Kay...does that count??? (Well, some of the code was there...I did *not* try to run it.)
-- +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond <richm...@plano.net> | +-------------------------------------------------------------+
"Charles Richmond" <richm...@ev1.net> wrote in message... > > >> Fair enough then. But what's this caper about only running > > >> Spacewars!?
> > > Well, you can shoot things. It's more fun than running LISP. :)
> > Surely someone, somewhere, is coding up Spacewar in Common Lisp even as > > we speak...
> > ...and if not, I darned well want to know the reason why not!
> Somewhere on the web, I saw a version of Spacewar! coded in Logo > by Alan Kay...does that count??? (Well, some of the code was > there...I did *not* try to run it.)
Well dare I say that Logo isn't quite like Lisp. But then I've used Logo, which 'can' be used for more than just Turtle Drawning. All I know about Lisp is, it's some language used for Artifical Intelligence Programming. I'd don't know if it compares to other languages of the time like Algol 60.
