Mark Crispin's passing and the TOPS-20 mailing list

[Rich Alderson]

As many of you are no doubt aware, Mark Crispin managed and eventually hosted
the TOPS-20 mailing list, beginning in the days of the ARPANET before the
TCP/IP transition.[1]

At the end of December 2011, Mark contacted me to ask, among other things,
whether Living Computer Museum would be willing to host the list, and if I
would be willing to manage it. I agreed, and we planned to move the needed
files from Lingling.Panda.com to Toad-1.LivingComputerMuseum.org in the next
few weeks. Sadly, Mark became incapacitated much more quickly than he had
anticipated, so that we did not accomplish this before he went into care, and
my own schedule became full of opening the museum.

I have since made arrangements with his executor to bring up Lingling and
recover the mail system files needed to bring this list back to life, but am
allowing her some time for private grief before we move ahead on this. I
fully intend to honor this commitment to my old friend.

I welcome any assistance in this which the community offers.


[1] Or so I believe. The list may not have come into existence until after the
1983-01-01 transition, but that seems unlikely.

--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...

[Duty Calls]

And what of the Panda distribution of TOPS-20? Will it be available
for general download?

[Al Kossow]

On 1/19/13 9:12 PM, Duty Calls wrote:
> And what of the Panda distribution of TOPS-20? Will it be available
> for general download?
>

It would be nice if the last version could be archived by Tim Shoppa at http://panda.trailing-edge.com/

[Antti Louko]

By the way, here is my SVG version, editable with Inkscape, of the Panda
panel:

http://alo.fi/Panda/Panda-panel-7.svg

Spare Time Gizmos made the electronics for this. I don't know if it is
still available. It needs original parallel port interface (no USB
converter) to work. I have been planning to make a more modern version,
using USB interface, modified KLH to integrate light values and deliver
them to the panel. It would need a number of interested people and time
to materialize.

/alo

[fishtoprecords]

I'm more than willing to share a few megabytes for the panda distribution on one of my webservers.

I don't know what running the tops-20 mailing list takes, but I'm willing to do that too if someone can clue me in on what it takes.

While I spent the first 6 or so years of my career on Tops-10, as soon as I used Tops-20, I was in love.

[johnhre...@yahoo.com]

Most of Mr. Crispin's web site (panda.com) is still archived in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (web.archive.org). Including the Tops-20 page which has this

"The good folks at trailing-edge.com have kindly agreed to host a downloadable copy of the June 16, 2006 snapshot of the Panda distribution. Note that this is a large (221MB) compressed tar file. A newer version may be available from us, either via scp upload from our site (downloads not possible) or by CD-ROM. Contact information for how to request a newer version from us is on the trailing-edge.com site."

So the question is: Was there ever a newer snapshot of the Panda distribution than the June 6, 2006? If so, does someone have it and can they get it to Tim Shoppa for updating the trailing-edge archive? Or is someone else willing to host it?

John H. Reinhardt

[Rich Alderson]

"johnhre...@yahoo.com" <johnhre...@yahoo.com> writes:

> So the question is: Was there ever a newer snapshot of the Panda distributi=
> on than the June 6, 2006? If so, does someone have it and can they get it =
> to Tim Shoppa for updating the trailing-edge archive? Or is someone else w=
> illing to host it?

To the best of my knowledge, Mark never made another release.

[Antti Louko]

On 2013-01-26 02:46, Rich Alderson wrote:
> "johnhre...@yahoo.com" <johnhre...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> So the question is: Was there ever a newer snapshot of the Panda distributi=
>> on than the June 6, 2006? If so, does someone have it and can they get it =
>> to Tim Shoppa for updating the trailing-edge archive? Or is someone else w=
>> illing to host it?
>
> To the best of my knowledge, Mark never made another release.

There was something to be release as Mark responded to me on
2010-04-09:

"That's the most recent distribution. There is an update pending, but a
certain package is not ready yet and the main purpose of the update is
that package."

From some other postings I had the understanding that he had gotten
licenses and/or permits for those programs to be included in the Panda
distribution.

[Antti Louko]

On 2013-01-20 22:59, Antti Louko wrote:

> Spare Time Gizmos made the electronics for this. I don't know if it is
> still available. It needs original parallel port interface (no USB
> converter) to work. I have been planning to make a more modern version,
> using USB interface, modified KLH to integrate light values and deliver
> them to the panel. It would need a number of interested people and time
> to materialize.

I have thought about emulating bulbs with LEDs and this would require
integrating light values over time and then adjusting LEDs with right
level of PWM. What is the regularly executed routine in TOPS-20 where I
might put the refresh instruction? Or is there a place in klh which is
executed at fixed intervals, preferably measured in virtual machine time
of wall?

There are now LED components that would make this almost trivial to do.

/alo

[johnhre...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, January 25, 2013 7:46:24 PM UTC-5, Rich Alderson wrote:
> "johnhre...@yahoo.com" <johnhre...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>
>
> > So the question is: Was there ever a newer snapshot of the Panda distributi=
>
> > on than the June 6, 2006? If so, does someone have it and can they get it =
>
> > to Tim Shoppa for updating the trailing-edge archive? Or is someone else w=
>
> > illing to host it?
>
>
>
> To the best of my knowledge, Mark never made another release.
>
>
>
> --
>

> Rich Alderson n...@alderson.users.panix.com

>
> the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
>
> to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...

Ah, that's a pity. At least I have a reasonable starting place for whenever I do actually get around to playing with TOPS-20

John H. Reinhardt

[Jordi Guillaumes Pons]

A reasonable way to do it could be to use an arduino or similar to handle the led blinking/dimming (those things cost about 18€) and just write a replacement for the lites.c which comes with klh20 to talk to the arduino via usb/serial or even GPIO pins (if you want to run the simulator in a raspberry or similar) instead of using the LPT interface.

Or perhaps a "neutral" lites.h implementantion which could send the blinky updates via UDP, so they could be processed by a real blinky thing or a "virtual" console drawn in a screen.

I have been doing some experimentation to do just that for the pdp11 under simh, and the effect you get is quite pretty. And not (very) hard to do.

[Antti Louko]

On 2013-02-01 13:41, Jordi Guillaumes Pons wrote:

> A reasonable way to do it could be to use an arduino or similar to
> handle the led blinking/dimming (those things cost about 18€) and
> just write a replacement for the lites.c which comes with klh20 to
> talk to the arduino via usb/serial or even GPIO pins (if you want to
> run the simulator in a raspberry or similar) instead of using the LPT
> interface.
>
> Or perhaps a "neutral" lites.h implementantion which could send the
> blinky updates via UDP, so they could be processed by a real blinky
> thing or a "virtual" console drawn in a screen.

I am in exactly the same tracks myself and agree with you. I have
already such modifications. And they work just great unless lights are
changing very often. It is not practical to send an UDP packet each
time the LIGHTS UUO is executed. That is why I would like to integrate
the dim values in a periodic function in KLH and then send those updates
lightness values (eg 0 .. 255) to the remote display using UDP or serial
line.