The SDS 92, its place in history?

[Quadibloc]

The SDS 92 was the first computer to be made entirely out of monolithic integrated circuits - Fairchild DTL chips.

An advertisement for this computer, at $29,000, claimed that it offered better price-performance than the competition.

However, it only did arithmetic on 12-bit fixed-point values, like a $18,000 PDP-8.

Unlike a PDP-8, though, it had an elegant set of addressing modes and a complete instruction set. So many operations that would take two instructions on a PDP-8 would still take only a single instruction on the SDS 92.

The 24-bit computer from SDS at the same time cost $85,000. So it appears my instincts are wrong... it would seem to me that widening the ALU to 24 bits would have required fewer transistors than the extensions to the control logic of an SDS 92 versus a PDP-8.

But then, as even the much later history of the IBM PC tells us, a wider bus to memory costs a lot of money.

So my instinctive response, that the SDS 92 was a very unbalanced design, with fancy instruction decoding applied to limited arithmetic muscle, appears to be wrong.

Another thing as well; the SDS 92 had variable length instructions, either 12 bits or 24 bits. So SDS knew how to do this, and thus instead of making the Sigma 7 and its relatives, they could have built something akin to a Spectra 70 had they wished. Or, at least, if they didn't want to go for full compatibility, they could at least have had 16-bit register-to-register instructions. Since variable-length instructions were on the low-end SDS 92, apparently they didn't add much to the cost of the machine.

However, it's possible that's only true with an approach that would have impacted performance, fetching instructions 16 bits at a time instead of 32 bits at a time.

John Savard

[Al Kossow]

On 7/5/14 6:02 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
> The SDS 92 was the first computer to be made entirely out of monolithic integrated circuits - Fairchild DTL chips.
>

Firsts should be avoided.
It may have been the first commercial IC computer, but the military had them before this.

Its place in history is an evolutionary dead end, at best a proof of concept for future IC products within SDS.
I haven't compared the 92 with the CDC 160 or 160B architectures. It wouldn't surprise me if it were designed
for a military contract or a very specific application.

The chief engineer and co-founder of SDS, Robert Beck, who recently passed away, didn't think very much of ICs
when we did an oral history of him five years ago. They were one of the reasons he got out of the computer business.
The interview is on line at the CHM web site.

SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for making their founders rich after being bought
out by a big corporation.

Maybe a history of technology PhD will write a dissertation on them or the other Southern California computer
companies from the 60's some day.

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:

> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for making
> their founders rich after being bought out by a big corporation.

Well, I do remember the story of how some Xerox engineers built their own PDP-10 rather than use a Xerox Sigma for some development work, because they found the Sigma to be lacking.

When I went to University, during my days as a grad student, a Honeywell 516 was being used for data acquisition, while an SDS 930 lay neglected and almost unused in another room.

The company seems to have specialized in making low-priced computers, but unlike DEC, their designs were somehow lacking, leading to little enthusiasm among users.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:

> I haven't compared the 92 with the CDC 160 or 160B architectures. It wouldn't surprise me if it were designed
> for a military contract or a very specific application.

The two were radically different.

The CDC-160 instruction had a six-bit opcode, and a six-bit field that was either an address on one page of memory, or it was all zeroes, indicating the next word had a 12-bit address.

It was a special-purpose architecture, and worked well in the GRID terminal or as a peripheral processing unit in the 6600.

The SDS 92, except for being a 12-bitter, was very much a conventional computer architecture. It had six addressing modes:

Memory-reference, with a 15-bit address.

Indexed, with a 15-bit address.

Indirect memory-reference, again a 15-bit address, but could not be indexed.

Indirect on pointer - eight reserved 24-bit memory locations had pointers.

Scratchpad - 31 reserved 12-bit memory locations allowed short instructions.

Immediate - second half of the instruction is a 12-bit operand.

The destination register on most instructions could be either the A or B accumulator.

So it was designed like a conventional computer, with few compromises other than its 12-bit word length (and using indirect on pointer instead of allowing indexed indirect).

Given that, it _would_ surprise me if it was designed to a contract for a specialized purpose, since it seems very much to be a general-purpose design. It's odd - having such versatile addressing for such a small word length - but it's odd in the wrong way. I'd have no problem believing the CDC-160 had been designed for some special military project, because its design seems specialized.

John Savard

[Al Kossow]

On 7/5/14 9:56 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:
>
>> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for making
>> their founders rich after being bought out by a big corporation.
>
> Well, I do remember the story of how some Xerox engineers built their own PDP-10 rather than use a Xerox Sigma for some development work, because they found the Sigma to be lacking.
>

It was Chuck Thacker and the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC.

I've talked to Chuck about this in the past. It was lacking because it couldn't run TENEX
and they felt they would loose several man-years trying to write something that was as good as the existing
software of TENEX a Sigma. They had just finished building the BCC-500 and thought they could build their own
microcoded PDP-10 faster, which is what they did. Their biggest mistake was using Intel 1103 DRAM for
the memory, which was unreliable, unproven technology.

The good news was that the technology and experience they gained building MAXC fed directly into being able
to quickly then build the Alto.

[Lon]

On 7/5/2014 10:44 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
> On 7/5/14 6:02 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>> The SDS 92 was the first computer to be made entirely out of
>> monolithic integrated circuits - Fairchild DTL chips.
>>
>
> Firsts should be avoided.
> It may have been the first commercial IC computer, but the military had
> them before this.

A lot of the stuff that trickled down into civilian was from
military/aerospace, e.g. rtl, mrtl, dtl, ttl, ecl, cmos, etc.

Created a nice job market a bit later as the aerospace biz headed for
the toilet.

[Lon]

And much cursing amongst the poor schnooks who had to try to
fix/maintain the ones that found their way into use where there was no
budget to buy a computer designed by humans with pulses.

[Charles Richmond]

"Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
news:063a6712-d428-4ef1...@googlegroups.com...

> On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:
>
>> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for
>> making
>> their founders rich after being bought out by a big corporation.
>
> Well, I do remember the story of how some Xerox engineers built their own
> PDP-10 rather than use a Xerox Sigma for some development work, because
> they found the Sigma to be lacking.
>

You must be thinking of the "researchers" at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC). They indeed built their own PDP-10 clone... because Xerox
would *not* allow them to *buy* a PDP-10 from DEC.

--

numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

[Charles Richmond]

"Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message

news:ef1e2c2a-cb88-4e12...@googlegroups.com...

>
>Given that, it _would_ surprise me if it was designed to a contract for a
>specialized purpose, since it seems very >much to be a general-purpose
>design. It's odd - having such versatile addressing for such a small word
>length - >but it's odd in the wrong way. I'd have no problem believing the
>CDC-160 had been designed for some special >military project, because its
>design seems specialized.

The legend is that Seymour Cray checked into a motel on Friday and designed
the CDC-160 over the weekend.

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 4:23:02 PM UTC-6, Charles Richmond wrote:

> The legend is that Seymour Cray checked into a motel on Friday and designed
> the CDC-160 over the weekend.

I don't find that hard to believe, since he has proven himself to be very good at designing much more powerful and complicated computers.

Incidentally, I haven't yet mentioned in this thread that I updated my page at

http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cp0305.htm

as it formerly did not show the addressing modes of the SDS 92 correctly; and I had checked up on the SDS 92 because I had recalled that it was in some ways similar to what I was working on for the bottom half of this page,

http://www.quadibloc.com/arch/per0104.htm

although this is different in a number of ways... essentially, it uses a 12-bit memory unit, but it handles a full assortment of types like an old mainframe or a contemporary Pentium. The instruction set includes, as a nucleus, something sort of like a 12-bit version of the PDP-11, although the limitations of squeezing it into a 12-bit word make it look more like the IBM 360 with a touch of the Data General Nova.

John Savard

[Peter Flass]

One of the early machines - SDS940 maybe? - was very popular for early
timesharing systems. I think, PARC snobs aside, that most people who used
a SIgma loved it, the problem is that SDS/XDS couldn't get enough people to
use it.

--
Pete

[jmfbahciv]

Sometimes, creating an artificial need produces the best work. we got
Unix because it had to deal with extreme limitations of a PDP-11
(compared to a PDP-10). If ATT had bought a PDP-10, Unix would be
a very different animule.

/BAH

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 8:42:30 PM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:

> One of the early machines - SDS940 maybe? - was very popular for early
> timesharing systems. I think, PARC snobs aside, that most people who used
> a SIgma loved it, the problem is that SDS/XDS couldn't get enough people to
> use it.

It definitely was the 940 that did timesharing - it was one of the more inexpensive early machines with the capability, and the only one of that SDS lineup that did.

I think it's too bad that there wasn't a 9300 with timesharing, but then the Sigma series did also have such capabilities.

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, July 6, 2014 6:39:59 AM UTC-6, jmfbahciv wrote:
> If ATT had bought a PDP-10, Unix would be
> a very different animule.

While, historically, this might have been a PDP-6 (instead of a PDP-7) rather than a PDP-10 instead of a PDP-11, you're quite right. After all, the GE 635 was *also* a 36-bit machine... so what might have happened could have been just a straight port of MULTICS, never mind a "different" UNIX.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 4:49:12 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> and I had checked up on the SDS 92 because I had recalled that it was in some
> ways similar to what I was working on for the bottom half of this page,

> http://www.quadibloc.com/arch/per0104.htm

and now, deciding that the SDS 92 was in some ways *better* than what I did there, I added another example architecture, briefly sketched, closer to the SDS 92.

John Savard

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Lon <lon.s...@comcast.net> writes:
> A lot of the stuff that trickled down into civilian was from
> military/aerospace, e.g. rtl, mrtl, dtl, ttl, ecl, cmos, etc.

over on linkedin ... somebody has waded in about the dumbing of america
with new book about japanese STEM-oriented culture even supported by
their literature (there is separate topic drift about large part of the
population aren't completely ignorant of scientific fact ... but when
belief and facts are in conflict, there is large group that will go with
belief).

There was rise of STEM in the US in the 40s, 50s, 60s ... but then
seemed to have been downward spiral since them ... even anti-scientific.
the issue was how much of this was rise of US military science in
40s-60s and it leaking out into the rest of culture ... which lost its
attractiveness ... possibly starting with impact of vietnam war.

the McNamara "whiz kids" weren't so much science ... but the rise of MBA
along with body counts as simple measure of effectiveness (giving STEM a
bad name, side argument something similar with fiddling waiting lists at
VA).

Then there is military-industrial-complex embracing enormously large
projects ... and even "success of failure" culture ... where they can
maximize earnings with a series of failed projects (compared to
immediate success, requires a large amount of skill to have repeated
failures, possibly even blaming on scientists as part of obfuscation
and misdirection).
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

currently periodical articles about large percentage of components in
military equipment and critical infrastructure come from countries that
might be advisaries (because we no longer have our own) ... even rocket
engines for our space launches come from overseas.

past posts mentioning "success of failure"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failure

misc. past posts mentioning STEM:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#0 America's Defense Meltdown
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#18 21st century India: welcome to the smartest city on the planet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#34 Congratulations, where was my invite?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#72 77,000 federal workers paid more than governors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#36 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#52 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#49 US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#44 Time to Think ... and to Listen
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#18 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#31 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#42 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#67 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#32 How Comp-Sci went from passing fad to must have major


--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
> One of the early machines - SDS940 maybe? - was very popular for early
> timesharing systems. I think, PARC snobs aside, that most people who used
> a SIgma loved it, the problem is that SDS/XDS couldn't get enough people to
> use it.

in first part of 70s, i got called into marketing situation with 370/145
with vm370/cms against sigma/7 ... past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#53 Bettman Archive in Trouble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#78 Newsgroup cliques?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#0 Newsgroup cliques?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#15 computer industry scenairo before the invention of the PC?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#11 Anyone remember Mohawk Data Science ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#21 Old XDS Sigma stuff

[Al Kossow]

On 7/6/14 8:56 AM, Quadibloc wrote:


> I think it's too bad that there wasn't a 9300 with timesharing

You do realize that SDS didn't develop the 940. It was done by Lichtenberger, et. al.
including Thacker and Lampson at UC-Berkeley.

SDS only created the 940 model because of demand for it as a product.

Sigma UTS was SDS's product development answer for timesharing
(see sigma/uts/memos/UTS_Design_Specification_Feb67)

[Al Kossow]

On 7/6/14 9:09 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> There was rise of STEM in the US in the 40s, 50s, 60s ... but then
> seemed to have been downward spiral since them ... even anti-scientific.
>

It's called post-modernism.
You should try reading about it.

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 6 Jul 2014, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> Lon <lon.s...@comcast.net> writes:
>> A lot of the stuff that trickled down into civilian was from
>> military/aerospace, e.g. rtl, mrtl, dtl, ttl, ecl, cmos, etc.
>
> over on linkedin ... somebody has waded in about the dumbing of america
> with new book about japanese STEM-oriented culture even supported by
> their literature (there is separate topic drift about large part of the
> population aren't completely ignorant of scientific fact ... but when
> belief and facts are in conflict, there is large group that will go with
> belief).
>
> There was rise of STEM in the US in the 40s, 50s, 60s ... but then
> seemed to have been downward spiral since them ... even anti-scientific.
> the issue was how much of this was rise of US military science in
> 40s-60s and it leaking out into the rest of culture ... which lost its
> attractiveness ... possibly starting with impact of vietnam war.
>

Of course, WWII was like "culture shock" to a lot of of people, suddenly
pulled out of their farms and small towns into the wider world, and one
full of technological wonders. The war pushed development of electronics,
and pushed the useable radio spectrum upwards, setting the stage for
things afterwards.

So all those GIs coming home from the war had the ability to pursue higher
education (that GI Bill) and likely more of an interest.

And you do see that. IN the past few years I've found magazines from the
fifties, and it reflects an interest in technical hobbies (which I did
know about but these new acquisitions show a wider swatch of what those
technical hobbies were). There seems to have been enough people with
lathes and such in their basements for magazines to cover that sort of
thing.

Then Sputnik launches, and there's a feeling of a need to "catch up", so
science moved forward in the sixties. And just as things started
trickling down to make things easier.

I'm not sure when that stalled. It was never for everyone, but there
seemed to be a time when it was wider. And the interests still seem to be
there, but some segments of the magazines have all faded, as if there
wasn't enough interest to sustain it. There were endless magazines about
hobby electronics and amateur radio even in the seventies when I got
interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby electronic
magazines have mostly faded.

Michael

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#100 The SDS 92, its place in history?

Metaphorical Circuit: Negotiations between Literature and Science in
20th Century Japan (Cornell East Asia, No. 119)
http://www.amazon.com/Metaphorical-Circuit-Negotiations-between-Literature/dp/1885445199/

thread from last year about belief trumps facts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#39 Words Are Thinking Tools: Praxotype
another thread from last year about belief trumps facts,
this one has been getting quite a bit of play in the news
last week or two
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#52 Steve B sees what investors think

and just today

When Beliefs and Facts Collide
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/upshot/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide.html
When Beliefs and Facts Collide
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/07/06/1229251/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide
New NYT: When beliefs and facts collide
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2014/07/new-nyt-when-beliefs-and-facts-collide.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BrendanNyhan+(Brendan+Nyhan)

... and Postmoderniscm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

[Peter Flass]

Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> wrote:
> On 7/6/14 8:56 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>
>> I think it's too bad that there wasn't a 9300 with timesharing
>
> You do realize that SDS didn't develop the 940. It was done by Lichtenberger, et. al.
> including Thacker and Lampson at UC-Berkeley.
>

Now that you mention it, I think I read this somewhere.

> SDS only created the 940 model because of demand for it as a product.
>
> Sigma UTS was SDS's product development answer for timesharing
> (see sigma/uts/memos/UTS_Design_Specification_Feb67)

Wonderful OS. UTS was a bit unstable, but I believe CP-V, which was a
renamed UTS, fixed them. I loved UTS, especially compared to other OSs of
the time I was familiar with.

--
Pete

[whacker james]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...

Essentially because you can buy the electronic devices already made
because so many want them, but far fewer want model railroads so
that does not support anything like the same manufacturing industry.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lp9a0g$h3g$1...@dont-email.me>, on 07/05/2014

at 09:44 AM, Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> said:

>I haven't compared the 92 with the CDC 160 or 160B

I know about the 160, 160A and 160G, but what's a 160B?

>SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered
>for making their founders rich after being bought out by a big
>corporation.

Time sharing?

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org

[Shmuel Metz]

In <PM0004FD8...@aca21510.ipt.aol.com>, on 07/06/2014

at 12:39 PM, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> said:

>Sometimes, creating an artificial need produces the best work. we
>got Unix because it had to deal with extreme limitations of a
>PDP-11 (compared to a PDP-10).

The PDP-11 implementation came later. A PDP-10 might have been better,
but the PDP-11 was a step up from what they had previously.

[jmfbahciv]

hmm..I never thought of a straight MULTICS acquisition. What were the
legal ramifications back then? I don't anyone was buying sole rights
to OS software back then because OS software was usually an item
on the hardware invoice.

I wasn't thinking of the beginning of the work. I was thinking of
the development processes over the years. After the initial
development, the choice of processor determined how the monitor
delivered services to the users. A PDP-11 didn't have daily
hardware problems so that influenced the methods of disk I/O,
memroy management and swapping. A PDP-11 didn't have much memory
so the memory management/user would be very different than an
OS which could keep lots of high segs in core or on the swap
space. Disk drive limitations would also influence how I/O
was handled. The geometry would be different, too.

Operations support would be minimal so that would influence
the heiraarchy of what to implement in the developers' spare
time.

/BAH

[JimP.]

Secondary education used to flunk students who didn't do well, now
they promote them to keep the age groups together. I think this 'you
don't really need to work at getting a passing grade' idiocy has been
a big contributor to a lack of trying anything.

JimP
--
"Brushing aside the thorns so I can see the stars." from 'Ghost in the Shell'
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://travellergame.drivein-jim.net/ February, 2014

[Al Kossow]

On 7/6/14 11:14 AM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <lp9a0g$h3g$1...@dont-email.me>, on 07/05/2014
> at 09:44 AM, Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> said:
>
>> I haven't compared the 92 with the CDC 160 or 160B
>
> I know about the 160, 160A and 160G, but what's a 160B?
>

Sorry, that was a typo, I was thinking of the 160G

>> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered
>> for making their founders rich after being bought out by a big
>> corporation.
>
> Time sharing?
>

It is interesting that UTS/CPV/CP6 aren't even listed in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing_system_evolution

[whacker james]

"JimP." <pongb...@cableone.net> wrote in message
news:jp7lr9l7ddlebi2uk...@4ax.com...

Not always, the youngest Kurd I know was just recently forced
to repeat a year in high school and he has been in this country
for all of his schooling so that wasn't due to the year they put
him in when he showed up here from Turkey.

> I think this 'you don't really need to work at getting a passing grade'
> idiocy has been a big contributor to a lack of trying anything.

I don't. There is far less need to try anything with electronics
now that you can buy the stuff complete from china for
peanuts instead of assembling it from discrete components.

You do still see quite a bit of trying things with games like WoW etc,
its just in a different area to where we used to do that trying in the past.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 1:34:57 PM UTC-4, Lon wrote:

> Created a nice job market a bit later as the aerospace biz headed for
> the toilet.

A lot of engineers displayced by the aerospace/engineering crash of 1970 learned COBOL and became business application programmers. For a number, it was a mid-life career change--they were already in their late 30s when they made the switch. A number had to take pay cuts, but were happy at that point to have a job.

After Y2K, a number of experienced mainframe programmers unexpectedly found themselves out on the street as the job market collapsed.

Some, understandably, were a little bitter, having put in a great deal of unpaid overtime to make Y2K conversions in time, only to be thanked by getting fired, instead of perhaps a bonus for their efforts.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Sunday, July 6, 2014 1:19:35 PM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:

> Of course, WWII was like "culture shock" to a lot of of people, suddenly
> pulled out of their farms and small towns into the wider world, and one
> full of technological wonders. The war pushed development of electronics,
> and pushed the useable radio spectrum upwards, setting the stage for
> things afterwards.

WW II was a culture shock not only to the farm boys, but to veteran managers of industry and many existing engineers and scientists.

Various things, such as electronic counting circuits, operations research, new materials (ie plywood, plastics), and statistical quality control, went from the laboratory to industry in a short period of time. Often these tools improved efficiency and production.

Another culture shock was that industrialists had to get used to the government telling them how to run their factories, something they deeply resented.

Here's an excellent book describing some of the changes: "World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building Changed a Nation", edited by Donald Albrecht.

https://secure2.convio.net/nbm/site/Ecommerce/324155508?VIEW_PRODUCT=true&product_id=2414&store_id=1161

> I'm not sure when that stalled. It was never for everyone, but there
> seemed to be a time when it was wider. And the interests still seem to be
> there, but some segments of the magazines have all faded, as if there
> wasn't enough interest to sustain it. There were endless magazines about
> hobby electronics and amateur radio even in the seventies when I got
> interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
> magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby electronic
> magazines have mostly faded.

That's a good question. My guess is electronics of the 1950s-1970s was more "hands on" and often with emerging functionality. That is, you could develop a breadboard device never done before, like playing Pong on your TV set.

I think the same thing applied to computers of the 1970s and 1980s.

However, by the 1990s, it all became sealed and automated, so there wasn't as much handicraft skilla and thrill.


As an aside, I'm not sure if railroading is still all that popular. Some train groups have members who are all up in years. At trackside, train watchers seem mostly older, as are contributors of articles to hobby magazines. (Though, some young folks, including young women, attend New York Transit [subway] Museum events, including enjoying rides on old subway cars.)

Along these lines, older fraternal organizations, like the Masons, have mostly an older membership; indeed, some chapters are literally dying out. Young people do not seem to be interested in joining lodges as an earlier generation.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Monday, July 7, 2014 9:24:39 AM UTC-4, JimP. wrote:

> Secondary education used to flunk students who didn't do well, now
> they promote them to keep the age groups together. I think this 'you
> don't really need to work at getting a passing grade' idiocy has been
> a big contributor to a lack of trying anything.

The programs at many secondary schools were so weak that flunking out of a general studies program meant the student was very weak in intelligence, or more likely, just not very interested in schoolwork and making the necessary effort. (Programs for college prep generally were tougher).

A lot of those kids just got bored and dropped out because back then they could find jobs that they liked better than school. In the 1950s a person could support his family reasonably comfortably if he was a hard worker and had some brains despite being a high school drop out.

[gareth]

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message
news:2cf15e01-3bb2-41a2...@googlegroups.com...

> As an aside, I'm not sure if railroading is still all that popular.

DCC apps are all the rage today

[Walter Bushell]

In article <2cf15e01-3bb2-41a2...@googlegroups.com>,

hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> As an aside, I'm not sure if railroading is still all that popular.

Police and prosecutors use railroading every chance they get.

--
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 7:02:53 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> The SDS 92 was the first computer to be made entirely out of monolithic
> integrated circuits - Fairchild DTL chips.

> An advertisement for this computer, at $29,000, claimed that it offered better
> price-performance than the competition.

> However, it only did arithmetic on 12-bit fixed-point values, like a $18,000
> PDP-8.

Looking more carefully at the series of Computers and Automation issues from Bitsavers, its existence, at least, is more easily explained.

As noted, it had a complete and relatively elegant set of addressing modes and instructions. That seemed to have been wasted on a machine that only did 12-bit arithmetic.

But it came out a few months *before* the PDP-8, at $18,000, changed the rules of the game. So its competition was instead the $27,000 PDP-5 - and thus an extra $2,000 for a much more elegant architecture would have seemed quite reasonable at the low end.

Whether it caused diminished sales of the PDP-5, which goaded DEC into making history with the PDP-8, is questionable; the time between the two systems was rather short, so the PDP-8 likely would have been in development before there was an SDS 92. (The original PDP-8, incidentally, was still a discrete transistor machine.)

As the PDP-6 was not much more expensive than an SDS 9300, that partly explains why DEC never made a 24-bit machine. But more to the point was perhaps the fact that the PDP-4/7/9/15 series was what covered the "large" mini territory for DEC; it used the 12-bit PDP-8 to compete with 16-bit minis from HP and Honeywell and others, and so their 18-bit series competed with 24-bit machines as an additional means of having an uncontestable price advantage.

While SDS only offered the 940 for time-sharing, with DEC you had a choice... a PDP-6 or PDP-10... or a PDP-8/I or later a PDP-8/e, suitably configured.

John Savard

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lpeng2$5oh$1...@dont-email.me>, on 07/07/2014

at 11:04 AM, Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> said:

>It is interesting that UTS/CPV/CP6 aren't even listed in
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing_system_evolution

What did SDS run on the 945?

[Al Kossow]

On 7/7/14 5:19 PM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <lpeng2$5oh$1...@dont-email.me>, on 07/07/2014
> at 11:04 AM, Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> said:
>
>> It is interesting that UTS/CPV/CP6 aren't even listed in
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing_system_evolution
>
> What did SDS run on the 945?
>

When I was researching the 945, someone mentioned that it never shipped.
I would have to do more digging to remember where it was (Wikipedia comments?)
The only thing I ever found was a comment that someone in the SF Bay area had a
couple of 945 logo top plates.

The 940 was never well supported by SDS. We received some documentation from Harvard
and there is an email trail in there about converting from the version of the Genie
TSS that SDS had to Tymshare's version, because of the unreliability of the system. Harvard getting
Tymshare's TSS was significant because they also got their Super BASIC, which influenced
some kids from Seattle when they were writing a BASIC for the 8080. One of them has a little
computer collection just south of downtown Seattle, and he has been very interested in trying
to find the sources for Super BASIC.

There were a handful of sites that ran the Berkeley Genie software, notably Shell Research, Doug
Englebart at SRI, and BBN. All of them had significant local OS mods.

The team that did the Berkeley timesharing system spun out in the late 60's and created
Berkeley Computer Corp to develop the BCC-500, a purpose-built timesharing computer that was
supposed to be capable of supporting 500 simultaneous users. It was a 24-bit microcoded machine which
had a 940 compatibility mode. When BCC went bankrupt in 1970, the system was deinstalled and reassembled
at the University of Hawaii, where Wayne Lichtenberger ran it into the mid 70's, partially funded
by ARPA and was one of the hosts on the AlohaNet.

Mel Pertle went from BCC to run the ILLIAC-IV project at NASA Ames.
Lampson, Thacker and several others went from BCC to PARC.

Eventually Tymshare bought out the other companies that were running 940s as commercial timesharing services
and had an operation in southern California that maintained them. The museum acquired all the surviving 900
series software and documentation in the mid 2000's from the person who bought the rights from Honeywell and
there was almost nothing on the 940 (in particular only one 940 tape that didn't contain the operating system)
and nothing at all on the 945

Tymshare ran the 940s into the early 70's when they were replaced by PDP-10s

In all of this, SDS/XDS is notably absent.

[Alan Bowler]

We never saw any particular stability problems with UTS.
It was a great improvement on the timesharing under BPM
which ran on the Sigma 7 before UTS.

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, July 8, 2014 9:30:03 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:

> When I was researching the 945, someone mentioned that it never shipped.
> I would have to do more digging to remember where it was (Wikipedia comments?)
> The only thing I ever found was a comment that someone in the SF Bay area had a
> couple of 945 logo top plates.

I remember that there was a 925; I'm not sure that I ever heard of the 945.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, July 8, 2014 1:53:56 PM UTC-6, I wrote:

> I remember that there was a 925; I'm not sure that I ever heard of the 945.

Given that it was announced in 1968 - when the Sigma series was already in existence in 1967 - I'm not surprised that they might have had an attack of sanity and decided to cancel the project.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

I've found someone who claims to have used one:

http://w3.uwyo.edu/~jimkirk/sigma_era.html

so so much for that theory...

John Savard

[Peter Flass]

Fur shure. On the other hand we had a lot of system crashes when we
switched. I can't remember when we finally got a relatively stable system,
but it was months. We sent them dump after dump for a while, and in
pre-internet days that meant expressing a tape. The problems seemed to be
related to heavy system load. I think a one point Xerox sent out a couple
of support people to try to identify the problems, but my recollection is
hazy at best - it's been a couple of years. ;-)


--
Pete

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Sun, 6 Jul 2014 13:19:35 -0400, Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:

[snip]

>interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
>magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby electronic
>magazines have mostly faded.

I think because there is a lot you can do in model railroading
that is obvious. With electronics, I think, not so much now.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[gareth]

"Gene Wirchenko" <ge...@telus.net> wrote in message
news:os8pr9hijh43m2f7u...@4ax.com...

>
> I think because there is a lot you can do in model railroading
> that is obvious. With electronics, I think, not so much now.

Taking both together, DCC is where it's at today.

[JimP.]

On Tue, 08 Jul 2014 19:07:51 -0700, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net>
wrote:

RFDTV, available on satellite, has toy train shows, and a few steam
locomotive shows as well.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <os8pr9hijh43m2f7u...@4ax.com>,

The electronics hobby has mutated into a programming hobby. There are
many books on programming. Even hardware design has turned into a
programming thing. A toaster may have a more powerful confusor in it
than what I programmed for money when I got my first post
baccalaureate job.

[JimP.]

On Wed, 09 Jul 2014 08:49:34 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com>
wrote:

The number of arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and Beagle Bone Blacks sold
shows this.

[Osmium]

Michael Black"

> So all those GIs coming home from the war had the ability to pursue higher
> education (that GI Bill) and likely more of an interest.
>
> And you do see that. IN the past few years I've found magazines from the
> fifties, and it reflects an interest in technical hobbies (which I did
> know about but these new acquisitions show a wider swatch of what those
> technical hobbies were). There seems to have been enough people with
> lathes and such in their basements for magazines to cover that sort of
> thing.
>
> Then Sputnik launches, and there's a feeling of a need to "catch up", so
> science moved forward in the sixties. And just as things started
> trickling down to make things easier.
>

> I'm not sure when that stalled. It was never for everyone, but there
> seemed to be a time when it was wider. And the interests still seem to be
> there, but some segments of the magazines have all faded, as if there
> wasn't enough interest to sustain it. There were endless magazines about
> hobby electronics and amateur radio even in the seventies when I got

> interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
> magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby electronic
> magazines have mostly faded.

Electronics hobbyists were forever talking about "breadboards" But they
were, using current terminology, virtual breadboards. Now I was one of
those guys, electronics my day job and my hobby at night. I never used or
saw an actual breadboard in such use. Photographs in magazines, yes, I
think I saw such. But did any real person ever actually use a real
breadboard? Good ones are made of maple and harder than hell. Even the
dime store ones were something hard. Getting a screw in requires a pilot
hole, and a nail must be almost impossible.

Although rare, there were maple floors. Perhaps a bowling alley? I wonder
if they had special extra sharp nails?

[Michael Black]

I started losing interest in the hobby electronic magazines, and I can't
figure out why. Some of it was price, and it sure seemed like it wans't
just price, but that I'd spend the money and get little reading out of it.
It's hard to judge that since I started reading hobby electronic and
amateur radio magazines when I was 11 years old, so perhaps after a
certain time, it repeats too much.

To counter that, I was all excited because I found one recent ham
magazine at a used book sale in the spring, something new to read. And
someone has put old issues of hobby electronic magazines online, and even
the ones I've read before are a treat to see.

I go looking at magazines all the time, and yet rarely buy. Something is
missing, and I can't place it. Yet I'm not satisfied, I'm looking for
something that I can curl up with and spend time with.

And I should point out, "the decline" that I felt came before "the
internet", so it's not that I can get the same things online.


Michael

[Michael Black]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2014, JimP. wrote:

> On Tue, 08 Jul 2014 19:07:51 -0700, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net>
> wrote:
>> On Sun, 6 Jul 2014 13:19:35 -0400, Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
>>> magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby electronic
>>> magazines have mostly faded.
>>
>> I think because there is a lot you can do in model railroading
>> that is obvious. With electronics, I think, not so much now.
>
> RFDTV, available on satellite, has toy train shows, and a few steam
> locomotive shows as well.
>

And the local PBS station just reran some show about trains a few weeks
ago. There has to be something concrete about why the model railroading
magazines have survived, and other magazines have died. I was never into
it, but I can see how it's requires multiple skills/interests.

Michael

[Michael Black]

But I can remember the first time I actually got an electronic project
going, after some false starts. I'd copy the parts list from the
magazine, go to the store, buy the parts, and have no clue about whether
the parts they provided were the same or even if the pinouts were the
same. That happened a few times, then I was able to put things together
with parts I'd pulled off existing equipment, including "surplus computer
boards" though I really think those were Nixie drivers in retrospect.

I'm not sure why that sense of accomplishment is gone. Everyone says
hobby electronics and amateur radio has to compete with the internet, yet
the accomplishment of getting a project going, no matter how simple, is
still there.

And while people can do things they couldn't decades back, some of what's
going on seems a dumbing down. Yes, you can program a computer to do
something, but you might just need a few parts do do that same something.
So people are buying "expensive" controller boards almost as if to avoid
learnign some electronics and soldering skills. It's a tradeoff, but I'm
not sure the big wave of Make is about learning and understanding.

When I read the hobby magazines, after the first little while, I'd look at
the projects, understand what was going on, and I'd be thinking about what
I could use to build the project. Don't go out and buy all the parts on
the parts list, understand what was needed and what could be substituted.
Even if I didn't build the project, I was learning from it.

Michael

[gareth]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...

> I started losing interest in the hobby electronic magazines, and I can't
> figure out why.

Too many circuit ideas wrapped around the two-transistor astable
multivibrator?

[Andrew Swallow]

A model railway is a toy for dad to play with. The magazines are
probably bought by men rather than by boys.

Andrew Swallow

[Charles Richmond]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...
>

> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]

>
> I'm not sure why that sense of accomplishment is gone. Everyone says
> hobby electronics and amateur radio has to compete with the internet, yet
> the accomplishment of getting a project going, no matter how simple, is
> still there.
>

ISTM that the "gee whiz" factor requirement has gone *way* up! When you
look at your computer's display of fancy graphics... it does *not* seem so
great that your little electronic project can blink a couple of LEDs. In
order to experience the "gee whiz", your project has to produce some
*really* fancy things!

Back in the 70's, my friends and I thought that "text games" on a computer
terminal were pretty "gee whiz". Now, text games are slow and boring to a
generation that expects real-time graphics and manipulation of images using
game "controllers".

ISTM that most are addicted to the "gee whiz" and *not* the feeling of
accomplishment.

--

numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

[whacker james]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...

> On Tue, 8 Jul 2014, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 6 Jul 2014 13:19:35 -0400, Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> interest. The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
>>> magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the hobby
>>> electronic
>>> magazines have mostly faded.
>>
>> I think because there is a lot you can do in model railroading
>> that is obvious. With electronics, I think, not so much now.

> I started losing interest in the hobby electronic magazines, and I can't
> figure out why.

I know why I did. They had fewer and fewer projects that I ever got
interested enough to assemble with so much buyable complete.

> Some of it was price,

That was never the major effect with me.

> and it sure seemed like it wans't just price, but that I'd spend the money
> and get little reading out of it.

> It's hard to judge that since I started reading hobby electronic and
> amateur radio magazines when I was 11 years old,

So did I, roughly at that sort of age. Well before
you because I am rather older than you are.

> so perhaps after a certain time, it repeats too much.

That wasn't the problem in my case.

> To counter that, I was all excited because I found one recent ham magazine
> at a used book sale in the spring, something new to read. And someone has
> put old issues of hobby electronic magazines online, and even the ones
> I've read before are a treat to see.

I don't feel that about those now.

> I go looking at magazines all the time, and yet rarely buy.

Yeah, I do the same thing.

> Something is missing, and I can't place it.

I can, I just don't find projects that I plan to construct.

I currently can't buy decent wifi temperature sensors
for a sensible price. I would get some if I could find
some, putting one in each fridge and freezer and
would have one on each of the beer brewing
barrels too. I currently have about 10 of those
and normally do use something like 7 or so
at a time when doing a beer brewing run to
make a years supply of beer at a time.

I'd certainly make my own if one of the electronic
mags did have a project to make them cheaply,
but none of them have any project like that.

I would also like to be able to buy sensors that
could just be plugged into the mains and be
read remotely using the X10 system or something
like that if I could find them at a sensible price.

And would certainly build them if one of the mags
came up with a project like that. But they never have.

I must admit that I have been too lazy to suggest to any
of the mags that either would be a useful project.

> Yet I'm not satisfied, I'm looking for something that I can curl up with
> and spend time with.

I basically look for project that I would find useful.

> And I should point out, "the decline" that I felt came before "the
> internet", so it's not that I can get the same things online.

Yeah, I got the same effect too.

[whacker james]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...

I am, because once you do it a few times, you
don't get the same sense of accomplishment.

> Everyone says hobby electronics and amateur radio has to compete with the
> internet,

And they are right with the mags.

> yet the accomplishment of getting a project going, no matter how simple,
> is still there.

Sure, and was when I physically built my entire house on a bare block of
land too.

> And while people can do things they couldn't decades back, some of what's
> going on seems a dumbing down. Yes, you can program a computer to do
> something, but you might just need a few parts do do that same something.

I personally much prefer to do it using code with the bare minimum
of physical hardware and doing the fancy stuff in code.

> So people are buying "expensive" controller boards almost as if to avoid
> learnign some electronics and soldering skills. It's a tradeoff, but I'm
> not sure the big wave of Make is about learning and understanding.

> When I read the hobby magazines, after the first little while, I'd look at
> the projects, understand what was going on, and I'd be thinking about what
> I could use to build the project. Don't go out and buy all the parts on
> the parts list, understand what was needed and what could be substituted.
> Even if I didn't build the project, I was learning from it.

It wasn't about the learning for me, it was about producing a useful
result with everything thru to building the entire house form scratch
and doing almost all of it in person myself.

[jmfbahciv]

Whenever JMF was showing a guest around the machine room, he would
point to a TTY in monitor mode and say proudly, "My program prints
that dot." That is a maximum "gee whiz" which few people understand.

/BAH

[jmfbahciv]

Target audiences have to have an IQ of 50. That's why you're not
enjoying them.

>
> And I should point out, "the decline" that I felt came before "the
> internet", so it's not that I can get the same things online.

Books of fiction have a similar problem.

/BAH

[Charles Richmond]

"jmfbahciv" <See....@aol.com> wrote in message
news:PM0004FDD...@ac81263f.ipt.aol.com...

I understand JMF's feelings about "printing the dot". I was referring more
to the "unwashed masses". For them, ISTM that the latest whiz-bang stuff
eclipses the "gee whiz" feelings that we used to get from older stuff...
like electronic projects and text games on computer.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Wednesday, July 9, 2014 3:54:35 PM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:

> I'm not sure why that sense of accomplishment is gone. Everyone says
> hobby electronics and amateur radio has to compete with the internet, yet
> the accomplishment of getting a project going, no matter how simple, is
> still there.
> And while people can do things they couldn't decades back, some of what's
> going on seems a dumbing down. Yes, you can program a computer to do
> something, but you might just need a few parts do do that same something.
> So people are buying "expensive" controller boards almost as if to avoid
> learnign some electronics and soldering skills. It's a tradeoff, but I'm
> not sure the big wave of Make is about learning and understanding.

I remember when a friend designed and built a device to play pong on a TV set. It was pretty awesome It was all hand built of individual components, which at the time, was the only practical and cost-effective way to build something like that.

My guess is that the thrill back then was building something that actually do something neat and usable, and proved a challenge to do so. The pong game, at the time, was like that.

But today, everything is available already programmed on a chip or device, and dirt cheap at that. So, hand-building something that already exists cheap seems kind of pointless.

I think some of the past has been replaced by app design, which is still a somewhat new field. For instance, I suspect a lot of hobbyists today are trying to dream of up new apps for cell phones.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Wednesday, July 9, 2014 5:08:01 PM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:


> ISTM that most are addicted to the "gee whiz" and *not* the feeling of
> accomplishment.

Excellent points.

I well remember our excitement at the arithemetic power of time-shared BASIC at a time when no decent computing power was available, at an affordable price, to kids (not counting a slide rule).

We'd write little programs exploiting our newly learned physics knowledge for all sorts of 'rocket games' and were amazed at how fast the computer did calculsations that would tedious and time-consuming with a slide rule. So, those text based games back then were exciting.

[gareth]

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message
news:082b2d39-b686-43aa...@googlegroups.com...

>
> I remember when a friend designed and built a device to play pong on a TV
> set.
> It was pretty awesome It was all hand built of individual components,

SN74123 monostables?

[Quadibloc]

On Wednesday, July 9, 2014 3:08:01 PM UTC-6, Charles Richmond wrote:

> ISTM that most are addicted to the "gee whiz" and *not* the feeling of
> accomplishment.

I can't really fault people for that. In a hobby, like electronics, people expend effort and achieve a result. They do derive some satisfaction from their effort succeeding from the fact that they learned how to do it right - but also from the result they obtained from the effort.

And if the result is bigger and more impressive, that is a better return on their effort. So seeking that is only... rational.

Of course, there is an irrational emotional component to a "gee whiz" feeling too.

I think of how impressive even a PDP-8 was back in, say, 1969... and compare it to how much more impressive a System 360 Model 195 was then, with its masses of blinking lights.

Now, look at an ordinary laptop today. Even a top of the line one with a quad-core processor doesn't look like much; it doesn't have the intimidating front panel of even a PDP-8. But it does have a graphical display, and a quieter keyboard than an ASR-33 teletype, so it's clear that it _does_ more.

But it's still easy to take for granted. Computers are so cheap today that we think nothing on wasting one on just surfing the web and E-mail, instead of putting them to use more often on what they're built for - say computational fluid dynamics, for example.

Now, there are supercomputers out there. They're basically masses of the same kind of CPU as found in home computers (or even smartphones, to save electricity).

The technology does not exist to construct anything that is as much more *powerful* as an ordinary home PC... as a 360/195 (very similar to the earliest Pentiums in having both cache and a pipeline) was more powerful than a PDP-8. That somewhat dismays me.

John Savard

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote
> Michael Black wrote
>> Gene Wirchenko wrote
>>> Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote

>>>> The local bookstore still has a number of model railroading
>>>> magazines, I'm not sure why they still do well while the
>>>> hobby electronic magazines have mostly faded.

>>> I think because there is a lot you can do in model railroading
>>> that is obvious. With electronics, I think, not so much now.

>> I started losing interest in the hobby electronic magazines, and I can't
>> figure out why. Some of it was price, and it sure seemed like it wans't
>> just price, but that I'd spend the money and get little reading out of
>> it.
>> It's hard to judge that since I started reading hobby electronic and
>> amateur radio magazines when I was 11 years old, so perhaps after a
>> certain time, it repeats too much.

>> To counter that, I was all excited because I found one recent ham
>> magazine at a used book sale in the spring, something new to read.
>> And someone has put old issues of hobby electronic magazines
>> online, and even the ones I've read before are a treat to see.

>> I go looking at magazines all the time, and yet rarely buy. Something is
>> missing, and I can't place it. Yet I'm not satisfied, I'm looking for
>> something that I can curl up with and spend time with.

> Target audiences have to have an IQ of 50.

That's not right with electronics hobby magazines.

> That's why you're not enjoying them.

Doesn’t explain why he used to and doesn’t now.

>> And I should point out, "the decline" that I felt came before
>> "the internet", so it's not that I can get the same things online.

> Books of fiction have a similar problem.

No they do not, as should be obvious from the Harry Potter fiction.

Its interesting that some do last what Agatha Christie
wrote at least as far as TV fiction is concerned.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Thursday, July 10, 2014 3:22:31 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
> Now, look at an ordinary laptop today. Even a top of the line one with a quad-core processor doesn't look like much; it doesn't have the intimidating front panel of even a PDP-8. But it does have a graphical display, and a quieter keyboard than an ASR-33 teletype, so it's clear that it _does_ more.

When you first saw an ASR 33 Teletype, and it started printing away--with the noise and vibration--you had the sense something wondrous was going on. The overall impression was one of awe.

Likewise with a S/360-40--it had plenty of blinking lights, and the look and sound of 1,000 per minute card reader and printer was pretty neat, too.

I think the "gee whiz" factor is pretty well dead in modern machines. They're just boxes.

Frankly, I think many of us are a bit jaded with the problems that come along with modern computers--viruses slipping through, spam, slow and bloated websites, excessive ads, errors, lost emails, forced upgrades we don't want, and other irritating issues.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2014-07-10, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> I think some of the past has been replaced by app design, which
> is still a somewhat new field. For instance, I suspect a lot of
> hobbyists today are trying to dream of up new apps for cell phones.

And even they are turning into solutions looking for problems.
It's getting to the point where you can't do something without
having the app for it. Many of these things could be done with
a well-designed web site and a decent browser. But that leaves
you a bit too free - it doesn't lock you into someone's app.

--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

[jmfbahciv]

Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 9, 2014 3:08:01 PM UTC-6, Charles Richmond wrote:
>
>> ISTM that most are addicted to the "gee whiz" and *not* the feeling of
>> accomplishment.
>
> I can't really fault people for that. In a hobby, like electronics, people
expend effort and achieve a result. They do derive some satisfaction from
their effort succeeding from the fact that they learned how to do it right -
but also from the result they obtained from the effort.
>
> And if the result is bigger and more impressive, that is a better return on
their effort. So seeking that is only... rational.
>
> Of course, there is an irrational emotional component to a "gee whiz"
feeling too.
>
> I think of how impressive even a PDP-8 was back in, say, 1969... and compare
it to how much more impressive a System 360 Model 195 was then, with its
masses of blinking lights.
>
> Now, look at an ordinary laptop today. Even a top of the line one with a
quad-core processor doesn't look like much; it doesn't have the intimidating
front panel of even a PDP-8. But it does have a graphical display, and a
quieter keyboard than an ASR-33 teletype, so it's clear that it _does_ more.

The difference between a PDP-8 and a laptop is that you had to play with
the PDP-8 and you play on the laptop.

<snip>

/BAH

[jmfbahciv]

I understand. If you meet someone who is that bored, you are looking
at someone who hasn't made something with his/her own two hands recently.

/BAH

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2014, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2014-07-10, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>
>> I think some of the past has been replaced by app design, which
>> is still a somewhat new field. For instance, I suspect a lot of
>> hobbyists today are trying to dream of up new apps for cell phones.
>
> And even they are turning into solutions looking for problems.
> It's getting to the point where you can't do something without
> having the app for it. Many of these things could be done with
> a well-designed web site and a decent browser. But that leaves
> you a bit too free - it doesn't lock you into someone's app.
>

There has been campaigning locally for the municipal government to go
"open source", but the campaigners aren't thinking in terms of the
citizenry being better able to judge how the government is doing, but so
they can make apps to process that open data.

I have seen instances of "apps" recently that serve little purpose but to
jump on the app bandwagon. One festival has an app (which I bet won't run
on my Blackberry Plabyook, or my won in May Microsoft Surface 2 tablet.
But I think of the time that festival didn't bother putting the program
online in the form of a pdf (back when you weren't likely to have a
"mobile device", at least not one that could access the internet
anywhere), when it might have been useful to have that program handy and
it did beat paper distribution. SO they'd waste time and energy putting
the program online in html, rather than just distribute the program via
the web, making use of the effort made in making the paper program.

If everyone else is doing it, chances are that's not a good reason to be
doing it.

Michael

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2014, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, July 9, 2014 3:54:35 PM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure why that sense of accomplishment is gone. Everyone says
>> hobby electronics and amateur radio has to compete with the internet, yet
>> the accomplishment of getting a project going, no matter how simple, is
>> still there.
>> And while people can do things they couldn't decades back, some of what's
>> going on seems a dumbing down. Yes, you can program a computer to do
>> something, but you might just need a few parts do do that same something.
>> So people are buying "expensive" controller boards almost as if to avoid
>> learnign some electronics and soldering skills. It's a tradeoff, but I'm
>> not sure the big wave of Make is about learning and understanding.
>
>
> I remember when a friend designed and built a device to play pong on a
> TV set. It was pretty awesome It was all hand built of individual
> components, which at the time, was the only practical and cost-effective
> way to build something like that.
>
> My guess is that the thrill back then was building something that
> actually do something neat and usable, and proved a challenge to do so.
> The pong game, at the time, was like that.
>
> But today, everything is available already programmed on a chip or
> device, and dirt cheap at that. So, hand-building something that
> already exists cheap seems kind of pointless.
>

I can see that, to some extent, but then it seems to suggest that many
back then were just in it for the end product, and disappeared when other
routes were available. Maybe that's true, certainly Heathkit lost its
wider customer base when the cost of the kits could no longer be cheaper
than buying off the shelf.

But then there are the "craftsmen". The building is the end in itself.
part of me is increasingly interested in building a telescope. I look at
ads and think I could buy a telescope, but then I'm not sure I want/need a
telescope, but the building of one would have interest in itself. I don't
know, it's still something I'm thinking about.

There are people who like to build furniture. It's a meditative thing,
something "simple" that doesn't require a lot of thought, unlike their
job. The building is the relaxation, not having the furniture afterwards.

There was a period when I made tofu. I stopped after a couple of years, I
found it was so messy, and so much cleanup, that it was simpler to buy it.
But I learned that from the experience, I learned how to make tofu (and
some tricks about making it easier to make, from my experience) and I
realized that making it in larger amunts, if one has the equipment, is
actually easier than making it in small amounts. The overhead stays about
the same, you get more result from the larger batch.

But I then discovered that seitan, the protein from wheat, is a process
easily done, and that's a fun thing to do in itself. I can't see the
point in buying it off the shelf when the process is simple and fun.

I'd like to make tempeh, another method of making use of soybeans. I've
not ever done it, but it seems like a fun thing to do. Or, get an ice
cream maker, and practice making ice cream, make up flavors.

The making can still be a key reason to do so.

Michael

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2014, Morten Reistad wrote:


> People still carry the dreams, but they use websites now, and
> the publishers wonder why they are squeezed out. They need
> to reattach to those dreams.
>
That makes sense. Old media is spending too much time and effort trying
to "be the web" rather than figure out what is special about itself, and
keep that going.

Ever since I got DSL, a year and a half ago, I've spent more time on the
web, and maybe mroe important, more time with a graphic browser. It's
incredible what junk there is, teasers causing you to jump to another
site, and ooh, it looks so good, but it has no real content or substance.

I'm tired of watching the evening news and seeing stories from the web,
valued because they went "viral" rather than because "this is such an
important thing in itself"

Micahel

[jmfbahciv]

Michael Black wrote:

<snip>

> But then there are the "craftsmen". The building is the end in itself.
> part of me is increasingly interested in building a telescope. I look at
> ads and think I could buy a telescope, but then I'm not sure I want/need a
> telescope, but the building of one would have interest in itself. I don't
> know, it's still something I'm thinking about.
>
> There are people who like to build furniture. It's a meditative thing,
> something "simple" that doesn't require a lot of thought, unlike their
> job. The building is the relaxation, not having the furniture afterwards.
>
> There was a period when I made tofu. I stopped after a couple of years, I
> found it was so messy, and so much cleanup, that it was simpler to buy it.
> But I learned that from the experience, I learned how to make tofu (and
> some tricks about making it easier to make, from my experience) and I
> realized that making it in larger amunts, if one has the equipment, is
> actually easier than making it in small amounts. The overhead stays about
> the same, you get more result from the larger batch.
>
> But I then discovered that seitan, the protein from wheat, is a process
> easily done, and that's a fun thing to do in itself. I can't see the
> point in buying it off the shelf when the process is simple and fun.
>
> I'd like to make tempeh, another method of making use of soybeans. I've
> not ever done it, but it seems like a fun thing to do. Or, get an ice
> cream maker, and practice making ice cream, make up flavors.
>
> The making can still be a key reason to do so.

I've been knitting and crocheting. Earlier this year, I tried to
replicate a crochet pattern; it turned out to be a disaster because
the piece curled up. I got so bored finishing it, I comtemplated
String Theory and tried to extrapolate the geometry of the strands
of yarn to 4+ dimensions. I also want to figure out how to
develop a mathematical formula which would describe the tight
curl this knitting pattern caused.

/BAH

[Peter Flass]

Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>
> There are people who like to build furniture. It's a meditative thing,
> something "simple" that doesn't require a lot of thought, unlike their
> job. The building is the relaxation, not having the furniture afterwards.

If you watch NCIS, think of Gibbs and his boat(s).

--
Pete

[gareth]

"jmfbahciv" <See....@aol.com> wrote in message

news:PM0004FDE...@aca20a34.ipt.aol.com...

>
> The difference between a PDP-8 and a laptop is that you had to play with
> the PDP-8 and you play on the laptop.
>

Brilliant!

[gareth]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...
>

> But then there are the "craftsmen". The building is the end in itself.

Which is the main reason that having held a ham licence for 44 years,
I'm only half way through my second log book, only coming on the
air to evaluate the station improvement, and then move onto
something else.

[gareth]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org...
>

> Ever since I got DSL, a year and a half ago, I've spent more time on the
> web, and maybe mroe important, more time with a graphic browser. It's
> incredible what junk there is, teasers causing you to jump to another
> site, and ooh, it looks so good, but it has no real content or substance.

Agree strongly because the landline phone plus Internet has been out of
order
over the weekend, and I got a humungous amount done, including some things
that had been on the TUIT list for a couple of years!

[Walter Bushell]

In article <lq08t1$v5r$1...@dont-email.me>,

And nobody rips movies on a PDP-8.

--
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

[Rich Alderson]

jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:

> Charles Richmond wrote:
>> "Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
>> news:063a6712-d428-4ef1...@googlegroups.com...
>>> On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:

>>>> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for
>>>> making their founders rich after being bought out by a big corporation.

>>> Well, I do remember the story of how some Xerox engineers built their own
>>> PDP-10 rather than use a Xerox Sigma for some development work, because
>>> they found the Sigma to be lacking.

>> You must be thinking of the "researchers" at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
>> Center (PARC). They indeed built their own PDP-10 clone... because Xerox
>> would *not* allow them to *buy* a PDP-10 from DEC.

> Sometimes, creating an artificial need produces the best work. we got
> Unix because it had to deal with extreme limitations of a PDP-11
> (compared to a PDP-10). If ATT had bought a PDP-10, Unix would be
> a very different animule.

Barb, you've got it a little garbled.

What Thompson, Ritchie, et al. wanted was a brand spanking new DECsystem-10 (in
the form of a 1070, that is, a KI-based system). AT&T/Bell Labs would not buy
them such a large machine for a group of about 6 researchers, and pointed them
at a retired PDP-7 with no associated software. *That* is where Unix started;
by the time it moved onto the PDP-11, it had a couple of years' development
behind it, and then more development on the -11 before the C language was
invented and the final port was done.

What the team *wanted* was big timesharing, to continue the research begun in
the Multics environment.

--
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...

[Rich Alderson]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> On Sunday, July 6, 2014 6:39:59 AM UTC-6, jmfbahciv wrote:

>> If ATT had bought a PDP-10, Unix would be
>> a very different animule.

> While, historically, this might have been a PDP-6 (instead of a PDP-7) rath=
> er than a PDP-10 instead of a PDP-11, you're quite right. After all, the GE=
> 635 was *also* a 36-bit machine... so what might have happened could have =
> been just a straight port of MULTICS, never mind a "different" UNIX.

The dates are all wrong. The machine they wanted to buy was a *second*
*generation* PDP-10, the KI-10 process in the DECsystem-10 (a name that was
introduced with that processor--the earlier KA-10 was simply "the PDP-10").

[John Levine]

>> While, historically, this might have been a PDP-6 (instead of a PDP-7)

>rather than a PDP-10 instead of a PDP-11, you're quite right. After all, the
>GE 635 was *also* a 36-bit machine... so what might have happened could have

>been just a straight port of MULTICS, never mind a "different" UNIX.

The 635 didn't run Multics, only G(E)COS and DTSS. Multics needed a
645, which had the extra memory management hardware.

If they'd gotten a PDP-6 or PDP-10, we probably wouldn't have Unix at
all. Ken and Dennis seemed OK using GCOS, which is where they wrote the
first versions of B and C, and they'd likely have been
OK with TOPS-10 or Tenex, too.

The PDP-7 and early PDP-11 had no usable OS at all.

(Yes, C wasn't originally written for the PDP-11. You can look it
up.)

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

[jmfbahciv]

Rich Alderson wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:
>
>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> "Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
>>> news:063a6712-d428-4ef1...@googlegroups.com...
>>>> On Saturday, July 5, 2014 10:44:00 AM UTC-6, Al Kossow wrote:
>
>>>>> SDS is sadly one of those companies that will only be remembered for
>>>>> making their founders rich after being bought out by a big corporation.
>
>>>> Well, I do remember the story of how some Xerox engineers built their own
>>>> PDP-10 rather than use a Xerox Sigma for some development work, because
>>>> they found the Sigma to be lacking.
>
>>> You must be thinking of the "researchers" at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
>>> Center (PARC). They indeed built their own PDP-10 clone... because Xerox
>>> would *not* allow them to *buy* a PDP-10 from DEC.
>
>> Sometimes, creating an artificial need produces the best work. we got
>> Unix because it had to deal with extreme limitations of a PDP-11
>> (compared to a PDP-10). If ATT had bought a PDP-10, Unix would be
>> a very different animule.
>
> Barb, you've got it a little garbled.

No. You are not reading what I meant.

>
> What Thompson, Ritchie, et al. wanted was a brand spanking new DECsystem-10
(in
> the form of a 1070, that is, a KI-based system). AT&T/Bell Labs would not
buy
> them such a large machine for a group of about 6 researchers, and pointed
them
> at a retired PDP-7 with no associated software. *That* is where Unix
started;
> by the time it moved onto the PDP-11, it had a couple of years' development
> behind it, and then more development on the -11 before the C language was
> invented and the final port was done.
>
> What the team *wanted* was big timesharing, to continue the research begun
in
> the Multics environment.

If they had gotten their PDP-10, the OS would be very different because
they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11. Those contraints
produced the Unix OS philosophy. Memory and file system management
would have been done differently.

/BAH

[jmfbahciv]

John Levine wrote:
>>> While, historically, this might have been a PDP-6 (instead of a PDP-7)
>>rather than a PDP-10 instead of a PDP-11, you're quite right. After all, the
>>GE 635 was *also* a 36-bit machine... so what might have happened could have
>>been just a straight port of MULTICS, never mind a "different" UNIX.
>
> The 635 didn't run Multics, only G(E)COS and DTSS. Multics needed a
> 645, which had the extra memory management hardware.
>
> If they'd gotten a PDP-6 or PDP-10, we probably wouldn't have Unix at
> all.

Probably but I wasn't about to open that can :-).

> Ken and Dennis seemed OK using GCOS, which is where they wrote the
> first versions of B and C, and they'd likely have been
> OK with TOPS-10 or Tenex, too.
>
> The PDP-7 and early PDP-11 had no usable OS at all.

When did IAS come out? That was the best PDP-11 OS.

>
> (Yes, C wasn't originally written for the PDP-11. You can look it
> up.)
>

/BAH

[William Pechter]

In article <PM0004FF5...@ac810f03.ipt.aol.com>,

Anyone know how many DECsystem10/20's they had in Western
Electric/AT&T... They had one in their R&D (IIRC) in the Princeton area
(Pennington, NJ) and I think they had a number of them in the Newark
area...

I wonder if any of them ever got into Bell Labs...
There were none there by the time I got to the Labs.
I remember IBM and Vax and some HP minis. Bellcore had some AIX
as well.

One good thing about my days in the computer rooms in the mid '80's was
I got to see a lot of different vendor's equipment. Now just Intel
Inside (tm)...

Even the AMD cpus are rare on the IBM side now.



Bill


--
--
Digital had it then. Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-pechter.dyndns.org http://xkcd.com/705/

[Rod Speed]

"jmfbahciv" <See....@aol.com> wrote in message

news:PM0004FF5...@ac810f03.ipt.aol.com...

It wasn’t initially done for the 11, so its constraints were irrelevant.

> Those contraints produced the Unix OS philosophy.

Bullshit, because it didn’t start on the 11.

> Memory and file system management would have been done differently.

Yes, but not because of the 11.

[Rich Alderson]

jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:

> John Levine wrote:

>> The PDP-7 and early PDP-11 had no usable OS at all.

> When did IAS come out? That was the best PDP-11 OS.

The version 1 manuals are dated September 1975; the latest version came out in
1990. I'd love to get my hands on distribution media for one of our 11/70
systems!

[Shmuel Metz]

In <PM0004FF5...@ac810f03.ipt.aol.com>, on 07/29/2014

at 11:46 AM, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> said:

>If they had gotten their PDP-10, the OS would be very different
>because they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11.
>Those contraints produced the Unix OS philosophy.

Nonsense; the damage was already done before the PDP-11 was an option.
The PDP-7 was a totally different machine; not even the word size was
the same.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org

[John Levine]

>>If they had gotten their PDP-10, the OS would be very different
>>because they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11.
>>Those contraints produced the Unix OS philosophy.
>
>Nonsense; the damage was already done before the PDP-11 was an option.
>The PDP-7 was a totally different machine; not even the word size was
>the same.

Um, PDP-10 != PDP-7

R's,
John

[jmfbahciv]

Rich Alderson wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:
>
>> John Levine wrote:
>
>>> The PDP-7 and early PDP-11 had no usable OS at all.
>
>> When did IAS come out? That was the best PDP-11 OS.
>
> The version 1 manuals are dated September 1975; the latest version came out
in
> 1990. I'd love to get my hands on distribution media for one of our 11/70
> systems!
>

It didn't go through the usual development processes like the "offishal"
OSes DEC shipped. Ian Service might be able to help you. I don't remember
the name of my US contact. He was all business and a conversation would
last manybe 5 or 10 minutes. There was no bullshit. No politics. No
delay about answering questions. I often wondered
if this kind of attitude creates the best OS delivery service.

It was such a good OS; it didn't get in your way if you didn't need
it. The developers gave as much as possible of the system resources
to the users instead of micromanaging resources in exec-mode like
other -11 OSes do.

/BAH

[jmfbahciv]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <PM0004FF5...@ac810f03.ipt.aol.com>, on 07/29/2014
> at 11:46 AM, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> said:
>
>>If they had gotten their PDP-10, the OS would be very different
>>because they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11.
>>Those contraints produced the Unix OS philosophy.
>
> Nonsense; the damage was already done before the PDP-11 was an option.
> The PDP-7 was a totally different machine; not even the word size was
> the same.
>

Then you don't know how OS development is done over multiple versions
and different hardware.

/BAH

[Christian Brunschen]

In article <PM0004FF6...@aca214a1.ipt.aol.com>,

Barb,

you initially seemed to miss or ignore the point that it was a PDP-7,
not a PDP-11, on which Unix was initially developed; and that thus, it's
the PDP-7's constraints that were applicable for the initial design of
Unix, not the constraints of the PDP-11.

Of course Unix has since been ported to and expanded over many different
machines and generations of hardware; and as such, it has been adapted
and expanded within newer, looser, wider constraints as time has gone by.

But the initial set of constraints came not from the PDP-11 (as you
wrote), but from the PDP-7.

Dennis Ritchie's Unix History page at
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html> has a lot of information,
including that a PDP-10 was only one machine that they tried to buy, an
SDS (Xerox) Sigma 7 was another option.

Now, you also claim that the constraints produced the Unix philosophy.
That also does not necessarily hold: It's perfectly possible for the
philosophy to be developed on a much more general level, and then simply
implemented within the constraints. So even if there had been a PDP-10
(or Sigma 7) available, the Unix philosophy might have ended up much the
same as it did. After all, the driving force behind Unix' development
was what they wanted to achieve, not that they specifically wanted to do
something on that particular type of machine! On the contrary, it should
be seen as a testament to the machine-independent nature of the Unix
philosophy that it was so quickly ported to so many other different
kinds of machines, which really suggests that it was the philosophy that
was fit into the constraints of the machine, rather than the constraints
growing the philosophy; and this continues to this day: the philosophy
has proven itself to surpass machine types.

>/BAH

// Christian

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Tuesday, July 29, 2014 12:57:24 PM UTC-4, William Pechter wrote:

> Anyone know how many DECsystem10/20's they had in Western
> Electric/AT&T... They had one in their R&D (IIRC) in the Princeton area
> (Pennington, NJ) and I think they had a number of them in the Newark
> area...

If you're referring to a specific model "DEC 20", then I don't know the answer.

But AT&T was a heavy user of DEC PDP machines in various ways (see prior note).

This included circa 1983:

PDP 11/40:
The No.1 AMARC, the first in a series of two major AMARC developments,
receives billing data in real time over dedicated voice-grade data
links. It is based on a pair of DEC PDp19_11/40 minicomputers operating
in a duplex configuration.
The No.1 AMARC controls and receives the data from a maximum of
thirty dedicated channels. Each channel consists of a dedicated voicegrade
line equipped with 202T (or equivalent) data sets, operating asynchronously
at 1.2 kilobits per second (kbps). In case of channel failure,
the AMARC automatically dials a back-up channel to the affected sensor
over the direct distance dialing or local message network. A maximum of
two such back-up channels is provided to cover the thirty input channels.


PDP 11/70:
This AMARC uses higher-capacity minicomputers (PDP-II/70s) and peripheral
equipment with Western Electric-manufactured communications
interfaces and alarm circuits to provide ninety input channels, improved
maintenance capabilities, and sufficient capacity for additional sensor
types. To ensure reliability, all major central units (processor, memory,
tape) are duplicated as with the No.1 AMARC. The first full-capability
No. lA AMARC began operation in 1981 in Illinois. The No.1 AMARC
is no longer being deployed.

PDP 11/40:
LAMA-C is a duplex minicomputer system based on PDP-ll/40s and
designed to improve billing economics in No.5 Crossbar offices.
Although no longer being deployed, many LAMA-C systems are still in
use.


PDP 10:
COEES is the standard system for planning and engineering local switching
equipment. It is a time-sharing system that runs on DEC PDP-I0 computers,
centrally located and accessed via the computing system vendor's
communication network.

[Scott Lurndal]

"The system was to be called IAS, which if I remember rightly
stood for "Interactive Applications System". It added to the
RSX-11D kernel a clever timesharing scheduler, a bunch of security
features, and a new command language. These were the days of MCR,
a command language which makes even the Unix shell look lucid.
(To delete a file you typed "PIP file/D" for example). The then-boss
of software decided we needed a Digital Command Language, which of
course later become a feature of VMS, but IAS was the guinea-pig.

In fact, all DCL commands were translated into the corresponding
MCR and the fired off to the appropriate utility. The command
interpreter that did this was thrown together in great haste,
and remains to this day the nastiest piece of software I have ever encountered."

_John A Harper_ (http://www.john-a-harper.com/ias.html)

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lr9idk$1spd$1...@miucha.iecc.com>, on 07/30/2014
at 01:40 AM, John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> said:

>Um, PDP-10 != PDP-7

Water is wet. The point is that since they didn't have a PDP-11 when
they designed Unix, the constraints of the PDP-11 were not responsible
for the design; it was the constraints of the PDP-7. The text that I
quoted included "they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11."

[Shmuel Metz]

In <PM0004FF6...@aca214a1.ipt.aol.com>, on 07/30/2014

at 12:34 PM, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> said:

>Then you don't know how OS development is done over multiple versions
>and different hardware.

ROTF,LMAO! Thomson and Ritchie are more reliable sources than you are.
In 1969 all they had was a PDP-7, and they coded in assembler. The
BCPL->B->C development came later.

[Quadibloc]

On Wednesday, July 30, 2014 12:23:35 PM UTC-6, Seymour J. Shmuel Metz wrote:

> Water is wet. The point is that since they didn't have a PDP-11 when
> they designed Unix, the constraints of the PDP-11 were not responsible
> for the design; it was the constraints of the PDP-7. The text that I
> quoted included "they would not have had the contraints of a PDP-11."

This is true. Having a hand-me-down PDP-7 instead of a brand-new PDP-10 definitely was responsible for Unix starting out as a very minimal operating system.

However, the PDP-7 was, despite having a word length two bits longer, even more limited than the PDP-11... *and* the PDP-11 had sufficient constraints that when the project moved to the PDP-11, while they were afforded the opportunity to move from assembler language to C with its additional power, they did not have the opportunity to turn Unix into another Multics.

Those who forget that Unix was developed on a PDP-7 before it moved to the PDP-11 are, indeed, guilty of a historical inaccuracy.

But *both* the PDP-7 and the PDP-11 were constrained compared to a PDP-10; the PDP-10 had the same word length as the GE computer used for MULTICS even if it didn't have *all* the same features, and so it might have offered a temptation for bloat.

Today, of course, a lot of that is moot. Today's PCs are architecturally similar to, but more powerful than, the IBM System 360 Model 195, and Linux today is keeping up with Windows in the area of bloat, with the NSA's Security Enhanced Linux even providing the distinctive file security feature for which MULTICS was famous.

John Savard

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Wednesday, July 30, 2014 3:33:43 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:

> Today, of course, a lot of that is moot. Today's PCs are architecturally similar to, but more powerful than, the IBM System 360 Model 195

While the specific operating characteristics of the 195 are available, would anyone know the _comparative throughput_ values? In those days, it was common to use the S/370-158 as the measuring standard of 1.0, and compare throughput (running a defined series of jobs) in other machines to get relative performance.

Indeed, I always wondered how long various PCs of the past and present would take to run a workload as compared to S/3660 or S/370 computer.

I'm not sure that even a PC of today could handle as well the multi-tasking that a S/370-158 could handle because the architecture of the S/370 allowed for more independence of the various devices, resulting in less contention. AFAIK, most PCs still only have one disk drive.