where to find pdp8e programming articles

[will...@gmail.com]

Anybody know of any good sources for articles discussing programming a pdp8e (pal iii, 4k basic, etc)?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-01-27 04:14, will...@gmail.com wrote:
> Anybody know of any good sources for articles discussing programming a pdp8e (pal iii, 4k basic, etc)?

What kind of "discussing"? If you want to learn a bit on how to program
on a PDP-8 (in assembler), the "Introduction to Programming" book is a
good start.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp8/handbooks/DEC-08-XINPA-A-D_intrPgm_75.pdf

There are additional handbooks which do cover some aspects of other
languages and operating system environments as well. Check around in
that directory and others on bitsavers.

Johnny

[Scott Lurndal]

"will...@gmail.com" <will...@gmail.com> writes:
>Anybody know of any good sources for articles discussing programming a pdp8e (pal iii, 4k basic, etc)?

The "Small Computer Handbook" on bitsavers.org.

[William Cattey]

After working through examples from "Introduction to Programming," and feeling like you've mastered the basics,
I recommend diving into some source code and learning how others do it.

I cut my teeth as a high school student on a source listing of the EDU-200 BASIC interpreter.

The code wasn't always the best, but it was a great learning experience to see how someone else cut up
a complex problem and distilled it into PAL8.

-Bill

[Tim]

We progressed to looking at the code for TSS-8 as it was available to us in "big" binders. There are still parts I do not fully understand. :)

[will...@gmail.com]

I see where I went wrong - what I meant was - were there any magazine or user group/newsletters type articles. Were there any community efforts to provide tidbits to new users? I saw the DECUS software list for the PDP8, so that's a start, but a lot of those programs look like specialized utilities that came along early, early days (1965-1970). There are later contributions, but they too are specialized. I was thinking something along the lines of the old BASIC rags - find primes with sieve of Eratosthenes or pick a number between 1 and ten type stuff :).

[William Cattey]

On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 3:28:31 PM UTC-5, will...@gmail.com wrote:
> I see where I went wrong - what I meant was - were there any magazine or user group/newsletters type articles. Were there any community efforts to provide tidbits to new users? I saw the DECUS software list for the PDP8, so that's a start, but a lot of those programs look like specialized utilities that came along early, early days (1965-1970). There are later contributions, but they too are specialized. I was thinking something along the lines of the old BASIC rags - find primes with sieve of Eratosthenes or pick a number between 1 and ten type stuff :).

You probably want the 12-bit SIG newsletter, then:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/pdp8/12-bit_SIG/
Note that issues 1-28 are in the "fiche" subdirectory.

[will...@gmail.com]

Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!