From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 7 01:53:59 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 10:53:59 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
Moving to COFF.
below.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 10:40 AM Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Clem,
>
> It figures. I should have known there was a reason for the shorter lines
> other than display. Conventions are sticky and there appears to be a
> generation gap. I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors
> used 2... who knows why? :).
>
You never use a real typewriter. Double-space allows you to edit
(physically) the document if need be. This was how I did everything
before I had easy computer access.
I went to college with an electric typewriter and all my papers were done
on it in the fall of my freshman year (until I got access to UNIX). I did
have an CS account for the PDP-10 and they had the XGP, but using it for
something like your papers was somewhat frowned upon. However, the UNIX
boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters that had RS-232C
interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers and run it off in the
admin's desk at night.
Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201106/af8ed432/attachment.htm>
From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 7 02:22:39 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 11:22:39 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
References: <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2ORm6S0ZpW8BnKX8dW+uxxp-fC3+t1e=uWDdNNeoWRiQw@mail.gmail.com>
Exactly -- just re-read Will's question. 2 spaces after punctuation is a
fix-size typeface solution to the 1.5 typographer layout.
I was referring to why typed papers were traditionally double spaced
between the lines.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 11:02 AM Chris Torek <torek at elf.torek.net> wrote:
> >I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors
> >used 2... who knows why? :).
>
> Typewriters.
>
> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification,
> we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of-
> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than
> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get
> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space. Note that this is
> all in the variable-pitch font world.
>
> Since typewriters are fixed-pitch, the way to emulate the
> 1.5-space-wide gap is to expand it to 2.
>
> Chris
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201106/81529406/attachment.htm>
From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 7 03:56:05 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 12:56:05 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <3c54b19d-e604-68eb-2b4b-0b65e9cfb896@earthlink.net>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106063725.GB99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<5BE1CBD5-C9EB-45D4-B135-E58BCCCBE38C@gmail.com>
<3c54b19d-e604-68eb-2b4b-0b65e9cfb896@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Pncr6G2ZoouOpZBgxpdLzbPEo__T2kiRVY8svnpHm1TA@mail.gmail.com>
I'd be curious to hear from the folks a few years older than I (I started
in the later 60s with the GE-635), but my own experiences of having lived
through some of it, I personally think it was more to do with all of the
systems of the time switching from cards to the Model 28 and later the 33
then Unix or AT&T. Unix was just one of the systems that we used at the
time of the transition from cards. But the other timesharing systems of
those days began to transition to the tty's requirements.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 12:27 PM Stephen Clark <sclark46 at earthlink.net>
wrote:
> On 11/6/20 12:13 PM, Adam Thornton wrote:
> > I’m going to chime in on pro-80-columns here, because with the text a
> comfortable size to read (although this is getting less true as my eyes
> age), I can read an entire 80-column line without having to sweep my eyes
> back and forth.
> >
> > I can’t, and never could, do that at 132.
> >
> > As a consequence, I read much, much faster with 80-column-ish text
> blocks.
> >
> > I also think there is something to the “UNIX is verbal†and “UNIX nerds
> tend to be polyglots often with a surprising amount of liberal arts
> background of one kind or another,†argument. That may, however, merely be
> confirmation bias.
> >
> > Adam
> May have had to do with the first terminal commonly used with UNIX.
>
> The Model 33 printed on 8.5-inch (220 mm) wide paper, supplied on
> continuous
> 5-inch (130 mm) diameter rolls and fed via friction (instead of, e.g.,
> tractor
> feed). It printed at a fixed 10 characters per inch, and supported
> 74-character
> lines,[13] although 72 characters is often commonly stated.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201106/d131a070/attachment.htm>
From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 7 05:24:43 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 14:24:43 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201106192201.GM1750809@mit.edu>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106192201.GM1750809@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2P5f6=R4BnB6fCLGnQctPT3dp9BwYVBMquzXf67GKYwDw@mail.gmail.com>
Outstanding hack!
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 2:22 PM Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 10:53:59AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> >
> > I went to college with an electric typewriter and all my papers were done
> > on it in the fall of my freshman year (until I got access to UNIX). I
> did
> > have an CS account for the PDP-10 and they had the XGP, but using it for
> > something like your papers was somewhat frowned upon. However, the
> UNIX
> > boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters that had RS-232C
> > interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers and run it off in the
> > admin's desk at night.
>
> When I was in high school, we had a box that could be fitted over an
> Olivetti electric typewriter's keyboard, which had solenoids to
> "type". The other end had a parallel port and it was connected to a
> Heathkit H-89 CP/M system, and so rough drafts would be sent to the
> dot matrix printer, but for the final copy, it could look like it came
> out of a typewriter --- because technically, it did. :-)
>
> - Ted
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201106/cb105a93/attachment.htm>
From tytso at mit.edu Sat Nov 7 05:22:01 2020
From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 14:22:01 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201106192201.GM1750809@mit.edu>
On Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 10:53:59AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> I went to college with an electric typewriter and all my papers were done
> on it in the fall of my freshman year (until I got access to UNIX). I did
> have an CS account for the PDP-10 and they had the XGP, but using it for
> something like your papers was somewhat frowned upon. However, the UNIX
> boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters that had RS-232C
> interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers and run it off in the
> admin's desk at night.
When I was in high school, we had a box that could be fitted over an
Olivetti electric typewriter's keyboard, which had solenoids to
"type". The other end had a parallel port and it was connected to a
Heathkit H-89 CP/M system, and so rough drafts would be sent to the
dot matrix printer, but for the final copy, it could look like it came
out of a typewriter --- because technically, it did. :-)
- Ted
From grog at lemis.com Sat Nov 7 08:58:25 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2020 09:58:25 +1100
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 10:53:59 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> However, the UNIX boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters
> that had RS-232C interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers
> and run it off in the admin's desk at night.
My memory is hazy, but I thought that the daisy wheel printers I knew
(Qume Sprint\5) also had proportional spacing. I ran into significant
problems with early MS-DOS based formatting software because it made
(frequently incorrect) assumptions about character widths.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201107/7b932d2c/attachment.sig>
From grog at lemis.com Sat Nov 7 09:08:57 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2020 10:08:57 +1100
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <202011061519.0A6FJOAx034308@elf.torek.net>
References: <20201106150609.GR26296@mcvoy.com>
<202011061519.0A6FJOAx034308@elf.torek.net>
Message-ID: <20201106230857.GF99027@eureka.lemis.com>
[Following clemc's example and moving to COFF]
On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 7:19:24 -0800, Chris Torek wrote:
>> I'm lazy.
>
> I am too, but I still use a big screen: I just fit a lot of smaller
> windows in it.
Agreed. There's a second issue here: for reading text, 70 to 80 n
widths is optimal. For reading computer output, it should be much
wider. I've compromised by fitting two 120 character wide xterms on
my monitors, left and right. I still display only 70-80 characters
for text.
> I'd like to have a literal wall screen, especially if I'm in an
> interior, windowless (as in physical glass windows) room, so that
> part of the wall could be a "window" showing a view "outside" (real
> time, or the ocean, or whatever) and other parts of the wall could
> be the text I'm working on/with, etc.
The issue there is perspective. I could do that (modulo cost) in my
office, but I'd have a horizontal angle of about 90°, and that's
uncomfortable.
> (But I'll make do with these 27" 4k displays. :-) )
Yes, that's about the widest I find comfortable, and it took me a
while to adapt.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201107/7a2cfcfb/attachment.sig>
From torek at elf.torek.net Sat Nov 7 04:12:20 2020
From: torek at elf.torek.net (Chris Torek)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 10:12:20 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2ORm6S0ZpW8BnKX8dW+uxxp-fC3+t1e=uWDdNNeoWRiQw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <202011061812.0A6ICKKp034910@elf.torek.net>
>I was referring to why typed papers were traditionally double spaced
>between the lines.
(this seems to have moved to coff@, which I think I am not on)
Ah, the traditional reason for doubling the "leading" (not that
there's any actual chemical-element-Pb lead in typewriting) is
for copy-editing purposes.
I'm not sure if traditional typesetting drafts had increased
leading like this.
Chris
From dave at horsfall.org Sat Nov 7 10:16:56 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2020 11:16:56 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201106222302.GG26411@mcvoy.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106063725.GB99027@eureka.lemis.com> <20201106150609.GR26296@mcvoy.com>
<CALMnNGg=9KHCwqaqdFESBQr=Ru_qzM=x-S2fc=ewgJNf2zLRFQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106222302.GG26411@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011071111330.6603@aneurin.horsfall.org>
[ Moving to COFF (if your MUA respects "Reply-To:") ]
On Fri, 6 Nov 2020, Larry McVoy wrote:
> But I'm pretty old school, I write in C, I debug a lot with printf and
> asserts, I'm kind of a dinosaur.
You've never experienced the joy of having your code suddenly working when
inserting printf() statements? Oh dear; time to break out GDB...
-- Dave
From cym224 at gmail.com Sat Nov 7 12:52:57 2020
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2020 21:52:57 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2ORm6S0ZpW8BnKX8dW+uxxp-fC3+t1e=uWDdNNeoWRiQw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
<CAC20D2ORm6S0ZpW8BnKX8dW+uxxp-fC3+t1e=uWDdNNeoWRiQw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4cb3465d-ed2f-104b-494f-4fd8c97f595b@gmail.com>
On 11/06/20 11:22, Clem Cole wrote:
> Exactly -- just re-read Will's question. 2 spaces after punctuation
> is a fix-size typeface solution to the 1.5 typographer layout.
Is it not an m-space after a full-stop? (Though Brinhurst eschewed this
in the fourth edition.)
> I was referring to why typed papers were traditionally double spaced
> between the lines.
I was advised to this with drafts for copy-editing but legal documents
are always double-spaced lines (and I know not why).
N.
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 11:02 AM Chris Torek <torek at elf.torek.net
> <mailto:torek at elf.torek.net>> wrote:
>
> >I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors
> >used 2... who knows why? :).
>
> Typewriters.
>
> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification,
> we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of-
> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than
> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get
> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space. Note that this is
> all in the variable-pitch font world.
>
> Since typewriters are fixed-pitch, the way to emulate the
> 1.5-space-wide gap is to expand it to 2.
>
> Chris
>
From grog at lemis.com Sat Nov 7 14:22:49 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2020 15:22:49 +1100
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201106232901.AkY2I%steffen@sdaoden.eu>
References: <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
<20201106225422.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<20201106232901.AkY2I%steffen@sdaoden.eu>
Message-ID: <20201107042249.GG99027@eureka.lemis.com>
[Coff, etc]
On Saturday, 7 November 2020 at 0:29:01 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in
> <20201106225422.GD99027 at eureka.lemis.com>:
>> On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 7:46:57 -0800, Chris Torek wrote:
>>> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification,
>>> we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of-
>>> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than
>>> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get
>>> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space.
>>
>> FWIW, this is the US convention. Other countries have different
>> conventions. My Ausinfo style manual states
>>
>> There is no need to increase the amount of punctuation ... at the
>> end of a sentence.
>>
>> I believe that this also holds for Germany. I'm not sure that the UK
>> didn't have different rules again.
>
> Yes, the DUDEN of Germany says for typewriters that the punctuation
> characters period, comma, semicolon, colon, question- and
> exclamation mark are added without separating whitespace. The next
> word follows after a space ("Leerschritt", "void step").
Thanks for the confirmation. Where did you find that? I checked the
yellow Duden („Richtlinien für den Schriftsatz“) before sending my
previous message, but I couldn't find anything useful.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201107/5686d130/attachment.sig>
From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun Nov 8 06:31:22 2020
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 2020 21:31:22 +0100
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201107042249.GG99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<202011061546.0A6Fkv3D034443@elf.torek.net>
<20201106225422.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<20201106232901.AkY2I%steffen@sdaoden.eu>
<20201107042249.GG99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <20201107203122.7dGQ4%steffen@sdaoden.eu>
Hello and good evening.
Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in
<20201107042249.GG99027 at eureka.lemis.com>:
|[Coff, etc]
I tend to hang in compose mode so long that i miss such switches
at first.
|On Saturday, 7 November 2020 at 0:29:01 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
|> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in
|> <20201106225422.GD99027 at eureka.lemis.com>:
|>> On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 7:46:57 -0800, Chris Torek wrote:
|>>> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification,
|>>> we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of-
|>>> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than
|>>> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get
|>>> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space.
|>>
|>> FWIW, this is the US convention. Other countries have different
|>> conventions. My Ausinfo style manual states
|>>
|>> There is no need to increase the amount of punctuation ... at the
|>> end of a sentence.
|>>
|>> I believe that this also holds for Germany. I'm not sure that the UK
|>> didn't have different rules again.
|
|> Yes, the DUDEN of Germany says for typewriters that the punctuation
|> characters period, comma, semicolon, colon, question- and
|> exclamation mark are added without separating whitespace. The next
|> word follows after a space ("Leerschritt", "void step").
|
|Thanks for the confirmation. Where did you find that? I checked the
|yellow Duden (ââ¦â¦Richtlinien für den Schriftsatzââ¦â¦) before sending my
|previous message, but I couldn't find anything useful.
(The charset errors were already in.)
Well yes, i looked first, it has been a very long time since
i only follow my gut, if it does not come naturally leave it. The
next chapter it is, »Hinweise für das Maschinenschreiben«
("Advices for typewriting"). (For handwriting hope is lost
anyway, noone can read that. Even though one could find
philosophic background in good handwriting style, but i personally
was touched by the Japanese, Chinese etc., also Arabic way of
doing things already so young, western style has a hard time
against calligraphie that is to say.)
But mind you, reassuring that old typewriters really placed the
mentioned punctuation characters left in their box i even found
a bug in mutool! (Ghostscript mupdf issue 703092.)
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
From clemc at ccc.com Sun Nov 8 07:04:16 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2020 16:04:16 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 5:58 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> My memory is hazy, but I thought that the daisy wheel printers I knew
> (Qume Sprint\5) also had proportional spacing.
I never used that brand. Xerox (which was the main USA supplier as a pure
typewriter to compete with IBM's Selectric 'ball' units) were definitely
fixed width. People started to hack the Xerox units to add access to
serial interface and Xerox made it standard or maybe an option as
somepoint. IIRC it was somebody like Ollivetti that originally did the
daisywheel and Xerox licensed it and they definitely were the primary
player here. But by the late 70s, early 80's, there were a number of
manufacturers of them.
My memory was with the maybe circa 74/75 timeframe, Xerox unit (but it
might have been one of the others) was that the original unit had a serial
port for diagnostics/maintenance which allowed access to the on-board
microprocessor (which might have been a 4-bit TI chip IIRC - same used in
some early 'Simon' games). Somebody figured out how to hack it and the
schematics/description was available. I remember we hacked one of the
units in the EE dept. But by the late 1970's the serial interface was a
first class part of the unit, which made them different from IBM Selectrics
which did not have an easy to access serial interface, even though IBM used
the printer mechanism from the Selectric as the guts of the console for the
360 which I think was called a 2150 but the bits in my brain on that are
extremely stale.
> I ran into significant
> problems with early MS-DOS based formatting software because it made
> (frequently incorrect) assumptions about character widths.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201107/fe0e2437/attachment.htm>
From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 8 09:05:56 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2020 10:05:56 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011081002260.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Sat, 7 Nov 2020, Clem Cole wrote:
> > My memory is hazy, but I thought that the daisy wheel printers I knew
> > (Qume Sprint\5) also had proportional spacing.Â
>
> I never used that brand.  [...]
The daisywheel that I used (Fujitsu?) definitely was fixed-width
(Courier); I used it a lot with WordStar on CP/M.
-- Dave
From grog at lemis.com Mon Nov 9 14:36:19 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2020 15:36:19 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Saturday, 7 November 2020 at 16:04:16 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 5:58 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> My memory is hazy, but I thought that the daisy wheel printers I knew
>> (Qume Sprint\5) also had proportional spacing.
>
> I never used that brand. Xerox (which was the main USA supplier as a pure
> typewriter to compete with IBM's Selectric 'ball' units) were definitely
> fixed width. People started to hack the Xerox units to add access to
> serial interface and Xerox made it standard or maybe an option as
> somepoint. IIRC it was somebody like Ollivetti that originally did the
> daisywheel and Xerox licensed it and they definitely were the primary
> player here. But by the late 70s, early 80's, there were a number of
> manufacturers of them.
The Qume printers seemed to have been the best round 1980 when we used
them in our applications. In particular, a large choice of wheels and
fine-grained spacing. I forget how the spacing worked.
> But by the late 1970's the serial interface was a first class part
> of the unit, which made them different from IBM Selectrics which did
> not have an easy to access serial interface, even though IBM used
> the printer mechanism from the Selectric as the guts of the console
> for the 360 which I think was called a 2150 but the bits in my brain
> on that are extremely stale.
The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the
/360 itself. The model numbers I recall were 735, and the newer
generation 2731/2735. The last digit related to the carriage width
(11"/15").
Round the time in question I bought a second-hand 735 machine. It had
an arcane interface that directly talked to the magnets. I built an
interface for it to a parallel port, but it never worked well. Not
the interface: the 735 was second-hand and basically worn out, and it
kept coming out of adjustment. The Qume machines were *so* much
easier to use.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201109/39662d99/attachment.sig>
From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 10 00:26:05 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2020 09:26:05 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MXEiOLCPw_+OcitTXe=rWA6dQf+=G5yO0ZE7zzEpojsw@mail.gmail.com>
On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 11:36 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the /360
> itself.
>
Hmmm, I think what I said is correct. The S/360 system was released in
1964. My friend Russ Roebling (360/50 chief designer ) once told me the
console came from the office products (typewriter) division. I wish I
could remember the story he told me, but IIRC it was something WRT to
politics inside of IBM and ensuring the console device and the 360's launch
between the divisions. [Just like every large firm I have worked, I'm not
really surprised to hear that divisional fiefdoms were rampant at IBM in
those days, too].
I'm fairly sure that the Selectric (I) was early1960s (I think 61/62). I
just don't remember the model number of the S/360's console (every device
at IBM had numeric names), your memory is likely that the number was 7xy.
But as I said, I'm fair sure that the guts of the console were based on
the Selectric's design.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201109/facebdc3/attachment.htm>
From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 10 08:08:44 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 09:08:44 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011100851280.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Mon, 9 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> The Qume printers seemed to have been the best round 1980 when we used
> them in our applications. In particular, a large choice of wheels and
> fine-grained spacing. I forget how the spacing worked.
Presumably some sort of a table lookup, based on which character is about
to be hit? Or are you referring to the micro-spacing itself?
> The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the
> /360 itself. The model numbers I recall were 735, and the newer
> generation 2731/2735. The last digit related to the carriage width
> (11"/15").
I once had a fine collection of goofballs (as we called them); sadly lost
in a house move :-(
> Round the time in question I bought a second-hand 735 machine. It had
> an arcane interface that directly talked to the magnets. I built an
> interface for it to a parallel port [...]
I'd like to know a bit more about that interface... You'd have to control
the carriage, roller, swivel/tilt/hit etc. How did you detect the BREAK
key to get the 360's attention and unlock the keyboard?
-- Dave
From grog at lemis.com Tue Nov 10 10:10:57 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:10:57 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MXEiOLCPw_+OcitTXe=rWA6dQf+=G5yO0ZE7zzEpojsw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2MXEiOLCPw_+OcitTXe=rWA6dQf+=G5yO0ZE7zzEpojsw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201110001057.GP99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Monday, 9 November 2020 at 9:26:05 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 11:36 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the /360
>> itself.
>>
> Hmmm, I think what I said is correct. The S/360 system was released in
> 1964. My friend Russ Roebling (360/50 chief designer ) once told me the
> console came from the office products (typewriter) division. I wish I
> could remember the story he told me, but IIRC it was something WRT to
> politics inside of IBM and ensuring the console device and the 360's launch
> between the divisions. [Just like every large firm I have worked, I'm not
> really surprised to hear that divisional fiefdoms were rampant at IBM in
> those days, too].
>
> I'm fairly sure that the Selectric (I) was early1960s (I think 61/62). I
> just don't remember the model number of the S/360's console (every device
> at IBM had numeric names), your memory is likely that the number was 7xy.
> But as I said, I'm fair sure that the guts of the console were based on
> the Selectric's design.
Thanks for the interesting details. Yes, that all matches my
recollection. Originally you were talking about mid- to late 1970s,
and that's what my "much earlier" referred to.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/9777d59d/attachment.sig>
From grog at lemis.com Tue Nov 10 10:48:03 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:48:03 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011100851280.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011100851280.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20201110004803.GQ99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 9:08:44 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
>> The Qume printers seemed to have been the best round 1980 when we used
>> them in our applications. In particular, a large choice of wheels and
>> fine-grained spacing. I forget how the spacing worked.
>
> Presumably some sort of a table lookup, based on which character is about
> to be hit? Or are you referring to the micro-spacing itself?
"Yes". As I said, I forget. I have a feeling that it must have been
explicit micro-spacing, since the machine didn't know anything about
the kind of daisy wheel that was fitted.
>> The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the
>> /360 itself. The model numbers I recall were 735, and the newer
>> generation 2731/2735. The last digit related to the carriage width
>> (11"/15").
>
> I once had a fine collection of goofballs (as we called them); sadly lost
> in a house move :-(
I was going to say "ditto", but I think I actually sold them along
with the 735.
>> Round the time in question I bought a second-hand 735 machine. It had
>> an arcane interface that directly talked to the magnets. I built an
>> interface for it to a parallel port [...]
>
> I'd like to know a bit more about that interface... You'd have to
> control the carriage, roller, swivel/tilt/hit etc.
Yes, I'm trying to recall that too. The ball itself was controlled by
6 signals: Up 1, up 2 (for the 4 rows of characters), left 1, left 2,
left 2 (yes, twice) and right 5, for a total of 11 columns. But my
recollection was that I only had about 10 power transistors driving
the thing. I wish I had kept more details. Maybe there's something
amongst the useless junk in the shed.
> How did you detect the BREAK key to get the 360's attention and
> unlock the keyboard?
I didn't. The 735 doesn't have a BREAK key. It was a typewriter, not
a teletype. I used it as a printer in addition to a normal glass TTY.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/7bec0f8e/attachment.sig>
From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 11 00:48:22 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 09:48:22 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <20201110001057.GP99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2MXEiOLCPw_+OcitTXe=rWA6dQf+=G5yO0ZE7zzEpojsw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201110001057.GP99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O=tT3Ww+UpaJeSc9kNhuqOkMVXbJy5JYQQropy67H3nw@mail.gmail.com>
Fair enough, sorry to be confusing. It is interesting that a piece of IBM
early 60s mechanical design (the electric), lasted as long as it did. I
don't know if there was a Selectric IV, there certainly was a Selectric III
that was sold through the 70s and early 1980s. Wang created what they
called word processing and only then did the Selectrics and Daisy Wheels
start to slowly diminish[1]. By the 80s, when we created Stellar
Computers, all of the admin's had a PC/AT and a copy of Wordperfect and
used our LaserWriters in Engineering, but we still had one Selectric for
times when a typewriter was easier.
Clem
1] A fun side story. One of many sisters is/was a professional concert
harpist (she has incredible manual dexterity). Tough to feed yourself as
a concert harpist, so she got a job at MIT working as Ron's admin. Her
terminal was an ITS connection and so they taught her to edit documents
using EMACS/Tex (she actually typed the RSA papers for Ron so many years
ago using the same). At one point, she was thinking of leaving MIT, and
when she would interview different firms, they usually would ask her if she
knew 'Wang.' It's interesting that her MIT skills were the ones that
lasted. For the last few years, she has worked as a technical editor/book
index creator *etc*.. for a number of research orgs and technical book
publishers -- she can handle EMACS and LaTex of course, not just MS-Word ;-)
On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 7:10 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Monday, 9 November 2020 at 9:26:05 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 11:36 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> The golfball console for the /360 was much earlier than that, like the
> /360
> >> itself.
> >>
> > Hmmm, I think what I said is correct. The S/360 system was released in
> > 1964. My friend Russ Roebling (360/50 chief designer ) once told me the
> > console came from the office products (typewriter) division. I wish I
> > could remember the story he told me, but IIRC it was something WRT to
> > politics inside of IBM and ensuring the console device and the 360's
> launch
> > between the divisions. [Just like every large firm I have worked, I'm
> not
> > really surprised to hear that divisional fiefdoms were rampant at IBM in
> > those days, too].
> >
> > I'm fairly sure that the Selectric (I) was early1960s (I think 61/62).
> I
> > just don't remember the model number of the S/360's console (every device
> > at IBM had numeric names), your memory is likely that the number was 7xy.
> > But as I said, I'm fair sure that the guts of the console were based on
> > the Selectric's design.
>
> Thanks for the interesting details. Yes, that all matches my
> recollection. Originally you were talking about mid- to late 1970s,
> and that's what my "much earlier" referred to.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/6321acf5/attachment.htm>
From stewart at serissa.com Wed Nov 11 01:10:56 2020
From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 10:10:56 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Daisy wheel printers (was: [TUHS] The Elements Of Style:
UNIX As Literature)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2O=tT3Ww+UpaJeSc9kNhuqOkMVXbJy5JYQQropy67H3nw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<175409f6-af94-601e-3db3-a5af5d7f64d0@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2N0KbsZ4URqruuPnfvaOvnCTrxU9tr+PRqHk_keVSQxdQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106225825.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2PHRMsTGb2uZstUr7zjkU5mnOe=d0K8SnW-KBNf13empQ@mail.gmail.com>
<20201109043619.GO99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2MXEiOLCPw_+OcitTXe=rWA6dQf+=G5yO0ZE7zzEpojsw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201110001057.GP99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2O=tT3Ww+UpaJeSc9kNhuqOkMVXbJy5JYQQropy67H3nw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <E8E5BEC3-2525-4562-A592-41CF44D890B4@serissa.com>
Speaking of the Selectric
Another old story about printers. Back in 1974 (ish) I was an undergrad at MIT working at the Architecture Machine Group, which was the predecessor to the Media Lab. We had a home-grown OS for the Interdata 16-bit minicomputers, whose instruction sets were very much like 16-bit IBM 360’s.
There was an IBM 2741 there for talking to the institute mainframes, and somehow I got the job of writing a device driver for it. It was quite an adventure getting the tilt-rotate codes and so forth to fit in the 160 hex bytes available… I recall having to chain short branches together if the condition codes were right.
The success of that made me a go-to guy for printing, unfortunately, so later it was my job to patch the line printer to print capital O after the 0 wore out*.
* A real thing, way before Dilbert got hold of it.
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 09:11:18 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 10:11:18 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
Message-ID: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/064fe466/attachment.sig>
From imp at bsdimp.com Wed Nov 11 09:38:17 2020
From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 16:38:17 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CANCZdfp7qyEYd5DLMY95d=YBrnE1MM-nJpwhHzs9_gufJiDkyQ@mail.gmail.com>
It depends a lot on when.
For pure research V7 / 2BSD / 4BSD that was true. You can give the
install.ms from these releases as a reference. It was a lot more daunting
than today, and often times only bug fixes warranted a recompile. You can
find references in the 2.11BSD patch series to the 'annual recompilation of
the sources' which Steve did and where he'd always find something.
However, after that, everything was binaries. The kernel you got was a
bunch of .o files (even for the V7 ports), though often you had all the
source to the drivers (but not the core of the kernel). I have said files
for Venix, though there it was an extra cost option it seems (I say seems,
since I've not found a price sheet for it from the era, though I have the
disks). DEC's ultrix was binary. Sun's SunOS. All the Unisoft ports to 68k
machines. Sony's NEWS workstations likewise. HP's unix offerings too. Sure,
you could get a source license, sometimes, but they kept those expensive.
IBM and VMS were always binary only (though again, you could buy source if
you had the right amount of $$$ and leverage).
So I'm not sure what old days you were talking about, or which
machines.... The BSD build.sh and/or make world were a bit of an anomaly
imho. Once Linux got distributions the whole notion of building it yourself
faded somewhat.
Warner
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 4:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/5bd4ab63/attachment-0001.htm>
From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 11 09:45:15 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 18:45:15 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did) build
from source but usually just built parts. By the time of VMS and the
other minis, you tended to link together from modules, although many sites
did have sources (in assembler).
Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not giving away
much. In the case of IBM, eventually, Amdahl started cloning and they got
a tad more closed, but by that time there were also many mainframe OS
flavors in wild.
That said, I think Burrough's gave away the ESPOL code for their systems,
but I never saw it; so I can not speak definitively there.
Unix was different. Like Burrough's, it was heavily written in a systems
programming language. To my knowledge, the 'concept' or 'porting' the OS
in it's entirety to a completely new ISA began with UNIX.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/ef916116/attachment.htm>
From bakul at iitbombay.org Wed Nov 11 10:01:41 2020
From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 16:01:41 -0800
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <756A5C2A-F2AF-4792-8A9B-5CB5DCE04AF2@iitbombay.org>
On Nov 10, 2020, at 3:11 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
Not sure about a "big computer" but what about this paper by Richard
Miller on porting V6 to Interdata 7/32?
http://bitsavers.org/bits/Interdata/32bit/unix/univWollongong_v6/miller.pdf
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 10:02:58 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 11:02:58 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <CAP2nic0LCUEGmMJ6_3OJQw8UPZgozjJGoetHJabL-w0DFL6neg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic0LCUEGmMJ6_3OJQw8UPZgozjJGoetHJabL-w0DFL6neg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201111000258.GX99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 16:52:58 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> If 4.3BSD is old enough, the System Administrator's Manual (e.g.
> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/isi/bsd/490197C_Unix_4.3BSD_System_Administrator_Guide_ISI_Release_4.1_May88.pdf)
> section 4.2 _et seq_.
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 4:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
>> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
>> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> How olden days do you mean?
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I was thinking commercial systems of the
1960s and 1970s, not any form of Unix.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/599d84c8/attachment.sig>
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 10:06:21 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 11:06:21 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 18:45:15 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
>> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
>> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
> distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did)
> build from source but usually just built parts.
Right, this is my recollection.
> Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not
> giving away much.
Again, my assessment.
The real issue is: where can I find a reference? Google brings up so
many false positives that it's not worth the trouble, and Wikipedia's
pages on "System generation" are too vague.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/16cdc204/attachment.sig>
From athornton at gmail.com Wed Nov 11 10:10:37 2020
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 17:10:37 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
Pretty sure this VM/370 reference has, somewhere in its rather formidable
bulk, what you're looking for. Start around p. 225:
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/ibm/370/VM_370/Release_6/GC20-1801-10_VM370_Sysgen_Rel_6_Jan80.pdf
Now granted VM was never the most popular of the IBM OSes. But it was
delivered (and patched) as assembler sources. You may also enjoy Melinda
Varian's "What Mother Never Told You about VM Service."
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/tutorial.pdf
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 5:06 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 18:45:15 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> >> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
> >> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
> >> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
> >
> > Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
> > distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did)
> > build from source but usually just built parts.
>
> Right, this is my recollection.
>
> > Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not
> > giving away much.
>
> Again, my assessment.
>
> The real issue is: where can I find a reference? Google brings up so
> many false positives that it's not worth the trouble, and Wikipedia's
> pages on "System generation" are too vague.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/1de9d07a/attachment.htm>
From athornton at gmail.com Wed Nov 11 10:12:27 2020
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 17:12:27 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
I don't know enough about MVS but it too is public domain until 3.8j or so,
and I would expect that the way you serviced the system was about the same:
patch the assembly code from PTFs (or whatever those are called in
MVS-land), reassemble the modules, relink into a kernel/system
image/whatever the os-appropriate nomenclature is.
Adam
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 5:10 PM Adam Thornton <athornton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pretty sure this VM/370 reference has, somewhere in its rather formidable
> bulk, what you're looking for. Start around p. 225:
>
>
> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/ibm/370/VM_370/Release_6/GC20-1801-10_VM370_Sysgen_Rel_6_Jan80.pdf
>
> Now granted VM was never the most popular of the IBM OSes. But it was
> delivered (and patched) as assembler sources. You may also enjoy Melinda
> Varian's "What Mother Never Told You about VM Service."
> http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/tutorial.pdf
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 5:06 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 18:45:15 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> >> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
>> >> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
>> >> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>> >
>> > Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
>> > distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did)
>> > build from source but usually just built parts.
>>
>> Right, this is my recollection.
>>
>> > Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not
>> > giving away much.
>>
>> Again, my assessment.
>>
>> The real issue is: where can I find a reference? Google brings up so
>> many false positives that it's not worth the trouble, and Wikipedia's
>> pages on "System generation" are too vague.
>>
>> Greg
>> --
>> Sent from my desktop computer.
>> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
>> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
>> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/8c8e8124/attachment-0001.htm>
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 11 11:01:40 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:01:40 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for a
> big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference, and
> I can't find one! Can anybody help?
Depends what you mean by "olden days" and "big computer". As I recall we
(Uni of NSW) had the source to the 360/50 and the Cyber 72, but not for
the VMS stuff; binaries were patched with IEBUPDTE and later on SUPERZAP
(possibly written locally).
I got an official pat on the back for getting SPITBOL to work after its
time-bombs (yes, plural) expired[*]...
And we had the source to something called Unix Edition 5 & 6 etc, but they
were hardly mainframes :-)
[*]
The first bomb failed with an error message, so I patched that. It then
started crashing rather mysteriously, and I discovered that it was taking
an indirect jump to whatever was in R0 at the time (I think). Rather than
waste time digging them all out, I wrote a program that LOADed the binary,
scanned memory for a word that matched that date, and printed each address
so they could then be inspected by hand. There were something like six of
them... One big SUPERZAP later, and we had a working SPITBOL compiler
again; a bored CompSci student is terrible to behold.
-- Dave
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 11 11:26:33 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:26:33 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <756A5C2A-F2AF-4792-8A9B-5CB5DCE04AF2@iitbombay.org>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<756A5C2A-F2AF-4792-8A9B-5CB5DCE04AF2@iitbombay.org>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111225140.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Tue, 10 Nov 2020, Bakul Shah wrote:
> Not sure about a "big computer" but what about this paper by Richard
> Miller on porting V6 to Interdata 7/32?
>
> http://bitsavers.org/bits/Interdata/32bit/unix/univWollongong_v6/miller.pdf
Either that server is suddenly overloaded, or the Interweb pipes are
suddenly blocked...
-- Dave
From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 11 12:07:20 2020
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 21:07:20 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O7GoF4vh4_wZvRE4qQ=On5OCwtpe=dxmLON7TK-nLb3g@mail.gmail.com>
Well bitsavers is probably your best bet. I would look at any ibm doc for
os/360 and TSS/360. Then look at the DEC docs for Tops-10 and the distro
library's. Tops-20 I would have expected but maybe not as by the VMS and
more closed culture had begun at DEC but because it was based on Tenex
(from BBN) might have been available with full sources.
IIRC early versions of RT-11 was distributed as a binary but the sources
were readily available. I know I have seen them. Some of the first
assembler based driver code I ever looked was from RT11 (the TC11 driver)
TSS/8 was in PDP-8 source originally from CMU but DEC made it a product.
That was source which I think I have somewhere from the paper tape swapping
hack.
I never looked for or built OS/8 but I have to believe it was distributed
as source from DEC
As I said I would suggest bit savers.
Clem
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 7:06 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 18:45:15 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> >> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
> >> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference,
> >> and I can't find one! Can anybody help?
> >
> > Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
> > distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did)
> > build from source but usually just built parts.
>
> Right, this is my recollection.
>
> > Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not
> > giving away much.
>
> Again, my assessment.
>
> The real issue is: where can I find a reference? Google brings up so
> many false positives that it's not worth the trouble, and Wikipedia's
> pages on "System generation" are too vague.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/cf16b140/attachment.htm>
From brad at anduin.eldar.org Wed Nov 11 12:03:15 2020
From: brad at anduin.eldar.org (Brad Spencer)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 21:03:15 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
(message from Dave Horsfall on Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:01:40 +1100 (EST))
Message-ID: <xono8k4myzg.fsf@anduin.eldar.org>
Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> writes:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
>> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for a
>> big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference, and
>> I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> Depends what you mean by "olden days" and "big computer". As I recall we
> (Uni of NSW) had the source to the 360/50 and the Cyber 72, but not for
> the VMS stuff; binaries were patched with IEBUPDTE and later on SUPERZAP
> (possibly written locally).
>
> I got an official pat on the back for getting SPITBOL to work after its
> time-bombs (yes, plural) expired[*]...
>
> And we had the source to something called Unix Edition 5 & 6 etc, but they
> were hardly mainframes :-)
>
> [*]
> The first bomb failed with an error message, so I patched that. It then
> started crashing rather mysteriously, and I discovered that it was taking
> an indirect jump to whatever was in R0 at the time (I think). Rather than
> waste time digging them all out, I wrote a program that LOADed the binary,
> scanned memory for a word that matched that date, and printed each address
> so they could then be inspected by hand. There were something like six of
> them... One big SUPERZAP later, and we had a working SPITBOL compiler
> again; a bored CompSci student is terrible to behold.
>
> -- Dave
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
Wow... you too... Back in the late 1980s or early 1990s I removed a
time bomb from a language compiler running on a Data General MV/10000
with AOS/VS as the OS while an undergrad. This particular bomb,
apparently, was put in by a disgruntled employee of the company that
provided the compiler, as I received the story. I honestly don't know
many of the details, beyond that. The effort required that I
disassemble the compiler with a assembly debugger and then patch the
machine code to defeat the bomb. I seem to remember that I just patched
out a jump instruction with a nop or two. I have mostly forgotten what
the compiler was for, but it may have been the commercial Simscript
compiler for the DG. We, that is myself and one of the professors, sent
the patch to the company that provided the compiler and I know that they
ended up giving the patch out as another university with the same bomb
problem sent me a thank you note. The only other work around was to set
the clock back on the system, as it literally was a time based bomb.
--
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 13:09:51 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 14:09:51 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 17:12:27 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> I don't know enough about MVS but it too is public domain until 3.8j or so,
> and I would expect that the way you serviced the system was about the same:
> patch the assembly code from PTFs (or whatever those are called in
> MVS-land),
Right! There's a TLA that rings a bell. "Permanent Temporary Fix"?
Or was that a reinterpretation? But yes, it's clearly source-related.
> reassemble the modules, relink into a kernel/system image/whatever
> the os-appropriate nomenclature is.
Yup. That reminds me of a poem published in Datamation decades ago:
On either die the printer lie
Fat stacks of paper six feet high
That stun the mind abnd blur the eye,
And lo! Still more comes streaming by,
A fresh SYSABEND dump.
Ye printer clackth merrily
"Compleccioun code is 043"
Alack! What can the matter be
That made SYSABEND dump?
My TCAM hath no MCP?
My data cannot OPENed be?
Consult my neighbourhood SE?
The devil take thy dam and thee,
Thou vile SYSABEND dump!
Assemble modules on the fly
And link for yet another try.
With SUPERZAP a patch apply,
This time THOU SHALT NOT DUMP!
On either side the printer lie
Fat stacks of paper twelve feet high
That blow the mind and blast the eye.
Gadzooks! How shrill yon varlet's cry
As sixteen megabytes go by
In yet another dump.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/fc5d54c8/attachment.sig>
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 13:11:26 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 14:11:26 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20201111031126.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Wednesday, 11 November 2020 at 12:01:40 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
>> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for a
>> big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference, and
>> I can't find one! Can anybody help?
>
> Depends what you mean by "olden days" and "big computer".
Since clarified, of course, but you're in the right track.
> As I recall we (Uni of NSW) had the source to the 360/50 and the
> Cyber 72, but not for the VMS stuff; binaries were patched with
> IEBUPDTE and later on SUPERZAP (possibly written locally).
Was SUPERZAP source or object related? I thought the latter, but I've
never come close to it.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/cbd236b6/attachment.sig>
From athornton at gmail.com Wed Nov 11 13:22:01 2020
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2020 20:22:01 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111031126.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20201111031126.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic2Fj-BT+dB-YjM0AeXJYxoF3iL6rHzDPGWhkahBTdXgNQ@mail.gmail.com>
Pretty sure SUPERZAP was for object files. That was for wizardry beyond my
ken. Normal VM service, as I recall, and I am only about 75% sure I'm
right, was in the form of source patches rather like diff files--I don't
know anymore if they were literally editor commands to transform File A
into File B, but that was the net effect--plus reassembly. Patching the
object modules was possible, but you had to be better at it than I ever was
to pull it off.
Adam
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 8:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, 11 November 2020 at 12:01:40 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> >
> >> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
> >> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for a
> >> big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference, and
> >> I can't find one! Can anybody help?
> >
> > Depends what you mean by "olden days" and "big computer".
>
> Since clarified, of course, but you're in the right track.
>
> > As I recall we (Uni of NSW) had the source to the 360/50 and the
> > Cyber 72, but not for the VMS stuff; binaries were patched with
> > IEBUPDTE and later on SUPERZAP (possibly written locally).
>
> Was SUPERZAP source or object related? I thought the latter, but I've
> never come close to it.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201110/4c900205/attachment-0001.htm>
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 11 14:54:06 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 15:54:06 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111553300.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> Right! There's a TLA that rings a bell. "Permanent Temporary Fix"?
Program Temporary Fix.
-- Dave
From grog at lemis.com Wed Nov 11 14:58:23 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 15:58:23 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111553300.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111553300.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20201111045823.GH99027@eureka.lemis.com>
On Wednesday, 11 November 2020 at 15:54:06 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
>> Right! There's a TLA that rings a bell. "Permanent Temporary Fix"?
>
> Program Temporary Fix.
Yes. But I recall correctly. See the Wikipedia page:
Customers sometimes explain the acronym in a tongue-in-cheek manner
as permanent temporary fix or more practically probably this fixes,
because they have the option to make the PTF a permanent part of the
operating system if the patch fixes the problem.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/9cf5c520/attachment.sig>
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 11 15:15:58 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 16:15:58 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111031126.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111133190.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20201111031126.GE99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111611460.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> Was SUPERZAP source or object related? I thought the latter, but I've
> never come close to it.
Binary, for things for which there was no source (like SPITBOL). To edit
the source, you used a keypunch :-)
Which reminds me; our SPITBOL was just a demo program, until I nobbled it;
the "real" one (no time bomb) cost many $$$ which we couldn't afford.
-- Dave, a bored CompSci student at the time
From peter at rulingia.com Wed Nov 11 18:31:56 2020
From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 19:31:56 +1100
Subject: [COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com>
On 2020-Nov-06 10:07:21 -0500, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>Will, I do still the same thing, but the reason for 72 for email being that
>way is still card-based. In FORTRAN the first column defines if the card
>is new (a blank), a comment (a capital C), no zero a 'continuation' of the
>last card. But column 73-80 were 'special' and used to store sequence #s
>(this was handy when you dropped your card deck, card sorters could put it
>back into canonical order).
Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore
columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read any
(but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of 36-bit words
in an IBM 701.
--
Peter Jeremy
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 963 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201111/f4ec68e4/attachment.sig>
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Wed Nov 11 22:21:10 2020
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:21:10 +0100
Subject: [COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com> (Peter Jeremy via
COFF's message of "Wed, 11 Nov 2020 19:31:56 +1100")
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com>
Message-ID: <m2v9ecdqyx.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Peter Jeremy via COFF <coff at minnie.tuhs.org> writes:
> Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore
> columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read any
> (but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of 36-bit words
> in an IBM 701.
...and for those who, like me, did a double-take on that, thinking "WTF?
That would mean it read *rows* of bits from the card into machine words!",
I checked, and yes, that's exactly what it did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card_input/output#Binary_format
-tih (who learned FORTRAN using punched cards on a UNIVAC)
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Wed Nov 11 22:21:10 2020
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:21:10 +0100
Subject: [COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com> (Peter Jeremy via
COFF's message of "Wed, 11 Nov 2020 19:31:56 +1100")
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com>
Message-ID: <m2v9ecdqyx.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Peter Jeremy via COFF <coff at minnie.tuhs.org> writes:
> Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore
> columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read any
> (but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of 36-bit words
> in an IBM 701.
...and for those who, like me, did a double-take on that, thinking "WTF?
That would mean it read *rows* of bits from the card into machine words!",
I checked, and yes, that's exactly what it did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card_input/output#Binary_format
-tih (who learned FORTRAN using punched cards on a UNIVAC)
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From dave at horsfall.org Thu Nov 12 07:09:01 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 08:09:01 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
In-Reply-To: <20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com>
References: <CAEuQd1AWs=jpHYk3nGpKsBV=qF4DZVXvXzynSeDK5S-r-hfryw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201106014109.GP26296@mcvoy.com>
<CAD2gp_Q-wTvG2cAW5goJFYW3A6qF9zOuTh=Y4Kahh0nLBtof2Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKzdPgx1Ptu=sahO3o5KYS-A=vnfXK-hs=QeVwO_Vd1cFfaeqw@mail.gmail.com>
<a588c934-e403-2a4e-4701-669b8c14e989@gmail.com>
<CAC20D2PPw3Ua3-VpMYjh=NaC09=9Q528kqEvE7SvmO3Ly2JO0A@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111083156.GA57519@server.rulingia.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011120807450.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Peter Jeremy via COFF wrote:
> Since no-one has mentioned it, the reason why Fortran and Cobol ignore
> columns 73-80 goes back to the IBM 711 card reader - which could read
> any (but usually configured for the first) 72 columns into pairs of
> 36-bit words in an IBM 701.
I'll be damned... So obvious when it's pointed out!
-- Dave
From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 13 12:15:14 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:15:14 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <20201111045823.GH99027@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111553300.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20201111045823.GH99027@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011131309290.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>> Program Temporary Fix.
>
> Yes. But I recall correctly. See the Wikipedia page:
>
> Customers sometimes explain the acronym in a tongue-in-cheek manner as
> permanent temporary fix or more practically probably this fixes,
> because they have the option to make the PTF a permanent part of the
> operating system if the patch fixes the problem.
Yeah, they did have a habit of being permanent, but I don't recall
them ever being called by any of those names during my servitude.
-- Dave
From athornton at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 16:57:11 2020
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 23:57:11 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011131309290.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20201110231118.GW99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAC20D2OA5mqCoHFEg=2+5STe_4mA6DRq=+ofkzbaWS1CsKRXXw@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111000621.GY99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<CAP2nic3_-RWfowxqPuu1gyACXeghv4H-+_uBPfXKpdy85xw2_A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAP2nic24WCWz0A=W6Z5Ez_NJzLrDrQKWcZChQ-+T9xzg6n4cFA@mail.gmail.com>
<20201111030951.GD99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011111553300.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20201111045823.GH99027@eureka.lemis.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011131309290.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic2rz21rsJhyfrM09t9cM0Sb5r108SkgJreJKdZLpGkz=w@mail.gmail.com>
This has inspired me to re-read Melinda Varian's "What Mother Never Told
You About VM Service" and it's still a magnificent document. I once again
find the control files confusing as hell, but once you get used to how they
work, which once upon a time I was, you had a repeatable (and unwindable!)
service process.
I miss the casualness with which you'd build a new CP nucleus and test it
out on a second-level system. It's so much better than anything in the
Unix world, far more elegant than testing kernel patches in a Linux virtual
machine, largely because of the ease with which you can attach minidisks to
a first, second, or whatever-level system. I guess cgroups and bind mounts
finally get you most of the way there in terms of mounting arbitrary
storage to virtual systems, but it's still a pain in the ass to test
multiple kernels.
Not that I spend much time anymore that far down in the system (any
system!), but...VM got a lot of things right.
Adam
On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 7:15 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
> >> Program Temporary Fix.
> >
> > Yes. But I recall correctly. See the Wikipedia page:
> >
> > Customers sometimes explain the acronym in a tongue-in-cheek manner as
> > permanent temporary fix or more practically probably this fixes,
> > because they have the option to make the PTF a permanent part of the
> > operating system if the patch fixes the problem.
>
> Yeah, they did have a habit of being permanent, but I don't recall
> them ever being called by any of those names during my servitude.
>
> -- Dave
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201112/b57a2bd0/attachment.htm>
From grog at lemis.com Tue Nov 24 08:29:52 2020
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 09:29:52 +1100
Subject: [COFF] DDP-516 hardware (was: 516-TSS Documents)
In-Reply-To: <20201123134234.8F52218C096@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20201123134234.8F52218C096@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20201123222952.GF56952@eureka.lemis.com>
[Redirecting to COFF]
On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 8:42:34 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 12:28 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org> wrote:
>
>> The Honeywell DDP-516 was the computer (running specialized software
>> written by Bolt, Bernanek & Newman (BBN)) which was the initial model of
>> the ARPANET Interface Message Processors (IMP).
>
> The IMPs had a lot of custom interface hardware; sui generis serial
> interlocked host interfaces (so-called 1822), and also the high-speed modem
> interfaces. I think there was also a watchdog time, IIRC (this is all from
> memory, but the ARPANET papers from JCC cover it all).
I worked with a DDP-516 at DFVLR 46 years ago. My understanding was
that the standard equipment included two different channel interfaces.
One, the DMC (Direct Multiplexer Control, I think) proved to be just
what I needed for my program, a relatively simple tape copy program.
The input tape was analogue, unbuffered, and couldn't be stopped, so
it was imperative to accept all data as it came in from the ADC.
But the program didn't work. According to the docco, the DMC should
have reset when the transfer was complete (maybe depending on
configuration parameters), but it didn't. We called in Honeywell
support, who scratched their heads and went away, only to come back
later and say that it couldn't be fixed.
I worked around the problem in software by continually checking the
transfer count and restarting when the count reached 0. So the
program worked, but I was left wondering whether this was a design
problem or a support failure. Has anybody else worked with this
feature?
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20201124/e499c16f/attachment.sig>
From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 27 06:18:29 2020
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 07:18:29 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] In memorium: Ada Lovelace
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011270713450.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
The world's first computer programmer (and a mathematician, when that was
deemed unseemly for a mere woman), we lost her in 1852 from uterine
cancer.
-- Dave