nigwil_

screen capture of the present day PERQ emulator running a demo shown originally at SIGGRAPH 1982

https://imgur.com/gallery/3-rivers-computer-corporation-perq...

Richard Cornwell's emulator is implemented within the OpenSimH framework, and forms the basis of PiDP-10:

https://github.com/rcornwell/sims/tree/master?tab=readme-ov-...

From the GitHub entry: The KA10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 4.5, 5.03 and 6.03, ITS and WAITS. The KI10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 6.03 with VMSER. The KL10 sim has successfully run Tops 10 6.03-7.03, ITS and Tops 20 V2-V7. The KS10 sim has successfully run Tops 10, Tops 20 and ITS.

PiDP-10 can run a variety of PDP-10 operating systems, although the front-panel is specific to the early KA10 model.

Or a video introduction if you prefer: https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI?si=yJCX-CS1T6zsYiLY

The reason some of us MTBers switched: a single outing with rim-brakes in wet/muddy/dusty conditions would grind a set of pads to nothing (adding $25+ per outing for replacements), along with the wheel rim being ground thin to the point where the wheel wall would fail. Disc brakes last repeated use in adverse conditions and braking force remained consistent over many hours.

MPW had an interesting About box animation too. I recorded this back in 2011 using vMac emulator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJn3qxK9Br0

save a click: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442

Detailed exposition here:

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/B5000_5500_5700/Organick_...

I think it is worth mentioning that this was Robert Dewar's second or third Ada implementation (depending on how you want to count them). Robert was involved with the original Ada/Ed implementation from the late 1970s/early 1980s at NYU (targeting VAX minicomputers), and the re-implementation of that into a C-based implementation that ran on MS-DOS. Ada/Ed was the first validated Ada implementation, and it used SETL as its implementation language which Robert was actively involved in through the 1970s (so he had a long track record of language implementations).

What we are missing about the Ada story is the long line of languages and tools that inspired the Green design that lead to Ada, that is the language LIS (Pascal/Simula inspired) and its toolchain that Jean Ichbiah and associates used as inspiration for the Ada design.

Excel Versus Excel! EVE...

Could use Automator with AppleScript:

  x@Mac-mini-M1 ~ % cat ClearClipboard.scpt 
  on run
   tell application "System Events" to set the clipboard to ""
  end run
  x@Mac-mini-M1 ~ %

Unisys has been very supportive of our efforts to find and preserve early Burroughs software and generously provided corporate time to arrange licensing and provide copies of anything they still had. Burroughs B5000 series now has a rich library of software and several emulator implementations (web-browser, simh and standalone). However the B6000/7000 family software recovery is sparse with critical pieces still missing, we are unable to bootstrap a working MCP as yet.

"In the case of CHERI, this was to change the user-visible abstract machine exposed by hardware in a way that hasn’t been done for mainstream hardware since the PDP-11." - the authors should take the time to familiarise themselves with the Burroughs B6700 (designed in the 1960s) which provided tagged memory, and a similar mechanism to CHERI architectural capabilities through the B6700 descriptor mechanism.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems_descriptors

The PDP-11 minicomputer was a low-cost and undoubtably successful for its time system but a low bar for architectural sophistication or an exemplar for state of the art in computer architecture particularly in terms of memory design.

CHERI is a welcome development in producing safer systems, but it is packaging ideas that have been around for 50+ years, long overdue of course, but finally hardware costs have commoditised such that these ideas can be baked into mass produced hardware.

Dave Ackley explores this aspect here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiqMGhn9rk

"PCI-e is descendant from Infiniband which in turn is decendant from ServerNet ..." When you say PCIe descended from IB, at the signalling layer or a higher layer? Can you suggest a starting place to understand this lineage please, was it in the PCIe standards group discussions? I've not heard of this relationship before and I'm not having much luck finding the original discussion.

I asked Wilm in Sep-2020 and three were produced as a one-off build, Wilm did not indicate any intention to produce more.

In computing history claims like "first" and "commercial success" need to be qualified and defined, and therein things become difficult since timing and thresholds matter to meet a generally acceptable standard of either claim.

In the 1960s, several companies were selling commercial database management systems (as a distinct product), for example: IBM IMS, Univac DMS and General Electric IDS. These ideas were established to a level that there was a database standard committee known as CODASYL active from 1959 onward.

There is a good overview of the 1960s here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-0-387-3474...

IBM AIX (IBM's variant of the UNIX operating system) has long supported IPoFC (IP over Fibre Channel). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX

This map from Feb-1978 shows Illiac IV connected to ARPANET (top-left of diagram):

https://i.imgur.com/7hSaVVf.png

By this time Illiac IV had been connected to ARPAnet since Nov-1975.

The Illiac IV had various supporting systems: Burroughs B6700, DEC PDP-10 and PDP-11s.

Map is from this document: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a482154.pdf

I have been attempting to locate software for the Illiac IV. I corresponded with as many of the people involved with it I could easily find online and with NASA Ames (which has a history office!).

I've been looking for software such as this:

ASK - assembler for the Illiac IV on the Burroughs B5500 and later B6700

SSK - simulator for the Illiac IV on the Burroughs B5500 and later B6700

CFD - a FORTRAN like language targeted at CFD

Glypnir - ALGOL like language, likely not used at Ames

VECTORAL - vector processing language used at Ames

So far nothing has been found except the manual for CFD.

Unisys has helped but not unexpectedly the machines we are targeting were end-of-life in the late 1970s and so they did not keep software for them beyond that time.

We received some files from Release II.1 (early 1972) but it is missing significant components. After that time we have bits and pieces but nothing complete. We remain hopeful that someone has a distribution tape from the 1970s and we would expect that to have all the needed components.

As a reminder, we are still looking for complete distributions of the Burroughs B6700 MCP releases that include ESPOL/NEWP so we can complete an emulator and preserve this system into the future.

Exactly. We have to stop writing more C/C++ one day; can we at least autopilot down our freeways, and eventually colonise Mars on the back of a safe and secure language like Rust.

Rust for the Red Planet

Rust for the 2020s

Mars is covered in Rust

It just makes sense :-)

Several things caught my eye[1], but the moving sidewalk/footpath was a surprise to me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway

[1] horse drawn fire brigade, difficulty of crossing the busy road, sitting high-up on a carriage (safety nightmare)

interesting, someone has refined SETL2 into SetlX; I had not noticed that the SETL wikipedia entry has an entry for SetlX:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETL

In my other reply in this thread I highlighted the lineage of SETL, I neglected to also mention that SETL was an influence on ABC that influenced Python.

SETL has an interesting lineage and part to play in the history of computing:

The original SETL was implemented in a language known as LITTLE, Dave Shields noted in an email: "SETL was implemented in LITTLE, a language based on FORTRAN that had fixed=length bitfields as a fundamental data type."

Early SETL was used by Robert Dewar's team to implement the first validated Ada implementation, known as NYU Ada/Ed. This implementation worked as an interpreter.

We have a printed copy of the original SETL based NYU Ada/Ed but we are still to find the original SETL implementation. Maybe somewhere in the Courant Institute or their alumni there is someone with an original magnetic tape from the DEC VAX machine that ran these implementations.

Subtitle is a better heading and less border-line click-bait:

"Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft did not find the gas in red planet’s atmosphere during its first months of operation"

It needs driven wheels. Programmer spaces could be large empty warehouses, these mobile workstations gliding across the open space. If you needed to collaborate you could drive over to colleagues, be latched together for pair programming, able to move as a unit. Team meetings could have a flocking function to literally bring everyone together. Team leaders could have an override summon for those recalcitrants who are tardy attending the “stand-up”. There could be coffee-maker modules bolted on too, like saddle bags. ...jk