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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 16th Nov 2020, 2:34 pm   #21
Phil__G
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Does anyone remember 'Pilot' ?
"Programmed Instruction, Learning Or Teaching"
It was a text-matching language designed for conversational, Eliza type applications as I recall....
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 3:09 pm   #22
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I think Cambridge somehow managed to buy an IBM360.
That is what they got - but it was meant to be a 370. I think the problem was that they wanted very fast floating point arithmetic and there wasn't quite a 370 model (very new at the time) that was good enough. They were furious when they found it couldn't do mapped memory.

It was certainly very fast. I had already got a job as a systems programmer on Xerox Sigma 9 systems so had something to campoare it to.

I was one of its very first users!
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 3:28 pm   #23
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

Let me add my Cambridge reminiscences... As I recall the 370/165 started operation in 1973, and it was installed with a massive 1 megabyte of memory. It was soon upgraded to 2 megabytes. I remember a pub conversation some time later when the university had paid IBM quite a lot of money to increase the system's clock speed. The possibly apocryphal technique that the engineer had adopted to perform this upgrade was to cut a wire jumper. It was expensive because you had to know which jumper to cut!

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Old 16th Nov 2020, 4:54 pm   #24
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You omitted to mention that the massive 1Mb of extra memory was RAM (so not the usual core store) - very leading edge at the time. A whole cabinet filled with PCBs of many little RAM chips.

The water cooling helped of course!
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 5:12 pm   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil__G View Post
Does anyone remember 'Pilot' ?
"Programmed Instruction, Learning Or Teaching"
It was a text-matching language designed for conversational, Eliza type applications as I recall....
Indeed I do. I have the manual for the TRS-80 Model 3 version on my shelf (and I have the disks and a machine to run it on). Never did much with it though.

I wondered if the original question refered to an early HP BASIC but I can find nothing about implied multiplication in the manuals. HP did have a language where the assignment operator worked backwards, rather than

A = B + C

you wrote

B + C -> A

where -> was a single right-pointing arrow character called 'gozinta' in the technical notes I have...
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 6:54 pm   #26
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Default Re: Old Programming Language

HP calculators were always fond of "Reverse Polish" style using a stack.

A [ENTER] B +

Their big desktop scientific beasties [often with something like a flatbed plotter attached usubng HP-IB interface] were rather fun, I did a lot of Principal Component Analysis on one (which thankfully had a magstrip store so you didn't have to re-key everything for each 'run')

As to 60s/70s Academic computing, yes - the "Computer Board" were known to "Strongly Encourage" purchase of ICL kit by Universities/Government-Research outfits - if too many Unis bought the likes of IBM or Honeywell then there was a degree of jockeying to bring-forward or delay your planned mainframe-replacement so you were not the one who got 'fingered' by the Computer Board and required to buy ICL.

[I have fond memories of 1970s FORTRAN on the UMRCC CDC7600 - which was actually front-ended by an ICL1900-series running GEORGE3 to allow remote-job-submission from smaller Universities. After than I moved to using a UNIVAC and an IBM3033 at Rutherford Labs].

The CDC7600 was fun in that it used a native 60-bit word-length, wmeaning you could store ten 6-bit characters per word. Upper-case only though!]

Last edited by G6Tanuki; 16th Nov 2020 at 7:03 pm.
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Old 16th Nov 2020, 8:04 pm   #27
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When at Uni, we had a very weird central computer. A Harris which i believe was a bit odd in being 14 bit though that may be something I've remembered wrongly. Luckily for me, PCs were also just starting to come in and we had a few, Amstrad machines. I learned the value of backup discs fairly fast. They had PETs much earlier and I was lucky to work with them and learn that early. At college in between 6th form and Uni, we had something PDP11 based though I have no idea of what. What I do remember is how unreliable it was and was often not working. But in the end that turned out to be one of or lecturers who had a grudge who was somehow sabotaging it. I did hear that that same machine had been set to solve Pi, and succeeded!
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Old 18th Nov 2020, 2:54 am   #28
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Originally Posted by Phil__G View Post
Does anyone remember 'Pilot' ?
"Programmed Instruction, Learning Or Teaching"
It was a text-matching language designed for conversational, Eliza type applications as I recall....
Yes! It was a sort of "quiz construction kit" language. I painstakingly ported a version from the Apple ][ to the BBC Micro, neatened the variable names, replaced all GOSUBs with PROCs and even extended the language a bit.

A month later, The Micro User published the original author's listing, crudely ported still with upper case variable names, and still using GOTOs and GOSUBs ..... Perhaps I should have sent in my improved version, but I certainly did not feel like doing so at the time!

EDIT: It could well have been TI BASIC I was thinking of.
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Old 18th Nov 2020, 5:19 pm   #29
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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
HP calculators were always fond of "Reverse Polish" style using a stack.

A [ENTER] B +

Their big desktop scientific beasties [often with something like a flatbed plotter attached usubng HP-IB interface] were rather fun, I did a lot of Principal Component Analysis on one (which thankfully had a magstrip store so you didn't have to re-key everything for each 'run')
In my opinion there was only one HP RPN desktop calculator.

The HP9100 (beautiful discrete transistor design) has 3 registers -- X (Keyboard), Y (Accumulator), Z (Temp) but there was no automatic lift/drop. So I do not consider that to be really RPN

The HP9810 (TTL) was almost identical to the HP9100 at the user level so the same comment applies

The HP9820 (same processor as the HP9810) is an algebraic-notation machine

The HP9830 is a contender for 'first personal computer' and runs BASIC

The HP9815 (Motorola 6800 processor, the only 'standard' microprocessor in an HP calculator) is, indeed, a 4 level stack RPN machine

The HP9825 runs an enhanced version of the HP9820 language and is algebraic

HP9831 (very rare), HP9835 and HP9845 all run BASIC

After that the machines become more like computers, the HP80 series and then the HP9000/200 models.

But fortunately most of the older HP handheld calculators are RPN. I am not clever enough to use anything else.
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Old 18th Nov 2020, 6:08 pm   #30
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I am not clever enough to use anything else
That is how I feel about RPN, stops people borrowing ones calculator too. You can get them new from swissmicros https://www.swissmicros.com/ not the cheapest of calculators, they are well made and updateable. I have a few and some HPs as well.
 
Old 18th Nov 2020, 8:07 pm   #31
Phil__G
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I remember someone asking to borrow my kit-built Sinclair 'Scientific' calculator...
I didnt tell them it was RPN - it wasnt gone very long
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Old 18th Nov 2020, 9:15 pm   #32
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Our lab managed to buy a HP35 "on the job" when it first came out. We were designing and buying in a number of special integrated circuits at the time. One of our engineers rang the HP sales department to order one and asked if it was OK to refer to it as an "integrated circuit module" to get it passed by our Accounts dept. The HP guy replied that we could call it what we liked on the order as long as it included a mention of HP35! I remember it cost well over £200.
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Old 19th Nov 2020, 10:57 pm   #33
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil__G View Post
Does anyone remember 'Pilot' ?
"Programmed Instruction, Learning Or Teaching"
It was a text-matching language designed for conversational, Eliza type applications as I recall....
I do. I remember reading an article in a computer magazine (cant remember which one but probably PCW) which had a listing for a Pilot interpreter written in BASIC. I typed it all in thinking it might be suitable for writing "Adventure" programs in. It worked, but I seem to recall I thought it too limiting for what I wanted to do and I started writing an Adventure generator in BASIC - a project that kind of got completed but I never went very far with in terms of making actual games.
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Old 19th Nov 2020, 11:30 pm   #34
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Originally Posted by Slothie View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil__G View Post
Does anyone remember 'Pilot' ?
"Programmed Instruction, Learning Or Teaching"
It was a text-matching language designed for conversational, Eliza type applications as I recall....
I do. I remember reading an article in a computer magazine (cant remember which one but probably PCW) which had a listing for a Pilot interpreter written in BASIC. I typed it all in thinking it might be suitable for writing "Adventure" programs in. It worked, but I seem to recall I thought it too limiting for what I wanted to do and I started writing an Adventure generator in BASIC - a project that kind of got completed but I never went very far with in terms of making actual games.
Well on the topic of Adventures you may or may not know that an article in Practical Computing 1980 by Ken Reed led to us launching The Quill system which was of course designed specifically for writing adventures and a similar CondAct type approach is still in use today in many systems... you should have bought a copy of that
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 11:16 am   #35
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On the multiply 3A question - I don't recollect that syntax for 3 * A.

On the Cambridge IBM 360 side issue - yes, Cambridge did have a 360. It was at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) and had been bought for Fred Hoyle, an eminent Cosmologist of the 1960s. Later on indeed there was the 370/165 which was the main University Computer based on the New Museums Site - and which replaced Edsac II.
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 11:43 am   #36
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Quote:
and which replaced Edsac II.
That was a lot earlier. The big IBM 360 replaced the "Titan" system (Atlas 2).
I used them both!
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 12:00 pm   #37
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GMB - yes, you are correct - it is all rather a few years ago now! The IBM took over from Titan. If my memory serves me better the 370 used IBM's JCL operating system at first but then the "Phoenix" operating system was ported onto it. "Error 240" and /*Del JCLese comes to mind...
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 12:30 pm   #38
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Originally Posted by emeritus View Post
Our lab managed to buy a HP35 "on the job" when it first came out. We were designing and buying in a number of special integrated circuits at the time. One of our engineers rang the HP sales department to order one and asked if it was OK to refer to it as an "integrated circuit module" to get it passed by our Accounts dept. The HP guy replied that we could call it what we liked on the order as long as it included a mention of HP35! I remember it cost well over £200.
Had to laugh at that, as I recalled my time in UKAEA when you were allowed to borrow kit to take home. For some reason, this did not include power supplies - so if one was required, it was signed out as a 'DC signal generator'!
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 1:21 pm   #39
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If my memory serves me better the 370 used IBM's JCL operating system at first...
The operating system would be simply OS ("Operating System")* of some flavour. As I recall these flavours included:
Principal Control Program (PCP) running a single program at a time. I never had any direct involvement with this one, which had been superseded by
Multiprogramming with a Fixed number of Tasks (MFT) in which the memory was divided up into areas that could each run a separate program.
Multiprogramming with a Variable number of Tasks (MVT) in which each program specified through the JCL (which I'll come to shortly) how much memory should be allocated to that task.
Multiprogramming with Virtual Storage (MVS) which was similar to MVT but the memory available for running programs was not confined to physical memory, with virtual memory being swapped in and out of disc storage as needed. MVS/XA was a further refinement of MVS with an "Extended Architecture".

*Prior to OS was an operating system known as DOS (Disk Operating System) - not to be confused with MS-DOS!

The programs (grouped into "jobs") used Job Control Language (JCL) to tell the operating system what programs to run, how much memory to allocate them (either by the MVS "Region" parameter on each program in MVT/MVS or by job class in MFT), what input, output and storage files or devices the program needed to access, among other things. So JCL acted as an interface between the programs and the OS.
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Last edited by Dave Moll; 4th Dec 2020 at 1:25 pm. Reason: footnote about DOS added
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Old 4th Dec 2020, 3:07 pm   #40
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The '360 I used was at the CCAT (Cambridge College of Arts and Technology) now the "Anglia Ruskin" university. Must have been passed down from one of the more elite schools. That took up a large room, replaced by a Data General Eclipse, only a six foot rack.

I used it via a teletype link from school in Ely (Cambs.) in 1974 ish.. We (the computer studies course pupils) had a visit about then. The very first programme I wrote was in CESIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CESIL
 
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