Another list poll (was: SciFil Cons - UK retro show thoughts)

[Jim Battle]

...
>> Second reference I've seen on the list to science fiction conventions.  I'm
>> curious.  How many list members have been to a sci-fi convention or even
>> know about them?  Anybody been to any WorldCons, Westercons or EasterCons?
>> I know Chris Garcia is active in fandom.  Anybody else?
...

I'm curious: how many people on this list are interested in vintage 
computers?

(please don't reply -- it was meant to be a rebuke, not an invitation to 
chatter about non-vintage and non-computer stuff)


Obligatory real cctalk:

I recently made contact with one of the important people in the Wang 
2200 community, Tim VeArd.  He had an interesting tidbit to share, but 
first some background.

The 2200 is a microcode BASIC implementation, with no native assembly 
language accessible to the user.  The 2200 BASIC syntax couldn't 
anticipate all the various I/O devices that might be connected to the 
machines, and Wang didn't want to have to keep doing microcode ROM 
updates in the field every time a new I/O device was added.

Tim at the time was working on secret government stuff, and they had the 
need to interface the 2200 to all manner of devices.  Tim badgered Wang 
into adding the $GIO() commands.  $GIO defined a synthetic restricted 
machine language, somewhat like the early Apple II ROMs contained Woz's 
SWEET16 interpreter.  This fake machine code would be loaded into an 
array of strings, and then a call to the $GIO() command would interpret 
the commands.

The 2200 $GIO command set was far to limited to do anything interesting, 
but the 2200VP $GIO command set was augmented with more powerful 
commands (but still limited).  I've long wondered if anybody, as a hack, 
wrote anything interesting, like a tiny basic implementation, in $GIO 
code, or if it would even be possible.

I can tell that Tim VeArd has many more stories to tell, and I hope to 
extract some of them soon.  At one time Wang named him the 2200 
programmer of the year.