Programing PDP-8 assembler - details

[Rick Murphy]

At 11:09 PM 6/10/2010, Ben wrote:
>The important thing is got windows ( hyper-term ) and the
>SBC6120 with k12mit ( Kermit ) talking to each other today.
>The PDP 8 was promoted as paper tape system, and it is
>harder to think of communicating with it remotely.
>I still will do most of my editing in DOS box, since the line
>editor is pain to use with the PDP 8.

Yes, you can do everything with paper tape. My first DEC system was a 
PDP-5 with paper tape only.
You read the editor into memory off paper tape, read your source off 
tape then punched a new version.
Then you loaded the assembler off paper tape, punched a bin paper tape, 
etc... very painful.

Under OS/8 it's a lot easier and more convenient. You can use the line 
editor or TECO. With a VT-52 emulating terminal, VTEDIT is a very 
friendly editor. (However, I'm TECO-biased. I created the VAX TECO 
editor for VMS.)

If your terminal emulator can't do VT-52, I do have a copy of OS/8 TECO 
and VTEDIT that works with ANSI terminals. Getting it onto your PDP-8 
should be pretty easy if you've got Kermit running. (I use PUTR to move 
things on and off my SIMH drives.)
         -Rick