A week old news, but still. Seems like it appeared on wikipedia only
yesterday.
From [1]:
QUOTE START
Margaret Hamilton (née Heafield; August 17, 1936 – September 30, 2026)
was an American computer scientist. She directed the Software
Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she
led the development of the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo
Guidance Computer for the Apollo program. She later founded two
software companies, Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton
Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hamilton published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports,
about sixty projects, and six major programs. She coined the term
software engineering, stating, "I began to use the term 'software
engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of
engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall
systems engineering process."[2][3][4]
On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom from President Barack Obama for her work leading to the
development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo moon
missions.[5]
QUOTE END
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)
[2] RIP Margaret Hamilton, whose code saved the Apollo 11 Moon landing
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/r-i-p-margaret-hamilton-whose-code-…
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **
The next meeting in Glen Ellyn of the CCC Hardware Repair and Discussion
will be held on October 17, 2026.
Meeting Starts at 2:00PM and we will order pizza around 6pm or so.
I hope to see you there,
Mike Katz
385 Saint Charles Rd
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
+1 (773) 414-1044 (Cell)
My ADM-3A Dumb Terminal has an aggravating tendency to key bounce. It's
not the highest quality keyboard I've ever encountered, and the
circuitry appears to have (at best) 2-key rollover.
Currently I'm using it to talk to my PiDP-8/I at either 110 baud (to
simulate the Teletype experience) or 1200 baud.
Has someone already made improvements to the key scanning circuitry, or
do we just live with it ("that's what they all do")?
I haven't used one regularly since 1981 (senior year in college) 😉 but
don't remember it being quite this annoying.
thanks.
It's been a while since my initial posting about this project but it is time
for an update.
This has been mostly a spare time project, and you know how life tends gets in
the way sometimes...
The work itself has been a bit of a "maze of twisty little passages, all
alike" with many potholes and obstacles, but progress has been made.
The video below tells the tale:
https://youtu.be/KwaNschJg6w
Synopsis:
A real PDP-11/70 boots RSTS/E V10.1 through it's unmodified RH70 controller
with the data coming from the Massbus emulator.
Operation is rock solid and so far have not been able to break it. It also
passes the ERHAE1 XXDP diagnostic without errors.
We now have a viable option for modern storage for Massbus systems.
Still to do is performance optimizations, hardening against some edge cases,
and a large amount of code cleanup.
I only have a PDP-11/70 to test with, but it *should* work with any Massbus
system. Adherence to the DEC Massbus Specification was strict and every
attempt made to make it behave as a proper Massbus device rather than just
coding things to make the RH70 happy.
I am kicking around the idea of putting together a blog chronicling the
various trials, tribulations and milestones encountered along the way if
anyone is interested in reading the gory details....
Cheers!
Jim
Hi all,
I have a complete set of RT11 V5 manuals that I am getting rid of.
Never used!
I cannot ship, so only for pickup in Toronto.
cheers
Nigel
--
Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
Oh what a mangled head received when first we fractals do perceive
I just finished scanning the DEC documentation for the KH11-A "NPR
Expansion" option for the PDP11/20 and the PDP11/05 machines. (I just
bought this drawing set on eBay...)
As far as I can tell, this is the only documentation for this CPU
modification that's online - aside of course for my own reverse-engineering
drawings from earlier this year.
You can find the drawings here.
<https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/011-Digital%20Equipment%20Corporat…>
I believe this is a complete documentation set. The page order is a bit
funky, but it is in the original page order - I had to remove the (very
rusty) original staples to be able to scan it all.
Note that in addition to the complete print set, I've also included
additional drawings for the M724-YA, for later revisions of that board.
Martin
> Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2026 19:49:36 -0400
> From: Paul Koning<paulkoning(a)comcast.net>
> Subject: [cctalk] APL-11 sources
> To:"cctalk(a)classiccmp.org" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
> Message-ID:<7743C081-B2D1-4788-9E52-AB946F9A1D30(a)comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I was just wandering through some old disk images and spotted something I missed for years: a directory holding what looks like a set of source files and build scripts for APL-11.
>
> I have no idea where this came from or why I have it; while I have used APL I have not used it on a PDP-11, nor ever installed it.
>
> Is this something others already have that is a known to be good version, or should I go dig through this and verify it, then archive it properly?
>
> paul
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2026 20:08:37 -0400
> From: Bill Gunshannon<bill.gunshannon(a)hotmail.com>
> Subject: [cctalk] Re: APL-11 sources
> To:cctalk@classiccmp.org
> Message-ID:<SJ0PR11MB5815FB606E1B75ACD17CB39DED892(a)SJ0PR11MB5815.nam
> prd11.prod.outlook.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
>
>
> On 10/1/2026 7:49 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>> I was just wandering through some old disk images and spotted something I missed for years: a directory holding what looks like a set of source files and build scripts for APL-11.
>>
>> I have no idea where this came from or why I have it; while I have used APL I have not used it on a PDP-11, nor ever installed it.
>>
>> Is this something others already have that is a known to be good version, or should I go dig through this and verify it, then archive it properly?
>>
> I would imagine it is the one distributed by DECUS. I have a copy here
> somewhere but I, too, never got around to getting it working. And, yes,
> I know and have used APL on a number of different machines.
>
> bill
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2026 20:23:19 -0400
> From: Paul Koning<paulkoning(a)comcast.net>
> Subject: [cctalk] Re: APL-11 sources
> To:"cctalk(a)classiccmp.org" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
> Cc: Bill Gunshannon<bill.gunshannon(a)hotmail.com>
> Message-ID:<667546B6-EFFE-4C1F-B031-33E0F5CFABEC(a)comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
>
>
>> On Oct 1, 2026, at 8:08 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/1/2026 7:49 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>>> I was just wandering through some old disk images and spotted something I missed for years: a directory holding what looks like a set of source files and build scripts for APL-11.
>>> I have no idea where this came from or why I have it; while I have used APL I have not used it on a PDP-11, nor ever installed it.
>>> Is this something others already have that is a known to be good version, or should I go dig through this and verify it, then archive it properly?
>> I would imagine it is the one distributed by DECUS. I have a copy here
>> somewhere but I, too, never got around to getting it working. And, yes,
>> I know and have used APL on a number of different machines.
>>
> Hard to say. The source files don't have copyright headers on them at all, but there is an "apl11s.doc" file with a DEC copyright; it seems to be a "support" manual that discusses the internals.
>
> paul
>
> Mark Matlock and I did some work to resurrect the APL-11 that was
> donated to DECUS, for use on later versions of RSX11M+. See details at
> https://rsx11.blogspot.com/2021/02/decus-apl-11-fixes-for-id-space-and.html
> Johnny Billquist did more work on it later, and distributes it by
> his RPM facility for RSX. -- Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G
> Consultants. lee.gleason(a)gmail.com
