This is a very poor machine transcription of a Zoom conversation I had with Charles about 5 years ago.
I went flying with him once a month.
00:15:04 Charles Simonyi
Yeah the yeah this uh this kind of third hand plane and then flying with him and.
00:15:15 Charles Simonyi
We were flying at night and we had a complete electrical failure.
00:15:21 Paul McJones
Oh, really.
00:15:22 Charles Simonyi
Yeah, in the San Jose airspace.
00:15:27 Charles Simonyi
And dum dum.
00:15:31 Charles Simonyi
There are actual procedures to come to.
00:15:37 Charles Simonyi
Do.
00:15:40 Charles Simonyi
You approach an airport with radio failure.
00:15:43 Charles Simonyi
He was supposed to fly by the You know lookout.
00:15:47 Charles Simonyi
Of course it was.
00:15:48 Charles Simonyi
It was completely beautiful weather, you know, zillion visibility and and you were supposed to fly by the.
00:15:57 Charles Simonyi
Uhm, he knew all the procedure.
00:16:00 Charles Simonyi
We fly by the the control tower and then they guide you down with this thing called the light gun.
00:16:07 Charles Simonyi
Which is a colored oh colored thing that actually you can see even in the movies.
00:16:13 Charles Simonyi
You can see it kind of hanging from the from the ceiling.
00:16:16 Charles Simonyi
There's this big flashlights, you know that you you can direct at planes and and and the weird thing is that that.
00:16:27 Charles Simonyi
I was learning to fly at the time, so I'm doing a little bit of knowledge and and the when you clear to land, it's a it's steady green.
00:16:38 Charles Simonyi
And flashing green means standby.
00:16:40 Charles Simonyi
OK, wait for the client and and we saw this.
00:16:45 Charles Simonyi
I saw flashing green.
00:16:47 Charles Simonyi
And I said, wait, wait, it's we are not clear.
00:16:50 Charles Simonyi
Yeah.
00:16:51 Charles Simonyi
And and how it said no, no, no.
00:16:53 Charles Simonyi
That's a steady light, except that they are not hitting us, right?
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
Oh Oh yeah, yeah.
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
Oh yeah.
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
00:16:59 Charles Simonyi
So I've just realized and and he said just look very close to the source and you can see a little bit of of the beam and see that it's steady.
00:17:10 Paul McJones
OK.
00:17:10 Paul McJones
OK.
00:17:11 Charles Simonyi
And and I realized.
00:17:13 Charles Simonyi
I mean, I still remember how.
00:17:15 Charles Simonyi
You know, and then you would have to see this in a simulator or something.
00:17:19 Charles Simonyi
Otherwise you know if I had been alone, I would have never landed because they they can't take you straight.
00:17:26 Paul McJones
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:26 Charles Simonyi
And I was thinking about this silly, silly distinction.
00:17:31 Charles Simonyi
Because, operationally, it's it's very difficult to tell the difference, But anyway.
Hi all,
today it happened to me I got a lot of stuff - spares for my HP9100, which do have the status of almost unobtanium:
- three cathode ray tubes, just tested and working
- two complete board sets
- several core memory boards
Andreas
Just a shot in the dark, but does anyone here happen to have a collection
of Apollo documentation, specifically for the DSP80A/90? According to the
Apollo documentation index they would be:
Operating the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 004957
Unpacking and installing the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 004958
and Servicing the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 005806.
Unsurprisingly, between my collection and Bitsavers, I cant seem to find
anything on line anywhere. I'd be pleasantly surprised if i wasn't the
owner of the only remaining DSP90.
-Kurt
You can also run Multics in a simulator: https://dps8m.gitlab.io/dps8m
It's been a while since I've been actively involved in that project, but it ran nicely.
I realize MULTICS is from teletype era - so probably no old photographs
showing MULTICS output in that form.
But looks like MULTICS was actually in use for a couple decades, maybe some
photo of a CRT with aspects of MULTICS presentable?
Mostly trying to verify what the "list" command output looked like. But
it should have some way to list processes also.
-Steve
I have an opportunity to read some 3480 and related IBM format tapes,
looking for someone in the Phila area who has the hardware to
archive/retrieve the data from this format. This would be a service
for which you would get paid. Contact me privately through
kennettclassic.com/contact.cfm
Thanks
BIll
Does anybody here still use Massbus?
Or have a Massbus system you’d like to run, but the idea of dealing with
washing-machine disk drives is a bit less appealing these days?
In what may classified as a momentary lapse of reason, I have taken up the old
Living Computer Museum Massbus emulator project and am in the process of
resurrecting / modernizing it.
Current progress photo here:
http://www.dmv.net/mbe/mbe1.jpg
Why, you ask? "Has he gone insane?" are you thinking?
I have three PDP-11/70s that I would like to get running again. Sure, I could
cheat and hang a UNIBUS SCSI controller with a ZuluSCSI disk simulator, but
where is the fun in that? Also, the 11/70 was designed and optimized around
Massbus for primary storage, so it seems only fitting to use it that way.
The original LCM emulator used a PC with a Mesa 5I22 FPGA card as the Massbus
interface. The FPGA implemented the drive-side bus logic, while the PC
software emulated the backing disk or tape image. A driver/receiver (“D/R”)
board sat in the middle to translate the Massbus differential signals into
logic levels suitable for the FPGA. It worked...
Since Mesa 5I22 cards are now pretty much unobtainium, I went looking for a
cleaner and more modern approach. The result is a redesigned D/R board that
accepts a Terasic DE10-Nano directly. The DE10-Nano is a small Linux SBC with
a Cyclone V FPGA onboard, so it can host the emulator software itself while
the FPGA handles the Massbus interface duties that were previously done by the
Xilinx FPGA on the Mesa card. Same general architecture, but much tidier.
There is still work to do, but it is coming along nicely. The board in the
photo is not yet fully populated, since I am doing incremental testing before
committing the rest of the parts.
As I have gone down this rabbit hole, naturally a few questions in the “why
did they do THAT??” category have come up...
paging @Rich Alderson ...
If anyone here is still actively using Massbus, has experience with the
original LCM project, or just has relevant war stories, comments, warnings, or
encouragement, I would be glad to hear them.
Cheers!
Jim
VCF West 2026 will be held on August 1st and 2nd at the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View, CA.
We have opened registration for exhibits, vendors, speakers, and volunteers.
Please visit our event application at
https://em.vcfed.org/events/vcf-west-2026 to register. Also, please note
that this software is new, so there may be a bug or two. Please report any
issues, or send any questions or comments to vcfwest(a)vcfed.org.
Thank you!
Jeff Brace
VCF West co-showrunner
