On May 27, 2020, Lars Brinkhoff <lars at nocrew.org> wrote:
> Al Kossow wrote:
>>> Algol W was from Eroupe?
>> Algol W was from Stanford, written by Wirth when he was there
>
> I wonder if there's any connection to Stanford's SAIL language?
Good question. I believe the answer is ?Wirth was initially involved with both?. Here?s a bit of history in the Preface to a SAIL manual:
HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE
The GOGOL III compiler, developed principally by Dan Swinehart at the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project, was the basis for the non-LEAP
portions of SAIL. Robert Sproull joined Swinehart in incorporating the
features of LEAP The first version of the language was released in November,
1969. SAIL's intermediate development was the responsibility of Russell
Taylor, Jim Low, and Hanan Samet, who introduced processes, procedure
variables, interrupts, contexts, matching procedures, a new macro system,
and other features. Most recently John Reiser, Robert Smith, and Russell
Taylor maintained and extended SAIL. They added a high-level debugger,
conversion to TENEX, a print statement, and records and references.
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib20-01/01/decus/20-0002/sail.man.html
And here?s a 1964 Stanford TimeSharing Project Memo by McKeeman and Wirth on Gogol:
Gogol is a simple, integer arithmetic language used under the PDP-1 time sharing system at Stanford. This memorandum includes the syntactical definition of the language and a number of sample programs as well as a brief description of the operational characteristics of the compiler. Gogol was designed to permit fast compilation of efficient machine code directly into memory. The speed of compilation together with the accessibility of the text editor make program de- bugging relatively rapid. The examples presented here plus the availability of the compiler should form an adequate basis for learning to use the language. More detailed information depends heavily on a knowledge of PDP-1 hardware.
https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jy391jj5758/jy391jj5758.pdf
Thanks for the suggestions. I currently have Rescue Tape brand self adhesive silicone tape on the cable, but it looks like it is causing corrosion of the spiral-wound metal shield wires. The wrap around heat shrink might cost more than just buying a new adapter! It looks like there is an 1/8" split wire loom that could work, or perhaps Plasti Dip spray would make a reasonable coating.
At 09:25 AM 5/28/2020, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
>Nothing like asking people to jump thru hoops before you let them
>do you a favor. :-)
Much of the effort of running a thrift store is disposal of
donated material that has no rapid resale value.
- John
Ok, so to get back to technology I have been working on fixing the
TK50's I have here along with attempting to look at some old tapes from
Bob's basement. It's been interesting.
So far one of the units works well with one of my tapes (stored indoors
for about 20 or so years) after a good cleaning with 95% isopropyl
alcohol. From RT11 I was able to initialize the tape, write 40mb of .DSK
image files, and consistently read the files back (to a VM: memory
drive) and diff/bin them to make sure they are the same. Good.
First test: A second TK50 drive I had banging around. This one will read
the tape, but fail about half way through. May still be a bit dirty,
will clean and check.
Second test: Checking some of the tapes from Bob's basement. In addition
to getting the PERQ tapes out of there I had a few TK50 tapes mixed in,
most with degaussed stickers on them from long ago. These tapes appear
to have been Vax 8650 load tapes of some sort, no idea if there is any
value to the data but one was labelled Micro-pdp11 diagnostics and since
I know those are backed up I started with that one.
It loads, but fails with a DUP IO output error. It also messes up the
tape head so I have to clean it after testing. Most of the dirt is at
the bottom of the head. After cleaning the drive can load and read the
"control" tape which has all of those image files on it, so it doesn't
damage the drive. Still I see why taking the cage top off the TK50 is a
good idea. :-)
Took the cartridge apart and here is what I see:
https://i.imgur.com/xHhiBAW.jpg
This is... not good. Dirt or something on the bottom of the tape. Now
these did spend the last 20 years in a pretty dank basement with an oil
fired house heater so there is probably that. Still I used a Q tip on
the tape with isopropyl alcohol and it came up dirty inside the cart and
out:
https://i.imgur.com/TB91gGx.jpg
Also odd that the tape is wrapped in two different "levels" on the
spindle. Maybe that's normal. So a question:
Can one clean tape with isopropyl alcohol? In theory if I could get the
controller to slowly run the tape onto the take-up real to the EOT
marker I could soak some cotton swabs and use them to clean the tape
before it hits the heads (to minimize head wear). Or I could just chuck
these tapes and see how a couple I am buying from Ebay hold up.
This is mostly an academic exercise: It gives me something to do. But I
am wondering if the tapes were crudded by the environment or if this is
just natural tape degradation. I do have one final tape that was in a
closed tape holder so it might be better (it's clean on the outside).
Will see....
C
You can use cable lacing.
It does not make it pretty(er), but usable.
If You don't want to remove the connectors or cut the cable
You cannot add any new sheath?
There may be some fabric/wowen expandable sheaths
which have been used on power cables earlier but I have no precise knowledge.
Something like when You push it, it bulges.
BR Matti
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Hi folks,
I've recently acquired an Apollo DN100 I'd like to restore to former glory.
Sadly, there are no schematics anywhere that I can find.
I have seen this alluded to, but do not have a part number- anyone got a
lead?
Even better would be to find anything describing the PALs in the system.
Separately, there is a 14" Priam DISKOS hard drive in here- not with the
Priam interface used by the later SAU2 Apollos (DN300, etc.) but something
else- perhaps the early ANSI interface option provided by Priam.
If anyone has leads on -
1) The failure modes of these drives and
2) A replacement
? advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
- Ian
Does anyone know of an effective technique to replace the sheath of a cable without needing to reterminate the ends? On all of the Apple power adapter cables I've used the plastic sheath starts to fall apart, but the adapter itself and the cable conductors are still useable. Something that results in a reasonably flexible coating that doesn't look like a horrible accident happened to the cable? :-)