1 Mar
2016
1 Mar
'16
4:28 p.m.
From: Glen Slick
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 7:43 PM
On Feb 29, 2016 5:07 PM, "Rich Alderson"
<RichA at livingcomputermuseum.org>
wrote:
> From: David Griffith
> Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 4:05 PM
>> One of my ongoing wish projects is to learn to
program a pdp-10 so I can
>> port Frotz to it.
> The canonical textbook is Ralph Gorin's
_Introduction to DECSYSTEM-20
> Assembly Language Programming_ (Digital Press, 1981). Lots of examples,
> well thought out presentation.
> It's a shame that Ralph's book has become
so rare. (Seriously, who
> does the seller asking $1,441.25 for a copy think he's talking to???)
> Probably remaindered in the 1990s at any library that had a copy.
FWIW Amazon lists used copies of ISBN-13
978-0932376121 around $100. I
bought a used copy a couple of years ago that turned out to be an
ex-library copy. Don't think I paid too much at the time. Still haven't
gotten around to looking at it much.
For most hobbyists, even $100 is too much. I was simply astounded at the
chutzpah of the seller--right there on the Amazon list--who was asking
nearly $1500 for a copy.
From: Mark Wickens
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 11:32 PM
There is a copy on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/introductiontode00step
Well, I was going to point that out to my friend Ralph, but I see that
it is a different book with the same title, by one Stephen Longo, which
has been stolen.
From: John H. Reinhardt
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2016 5:03 AM
There is a similar document online at Columbia with
parts written by
Ralph Gorin
<http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftp/dec20/assembler-guide.txt>
Rather, adapted from Ralph's early course notes (he was teaching the
class at Stanford for a few years before the book was published) by
Frank da Cruz and Chris Ryland. I know that Frank and Ralph were
friendly, so I'm not surprised that Ralph shared his notes.
From: Pontus Pihlgren
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2016 5:13 AM
On Tue, Mar 01, 2016 at 08:02:47AM -0500, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
>
<http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftp/dec20/assembler-guide.txt>
I think this is the same file, but in HTML-formatted
with one page per
chapter:
No, that's an HTMLized version of the INFO file that accompanies the
original EMACS (the one written in MIT AI Lab TECO for the PDP-10).
So David, there are alternatives to the Gorin textbook. I simply prefer
it for paedogogical reasons.
Rich
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/