Comments for Dusty Decks

Comment on Algol 68: Informal Introduction and more by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:58:27 +0000

Dear Dr. Mountbatten, The link should take you to the very end of this web page: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/standards/ (scroll down to the end if necessary). There you should find links to the full book, the table of contents, and the syntax charts. The listings for Algol68RS are on this page: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol68impl/ (you'll have to scroll -- I didn't add anchors for the various implementations). There I provide links to an ELLA release at NYU and a Linux port of algol68toC by Dr. Sian Leitch. Is that by any chance you? Paul

Comment on Algol 68: Informal Introduction and more by Dr Sian Mountbatten

Dr Sian Mountbatten — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:59:07 +0000

I followed the link for Informal Introduction to Algol 68 and found it gave me a web
page containing references to Algol 68, but not the book. Please would you check this
anchor and ensure that the book is really available?

Fortunately, I have my own personal copy dating from 1978!

Have you mentioned my port of the Algol 68 RS compiler in the ELLA package to
Linux?

I shall be uploading a debugged version of algol68toc_1.18_i386.deb to my
web-site. One of the utilities supplied (rs) does not handle stand in properly, but
the debugged version does. The new version should be available later today.

Comment on Harold V. McIntosh and his students: Lisp escapes MIT by José Manuel Gómez Soto

José Manuel Gómez Soto — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:48:16 +0000

Nice and interesting description!
Thanks for shared

José Manuel Gómez Soto

Comment on Simulators by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:28:29 +0000

Lars, thanks very much for that suggestion; I’ve added it to the page.

Comment on Simulators by Lars Brinkhoff

Lars Brinkhoff — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:03:02 +0000

There’s also KLH10 which emulates the venerable KL10B processor from the PDP-10 heydays.

Comment on The First International LISP Conference (1963) by Tim Hart

Tim Hart — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:40:29 +0000

Thanks for pointing me at your writeup, and refreshing my memory of that event. I’m afraid I can’t add anything to what you have, partly because I disbelieved all the warnings about drinking the water, sampled a well frequented by farm animals and got a very bad case of Moctezeuma’s revenge and had to return home early.

Comment on 704 FORTRAN II listing available by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:53:50 +0000

The PDFs that you are interested in may be downloaded from here.

Comment on 704 FORTRAN II listing available by Mike Danner

Mike Danner — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:35:03 +0000

Please send me the digitized listing in PDF format for this compiler of FORTRAN II for the IBM 704.

Comment on Historic FORTRAN documents online by Wayne B'Rells

Wayne B'Rells — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:36:01 +0000

As a summer intern, I remember using UTO Fortran II on a CARD ORIENTED 1620 system at the New England Electric System office in downtown Boston. On that system the UTO compiler was loaded from 80 column cards. Following the compiler, the user’s program (also on cards, of course) was loaded. The 1620 then processed the source cards and (hopefully) punched out a deck of object code. Finally, the object code was reloaded along with a deck of cards containing the UTO library. After this rather time-consuming process, results from the user’s program (if any) were punched onto yet another stack of 80-column cards. THESE cards were then printed via a 407(?) “accounting machine”! If I remember correctly, this whole process could easily take 1/2 for a short program. BTW, this 1620 only had 20K words of memory…

Everyone using the 1620 was extremely happy when it was replaced with an IBM 1130, although cards were still used (of course!) for input.

Wayne

Comment on ALGOL by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 23:48:17 +0000

Graham,

Thanks for the information about Rogalgol; I’ve added an entry for it:

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/#Rogalgol

Paul

Comment on ALGOL by Graham Reid

Graham Reid — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:06:31 +0000

Hi, in the 1974 timeframe, I used an implementation of Algol-60 on an 8k PDP8/E. This was written by a Dr Roger Abbot (hence called RogAlgol).
I gather it was subsequently ported to CP/M.
Some links are:
http://pdp8.de/download/RogAlgol.pdf
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/algol60.html
http://www.dbit.com/pub/pdp8/nickel/langs/algol/ascii/

Regards, Graham

Comment on SDC: Q-32 Lisp, Lisp 2, and three more; Lisp 1.5 Primer by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:44:18 +0000

Catherine,

At least a few people are looking at the old LISP code, and the old FORTRAN code on a parallel web site, because they have succeeded in getting it running on simulators for the original IBM 704/709/7090 computers. In the case of LISP, this required using OCR and careful hand-checking, because no machine readable version was available.

I think this is wonderful, but it is not the only justification for such preservation work. I hope in 500 years, when people look back to the invention of computers, they will be able to study some of the actual source code for the earliest systems and application software. So I am heartened to see the work of others around the world doing similar work. I’d like to encourage you to keep up your excellent work documenting APL’s history.

Comment on SDC: Q-32 Lisp, Lisp 2, and three more; Lisp 1.5 Primer by Catherine Lathwell

Catherine Lathwell — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:36:18 +0000

Are people looking at the old LISP code?

Just last night I was looking at an assembly listing of APL’s shared variable processor dated May 1, 1972. I was looking for inspiration because I’m trying to find a way to explain how different things are today. It also has my father’s hand written notes and corrections, so it is special to me. I’m curious to know how many people look at these old things?

Comment on ALGOL by Marcel van der Veer

Marcel van der Veer — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:50:54 +0000

Algol 68 Genie is in continuous development. Many are using it to run either vintage programs or new code. If someone thinks it contains a “critical error”, please report it to me so it can be corrected. The quality of open source software depends on useful feedback of its users.

Thank you,
Marcel

Comment on ALGOL by andrey (c) adtrefer

andrey (c) adtrefer — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:40:26 +0000

Old compilers must died. Try to make new compiler for Algol family. Algol 68 genie has critical errors, so you have chance to make good compiler.

Comment on ALGOL by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:53:35 +0000

John,

I’m especially interested in old implementations. For completeness, I’ll probably add GNU Algol/Marst and the NASE Algol 60 interpreter. Thanks very much for mentioning them.

Paul

Comment on ALGOL by John Cowan

John Cowan — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:28:45 +0000

Are you only interested in implementations for old computers? GNU Algol, otherwise called Marst, is a full implementation of Algol 60 (the modified report) that translates it into C, and there is the NASE Algol 60 interpreter as well.

Comment on Elements of Programming by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:54:36 +0000

Gene,

You are of course correct. In the book, we introduce the notion of a partial model of a theory, such as integers of a given word size.

Paul

Comment on Elements of Programming by Eugene Miya

Eugene Miya — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:44:51 +0000

Actually, floating point addition in computers isn’t associative. Algebraically it is associative, but the results of each addition will be dependent on the size and sign of the numbers being added. It’s associative on integers only for the range of integers on a given memory word size these days

Comment on Historic FORTRAN documents online by Hal Smith

Hal Smith — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:19:53 +0000

Paul, you might check with the University of Toronto. I remember running a Fortran II compiler “UTO Fortran” (I think it was) on the paper tape driven IBM 1620 at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, in the fall 1968 through fall 1970.