[COFF] DECmate-II and WPS-8

[COFF] DECmate-II and WPS-8

[Paul Winalski]

A friend of mine has a DECmate-II word processor.  It is in perfect
working order except for one thing.  The field encoding the current
date/time has overflowed.  It is impossible to set a date/time in the
21st century.

He says that the software in question is a version of WPS-8 for the
PDP-8.  It should be possible to fix the date/time problem by dumping
the DECmate's ROM and disassembling the code.  It ought not be too
hard to locate the date/time encode/decode routine and come up with a
fix to the time epoch problem.

Is anyone out there familiar with the DECmate-II software?  Or, even
better, knows how to get its source code?

Advice greatly appreciated.

-Paul W.

[COFF] Re: DECmate-II and WPS-8

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Paul,

> It should be possible to fix the date/time problem by dumping
> the DECmate's ROM and disassembling the code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECmate#External_links includes

    ...
    DECmate II ROM contents, decoded and disassembled by Charles J. Lasner
    https://web.archive.org/web/20051218090251/http://anachronda.homeunix.com:8000/~rivie/decmate/358360.pal

Hope that's a match.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

[COFF] Re: DECmate-II and WPS-8

[segaloco via COFF]

On Monday, February 26th, 2024 at 11:13 AM, Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Paul,
> 
> > It should be possible to fix the date/time problem by dumping
> > the DECmate's ROM and disassembling the code.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECmate#External_links includes
> 
> ...
> DECmate II ROM contents, decoded and disassembled by Charles J. Lasner
> https://web.archive.org/web/20051218090251/http://anachronda.homeunix.com:8000/~rivie/decmate/358360.pal
> 
> Hope that's a match.
> 
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.

Would a modern PDP-8 disassembler be helpful?  I've got a bare bones 6502 disassembler I wrote some time ago that is modular enough that I could probably roll a PDP-8 one from its skeleton if there's not a preferred solution these days.  Been looking for another simple utility project to tinker on lately.

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: DECmate-II and WPS-8

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi again Paul,

> He says that the software in question is a version of WPS-8 for the
> PDP-8.  It should be possible to fix the date/time problem by dumping
> the DECmate's ROM and disassembling the code

I think WPS arrives on floppy.  How sure are you the ROM's firmware
provides the date routines used by WPS rather than it just dishing up
something more crude with WPS doing the work of turning it into a date?

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

[COFF] Re: DECmate-II and WPS-8

[Paul Winalski]

IOn 2/27/24, Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I think WPS arrives on floppy.  How sure are you the ROM's firmware
> provides the date routines used by WPS rather than it just dishing up
> something more crude with WPS doing the work of turning it into a date?

I got the ROM disassembly you pointed me to and took a look at it.
Thanks, Ralph.

You're right--it's WPS-8 itself that has the date/time routines that
need patching.

So now I'm looking for a WPS-8 disassembly, and if possible the source
code, which I assume is in PDP-8 assembler.

Is there a forum that PDP-8 folks hang out in where I could ask for leads?

Thanks,

-Paul W.

[COFF] Re: DECmate-II and WPS-8

[Clem Cole]

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below...

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 12:00 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> So now I'm looking for a WPS-8 disassembly, and if possible the source
> code, which I assume is in PDP-8 assembler.
>
https://web.archive.org/web/20200509075839/http://pdp12.dustyoldcomputers.com/pub/pdp8/utils/d8tape.tar.gz
is the disassembler I used in the past. There are is an assembler on the
same site.


>
> Is there a forum that PDP-8 folks hang out in where I could ask for leads?
>
PiDP-8 Mailing list: PiDP-8 <pidp-8@googlegroups.com>

Couple of sites:
https://www.pdp8online.com/
https://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/

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