[TUHS] Re: Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[TUHS] Re: Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[Jon Steinhart]

Wow, this brings back memories.  When I was a kid I remember visiting
a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8.  The 500 was a vacuum
tube and nixie display machine.  That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
dollars just to warm it up.  I think that the PB 250 was one of the
first machines built using transistors.  I assume that all of you know
what a PDP-8 is.  I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework.  Note that the PB
250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.

Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz.  Maybe he
can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.

Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
from home.  Does anyone else out there know anything about it?  It's a
vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.

Jon

[TUHS] Re: Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[Douglas McIlroy]

That would be Claude Kagan. A bunch of kids called the
R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S met there regularly to play with the computers.
Claude, who worked for Western Electric, implemented a version of
Calvin Mooers's TRAC macroprocessor. Mooers sued for infringing the
copyright on a journal article. AT&T settled, out of fear of the
consequences of an (unlikely) win for Mooers. The issue remained in
the air until a Supreme Court case (Google v Oracle) about a year ago,
which fortunately came down against copyrights on  software
interfaces.

Doug

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 12:14 PM Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, this brings back memories.  When I was a kid I remember visiting
> a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
> There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8.  The 500 was a vacuum
> tube and nixie display machine.  That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
> seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
> dollars just to warm it up.  I think that the PB 250 was one of the
> first machines built using transistors.  I assume that all of you know
> what a PDP-8 is.  I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
> arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework.  Note that the PB
> 250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.
>
> Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
> 516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz.  Maybe he
> can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.
>
> Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
> from home.  Does anyone else out there know anything about it?  It's a
> vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.
>
> Jon

[TUHS] Re: Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[Heinz Lycklama]

Jon, I found the documentation for SNAP and FSNAP
which both ran on the DDP-516 multiprogramming
operating system. Both documents were written in
the summer/fall of 1970, and the FSNAP language
is based on SNAP programming language, but I'm not
sure if this SNAP language was the same as the one
you used on the PDP-8. I'll send you the two documents
in a separate email so you can tell if the two SNAP's
are one and the same. We are talking 52 years ago now.
Let's see if you can remember.

Heinz

P.S. Coincidentally I learned much of my system level
     programming on a PDP-8 computer during my
     student graduate days in the late 1960's.



On 12/13/2022 9:14 AM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Wow, this brings back memories.  When I was a kid I remember visiting
> a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
> There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8.  The 500 was a vacuum
> tube and nixie display machine.  That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
> seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
> dollars just to warm it up.  I think that the PB 250 was one of the
> first machines built using transistors.  I assume that all of you know
> what a PDP-8 is.  I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
> arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework.  Note that the PB
> 250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.
>
> Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
> 516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz.  Maybe he
> can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.
>
> Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
> from home.  Does anyone else out there know anything about it?  It's a
> vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.
>
> Jon

[TUHS] Re: Clever code [ really PB 250 ]

[Rob Pike]

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Well, if you're sharing educational bootstrapping stories, Heinz, if I
remember right you were the first person I saw in person from Bell Labs,
when you gave a talk at the University of Toronto about Bell's work on
ARPANET around 1977.

-rob


On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 4:08 PM Heinz Lycklama <heinz@osta.com> wrote:

> Jon, I found the documentation for SNAP and FSNAP
> which both ran on the DDP-516 multiprogramming
> operating system. Both documents were written in
> the summer/fall of 1970, and the FSNAP language
> is based on SNAP programming language, but I'm not
> sure if this SNAP language was the same as the one
> you used on the PDP-8. I'll send you the two documents
> in a separate email so you can tell if the two SNAP's
> are one and the same. We are talking 52 years ago now.
> Let's see if you can remember.
>
> Heinz
>
> P.S. Coincidentally I learned much of my system level
>      programming on a PDP-8 computer during my
>      student graduate days in the late 1960's.
>
>
>
> On 12/13/2022 9:14 AM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> > Wow, this brings back memories.  When I was a kid I remember visiting
> > a guy who had a barn full of computers in or around Princeton, N.J.
> > There was a Burroughs 500, a PB 250, and a PDP-8.  The 500 was a vacuum
> > tube and nixie display machine.  That sucker used a lot of neon, and I
> > seem to remember that it used about $100 worth of electricity in 1960s
> > dollars just to warm it up.  I think that the PB 250 was one of the
> > first machines built using transistors.  I assume that all of you know
> > what a PDP-8 is.  I remember using the PDP-8 using SNAP (simple numeric
> > arithmetic processor) to crank out my math homework.  Note that the PB
> > 250 also had SNAP, but in that case it was their assembler.
> >
> > Some of the first serious programming that I did was later at BTL on
> > 516-TSS using FSNAP (floating-point SNAP) written by Heinz.  Maybe he
> > can fill us in on whether it was derived from SNAP.
> >
> > Anyway, I could only visit the place occasionally because it was far
> > from home.  Does anyone else out there know anything about it?  It's a
> > vague memory brought back by the mention of the 250.
> >
> > Jon
>
>

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