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* [TUHS] CDL & UCDS
@ 2023-02-10 16:44 Steve
  2023-02-10 19:31 ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
  2023-02-12  7:20 ` arnold
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Steve @ 2023-02-10 16:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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Sandy wrote the original CDL tool set.  It had a graphical front end that provided for chips , pins, 
wires etc and generated a connectivity list which was then consumed by wire wrap and other back end 
tools.  We had Tek 4014 terminals at the time (late 70s is what I recall) which made all this 
reasonable.

I took it over the code base at some point and among other things added macros so that repeated wire 
to chip connection patterns and names could be generated without the labor intensive one wire at a 
time e.g. wire[0-7] connects to pin[0-7].  The macro would be expanded so that wire0 connected to 
pin0 etc.  This later system was call UCDS - Unix Circuit Design System.

UCDS was used by Joe Condon for the chess machine that he and Ken built.  Ken may remember more 
about this.  It was also one of the reasons that BTL got a $1B Navy contract.

Steve

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* [TUHS] Re: CDL & UCDS
  2023-02-10 16:44 [TUHS] CDL & UCDS Steve
@ 2023-02-10 19:31 ` Bakul Shah
  2023-02-12  7:20 ` arnold
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2023-02-10 19:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Feb 10, 2023, at 8:44 AM, Steve <srb@unixsh.com> wrote:
> 
> I took it over the code base at some point and among other things added macros so that repeated wire to chip connection patterns and names could be generated without the labor intensive one wire at a time e.g. wire[0-7] connects to pin[0-7].  The macro would be expanded so that wire0 connected to pin0 etc. 

For specifying wirewrap lists compactly, at Fortune Systems we used some syntax Rob Warnock had picked up elsewhere. Basically lists in all angle brackets would expand in parallel and then lists in all square brackets. So for example

U[0:1].P<3:0> = U[2:3].P<1,2,4:5> 

would expand as

U0.P3 = U2.P1
U0.P2 = U2.P2
U0.P1 = U2.P4
...
U1.P0 = U3.P5

This turns out to be an interesting programming exercise. Its grammar is clearly not context-free because the number of items in all bracketed lists of give type and at a given level had to match.

[Program for this also happened to be the first C program I wrote for pay -- and spent a week debugging because coming from Pascal I used "=" when I should've used "=="]

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* [TUHS] Re: CDL & UCDS
  2023-02-10 16:44 [TUHS] CDL & UCDS Steve
  2023-02-10 19:31 ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
@ 2023-02-12  7:20 ` arnold
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2023-02-12  7:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, srb

Steve <srb@unixsh.com> wrote:

> UCDS was used by Joe Condon for the chess machine that he and Ken built.  Ken may remember more 
> about this.  It was also one of the reasons that BTL got a $1B Navy contract.

This sounds like an interesting story. Can you give more details?

Thanks,

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread

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