The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* Re: [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
@ 2019-03-09 19:19 Doug McIlroy
  2019-03-09 20:02 ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2019-03-09 19:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: clemc, tuhs

Clem,

I think the "Algol machine" you have in mind is the RC-2000 (not quite sure
of the designation--could look it up in the attic if it matters) designed by
Per Brinch Hansen for Regencentralen (again, the name may not be quite right).
The manual used Algol as a hardware description language.  The instruction
set was not unusual. It has come up before in TUHS. I have the manual
if you need more info.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
@ 2019-03-09 22:29 Nelson H. F. Beebe
  2019-03-10  5:16 ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Nelson H. F. Beebe @ 2019-03-09 22:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

The posting of the link

	http://bitsavers.org/pdf/regnecentralen/RC_4000_Reference_Manual_Jun69.pdf

brought back old memories.  When I moved to Aarhus University in
Denmark in December 1973, I found that the Department of Chemistry
where I worked had a Regnecentralen RC-4000 minicomputer with paper
tape input that was used to manage the department's accounting.  It
had a dedicated operator who kept in running nicely until at least
after I left in 1977.  It had too little physical memory to be
considered practical for the quantum chemistry work that I was then
engaged in, and may not even have had a Fortran compiler; instead, we
used the campus CDC 6400 for our research.

In memory of the RC-4000, and Per Brinch Hansen's (13 Nov
1938--31-Jul-2007) many contributions to the literature of computer
science, programming language design, and parallel computing, I
prepared an enhancement of its manual, available here:

	http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/RC-4000/

The Web page that comes up gives a directory of the available files,
and documents the steps needed to produce them.  The result is a
searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
file.

Despite my 40+ year engagement in the TeX community, I only recently
learned via the texhax mailing of some PDFTeX internals that allow one
to construct a file that can retypeset n-up files into 1-up format.

I therefore make this posting in the hope that someone else might be
encouraged to tackle similar document improvements in the bitsavers
archives.  Although it takes a bit of experimentation, with the
exception of the OCR conversion, the entire operation can be done with
free software on pretty much any modern computing platform, thanks to
the portability of the needed software.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
@ 2019-03-10  4:39 Rudi Blom
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Rudi Blom @ 2019-03-10  4:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

>Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2019 15:29:11 -0700
>From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu>
>To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
>Message-ID: <CMM.0.95.0.1552170551.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>

... snip ...
>        http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/RC-4000/
>
>The Web page that comes up gives a directory of the available files,
>and documents the steps needed to produce them.  The result is a
>searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
>than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
>file.

>Despite my 40+ year engagement in the TeX community, I only recently
>learned via the texhax mailing of some PDFTeX internals that allow one
>to construct a file that can retypeset n-up files into 1-up format.
>
>I therefore make this posting in the hope that someone else might be
>encouraged to tackle similar document improvements in the bitsavers.
>archives.  Although it takes a bit of experimentation, with the
>exception of the OCR conversion, the entire operation can be done with
>free software on pretty much any modern computing platform, thanks to
>the portability of the needed software.

A bit off topic (sorry) but wondering about that PDF conversion. This
may be a dumb question but did you ever try the PDF conversion in
calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com )?
I like the PDF to htmlz conversion even if mostly the result still
needs (a lot of) extra work.

Cheers,
uncle rubl

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago
@ 2019-03-11  5:45 Rudi Blom
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Rudi Blom @ 2019-03-11  5:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

>A bit off topic (sorry) but wondering about that PDF conversion. This
>may be a dumb question but did you ever try the PDF conversion in
>calibre ( https://calibre-ebook.com )?

To answer my own question. Yes, that was a dumb question. I completely
over looked the 'image' in Nelson's post

>The result is a
>searchable document, with a single page image per PDF page, rather
>than the mixed bitmap scan of 1-up and 2-up pages in the original PDF
>file.

Calibre's PDF to whatever conversion doesn't do anything worthwhile with images.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2019-03-11  5:45 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2019-03-09 19:19 [TUHS] Failing Memory of an Algol Based System from years ago Doug McIlroy
2019-03-09 20:02 ` Bakul Shah
2019-03-09 20:06   ` Clem Cole
2019-03-09 22:29 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2019-03-10  5:16 ` Bakul Shah
2019-03-10  4:39 Rudi Blom
2019-03-11  5:45 Rudi Blom

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).