On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Jason Stevens wrote: > Yep, dungeon runs great on RT-11 ... I've docuemnted the experence here... > > http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=169 > > Building the fortran compiler was... an adventure onto its own, but luckily > I found some documentation @ bitsavers, and could ask on the PDP11 lists for > help... I'm amazed it compiled and runs! .. > > Oh and TripOS is the BCPL based OS that ran on all kinds of machines, it was > very portable, the best known port would be AmigaDOS for the Commodore > Amiga.  I wonder if it was licensing fees and BCPL/TripOS being based in the > UK what seperated them from C/Unix... I guess we'd be living in the B++, B# > and ObjectiveB world if it wasn't for DMR's wonderful world of C .. :) > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Gregg Levine [mailto:gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com] > Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 12:37 AM > To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Cc: Jason Stevens > Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? > > > On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Jason Stevens > wrote: >> Wasn't the other 'advantage' of threaded/pcode that it'd be smaller than a >> native executable? >> >> I know it's out of left field, but building Dungeon on RT-11, you have to >> use the treaded compiler, and I assume it was a space thing.. Just as on >> MS-DOS (Yeah I know...) a save for fitting stuff in 64kb for the later >> compilers was to compile to p-code.. >> >> Wikipedia gives p-code for Pascal a timeframe of the 'early 70's and >> attribes the whole interpeted code as O-Code for BCPL .... >> >> I wonder if anyone ever did save any TripOS tapes for the PDP-11..... >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: A. P. Garcia [mailto:a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com] >> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:58 PM >> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org >> Subject: Re: [TUHS] b remnants? >> >> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, A. P. Garcia >> wrote: >>> >>> In memoriam, I read The Development of the C Language: >>> http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html >>> >>> It talks a bit about how B was originally implemented somewhat like >>> ETH Pascal (p-code). Are there any B interpreters or programs in the >>> archive? >> >> What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an >> abstract machine running as an interpreter. BCPL, roughly >> contemporaneous, used ocode as an intermediate language, but it seems >> this was intended to be further translated into assembly. While it's >> possible to interpret ocode, in practice it seems this was rare, if it >> was done at all. Almost everything I've read about abstract/vitual >> machines traces its roots back to the following source: >> >> James R. Bell. 1973. Threaded code. Commun. ACM 16, 6 (June 1973), >> 370-372. DOI=10.1145/362248.362270 >> http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/362248.362270 >> >> Here's where dmr mentions implementing B using this technique: >> >> The B compiler on the PDP-7 did not generate machine instructions, but >> instead `threaded code' [Bell 72], an interpretive scheme in which the >> compiler's output consists of a sequence of addresses of code >> fragments that perform the elementary operations. The operations >> typically-in particular for B-act on a simple stack machine. >> >> Note he says it was published in 1972, when it actually appeared in >> print in 1973 (same page numbers). Two paragraphs later he writes: >> >> By 1970, the Unix project had shown enough promise that we were able >> to acquire the new DEC PDP-11. The processor was among the first of >> its line delivered by DEC, and three months passed before its disk >> arrived. Making B programs run on it using the threaded technique >> required only writing the code fragments for the operators, and a >> simple assembler which I coded in B; ; soon, dc became the first >> interesting program to be tested, before any operating system, on our >> PDP-11. Almost as rapidly, still waiting for the disk, Thompson >> recoded the Unix kernel and some basic commands in PDP-11 assembly >> language. Of the 24K bytes of memory on the machine, the earliest >> PDP-11 Unix system used 12K bytes for the operating system, a tiny >> space for user programs, and the remainder as a RAM disk. This version >> was only for testing, not for real work; the machine marked time by >> enumerating closed knight's tours on chess boards of various sizes. >> Once its disk appeared, we quickly migrated to it after >> transliterating assembly-language commands to the PDP-11 dialect, and >> porting those already in B. >> >> The abstract machine is also mentioned in Thompson's "Users' Reference >> to B", dated January 7, 1972. If the 1970 date is correct, they were >> using this technique some three years before most of the computing >> world knew about it!? > > Hello! > This discussion is beginning to strike a heck of a lot of chords. > Jason what is this TripOS you are describing here about? And did you > actually get Dungeon to work? > > ----- > Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com > "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." > Hello! Well as it happens I looked up BCPL via Google and got this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPL That one lead to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2 which of course goes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-0 that one mentions how the PDP-1 came about. The TX-0 is the direct ancestor to the PDP-1. With today's FPGA technology someone should revive the TX-0 and the TX-1 that way...... ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."