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
On Sat, 09 Mar 2019 14:19:43 -0500 Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote: > 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). I believe he architected and wrote the OS for RC-4000. > 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. This manual is at bitsavers.
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 965 bytes --] Right, I had found it there right after Doug's refresh of my memory. Many thanks to you both. I grab a copy and put it in my own historic archives. Clem http://bitsavers.org/pdf/regnecentralen/RC_4000_Reference_Manual_Jun69.pdf ᐧ On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 3:03 PM Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote: > On Sat, 09 Mar 2019 14:19:43 -0500 Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> > wrote: > > 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). > > I believe he architected and wrote the OS for RC-4000. > > > 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. > > This manual is at bitsavers. > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2366 bytes --]
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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>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
On Sat, 09 Mar 2019 15:29:11 -0700 "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote: > > 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. How about tesseract for OCR? https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract
>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.