[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[ron minnich]

I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote it.

Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which was
written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the 16-bit
column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error.

Anyone remember who wrote it?
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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[ron minnich]

I was not clear, evidently, although part of this is my memory's fault :-)

There was a fortran compiler on v6, written in assembly. I was wondering
who wrote it.

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 9:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote it.
>
> Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which was
> written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the 16-bit
> column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error.
>
> Anyone remember who wrote it?
>
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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Ron Natalie]

Dunno.   The first I dealt with was the f77 based on the pcc backend.

 

 

From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of ron minnich
Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 1:14 PM
To: TUHS main list
Subject: Re: [TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

 

I was not clear, evidently, although part of this is my memory's fault :-)

 

There was a fortran compiler on v6, written in assembly. I was wondering who wrote it.

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 9:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote it.

 

Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which was written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the 16-bit column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error. 

 

Anyone remember who wrote it?

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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Clem Cole]

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below..

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 1:13 PM, ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was not clear, evidently, although part of this is my memory's fault :-)
>
> There was a fortran compiler on v6, written in assembly. I was wondering
> who wrote it.
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 9:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote
>> it.
>>
>> Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which
>> was written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the
>> 16-bit column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error.
>>
>> Anyone remember who wrote it?
>>
>

A one point the DEC RT11 compiler was moved to V6 and V7 (I want to say
around 1978 or 79 ish).   It was written in a mix of BLISS-11 and PDP-11
assembly, although the UNIX code was moved over as pure assembly. I do not
believe the BLISS-11 runtime was ever directly ported.    IIRC, the "port"
was done by the "Commercial Union Leasing Corp" guys folks in NYC.  The
assembly code for same was released to the UNIX community - I think on one
of the early USENIX tapes, could be the first one, two or three.

One of the things "CULC" guys did was they had to write a PDP-10 simulator
so they run the BLISS compiler which only ran as cross compiler from a 36
bit system.   I remember the USENIX talk about it at the time, somebody
asked the speaker if ITS would boot on the simulator - which got a lot of
chuckles.  As I remember the process, they ran the PDP-10 version of the
BLISS/11 compiler under enough of a TOPS-10 (I think) simulator that they
could feed it the sources to the DEC FORTRAN compiler.  IIRC a recompile on
their 11/45 took overnight or something like that.   I remember that they
said that the process was not interactive.

Like Ron, I remember seeing and using the results the process.  I do not
remember ever seeing the simulator or the input to the process that created
the assembly for the compiler.  I also do not remember how much of the
compiler sources they had from DEC.   They may only have had the runtime
source and a few files / "enough" of the upper layers to hack it into
working "good enough" for UNIX.   If you remember when you used it, the
switches were parsed RT-11 style because all that was in the code they did
not/could not replace.  My guess is that was probably what is was.   DEC
must published the runtime as "open source" and they picked it up and
started hacking.  But I don't remember more than that.

That said, it was "good enough" port/hack of the compiler and its runtime
to make it all work.   I probably still have it somewhere on 9-track.

As an interesting aside, I just saw the lead (Rich Groves) from the DEC
team for that compiler last Wednesday at a social function (he has been
quite ill and I'm pleased to see him out and about).    They DEC Fortran
folks really were an amazing crew and that legacy continues.   I fear not
enough people really know how far back their legacy goes.  In the old days
I used to kid Rich, asking him if there were more Fortran developers than
there were Fortran users.   But the truth is, 40 years into my career,
while I still don't want to program in it, as a language, it still very
much pays my salary.

Ron as you know from your days at the labs, Intel would not nearly be as
successful in HPC if not for its developer tools and those tools all have
the DEC compiler DNA ground up and injected into them.


Clem ​
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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> Dunno.   The first I dealt with was the f77 based on the pcc backend.
>

Hmm. I've found the source code for that compiler (/usr/source/fort in the
v6 distribution) but there doesn't seem to be an attribution.  The man page
seems to be dated 8/20/73, but again lacks attribution; perhaps Ken wrote
it?

        - Dan C.

*From:* TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] *On Behalf Of *ron
> minnich
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 7, 2017 1:14 PM
> *To:* TUHS main list
> *Subject:* Re: [TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11
>
>
>
> I was not clear, evidently, although part of this is my memory's fault :-)
>
>
>
> There was a fortran compiler on v6, written in assembly. I was wondering
> who wrote it.
>
> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 9:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote it.
>
>
>
> Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which was
> written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the 16-bit
> column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error.
>
>
>
> Anyone remember who wrote it?
>
>
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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 2:40 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> I remember the USENIX talk about it at the time, somebody asked the
> speaker if ITS would boot on the simulator - which got a lot of chuckles.


​BTW: for those that never saw ITS, I should have added, part of why this
is funny is that ITS has a very famous PDP-11 simulator included as part
it.​
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[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Paul Ruizendaal]

Yes. On the Unix Tree the first man page for it appears in V3.

The "Research Unix Reader" says it appeared in V2 and was written by Thomson and Ritchie jointly.

Paul

On 7 Mar 2017, at 20:53 , Dan Cross wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> Dunno.   The first I dealt with was the f77 based on the pcc backend.
> 
> 
> Hmm. I've found the source code for that compiler (/usr/source/fort in the v6 distribution) but there doesn't seem to be an attribution.  The man page seems to be dated 8/20/73, but again lacks attribution; perhaps Ken wrote it?
> 
>         - Dan C.
> 
> From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of ron minnich
> Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 1:14 PM
> To: TUHS main list
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11
> 
>  
> 
> I was not clear, evidently, although part of this is my memory's fault :-)
> 
>  
> 
> There was a fortran compiler on v6, written in assembly. I was wondering who wrote it.
> 
> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 9:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I spent a year or so working on this in 1977. I was wondering who wrote it.
> 
>  
> 
> Funny but: I once had a compile fail on Motorola's MPL compiler, which was written in fortran. It had so many continued comment lines that the 16-bit column number went negative, and I got a fairly obscure error. 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyone remember who wrote it?
> 
> 

[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Tue, 7 Mar 2017, Clem Cole wrote:

>       I remember the USENIX talk about it at the time, somebody asked 
>       the speaker if ITS would boot on the simulator - which got a lot 
>       of chuckles.
> 
> 
> BTW: for those that never saw ITS, I should have added, part of why this 
> is funny is that ITS has a very famous PDP-11 simulator included as part 
> it.​

And it's turtles all the way down!

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 2:53 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> /usr/source/fort


​Ah - that is the old Research compiler before f77.   I'm not even sure it
will compile a full Fortran-IV deck.   As I said, pretty early into USENIX
look in the CULC directory and you should find a FTN compiler and the DEC
assembler. That was the compiler many of used until the pcc/f77 showed up.

Years later, when DEC released Ultrix, the languages groups formally
supported Ultrix.  Besides being more modern versions of the compilers, is
they supported the old VMS linker, which was ported to both the 11 and the
Vax by Paul Winalski. ​  Not only did he get it run on Unix, he got it work
with a.out, and macho files too.  I don't remember if he could grok ELF
with it (he would know - maybe I can convince to join this list).   He will
carry a lot of DEC history in the middle times, when I was doing startups.
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