#bitsavers — Public Fediverse posts

Florida Man
Florida Man
suckin' data like a pig is
Florida Man

#bitsavers

Bitsavers has been an invaluable resource for everyone in the retrocomputing community for a long time now, and @bitsavers now has a Patreon for it! If you find it useful, you should join! https://www.patreon.com/bitsavers

#retrocomputing #Bitsavers

@screwlisp

You can pick up the document 'Signalling and Handling Conditions' from this index page:

http://nhplace.com/kent/ZL/

It was longer than I thought it would be, but I think you'll find it interesting to see what the Zetalisp condition system (which inspired the Common Lisp condition system) looked like.

In spirit, it was much the same. The biggest differences are:

* The CL system has 'active' restarts, where the ZL system had a passive thing where you returned a value to the case context and hoped that it would do the thing you wanted. It felt quite a bit more error-prone (if you'll pardon the reuse of 'error' here, maybe I should say 'mistake-prone').

* The ZL condition system offers a lot of really low-level stuff that did not seem proper for CL.

* The set of operations offered in ZL was richer, but also a lot more complicated, I thought, and I worried people would not really see what it was trying to do.

* Obviously, the ZL system was based on Flavors, not CLOS, and made reference to a lot of LispM-specific packages.

* The document was published in January, 1983 and identifies itself as part of Symbolics Release 4.0.

There are other differences as well.

#Zetalisp #LispMachine #LispMachines #Symbolics #LispM
#ConditionHandling #ConditionSystem #ErrorSystem #ErrorHandling #CommonLisp #CL #Flavors #CLOS #History #ComputerHistory
#InternetArchive #Bitsavers

Well, surfacing from another rathole, we research very early supermarket Point of Sale systems, in particular the ones from ESIS which were deployed initially in Jewel food stores in Chicago ca. 1971 just before UPC scanners came out in 1973. Finding a picture of one was really difficult, and the only one I found was from 1975 after Bunker-Ramo bought ESIS and had adopted UPC scanning. Each store required three ND-812 12 bit minicomputers to run the system.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/nd/ESIS

and, like everything else, there is someone out there who collects old PoS registers.

https://vintagepointofsale.com

#bitsavers

A fun thing I came across on Tue in my stacks of random papers, the Mascor 132 Reference Manual ca. 1970. It was a startup that failed in the 1970 recession that a bunch of IBM ACS engineers went to before joining Amdahl. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mascor I also added some related historical articles to http://bitsavers.org/pdf/amdahl/history

#bitsavers

A weird failed product that I turned up scanning information on the RCA 301 computer yesterday, the 361 Data File jukebox, ca 1963

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/rca/301

#bitsavers

@mmu_man @stepleton @jelora

Not yet. It will eventually be in http://bitsavers.org/BBofBS

There is a video of my workflow for prepping magtape at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xlq_MPWNKk

#bitsavers

@philpem

Yesterday I learned DEC sold a Teletex distribution and authoring system with speech using DECtalks

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/layered_product/VTX/

I'm going to dig around to see if we have the other mentioned manuals in the archive

#bitsavers

Evans and Sutherland Picture System 2 ca. 1977 documentation and software. Something I've been trying to find since 1980. Now, i have to find my copy of the sources to Simutech's 1979 F-16 flight simulator HUD course follower demo.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/evansAndSutherland/picture_system_2
http://bitsavers.org/bits/EvansAndSutherland/Multi_Picture_System/

#bitsavers

As far as I know, no one has ever 3D scanned and modeled a real Melitta large teapot.
Now a friend did this for me.
There was a large, medium and small one which I call the Teapot Family. I should have Mama and Baby Teapot available next week
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/melitta

#bitsavers

A description from 1984 of Motorola's bubble memory chipset
http://bitsavers.org/components/motorola/bubble_memory/Brzozowy_-_The_Design_and_Performance_of_Magnetic_Bubble_Memory_Systems_198405.pdf

#bitsavers

ROMP functional specification 1983

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/rt/ROMP/6080439_ROMP_Functional_Specification_19831201.pdf

#bitsavers

The 'contrib' tapes for X11R3 aren't on x.org Someone found a post of mine from years ago that I had them, I pulled them off of a backup and they are up now under
http://bitsavers.org/bits/MIT/X/X11R3

It doesn't look like I saved anything earlier than X10R4. A LONG time ago, I helped build a board-level product that was essentially an X terminal on a VME and QBus card. It started life supporting X vers 10

#bitsavers

The Unix V4 tape read was successful
https://discuss.systems/@ricci/115747843169814700

#bitsavers

"Friendly reminder to keep magnetic disks away from laptop lids!"

#bitsavers

Today's exercise in "no fun".
Someone noticed the pages of this pdf were out of order. This brought back a bad memory that, in fact, this rather expensive used tome was bound incorrectly, and I forgot to fix it when I made the pdf.
Several hours later after renaming every page to correct his, and create an easy to search version, it is up for your enjoyment.

Unix_System_V_Release_4_System_Calls_and_Library_Functions_for_Motorola_Processors_1993

I am baffled why anyone would want to lump some of the sections of the Unix Programmers Manual into one mongo alphabetized one, but there you are.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/System_V_Release_4_Motorola/0-13-035841-X_Unix_System_V_Release_4_System_Calls_and_Library_Functions_for_Motorola_Processors_1993.pdf

warning... it is a 48 megabyte file.

#bitsavers

Well, it has started. Let's see if I actually get it written next year.

http://bitsavers.org/BBofBS

The BS is intentional.

#bitsavers

Once upon a time IBM Research had scans of the Journal of Research and Development and the System Journal on line. I archived them before they disappeared and just pushed them to bitsavers
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/IBM_Journal_of_Research_and_Development
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/IBM_Systems_Journal

#bitsavers

I just finished uploading a few dozen Xerox PARC "Blue and White" technical reports to fill in the ones that were missing in
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports

#bitsavers

Knee deep right now in scanning DTS draft documents of all those comm products Buzz Dean's N&C group did for interoperability on Macs in the late 80s that no one remembers.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/communications

and the light bulb came on while scanning the MacX document why the code name was "Malcolm"

#AppleLore #Bitsavers

I found my copy of Tredennick's book on the Micro/370 yesterday.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/_Digital_Press/Tredennick_-_Microprocessor_Logic_Design_The_Flowchart_Method_1987.pdf

#bitsavers

A collection of IBM Personal Computer OEM Seminar scans 1983-87, with a PDF index

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/IBM_Personal_Computer_Seminar_Proceedings

#bitsavers

unicorn captured

schematics for the Floating Point Systems
AP-120B and FPS-100 array processors

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/floatingPointSystems

#bitsavers

Just finished uploading some EDN magazines from 1970-73 The new pdf index of the directory will take a while to create.

http://bitsavers.org/magazines/EDN

11/1/1970 has an article by a very young looking Bob Dobkin (founder of Linear Technology)

#bitsavers

Down a rathole on Xerox outline fonts.
https://alt.folklore.computers.narkive.com/42k1dv8o/xerox-9700-fonts

The patent mentioned probably has the C
implementation in a 398 page appendix
to US5459828
How does one acquire that?

#bitsavers

No one but me will care about this

I've been trying to document the tek 8540 in-circuit emulators for years and got around to
dumping some firmware this morning
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/tektronix/85xx/Emulator_Processor/68000/

i've been trying to find docs, esp for the uP specific boards service manuals and the only one i've ever found is for the 68000

It is weird. The main CPU is a Signetics 2650 like the earlier Tek 8002 but the OS on the 8540 is all in 2764 eproms.

#bitsavers

1980-82 issues of "Mini-Micro Systems"
http://bitsavers.org/magazines/Mini-Micro_Systems/ along with an updated index file

#bitsavers

CP/M source listings that I finally got around to scanning after having them in storage for years.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalResearch/CPM_Listings/

There probably isn't anything there that isn't already on http://www.gaby.de/ehome.htm

#bitsavers

more than you ever wanted to know about Britton Lee database machines

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/brittonLee

#bitsavers

CHM has one
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102718516

1977 report on the future of data processing.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/advancedComputerTechniques/Lecht_-_The_Waves_of_Change_-_A_Techno-Economic_Analysis_of_the_Data_Processing_Industry_1977.pdf

#bitsavers