#linc — Public Fediverse posts

RE: https://mastodon.online/@mwichary/115676326852139827

Love to see a thread about the #LINC appear without coming from me! #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #ComputerHistory

Another amazing find by @larsbrinkhoff is this #LAP6 source code printout: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/washingtonUniversity/linc/LAP6_Manuscript_Listings_May67.pdf

It was good to see probably the most hardcore #LINC program out there in its original source form. But looking into this we found an oddity that uncovered some ingenious #RealProgrammer tricks that Mary Allen Wilkes used in her code.

Take a look at the attached screenshot here. This is a section from the `MSDISPLY.M` "manuscript" (text/source code) file for the main LAP6 editor. The first column is the memory location (in octal), second column is the octal value for the instruction line, and to the right of that is the source code in LINC assembly.

The code is full of subroutines, which make use of the fact that the first 16 memory locations are treated as a sort of register file, and the `JMP` instruction stores a return pointer in "register" 0 so that a `JMP 0` is basically `RET`. The only mnemonics that are in this code are `JMP`, `LDA`, `SAE`, and `XSK`.

`LDA i` loads the next word in the code into the accumulator, `SAE i` skips an instruction if the accumulator is equal to the next word in the code, and `XSK i 0` checks to see if the address in register 0 has overflowed somehow. The details of this subroutine are less interesting than all of the other lines.

Some of the lines have text like `BIGGEST BLOCK USED IN WA` and `MAXIMUM LN`, which the assembler has assigned the value `0000`, presumably because they are invalid instructions in LAP6 assembly. I guess that's a neat trick: bad memonics can make a handy self-documenting null value!

But take a look at line `524`:

```
524 0011 CURRENT LN
```

That's a bit of a novelty. How did `CURRENT LN` assemble to the value `0011` (9, decimal)?

Well remember that Mary Allen Wilkes had a strong hand on the LINC ISA: she wrote the emulator that could run LINC code before the hardware was anywhere near functional. She also wrote the assembler for this ISA on that emulator. She had direct control of both parts of this chain, and so she made it so that the LINC Assembly Program only checked two letters to see if it was a valid mnemonic: the middle letter was ignored for uniqueness!

So the word `CURRENT` basically matched the regex `^C.R`, and the assembler put the instruction for the `CLR` mnemonic, which is `0011`! (Incidentally this clears the accumulator when run as an opcode rather than an operand).

I'm still not sure how it picked the values. Somehow at one point she uses the text `TAPE INSTR` to match the `SCR` instruction (`0340` if you're curious). So my regex above wasn't the only way it could match mnemonics.

But now that I know that only the first and third letters are unique in combination, the whole instruction set begins to make more sense to me.

#RetroComputing #MaryAllenWilkes

Hey #RetroComputing folks! I'm running #LAP6 on @larsbrinkhoff's #LINC emulator! #VintageComputing #PDP12

https://github.com/open-simh/simh/pull/505 ← There's a new emulator in open #SIMH for the #LINC, by @larsbrinkhoff. I will absolutely be running this on the hardware from my exhibit once the current exhibition finishes, and I'll work on getting the knobs and switches working accurately. I'll need to drive way more neopixels for that to work! #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

My #RetroComputing exhibit on the #LINC and Mary Allen Wilkes is open for free to the public in #Stratford #London through the end of October 2025. Please drop by and interact with it!

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/aug/practice-iii-student-showcase

@neale Here's a closeup of the exhibit as I left it after showing it to @anmeisel the other day. #LINC #RetroComputing #UCL #PublicHistory

My #RetroComputing exhibit about the #LINC is about to open at the #UCL Urban Room for the next two months.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/aug/practice-iii-student-showcase

Edit: It's now open! You have until Friday, 31 Oct 2025 to come and see it!

Mottok et spennende byggesett på døra i går, komplett med grønn overledning #MT32-Pi #linc #midi #norsktut

"The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) [...] is considered by some to be the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC

via @computers

#computers #technology #vintage #history #LINC

Sensibilisation à l'#OSINT par la #CNIL et le #LINC. A partir de cette vidéo, et avec un peu d'astuce, il est possible de retrouver les infos sur son auteur :
🆔 nom et prénom
🌐 profiles Insta et Twitter/X
💼 employeur
🏡 domicile
🎓 parcours universitaire
🍻 bars et restaurants préférés

La solution : https://www.cnil.fr/fr/recoupement-dinformations-en-ligne-ce-que-vous-publiez-peut-devoiler-votre-vie-privee

Plus d'info : https://linc.cnil.fr/le-renseignement-en-sources-ouvertes-faire-le-lien-entre-vos-activites-sur-le-web

Here's a video of the #LINC team signing that panel visible in the background of the video: https://youtu.be/dg7-GxUfn_M

Here's a recent local news segment from someone visiting the museum where the #DigiBarn #LINC was last year, apparently. If you go to the museum Web site the #pdp12 in this shot seems to be on a general floor exhibit. The piece talks about how Wilkes got out of computers to become an attorney.
https://youtu.be/VymT3KnSvAM?t=7

There is one good photo of Wes Clark with a #LINC; but instead of using it, he's just posing with it like some sort of anonymous model. He always described this photo as his "#BrooksBrothers pose", referring to the popular menswear company in the US.

Gentle update: I originally said this was the earliest LINC photo, which on review is highly incorrect.

I had conflated some stuff about how Wilkes worked on the original OS (more of a simple assembler, really) on a #LINC emulator she wrote on the TX-2. She spent a lot of time haranguing Wes and the others to pin down behaviours of the hardware so she could get it finished, but they were redesigning regularly due to the tight constraints and new flipchips coming out at #dec.

She worked with all the biomedical researchers they shipped the things to, teaching them how to get software written that worked with their experiments. Apparently that was so exhausting that she took a year off to travel the world, and in 1965 she got back to the US and found LINC had spun off from MIT and was based in St. Louis. She was still in sort of "gap year" mindset and said she'd work on the machine but didn't want to commit to any particular city. So they shipped one of the existing units to her father's home in Baltimore.

The OS she worked on there was LAP 6 (LINC Assembly Program version 6), which was vastly superior to the earlier versions. It had a full-screen text editor that took advantage of the RAM expansion modules that LINC were shipping at the time, and really made the machine more generally useful.

The OS that shipped with the #pdp12 from #dec was called "LAP6DIAL"

@tastytronic Oh yes, and it's from the Minneapolis campus, but it's rather fitting that this 1990 oral history of the #LINC is hosted at UMN: https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107217

OK, so where did all of this #LINC and #pdp8 stuff from this whoooole thread end up? Well, Dick Clayton from #dec explains in this short interjection at the DigiBarn event:

https://youtu.be/xT_5PcrVI9Q?t=5810

Basically Digital made a weird hybrid LINC/pdp8 system called the LINC-8, but it wasn't that great. So while he was on jury duty, he sketched out the Right Way to do it so that the system could switch between "8 mode" and "LINC mode" *in software*. The result was the #pdp12, which sold more units than all the previous LINC systems combined.

And that takes us to tonight's thread from @tastytronic, where the #umdpdp12 has just had its first successful verification tests of some of its 60-year-old flipchip cards: https://teh.entar.net/@tastytronic/109644812161500698

I dispositivi di riconoscimento vocale basati su #AI remota, come #Amazon #Echo #Alexa o #Google #assistant, sono problematici per la #privacy

Il #LINC, centro di ricerca del #garante privacy francese, sta lavorando a un assistente vocale che opera in locale senza invio di dati, conforme al #GDPR.

I risultati sono incoraggianti: è una buona notizia.

Le info sono qui: https://linc.cnil.fr/fr/preuve-de-concept-dun-assistant-vocal-respectueux-de-la-vie-privee-des-utilisateurs

#digitalrights #sorveglianza #surveillance #surveillancecapitalism
#CNIL
#garanteprivacy

[#vidéosurveillance] Un dossier du #Linc (#CNIL) publié le 19/11/2021,sur le développement de la vidéosurveillance dans les villages.
➡️ https://linc.cnil.fr/fr/les-cameras-au-village
#Surveillance #DonneesPersonnelles #RGPD #ViePrivee #Videoprotection

#ComedyTouchTouch1000 #CLARKE #Pree #Dorian #MAXMX43 #TheMan #TAALR #Giant #A.L.I.E #Vigil #Stella #Overmind #V #A.D.I.S.N. #TheQuail #Gideon #Orak #Brainiac #Batcomputer #CerebroCerebra #Computo #Ultron #MotherBox #Fate #Banana,Jr.6000 #Max #Auntie #A.I.D.A. #Kilg%re #Project2501 #Yggdrasil #DTXPC #Beast666 #HOMER #TheMagi #Toy #Virgo #Praetorius #Erwin #AIMA #Answertron2000 #iFruit #EnnesbyLunesbyPeteyTAGAthens #Melchizedek #Merlin #Normad #Aura #TreeDiagram #Europa #Benson #PRISM #MotherBrain #GW #MotherBrain #BaseCochiseAI #DIA51 #Noah #DurandalLeelaTycho #TraxusIV #LINC #0D-10 #Prometheus #SEED #AM #CABAL #EVA #KAOS #MotherBrain #XenocidicInitiative #PC #Pokedex #Centralconsciousness #GOLAN #PipBoy2000/PipBoy3000 #ZAX #ACE #Sol—9000SystemDeus #FATE #NEXUSIntruderProgram #SHODAN #XERXES #IcarusDaedalusHeliosMorpheusTheOracle #Mainframe #343GuiltySpark #Calculator #Cortana #DeadlyBrain #PETs #Thiefnetcomputer #Adam #AuraMorganna #Dr.Carroll #TheController #ADA #IBIS #2401PenitentTangent #Angel #Durga/Melissa/Yasmine #TheMechanoids #TEC-XX #Dvorak #TemperNet #Animus #AuroraUnit #TheCatalysttheIntelligence