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computers / comp.sys.unisys / Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

SubjectAuthor
* Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
+* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
|+* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
||`- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
|`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
| `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
+* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
|`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Bill Gunshannon
| `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200David W Schroth
|  +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
|  |`- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
|  +- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Bill Gunshannon
|  `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kurt Duncan
|   `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
|    `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200David W Schroth
|     `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
 +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Andrew
 |`- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200David W Schroth
 `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
  `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
   +- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200jns
   `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
    |+- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    | `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
    |  +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    |  |+- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Kira Ash
    |  |`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |  | `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    |  |  `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |  |   +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Paul Kimpel
    |  |   |`- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |  |   `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    |  |    `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |  `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   +- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Andrew
    |   +- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |   +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Bill Gunshannon
    |   |`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   | +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Paul Kimpel
    |   | |`- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   | +* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |   | |`* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   | | `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Scott Lurndal
    |   | |  `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   | `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Bill Gunshannon
    |   |  `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
    |   +- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Paul Kimpel
    |   `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld
    `* Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Lewis Cole
     `- Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200Stephen Fuld

Pages:123
Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Thu, 22 Sep 2022 21:35 UTC

Hi all,

I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.

https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/

Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.

Kira

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

<tgjc52$27vpp$3@dont-email.me>

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys
Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2022 21:19:45 -0700
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Fri, 23 Sep 2022 04:19 UTC

On 9/22/2022 2:35 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>
> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>
> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.

First, welcome to the 2200 community. We are a small, but generally
friendly group. If you have questions, someone here will almost
certainly help to answer them.

Second, I enjoyed your web site. It was interesting to see someone not
familiar with 2200 stuff figuring it out, and comparing it to other systems.

Third, a few comments/pointers, etc.

A) You seem to be under the impression that all files are program
files. This is not true. While all program files are files to the file
system, not all files are program files. Many (and on some systems
most) files are simply files, with no internal structure other than what
the application gives them. These are typically what one deals with
when a program does I/O. A program file is simply a file with a
particular well defined structure within it. As you say, it is sort of
like a directory, but not exactly. It is definitely not an ISAM file.

B) When you talk about processor calls, you seem to be unaware of the
defaults, especially for the output file. So for example if you have
@UC File1.Element1, File2.Element2

It will behave as you indicate. But if you leave off File2, and just
have .element2, it will default to the same file as specified in spec1.
The same rules apply to element names, that is file2. without specifying
an element name will default to Element1. But best of all, if you leave
out spec2 entirely, i.e. @UC file1.element1 spec two will default to the
same name as spec1. You might think that the output would overwrite the
input file, but the program file allows you to have a source (symbolic)
and an object (binary) element with the same name. If you do this, then
do an @PRT,t of the file, it will show both elements. (There are further
options to @PRT,t to show only one or the other if you desire.)
Overall, this can reduce your cognitive load, and reduce typing.

C) You say an unadorned @RUN can start a demand run. This is true, but
assuming you have set up the account, it can can just as easily start a
batch run.


D) I believe that the Hitachi, Fujitsu, and old Siemans mainframes were
essentially IBM 360/70 clones (though with their own OS), whereas the
Bull and Unisys systems weren't. I think this is worth mentioning,

Anyway, thanks for doing this, and I look forward to reading future
sections of your web site.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

<3dc9e362-46df-4cca-85df-6ff4054b9f9cn@googlegroups.com>

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Fri, 23 Sep 2022 14:01 UTC

On Thursday, September 22, 2022 at 9:19:51 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 9/22/2022 2:35 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
> >
> > https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
> >
> > Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
> First, welcome to the 2200 community. We are a small, but generally
> friendly group. If you have questions, someone here will almost
> certainly help to answer them.
>
> Second, I enjoyed your web site. It was interesting to see someone not
> familiar with 2200 stuff figuring it out, and comparing it to other systems.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you very much for your reply - as is obvious, I'm new to the system; I have a lot of experience with UNIX and a fair amount with Stratus VOS, which obviously affects how I learn things, but OS 2200 is certainly different from my usual area of expertise, and there's a lot to learn.

>
> Third, a few comments/pointers, etc.
>
> A) You seem to be under the impression that all files are program
> files. This is not true. While all program files are files to the file
> system, not all files are program files. Many (and on some systems
> most) files are simply files, with no internal structure other than what
> the application gives them. These are typically what one deals with
> when a program does I/O. A program file is simply a file with a
> particular well defined structure within it. As you say, it is sort of
> like a directory, but not exactly. It is definitely not an ISAM file.
>

A non-program-file file has no trailing dot and no internal named elements, right? If so, I actually started primarily working with those first - they just cluttered up my @prt,p output quickly, so I started keeping things contained in program files. (On a related note, can I make @PRT show me a list of files with a certain qualifier? I didn't see that option in the ECL/FURPUR manual.)

The ISAM comparison was probably a bad one, as I see now. I was mostly just thinking "file with internal records identified by name", but it seems like that's not quite right for the elements of a program file.

> B) When you talk about processor calls, you seem to be unaware of the
> defaults, especially for the output file. So for example if you have
> @UC File1.Element1, File2.Element2
>
> It will behave as you indicate. But if you leave off File2, and just
> have .element2, it will default to the same file as specified in spec1.
> The same rules apply to element names, that is file2. without specifying
> an element name will default to Element1. But best of all, if you leave
> out spec2 entirely, i.e. @UC file1.element1 spec two will default to the
> same name as spec1. You might think that the output would overwrite the
> input file, but the program file allows you to have a source (symbolic)
> and an object (binary) element with the same name. If you do this, then
> do an @PRT,t of the file, it will show both elements. (There are further
> options to @PRT,t to show only one or the other if you desire.)
> Overall, this can reduce your cognitive load, and reduce typing.

Oh, interesting! So would that mean that when running other commands, like @DELETE for instance, I'd provide a subtype specifier to specify which of the same-named files I'm referring to?

>
> C) You say an unadorned @RUN can start a demand run. This is true, but
> assuming you have set up the account, it can can just as easily start a
> batch run.
>

Makes sense. I know @RUN has a lot of moving parts I haven't had to figure out yet.

>
> D) I believe that the Hitachi, Fujitsu, and old Siemans mainframes were
> essentially IBM 360/70 clones (though with their own OS), whereas the
> Bull and Unisys systems weren't. I think this is worth mentioning,
>

Sure, I'll add some clarification on that! NEC is also not of the 360/370 family, but related to Bull's systems. Maybe I should just add a family tree graphic.

> Anyway, thanks for doing this, and I look forward to reading future
> sections of your web site.
>
>
>
> --
> - Stephen Fuld
> (e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Thanks again for your reply! I deeply appreciate feedback from someone who has spent quality time with this system. Hopefully I'll embarrass myself less next time around.

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Scott Lurndal - Fri, 23 Sep 2022 14:25 UTC

Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:
>On 9/22/2022 2:35 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>
>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>
>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>
>

> D) I believe that the Hitachi, Fujitsu, and old Siemans mainframes were
>essentially IBM 360/70 clones (though with their own OS), whereas the
>Bull and Unisys systems weren't. I think this is worth mentioning,

Sperry had a line of 360 clone systems alongside the 1100/2200
line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_Series_90

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys
Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Fri, 23 Sep 2022 15:07 UTC

On 9/23/2022 7:25 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:
>> On 9/22/2022 2:35 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>>
>>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>>
>>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>>
>>
>
>> D) I believe that the Hitachi, Fujitsu, and old Siemans mainframes were
>> essentially IBM 360/70 clones (though with their own OS), whereas the
>> Bull and Unisys systems weren't. I think this is worth mentioning,
>
> Sperry had a line of 360 clone systems alongside the 1100/2200
> line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_Series_90

Yes. But I believe Kira was discussing current systems. Sperry
actually had two lines of semi 360 clone systems, one it developed
internally and one it got when it took over the computer business of RCA.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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 by: Stephen Fuld - Fri, 23 Sep 2022 15:30 UTC

On 9/23/2022 7:01 AM, Kira Ash wrote:
> On Thursday, September 22, 2022 at 9:19:51 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 9/22/2022 2:35 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>>
>>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>>
>>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>> First, welcome to the 2200 community. We are a small, but generally
>> friendly group. If you have questions, someone here will almost
>> certainly help to answer them.
>>
>> Second, I enjoyed your web site. It was interesting to see someone not
>> familiar with 2200 stuff figuring it out, and comparing it to other systems.
>
> I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you very much for your reply - as is obvious, I'm new to the system; I have a lot of experience with UNIX and a fair amount with Stratus VOS, which obviously affects how I learn things, but OS 2200 is certainly different from my usual area of expertise, and there's a lot to learn.

Yup! But you seem to be enjoying it, so "good on you".

>
>>
>> Third, a few comments/pointers, etc.
>>
>> A) You seem to be under the impression that all files are program
>> files. This is not true. While all program files are files to the file
>> system, not all files are program files. Many (and on some systems
>> most) files are simply files, with no internal structure other than what
>> the application gives them. These are typically what one deals with
>> when a program does I/O. A program file is simply a file with a
>> particular well defined structure within it. As you say, it is sort of
>> like a directory, but not exactly. It is definitely not an ISAM file.
>>
>
> A non-program-file file has no trailing dot and no internal named elements, right?

Not exactly. You need to specify the trailing dot if the name could be
confused with an element name. Some commands can work with either. If a
command can work with either, and no dot is used, the command assumes
the name is an element name. But you are right that a non-program file
has no internal elements.

>If so, I actually started primarily working with those first - they just cluttered up my @prt,p output quickly, so I started keeping things contained in program files.

Fair enough. Your choice. There are advantages each way, although if
you are writing source code that is to be compiled, it must be in an
element.

> (On a related note, can I make @PRT show me a list of files with a certain qualifier? I didn't see that option in the ECL/FURPUR manual.)

I don't know of a way to do that.

> The ISAM comparison was probably a bad one, as I see now. I was mostly just thinking "file with internal records identified by name", but it seems like that's not quite right for the elements of a program file.
>
>> B) When you talk about processor calls, you seem to be unaware of the
>> defaults, especially for the output file. So for example if you have
>> @UC File1.Element1, File2.Element2
>>
>> It will behave as you indicate. But if you leave off File2, and just
>> have .element2, it will default to the same file as specified in spec1.
>> The same rules apply to element names, that is file2. without specifying
>> an element name will default to Element1. But best of all, if you leave
>> out spec2 entirely, i.e. @UC file1.element1 spec two will default to the
>> same name as spec1. You might think that the output would overwrite the
>> input file, but the program file allows you to have a source (symbolic)
>> and an object (binary) element with the same name. If you do this, then
>> do an @PRT,t of the file, it will show both elements. (There are further
>> options to @PRT,t to show only one or the other if you desire.)
>> Overall, this can reduce your cognitive load, and reduce typing.
>
> Oh, interesting! So would that mean that when running other commands, like @DELETE for instance, I'd provide a subtype specifier to specify which of the same-named files I'm referring to?

Yes, precisely. See the A,O,R and S options. BTW, the same options
work the same way on @PRT,T

But note that @delete of an element doesn't actually delete the element.
It just marks the element as deleted in the program file table of
contents. (sort of like deleting a file in Windows). So program files
tend to grow and have lots of deleted elements. If you want to recover
the space, use @PACK.

snip

> Thanks again for your reply! I deeply appreciate feedback from someone who has spent quality time with this system. Hopefully I'll embarrass myself less next time around.

No embarrassment at all. For something so different from your
background, ISTM you are doing remarkably well.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Sat, 24 Sep 2022 21:14 UTC

On Friday, September 23, 2022 at 10:07:00 PM UTC-7, David W Schroth wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:35:59 -0700 (PDT), Kira Ash
> <hpeint...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Hi all,
> >
> >I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
> >
> >https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
> >
> >Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
> >
> >Kira
> I will echo Mr. Fuld's welcome to you, and offer semi-random comments
> on your fascinating posts.
>
> 1) I believe that there is a CSHELL program for the 2200 that provides
> a decent emulation of a *nix shell. While I knew the authors when
> they worked at Unisys, I don't know where the program can be found.
>
> 2) The 2200 File System is a flat file system. According to Ron Smith
> (co-author with George Gray of what I regard as the definitive history
> of Unisys systems), there was a time when Univac considered replacing
> the flat file system with a heirarchical file systems. The customers
> they discussed this with were not supportive of the idea, so it was
> dropped.
>
> 3) Based upon your comment regarding read and write keys on files, I
> infer that you are running on what is called a Fundamental Security
> system. I tend to regard SECOPT1 (or higher) systems somewhat more
> secure, and on those systems read and write keys are not meaningful
> for most files.
>
> 4) The ECL (Exec Control Language) internally works with Fieldata,
> which is a six bit character set. So ECL is not case-sensitive.
>
> 5) @PRT (with no options) is not something I typically use, as it
> displays the contents of the entire Master File Directory. Not a big
> deal on systems with small filesystems; a very big deal at some sites
> I have supported with very large file systems.
>
> 6) PLUS is a descendent of JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the
> International Algorithmic Language), or so I've been told. It
> suffers, from my perspective, from trying to be too many things for
> too many people (for a while it ran on 2200s, Series 30, and Series 90
> systems). While there are UCS flavors of COBOL and Fortran, I suspect
> that the customer you cite probably uses FTN (ASCII Fortran). I could
> be mistaken.
>
> 7) From a user program perspective, there are 48 general registers
> (partitioned into index registers, accumulators, and R-registers),
> and16 base registers (critical for addressing and security). While
> negative zero is a thing, arithmetic operations never return a
> negative zero. The existence of negative zero does cause some quirks
> that most people encounter very rarely. Instructions can access sixth
> words, quarter words, third words, half words, words, and double
> words. I will observe that the complex memory security features seem
> to be effective.
>
> 8) AT&T, before it was broken up, was a heavy user of SX 1100. There
> are some oddball Exec ERs that were put in specifically to support
> AT&T's needs.
>
> I'm now dying to see Part 4: The Periodic File of Elements.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful post, and I hope Part 4 is interesting to you when it's posted in a couple of weeks! I've been hitting the manuals on OS 2200 storage and the APIs for dealing with it - lot of interesting stuff in there.

For the Ron Smith and George Gray history, do you mean "Unisys Computers: An Introductory History" or "Sperry Rand's Third Generation Computers" in IEEE Annals?

CSHELL sounds like an interesting beast. Please let me know if you come across a copy somewhere, as I'd be very curious - though the truth is, I've become increasingly accustomed to doing things the 2200 way. :-)

Thanks again!

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: bill.gun...@gmail.com (Bill Gunshannon)
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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Bill Gunshannon - Sat, 24 Sep 2022 22:28 UTC

On 9/24/22 17:14, Kira Ash wrote:
> On Friday, September 23, 2022 at 10:07:00 PM UTC-7, David W Schroth wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:35:59 -0700 (PDT), Kira Ash
>> <hpeint...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>>
>>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>>
>>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>>>
>>> Kira
>> I will echo Mr. Fuld's welcome to you, and offer semi-random comments
>> on your fascinating posts.
>>
>> 1) I believe that there is a CSHELL program for the 2200 that provides
>> a decent emulation of a *nix shell. While I knew the authors when
>> they worked at Unisys, I don't know where the program can be found.
>>
>> 2) The 2200 File System is a flat file system. According to Ron Smith
>> (co-author with George Gray of what I regard as the definitive history
>> of Unisys systems), there was a time when Univac considered replacing
>> the flat file system with a heirarchical file systems. The customers
>> they discussed this with were not supportive of the idea, so it was
>> dropped.
>>
>> 3) Based upon your comment regarding read and write keys on files, I
>> infer that you are running on what is called a Fundamental Security
>> system. I tend to regard SECOPT1 (or higher) systems somewhat more
>> secure, and on those systems read and write keys are not meaningful
>> for most files.
>>
>> 4) The ECL (Exec Control Language) internally works with Fieldata,
>> which is a six bit character set. So ECL is not case-sensitive.
>>
>> 5) @PRT (with no options) is not something I typically use, as it
>> displays the contents of the entire Master File Directory. Not a big
>> deal on systems with small filesystems; a very big deal at some sites
>> I have supported with very large file systems.
>>
>> 6) PLUS is a descendent of JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the
>> International Algorithmic Language), or so I've been told. It
>> suffers, from my perspective, from trying to be too many things for
>> too many people (for a while it ran on 2200s, Series 30, and Series 90
>> systems). While there are UCS flavors of COBOL and Fortran, I suspect
>> that the customer you cite probably uses FTN (ASCII Fortran). I could
>> be mistaken.
>>
>> 7) From a user program perspective, there are 48 general registers
>> (partitioned into index registers, accumulators, and R-registers),
>> and16 base registers (critical for addressing and security). While
>> negative zero is a thing, arithmetic operations never return a
>> negative zero. The existence of negative zero does cause some quirks
>> that most people encounter very rarely. Instructions can access sixth
>> words, quarter words, third words, half words, words, and double
>> words. I will observe that the complex memory security features seem
>> to be effective.
>>
>> 8) AT&T, before it was broken up, was a heavy user of SX 1100. There
>> are some oddball Exec ERs that were put in specifically to support
>> AT&T's needs.
>>
>> I'm now dying to see Part 4: The Periodic File of Elements.
>
> Thank you very much for your thoughtful post, and I hope Part 4 is interesting to you when it's posted in a couple of weeks! I've been hitting the manuals on OS 2200 storage and the APIs for dealing with it - lot of interesting stuff in there.
>
> For the Ron Smith and George Gray history, do you mean "Unisys Computers: An Introductory History" or "Sperry Rand's Third Generation Computers" in IEEE Annals?
>
> CSHELL sounds like an interesting beast. Please let me know if you come across a copy somewhere, as I'd be very curious - though the truth is, I've become increasingly accustomed to doing things the 2200 way. :-)
>
> Thanks again!

Speaking of SHELLs. Do copies of the Software Tools Virtual Operating
System written for EXEC-8 on the 1100 still exist? Has it been ported
to the 2200?

bill

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: l_c...@juno.com (Lewis Cole)
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 by: Lewis Cole - Mon, 26 Sep 2022 09:03 UTC

As Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth said, welcome.
Some piddly points of no real importance as the Really Important Stuff you probably need to know is coming from Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth (and probably Mr. Gunshannon Real Soon Now).

1. You mentioned the fact that Once Upon a Time, there used to be a Unix variant, SX-1100, that ran on top of OS1100 at Bell Labs (BELLCORE).
You also mentioned that it had a "poor reputation for performance".
I would like to point out that at the time (pre-1100/90 IIRC), I think that 1100 hardware was still running at only a few MIPS at best.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "If you see a dog's walking on his hind legs, it may not do so very well, but what you should be surprised at is that it is done at all."

2. As Mr. Schroth noted, the OS1100/OS2200 file system was (is?) a flat file system with program files just happening to have an internal structure that makes them look like they are a subdirectory.
But just in case you haven't run into it yet, there were (are?) also file cycles (F-cycles) so that there can be multiple instances of a file with the "same" name.
If you want to learn more about the joys of basic OS1100/OS2200 speak, I would recommend that you take a look at Volume 2 of one of the old Exec Programmer Reference Manuals like this one for Exec 36R2:
< http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/1100/exec/UP-4144.23_R36r2_Executive_System_Vol_2_Jan80.pdf >

Yes, I know it's older than dirt, but AFAIK, it's still applicable to today's OS2200 thanks to the joys of Backward Compatibility.

3. You mention file access being controlled via read/write keys.
Well, things may have changed, but that isn't (or wasn't) the only way file access could be controlled.
Once Upon a Time, a branch of OS1100 was hardened to be compliant with the B-1 Security Standard (the Orange Book?).
AFAIK, this is just about as good as it gets in terms of security.
(I think Microsoft at one time came up with some that was C-2 compliant.)
So at least at one time, access could be controlled by ACRs as well as read/write keys.
4. From your previous questions, I suspected that you were probably writing some kind of article, especially based on your question about what were the most common programming language that programs running on OS2200 are written in.
To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what you were getting at and to be quite honest, I not sure I do yet.

To try to be clear on my part, every customer in sight since close to the beginning of time has wanted computers that supported high level languages so that they (the customers) could supposedly write machine independent code ... at least before they started using the machine specific language features that tied them in to one family of machines.
No doubt in an attempt to keep its customers "happy", Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys provides and supports, and will continue to provide and support high level languages like COBOL, Fortran, and C or whatever other languages become the Language Du Jour so long as the Company exists.

But the fact of the matter is that a lot of code from the Good Old Days which was and still is 1100 assembly language code, and is still presumably very much supported (even if its use is not really encouraged).
If that wasn't the case, then the Company could have gotten rid of what amounts to an entirely different machine (a "Basic Mode" machine) that's tacked onto a newer machine with a similar architecture (an "Extended Mode" machine) which the OS switch between by way of a mode bit in the Unisys version of a PSW (DB16 in the Designator Register AKA DR).
Also in addition to old Dusty Deck code, I suspect that a lot of Transaction Processing development is still actively being done in assembly language.
Of course, if Mr. Fuld or Mr. Schroth say that I'm full of shit, I will defer to them and say that you should believe them, but my point is that I suspect that assembler is still very much alive and well as far as OS2200 is concerned and should be in your list.

Also, in addition to assembly, COBOL, Fortran, and C, there's also the matter of what amounts to another Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys language known as Mapper (which I see you reference in the second part of your series).
Mapper was renamed long, long ago to BL- or BS- something-something-something and was even ported to non-Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys machines.
Considering that the Company once sort of tailored one of its 1100 systems to primarily run Mapper (i.e. a variant of the 1100/50 was referred to as Mapper10), I suspect that Mapper should also be added to your list.

As for other languages that were customer written and not supported by the Company, there used to be a Pascal, a PL/1 variant (PLUM), and a LISP (written in Pascal IIRC).
While they aren't Company processors, presumably they stand a decent chance of still running on an Dorado.

5. I think you are confusing the Unisys 2200 emulator software that the Company uses on its Intel boxes with PS/2200.
Although it's been a few years now since I used PS/2200, I can definitely say that at the time I used it, it was *NOT* an emulator.
It couldn't be.
The host OS (Windows) prevented time keeping on the 1-usec granularity that the original M-Series dayclock hardware could deliver and so if you just left the simulated system run for awhile, its sense of wall time quickly went out of sync with actual wall time, making PS/2200 at best a simulator rather than an emulator.
It's my understanding that the Company emulator basically runs on top of a Linux based hypervisor which presumably is in close communication with the guest OS.
Again, I will defer to Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth if they say something different.

6. I think you haven't quite gotten a handle on the finer points of the basic 2200 Series IP (AKA CPU) architecture.
So here are a few things that I'll throw at the wall for your consideration..

* No, not all registers are visible in the (virtual) address space.
The General Register Set (GRS) is divided into a User set and an Exec set, the visibility of which is determined by a mode bit (DB17).
Even so, some instructions specify a register using a GRS offset (by combining the J- and A-fields of an instruction as in the case of the JGD instruction) and so are *NOT* affected by the mode bit, except to say that if you're a User and you try to access an Exec register, you won't get there from here but instead will take an interrupt.
Furthermore, in the Good Old Days, there were some registers that were specifically for Exec use only and so you couldn't access them either no matter how tricky you might get.
(They've largely/entirely disappeared.)
And I think the rules for indirect addressing sometimes always reference storage rather than GRS no matter what, but I could be wrong.

* There are basically three (3) kinds of registers in each of the two register sets in GRS: index registers (X-registers), accumulators (A-registers), and repeat counters (R-registers).
To me, that's not all that "complex".
I mean, the MC68000 used to have two (2) kinds of registers, index registers (A-registers) and accumulators (D-registers) and yet I don't recall the 68K architecture as being "complex".

* When you compute the effective address of a "storage operand" whose value is less than 0200 (that's octal 0200), the processor *MAY* refer to a GRS register depending on the type of instruction being executed.
Some instructions will *ALWAYS* reference storage no matter what, while some will reference a GRS register (assuming that you have the appropriate processor privilege to get there from here) if you're running in Basic Mode or if you're running in Extended mode and the B-register specified in the instruction is zero (AKA B0).

* I would quibble about how you describe the address of a storage operand.
Assuming that we're not talking about a literal/immediate value, it's specified by an offset (u) and an index value from an index (X-) register in Basic Mode or an offset (u) and index value from an index (X-) register and base value (from a Base [B-] register) in Extended Mode.
The size of the offset varies between Basic mode and Extended mode, and there's a mode bit that controls the size of the index value (DB11) if you're the Exec (DB14 || DB15 < 2).
In the Good Old Days, the effective address U was turned directly into an actual storage address (called an absolute address) via the additon of the base value from a base register, but since the introduction of M-Series (the 2200/900 and 2200/500) the absolute address specifies a location in a paged absolute address space and not an actual storage address.
Paging hardware translates the absolute address into an actual storage address (called a real address) although on the emulated hardware, it's the host hardware that does the address translation.
IOW, in the Good Old Days, 1100/2200 hardware used two layers of address translation, while the newer hardware uses three layers of address translation.

* As Mr. Schroth has noted, OS1100/2200 basically uses Fieldata (6-bit characters) internally.
The architecture just happens to support reading and writing sixth words which is to say 6-bits which is "nice".
But the architecture also supports reading and writing either third words (12-bits) or quarter words (9-bits) based on the setting of a mode bit (DB32).
I mention this because to the extent that the hardware supports a character other than Fieldata, that character is 9-bits wide, not 7-bits which is of course ASCII or 8-bits which is of course ANSI or one of the other 8-bit encodings.
This something you need to be careful about if you're coming from an 8-bit byte addressable machine and if you happen to be conditioned to think that your characters are basically either 7-bits or 8-bits wide in an 8-bit cell..


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Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: Dou...@hyperspace.vogon.gov (Andrew)
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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:45:03 +0200
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 by: Andrew - Mon, 26 Sep 2022 10:45 UTC

Lewis Cole wrote:
> As Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth said, welcome.
> Some piddly points of no real importance as the Really Important Stuff you probably need to know is coming from Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth (and probably Mr. Gunshannon Real Soon Now).
>
> 1. You mentioned the fact that Once Upon a Time, there used to be a Unix variant, SX-1100, that ran on top of OS1100 at Bell Labs (BELLCORE).
> You also mentioned that it had a "poor reputation for performance".
> I would like to point out that at the time (pre-1100/90 IIRC), I think that 1100 hardware was still running at only a few MIPS at best.
> To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "If you see a dog's walking on his hind legs, it may not do so very well, but what you should be surprised at is that it is done at all."

SX1100 was replaced by "Open Programming Environment", I have a copy of
the manual here - OPE 4R1 from August 1998. It is one of those manuals
which contains a number of tutorials (ed, vi, shell, awk, electronic
mail) which indicates it was aimed at OS2200 people with little
knowledge of Unix.

>
> 2. As Mr. Schroth noted, the OS1100/OS2200 file system was (is?) a flat file system with program files just happening to have an internal structure that makes them look like they are a subdirectory.
> But just in case you haven't run into it yet, there were (are?) also file cycles (F-cycles) so that there can be multiple instances of a file with the "same" name.
> If you want to learn more about the joys of basic OS1100/OS2200 speak, I would recommend that you take a look at Volume 2 of one of the old Exec Programmer Reference Manuals like this one for Exec 36R2:
>
> < http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/1100/exec/UP-4144.23_R36r2_Executive_System_Vol_2_Jan80.pdf >
>
> Yes, I know it's older than dirt, but AFAIK, it's still applicable to today's OS2200 thanks to the joys of Backward Compatibility.

Kira seems to have read the ECL / Furpur manual already, that is
essentially the same.

>
> 3. You mention file access being controlled via read/write keys.
> Well, things may have changed, but that isn't (or wasn't) the only way file access could be controlled.
> Once Upon a Time, a branch of OS1100 was hardened to be compliant with the B-1 Security Standard (the Orange Book?).
> AFAIK, this is just about as good as it gets in terms of security.
> (I think Microsoft at one time came up with some that was C-2 compliant.)
> So at least at one time, access could be controlled by ACRs as well as read/write keys.
>

There are four levels of security,
0 - File access controlled by keys and public/private is by account or
project-id (configurable in the Exec).

1 - ACRs, Clearance Levels and Owned files are introduced.
Public/private is by file ownership unless the file is unowned (the old
rules then apply), ACRs can be used to say who has which access to a
file, Clearance levels can be used to block all access to those with a
lower CL. A Security Officer can block/permit access to many ERs and
privileges, either on a userid basis or to make the default generally
(un)available.
I did not find Clearance levels helpful but the rest was heavily used.

2 - SECOPT1 + some bits which controlled file access via some control
bits. We had it but eventually decided it was of no use to us and we
dropped back to SECOPT1, something which required a JK13 with a local
modification to FAS along with a "script" to set up the ACRs for the
system files. Those control bits had a name but we dumped SECOPT2 25
years ago.

3 - SECOPT2 + some way of blocking unwelcome access to Common Banks,
there were options to scrub memory and to scrub files when they were
being reduced in size or deleted (obviously only the parts being
released were scrubbed). I can't remember much about this and we never
used it, SECOPT3 was the one with what will have been C-2 compliancy.

> 4. From your previous questions, I suspected that you were probably writing some kind of article, especially based on your question about what were the most common programming language that programs running on OS2200 are written in.
> To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what you were getting at and to be quite honest, I not sure I do yet.
>
> To try to be clear on my part, every customer in sight since close to the beginning of time has wanted computers that supported high level languages so that they (the customers) could supposedly write machine independent code ... at least before they started using the machine specific language features that tied them in to one family of machines.
> No doubt in an attempt to keep its customers "happy", Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys provides and supports, and will continue to provide and support high level languages like COBOL, Fortran, and C or whatever other languages become the Language Du Jour so long as the Company exists.
>
> But the fact of the matter is that a lot of code from the Good Old Days which was and still is 1100 assembly language code, and is still presumably very much supported (even if its use is not really encouraged).
> If that wasn't the case, then the Company could have gotten rid of what amounts to an entirely different machine (a "Basic Mode" machine) that's tacked onto a newer machine with a similar architecture (an "Extended Mode" machine) which the OS switch between by way of a mode bit in the Unisys version of a PSW (DB16 in the Designator Register AKA DR).
> Also in addition to old Dusty Deck code, I suspect that a lot of Transaction Processing development is still actively being done in assembly language.
> Of course, if Mr. Fuld or Mr. Schroth say that I'm full of shit, I will defer to them and say that you should believe them, but my point is that I suspect that assembler is still very much alive and well as far as OS2200 is concerned and should be in your list.
>
> Also, in addition to assembly, COBOL, Fortran, and C, there's also the matter of what amounts to another Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys language known as Mapper (which I see you reference in the second part of your series).
> Mapper was renamed long, long ago to BL- or BS- something-something-something and was even ported to non-Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys machines.

MAPPER was renamed BIS (Business Information System?) for marketing
purposes, the product itself was still MAPPER. Unisys did that with
several products.

> Considering that the Company once sort of tailored one of its 1100 systems to primarily run Mapper (i.e. a variant of the 1100/50 was referred to as Mapper10), I suspect that Mapper should also be added to your list.
>
> As for other languages that were customer written and not supported by the Company, there used to be a Pascal, a PL/1 variant (PLUM), and a LISP (written in Pascal IIRC).
> While they aren't Company processors, presumably they stand a decent chance of still running on an Dorado.

I think Pascal was Extended Mode (UCS) and as such it depended on the
UCS infrastructure (LINK, LSS, URTS). A modification was made to them
some time after Pascal was dropped and I believe a side-effect was that
Pascal programs would no longer work. If the change was to LSS or Link,
they could no longer be compiled, if it was to URTS then existing
programs would no longer run.

>
> 5. I think you are confusing the Unisys 2200 emulator software that the Company uses on its Intel boxes with PS/2200.
> Although it's been a few years now since I used PS/2200, I can definitely say that at the time I used it, it was *NOT* an emulator.
> It couldn't be.
> The host OS (Windows) prevented time keeping on the 1-usec granularity that the original M-Series dayclock hardware could deliver and so if you just left the simulated system run for awhile, its sense of wall time quickly went out of sync with actual wall time, making PS/2200 at best a simulator rather than an emulator.
> It's my understanding that the Company emulator basically runs on top of a Linux based hypervisor which presumably is in close communication with the guest OS.
> Again, I will defer to Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth if they say something different.

OS2200 offers (and uses) timestamps in nanoseconds-since-31-Dec-1899,
with or without local offsets to UTC.

>
> 6. I think you haven't quite gotten a handle on the finer points of the basic 2200 Series IP (AKA CPU) architecture.
> So here are a few things that I'll throw at the wall for your consideration.
>
> * No, not all registers are visible in the (virtual) address space.
> The General Register Set (GRS) is divided into a User set and an Exec set, the visibility of which is determined by a mode bit (DB17).
> Even so, some instructions specify a register using a GRS offset (by combining the J- and A-fields of an instruction as in the case of the JGD instruction) and so are *NOT* affected by the mode bit, except to say that if you're a User and you try to access an Exec register, you won't get there from here but instead will take an interrupt.
> Furthermore, in the Good Old Days, there were some registers that were specifically for Exec use only and so you couldn't access them either no matter how tricky you might get.
> (They've largely/entirely disappeared.)
> And I think the rules for indirect addressing sometimes always reference storage rather than GRS no matter what, but I could be wrong.
>
> * There are basically three (3) kinds of registers in each of the two register sets in GRS: index registers (X-registers), accumulators (A-registers), and repeat counters (R-registers).
> To me, that's not all that "complex".
> I mean, the MC68000 used to have two (2) kinds of registers, index registers (A-registers) and accumulators (D-registers) and yet I don't recall the 68K architecture as being "complex".
>
> * When you compute the effective address of a "storage operand" whose value is less than 0200 (that's octal 0200), the processor *MAY* refer to a GRS register depending on the type of instruction being executed.
> Some instructions will *ALWAYS* reference storage no matter what, while some will reference a GRS register (assuming that you have the appropriate processor privilege to get there from here) if you're running in Basic Mode or if you're running in Extended mode and the B-register specified in the instruction is zero (AKA B0).
>
> * I would quibble about how you describe the address of a storage operand.
> Assuming that we're not talking about a literal/immediate value, it's specified by an offset (u) and an index value from an index (X-) register in Basic Mode or an offset (u) and index value from an index (X-) register and base value (from a Base [B-] register) in Extended Mode.
> The size of the offset varies between Basic mode and Extended mode, and there's a mode bit that controls the size of the index value (DB11) if you're the Exec (DB14 || DB15 < 2).
> In the Good Old Days, the effective address U was turned directly into an actual storage address (called an absolute address) via the additon of the base value from a base register, but since the introduction of M-Series (the 2200/900 and 2200/500) the absolute address specifies a location in a paged absolute address space and not an actual storage address.
> Paging hardware translates the absolute address into an actual storage address (called a real address) although on the emulated hardware, it's the host hardware that does the address translation.
> IOW, in the Good Old Days, 1100/2200 hardware used two layers of address translation, while the newer hardware uses three layers of address translation.
>
> * As Mr. Schroth has noted, OS1100/2200 basically uses Fieldata (6-bit characters) internally.
> The architecture just happens to support reading and writing sixth words which is to say 6-bits which is "nice".
> But the architecture also supports reading and writing either third words (12-bits) or quarter words (9-bits) based on the setting of a mode bit (DB32).
> I mention this because to the extent that the hardware supports a character other than Fieldata, that character is 9-bits wide, not 7-bits which is of course ASCII or 8-bits which is of course ANSI or one of the other 8-bit encodings.
> This something you need to be careful about if you're coming from an 8-bit byte addressable machine and if you happen to be conditioned to think that your characters are basically either 7-bits or 8-bits wide in an 8-bit cell.
>
> * Mr. Schroth said that arithmetic operations can't return a negative zero.
> Normally, you should always trust what Mr. Schroth says instead of what I say, but in this case, Mr. Schroth is mistaken as any of the IP PRMs indicate in their discussion of negative zero.
> In particular (-0) + (-0) = (-0) and (-0) - (+0) = (-0).
> But the only way for -0 to show up in such an operation is if a programmer to do something to explicitly put it there in a register, such as (I think), doing a load negative immediate of a positive zero before the arithmetic operation (e.g. "LN,U A0,0") which is kinda stupid.
>
> 7. Maybe I'm taking this all wrong, but I get the sense in the third part of your series that you're slamming OS2200 because you're having trouble coding up your Robot Finds Kitten app in C.
> I think this is more than a little unfair/biased as by pretty much by definition, there's no such thing as "standard I/O" that's part of the C language itself.
> Yes, there are I/O libraries, but in effect you seem to be assuming that all systems that support C must also have equivalent I/O devices which is not the case.
> I doubt that you could get your Robot Finds Kitten app running on an Atmel 8-bit AVR based system even though I'm sure that there's a C compiler for it.
> IOW you seem to be trying to construct a toy application that might be trivial on x86-64 box, but doing so on an OS2200 system doesn't pass the "So What?" test for me except to the extent that you're deliberately trying to suggest that 1100/2200 Series systems are not just weird, but also severely lacking in capability.
> My apologies in advance if this was not your intent.
>


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Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Mon, 26 Sep 2022 13:46 UTC

On Monday, September 26, 2022 at 2:03:43 AM UTC-7, Lewis Cole wrote:
> As Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth said, welcome.
> Some piddly points of no real importance as the Really Important Stuff you probably need to know is coming from Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth (and probably Mr. Gunshannon Real Soon Now).
>
> 1. You mentioned the fact that Once Upon a Time, there used to be a Unix variant, SX-1100, that ran on top of OS1100 at Bell Labs (BELLCORE).
> You also mentioned that it had a "poor reputation for performance".
> I would like to point out that at the time (pre-1100/90 IIRC), I think that 1100 hardware was still running at only a few MIPS at best.
> To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "If you see a dog's walking on his hind legs, it may not do so very well, but what you should be surprised at is that it is done at all."
>
> 2. As Mr. Schroth noted, the OS1100/OS2200 file system was (is?) a flat file system with program files just happening to have an internal structure that makes them look like they are a subdirectory.
> But just in case you haven't run into it yet, there were (are?) also file cycles (F-cycles) so that there can be multiple instances of a file with the "same" name.
> If you want to learn more about the joys of basic OS1100/OS2200 speak, I would recommend that you take a look at Volume 2 of one of the old Exec Programmer Reference Manuals like this one for Exec 36R2:
>
> < http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/1100/exec/UP-4144.23_R36r2_Executive_System_Vol_2_Jan80.pdf >
>
> Yes, I know it's older than dirt, but AFAIK, it's still applicable to today's OS2200 thanks to the joys of Backward Compatibility.
>
> 3. You mention file access being controlled via read/write keys.
> Well, things may have changed, but that isn't (or wasn't) the only way file access could be controlled.
> Once Upon a Time, a branch of OS1100 was hardened to be compliant with the B-1 Security Standard (the Orange Book?).
> AFAIK, this is just about as good as it gets in terms of security.
> (I think Microsoft at one time came up with some that was C-2 compliant.)
> So at least at one time, access could be controlled by ACRs as well as read/write keys.
>
> 4. From your previous questions, I suspected that you were probably writing some kind of article, especially based on your question about what were the most common programming language that programs running on OS2200 are written in.
> To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what you were getting at and to be quite honest, I not sure I do yet.
>
> To try to be clear on my part, every customer in sight since close to the beginning of time has wanted computers that supported high level languages so that they (the customers) could supposedly write machine independent code ... at least before they started using the machine specific language features that tied them in to one family of machines.
> No doubt in an attempt to keep its customers "happy", Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys provides and supports, and will continue to provide and support high level languages like COBOL, Fortran, and C or whatever other languages become the Language Du Jour so long as the Company exists.
>
> But the fact of the matter is that a lot of code from the Good Old Days which was and still is 1100 assembly language code, and is still presumably very much supported (even if its use is not really encouraged).
> If that wasn't the case, then the Company could have gotten rid of what amounts to an entirely different machine (a "Basic Mode" machine) that's tacked onto a newer machine with a similar architecture (an "Extended Mode" machine) which the OS switch between by way of a mode bit in the Unisys version of a PSW (DB16 in the Designator Register AKA DR).
> Also in addition to old Dusty Deck code, I suspect that a lot of Transaction Processing development is still actively being done in assembly language.
> Of course, if Mr. Fuld or Mr. Schroth say that I'm full of shit, I will defer to them and say that you should believe them, but my point is that I suspect that assembler is still very much alive and well as far as OS2200 is concerned and should be in your list.
>
> Also, in addition to assembly, COBOL, Fortran, and C, there's also the matter of what amounts to another Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys language known as Mapper (which I see you reference in the second part of your series).
> Mapper was renamed long, long ago to BL- or BS- something-something-something and was even ported to non-Univac/Sperry Univac/Sperry/Unisys machines..
> Considering that the Company once sort of tailored one of its 1100 systems to primarily run Mapper (i.e. a variant of the 1100/50 was referred to as Mapper10), I suspect that Mapper should also be added to your list.
>
> As for other languages that were customer written and not supported by the Company, there used to be a Pascal, a PL/1 variant (PLUM), and a LISP (written in Pascal IIRC).
> While they aren't Company processors, presumably they stand a decent chance of still running on an Dorado.
>
> 5. I think you are confusing the Unisys 2200 emulator software that the Company uses on its Intel boxes with PS/2200.
> Although it's been a few years now since I used PS/2200, I can definitely say that at the time I used it, it was *NOT* an emulator.
> It couldn't be.
> The host OS (Windows) prevented time keeping on the 1-usec granularity that the original M-Series dayclock hardware could deliver and so if you just left the simulated system run for awhile, its sense of wall time quickly went out of sync with actual wall time, making PS/2200 at best a simulator rather than an emulator.
> It's my understanding that the Company emulator basically runs on top of a Linux based hypervisor which presumably is in close communication with the guest OS.
> Again, I will defer to Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth if they say something different.
>
> 6. I think you haven't quite gotten a handle on the finer points of the basic 2200 Series IP (AKA CPU) architecture.
> So here are a few things that I'll throw at the wall for your consideration.
>
> * No, not all registers are visible in the (virtual) address space.
> The General Register Set (GRS) is divided into a User set and an Exec set, the visibility of which is determined by a mode bit (DB17).
> Even so, some instructions specify a register using a GRS offset (by combining the J- and A-fields of an instruction as in the case of the JGD instruction) and so are *NOT* affected by the mode bit, except to say that if you're a User and you try to access an Exec register, you won't get there from here but instead will take an interrupt.
> Furthermore, in the Good Old Days, there were some registers that were specifically for Exec use only and so you couldn't access them either no matter how tricky you might get.
> (They've largely/entirely disappeared.)
> And I think the rules for indirect addressing sometimes always reference storage rather than GRS no matter what, but I could be wrong.
>
> * There are basically three (3) kinds of registers in each of the two register sets in GRS: index registers (X-registers), accumulators (A-registers), and repeat counters (R-registers).
> To me, that's not all that "complex".
> I mean, the MC68000 used to have two (2) kinds of registers, index registers (A-registers) and accumulators (D-registers) and yet I don't recall the 68K architecture as being "complex".
>
> * When you compute the effective address of a "storage operand" whose value is less than 0200 (that's octal 0200), the processor *MAY* refer to a GRS register depending on the type of instruction being executed.
> Some instructions will *ALWAYS* reference storage no matter what, while some will reference a GRS register (assuming that you have the appropriate processor privilege to get there from here) if you're running in Basic Mode or if you're running in Extended mode and the B-register specified in the instruction is zero (AKA B0).
>
> * I would quibble about how you describe the address of a storage operand..
> Assuming that we're not talking about a literal/immediate value, it's specified by an offset (u) and an index value from an index (X-) register in Basic Mode or an offset (u) and index value from an index (X-) register and base value (from a Base [B-] register) in Extended Mode.
> The size of the offset varies between Basic mode and Extended mode, and there's a mode bit that controls the size of the index value (DB11) if you're the Exec (DB14 || DB15 < 2).
> In the Good Old Days, the effective address U was turned directly into an actual storage address (called an absolute address) via the additon of the base value from a base register, but since the introduction of M-Series (the 2200/900 and 2200/500) the absolute address specifies a location in a paged absolute address space and not an actual storage address.
> Paging hardware translates the absolute address into an actual storage address (called a real address) although on the emulated hardware, it's the host hardware that does the address translation.
> IOW, in the Good Old Days, 1100/2200 hardware used two layers of address translation, while the newer hardware uses three layers of address translation.
>
> * As Mr. Schroth has noted, OS1100/2200 basically uses Fieldata (6-bit characters) internally.
> The architecture just happens to support reading and writing sixth words which is to say 6-bits which is "nice".
> But the architecture also supports reading and writing either third words (12-bits) or quarter words (9-bits) based on the setting of a mode bit (DB32).
> I mention this because to the extent that the hardware supports a character other than Fieldata, that character is 9-bits wide, not 7-bits which is of course ASCII or 8-bits which is of course ANSI or one of the other 8-bit encodings.
> This something you need to be careful about if you're coming from an 8-bit byte addressable machine and if you happen to be conditioned to think that your characters are basically either 7-bits or 8-bits wide in an 8-bit cell.
>
> * Mr. Schroth said that arithmetic operations can't return a negative zero.
> Normally, you should always trust what Mr. Schroth says instead of what I say, but in this case, Mr. Schroth is mistaken as any of the IP PRMs indicate in their discussion of negative zero.
> In particular (-0) + (-0) = (-0) and (-0) - (+0) = (-0).
> But the only way for -0 to show up in such an operation is if a programmer to do something to explicitly put it there in a register, such as (I think), doing a load negative immediate of a positive zero before the arithmetic operation (e.g. "LN,U A0,0") which is kinda stupid.
>
> 7. Maybe I'm taking this all wrong, but I get the sense in the third part of your series that you're slamming OS2200 because you're having trouble coding up your Robot Finds Kitten app in C.
> I think this is more than a little unfair/biased as by pretty much by definition, there's no such thing as "standard I/O" that's part of the C language itself.
> Yes, there are I/O libraries, but in effect you seem to be assuming that all systems that support C must also have equivalent I/O devices which is not the case.
> I doubt that you could get your Robot Finds Kitten app running on an Atmel 8-bit AVR based system even though I'm sure that there's a C compiler for it.
> IOW you seem to be trying to construct a toy application that might be trivial on x86-64 box, but doing so on an OS2200 system doesn't pass the "So What?" test for me except to the extent that you're deliberately trying to suggest that 1100/2200 Series systems are not just weird, but also severely lacking in capability.
> My apologies in advance if this was not your intent.


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Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: l_c...@juno.com (Lewis Cole)
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 by: Lewis Cole - Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:20 UTC

On Monday, September 26, 2022 at 6:46:40 AM UTC-7, Kira Ash wrote:
> I'm terribly sorry if it somehow came across
> like I was slamming OS 2200 in part 3. On the
> contrary, I'm very much enjoying OS 2200; I
> find it to be a well-thought-out platform,
> with good interfaces to the user and the
> programmer, and I don't know what I wrote
> that gave the impression that I was attacking
> the 2200 system.

I think that the way you've written your articles makes it easy for people who want to look down on mainframe in general and OS2200 systems in particular to do so.

For example, I ran across your series by way of a bit in the episode 260 YouTube video on the Retrocomputing Roundtable channel
(< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeK3E0JA8N4 > starting around timestamp [48:23]).
After all four of the Roundtable board members basically expressed complete cluelessness about mainframes and OS2200, one member -- a PROGRAMMER who I happen to follow for her machinist videos on her Blondi Hacks channel -- said this (starting around timestamp [52:13]):

"Well when people talked about that, like we've all heard the stories about the culture clash between, you know, mainframes and the smaller mini-computer systems, and how difficult that transition was for companies because, you know, the mainframe people had all the lab coats and all the prestige and so on.
And they cultivated this, you know, mystery of wizards in a tower running these systems.

"But a blog like this really, ah, really, brings that home, like, what a completely different world it was.
One of the earlier posts she said about how the, ah, system that she's running was like intentionally baroque or something ... how did she put it? ... like it reveled in how weird it was and how difficult it was to understand..
And yeah, this -- this line here I like: 'They are unapologetically strange systems -- integers are represented as ones' complement, and the machine word is 36-bits; the operating system is proudly baroque and more than a little intimidating.'"

She skips the following line where you said, "They're also way more fun than I expected" and instead went on to say:

"That's great writing, but I also think that it sells how strange these systems were.
And I almost won ... this also makes me wonder if there was a little bit of intentionality at some point here because engineers always joke about how hard, complicated, hard-to-understand systems create job security -- which is not really true but we like to joke about being true -- and that almost feels like that's what's happening here. I mean if you create a system that's so hard to understand, then you have to go back to the same set of people to operate it."

As it turns out, I appear to be blocked from making comments on this video (presumably because I pointed out that the claim she made in episode 0 that the presence of positive and negative zero in ones complement makes "basic arithmetic crazy complicated" was untrue).

Now I understand that you can't control the way people interpret what you've written, but with all due respect, I can't see how you weren't intending to slam OS2200 when you wrote the first paragraph of the third section of your series.
And later on, whatever "fun" you may have been having seemed to me to hidden behind the fact that you were trying to overcome the obstacles of OS2200 software that you could entirely avoid by using something like ncurses or some other library known to Linux kind.

FWIW, as I read what you were doing, I kept thinking to myself, "If you're trying to send something to a Uniscope terminal as a test (which I assume is the output device you're using either simulated or real), why is she messing around with C and DPS at all?"
I means if I wanted to send something to a screen just as a test, I'd probably use @FLIT.
Yes, @FLIT is a 2200 program or system simulator, but you can easily get it to send strings to terminals and you can put what you've discovered into @FLIT functions to automate the results.
For example, Once Upon a Time, the person who I think used to take care of RSI$ was wondering what various characters sequences would do to a UTS-20 and so he called up @FLIT, told the OS to send everything to the terminal as-is (i.e. "@@ESC O") and then executed a simple @FLIT function that basically sent every possible 4-character string possible to the terminal.
Just for giggles, I did the same with the result being that I hung every terminal on my string for like half a day which didn't make me a particularly popular person for awhile.
While it may be a case of "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail", I'd probably consider writing your little test app in terms of @FLIT functions because I used to be pretty comfortable using @FLIT.

In any event, like others, I look forward to your future installments.

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: jns...@ma.sdf.org - Tue, 27 Sep 2022 20:19 UTC

I'd like to say that I enjoyed the articles so far, and
the way I read them was in a positive tone towards OS2200
and mainframes in general. The emphasis on fun and the very
idea of writing a little game in the environment I find
encourages experimentation and works inspiring for people
new to OS2200 like myself.

-jns

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Tue, 27 Sep 2022 21:34 UTC

On 9/26/2022 11:20 AM, Lewis Cole wrote:
> On Monday, September 26, 2022 at 6:46:40 AM UTC-7, Kira Ash wrote:
>> I'm terribly sorry if it somehow came across
>> like I was slamming OS 2200 in part 3. On the
>> contrary, I'm very much enjoying OS 2200; I
>> find it to be a well-thought-out platform,
>> with good interfaces to the user and the
>> programmer, and I don't know what I wrote
>> that gave the impression that I was attacking
>> the 2200 system.
>
> I think that the way you've written your articles makes it easy for people who want to look down on mainframe in general and OS2200 systems in particular to do so.
>
> For example, I ran across your series by way of a bit in the episode 260 YouTube video on the Retrocomputing Roundtable channel
> (< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeK3E0JA8N4 > starting around timestamp [48:23]).
> After all four of the Roundtable board members basically expressed complete cluelessness about mainframes and OS2200, one member -- a PROGRAMMER who I happen to follow for her machinist videos on her Blondi Hacks channel -- said this (starting around timestamp [52:13]):
>
> "Well when people talked about that, like we've all heard the stories about the culture clash between, you know, mainframes and the smaller mini-computer systems, and how difficult that transition was for companies because, you know, the mainframe people had all the lab coats and all the prestige and so on.
> And they cultivated this, you know, mystery of wizards in a tower running these systems.
>
> "But a blog like this really, ah, really, brings that home, like, what a completely different world it was.
> One of the earlier posts she said about how the, ah, system that she's running was like intentionally baroque or something ... how did she put it? ... like it reveled in how weird it was and how difficult it was to understand.
> And yeah, this -- this line here I like: 'They are unapologetically strange systems -- integers are represented as ones' complement, and the machine word is 36-bits; the operating system is proudly baroque and more than a little intimidating.'"
>
> She skips the following line where you said, "They're also way more fun than I expected" and instead went on to say:
>
> "That's great writing, but I also think that it sells how strange these systems were.
> And I almost won ... this also makes me wonder if there was a little bit of intentionality at some point here because engineers always joke about how hard, complicated, hard-to-understand systems create job security -- which is not really true but we like to joke about being true -- and that almost feels like that's what's happening here. I mean if you create a system that's so hard to understand, then you have to go back to the same set of people to operate it."
>
> As it turns out, I appear to be blocked from making comments on this video (presumably because I pointed out that the claim she made in episode 0 that the presence of positive and negative zero in ones complement makes "basic arithmetic crazy complicated" was untrue).
>
> Now I understand that you can't control the way people interpret what you've written, but with all due respect, I can't see how you weren't intending to slam OS2200 when you wrote the first paragraph of the third section of your series.
> And later on, whatever "fun" you may have been having seemed to me to hidden behind the fact that you were trying to overcome the obstacles of OS2200 software that you could entirely avoid by using something like ncurses or some other library known to Linux kind.

I haven't watched the video, but from what you said, I think the problem
is with the lady in the video, not with Kira. She doesn't bolster her
point when she clips out the part that exactly contradicts her position. :-)

As for apologetically strange, I think that is actually right. They
certainly have nothing to apologize for, especially as OS 1100 predates
Linux by decades. And yes, compared to virtually every other CPU
generally available, 1s complement arithmetic and 36 bit words are at
best "unusual" and I don't blink at someone calling them strange. Of
course, it might appear less strange if you understood the reasoning
behind those decisions, and the upward compatibility requirements for
keeping them. (Reasons supplied on request.)

As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
doing remarkably well.

BTW, Kira, if you are comfortable saying, why did you embark on this
journey? Was it an assignment of some sort, or just for fun? If for
fun, why did you pick the 2200 as opposed to some other system?

>
> FWIW, as I read what you were doing, I kept thinking to myself, "If you're trying to send something to a Uniscope terminal as a test (which I assume is the output device you're using either simulated or real), why is she messing around with C and DPS at all?"
> I means if I wanted to send something to a screen just as a test, I'd probably use @FLIT.

Talk about strange! While you could do as you say, Flit is even more a
departure from "typical" systems and has a learning curve all its own.

>
> In any event, like others, I look forward to your future installments.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Tue, 27 Sep 2022 22:24 UTC

On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 9/26/2022 11:20 AM, Lewis Cole wrote:
> > On Monday, September 26, 2022 at 6:46:40 AM UTC-7, Kira Ash wrote:
> >> I'm terribly sorry if it somehow came across
> >> like I was slamming OS 2200 in part 3. On the
> >> contrary, I'm very much enjoying OS 2200; I
> >> find it to be a well-thought-out platform,
> >> with good interfaces to the user and the
> >> programmer, and I don't know what I wrote
> >> that gave the impression that I was attacking
> >> the 2200 system.
> >
> > I think that the way you've written your articles makes it easy for people who want to look down on mainframe in general and OS2200 systems in particular to do so.
> >
> > For example, I ran across your series by way of a bit in the episode 260 YouTube video on the Retrocomputing Roundtable channel
> > (< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeK3E0JA8N4 > starting around timestamp [48:23]).
> > After all four of the Roundtable board members basically expressed complete cluelessness about mainframes and OS2200, one member -- a PROGRAMMER who I happen to follow for her machinist videos on her Blondi Hacks channel -- said this (starting around timestamp [52:13]):
> >
> > "Well when people talked about that, like we've all heard the stories about the culture clash between, you know, mainframes and the smaller mini-computer systems, and how difficult that transition was for companies because, you know, the mainframe people had all the lab coats and all the prestige and so on.
> > And they cultivated this, you know, mystery of wizards in a tower running these systems.
> >
> > "But a blog like this really, ah, really, brings that home, like, what a completely different world it was.
> > One of the earlier posts she said about how the, ah, system that she's running was like intentionally baroque or something ... how did she put it? ... like it reveled in how weird it was and how difficult it was to understand.
> > And yeah, this -- this line here I like: 'They are unapologetically strange systems -- integers are represented as ones' complement, and the machine word is 36-bits; the operating system is proudly baroque and more than a little intimidating.'"
> >
> > She skips the following line where you said, "They're also way more fun than I expected" and instead went on to say:
> >
> > "That's great writing, but I also think that it sells how strange these systems were.
> > And I almost won ... this also makes me wonder if there was a little bit of intentionality at some point here because engineers always joke about how hard, complicated, hard-to-understand systems create job security -- which is not really true but we like to joke about being true -- and that almost feels like that's what's happening here. I mean if you create a system that's so hard to understand, then you have to go back to the same set of people to operate it."
> >
> > As it turns out, I appear to be blocked from making comments on this video (presumably because I pointed out that the claim she made in episode 0 that the presence of positive and negative zero in ones complement makes "basic arithmetic crazy complicated" was untrue).
> >
> > Now I understand that you can't control the way people interpret what you've written, but with all due respect, I can't see how you weren't intending to slam OS2200 when you wrote the first paragraph of the third section of your series.
> > And later on, whatever "fun" you may have been having seemed to me to hidden behind the fact that you were trying to overcome the obstacles of OS2200 software that you could entirely avoid by using something like ncurses or some other library known to Linux kind.
> I haven't watched the video, but from what you said, I think the problem
> is with the lady in the video, not with Kira. She doesn't bolster her
> point when she clips out the part that exactly contradicts her position. :-)
>
> As for apologetically strange, I think that is actually right. They
> certainly have nothing to apologize for, especially as OS 1100 predates
> Linux by decades. And yes, compared to virtually every other CPU
> generally available, 1s complement arithmetic and 36 bit words are at
> best "unusual" and I don't blink at someone calling them strange. Of
> course, it might appear less strange if you understood the reasoning
> behind those decisions, and the upward compatibility requirements for
> keeping them. (Reasons supplied on request.)
>
> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
> doing remarkably well.
>
> BTW, Kira, if you are comfortable saying, why did you embark on this
> journey? Was it an assignment of some sort, or just for fun? If for
> fun, why did you pick the 2200 as opposed to some other system?
>

Thank you for your kind reply. I was very worried that I had made some grievous error and was flirting with taking LPOS2200 down - I didn't mean to upset anyone at all. I have enjoyed my time with OS 2200 more than I've expected, and certainly found it to be a likable system. And while Lewis seems to think I'd rather being using ncurses, once I figured out the mechanisms of DPS 2200, I'm impressed by how powerful it is - mostly-transparent form validation, in particular, is a very handy feature.

I've actually been interested in non-IBM mainframes for a while - I've been sporadically researching GCOS since I was in high school, over a decade ago, for instance - and I had read MCP manuals but never OS 2200. I had some concern that OS 2200 Express would be going away, since MCP Express already had, and figured I should get a license and learn it while I still had the opportunity. I had been trying to think up a good project to learn the APIs and tools for a while, and nothing really came to mind - until I remembered that the Robotfindskitten website included, on its list of ports, "Did you port rfk to Univac? Click here!" and I decided to take it more literally than the Robotfindskitten developers intended. I figured "okay, I can use the system forms interface to display it, and use the structured file interfaces to store game text" and ran with it from there. The point was always just to have a direction to learn from, not to do the easiest or most idiomatic possible port of Robotfindskitten.

I never initially planned to write articles about it at all, but friends of mine - perhaps growing unhappy with walls of text on chat programs about "whoa, look at what I figured out how to do in OS 2200!" - suggested I publish what I was learning, and the process by which I was learning it.

If I've done something wrong in all of that, I really am sorry. I did not want to ruffle any feathers. As to the video, I take the assertion that OS 2200 is designed the way it is because of some kind of job-security-related plot to be completely ridiculous. As with any operating system, I know it evolved to be the way it is because of the combination of application requirements and technical and practical limitations, and I actually quite like what I've seen of it so far. I left the following comment on the video, and I hope the Retrocomputing Roundtable hosts will read it:

" Hiya! I wrote Let's Play OS 2200 and I'm glad you enjoyed it! The emulator used is PS/2200, provided as a component of Unisys's OS 2200 Express. It runs a modern version of OS 2200 (iirc one version behind what's shipping today) and is free, but requires you to request a license. As for OS 2200 itself - I really don't think it's complex for the purpose of job security or complexity in and of itself. It's complex because it's supporting complex workloads that have to do a lot of different things - and the Unix way of dealing with things is not the one and only true way to do them; it's just the way a lot of the industry settled on. Mainframe operating systems tend to make a different set of tradeoffs, but they aren't intrinsically "wrong" - they were tradeoffs that made sense to their userbase and their workloads.. Unix has complexity too, it's just complexity that's more familiar. As for documentation, it's freely available on Unisys's site; very little of it is intended for introductory users, but it's definitely understandable if you put the effort in - and at least in my opinion, OS 2200 is way more approachable than GCOS 8 or MVS! "

As for 36-bit systems, I know they used to be common - GCOS 8 and OS 2200 are the only survivors, to the best of my knowledge, but there used to be the IBM 7xxx, PDP-10, and various others - but I've been somewhat unclear as to why; if I had to guess, I would assume that it's a natural word length for storing 6-bit character data, and that opting for word-addressing instead of byte-address increases the effective address space for a given word size. Someone also once told me it was because it provided ten signed integer digits. I am less clear as to the reasoning for ones' complement; wasn't it a little unusual even at the time?


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Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: l_c...@juno.com (Lewis Cole)
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 by: Lewis Cole - Tue, 27 Sep 2022 23:56 UTC

> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 3:24:11 PM UTC-7, Kira Ash wrote:
>> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
>> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
>> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
>> doing remarkably well.
>>
>> BTW, Kira, if you are comfortable saying, why did you embark on this
>> journey? Was it an assignment of some sort, or just for fun? If for
>> fun, why did you pick the 2200 as opposed to some other system?
>>
>
> Thank you for your kind reply. I was very worried that I had made some
> grievous error and was flirting with taking LPOS2200 down - I didn't
> mean to upset anyone at all. [...]

Just to try to be perfectly clear on my part, I don't think that Kira needs to apply to me or anyone else for what she has written.
Even if she was intending to slam OS2200, that would be her opinion and she is entitled to it.
(Of course, I am entitled to mine as well which means that I'm entitled to express my disagreement.)
I have no problem with anyone trying to learn more about OS2200 and/or the 1100/2200 Series of computers and I applaud Kira's interest in, and willing to actually learn more about, OS2200 and the 1100/2200 Series of computers..

In fact, I apologize to you, Kira, for making feel that any sort of apology was necessary at all for what you wrote.

> [...] I have enjoyed my time with OS 2200 more
> than I've expected, and certainly found it to be a likable system. And
> while Lewis seems to think I'd rather being using ncurses, once I
> figured out the mechanisms of DPS 2200, I'm impressed by how powerful
> it is - mostly-transparent form validation, in particular, is a very
> handy feature.

< snip >

What I think is that people whose experience is basically centered on C/Linux tend to judge the world based on that experience.
I think that means that more often than not, anything that isn't consistent with that experience negatively, meaning if you have to do more than include a library in your code (e.g. ncurses) in your code, you're more likely to regard what you do with OS2200 as sort of Unisys's way to create a "kicking a dead whale down the beach" experience.
What you wrote in part 3 is consistent with what I would expect to see with someone learning a new piece of software and for me is no big deal if I hadn't read the bit about OS2200 being "baroque" and "intimidating" and hadn't listened to the Retrocomputing Roundtable video.

> If I've done something wrong in all of that, I really am sorry.

Again, there's no reason for you to apologize.

>I did not want to ruffle any feathers.
< snip >

This is the Internet. You'll find someone will find a way to be upset with you no matter what you do. It's the cost of doing business.
Please continue your series.
Again, I look forward to seeing the rest.

> I left the following comment on the video, and I hope the
> Retrocomputing Roundtable hosts will read it:
< snip >

I likewise left a comment on the video (it's the first message that isn't visible for some reason) and when it appeared that I was being blocked, I sent an E-mail to their feedback address along with a copy of my message.
I won't go into the details of the reply I got, but response I got indicated (1) that I wasn't blocked ("hidden") but that something -- presumably YouTube just because -- decided my message shouldn't be seen and (2) that the host Paul was interested in playing with the PS2200 simulator but felt like doing so might be like wading into the ocean.
I indicated that if you just squint real hard, the XPA IP really looks a lot like an Intel 386 only with fixed length words and ones complement arithmetic.
I haven't gotten any further response, but I hope that he too will give OS2200 a spin.

FWIW, I've up-thumbed your reply, but as with my previous comment post to the video, that too seems to have disappeared into the mist for some reason.
I also note that the message count is up to three, but only your message is visible. Hmmm.

> Again, I apologize if I did or said something wrong. This
> is all new to me, and I freely admit I'm out of my depth,
> but I'm trying to do right by the system.

You did nothing wrong. You have done nothing to apologize for. Do "right" by yourself and don't worry about "the system" ... it's a machine and a bunch of software and isn't bothered by piddly human concerns.

And my apologies to you for what I've done to make you feel that you need to apologize.

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: l_c...@juno.com (Lewis Cole)
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 by: Lewis Cole - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:17 UTC

> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 9/26/2022 11:20 AM, Lewis Cole wrote:

> I haven't watched the video, but from what you said, I think the problem
> is with the lady in the video, not with Kira. She doesn't bolster her
> point when she clips out the part that exactly contradicts her position. :-)
< snip >

Agreed.
Be that as it may, Quinn is no dummy and she expressed an opinion that the other members didn't take issue with ... which I took to mean they either agreed with her or didn't think they knew enough to get into an agreement with her that would be captured for posterity.

> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
> doing remarkably well.
< snip >

Agreed.
In an E-mail from one of the members of the board (the details of which I won't get into), he basically said that the board members' experience is more with small scale systems (micros really) rather than mainframes.
So while I might (and did) have problems getting used to Windows coming from an OS1100/2200 environment, and have done just about everything I can to avoid dealing with Linux for the same sort of reason, the fact of the matter is that if I were to make comments about my experience, no one would likely take such comments as a reflection on PCs or Windows or Linux.
(Well, maybe the Windows users would bitch about Linux and the Linux users would bitch about Windows, but I think most people would bitch about me being a newbie.)

>> FWIW, as I read what you were doing, I kept thinking to myself,
>> "If you're trying to send something to a Uniscope terminal as a
>> test (which I assume is the output device you're using either
>> simulated or real), why is she messing around with C and DPS at
>> all?"
>> I means if I wanted to send something to a screen just as a test,
>> I'd probably use @FLIT.

> Talk about strange! While you could do as you say, Flit is even more a
> departure from "typical" systems and has a learning curve all its own.
< snip >

@FLIT is of course 1100/2200 specific, but IMHO is essential if one has any interest in developing software on OS1100/2200, just as much as using GDB is on Linux.
What I've found is that I can do more than just debug programs using @FLIT and in particular when I wanted to see what a terminal/console would do in response to control sequences, @FLIT beat writing a @MASM program to get the job done.

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: davidsch...@harrietmanor.com (David W Schroth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys
Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: David W Schroth - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 02:30 UTC

On Sat, 24 Sep 2022 18:28:20 -0400, Bill Gunshannon
<bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 9/24/22 17:14, Kira Ash wrote:
>> On Friday, September 23, 2022 at 10:07:00 PM UTC-7, David W Schroth wrote:
>>> On Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:35:59 -0700 (PDT), Kira Ash
>>> <hpeint...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>>>
>>>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>>>
>>>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>>>>
>>>> Kira
>>> I will echo Mr. Fuld's welcome to you, and offer semi-random comments
>>> on your fascinating posts.
>>>
>>> 1) I believe that there is a CSHELL program for the 2200 that provides
>>> a decent emulation of a *nix shell. While I knew the authors when
>>> they worked at Unisys, I don't know where the program can be found.
>>>
>>> 2) The 2200 File System is a flat file system. According to Ron Smith
>>> (co-author with George Gray of what I regard as the definitive history
>>> of Unisys systems), there was a time when Univac considered replacing
>>> the flat file system with a heirarchical file systems. The customers
>>> they discussed this with were not supportive of the idea, so it was
>>> dropped.
>>>
>>> 3) Based upon your comment regarding read and write keys on files, I
>>> infer that you are running on what is called a Fundamental Security
>>> system. I tend to regard SECOPT1 (or higher) systems somewhat more
>>> secure, and on those systems read and write keys are not meaningful
>>> for most files.
>>>
>>> 4) The ECL (Exec Control Language) internally works with Fieldata,
>>> which is a six bit character set. So ECL is not case-sensitive.
>>>
>>> 5) @PRT (with no options) is not something I typically use, as it
>>> displays the contents of the entire Master File Directory. Not a big
>>> deal on systems with small filesystems; a very big deal at some sites
>>> I have supported with very large file systems.
>>>
>>> 6) PLUS is a descendent of JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the
>>> International Algorithmic Language), or so I've been told. It
>>> suffers, from my perspective, from trying to be too many things for
>>> too many people (for a while it ran on 2200s, Series 30, and Series 90
>>> systems). While there are UCS flavors of COBOL and Fortran, I suspect
>>> that the customer you cite probably uses FTN (ASCII Fortran). I could
>>> be mistaken.
>>>
>>> 7) From a user program perspective, there are 48 general registers
>>> (partitioned into index registers, accumulators, and R-registers),
>>> and16 base registers (critical for addressing and security). While
>>> negative zero is a thing, arithmetic operations never return a
>>> negative zero. The existence of negative zero does cause some quirks
>>> that most people encounter very rarely. Instructions can access sixth
>>> words, quarter words, third words, half words, words, and double
>>> words. I will observe that the complex memory security features seem
>>> to be effective.
>>>
>>> 8) AT&T, before it was broken up, was a heavy user of SX 1100. There
>>> are some oddball Exec ERs that were put in specifically to support
>>> AT&T's needs.
>>>
>>> I'm now dying to see Part 4: The Periodic File of Elements.
>>
>> Thank you very much for your thoughtful post, and I hope Part 4 is interesting to you when it's posted in a couple of weeks! I've been hitting the manuals on OS 2200 storage and the APIs for dealing with it - lot of interesting stuff in there.
>>
>> For the Ron Smith and George Gray history, do you mean "Unisys Computers: An Introductory History" or "Sperry Rand's Third Generation Computers" in IEEE Annals?
>>
>> CSHELL sounds like an interesting beast. Please let me know if you come across a copy somewhere, as I'd be very curious - though the truth is, I've become increasingly accustomed to doing things the 2200 way. :-)
>>
>> Thanks again!
>
>Speaking of SHELLs. Do copies of the Software Tools Virtual Operating
>System written for EXEC-8 on the 1100 still exist? Has it been ported
>to the 2200?
>
>bill

Much to my surprise, you reference something 1100/2200 related that
I've never heard of. Please tell us more.

IMO, the major difference (from a user code standpoint) between an
1100 and a 2200 is that marketing thought 2200 sounded twice as sexy
as 1100. Mileage almost certainly varies.

Regards,

David W. Schroth

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: David W Schroth - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 03:55 UTC

On Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:45:03 +0200, Andrew <Doug@hyperspace.vogon.gov>
wrote:

>Lewis Cole wrote:
>> As Mr. Fuld and Mr. Schroth said, welcome.
<snip>
>There are four levels of security,
>0 - File access controlled by keys and public/private is by account or
>project-id (configurable in the Exec).

Aka Fundamental Security.
>
>1 - ACRs, Clearance Levels and Owned files are introduced.
>Public/private is by file ownership unless the file is unowned (the old
>rules then apply), ACRs can be used to say who has which access to a
>file, Clearance levels can be used to block all access to those with a
>lower CL. A Security Officer can block/permit access to many ERs and
>privileges, either on a userid basis or to make the default generally
>(un)available.
>I did not find Clearance levels helpful but the rest was heavily used.
>
>2 - SECOPT1 + some bits which controlled file access via some control
>bits. We had it but eventually decided it was of no use to us and we
>dropped back to SECOPT1, something which required a JK13 with a local
>modification to FAS along with a "script" to set up the ACRs for the
>system files. Those control bits had a name but we dumped SECOPT2 25
>years ago.
>
>3 - SECOPT2 + some way of blocking unwelcome access to Common Banks,
>there were options to scrub memory and to scrub files when they were
>being reduced in size or deleted (obviously only the parts being
>released were scrubbed). I can't remember much about this and we never
>used it, SECOPT3 was the one with what will have been C-2 compliancy.

Actually, OS1100 with SECOPT3 TRUE was evaluated as B1 compliant. And
Unisys was one of the few (maybe the only) vendor to successfully RAMP
their B1 offering.

My vague recollection was that OS1100 with SECOPT1 was regarded as
being C2 compliant, but I coud easily be misremembering that.
>
<snip>

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys
Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2022 21:49:35 -0700
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 04:49 UTC

On 9/27/2022 7:30 PM, David W Schroth wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Sep 2022 18:28:20 -0400, Bill Gunshannon
> <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/24/22 17:14, Kira Ash wrote:
>>> On Friday, September 23, 2022 at 10:07:00 PM UTC-7, David W Schroth wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:35:59 -0700 (PDT), Kira Ash
>>>> <hpeint...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I've been working on a series of posts documenting my experiences learning about, and programming for, OS 2200 using OS 2200 Express. I wasn't sure if anyone here would find it interesting or not, but I thought I'd post it just in case.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://arcanesciences.com/os2200/
>>>>>
>>>>> Feel free to yell at me if I'm misunderstanding or misstating anything - I'm not an expert in this system at all, but I'm getting deeper into it and liking what I'm seeing.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kira
>>>> I will echo Mr. Fuld's welcome to you, and offer semi-random comments
>>>> on your fascinating posts.
>>>>
>>>> 1) I believe that there is a CSHELL program for the 2200 that provides
>>>> a decent emulation of a *nix shell. While I knew the authors when
>>>> they worked at Unisys, I don't know where the program can be found.
>>>>
>>>> 2) The 2200 File System is a flat file system. According to Ron Smith
>>>> (co-author with George Gray of what I regard as the definitive history
>>>> of Unisys systems), there was a time when Univac considered replacing
>>>> the flat file system with a heirarchical file systems. The customers
>>>> they discussed this with were not supportive of the idea, so it was
>>>> dropped.
>>>>
>>>> 3) Based upon your comment regarding read and write keys on files, I
>>>> infer that you are running on what is called a Fundamental Security
>>>> system. I tend to regard SECOPT1 (or higher) systems somewhat more
>>>> secure, and on those systems read and write keys are not meaningful
>>>> for most files.
>>>>
>>>> 4) The ECL (Exec Control Language) internally works with Fieldata,
>>>> which is a six bit character set. So ECL is not case-sensitive.
>>>>
>>>> 5) @PRT (with no options) is not something I typically use, as it
>>>> displays the contents of the entire Master File Directory. Not a big
>>>> deal on systems with small filesystems; a very big deal at some sites
>>>> I have supported with very large file systems.
>>>>
>>>> 6) PLUS is a descendent of JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the
>>>> International Algorithmic Language), or so I've been told. It
>>>> suffers, from my perspective, from trying to be too many things for
>>>> too many people (for a while it ran on 2200s, Series 30, and Series 90
>>>> systems). While there are UCS flavors of COBOL and Fortran, I suspect
>>>> that the customer you cite probably uses FTN (ASCII Fortran). I could
>>>> be mistaken.
>>>>
>>>> 7) From a user program perspective, there are 48 general registers
>>>> (partitioned into index registers, accumulators, and R-registers),
>>>> and16 base registers (critical for addressing and security). While
>>>> negative zero is a thing, arithmetic operations never return a
>>>> negative zero. The existence of negative zero does cause some quirks
>>>> that most people encounter very rarely. Instructions can access sixth
>>>> words, quarter words, third words, half words, words, and double
>>>> words. I will observe that the complex memory security features seem
>>>> to be effective.
>>>>
>>>> 8) AT&T, before it was broken up, was a heavy user of SX 1100. There
>>>> are some oddball Exec ERs that were put in specifically to support
>>>> AT&T's needs.
>>>>
>>>> I'm now dying to see Part 4: The Periodic File of Elements.
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your thoughtful post, and I hope Part 4 is interesting to you when it's posted in a couple of weeks! I've been hitting the manuals on OS 2200 storage and the APIs for dealing with it - lot of interesting stuff in there.
>>>
>>> For the Ron Smith and George Gray history, do you mean "Unisys Computers: An Introductory History" or "Sperry Rand's Third Generation Computers" in IEEE Annals?
>>>
>>> CSHELL sounds like an interesting beast. Please let me know if you come across a copy somewhere, as I'd be very curious - though the truth is, I've become increasingly accustomed to doing things the 2200 way. :-)
>>>
>>> Thanks again!
>>
>> Speaking of SHELLs. Do copies of the Software Tools Virtual Operating
>> System written for EXEC-8 on the 1100 still exist? Has it been ported
>> to the 2200?
>>
>> bill
>
> Much to my surprise, you reference something 1100/2200 related that
> I've never heard of. Please tell us more.
>
> IMO, the major difference (from a user code standpoint) between an
> 1100 and a 2200 is that marketing thought 2200 sounded twice as sexy
> as 1100.

That, plus they essentially ran out of numbers, as they already had the
1100/10, /20, /40, /50, /60, /80, and /90. So they had to change something.

> Mileage almost certainly varies.

Certainly. :-)

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 05:27 UTC

On 9/27/2022 3:24 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
big snip
>>
>> As for apologetically
Typo. Of course I meant *un*apologetically

strange, I think that is actually right. They
>> certainly have nothing to apologize for, especially as OS 1100 predates
>> Linux by decades. And yes, compared to virtually every other CPU
>> generally available, 1s complement arithmetic and 36 bit words are at
>> best "unusual" and I don't blink at someone calling them strange. Of
>> course, it might appear less strange if you understood the reasoning
>> behind those decisions, and the upward compatibility requirements for
>> keeping them. (Reasons supplied on request.)
>>
>> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
>> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
>> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
>> doing remarkably well.
>>
>> BTW, Kira, if you are comfortable saying, why did you embark on this
>> journey? Was it an assignment of some sort, or just for fun? If for
>> fun, why did you pick the 2200 as opposed to some other system?
>>
>
> Thank you for your kind reply. I was very worried that I had made some grievous error and was flirting with taking LPOS2200 down - I didn't mean to upset anyone at all. I have enjoyed my time with OS 2200 more than I've expected, and certainly found it to be a likable system. And while Lewis seems to think I'd rather being using ncurses, once I figured out the mechanisms of DPS 2200, I'm impressed by how powerful it is - mostly-transparent form validation, in particular, is a very handy feature.
>
> I've actually been interested in non-IBM mainframes for a while - I've been sporadically researching GCOS since I was in high school, over a decade ago, for instance - and I had read MCP manuals but never OS 2200.
You are a bit strange - delightfully so! :-)

> I had some concern that OS 2200 Express would be going away, since MCP Express already had, and figured I should get a license and learn it while I still had the opportunity. I had been trying to think up a good project to learn the APIs and tools for a while, and nothing really came to mind - until I remembered that the Robotfindskitten website included, on its list of ports, "Did you port rfk to Univac? Click here!" and I decided to take it more literally than the Robotfindskitten developers intended. I figured "okay, I can use the system forms interface to display it, and use the structured file interfaces to store game text" and ran with it from there. The point was always just to have a direction to learn from, not to do the easiest or most idiomatic possible port of Robotfindskitten.
>
> I never initially planned to write articles about it at all, but friends of mine - perhaps growing unhappy with walls of text on chat programs about "whoa, look at what I figured out how to do in OS 2200!" - suggested I publish what I was learning, and the process by which I was learning it.
>
> If I've done something wrong in all of that, I really am sorry. I did not want to ruffle any feathers. As to the video, I take the assertion that OS 2200 is designed the way it is because of some kind of job-security-related plot to be completely ridiculous. As with any operating system, I know it evolved to be the way it is because of the combination of application requirements and technical and practical limitations, and I actually quite like what I've seen of it so far. I left the following comment on the video, and I hope the Retrocomputing Roundtable hosts will read it:
>
> " Hiya! I wrote Let's Play OS 2200 and I'm glad you enjoyed it! The emulator used is PS/2200, provided as a component of Unisys's OS 2200 Express. It runs a modern version of OS 2200 (iirc one version behind what's shipping today) and is free, but requires you to request a license. As for OS 2200 itself - I really don't think it's complex for the purpose of job security or complexity in and of itself. It's complex because it's supporting complex workloads that have to do a lot of different things - and the Unix way of dealing with things is not the one and only true way to do them; it's just the way a lot of the industry settled on. Mainframe operating systems tend to make a different set of tradeoffs, but they aren't intrinsically "wrong" - they were tradeoffs that made sense to their userbase and their workloads. Unix has complexity too, it's just complexity that's more familiar. As for documentation, it's freely available on Unisys's site; very little of it is intended for introductory users, but it's definitely understandable if you put the effort in - and at least in my opinion, OS 2200 is way more approachable than GCOS 8 or MVS!"
Well said!

>
> As for 36-bit systems, I know they used to be common - GCOS 8 and OS 2200 are the only survivors, to the best of my knowledge, but there used to be the IBM 7xxx, PDP-10, and various others - but I've been somewhat unclear as to why; if I had to guess, I would assume that it's a natural word length for storing 6-bit character data, and that opting for word-addressing instead of byte-address increases the effective address space for a given word size.
While both of those are true, I believe the reason you give next is the
most convincing.

Someone also once told me it was because it provided ten signed integer
digits.
The 1108 was a successor machine (not compatible, but designed by the
same group) to the 1103, which was an unclassified version of the Atlas
II which was designed for the military. I think I was told that the 10
digits, hence 36 bits came from a military requirement for the Atlas II.

I am less clear as to the reasoning for ones' complement; wasn't it a
little unusual even at the time?
Perhaps, I was told that the 1108 used ones complement as it required
slightly less logic and was slightly faster in the technology of the
time than two's complement. The example I remember is that in ones
complement, you negate a value just by flipping all the bits, whereas
for twos complement, more logic is required. Eliminating the extra
logic reduced costs and made operations such as subtraction faster, i.e.
invert all the bits of the minuend and perform an add.

> Again, I apologize if I did or said something wrong. This is all new to me, and I freely admit I'm out of my depth, but I'm trying to do right by the system.
No problem.
Rereading parts of your web site, a few minor nits.
1. You say the 2200 has full decimal floating point. This is not
correct. It has full binary floating point (36 and 72 bits), and
limited decimal fixed point support.
2. When you talk about file names you missed a subtlety. Note that the
dollar sign $, is a legal character in file names. With a flat file
system, you have to insure that the combination of Qualifier and
Filename are unique across the whole system. But the OS has various
system files, some visible to the user (e.g system libraries), some not,
e.g. the swap file. So in your file naming, you have to insure you
don't mistakenly use a name that the system is already using. So early
on, Univac decided that all Exec files would contain a dollar sign in
the name. So to insure no conflicts, all a use has to do is not use a
dollar sign in the name any of his files.
3. There has been a some discussion here about security levels, etc.
While this is important in a multi-user site, for a single user system
such as PS/2200, you really don't have to care about it at all, and
minimal security is fine.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: l_c...@juno.com (Lewis Cole)
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 by: Lewis Cole - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 05:48 UTC

> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 9:49:41 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 9/27/2022 7:30 PM, David W Schroth wrote:

< snip >
>> IMO, the major difference (from a user code standpoint) between an
>> 1100 and a 2200 is that marketing thought 2200 sounded twice as sexy
>> as 1100.
>
> That, plus they essentially ran out of numbers, as they already had the
> 1100/10, /20, /40, /50, /60, /80, and /90. So they had to change something.

Except that they didn't run out of 1100 Series numbers as they could have done what they did when they changed the name to "2200" namely use three digit model numbers (e.g. 2200/100, 2200/200, 2200/400, 2200/600).
Also since C-Series was originally supposed to have at least four models (from low to high: Chaparral = 1100/50, Centurian = ? Cirrus = 1100/90, with Condor and Capricorn fitting in who knows where), I don't know where they would have fit in without a change in model numbers even if Chaparral and Cirrus were the only C-Series machines left standing since by then the 1100/60 was also the 1100/70.

Just as a question of idle curiosity of no importance whatsoever, when did the Universal Compiling System (UCS) hit the fan?

Trying to bring this thread back to something related to what Kira started, in response to her question about what 1100 history document was referred to before, I don't know the answer to that question specifically, but there are several histories that directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, come from George Gray and/or Ron (AKA R.Q.) Smith.
Just about any of them are more than adequate and likely close to being correct on the history they cover.
They did a paper together entitled: "Sperry Rand's third-generation computers 1964-1980" that was published in the _IEEE Annals of the History of Computing_ but that too isn't readily available.

FWIW, I tend to trust anything written by someone who worked for the Company,
Another name that confers reliability to any history on this basis would be Paul Hagerty.
R.Q. was a fixture/legend in the OS (AKA Exec) group and Hagerty was a Blue Sky person who passed through the Exec and is (in-)famous (to me) for "jokingly" referring to casting PERLS before swine when giving a presentation in front of the Exec group on what would become UCS.
(He was also infamous for smoking like a chimney and setting his waste paper basket on fire when he had an office in the Exec group area.)

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
From: hpeinteg...@gmail.com (Kira Ash)
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 by: Kira Ash - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 13:48 UTC

On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 10:27:09 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 9/27/2022 3:24 PM, Kira Ash wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> big snip
>
> >>
> >> As for apologetically
>
> Typo. Of course I meant *un*apologetically
> strange, I think that is actually right. They
> >> certainly have nothing to apologize for, especially as OS 1100 predates
> >> Linux by decades. And yes, compared to virtually every other CPU
> >> generally available, 1s complement arithmetic and 36 bit words are at
> >> best "unusual" and I don't blink at someone calling them strange. Of
> >> course, it might appear less strange if you understood the reasoning
> >> behind those decisions, and the upward compatibility requirements for
> >> keeping them. (Reasons supplied on request.)
> >>
> >> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
> >> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
> >> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
> >> doing remarkably well.
> >>
> >> BTW, Kira, if you are comfortable saying, why did you embark on this
> >> journey? Was it an assignment of some sort, or just for fun? If for
> >> fun, why did you pick the 2200 as opposed to some other system?
> >>
> >
> > Thank you for your kind reply. I was very worried that I had made some grievous error and was flirting with taking LPOS2200 down - I didn't mean to upset anyone at all. I have enjoyed my time with OS 2200 more than I've expected, and certainly found it to be a likable system. And while Lewis seems to think I'd rather being using ncurses, once I figured out the mechanisms of DPS 2200, I'm impressed by how powerful it is - mostly-transparent form validation, in particular, is a very handy feature.
> >
> > I've actually been interested in non-IBM mainframes for a while - I've been sporadically researching GCOS since I was in high school, over a decade ago, for instance - and I had read MCP manuals but never OS 2200.
> You are a bit strange - delightfully so! :-)
> > I had some concern that OS 2200 Express would be going away, since MCP Express already had, and figured I should get a license and learn it while I still had the opportunity. I had been trying to think up a good project to learn the APIs and tools for a while, and nothing really came to mind - until I remembered that the Robotfindskitten website included, on its list of ports, "Did you port rfk to Univac? Click here!" and I decided to take it more literally than the Robotfindskitten developers intended. I figured "okay, I can use the system forms interface to display it, and use the structured file interfaces to store game text" and ran with it from there. The point was always just to have a direction to learn from, not to do the easiest or most idiomatic possible port of Robotfindskitten.
> >
> > I never initially planned to write articles about it at all, but friends of mine - perhaps growing unhappy with walls of text on chat programs about "whoa, look at what I figured out how to do in OS 2200!" - suggested I publish what I was learning, and the process by which I was learning it.
> >
> > If I've done something wrong in all of that, I really am sorry. I did not want to ruffle any feathers. As to the video, I take the assertion that OS 2200 is designed the way it is because of some kind of job-security-related plot to be completely ridiculous. As with any operating system, I know it evolved to be the way it is because of the combination of application requirements and technical and practical limitations, and I actually quite like what I've seen of it so far. I left the following comment on the video, and I hope the Retrocomputing Roundtable hosts will read it:
> >
> > " Hiya! I wrote Let's Play OS 2200 and I'm glad you enjoyed it! The emulator used is PS/2200, provided as a component of Unisys's OS 2200 Express. It runs a modern version of OS 2200 (iirc one version behind what's shipping today) and is free, but requires you to request a license. As for OS 2200 itself - I really don't think it's complex for the purpose of job security or complexity in and of itself. It's complex because it's supporting complex workloads that have to do a lot of different things - and the Unix way of dealing with things is not the one and only true way to do them; it's just the way a lot of the industry settled on. Mainframe operating systems tend to make a different set of tradeoffs, but they aren't intrinsically "wrong" - they were tradeoffs that made sense to their userbase and their workloads. Unix has complexity too, it's just complexity that's more familiar. As for documentation, it's freely available on Unisys's site; very little of it is intended for introductory users, but it's definitely understandable if you put the effort in - and at least in my opinion, OS 2200 is way more approachable than GCOS 8 or MVS!"
> Well said!
> >
> > As for 36-bit systems, I know they used to be common - GCOS 8 and OS 2200 are the only survivors, to the best of my knowledge, but there used to be the IBM 7xxx, PDP-10, and various others - but I've been somewhat unclear as to why; if I had to guess, I would assume that it's a natural word length for storing 6-bit character data, and that opting for word-addressing instead of byte-address increases the effective address space for a given word size.
> While both of those are true, I believe the reason you give next is the
> most convincing.
> Someone also once told me it was because it provided ten signed integer
> digits.
> The 1108 was a successor machine (not compatible, but designed by the
> same group) to the 1103, which was an unclassified version of the Atlas
> II which was designed for the military. I think I was told that the 10
> digits, hence 36 bits came from a military requirement for the Atlas II.
> I am less clear as to the reasoning for ones' complement; wasn't it a
> little unusual even at the time?
> Perhaps, I was told that the 1108 used ones complement as it required
> slightly less logic and was slightly faster in the technology of the
> time than two's complement. The example I remember is that in ones
> complement, you negate a value just by flipping all the bits, whereas
> for twos complement, more logic is required. Eliminating the extra
> logic reduced costs and made operations such as subtraction faster, i.e.
> invert all the bits of the minuend and perform an add.
> > Again, I apologize if I did or said something wrong. This is all new to me, and I freely admit I'm out of my depth, but I'm trying to do right by the system.
> No problem.
>
> Rereading parts of your web site, a few minor nits.
>
> 1. You say the 2200 has full decimal floating point. This is not
> correct. It has full binary floating point (36 and 72 bits), and
> limited decimal fixed point support.
>
> 2. When you talk about file names you missed a subtlety. Note that the
> dollar sign $, is a legal character in file names. With a flat file
> system, you have to insure that the combination of Qualifier and
> Filename are unique across the whole system. But the OS has various
> system files, some visible to the user (e.g system libraries), some not,
> e.g. the swap file. So in your file naming, you have to insure you
> don't mistakenly use a name that the system is already using. So early
> on, Univac decided that all Exec files would contain a dollar sign in
> the name. So to insure no conflicts, all a use has to do is not use a
> dollar sign in the name any of his files.
>
> 3. There has been a some discussion here about security levels, etc.
> While this is important in a multi-user site, for a single user system
> such as PS/2200, you really don't have to care about it at all, and
> minimal security is fine.
> --
> - Stephen Fuld
> (e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

I've revised the section on filenames to mention that system files all contain a $ - I had actually noticed that and was curious about the reason, so thanks for explaining it! Also corrected the mention of decimal floating point.

Thanks again for your feedback - I want to get this right!

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

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From: bill.gun...@gmail.com (Bill Gunshannon)
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Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
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 by: Bill Gunshannon - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 16:32 UTC

On 9/27/22 22:30, David W Schroth wrote:
>
>
> Much to my surprise, you reference something 1100/2200 related that
> I've never heard of. Please tell us more.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220420810_A_Virtual_Operating_System

Much like The UCSD-PSystem was a precursor to the Java Virtual machine
The Software Tools Virtual Operating System was an early attempt to do
what would later be tried by POSIX. Sadly, like so much of academia,
the original grad students graduated and academia became bored with
it so it fell by the wayside and languished only to be restarted decades
later with all the original research lost and all the potential research
that could have come about in the interim non-existent. It had a very
active Users Group and as can be seen by the list at the end of the
paper it worked on a large number of machines common to the era. Most
of the versions seem to have been lost and those that still exist seem
to be less than complete. I communicated with Ms. Scherrer several
about 30 years ago to ask about the possible existence of sources code
from the various versions. She told me she sent everything to USENIX
for preservation. I contacted USENIX and was informed that they had
thrown all of it out. As an industry that thrives on data, its manip-
ulation and preservation I am always amazed at how much of it has been
lost.

bill

Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200

<th268c$9m3$4@dont-email.me>

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https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?id=224&group=comp.sys.unisys#224

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From: sfu...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid (Stephen Fuld)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys
Subject: Re: Working on a series of mini-articles about OS 2200
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 12:11:08 -0700
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 by: Stephen Fuld - Wed, 28 Sep 2022 19:11 UTC

On 9/27/2022 5:17 PM, Lewis Cole wrote:
>> On Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 2:34:59 PM UTC-7, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> On 9/26/2022 11:20 AM, Lewis Cole wrote:
>
>> I haven't watched the video, but from what you said, I think the problem
>> is with the lady in the video, not with Kira. She doesn't bolster her
>> point when she clips out the part that exactly contradicts her position. :-)
> < snip >
>
> Agreed.
> Be that as it may, Quinn is no dummy and she expressed an opinion that the other members didn't take issue with ... which I took to mean they either agreed with her or didn't think they knew enough to get into an agreement with her that would be captured for posterity.
>
>> As for the meat of the issue, I can certainly see that someone steeped
>> in Unix would have a hard time "getting" the 2200 way of doing things.
>> I applaud Kira for taking on the challenge, and from what I can see,
>> doing remarkably well.
> < snip >
>
> Agreed.
> In an E-mail from one of the members of the board (the details of which I won't get into), he basically said that the board members' experience is more with small scale systems (micros really) rather than mainframes.
> So while I might (and did) have problems getting used to Windows coming from an OS1100/2200 environment, and have done just about everything I can to avoid dealing with Linux for the same sort of reason,

My experience is actually somewhat similar.

> the fact of the matter is that if I were to make comments about my experience, no one would likely take such comments as a reflection on PCs or Windows or Linux.

You're right. They would likely regard you as a "cranky old man". :-)

> (Well, maybe the Windows users would bitch about Linux and the Linux users would bitch about Windows, but I think most people would bitch about me being a newbie.)

Let's see, someone in an older generation complaining about the
"newfangled" stuff the young kids were into and that these kids had no
regard for what they had done, and the kids regarding the old folks as
relics of a previous age, not willing to "get with it". No, I've never
heard of anything like that before! :-)

>
>>> FWIW, as I read what you were doing, I kept thinking to myself,
>>> "If you're trying to send something to a Uniscope terminal as a
>>> test (which I assume is the output device you're using either
>>> simulated or real), why is she messing around with C and DPS at
>>> all?"
>>> I means if I wanted to send something to a screen just as a test,
>>> I'd probably use @FLIT.
>
>> Talk about strange! While you could do as you say, Flit is even more a
>> departure from "typical" systems and has a learning curve all its own.
> < snip >
>
> @FLIT is of course 1100/2200 specific, but IMHO is essential if one has any interest in developing software on OS1100/2200, just as much as using GDB is on Linux.

I think only if you are writing in assembler. For higher level
languages, I would think for most problems, PADS is a sufficient
debugger. While she might get there, I think that, so far at least,
2200 series assembler is something that Kira hasn't been exploring.

> What I've found is that I can do more than just debug programs using @FLIT and in particular when I wanted to see what a terminal/console would do in response to control sequences, @FLIT beat writing a @MASM program to get the job done.

Sure. But I think that is pretty low level, and would require much more
learning than Kira has been willing to undertake.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

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