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computers / alt.sys.pdp10 / Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)

SubjectAuthor
* Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete withsbyr...@gmail.com
`* Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anyLars Brinkhoff
 `* Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete withsbyr...@gmail.com
  `- Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anyLars Brinkhoff

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Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)

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Subject: Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with
sources anywhere ?)
From: sbyrne...@gmail.com (sbyr...@gmail.com)
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 by: sbyr...@gmail.com - Fri, 15 Apr 2022 01:56 UTC

On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 8:58:19 AM UTC-8, Al Kossow wrote:
> On 1/14/17 2:54 AM, Neil Thompson wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 12:43:40 AM UTC+2, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> >> Good news! Johnny Eriksson found a PARSE0.BCP with this:
> >>
> Since we are on the subject, was there ever a BCPL out of CMU?
> LCM+L has acquired the sources for an Alto game written in a dialect of BCPL
> I've never seen before on the Alto. I'm guessing since the game came out of
> CMU it was either written there or at the University of Rochester (another
> Xero Alto University Grant site)
>
> Does ANYONE know for sure if there are surviving tape archives at CMU? I've
> only ever heard rumors, and CMU has been absent from this discussion which
> is odd considering what a big player they were in the DEC world.

AFAIK, the BCPL on the Altos @ CMU was native to the Altos themselves. I don't believe there was much, if any BCPL work done at CMU -- everything along those lines was in C, or BLISS, or Macro, or Pascal for the PERQ machines (at least in the CS department); maybe a little SAIL here and there. I say this because I was @ CMU when the Altos arrived, and by poking around on them I managed to find some BCPL source files on the Altos, and, being a language maven, I was surprised I'd never come across BCPL in the past (other than vague references to it as a progenitor of C).

Sadly, I do not have any contacts at CMU anymore who might know if these tape archives exist, but I doubt they would be what you'd want since it was BCPL for the Altos and not TOPS-10/20.

Steve

Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)

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From: lars.s...@nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)
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Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 06:04:58 +0000
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 by: Lars Brinkhoff - Fri, 15 Apr 2022 06:04 UTC

Al Kossow wrote:
>> Since we are on the subject, was there ever a BCPL out of CMU?

Since we are, any TX-2 BCPL?

"The Nova version of BCPL was bootstrapped from the TX-2 implementation"
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/bcpl/BCPL_Reference_Manual_Sep75.pdf

sbyrne007 wrote:
> AFAIK, the BCPL on the Altos @ CMU was native to the Altos themselves.

I will note BBN's BCPL targets PDP-10 natively and cross compiles to
PDP-11. It seems likely PARC had access to this compiler. Just an
observation, not claiming it was used with the Alto in any way.

> Sadly, I do not have any contacts at CMU anymore who might know if
> these tape archives exist

The status of the archive in 2002 was:

"Howard and Bob Cosgrove, the current director, determined that backup
tapes from that period (1981-1983) still existed [...] Kirk Berthold
and Michael Riley in CS operations managed retrieving tapes from
off-site archival storage. Dale Moore looked for the post on Tops-20
backup tapes from CMU-20C."

No mention of older TOPS-10 tapes.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm

Ric Werme has a few DECtapes from his time at CMU.

Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)

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Subject: Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with
sources anywhere ?)
From: sbyrne...@gmail.com (sbyr...@gmail.com)
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 by: sbyr...@gmail.com - Fri, 15 Apr 2022 16:47 UTC

On Thursday, April 14, 2022 at 11:04:59 PM UTC-7, lars...@nocrew.org wrote:
> Al Kossow wrote:
> >> Since we are on the subject, was there ever a BCPL out of CMU?
> Since we are, any TX-2 BCPL?
>
> "The Nova version of BCPL was bootstrapped from the TX-2 implementation"
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/bcpl/BCPL_Reference_Manual_Sep75.pdf

Ah, and the Alto, being something with a microcoded Nova instruction set, I believe, would make porting that BCPL from the Nova version pretty easy.

It did seem that the "older" software for the Alto was written in BCPL; some of the newer stuff was in Mesa.

And, sadly, that last message about the archive was 20 years ago. I think Dale Moore has moved on to somewhere else, and the other people in the list I'm not familiar with -- likely after my time (so post mid 81). Another person not mentioned in the 2002 mail, but who was instrumental in the retrieval of the smiley origin emails was Jeff Baird, whom I have not been able to contact for the last several years. But, he would likely know.

Steve

Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)

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From: lars.s...@nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Re: CMU?? Alto BCPL (was Re: BBN TOPS-20 BCPL Compiler complete with sources anywhere ?)
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 by: Lars Brinkhoff - Fri, 15 Apr 2022 17:20 UTC

sbyrne007 wrote:

> Ah, and the Alto, being something with a microcoded Nova instruction
> set, I believe, would make porting that BCPL from the Nova version
> pretty easy. It did seem that the "older" software for the Alto was
> written in BCPL; some of the newer stuff was in Mesa.

If you really want to dig into this, here's a large stash of Alto files:
https://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/

Note that according to "extension frequencies" there are 2621 .bcpl
files, and 1321 .mesa files. So even if BCPL was the legacy language,
it was still going strong.

> And, sadly, that last message about the archive was 20 years ago. I
> think Dale Moore has moved on to somewhere else, and the other people
> in the list I'm not familiar with -- likely after my time (so post mid
> 81). Another person not mentioned in the 2002 mail, but who was
> instrumental in the retrieval of the smiley origin emails was Jeff
> Baird, whom I have not been able to contact for the last several
> years. But, he would likely know.

Thanks. I'll try to contact them.

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