On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 3:51:02 AM UTC-5, Morten Reistad wrote:
> In article <pk7lb3-...@dmz.pfarrell.com>,
> Pat Farrell <pfar...@nospam.com> wrote:
> >bob wrote:
> >> Pat Farrell wrote:
> >>> I'm not saying that KLs weren't great. I loved them.
> >>> But in our shop, which also had both, the KLs were never
> >>> considered in the same league with the Blue Mainframes.
> >>> I believe this was deliberate, I have vague memories of folklore
> >>> that KO didn't want DEC to compete with IBM at all.
> >>>
> >>> Its hard to remember what the thread was about since it is
> >>> at least four months old. But it wasn't that KLs couldn't
> >>> timeshare, it was that Digital didn't understand the
> >>> needs of timesharing customers, "they" seemed to
> >>> think that a PDP-11 on steroids was a proper timesharing
> >>> machine. Don't know if 'they' was all of DEC, or only
> >>> the demon spawn related to Mr Bell.
> >>>
> >> I will admit to being somewhat bad. RSTS-11, aka reall shitty
> >> timesharing, did run basic. It kind of stalled when one gave it a nice
> >> matrix inversion problem to do in basic. Especially when it was a top of
> >> the line 11 and one had four accounts running the problem
> >> simultaineously. Ahem....
> >
> >You are right, you could do some sort of timesharing on assorted
> >PDP-11 hardware with some of the assorted operating systems.
> >Some better than others, Unix better than most of the Digital
> >provided ones.
> >
> >The point I think I was aiming at was that DEC didn't understand
> >the needs of large scale timesharing companies. The companies like
> >Compuserv, ADP, Tymnet, AMS, etc. that were supporting hundreds
> >of commercial users simultaneously. This is different in type
> >(in addition to in scale) from the more common university
> >experience where 300 students entering 50 line
> >Fortran programs. The students were told to simply live with the
> >response (or not) of overloaded systems.
> >
> >DEC suggested that the Vax 8600 and other large vaxen would
> >be suitable for this market. They were not.
> >
> >Perhaps DEC was even right, but we needed something way faster
> >than a KL in 1980 or so. By 85 or so, the PC was doing a lot
> >of what simple users did with timesharing. Ken Olsen couldn't
> >understand PCs either. The PC didn't do the large scale
> >applications until the mid-90s when networks and client-server
> >designs leveraged the PC for what it was good at, user interaction
> >and had servers for big data.
> >
> >I believe that the world would have done a lot better if the
> >Jupiter came out in 80 with a follow-on in 84. We were doing
> >client-server with Pro-350s in the early 80s talking to our KLs
> >over Decnet. It was at least a decade before PCs worked as
> >peers.
> Yes, it took a long time. Far _too_ long, the hardware was
> actually reasonably capable.
> The 2060 measured around 1.4 mips on a dhrystone benchmark,
> the 2065 around 1.7; and they could handle around 40 users
> of edit/compile mix, or around 100 edit/mail/data entry users.
> They fared less well on a transaction handling mix via a
> network.
> The 80286 almost matched this under QNX, given enough
> memory. The 80386 needed sufficient cache memory and a 40 Mhz
> processor to outperform a KL10 under QNX. This happened
> in late 1987. I ran large user tests back to back with
> a DEC20 and the QNX box came out slightly ahead in all of
> them.
> Sun could match KL10 performance under a semi-decent OS a
> year or so earlier than this. This is on _microprocessor_
> systems; single chip processor, less than three core support
> chips, single board computer; all fitting in a large shoe box.
> We also ran a higher user-load on a Prime 9955-II ( a stellar
> machine for high loads if there ever was one) than I ever
> saw on a KL10; this was in 1985.
> We back-ported the transaction systems from the Prime 9955-II
> to QNX, and saw around 40% of the performance on a (large)
> 803086. The 68xxx series was around twice as fast at the
> time.
> We used QNX, although a realtime system with a lot of
> limitations, it was available at acceptable licensing terms.
> This was something Microsoft saw that the rest of the
> business missed. Unfortunatly their systems were not
> up to peer-to-peer networking for another decade.
> The point of this rant is that the pc hardware was a lot
> more capable of handling multitask systems than it
> usually gets credit for. The problem was software, and
> the attitudes of the core IT industry that was resisting
> openness tooth and nail.
> -- mrr

William Gallant here -
I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
"go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?

Thanx - William

On 2022-07-19 23:46, William Gallant wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 3:51:02 AM UTC-5, Morten Reistad wrote:
[...]
>
> William Gallant here -
> I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
> I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
> "go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
> and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
> It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
> long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
> disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?
>
> Thanx - William

Wow. You quote 16 year old posts about timesharing in a request to find
a PDP-10 disassembler?

Rich is still around, if you just search for him. The Toad-1 was shut
down a couple of years ago with the rest of the stuff at the Computer
History Museum in Seattle.

Johnny

Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>On 2022-07-19 23:46, William Gallant wrote:
>> On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 3:51:02 AM UTC-5, Morten Reistad wrote:
>[...]
>>
>> William Gallant here -
>> I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
>> I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
>> "go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
>> and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
>> It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
>> long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
>> disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?
>>
>> Thanx - William
>
>Wow. You quote 16 year old posts about timesharing in a request to find
>a PDP-10 disassembler?

I thought someone was resurrecting the old VAX <-> DECsystem10 wars.

RIP Morten.

>
>Rich is still around, if you just search for him. The Toad-1 was shut
>down a couple of years ago with the rest of the stuff at the Computer
>History Museum in Seattle.

That would be the Living Computer Museum. CHM is in Mountain View California.

On Wednesday, July 20, 2022 at 7:35:56 AM UTC-7, Scott Lurndal wrote:

(snip)

> That would be the Living Computer Museum. CHM is in Mountain View California.

I was thinking recently, and before reading this, that one possibility
would be a merger between CHM and LCM. That is, to convert LCM
into CHM north.

I don't know at all about how that might work, but it would seem better
than the current closed and unusable LCM.

But then nobody asked me.

On 2022-07-20 16:35, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>> On 2022-07-19 23:46, William Gallant wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 3:51:02 AM UTC-5, Morten Reistad wrote:
>> [...]
>>>
>>> William Gallant here -
>>> I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
>>> I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
>>> "go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
>>> and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
>>> It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
>>> long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
>>> disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?
>>>
>>> Thanx - William
>>
>> Wow. You quote 16 year old posts about timesharing in a request to find
>> a PDP-10 disassembler?
>
> I thought someone was resurrecting the old VAX <-> DECsystem10 wars.

Yeah. That would be amusing (not).

> RIP Morten.

I didn't know. Damn.

>> Rich is still around, if you just search for him. The Toad-1 was shut
>> down a couple of years ago with the rest of the stuff at the Computer
>> History Museum in Seattle.
>
> That would be the Living Computer Museum. CHM is in Mountain View California.

D'oh! I should know. No idea how I managed to mix that up. :-P

Johnny

In article <tb8sgb$2qm$1@news.misty.com>,
Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
>On 2022-07-19 23:46, William Gallant wrote:
>> On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 3:51:02 AM UTC-5, Morten Reistad wrote:
>[...]
>>
>> William Gallant here -
>> I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
>> I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
>> "go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
>> and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
>> It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
>> long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
>> disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?
>>
>> Thanx - William
>
>Wow. You quote 16 year old posts about timesharing in a request to find
>a PDP-10 disassembler?
>
>Rich is still around, if you just search for him. The Toad-1 was shut
>down a couple of years ago with the rest of the stuff at the Computer
>History Museum in Seattle.

Actually, the Toad is up (it's a Toad-2, though, AFAIK).
I believe that the DECsystem-10 is still down, though.

https://livingcomputers.org/Computer-Collection/Online-Systems.aspx

- Dan C.

William Gallant <sigma.research@gmail.com> writes:

> William Gallant here -
> I too am looking for a TOPS-10 disassembler.
> I noticed Rich Alderson's September 2005 post which states -
> "go to PDPplanet.org and follow links to request a Toad-1 account"
> and Rich could e-mail the Pascal disassembler source.
> It is now July, 2022 and the Toad-1 is shut down for i don't know how
> long. Dear Rich, if you read this post, could you somehow make the
> disassembler source available to me? Is it located in the DECUS library somewhere?

Some of the systems at Living Computers: Museum + Labs are still kept running
(because leaving them powered off makes it much harder to power them back on
when needed or wanted), including the Toad-2 to which all Toad-1 accounts were
moved in 2015.

It's a lot easier to just put a copy of the Pascal source into a Usenet post,
because those systems which are running are behind a strong firewall which is
only opened on a case by case basis.

I tried to put this on my personal Wordpress site, but WP makes it very
difficult to cut and paste HTML to preserve formatting.

****************************************************************
Copyright 2022 Richard M. Alderson, III. Permission is freely given to copy and
use the included Pascal program source with the sole restriction that this
copyright notice must be retained in any copy.

This disassembler is designed to interpret executable files in either of two
formats from Digital Equipment Corporation:

1. The older "compressed" format used in .SAV, .LOW, .HGH, and .SHR files, and
2. The newer .EXE file format

It cannot be used for MIT AI Lab's binary format or SAIL's .DMP format,
although it would try to handle the latter to some extent.

Earliest version available, timestamped 24-Jan-1995 18:30:44 PST.
This is the latest version, timestamped 23-Nov-2004 17:18:12 PST, modified for posting.

The changes made in November 2004 revised the handling of Tops-10 UUOs, with
which I was only theoretically familiar when I wrote the initial version of
this disassembler around 1980. Note that 40+ years ago, I was a clever
programmer trying to become more clever; I make no apology for the kludges this
made inevitable in my code from that era.

Cosmetic changes for this version:

1. Multiple statement lines have been broken into multiple lines, one statement per.
2. Page breaks have been removed and multiple blank lines have been shrunk to a
doublespace.

************************* Code follows *************************

program disasm (savefile, macrofile);

const
ALFAlength = 10;
AlfaTooLong = 11;
Leave1 = 9;
Leave2 = 8;
Leave3 = 7;
Leave4 = 6;
Leave5 = 5;
Leave6 = 4;
Leave7 = 3;
Leave8 = 2;
Leave9 = 1;

CALLvalue = 040;
CALLIvalue = 047;
TTCALLvalue = 051;
JSYSvalue = 104;
JRSTvalue = 254;
JFCLvalue = 255;

TopJSYS = 777;
TopCALLI = 277;
TopAC = 17;
TopDevice = 127;
TopPage = 511;

TopDataLine = 3;
BottomDataLine = 50;
LineLength = 105;
LabelColumn = 1;
MnemonicColumn = 9;
ArgsColumn = 17;
CommentColumn = 33;
AddressColumn = 34;
LeftHWcolumn = 43;
Commacolumn = 49;
RightHWcolumn = 51;
SIXBITcolumn = 61;
ASCIIcolumn = 69;
OpcodeColumn = 81;
FlagColumn = 84;
ACcolumn = 85;
IndirectColumn = 88;
IndexColumn = 90;
OperandColumn = 93;
LastTextColumn = 98;

type
AlfaPtr = ^Alfa;
WordType = packed array [ 0..1 ] of 0..262143;
HalfType = array [ 0..1 ] of 0..262143;

PgTblPtr = ^PageTableEntry;

PageTableEntry = record
NextPTentry : PgTblPtr;
RepeatCount : integer;
ProcessAddress : integer;
end;

JmpTblPtr = ^JumpTableEntry;

JumpTableEntry = record
NextJTentry : JmpTblPtr;
BranchAddress : integer;
JumpLabel : ALFA;
end;
{ Global (or main routine) variables }
var
MacroFile : file of char;
SaveFile : file of WordType;

Instruction : array [ 0..677 ] of ALFA;
JSYS : array [ 0..TopJSYS ] of ALFA;
CALLI : array [ 0..TopCALLI ] of ALFA;
TTCALL : array [ 0..TopAC ] of ALFA;

DeviceName : array [ 0..TopDevice ] of ALFA;
RealIO : array [ 0..7 ] of ALFA;

ACnames, JRST, JFCL : array [ 0..TopAC ] of ALFA;

Named_JSYS : array [ 0..TopJSYS ] of Boolean;
Named_CALLI : array [ 0..TopCALLI ] of Boolean;
Named_TTCALL, Named_JRST, Named_JFCL : array [ 0..TopAC ] of Boolean;
Named_Device : array [ 0..TopDevice ] of Boolean;

Radix50 : array [ 0..39 ] of char;

CharLine : array [ 1..LineLength ] of char;
HeadLine, StringLine : packed array [ 1..LineLength ] of char;

HalfWord, PreviousHalfWord : HalfType;

Opcode, AC, Index, Operand, Flag, LeftHalf, PageNumber,
OutputAddress, PageLines, HeapTop, FileWdCount, StartAddress,
LastWordtoDump, EVECaddress, EVEClength, NumberOfSavedWords : integer;

IndirectBit, EndOfSaveFile, VeryFirstOutputCall, Sharable : Boolean;

LIGHTSname : ALFA;

AddressString, OpcodeString, ACstring, FlagString, IndexString,
OperandString, LeftString, RightString : AlfaPtr;

PageListTop, PageListCurrent : PgTblPtr;

JumpListTop, JumpListBottom, JumpListCurrent : JmpTblPtr;
{ Radix conversion routines }

function Octal ( Number : integer ) : integer;

var
Octo, Radix : integer;

begin;
Radix := 1;
Octo := 0;

repeat;
Octo := Octo + (Number mod 8) * Radix;
Number := Number div 8;
Radix := Radix * 10;
until Number = 0;

Octal := Octo;
end {Octal} ;

function Decimal ( Number : integer ) : integer;

var
Decem, Radix : integer;

begin;
Radix := 1;
Decem := 0;

repeat;
Decem := Decem + (Number mod 10) * Radix;
Number := Number div 10;
Radix := Radix * 8;
until Number = 0;

Decimal := Decem;
end {Decimal} ;

{TRICKY manipulation of octal & decimal representations}

function Fiddle (OctoDecimal : integer) : integer;

begin;

if odd (OctoDecimal)
then Fiddle := Decimal (OctoDecimal) * 5 - 1
else Fiddle := Decimal (OctoDecimal) * 5;

end {Fiddle};
{ Page header routines }

procedure InitHeader;

var i : integer;
Heading : ALFA;
TempHead : array [ 1..LineLength ] of char;

begin;

for i := 1 to LineLength do TempHead [ i ] := ' ';

Heading := ';label ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 1);

Heading := 'instructio';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 9);
Heading := 'n stream ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 19);

Heading := 'addr ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 35);

Heading := 'halfword ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 45);

Heading := 'sixbit ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 60);

Heading := 'ascii ';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 71);

Heading := 'compiled i';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 79);
Heading := 'nstruction';
unpack (Heading, TempHead, 89);

pack (TempHead, 1, HeadLine);

end {InitHeader};

{ Push out a header line }

procedure PutHeader;
begin;

PageNumber := PageNumber + 1;

writeln (macrofile, chr (12) {Form Feed}) ;
write (macrofile, HeadLine);
writeln (macrofile, chr (9) {Tab}, 'Page ', PageNumber:1);
writeln (macrofile);

end {PutHeader};
{ Write out the actual contents of the line }

procedure OutputText;

var
i : integer;

begin;

{ I used to do this with "pack" and "unpack" but I want to save the extra }
{ spaces at EOLN, so use this routine instead }

{ pack (CharLine, 1, StringLine); }
{ writeln (macrofile, StringLine); }

for i := 1 to LastTextColumn do begin;

MacroFile^ := CharLine [ i ];
put (MacroFile);

end;

writeln (MacroFile);

PageLines := PageLines + 1;

end {OutputText};
{ Empty all output arrays }
procedure ClearLine;

var i : integer;

begin;
for i := 1 to LineLength do CharLine [ i ] := ' ';
pack (CharLine, 1, StringLine);
end { ClearLine };

procedure DisplayLine ( RepeatCount : integer );

var
OctalRepeat : integer;

begin;

if PageLines > BottomDataLine
then begin;
PutHeader;
PageLines := TopDataLine;
end;

OctalRepeat := Octal (RepeatCount);

if RepeatCount > 1
then begin;

if PageLines > TopDataLine
then writeln (macrofile);

writeln (macrofile, 'REPEAT ', OctalRepeat:1, ',<');

if PageLines > TopDataLine
then PageLines := PageLines + 2
else PageLines := PageLines + 1;
end;

In case it would be useful to someone, here is another disassembler:

https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/pdp10-its-disassembler

It's for running on Unix-like systems. It started as a disassembler for
ITS binaries, but now support many more file formats.