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DEC PDP-8/E EDUSYSTEM-10 4KW BASIC interpreter.

Code: 
The top level source and binary files here are derived from the dbit/nickel
source code, as before.  Those files represent the oldest known version,
perhaps edu25a-a.  The files there were infamously corrupted many years
ago, so these have been carefully reconstructed.  The edu25r.pal file is
the reconstructed version, and the edu25s.pal is a derived work that will
run on the SBC6120 with an IOB6120.  The sbcrw.pal is a routine which
replaces DTAPE to do I/O on the SPC.

There is also an older version of this "in the wild" that was distributed
to SBC6120 users.  That used code from EDU10 to reconstruct the missing
parts of the floating point output routine.

Newer stuff has been found, and is generally grouped in the subdirectories:
dbit
        Largely replicates the top level as described above.
edu25a-b
        The binary appears to be essentially the stuff above, with a lot
        of small (and a few large) patches.  I plan to at least get the
        source to build the binary.  Completely and accurately reconstructing
        the patch source would quite a job.
edu25b-b
        The source labels itself as edu25b-b, and it builds cleanly.  I don't
        have an edu25b-b binary to compare it to, however.
edu25f
        This builds and matches the binary and claims to be "V6".  Probably
        the latest version available.
educomp
        This calls itself edu25, but it's made by EduComp, not by DEC.  It's
        also targeted for Omnibus machines, and though it builds, it doesn't
        run.  (An early call to print a CRLF ends up in the wrong field, takes
        a 0000 return, and then loops in the interrupt service routine, which
        also returns to 0000.)
 
Al Kossow said:
dug through my bitpile and added a few more things to
Index of /bits/DEC/pdp8/dectapeImages
Click to expand...
Had a look at these. Most are OS/8 volumes, and the 32kfoc image is a really cool bootable DECtape with a verion of FOCAL which was totally new to me.

A few of them have me stumped. I haven't been able to make heads or tails of bart2, bart3, bart4, bart7, beck, beckrt, and dmp41. The bart3 and bart4 images have what look like OS/8 directories, but the file extensions aren't legal. (Also, if I interpret them as OS/8 the file contents have every other block thrashed. [That's after removing the dead space caused by the 129th word.])

Any hints as to what format the original tapes were in?

Thanks!
 
Since these are in a TSS/8 directory could it be part of the 8.25 code that allowed one to run OS/8 stuff or at least boot over to running OS/8? I never used 8.25. The last version of TSS/8 I used was 8.24 and that was at the end of my time there.
 
tradde said:
Since these are in a TSS/8 directory could it be part of the 8.25 code that allowed one to run OS/8 stuff or at least boot over to running OS/8? I never used 8.25. The last version of TSS/8 I used was 8.24 and that was at the end of my time there.
Click to expand...
Some of the OS/8 images do have 8.25 code on them, but I haven't checked how much of it is new. The .tap format is easily converted to SIMH DT format by reading them with block size 256*2 and writing with block size 129*2 (each word is 2 bytes). From there you can use 8tools or just use SIMH to attach and DIR them.

Vince
 
vrs42 said:
Some of the OS/8 images do have 8.25 code on them, but I haven't checked how much of it is new.
Click to expand...
Dunno if this helps:

$ grep "[.]25" */*
bkupn1.0/pham.pa:/TSS-8.25 CONFIGURATION FOR REMCO OF RACINE
bkupn1.0/uwm.pa:/TSS-8.25 CONFIGURATION FOR UWM

$ grep ".UWM.*25" */*
bkupn1.0/fip.pa:/FIP - UWM VERSION 25
bkupn1.0/init.pa:/INIT - UWM VERSION 25
bkupn1.0/para.pa:/PARAMETERS - UWM VERSION 25
bkupn1.0/si.pa:/SI - UWM VERSION 25
bkupn2.0/ts8ii.pa:/TS8II - UWM VERSION 25
bkupn2.0/ts8.pa:/TS8 - UWM VERSION 25
 
Now if we could only find the systems software (SYSTAT, CAT, ...) for 4.25. The ones for 4.24 and earlier no longer work with 4.25. Maybe there is a backup image hiding in there that would have them. I'll have to look.
 
vrs42 said:
Had a look at these. Most are OS/8 volumes, and the 32kfoc image is a really cool bootable DECtape with a verion of FOCAL which was totally new to me.

A few of them have me stumped. I haven't been able to make heads or tails of bart2, bart3, bart4, bart7, beck, beckrt, and dmp41. The bart3 and bart4 images have what look like OS/8 directories, but the file extensions aren't legal. (Also, if I interpret them as OS/8 the file contents have every other block thrashed. [That's after removing the dead space caused by the 129th word.])

Any hints as to what format the original tapes were in?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
beck seems to have pdp-8 executable code as I did an OD and it sure looks like valid code, at least as far as I checked. No idea on the bart2.
 
I had hoped for a clue in the provenance. Like maybe they came from a non-OS/8 system, were written with a particular backup program, or some such.
 
bart7 seems to be pdp-8 code starting at 4000. I see some user defined IOTs that fit into the "never used by DEC". So I have no idea what they might do.
 
"bart" is Richard Bartlein, the guy who did most of the hacks to UW-M's TSS8 system
I think "pham" is Paul Pham, who ran a TSS8 system at the Gateway Technical Institute in Racine
I vaguely remember these being TSS8 putr tapes
I'm pretty sure the ascii files in that directory are files that I extracted back a long time ago when John Wilson
and I were messing with TSS8 system recovery
 
Al Kossow said:
"bart" is Richard Bartlein, the guy who did most of the hacks to UW-M's TSS8 system
I think "pham" is Paul Pham, who ran a TSS8 system at the Gateway Technical Institute in Racine
I vaguely remember these being TSS8 putr tapes
I'm pretty sure the ascii files in that directory are files that I extracted back a long time ago when John Wilson
and I were messing with TSS8 system recovery
Click to expand...
Excellent!

Maybe someone with a working TSS8 can try to use putr to read them. Meanwhile, I'll see what documentation I can find about TSS8 putr.
 
Although I have no TSS8 Experience, I did a fair bit of swimming around in the source code to DEC Edusystem 25 BASIC, and Educomp EDU200 (their "enhanced EDU20") and EDU250 (their "enhanced EDU25").

If the EDU25 sources you have come from the "johnson.rk05" or the "johnson_fixed.rk05" from Dave Gesswein's site, it's probably a snapshot of a failed attempt to port the TD8e driver from EDU250 back into EDU25 that I attempted when I was a senior in high school. (I've gotten a LOT better at coding and debugging and understanding since then.)

At some point I'd like to review the sources and maybe help out with the recovery.

At the present moment, I'm actually trying to recover U/W FOCAL. The linctape from Dave Gesswein's site does not have source for non-EAE floating point. I see mention of 32kfoc.tap on Al Kossow's site. Can someone remind me what format that is in? I'd like to see if it has any missing pieces of U/W FOCAL.
 
wcattey said:
Although I have no TSS8 Experience, I did a fair bit of swimming around in the source code to DEC Edusystem 25 BASIC, and Educomp EDU200 (their "enhanced EDU20") and EDU250 (their "enhanced EDU25").

If the EDU25 sources you have come from the "johnson.rk05" or the "johnson_fixed.rk05" from Dave Gesswein's site, it's probably a snapshot of a failed attempt to port the TD8e driver from EDU250 back into EDU25 that I attempted when I was a senior in high school. (I've gotten a LOT better at coding and debugging and understanding since then.)

At some point I'd like to review the sources and maybe help out with the recovery.
Click to expand...
The link above:
doesn't actually encode the revision number (though the forum software makes it look like it), and should take you to my latest.

wcattey said:
At the present moment, I'm actually trying to recover U/W FOCAL. The linctape from Dave Gesswein's site does not have source for non-EAE floating point. I see mention of 32kfoc.tap on Al Kossow's site. Can someone remind me what format that is in? I'd like to see if it has any missing pieces of U/W FOCAL.
Click to expand...
I think the focal8-301 stuff at:
should be fairly complete. (Let me know if it isn't!) The link on the left will take you to the top level directory (whose URL you can also use to check it out with SVN).

The 32kfoc tape image is a stand-alone bootable DECtape. I just did "att dt 32kfoc.dt" and "boot dt" in SIMH. I didn't think it had any standard file-system on it.

Vince
 
I've peeked into the edu25/educomp directory. That EDU250 source is familiar to me.
Note that EDU250.LS is an assembly listing with no mass storage devices defined, so it is really emitting "EDU200" which is the same BASIC interpreter but without any Mass Storage.

I copied the EDU250.PA source into my simh environment, added a definition "R8E=1"built it and started it.

For me it runs just fine. I was surprised that I remembered even how to use the EDIT command to modify a line.

Note that various of the BASIC games that I included in the tangentsoft PiDP-8/i distribution in basic-games.tu56 are of a dialect that are incompatible with EDU250. To wit, a semicolon or a backslash to put multiple statements on a line provoke an error.

But BUNNY.BA, TICTAC.BA run just fine.

POKER.BA, might be too big to fit. I think that's what error 5 is.

Note also that you have to set caps lock because EDU250 doesn't grok lower case, and it looks like you're typing nothing.
 
Verified that dec-08-ed10a-a-pb-new.ptp runs fine on Straight 8. Modified one of the 101 BASIC game program to work with it. Was bringing it to a STEM type event so went with bounce simulating a bouncing ball. Had to get rid of many of the prints to make it fit, added code to simulate TAB(), and broke expressions up. Too complex expressions cause corruption. The BASIC wraps at around 59 character. Didn't fully work around that so sometimes will get unwanted line wraps. Code too slow to keep teletype busy printing. The DIM is likely larger that really needed so could save some memory by reducing it.

Also wrote a loader that allows loading it under DMS on DF32. It needs memory DMS uses so will need to reenter bootstrap to restart DMS when done.
 

Attachments

  • bounce.txt
    1 KB · Views: 6
Loader is attached. See usage.txt for notes on how it use. Will need work for DECtape. Anybody else use DF32? Sorry but standard demo code where not documents that well and development tends to stop when it works well enough for the demo.

Post back if anybody uses it.
 

Attachments

  • loader.zip
    4.5 KB · Views: 3
Al Kossow said:
"bart" is Richard Bartlein, the guy who did most of the hacks to UW-M's TSS8 system
I think "pham" is Paul Pham, who ran a TSS8 system at the Gateway Technical Institute in Racine
I vaguely remember these being TSS8 putr tapes
I'm pretty sure the ascii files in that directory are files that I extracted back a long time ago when John Wilson
and I were messing with TSS8 system recovery
Click to expand...
I was able to decode bart2 and bart7 as TSS PUTR DECtapes. The others appear to be something else.

I also added a few tools and some documentation to the 8tools for PUTR DECtapes:

Basically, there's an overview of the format, a tool to "dir" and optionally extract stuff, and some smaller tools to identify (and decode) BASIC and FOCAL files, as well as the most common format for PAL, etc. text files.

I found the "extension" field in the directories to be useless as a predictor of the files' actual file types.

Vince
 
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