3 ms·
If only the software itself weren't so fragile. Because of the hype around conversational UI lately, I was curious to start up an example of such from a half c
by lotyrin 10y ago
If only the software itself weren't so fragile.
Because of the hype around conversational UI lately, I was curious to start up an example of such from a half century ago, hook it up to Slack and provide people some historical context, but it was written targeting an interpreter which I couldn't find a copy of for a machine I couldn't find a working emulator for. (BTW, If anyone has a working way to emulate a PDP-10 on 64 bit linux, and an image for that machine providing MacLisp, please let me know - <username>@gmail.com.)
Maybe that will never happen for today's languages, operating systems or architectures, but I wonder if in 2065 a curious engineer would, even if a solution for his curiosity existed in this archive, be able to get something working (within some economical limits upon his effort).
Too rarely is code written in a way that it does much other than happen to work, definitely not in a fashion that makes future code archeologists likely to be able to reapply it's core learning (algorithms, patterns).
- fao_ 10y agoOne emulator is availible here: http://klh10.trailing-edge.com/ http://klh10.trailing-edge.com/ A tutorial on getting TOPS-20 here: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_TOPS-20_V4.1_under_SIMH http://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_TOPS-20_V4.1_under_SIMH (Or ITS: http://gunkies.org/wiki/ITS http://gunkies.org/wiki/ITS) If those don't provide MacLisp (I think the TOPS-20 image should), then you might be able to find it (or a link that sets you on the right track) here: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_family/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/maclisp_fa... A manual for MacLISP is here, by the way: http://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/meta-index.html http://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/meta-index.html Some assorted software for the PDP-10 is here (Including TECO!): http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/ http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/ The reason I have posted this as a comment, rather than via email is because too often have I been looking for solutions to a problem, only to discover a solution was found and emailed to someone else -- denying myself and others access to the solution!
- lotyrin 10y agoThank you! I somehow dead-ended before finding these.
- chubot 10y agoYeah definitely -- I think the more ambitious project is not just to save the source code, or even search it, but to save a complete build AND runtime environment for the software. Of course, it's underspecified turtles all the way down, but I bet you can bottom out with QEMU, which can be run in a mode where it's mostly ANSI C I believe? (i.e. the slow mode without hardware acceleration) QEMU seems to be the most portable emulator AFAICT.