3 ms·
Alas, it seems we haven't been able to locate the source or binary for this important artifact. It would have been wonderful to have this preserved and a simul
by FullyFunctional 8y ago
Alas, it seems we haven't been able to locate the source or binary for this important artifact. It would have been wonderful to have this preserved and a simulator, like we have for the Alto and countless IBM machines, etc.
Failing that, I'd be happy to just have a reimplementation, that's a faithful as possible to the original.
- kragen 8y agoAs far as I know, that's correct. Furthermore, the TX-2 it ran on was a one-off machine, and was changed over time, so the same instruction might do different things before and after hardware changes. I don't know of a description of the TX-2 at any point in time sufficiently complete to write a simulator, much less at the particular time SKETCHPAD was being built. Presumably it would be somewhat simpler than the PDP-1 simulator, and perhaps could even use the same scope simulation code — Norbert Landsteiner tells me that simulating the visual effects of the scope tube was the hardest part of writing the PDP-1 simulator.
- pmcjones 8y agoSketchpad listing at the Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903
- FullyFunctional 8y agoOh cool, thanks for pointing that out. It looks like it would be a major undertaking making a working piece of code from that.