3 ms·

I'm disgusted... What was the motivation for that?

by tjoff 4y ago

maccard 4y ago
I found this [0] which says that the layout of the LGP-30 Flexowriter (linked in the article) conformed to fgjkqw, so it may be related. [0] http://laboratorium.net/archive/2008/04/28/a_few_facts_about_the_lgp30 http://laboratorium.net/archive/2008/04/28/a_few_facts_about...
- kps 4y ago
  From https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum//DWcodes.html#A077 https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum//DWcodes.html#A077 the Flexowriter character code was: +----------------------------------------------+ | 00 20 40 60 00 20 40 60 | (1) triangle +--------------------+ +--------------------+ (2) pi | RE NL ST | 00 | RE NL ST | (3) sigma | z i p h | 01 | Z I P H | | 0 4 8 j | 02 | ) (1) (3) J | BS Back Space | SP / o | 03 | SP ? O | COL COLor | LC BS | 04 | LC BS | DEL DELete | b d e c | 05 | B D E C | HT Horizontal Tab | l 5 9 k | 06 | L % ( K | LC Lower Case | - . x | 07 | _ ] X | NL New Line | UC HT | 10 | UC HT | RE REad | y n u a | 11 | Y N U A | SP SPace | 2 6 f q | 12 | * $ F Q | ST STop | + , | 13 | = [ | UC Upper Case | COL | 14 | COL | | r m t s | 15 | R M T S | | 3 7 g w | 16 | " (2) G W | | , v DEL | 17 | : V DEL | +--------------------+ +--------------------+ | lower case upper case | +----------------------------------------------+ Taking bits 2–5 gives you: 0 l 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 f g j k q w
drfuchs 4y ago
The convention of using "ABCDEF" didn't get established until well after the LGP-30 was designed in the 1950's. The Wikipedia entry on "Hexadecimal" says "The now-current notation using the letters A to F establishes itself as the de facto standard beginning in 1966, in the wake of the publication of the Fortran IV manual for IBM System/360, which (unlike earlier variants of Fortran) recognizes a standard for entering hexadecimal constants." The comments elsewhere that note the layout of the Flexowriter character set risk conflating cause with effect. The single-character mnemonics for the sixteen hardware instructions were chosen by the LGP-30 designers to be, well, mnemonic; and then the remaining characters FGJKQW were left to represent the values ten through fifteen. This then forced the assignment of character positions for the Flexowriter device, so that no table lookup would be required when reading opcode mnemonics and also when reading hex numbers; all bits could just be shifted into place in both cases. Trigger warning: The phrase we were taught was standard in the LGP community to help remember FGJKQW was, I'm afraid, "For Good Jokes, Kill Quiet Women." This seems to have been excised from the written lore fairly early on, as search engines have no record of it.
- ddingus 4y ago
  For resistors, I was taught: Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly Not yet excised I see.

I'm disgusted... What was the motivation for that?

by tjoff 4y ago

I'm disgusted... What was the motivation for that?

I found this [0] which says that the layout of the LGP-30 Flexowriter (linked in the article) conformed to fgjkqw, so it may be related. [0] http://laboratorium.net/archive/2008/04/28/a_few_facts_about_the_lgp30 http://laboratorium.net/archive/2008/04/28/a_few_facts_about...

kps 4y ago
From https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum//DWcodes.html#A077 https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum//DWcodes.html#A077 the Flexowriter character code was: +----------------------------------------------+ | 00 20 40 60 00 20 40 60 | (1) triangle +--------------------+ +--------------------+ (2) pi | RE NL ST | 00 | RE NL ST | (3) sigma | z i p h | 01 | Z I P H | | 0 4 8 j | 02 | ) (1) (3) J | BS Back Space | SP / o | 03 | SP ? O | COL COLor | LC BS | 04 | LC BS | DEL DELete | b d e c | 05 | B D E C | HT Horizontal Tab | l 5 9 k | 06 | L % ( K | LC Lower Case | - . x | 07 | _ ] X | NL New Line | UC HT | 10 | UC HT | RE REad | y n u a | 11 | Y N U A | SP SPace | 2 6 f q | 12 | * $ F Q | ST STop | + , | 13 | = [ | UC Upper Case | COL | 14 | COL | | r m t s | 15 | R M T S | | 3 7 g w | 16 | " (2) G W | | , v DEL | 17 | : V DEL | +--------------------+ +--------------------+ | lower case upper case | +----------------------------------------------+ Taking bits 2–5 gives you: 0 l 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 f g j k q w

drfuchs 4y ago

The convention of using "ABCDEF" didn't get established until well after the LGP-30 was designed in the 1950's. The Wikipedia entry on "Hexadecimal" says "The now-current notation using the letters A to F establishes itself as the de facto standard beginning in 1966, in the wake of the publication of the Fortran IV manual for IBM System/360, which (unlike earlier variants of Fortran) recognizes a standard for entering hexadecimal constants." The comments elsewhere that note the layout of the Flexowriter character set risk conflating cause with effect. The single-character mnemonics for the sixteen hardware instructions were chosen by the LGP-30 designers to be, well, mnemonic; and then the remaining characters FGJKQW were left to represent the values ten through fifteen. This then forced the assignment of character positions for the Flexowriter device, so that no table lookup would be required when reading opcode mnemonics and also when reading hex numbers; all bits could just be shifted into place in both cases. Trigger warning: The phrase we were taught was standard in the LGP community to help remember FGJKQW was, I'm afraid, "For Good Jokes, Kill Quiet Women." This seems to have been excised from the written lore fairly early on, as search engines have no record of it.

ddingus 4y ago
For resistors, I was taught: Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly Not yet excised I see.