[author : Jim C. Warren, Jr.] #Edito
Extract : « [...] We solicit both compliments and complaints concerning vendors, from the hobbyist community. In either case, these comments should be explicit, and contain as much detail as may be appropriate. In the case of complaints, particularly those involving service, we will contact the vendor, discuss the complaint with him, and request that an explicit response from him be forthcoming within a reasonably short period of time. If the response is written, we will request that a copy of it be forwarded to the originator of the complaint. [...] »
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[author : Jim C. Warren, Jr.] #Event
Extract : « So far, the computer hobbyist conventions have been entirely run by hobbyists. As such, they have been well oriented to hobbyist needs and interests and have been really exciting to most of those who attended them. Also as a result, however, they have generally been less organized and more haphazard than is the case with a "professionally run" convention. They haven’t furnished as much as they could (and have often been a hair-pulling frustration to exhibitors), but, what they lacked in smooth operation, they more than made up for in exuberence and enthusiasm.
Now, however, some professional convention organizers are starting to get into the act. With a proper attitude, and with close cooperation and leadership from the hobbyists, these "pros" can help make a good convention even better. They can smooth out the rough spots and tie up the loose ends. However, at least a few of them don’t appear to give a damn about the hobbyists; they seem interested only in the maximum amount of profit for the minimum effort. In this case, I would say that "pro" stands for promoter with its worse possible connotation. [...] »
#Event
Extract : « [...] Apr 15-17, 1977 The First West Coast Computer Faire
Civic Auditorium San Francisco, CA
[Expecting 7,000-10,000 people, 50 sessions, 200 exhibitors] [...] »
[author : Jim C. Warren, Jr.] #GeneralQuestions #Event
Extract : « Through the prodigious efforts of John Dilks, Davy Jones, and Jim Main (and with considerable help, guidance and support from Carl Helmers and BYTE Magazine), the August 27th-28th Personal Computing ’76 Consumer Trade Fair was a great turn-on! So much was going on that I had only three to four hours of sleep per night, and even then, I missed some gatherings I would like to have attended. Details of particular note:
Statistics, first: About 4,500 computer enthusiasts and curiosity seekers attended the two-day convention. There were slightly over 100 exhibitors, and about 50 talks, panel sessions, and seminars. The banquet on Saturday night turned out over 360 people (in spite of its hefty $15 price tag). [...] »
[author : Jim C. Warren, Jr.] #Event
The San Francisco Bay Area Finally Gets It Together
Extract : « [...] The convention—called The First West Coast Computer Faire—will be held in the largest convention facility in Northern California, the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The two-and-a-half day event will include a Conference that will offer 50 to 100 different technical and tutorial sessions, several banquets and luncheons with major speakers, and an Exhibition that should have over 200 exhibits. Based on the location, the amount of planning and organization, and the experience with the other hobbyist conventions, 7,000 to 10,000 people are expected to attend. [...] »
#Microprocessor #BASIC
Extract : « We announced the "reliable rumor" of a Z-80 competitor being planned by Motorola, the 6809, at the July 21st Homebrew Computer Club meeting. Afterwards, a Motorola engineer rushed over and, after an unsuccessful query concerning our source of information, volunteered to "tell all." Here is his information as of August 6th. All of it is tentative. [...] »
[author : Chuck Felber] #Storage
Extract : « Dear Editor,
I read with interest, "The Time for Floppy’s is Just About Now," in DDJ, 8/76. I too think a floppy peripheral provides a highly desirable mass storage device, not only for homebrews but for industrial micros and minis as well.
In particular, I would like to provide some answers from my own experiences, to the questions you had regarding the iCOM floppy system. I bought a single drive system in August 1975. [...] »
[author : Richard C. Bemis] #TradeAndLaws
Extract : « Dear Mr. Warren,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the kind words and your support in Dr. Dobb’s Journal. As you know, Dr. Suding and the Digital Group have tried to be equally supportive of your efforts and of course will continue to be so.
In your August issue, you raised some very valid points about what we are trying to do and how well/not-well we are succeeding. Your assumptions were partially valid on the current situation and I would like to address them one-by- one. [The following three quotes were editorial comments published in the August article.]
1. "Customer interest in Digital Group products has exceeded their initial capacity to respond in a manner they would like."—obviously true.
2. "They are aware that they have a problem and are doing everything they can to expand their customer service department and procedures."—boy, are we aware of the problem!
3. "It is their wish to maintain an operation of unusually high integrity and responsiveness to their customers."—Exactly. [...] »
[author : Pierre duPont V] #Build
Extract : « [...] Just as school let out I became convinced that I should purchase a microcomputer. In about a week I had placed several orders, cancelled several, and ended up with an ALTAIR 680. It arrived on time (strange!), and I assembled it without difficulty. Just as I finished, I left for Denmark for some sleep. When I returned and had about one day’s use of my 680,I went to the Personal Computing Convention in Atlantic City. When I arrived at the convention, my teaching friend began to think about trading his 680 in for an IMSAI. As it turned out, we both traded our VW 680’s for Cadillac IMSAI’s. [...] »
[author : John Snell] #Review #ComputerKit
Extract : « (reprinted from PPC)
I recently put to gether a Pacer 3H microcomputer development system kit, made by Project Support Engineering. It has by far the easiest to use operational and debug functions of any computer kit that I have used. It has a NOVUS type (no tactile feedback) calculator keyboard built into the front panel. When you want to deposit a number such as 7532, you hit the 7, 5, 3, 2 keys on the keyboard instead of binary switches 1,1,1, 1,0,1, 0,1,1, 0,1,0. The Pacer uses the hexadecimal number system for keyboard input and display. If you do not know hexadecimal, the keyboard will convert from decimal to hexadecimal as well as perform hexadecimal arithmetic. Addresses are displayed to the left and data contents to the right in alphanumeric LED’s. Using the keyboard you may examine and/or modify not only memory locations but also:
♦ 4 accumulators X 16 bits,
♦ a 16 bit program counter,
♦ a 16 bit status register,
♦ a 10 word X 16 bit stack,
♦ a 16 bit value register used for scanning memory to find the address
at which a value is located,
♦ a 16 bit mask (for use if you are not certain about some of the bits
or digits in the value),
♦ and 10 break point registers, 16 bits each. [...]
»
[author : Michael Dertouzos] #GeneralQuestions #Anticipation
Extract : « (reprinted with permission from Technology Review, May 1976; Copyright 1976 by the Alumni Association, M.I.T.)
The computer already seems to be everywhere, doing everything, but according to a group of prominent computer scientists, the industry has only just begun an explosive growth. Over the next two decades it will enter home, business and factory as never before.
This was the principal conclusion of preliminary reports on an extensive study of "The Future Impact of Computers" being performed by computer and social scientists at IBM, Stanford, M.I.T., Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other prominent institutions.
The study, coordinated by Michael Dertouzos, Director of M.I.T.’s Laboratory for Computer Science, and Joel Moses, Associate Director, is sponsored by AT&T, IBM, the Office of Naval Research, and M.I.T.
To be completed in 1977, it consists of an integrated series of carefully thought-out and hashed-over papers on key topics in the computer field. The participants in the study, key people in their fields, occupy excellent vantage points to ponder the computer’s future, said Professor Dertouzos. But, perhaps just as important, their influence could make their predictions self-fulfilling prophecies. [...] »
[author : Gregory A. Worth] #Listing #Assembly #Time
Extract : « Gentlemen:
I have found in writing programs, that often a time-delay can be used to spice up a program. The following subroutine will generate time delays between 1 and 255 seconds. To use the routine, load register-B with the number of seconds you wish to delay and then jump to the subroutine. The subroutine returns after the specified number of seconds. [...] »
#BASIC
Extract : « You have seen the "TINY BASIC" and "MICRO BASIC" for the 6800 which fit in a small system (2-3K) and offer 10-15 statements and commands for the user to write BASIC programs. These systems range from quite slow (due to 2-level interpretation techniques) to surprisingly fast for a small system. The limiting factor in these versions of BASIC is the incomplete selection of statements, commands, and functions. The lack of certain statements means having to do without, resulting in less efficient programs.
TSC has solved this problem by creating MICRO BASIC PLUS. [...] »
[author : Tom Pittman] #BASIC
Extract : « Itty Bitty Computers is dedicated to the principle of high quality, low-cost software for personal computers. Tiny BASIC is our first offering in this field; if it sells well, there will be more. We are not in the hardware business-software is all we sell. The emphasis of all our software is small size and flexibility rather than high speed. Tiny BASIC will run in as little as 3K of memory. [...] »
[author : Henry L. Lee] #BASIC #Programming #Storage
Extract : « Dear Jim,
Here are modifications I’ve written to Tom Pittman’s 6800 Tiny BASIC. The additions are confined within the 2K size for the interpreter. The Sphere 6800 user will now have the ability to SAVE and LOAD programs he has written in Pittman’s Tiny BASIC. I do not think the modifications submitted infringe on the proprietary rights of Pittman’s Tiny BASIC. [...] »
[author : Robert Wilcox] #Listing #BASIC #Assembly
Extract : « The purpose of this program is to add the ability to talk to two terminals to those versions of MITS BASIC which do not have the console command.
The terminal change is accomplished by calling a machine language (USR) program which has been loaded into reserved high memory. The program may be loaded by use of the BASIC program given here, or in the case of 4K BASIC which does not have the POKE statement, by use of the front panel switches. [...] »
[author : E. R. Fisher] #Listing #Assembly #Programming
Complete Documentation & Annotated Source Code
Extract : « ODT-80 is an octal debugging routine for use on the Intel 8080 microprocessor. This routine provides the capability to examine and modify all of the memory that is available to the microcomputer and transfer program control to the created program. ODT-80 makes use of simple keyboard commands from any terminal—such as a teletypewriter—that is attached to the system. [...] »
[author : Marvin R. Winzenread] #Listing #Assembly #Game #Graphics
Extract : « Go Only Where You Haven’t Gone Before
You control a cursor with your right four sense switches in any combination. Try to draw a picture on the screen with a line that never goes through the same point twice. [...] »
[author : Marvin R. Winzenread] #BASIC #Programming
Extract : « Scrunch readable source code into a form that only a computer could love. Run bigger programs with less memory. Input original source code by paper tape, then dump your scrunched code to paper tape or cassette for later use.
I am presently working on PASS 2 which eliminates unnecessary line numbers by using the multiple statement per line feature. [...] »
[author : Jon O. Stedman] #Cryptography
How to Code Code
Extract : « [...] In reality, we have a super cryptographic machine in the home brew micro-computer! Complicated cyphering techniques can be programmed to baffle all of those government snoops who like to read other people’s mail.
Simple letter substitution cyphers are easily broken with a little statistical analysis on the letter frequency of the code-text. Many other cyphering techniques are public knowledge (see your public library) so the secret part of a coded message is the code word which is the "key" to decoding the message. [...] »
[author : Martin Buchanan] #Languages #Programming
Extract : « During the latter part of my spinning of imaginary languages, I’ve become dissatisfied with my previous definition of HI, as a procedural language which is both cleaner and more useful than PL/1, and incorporating associative retrieval, pattern matching, and list processing facilities. Several ideas have changed my direction:
1. A tiny language (or any language) should be extensible.
2. Most existing extensible languages (LISP, TRAC,
FORTH) are limited by primitive syntax.
3. The concept of “set” or “relation” is powerful enough
to include all the diverse data structures found in
computer applications, and to manipulate them with
common tools.
4. A further equivalence can be established between
relations and functions; one is defined extensionally;
the other is defined operationally.
5. The relational calculus is a powerful form for manipulating
such structures. In the past, it has been restricted
to data base operations (Codd’s DSL ALPHA).
6. Declarations make it feasible for the user to see only a
single data structure, ignoring the different internal
representations of structures. [...]
»
[author : Dave Caulkins] #Book
Extract : « Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976, 300 pp. $9.95 [...] »
#Book
Extract : « Minicomputers and Microprocessors: A Tutorial, Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 26, 1976—271 pp. [...]
Microprogramming: A Tutorial, Long Beach, California, May 17, 1975-309 pp. [...]
Minicomputer Realtime Executives, from COMPCON 74 Fall, September 9, 1974—208 pp. [...]
Tutorial on Computer Peripherals, from COMPCON 74 Spring, February 25, 1974-48 pp. [...]
Structured Programming, from COMPCON 75 Fall, September 8, 1975-241 pp. [...]
Computer Networks: A Tutorial, Gaithersburg, Maryland, June 18, 1975—296 pp.[...] »
[author : John Craig] #OtherMagazine
Extract : « Well, Wayne Green [the original publisher of BYTE] has finally got around to doing it! The hobby community has been expecting him to start another magazine for quite some time... and here it is... KILOBYTE. If the name of this magazine brings about a reaction, don’t worry about it, because you’re not alone. The important thing is that it’s a name you won’t easily forget... and besides, what’s in a name? Your reaction when you read the first issue is what will really count. (And you certainly ought to plan on getting that first issue, because it will very likely become a collector’s item in the months to come. Look at what happened to the last magazine Wayne Green started.) Never mind getting any of the following issues... just get that first one! [...] »