#OnlineService

Extract : «  The Washington D.C. Amateur Computer Society is proud to announce the publication of the first "Electronic Journal" available to the general public in the United States.

The Journal of the Washington Amateur Computer Society, now in its second year of publication, is available via a computer link, to anyone possessing a computer terminal and telephone coupler.

NO "PASSWORD" OR ACCOUNT NUMBER IS NECESSARY.  »

#Interface #Storage

#Interface #Storage #Electronic

Extract : «  There are only a few problems with doing this. The first problem is that the technique used to store the information was designed for telephone circuit characteristics. [...]

The second problem is that the modem transmits on one set of frequencies and receives on another. [...]  »

[author : Jef Raskin] #BASIC #Review

Extract : «  It takes a while to do a software review. Many pieces of hardware can be built and checked out in a few hours. The instruction manual has to be gone through but once, and any problems or good points noted. The device can be objectively tested against the published specifications. The reviewer can note any conveniences and difficulties in operating the device. The case size can be measured with a ruler and reported. All nice, sensible tests. But software is another matter entirely.

To be truthful there is software that is easy to review. Software that doesn’t work at all is trivial to report on. A short program that does floating-point division can be tested quite readily for example (although there are tricky points). But a compiler or interpreter, an operating system or a text editor — these require having the system up and running for a while. Sitting around and using the program for a while. There are sure to be corners of the software under test that just don’t get observed. A decent BASIC manual is not a pocket size pamphlet, and testing every feature, in every combination with every other feature, is just not possible. Even just testing every feature may be prohibitively time consuming.

My method has been to get the software under consideration up and running, and use it for a month or more. Occasionally I jot down a comment or two, and gather a general impression. After familiarity has bred some contempt I start to get nasty, and pick at the weak points. Some software can be brought crashing to its knees by doing operations that seem to be permitted by the manual, but in fact don’t work that way at all. Sometimes software is just wrong. [...]  »

[author : Dan S. Parker] #Listing #Assembly

Extract : «  A convenient feature of using both a video display device such as Processor Technology’s VDM-1 and a hard copy device in an operating system is the ability to edit text, list, or run a program using the high speed and versatility of the video device and then produce a hard copy of the final product. Unfortunately, producing a hard copy usually means rerunning the program, or reassembling it with a listing, this time with a sense switch in another position to get the hard copy. [...]  »

[author : Erik T. Mueller] #APL

Extract : «  Dear Mr. Warren:

I have just finished a micro APL for the 8080. It is completely debugged and operational. I am enclosing the documentation for publication which covers all of the operators and gives examples that thoroughly explain how to use it.

Since I hand assembled the language, I don’t have a source listing available for publication (Manual typing of a 5.25K program is impossible!)

I am selling Tarbell Cassette tapes of EMPL 1.0 for $10 each. The tape comes with a user’s manual, including complete information on implementing EMPL on any 8080 system, details of EMPL’s operation (such as workspace organization), tape loading software, etc. Any improvements I make in the meantime will be included and completely documented. I hope this will be of interest to your readers. [...]  »

[author : John A. Starkweather, Ph.D.] #Programming

Extract : «  PILOT is a programming system for controlling interactive conversation. PILOT stands for Programmed Inquiry, Learning or Teaching. It has most commonly been used as an author language for Computer-Assisted Instruction. It was first developed at the University of California in San Francisco and has been implemented on a variety of large and small computers. This guide provides a description and operating procedures for a version of PILOT that will run on computers using the Intel 8080 microprocessor. It is an interpreter written in assembly language that requires less than 4k bytes of memory for the interpreter code. Total memory requirements depend on the space required for PILOT program text and will often be no more than 8k bytes.

PILOT is designed to be simple in its syntax so that those without prior computer experience can easily learn to control its features. Dialogue programs can be rapidly constructed and tested. [... ]  »

[author : Ralph Sherman] #Listing #Assembly #Programming

Extract : «  [...] Recently, this program was modified to enable easier data entry into the relocater. It also was changed to permit easier relocation of programs with imbedded data or text provided the user has an easy means to zero portions of memory. [...]  »

[author : Stan Ockers] #Electronic #Display #Graphics #Listing #Assembly

Extract : «  I recently added the southwest technical graphics board to my KIM-1. there is not much resolution (60x96) but it is relatively cheap ($100) and gives a nice rock steady display with no flickering or white flashes on entry of new information. you quickly come to realize that good resolution takes lots of memory. i’m attempting primarily to use only that contained in the BASIC KIM-1. [...]  »

[author : D. Savir & G.J. Laurer] #Digitization #Book

Extract : «  Described are the coding and symbol of the Universal Product Code. The symbol code structure, format, encodation technique, and characteristics with their technical tradeoffs are discussed.

The symbol is analyzed and evaluated. Decodability is shown to depend on the structure of the code and symbol, the size of the symbol, the precision with which the symbol is printed, the technique of scanning employed, the accuracy with which measurements are made, the decoding logic, and the physical operation of scanning. The relationship between the scan pattern of a fixed head scanner and symbol size is shown.

The scanning of information from the labels of supermarket merchandise is necessary for a practical supermarket system. This information is encoded in a standard form, the Universal Product Code (UPC). The standard comprises both the code — the representation of decimal characters in binary form —and the symbol —the printed form of the code which can be read by a scanner.

In this paper, we discuss the development of this standard: we define a class of codes suited to optical scanning and investigate some of its properties, and we describe the code belonging to this class that was selected for the UPC.

The code, symbol, appropriate decoding scheme, and scanning scheme are all dependent upon each other. They constitute the structure of the decoding process that is studied to evaluate the decodability, or decoding reliability, of the UPC. (The UPC is standard in the United States and Canada. At the time of writing this paper, proposals for merchandise-identifying symbols for other countries are being advanced. [...]

P. V. McEnroe. H. T. Huth. E. A. Moore, and W. W, Morris. III. "Overview of the Supermarket System and the Retail Store System." in this issue.

L. D. Dickson and R. L. Soderstrom. The IBM Supermarket Scanner. Technical Report (in preparation). IBM Corporation. System Development Division. Rochester. Minnesota.

P. V. McEnroe and J. E. Jones. Identification Technology for the Retail Industry. IBM Corporation. System Development Division. Research Triangle Park. North Carolina (October 1971).

W. Feller. An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications. Vol. 1. 2nd Ed. 37. John Wiley & Sons. Inc. New York. New York (1957).

UPC Symbol Specification.© Distribution Codes, Inc. (formerly Distribution Number Bank. Inc.). 1725 K Street. N. W.. Washington. D C. (1973)

D. Savir. A Model of the Decodability of the Universal Product Code Symbol. Technical Report TR29.0123. IBM Corporation. System Development Division. Research Triangle Park. North Carolina.

D. Savir. The Effect of the Design of the IBM Proposed UPC Symbol and Code on Scanner Decoding Reliability. IBM Corporation. System Development Division. Research Triangle Park. North Carolina (October 1972).  »