[editor : Carl T. Helmers Jr.] [publisher : Virginia Peschke, Manfred Peschke] [art : Noreen Bardsley, Mary Jane Frohlich, Ellen Shamonsky] [cover : Marj Kirk] #Magazine
#Abstract
About the cover... April Fool! This cover depicts a working (believe it or not) computer called "Spider," which was first seen in a black and white shot in our August 1976 issue. The computer was built by Roger Amidon, and this color print was taken by Marj Kirk" For those who missed the August issue, the method of construction for this 12 bit mini was to wire point to point between small circuit cards. The Niagara Falls effect of spilling off the table was due to a wayward cat.
Many people who play with computers have seen a version of that well known game, "lunar lander." Much has been written about different versions of the game in books and other publications. In his article, KIM Goes to the Moon, Jim Butterfield adds one more chapter as he describes not only a version of the game, but also the logic behind his particular development of a lunar lander program to fit the limited resources of a single board computer.
Are you thinking of adding a hardcopy device to your microprocessor but can't afford the price that is required? Well, there are a lot of old Baudot type teleprinters out there which have plenty of use left in them. Michael McNatt describes some of these devices that are available on the surplus market today in his article, A Guide to Baudot Machines: Part 1, Description of Available Devices.
Watch out for complicated interpersonal situations. Your computer, if it is found out, could lead to events reminiscent of a jai alai fronton at mid game, as you'll find out by reading Steve Ciarcia's humorous account of Having a Private Affair With Your Computer.
Tom Pittman's Tiny BASIC language provides both the novice and experienced programmer with a vehicle for conveying thoughts from the flowchart stage to working programs quickly and efficiently. Tiny BASIC is a language that can be quickly mastered by the novice, yet has enough variations to satisfy the experienced programmer. In the article A Review of Tom Pittman's Tiny BASIC, Richard Rosner details what abilities the language provides. He also gives a fine example of the type of programming which can be accomplished in one short evening using such a high level language.
Waiting for a slow audio tape interface is one of the annoying aspects of stand alone computer systems without much in the way of mass storage peripherals. In this issue, find out how you can run a Southwest Technical Products Corporation AC-30 tape interface at four times its usual rate in the article on A Software Controlled 1200 bps Audio Tape Interface. This same interface can incidentally be run at 300 bps to read Kansas City (BYTE) standard tapes for which the AC-30 was intended.
For some time there has been a mystique associated with the phrase "artificial intelligence." The mystery often lies in defining what it is. If we take the definition offered by Turing as "able to mimic the behaviour and decision making of a human," then we are using artificial intelligence every time we play a simple computer game such as nim. In his article Artificial Intelligence, What Is It?, Richard L Rosenbaum dispels some of the mystique that surrounds artificial intelligence, by means of some introductory background in formation.
No system is truly complete without some systems software to help you create personalized software applications. But if memory is limited, how can you accomplish minimal functions such as assembly of programs? One way for 6800 users with 4 K bytes or more is described in Jack Emmerichs' article on Designing the "Tiny Assembler." In this first part, he describes the necessary prelude to such a design: Defining the Problem. (In our next issue, the article continues with detailed information , object code and some comments on customization to individual circumstances.)
Learn about Establishing the CHU Dynasty in your local computer club by reading Steven B Gray's somewhat tongue-in-cheek article ...
Who is Plexitus? He's the main character in E E Barnes' hysterical account of a jinxed Roman named Plexitus who is credited with the invention of flight, creation of the word idiot, and last (but hardly least) the invention of the computer. Early Indications of Technology in Roman Military Arts or Plexitus is a most interesting fictional history.
Science fiction has long been the mainstay of people who are interested in the frontiers of the future, the possibilities of tomorrow's technology today. But living in the world of today has made much of yesterday's science fiction ordinary occurrence. And some of today's technology hasn't even been touched upon by science fiction writers! Henry Melton's essay, Why Aren't There Any Altairs on Arcturus II ?, concerns the curious absence of personal computers in the works of science fiction, a small discrepancy in the vision of our prophets...
In this issue, we conclude the three part series about Omega Navigation with Mini-O with Richard J Salter's article on the software used to drive the hardware described in Ralph Burhans' articles. In Richard's article you'll find out how to use a 6502 processor to measure Omega phase differences, and as an extra bonus, how to calibrate a local clock in your lab with the Cesium atomic clocks used by the Omega system.
[author : Carl Helmers] #Edito
Extract : « It started late last summer, the first of the rumors and innuendos. Someone walked up to me and said words to the effect of "you know, Carl, Arthur C Clarke writes well about you...." How would you feel if someone walked up to you and made such a profound statement? To an old science fiction addict turned science fictionish reality purveyor, it is a rather astonishing statement. Arthur C Clarke is sitting up there in my private pantheon of the gods of great literature along with Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven (as well as editor John Campbell, now deceased, who cultivated the talents of many science fiction writers over the years). I've never spoken to the man, communicated with him, let alone imagined that I would. He's the person who suggested the idea of the synchronous satellite before today's technology ever existed, and is author of numerous widely read science fiction stories. So when someone suggested to me that one of those remote names on book jackets had somehow taken notice of yours truly, my immediate reaction was to file it as amusing and forget it, as if someone had walked up to me and said "I understand Herman Melville had a whale of a good time with you when you guys went to school together." [...] »
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[theme : Software] [author : Butterfield] #Listing #Assembly #GameRacingPiloting #Simulation
Extract : « There are quite a few lunar landing programs available nowadays: some for pocket calculators, others using graphic displays. The one I wrote for my KIM-1, based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, illustrates many of the techniques needed to develop the program.
The KIM-1 comes with a six digit LED display, which can be accessed by the user. I used the first four digits to represent the craft's altitude, and optionally, the fuel remaining. The last two digits, which are slightly separated from the rest of the display, are used for rate of descent. Both values change continually as the craft moves. [...] »
[theme : Peripherals] [author : Helmers] #Interface #Storage #Electronic #Listing #Assembly #Algorithm
Extract : « Often a piece of equipment is designed which will perform perfectly well in the mode of its intended operation, but which can also perform in ways not necessarily intended by the designer. An example of such a situation is the AC-30 audio tape cassette interface subsystem described by Gary Kay in his article in December 1976 BYTE, page 98, and manufactured by Southwest Technical Products Corporation. In a box accompanying that article, I noted the possibility of running Gary's design considerably faster than the nominal 300 bps rate of the "BYTE" or "Kansas City" standard for audio cassette recording. Since making the comment, I have integrated the AC-30 into my homebrew Motorola 6800 system and have worked out the details of this high speed use of the AC-30. [...] »
[theme : Software] [author : Emmerichs] #Method #Programming
Extract : « When I first became aware of the small systems industry, I was particularly interested in finding out what software had been developed for personal computers, especially software that would run on a minimal system configuration without much optional hardware. One of the most useful software products for such small systems is an assembler to relieve the programmer of the tedious job of programming in machine language. I found no assemblers, however, that would run on a small machine configuration. [...] »
[theme : Software] [author : Salter] #Electronic #Transport #Listing #Assembly #Algorithm
Extract : « The previous two articles on Omega Navigation and the Mini-O design by Ralph W Burhans [February 1977 BYTE, page 62; March 1977 BYTE, page 70] have presented the basics of the Omega system and the hardware required for a minimal Omega receiver interface to microprocessor systems. In this part we will present the software details for phase-tracking loop filters and methods for output of the data as filtered lines of position (LOPs) for selected station pairs. This type of data output would be directly usable in the simpler forms of marine navigation receivers with a digital to analog converter driving a low cost Rustrak type of chart recorder. [...] »
[theme : Hardware] [author : McNatt] #Overview #Keyboard #Printer #DataEntry #Encoding
Extract : « Are you wondering why you should consider yet another peripheral for your system when you may already have a nice, quiet video display and even a panel of Das Blinkenlights? Consider the following excellent quote by Robert H Cushman, one of the editors of EDN magazine, who has written several articles on designing with microprocessors:
Never Underestimate the Value of Hard Copy
Working at the Teletype is a superior way to learn... software and, later, to put the microprocessor to use...
The hardcopy record provided by the Teletype printer proved unexpectedly useful. Sample programs and their execution results... could be reviewed many days later, often clearing up today's cause of confusion...
Hardcopy records are especially helpful during this learning process because when one attacks some new feature of programming a particular machine, he or she invariably begins by probing and experimenting, making many false tries. At that instant, all inconclusive attempts seem like a complete waste of time. But later, as you advance, copies of your first attempts enable you to go back and explain earlier mysteries. Psychologically this is most comforting, because it wipes away the frustations that invariably build up when neither you nor the computer appear to understand each other. [...] »
[theme : Humor] [author : Ciarcia] #Experience
Extract : « What you are about to read is a true story. The names haven't been changed to protect the innocent because, frankly, there aren't any innocent parties.
It was the beginning of a cool autumn in Connecticut. The leaves were falling with increasing rapidity and the children who had played noisily in front of my house all summer had been removed conveniently to schools well out of earshot. There was just a slight rustle in the leaves and now was the time to contemplate the future without the disturbances of the present.
Many technical individuals are probably like me — the quiet and solitude stimulate the mind. Through your consciousness race thoughts of all kinds of inventions which haven't even been thought of yet. But you resign yourself to living quietly with a few modest pleasures which complement this attitude.
I consider a home computer system to be within my definition of modest. It is just a small 8080 system with 10 K and supported BASIC. I didn't intend it for any particular purpose, just relaxation. I assembled it and placed it in my shop with my other modest pleasures and plinked away on the keyboard occasionally. It was more the challenge of getting the computer up and running than writing exotic programs to keep an inventory of the kitchen cupboards, or calculate the surface area of the family car. I put together a CRT and cassette mass storage system and was content just generating peripherals. Then I made a mistake! I told someone that I had a computer! [...] »
[theme : Software] [author : Rosner] #Review #BASIC #Programming
Extract : « While at the Personal Computing 76 Trade Show at Atlantic City I bought a copy of Tom Pittman's Tiny BASIC Interpreter for my home computer, a 6502 with the MOS Technology TIM program in read only memory. Tom Pittman has several different versions of Tiny BASIC for different systems. I purchased the KIM version even though my computer uses a Teletype and the TIM instead of a keyboard. This allows me to load the interpreter starting at 0200 hexadecimal instead of at 1000 hexadecimal, leaving more memory space for my user programs.
Tiny BASIC is a subset of Dartmouth BASIC. It can handle only 16 bit signed integer numbers between -32768 and +32767 and recognizes the following commands: [...] »
[theme : Software] [author : Rosenbaum] #Initiation #ArtificialIntelligence
Extract : « If you are a typical computer hobbyist, you have probably spent (or will spend) a fair amount of time playing games — computer games, that is. Perhaps you have written computer programs to play space war, backgammon, even chess. What techniques are used in programming computer games, particularly those requiring "intelligent" decisions by the machine? The answer to this question is in the realm of artificial intelligence.
Perhaps you are trying to program a microprocessor to recognize or interpret signals from a video camera, or would like to automatically translate Morse code to printed characters. Both of these problems concern artificial intelligence, specifically in the field of pattern recognition. [...] »
[theme : Fanaticisms] [author : Gray]
Extract : « Much time is taken up at computer club meetings, and especially at computer conventions, with people asking each other what machines they have, how much memory, what peripherals, and so on. Much time could be saved if there were some faster way of communicating this information, and one possibility is the Computer Hobbyist Uniform, or CHU, for the purposes of adding one more incomprehensible acronym to the vernacular. [...] »
[theme : History] [author : Barnes] #History
Extract : « Sometimes an individual is about to bring about an invention which could change the world, but is never noticed. We often say that this man was born before his time. Omnius Plexitus, legate of the XIII legion, was such a man. Stationed with his legion in the rough country which later became Bulgaria, he improvised in order to survive. [...] »
[theme : Commentary] [author : Melton]
Extract : « I have been writing science fiction for some time now, and I've been reading it forever, so it doesn't strike me as being very odd that I'm now into computers. If you mention your computer to a friend, you're likely to get a HAL joke back. It's an automatic association: Computers and science fiction just seem to go together. It's logical too. For as long as I can remember, the science fiction stories I read had ideas. Spaceflight, nuclear power, robots and a hundred other marvels were accepted features of those adventures. A good science fiction yarn would drag me off to some strange time and place where there would be far too much going on for me to ponder over the particular space drive involved, or to puzzle about the program that might be running beneath the robot's polished skull. But when I got back to Earth, how things had changed. So many marvels seemed so possible in what had been such a drab mundane world. [...] »
[theme : History] [author : Baker] #Review #Microprocessor
Extract : « For the newcomer to the microcomputer world, the 8008 was one of the first 8 bit microprocessors to be developed. Figure 1 shows the pin assignment of the 18 pin dual-in-line package while figure 2 shows a block diagram of the central processor unit (CPU). Typical prices for the 8008 CPU are currently under $20. [...] »
[theme : Terminology] [author : Price] #Glossary
Extract : « In this article I have set down definitions of several computer words which one is likely to see in BYTE. I didn't want this to wind up being a full blown, unabridged dictionary, so I limited the list to words that I thought would be unfamiliar to most "outsiders." The computer industry has a fascinating tendency toward the use of abbreviations and acronyms. These words are printed in capital letters, and are spelled out within parentheses. [...] »
#Book
Extract : « 101 BASIC Computer Games edited by David H Ahl, Creative Computing, Morristown NJ 07960, 248 pages softbound. $7,50 plus postage. [...]
TV Typewriter Cookbook by Don Lancaster. Howard W Sams & Co, Indianapolis IN 46268, 1976. $9.95. [...]
Software Tools by Brian W Kernighan and P J Plauger, Addison-Wesley Publishing, Reading MA 01867, 1976. $8.95. [...] »
#Association