On Sat, 4 May 2024 02:11:51 -0400, Paul <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 5/4/2024 1:01 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise,
the operating system is a program, but not an application.
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
On Sat, 4 May 2024 02:11:51 -0400, Paul <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 5/4/2024 1:01 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
My first computer had an OS in ROM, with built-in BASIC, with which
you could write other programs and save them and their data on tape,
but all were programs.
With a couple of add-ons you could have a DOS
(CP/M), and save stuff on floppy disks, but that by-passed the BASIC
in ROM, so you had to get programming languages that ran under CP/M,
but whether they loaded from ROM, tape or disks, all there sets of instructions tomake the computer do different things.
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
If you boot a memtest floppy, that is a single program that
runs 100% of the time. Nobody tells it to do anything.
It is the boss. All machine resources are available.
If it wanted to erase your hard drive, nothing would stop it.
On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)
Steve Hayes wrote:
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
It's mine too. If you operate with a class called "executives" (or
OS's), it's just a subset of the programs.
On 05/05/24 02:56, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sat, 4 May 2024 02:11:51 -0400, Paul <[email protected]d>
wrote:
On 5/4/2024 1:01 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise,
the operating system is a program, but not an application.
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
It's all software, of course, but a person writing operating systems
code has to be aware of hardware features that the average applications >programmer never comes into contact with. For certain functions, e.g.
thread switching, it might be necessary to descend into assembly language.
There's another distinction that occurs to me. An application program
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It does it job and then
terminates. The operating system never terminates until the whole
computer is shut down.
The distinction is becoming fuzzier now that some operating systems are
built in layers. The bottom-level operating system is probably small and
does only some basic things. (Typically thread switching and memory >management.) Then another operating system is built on top of that. And
maybe even another on top of that.
US English is somewhat at a disadvantage here, be cause they use
"program" in a wider sense, so they often have to add "software" to
it, to distinguish a "software program" from other kinds of what the
rest of us would call "programmes", like TV programmes, sports events programmes etc.
On 05/05/24 15:40, lar3ryca wrote:
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
To make computer memory practical, the electronics people had to learn
how to put transistors on semiconductor chips. You can also build
flip-flops with vacuum tubes, but vacuum tubes already become awkward
once you have a few hundred of them.
In my student days, and for some time afterwards, I used the plugboard approach, but that was with analogue computers. Those were very good at solving differential equations, but they died out through not being sufficiently scalable.
On 2024-05-05 02:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 05/05/24 15:40, lar3ryca wrote:
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right. Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.
US English is somewhat at a disadvantage here, be cause they use
"program" in a wider sense, so they often have to add "software" to
it, to distinguish a "software program" from other kinds of what the
rest of us would call "programmes", like TV programmes, sports events >programmes etc.
lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2024-05-05 02:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 05/05/24 15:40, lar3ryca wrote:
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.
That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan
Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects) were
256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts. "Beautiful
stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day. And just one of
those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay line, and also offers
"random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16
array (16 bit CPU).
On 2024-05-06 12:47, Paul wrote:
On 5/6/2024 7:52 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2024-05-05 02:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 05/05/24 15:40, lar3ryca wrote:
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer, >>>>>> but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on >>>>>> it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing >>>>>> to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program >>>>>> could actually be stored in a memory.
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right. >>>>> Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in >>>>> columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance >>>> folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the >>>> wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between >>>> bit to differentiate between them.
That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length. >> The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000 pulses
to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive transducers and
nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.
Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects)
were 256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts.
"Beautiful stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day.
And just one of those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay
line, and also offers "random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).
And my breadboard computer used 8 1024x1 chips (2501?), and that was also my first computer. The memory cost me $85.00 CAD at the time, about 1975 if I remember correctly).
On 5/6/2024 7:52 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2024-05-05 02:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 05/05/24 15:40, lar3ryca wrote:
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer, >>>>> but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on >>>>> it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program >>>>> could actually be stored in a memory.
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in >>>> columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance >>> folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.
That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000 pulses
to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive transducers and
nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.
Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects)
were 256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts.
"Beautiful stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day.
And just one of those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay
line, and also offers "random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).
On 5/6/2024 7:52 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:[-]
lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2024-05-05 02:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in >>> columns of mercury sound incredible crude.
How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance >> folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.
That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000
pulses to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive
transducers and nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals
converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k<snip>
bytes of RAM.
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.
On Tue, 7 May 2024 10:09:03 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]d> wrote:
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k<snip>
bytes of RAM.
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.
Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.
On 2024-05-14 14:31, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 7 May 2024 10:09:03 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]d> >> wrote:
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k<snip>
bytes of RAM.
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.
Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.
Many years ago, the company I worked for played a softball game. For the occasion, the manager bought us all T-shirts with the company name on
them. We all had the choice of what name to put on the back.
I chose 'ITYNA'.
About halfway through the game, one of the players on the opponents team approached me and asked "Isn't your name 'Phillips'?"
I answered "Yes", and she asked "So why does your shirt have "ITYNA" on
it (she pronounced it out, "Iteena"), and I said "I thought You'd Never
Ask".
After a few rounds of "But I am asking", and " I thought you'd never
ask", she suddenly got it.
On Tue, 14 May 2024 22:40:50 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2024-05-14 14:31, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 7 May 2024 10:09:03 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]d>
wrote:
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k >>> bytes of RAM.<snip>
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.
Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.
Many years ago, the company I worked for played a softball game. For the occasion, the manager bought us all T-shirts with the company name on
them. We all had the choice of what name to put on the back.
I chose 'ITYNA'.
About halfway through the game, one of the players on the opponents team approached me and asked "Isn't your name 'Phillips'?"
I answered "Yes", and she asked "So why does your shirt have "ITYNA" on
it (she pronounced it out, "Iteena"), and I said "I thought You'd Never Ask".
After a few rounds of "But I am asking", and " I thought you'd never
ask", she suddenly got it.
ITYNA FTW!
On Tue, 14 May 2024 22:40:50 -0600, lar3ryca <[email protected]> wrote:Many years ago, I worked with a fellow named Jeff Langford (sp?) who
On 2024-05-14 14:31, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 7 May 2024 10:09:03 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]d> >>> wrote:
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k >>>> bytes of RAM.<snip>
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.
Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.
Many years ago, the company I worked for played a softball game. For the
occasion, the manager bought us all T-shirts with the company name on
them. We all had the choice of what name to put on the back.
I chose 'ITYNA'.
About halfway through the game, one of the players on the opponents team
approached me and asked "Isn't your name 'Phillips'?"
I answered "Yes", and she asked "So why does your shirt have "ITYNA" on
it (she pronounced it out, "Iteena"), and I said "I thought You'd Never
Ask".
After a few rounds of "But I am asking", and " I thought you'd never
ask", she suddenly got it.
ITYNA FTW!
Many years ago, I worked with a fellow named Jeff Langford (sp?) who
wrote some sort of useful code he named TINA (TINA Is Not an Acronym).
That seems to come from the same sort of warped minds that were
previously involved in this thread.
On 09/05/25 04:38, Jeff Barnett wrote:
Many years ago, I worked with a fellow named Jeff Langford
(sp?) who
wrote some sort of useful code he named TINA (TINA Is Not an
Acronym).
That seems to come from the same sort of warped minds that were
previously involved in this thread.
There was also an operating system called XINU (Xinu is not Unix).
EINE was a 1970s text editor. EINE Is Not Emacs.
Its successor, ZWEI, Was Eine Initially.
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