From: Ostapenko, Alexander
Sent: Tue 9/30/2003 12:29 PM
To: 'Tom Hunter'
Subject: Syntegra Hobbyist Concession Program


Hi Tom! 

Thanks for your quick response.  Here are answers to your questions.  I
apologize in advance if they may seem long-winded:

you asked: 
> Where does your interest in CDC soft/hardware come from? 

After 25+ years as a computer professional, presently in the HP-UX & Solaris
UNIX world, I have become interested in "resurrecting" my knowledge and
trying to "preserve" history of some of the older computers that I worked on.
Over the last couple of months, I have found lots of material on the
DECsystem-20, which was my SECOND large computer I worked on.  I also have
professional access to an IBM S/390 mainframe which was my THIRD large
computer I worked on.  However, I realized that I have no information of the
CDC6400/CDC6600 which was my FIRST computer that I worked on (except for the
"blue book" bible of CDC assembly language programming).  I signed up on
cray-cyber.org's systems, particularly "cy960", to try to refamiliarize
myself with the environment and programming languages.  But it would sure be
nice to be able to do same right on my home PC outside of the Sat. 6-12noon
(EST) window that they power up the system.  Hence my interest in "dtcyber".

you asked: 
> Have you ever worked on any CDC Cyber or 6x00? 

Yes.  My first programming experience was in Fall 1976 (as a college
freshman) writing an FTN4 program to compute and print square roots from 1
to 25.  That first semester Fortran course sparked my interest to take
advanced programming (PASCAL) the next semester (imagine all the multi-punch
codes for PASCAL's special characters) still on the CDC6400.  At the time,
we were running SCOPE 3.4(?) and Intercom with a custom built line editor
called "Senator" (I don't remember who wrote it or where we obtained it
from).  The CDC system itself had a Varian front-end with a paper-tape
loader.  I worked as a student consultant for 2 years, then got a part-time
job coding Fortran on the CDC to control manufacturing machines, then got a
full-time job as System Programmer at the college (Lehigh University).  We
also had a multi-user real-time star trek game called CODACAS that used disk
files for communicating between players.  When the game was enabled (only
during off-hours), the real-time file write/catalog/delete caused the
washing-machine disk drives to shake the raised floor computer room.  During
my 3 years as system programmer, my primary responsibility was with the
DECsystem-20, but secondarily on the CDC.  It eventually was upgraded to a
CYBER (I don't recall what model number) and NOS/BE.  I dabbled in FTN4,
Compass, and UPDATE maintenance of the OS (unfortunately, I don't remember
much).  We were also fortunate to obtain a Fortran source to the text-based
game called "ADVENTURE" (a variant of Infocom's ZORK), but we couldn't get
it to compile and fit into the CDC's memory... until we modified all the
hollerith text strings in the Fortran FORMAT statements to fully utilize
the CDC's 60-bit word size.  Then it fit, and we had a game to which we were
able to modify and add rooms and villains.  I last worked on a Cyber
computer in 1982.

you asked: 
> What can you contribute to the emulation of CDC Cybers and/or the 
> preservation of CDC software? 

My initial goal is simply to re-familiarize myself with SCOPE, NOS, NOS/BE
or equivalent, Compass, FTN4, (maybe even ALGOL) and the general CDC/Cyber
hardware architecture.  I then want to dig down and really learn and
understand the underlying details that I never took advantage of learning
while I had the systems in front of me.  In any way possible, I'd like to
capture and preserve stories and information of anecdotal/historical
interest, possibly renewing acquaintance with some of my colleagues from
that era who are still at Lehigh.  I'd also like to track down whatever
original documentation I can find both online and hardcopy (I can't
believe I actually threw out a COMPASS Assembler Reference and other
manuals years ago cleaning out my basement).

My professional work is primarily performance monitoring/tuning and
capacity planning for our UNIX servers, and I'm very interested in
learning, understanding, and experimenting with CDC/Cyber code that with
tweaking achieves amazing performance improvements over unoptimized code
by taking advantage of the architecture.  It's amazing how much these
systems could accomplish with such a slow clock compared to today's PC's.
Another observation that HP sales engineers will never admit to is that
the new Itanium IA64 chips (that HP designed and Intel is building) based
on VLIW technology is precisely what the CDC 6xxx architecture was:  1, 2,
or 4 instructions per 60-bit word.  Amazing how much the new technology is
really old technology.

If I can regain some of my old "expertise" (I use the term very loosely),
then I may become another source or repository of CDC knowledge and lore
for the CDC/Cyber community.  In addition, my teenage son is becoming
interested in computers, and as part of his training, I want to try to
give him an appreciation for this old "beast", the CDC.

Obviously, I'd like to make as much as what I learn available to the rest
of the CDC/Cyber community by way of a web site or contributions to other
Cyber web sites (such as yours).  I notice that "cray-cyber" has set up
some rudimentary documentation, and you have some pretty good stuff for
the emulator.  I have a knack for writing documentation, so I'd like to
document what I learn and experience to make it available to others by
way of PDF's.  Some of my challenge is the old "chicken and egg" problem.
Before I can accomplish anything of worth, I have to re-learn the stuff,
but some of the knowledge to re-learn the stuff is in manuals to which I
don't have access.  Maybe a diary of my efforts to re-learn the stuff
would be of value to someone.

So... I hope this answers your questions.  Please E-mail me if you have
anymore, or if you need any clarifications.  By the way, I'd be very
interested if you have any ideas of where contributions are needed:
that could certainly focus my efforts.

Thanks, and best regards! 

=:-)    Alex Ostapenko