Papertape and Mylar variant

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Thu Jun 1 07:18:53 2000

> > Right-o... teletypes with the reader/punch used rolls of paper tape.
> > I have a copy of DEC Monopoly on papertape that I punched myself, as
> > well as a copy of Intel's INTERP-80 (8080a simulator) and a
> Star Trek
> > game called BIGMES (from an HP 2000).
>
> What machine did INTERP-80 run on? Was it written in BASIC?

No, it was written in Fortan-IV. I ported it from its original
generic source code to run on the CDC6600 under Kronos 2.1, a
DEC-10 running TOPS-10, and lastly, a Prime P400 running Primos.
 
> I'm currently writing a simulation of the hardware that HP 2000 TSB ran
> on (a pair of HP 21xx minicomputers with a pair of bidirectional parallel
> interfaces between them). I've typed in most of the source code to
> 2000C' from a printed listing, and have written an assembler in Perl.

I must say, that's pretty cool. I used to have some other HP2000
programs, but the only one I found the other day was a listing that
I'd printed on a Silent 700 terminal. Environmental effects have
darkened the thermal paper to make it nearly unreadable. A bit of
squinting for a day or two might surmount that problem.

> I'd be interested in getting copies of those paper tapes, and anything
> else you might have that could be run on a 2000. Naturally I'm willing
> to pay copying and postage costs.

As I consider the paper tapes priceless, you'd have to be willing to
put up a serious chunk of change in escrow in case anything happened
to them. Better that you wait for me stage them to a newer format.

> I'll make accounts on the simulated 2000 available once it's running.

If you need BASIC programs to run on your simulator, keep a close watch
on E-Bay for books of BASIC games. I saw David Ahl's book 101 BAsic Games
the other day; that's for DEC-10 BASIC, but I recall there were some books
on HP BASIC back way back when, so one of those books will doubtlessly
surface.

Another resource for HP 2000 programs would be old issues of Creative
Computing (another wonderful magazine killed by the evil Ziff-Davis
empire).

Good luck; I'll file your message to me in my hobby folder so that
I'll have your e-mail address, and once I finally get BIGMES on disk,
I'll let you know.

-doug q
Received on Thu Jun 01 2000 - 07:18:53 BST