Ok, boys and girls and those who are still making up their minds!

rejennyrated has suggested that we start a Q & A trivia contest here in the fun and games section devoted strictly to "greybeard" legacy (read antique) computer folklore.  To the uninitiated, Greybeard is the term given (mostly) lovingly to those old fart computer geeks who have seen it all or at least a good amount of it.  I shortened it to "grey" since this little girl doesn't have one any longer.

This was originally in the "What are you reading this on - PC or Mac/Apple?" thread and now moved here so that we don't hijack that religious controversy too much.

I originally asked what BUNCH stood for and Jenny correctly answered Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, and Honeywell.

She responded with her own trivia question:

QuoteWhat was the title of the first computer generated music - or the name of the computer which generated it?

I suspect that she doesn't mean the Musique contrete that was popularized by the movie "Forbidden Planet".

I want to say that it was probably something out of RCA labs, but I may just be showing my colonies-centric nature.  I know the brits were doing some very interesting things with computer music in the mid to late 50's but I can't put my finger on it now.  BTW: This was all *way* before the idea of modern music synthesis had been imagined let alone designed, so Bob Moog had nothing to do with it.

-Sandy

and here I was thinking of the Mellotron, not a synth per se, but one of the popular early instruments...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron

Quote from: FlanKitty on December 04, 2009, 07:31:03 PM
and here I was thinking of the Mellotron, not a synth per se, but one of the popular early instruments...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron

I don't think she is referring to the Mellotron because she is asking about the title and computer that generated it...

Quote from: Sandy on December 04, 2009, 07:37:38 PM
I don't think she is referring to the Mellotron because she is asking about the title and computer that generated it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC
(Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer)
playing a bad rendition of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Bogey_March
Colonel Bogey March
?

Ah... I am lost.  If you mean computer generated music, I think it was "Tron" when I head it first.  But then again I am not a computer geek. 



Hugs and Love
Janet

Spot on Sandy.

I was thinking of the famous Iliac suite which was indeed composed for a string quartet by the computer at CSIRAC and which I have heard performed as a "Lolipop" item at a classical music concert.

although the mellotron stuf is fascinating too and I had forgotten about the work done on Colonel Bogey - which of course we have to thank for all the beeps and farts that our current machines now emit.

Right - as winner Sandy to gets to set the next question. (Oh and personally I'm quite happy to be called a greybeard - think beards are lovely - for me they make a man look really sexy - Of course like you I had to ditch what little I had as they don't really go well with being female LOL!)

Actually, Flan is the one that came up with the answer about CSIRAC, so I will yield the floor to her.  But if she declines, I do have a few... dozen.

-Sandy

oooooh sorry Flan I really must check my reading glasses.... actually I think I lost it somewhere inbetween the two threads. Then again my family would doubtless all tell you that I lost it years ago!

Quote from: Sandy on December 05, 2009, 08:56:17 AM
Actually, Flan is the one that came up with the answer about CSIRAC, so I will yield the floor to her.  But if she declines, I do have a few... dozen.

-Sandy

Enjoy, unless you want to be asked about stupid computer trivia (first computer from Apple)

That would be the Apple I

Which was followed closely by the apple][

Ok, trivia buffs, what computer was named after a Star Trek destination, and for extra points; Why?

-Sandy

Quote from: Sandy on December 05, 2009, 07:03:09 PM
That would be the Apple I

Which was followed closely by the apple][

Ok, trivia buffs, what computer was named after a Star Trek destination, and for extra points; Why?

-Sandy

It was the ALTAIR, for some reason I remembered that, But I had to cheat on why so I won't answer that. (It bugged me so much I had to google it !)

Jamie

Yeah, it's hard to have a real trivia game with wikipedia on the net...

Yes, it was the altair 8800.  Named by the author of the article's daughter who suggested the name because of the destination that the Enterprise was going to go to.  The first version of design was built around Intel's 4040 series of chips (a 4 bit computer).  Which was followed quickly by the use of the 8008 chips (a first generation 8 bit architecture).  And they finally settled on the 8080 series when Intel came out it.  The 8080 became popular and was the foundation for the 16 bit series of chips as popularized by the original 286 machine.

Alright, let's take it up a notch.

This is for the big-iron jockeys who wrestled with the 1400/360/370 vintage machines.

Choose any one of the following questions to answer:

• What does TIC mean in the series: Seek/Search/TIC/Read? Hint: It had to do with CCCHHRR (extra EXTRA points for that one)
• What was RAMAC?
  
• What was the big advancement that separated the 360 from the 370 architecture machines?

These are very esoteric questions and I imagine that no one else could answer these.  And I suspect that my butt could be beaten by person similarly familiar with Sperry-Rand machines.  So I apologize.

There are quite number more people who lived during the great booming times of the hobby computer so we can just keep it there with this one:

Before the S100 buss machines, as popularized by the altair, so dominated the microcomputer hobby industry, there were many other micros out there vying for the top spot.

Who made the COSMAC?

Try not to wiki that one.  I haven't so I can't tell you what it stood for, but if you can come up with that great.

-Sandy (where did I put that beard???)

Quote from: Sandy on December 06, 2009, 12:17:02 PM
-Sandy (where did I put that beard???)

next to your "portable" computer
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html

well I know two of the answers

The cosmac was the RCA 1802 MPU chip - it was actually a better design, in my opinion, than the 8080 but never really took off. No idea why it was called cosmac though - I'd have to google that one.

A RAMAC was, as I recall a very early winchester drive - winchester! - blimey the beard is regrowing as I even say that word.

TIC and CCCHHRR do ring bells somewhere I think to do with either punch tape or accoustic couplers - but I'm in the dark over those two.

It's making me recall the joys of front panel booting toggling in about 60 instructions by hand just to get the bootstrap loader into core to run the punch tape reader!

I used to work a lot with TI chips which were popular with people like NASA. I wrote a full 32 bit real time control multi tasking operating system which ran on a 99105 chip and was part of a piece of hardware we sold to NASA.

So here is a question - what is HARVARD ARCHITECTURE?

oh and another one for any fans of the 6502 chip

Early versions had an instruction which went by the initial memnonic HCF - What do the initials HCF stand for? what was the instruction meant to do? what did it really do? and why did it get that name?

HINT - if you know what it DID as opposed to what it was supposed to do the answers will become obvious.

That is correct, the COSMAC was RCA's 1802 entry into the micro market.  I googled COSMAC and it referred to the CMOS nature of the chip, which at the time was revolutionary.

Yes, the RAMAC was a 14xx peripheral with a twenty platter single arm access that would travel up and down the platter stack to access the data.  It could hold a revolutionary 5 million characters of storage.  They could be ganged together to create a 20MB super RAMAC.

TIC is Transfer In Channel.  It was a channel program operation that would transfer the data found in the Search command and cause the Read to execute next.  I believe, it's been a *very* long while since I wrote an EXCP command.  The 360/370 machines had IO processors that accessed data independently of the CPU and would use Channel Programs to control them.  Standard equipment on all but the most rudimentary of micro controllers these days.

CCCHHRR=Cylinder/Head/Record.  It was used to address data on 360/370 DASD.

The revolutionary change between the 360 and 370 was the introduction of Virtual Storage which allowed for memory to be mapped to DASD and swapped in and out as it was needed.  Thus a machine could run programs that were larger than the physical storage and only page in data as it was needed.  The hardware to facilitate that is now standard on all current CPUs used in everything from laptops to mainframes of every stripe and color.  IBM claimed to be one of the first to implement it, though CDC was using something very similar for years prior.

I haven't a clue about Harvard Architecture.  Stumped me on that one I'm afraid.

I'm not as familiar with the 6502 as I am with the 6800, but I seem to remember that the 6800 had some very peculiar instruction that was used as a half-adder to do decimal rounding for calculations.  I'll take a stab and say that HCF performed something similar.

-Sandy

I'll let a couple of others take a guess and if no one get's in tonight I'll post the answers and a new Q. in the morning.

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Post Merge: December 07, 2009, 07:35:13 AM

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Ok as no one has bitten in 24hours

Havard Architecture is where data and program are stored in two separate address spaces. This allowed faster execution and also prevented the accidental execution of data.

The 6502 contained an early op code which was supposed to tri-state the data and address busses. This was an early attempt at facilitating multi processing. However an error in the micro code meant that what the instruction actually did was internall connect the supply rail to ground. Hence the memnonic HCF which statds for Halt and Catch Fire - which is precisely wat happened if the processor ever executed that op-code.

It was hastilly removed from later production runs!

Ok here's a new question (unless someone else would like to play - in which case just post a new question and ignore mine)

In 1975/ 1976 Which famous programming partnership invented the computer role play adventure game and what was their first creation called?

(Hint it originally ran on a DEC PDP-10 and spelunking forms a large part of the action.)

I have lost so many hours to "adventure" that it was almost named as a co-respondent in my first divorce.

Adventure, as I ran into it was a really clever Fortran program that I ran under TSO.  It was so heavily used and so much productive work was lost that we added code to prevent it's use during work hours.

The real name of Adventure was called Colossal Cave, and I'll be damned if I remember the authors.  But reading the Fortran code was a joy.  It was well written and the comments read like a comedy routine ("Oh dear, he's awakened the dwarves...")

I know that it was an inspiration to Scott Adams to create his line of adventure games.  And BTW: if you typed it the magic word xyzzy to Zork I the response was "Cretin".

Anyway, I hope I get partial points, I refuse to google my answers so I am very curious about what you have to say!

-Sandy

Yeah I think I'll allow you 7 out of 10 there and a chance to set the next question.

5 for knowing the name 1 for knowing that it was written in Fortran and 1 for knowing about xyzzy

The authors were Crowther & Woods and there is short but interesting note on the evolution of such games here:

http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s46.html

Otherwise I am apt to come up with something crazy like "who wrote the computer software used to control the machines which carried out the testing protocols for the famous O rings which failed when the Challenger blew up" Hopefully you wouldn't know the answer... but as it happens it was me! 

Not exactly my finest hour even though my data analysis software was not found to be at fault!

Quote from: rejennyrated on December 07, 2009, 09:50:38 AM
Not exactly my finest hour even though my data analysis software was not found to be at fault!

I feel your remorse.  Even though your software was not a contributor, I know that everyone associated with that tragedy carries sadness to this very day.  And, no, I didn't know that.

Ok, here's an easy one:

What does VTOC stand for and how is it used?

-Sandy

Quote from: Sandy on December 07, 2009, 11:43:34 AM
I feel your remorse.  Even though your software was not a contributor, I know that everyone associated with that tragedy carries sadness to this very day.  And, no, I didn't know that.

Ok, here's an easy one:

What does VTOC stand for and how is it used?
-Sandy

Ok now were getting into some of the stuff that I can remember (mind is good but memory is short ! )

Volume Table Of Contents, If I remember correctly it showed you the Volser # and listing of the location of the data files,and size on the DASD.

Ok so here's another easy one what was VTAM and what was it used for ? and what was used before VTAM ?

Jamie