IMLAC - what happened to assembler, emulator?

[Bob Shannon]

I've got some documentation that might help.

I also have an Imlac, a very early PDS-1 'alpha' machine.
(it cannot run Mazewar).

There are several block loaders I have the source
code for, some written for paper tape, others for
the serial interface.

There are also two formats for the paper tape
code, 8-bit and 4-bit modes, each with its own
block loader program, for each interface of course.

I'll try to post a summary of the 8-bit and 4-bit
formats.  Tom Uban has some information on
the loaders, and some code he used to get his
PDS-1D on the air listed on his web site.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ross Wilson" <wilsonr at iinet.net.au>
To: <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 4:50 AM
Subject: IMLAC - what happened to assembler, emulator?


> Hi all,
>
> I've been lurking here since a slashdot article on the
> 30th anniversary of Maze, the first lan/wan FPS, which was
> run on an IMLAC.
>
> I was very interested in this as I programmed an IMLAC -
> PDS-4, I guess - in 1977/8 at Sydney University (au) and
> have good memories of the machine.
>
> I saw hints on the list that an assembler was imminent
> and an emulator was under consideration.  That was September
> 2002, and nothing since.  I am really interested in an
> emulator - I have an emulation of the main processor running
> and got it loading 'paper tapes' from disk via the paper
> tape boot loader.  I've used this to load code from hand
> assembled files to test the emulation and I would like to
> go a little further a little faster.
>
> Does anybody have information on the format of the data the
> papertape block-loader reads and loads?  The block loader is
> the first thing the boot loader runs - it reads in the rest
> of the tape.
>
> Also, does anyone know of or has any software (source or binary)
> on papertape or any other form?  I have no idea of the current
> ownership, if any, of the existing IMLAC software, and I could
> write an assembler, but it's so much more cool to run the IMLAC assembler!
>
> TIA,
> Ross