Byte sizes (was Re: 2.8M 3.5' floppy (was: three and a quarter loppy?)

[Bjørn]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 03:12:12 +0100, <blstuart at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> In message <op.sno3dpaxisslla at yngve.home.norbionics.com>,  
> =?utf-8?Q?Bj=C3=B8rn?
> = writes:
>> Hm - yes, I remember he got sidetracked by typesetting problems.
>> It took a very long time before it hit the bookstores. I think we were
>> writing MIX-simulators based on mimeographed excerpts, I did not get the
>> book until long after I left university.
>
> Was it a translation issue?  Volume 1 was originally published
> in 1968.

No, we did not use translations. It was more a question of how things were  
done at the University of Oslo.
It was customary to publish a compendium for each course, at least for  
those new subjects which did not have good enough textbooks yet. Those  
eventually developed into books.

I'm not sure of the chronology here. I think the MIX project was on the  
CDC-3300. We got one of the first CDC-3300s made, but I do not remember  
the date. It would have been around the time Volume 1 was being finished,  
I guess.

I know the Simula compiler was finished in 1969, and of course a  
development version existed in 1967, but at first only on the UNIVAC. My  
only involvment in the Simula project was to use the beta compiler and  
dutifully reporting bugs, otherwise I was programming in Algol. That made  
me very grateful to Knuth, because he had made a workable scheme to get  
input and output in Algol 60.

-- 
Bjørn