🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <cdxnv6200VsaA=uo...@andrew.cmu.edu> jn...@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer) writes:
Well, it wasn't in that article, but in some article Joe asked me to say
something about my biwerm program.  Now Joe, please keep in mind I have a
long commute, a high pressure job, a two-year old, about 50 trees to plant
(I'd be doing that now, excepts it's snowing in New Hampster today), and
I've been busy defending Libertarianism in rec.org.mensa.  I don't even
make it far enough through rn to see this group most of the time.  I just
thought I'd check up on the BLISS thread.  And then I noticed another
posting that said something about running diagnostics with the room lights
off.

However, being old enough to be inordinately fond of folklore, I can't resist.

Once upon a time, back when computers were first learning how to play
chess (that is, with voice I/O), CMU's Computer Science department built
the AMS (AI Music System? I forget).  Basically it was a PDP-10 peripheral
for linking various audio sources and destinations and filters.  It featured
a 16x12 array of lights and switches easily controlable from the -10 and
the builders encouraged me to do something useless with the lights.  Must
have been because of the ping pong program I wrote using the -10's console
lights and switches.

Somewhere along the line I decided that whatever I wrote was going to be small.
What I came up with was something that created 2 worms each 3 lights long.
they wiggled around the lights at random until they collided.  Then I flashed
TILT six times and I started the worms from their original positions.  I
had to talk to the device with -10s hardware I/O instructions, so I had to
beg the OS for support for that.  I also used the OS to sleep between steps
and to check for TTY input (the program would restart).  The random number
generator, code for checking to see if a werm tried moving off the edge,
and whatnot comprised the rest of the program.

I still have a listing (my wife thinks I'm crazy, but that's nothing new).
I was going to post it, but I'd probably have to explain it and, well, I'm
having trouble figuring it out, despite the comments.  Sigh.  If there's
interest....  One of the comments includes "r = .r +1", for you BLISS
fans.

The program took 61 instructions (274.5 bytes).  I wonder what that would
take on the i860s I use today?  (I used integer multiplies and divides, so
I'd have to replace that!)

As the werms wiggled around, we tended to get some marginally entertaining
sound effects from some of the nonsensical connections that got made.
-- 
| A pride of lions               | Eric J Werme                   |
| An odd lot of programmers      | uucp: mit-eddie!alliant!werme  |
| A Constitution of Libertarians | Phone: 508-486-1214            |