Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #623607Re: The birth of BASIC
From: Alan Bowler
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2018 19:00
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2018 19:00
28 lines
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2980 bytes
On 2018-06-04 1:28 PM, Quadibloc wrote: > On Monday, June 4, 2018 at 11:12:41 AM UTC-6, Alan Bowler wrote: >> On 2018-06-02 7:23 AM, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote: >>> On 02/06/2018 03:44, John Levine wrote: >> >>>> Dartmouth's compiler was quite impressive, >>>> typically compiling an entire program in one or >>>> two clock ticks. It was so fast that nobody >>>> bothered to save object code. >> >> Since the 635 and several generations of successors >> were asynchronous machines I'm not clear what is >> meant by "clock tick" > > I don't think any compiler, no matter how impresive, could compile a program of > any length in two processor clock cycles. > > Compiling one in *two seconds* of wall-clock time, however, is perfectly > possible, and it would have been impressive on a computer made from discrete > transistors. > > So I think the problem is that he meant a completely different kind of "clock > tick" from the kind you were thinking of that the GE 635 didn't have. > I should have expanded a bit more. The 635 did have CPU timer that was used to give programmed interrupts (used by the CPU dispatcher). It worked in units of 1/64000 second.
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X-Received: by 2002:a5d:44d2:: with SMTP id z18-v6mr701355wrr.25.1528484435610; Fri, 08 Jun 2018 12:00:35 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 2002:adf:fd05:: with SMTP id e5-v6ls1572466wrr.4.gmail; Fri, 08 Jun 2018 12:00:34 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:adf:fec9:: with SMTP id q9-v6mr727257wrs.30.1528484434856; Fri, 08 Jun 2018 12:00:34 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!n13-v6ni6155wmc.0!nntp.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Alan Bowler <atbo...@thinkage.ca> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: The birth of BASIC Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2018 15:00:33 -0400 Organization: Thinkage Ltd. Lines: 29 Message-ID: <pfejoi$1o2$1@dont-email.me> References: <874lisvjda.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <439a1044-9919-4234-ad93-d8741b1bd71c@googlegroups.com> <pescmn$m7o$1@dont-email.me> <cb11f87e-44a9-4f0b-b4b3-998177600274@googlegroups.com> <pet0ag$174f$1@gal.iecc.com> <petuom$iln$1@dont-email.me> <pf3ru7$ct1$1@dont-email.me> <0ccc0e69-2ccc-4566-9d87-985ee301dba9@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2018 19:00:34 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="a287eb8ed3a126b6c0d000df3baa3b66"; logging-data="1794"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+7G+rA9x1d0FbVyzMjfBNNmrHtjffi/dw=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.8.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:7cvZscrRnZljbnGIEnSvuAAWFbQ= In-Reply-To: <0ccc0e69-2ccc-4566-9d87-985ee301dba9@googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit