🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <12...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:
>
>I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
>friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
>cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
>What the frotz is this for? Microcode?
>
>Per Lindberg (The Mad Programmer)  !      __!__

I think so.  One IBM technique back then used capacitors as comtrol
storage.  The cards you describe sound as if they could be used as plates
for little programmable capacitors.  An inspection of the gadget that
reads the cards might confirm or deny this.

>From day one S/360  and its offspring have had microcode features not
described in the POO -- simulators for this old IBM system or that, assist
code for erating systems, andwhatever.  The cards you describe seem
like a reasonable pre-floppy way to distribute specialized ucode.

					phil

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Opinions outside attributed quotations are mine alone.
	Satirical material may not be specifically labeled as such.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
  |  ph...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG 		 | Phil Gustafson
  |  (ames|pyramid|vsi1)!zorch!phil 	 | UNIX/Graphics Consultant
i |					 | 1550 Martin Ave., San Jose CA 95126
  |					 | 408/286-1749

>From article <12...@front.se>, by p...@front.se (Per Lindberg):
> 
> I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
> friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
> cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
> 
> What the frotz is this for? Microcode?
>
Exactly!  The 360 Mod 30 was a microcoded machine with an 80 bit microword.
The control store consisted of cards, 12 microwords per card.  The readout
was capacitive, and cards could be programmed on any keypunch (but you did
have to use special mylar cards.

More than one research organization experimented with re-microcoding that
particular 360 model to make it interpret other instruction sets.

The capacitive readout was actually a rather sensible choice.  The only
ROM technologies available at the time were diode matrix (if you read the
original microcoding papers, that's what they recommended) and braided
wire memory (Dec and HP both built machines with this).

					Doug Jones
					jo...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu 

In article <12...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:
>
>I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
>friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
>cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
>
>The card is the same as a standard card, and is punched by a standard
>punch. There is a little electricallly conducting square in each bit
>position (except where punched, of course). The rows are
>interconnected.
>
>What the frotz is this for? Microcode?
>
Yep. All of the original 360's were microcoded (except the 360/75). They
used a different form of read-only storage for each machine. The ROS
on the 360/30 (which you have at hand) was designed for correction on a
"standard" keypunch. (See other thread about punch cards.)

I dimly remember an article in the IBM Journal of R&D about all of the
different read-only memory systems and the underlying machine
architectures. In those days before programmer-viewable architectures
became all of the rage :-), you could let the engineers design (almost)
anything that met the performance point, and then use ROS to create the
"360" architecture that the customer bought.
-- 
Elliott Frank      ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384
               or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00

[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.]
[the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some
inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]

In article <1990Apr30.0...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, ph...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes:
} In article <12...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:

} }I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
} }friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
} }cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
} }What the frotz is this for? Microcode?

} I think so.  One IBM technique back then used capacitors as comtrol
} storage.  The cards you describe sound as if they could be used as plates
} for little programmable capacitors.  An inspection of the gadget that
} reads the cards might confirm or deny this.

Yup, that's exactly it; those cards were the 1964 equivalent of ROM...

} From day one S/360  and its offspring have had microcode features not
} described in the POO -- simulators for this old IBM system or that, assist
} code for erating systems, andwhatever.  The cards you describe seem
} like a reasonable pre-floppy way to distribute specialized ucode.

No, it wasn't just the specialized features, it was the entire
instruction set.  Of the original 5 production models (30, 40, 50, 65,
and 75), only the 360/75 used random logic; the other 4 were
microcoded.  They differed in internal architecture (what Fred Brooks
calls the implementation) and especially data path width.

Note that this meant that the optional instruction sets -- floating
point and commercial -- thus required very little in the way of
new ``hardware''; it was just a matter of some extra ROM.  Wasn't
priced that way, though...  It also made it (marginally) feasible
for IBM to (in effect) recall the floating point on every early
machine -- they realized very early on that they had to add a guard
digit or risk total loss of significance in some arithmetic operations.

Elliott S. Frank (es...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com) writes:
+--
| ...All of the original 360's were microcoded (except the
| 360/75).
+--
I don't believe the 360/67 was microcoded either, and I'm
quite sure that the 360/44 was not.


-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, NM/jo...@jupiter.nmt.edu
``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.''  --Dave Farber

In article <43...@nmtsun.nmt.edu>, jo...@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) writes:
} Elliott S. Frank (es...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com) writes:
} +--
} | ...All of the original 360's were microcoded (except the
} | 360/75).
} +--
} I don't believe the 360/67 was microcoded either, and I'm
} quite sure that the 360/44 was not.

The 360/67 was a slightly-modified 360/65, and hence was microcoded.
I'm not certain about the 360/44, but it was not one of the original
models.

In article <43...@nmtsun.nmt.edu> jo...@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) writes:
>Elliott S. Frank (es...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com) writes:
>| ...All of the original 360's were microcoded (except the
>| 360/75).
>I don't believe the 360/67 was microcoded either, and I'm
>quite sure that the 360/44 was not.

The 67 was microcoded. In fact it was identical to the 65 but for the 
addition of virtual memory. Was the 75 ever shipped? I thought the only
true production "hard-wired" 360's were the 44 and 91. I believe the 44 was
claimed to have the best price/performance of the entire line.

Tom Almy
to...@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply

In article <1990Apr30.0...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> ph...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes:
>In article <12...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:
>>
>>I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
>>friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
>>cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
>>What the frotz is this for? Microcode?


Yep.  The 360/40 used tab-style cards for the micrtocode.
-- 
--Dick Wexelblat  (rw...@ida.org) 703 824 5511

In article <74...@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> to...@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:
>In article <43...@nmtsun.nmt.edu> jo...@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) writes:
>>Elliott S. Frank (es...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com) writes:
>>| ...All of the original 360's were microcoded (except the
>>| 360/75).
>>I don't believe the 360/67 was microcoded either, and I'm
>>quite sure that the 360/44 was not.
>
>The 67 was microcoded. In fact it was identical to the 65 but for the 
>addition of virtual memory. Was the 75 ever shipped? I thought the only
>true production "hard-wired" 360's were the 44 and 91.

Ah, the joys of being able to followup to one's own followup. Yes,
lots of /75's made it out the door -- I worked on two, one at Columbia,
and one at NASA Goddard. They were the winners in the blinkenlites
category until the /91 was shipped. (See the now-expired thread on the
/91 and the joys of imprecise interrupts [or, when is an implementation
non-architectural?]).

Part of the rationale for the /75 was so that IBM could patent technology
embedded in the 360-series design principles. You couldn't patent programs
back in the early sixties, so a microprogrammed implementation didn't
count as far as the Patent Office was concerned. Somewhere in my
archives I've got my ($0.50) copy of the patent -- one of the biggest
ever issued, both in terms of the number of claims (64?) and the number of
pages (close to 1000 pages in that funny typeface). Supposedly, if you
took the patent application and enough yellow (wirewrap) wire, you could
build your own 360/75. Did anyone ever try?
-- 
Elliott Frank      ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384
               or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00

[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.]
[the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some
inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]

In article <74...@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> to...@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:
>The 67 was microcoded. In fact it was identical to the 65 but for the 
>addition of virtual memory. Was the 75 ever shipped? ...

Yes, they shipped a bunch of 75s, including a fair number to NASA as the
main computers for Apollo ground support.
-- 
If OSI is the answer, what is |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the question?? -Rolf Nordhagen| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu

'case ya missed this the first time:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article 1493 of rec.humor.funny:
Path: agate!apple!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!inebriae!ssbn!looking!funny-request
>From: hayes@psunuce.bitnet
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Subject: "Purity" test for programmers -- long
Keywords: computers, funny
Message-ID: <55...@looking.on.ca>
Date: 1 Dec 89 11:30:09 GMT
Sender: fu...@looking.on.ca
Lines: 840
Approved: fu...@looking.on.ca
Reply-Path: watmath.uucp!forty2!claudio


(From NutWorks, the former Bitnet humour group)
Submitted-by: cla...@amsoft.imp.com (Claudio Nieder, Uster, Switzerland)

 THE HACKER TEST - Version 1.0

 Preface:  06.16.89

 This test was conceived and written by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela
 Thomas at the end of the spring semester, 1989.  It has gone through
 many revisions prior to this initial release, and will undoubtedly go
 through many more.


 (Herewith a compendium of fact and folklore about computer hackerdom,
  cunningly disguised as a test.)


 Scoring - Count 1 for each item that you have done, or each
           question that you can answer correctly.


 If you score is between:                    You are

            0x000 and 0x010       ->         Computer Illiterate
            0x011 and 0x040       ->         a User
            0x041 and 0x080       ->         an Operator
            0x081 and 0x0C0       ->         a Nerd
            0x0C1 and 0x100       ->         a Hacker
            0x101 and 0x180       ->         a Guru
            0x181 and 0x200       ->         a Wizard

 Note: If you don't understand the scoring, stop here.


 And now for the questions...


 0001 Have you ever used a computer?
 0002 ... for more than 4 hours continuously?
 0003 ... more than 8 hours?
 0004 ... more than 16 hours?
 0005 ... more than 32 hours?

 0006 Have you ever patched paper tape?

 0007 Have you ever missed a class while programming?
 0008 ... Missed an examination?
 0009 ... Missed a wedding?
 0010 ... Missed your own wedding?

 0011 Have you ever programmed while intoxicated?
 0012 ... Did it make sense the next day?

 0013 Have you ever written a flight simulator?

 0014 Have you ever voided the warranty on your equipment?

 0015 Ever change the value of 4?
 0016 ... Unintentionally?
 0017 ... In a language other than Fortran?

 0018 Do you use DWIM to make life interesting?

 0019 Have you named a computer?

 0020 Do you complain when a "feature" you use gets fixed?

 0021 Do you eat slime-molds?

 0022 Do you know how many days old you are?

 0023 Have you ever wanted to download pizza?

 0024 Have you ever invented a computer joke?
 0025 ... Did someone not 'get' it?

 0026 Can you recite Jabberwocky?
 0027 ... Backwards?

 0028 Have you seen "Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land"?

 0029 Have you seen "Tron"?

 0030 Have you seen "Wargames"?

 0031 Do you know what ASCII stands for?
 0032 ... EBCDIC?

 0033 Can you read and write ASCII in hex or octal?
 0034 Do you know the names of all the ASCII control codes?

 0035 Can you read and write EBCDIC in hex?

 0036 Can you convert from EBCDIC to ASCII and vice versa?

 0037 Do you know what characters are the same in both ASCII and EBCDIC?

 0038 Do you know maxint on your system?

 0039 Ever define your own numerical type to get better precision?

 0040 Can you name powers of two up to 2**16 in arbitrary order?
 0041 ... up to 2**32?
 0042 ... up to 2**64?

 0043 Can you read a punched card, looking at the holes?
 0044 ... feeling the holes?

 0045 Have you ever patched binary code?
 0046 ... While the program was running?

 0047 Have you ever used program overlays?

 0048 Have you met any IBM vice-president?
 0049 Do you know Dennis, Bill, or Ken?

 0050 Have you ever taken a picture of a CRT?
 0051 Have you ever played a videotape on your CRT?

 0052 Have you ever digitized a picture?

 0053 Did you ever forget to mount a scratch monkey?

 0054 Have you ever optimized an idle loop?

 0055 Did you ever optimize a bubble sort?

 0056 Does your terminal/computer talk to you?

 0057 Have you ever talked into an acoustic modem?
 0058 ... Did it answer?

 0059 Can you whistle 300 baud?
 0060 ... 1200 baud?

 0061 Can you whistle a telephone number?

 0062 Have you witnessed a disk crash?
 0063 Have you made a disk drive "walk"?

 0064 Can you build a puffer train?
 0065 ... Do you know what it is?

 0066 Can you play music on your line printer?
 0067 ... Your disk drive?
 0068 ... Your tape drive?

 0069 Do you have a Snoopy calendar?
 0070 ... Is it out-of-date?

 0071 Do you have a line printer picture of...
 0072 ... the Mona Lisa?
 0073 ... the Enterprise?
 0074 ... Einstein?
 0075 ... Oliver?
 0076 Have you ever made a line printer picture?

 0077 Do you know what the following stand for?
 0078 ... DASD
 0079 ... Emacs
 0080 ... ITS
 0081 ... RSTS/E
 0082 ... SNA
 0083 ... Spool
 0084 ... TCP/IP

      Have you ever used
 0085 ... TPU?
 0086 ... TECO?
 0087 ... Emacs?
 0088 ... ed?
 0089 ... vi?
 0090 ... Xedit (in VM/CMS)?
 0091 ... SOS?
 0092 ... EDT?
 0093 ... Wordstar?

 0094 Have you ever written a CLIST?

      Have you ever programmed in
 0095 ... the X windowing system?
 0096 ... CICS?

 0097 Have you ever received a Fax or a photocopy of a floppy?

 0098 Have you ever shown a novice the "any" key?
 0099 ... Was it the power switch?

      Have you ever attended
 0100 ... Usenix?
 0101 ... DECUS?
 0102 ... SHARE?
 0103 ... SIGGRAPH?
 0104 ... NetCon?

 0105 Have you ever participated in a standards group?

 0106 Have you ever debugged machine code over the telephone?

 0107 Have you ever seen voice mail?
 0108 ... Can you read it?

 0109 Do you solve word puzzles with an on-line dictionary?

 0110 Have you ever taken a Turing test?
 0111 ... Did you fail?

 0112 Ever drop a card deck?
 0113 ... Did you successfully put it back together?
 0114 ... Without looking?

 0115 Have you ever used IPCS?

 0116 Have you ever received a case of beer with your computer?

 0117 Does your computer come in 'designer' colors?

 0118 Ever interrupted a UPS?

 0119 Ever mask an NMI?

 0120 Have you ever set off a Halon system?
 0121 ... Intentionally?
 0122 ... Do you still work there?

 0123 Have you ever hit the emergency power switch?
 0124 ... Intentionally?

 0125 Do you have any defunct documentation?
 0126 ... Do you still read it?

 0127 Ever reverse-engineer or decompile a program?
 0128 ... Did you find bugs in it?

 0129 Ever help the person behind the counter with their terminal/computer?

 0130 Ever tried rack mounting your telephone?

 0131 Ever thrown a computer from more than two stories high?

 0132 Ever patched a bug the vendor does not acknowledge?

 0133 Ever fix a hardware problem in software?
 0134 ... Vice versa?

 0135 Ever belong to a user/support group?

 0136 Ever been mentioned in Computer Recreations?

 0137 Ever had your activities mentioned in the newspaper?
 0138 ... Did you get away with it?

 0139 Ever engage a drum brake while the drum was spinning?

 0140 Ever write comments in a non-native language?

 0141 Ever physically destroy equipment from software?

 0142 Ever tried to improve your score on the Hacker Test?

 0143 Do you take listings with you to lunch?
 0144 ... To bed?

 0145 Ever patch a microcode bug?
 0146 ... around a microcode bug?

 0147 Can you program a Turing machine?

 0148 Can you convert postfix to prefix in your head?

 0149 Can you convert hex to octal in your head?

 0150 Do you know how to use a Kleene star?

 0151 Have you ever starved while dining with philosophers?

 0152 Have you solved the halting problem?
 0153 ... Correctly?

 0154 Ever deadlock trying eating spaghetti?

 0155 Ever written a self-reproducing program?

 0156 Ever swapped out the swapper?

 0157 Can you read a state diagram?
 0158 ... Do you need one?

 0159 Ever create an unkillable program?
 0160 ... Intentionally?

 0161 Ever been asked for a cookie?

 0162 Ever speed up a system by removing a jumper?

      * Do you know...

 0163 Do you know who wrote Rogue?
 0164 ... Rogomatic?

 0165 Do you know Gray code?

 0166 Do you know what HCF means?
 0167 ... Ever use it?
 0168 ... Intentionally?

 0169 Do you know what a lace card is?
 0170 ... Ever make one?

 0171 Do you know the end of the epoch?
 0172 ... Have you celebrated the end of an epoch?
 0173 ... Did you have to rewrite code?

 0174 Do you know the difference between DTE and DCE?

 0175 Do you know the RS-232C pinout?
 0176 ... Can you wire a connector without looking?

      * Do you have...

 0177 Do you have a copy of Dec Wars?
 0178 Do you have the Canonical Collection of Lightbulb Jokes?
 0179 Do you have a copy of the Hacker's dictionary?
 0180 ... Did you contribute to it?

 0181 Do you have a flowchart template?
 0182 ... Is it unused?

 0183 Do you have your own fortune-cookie file?

 0184 Do you have the Anarchist's Cookbook?
 0185 ... Ever make anything from it?

 0186 Do you own a modem?
 0187 ... a terminal?
 0188 ... a toy computer?
 0189 ... a personal computer?
 0190 ... a minicomputer?
 0191 ... a mainframe?
 0192 ... a supercomputer?
 0193 ... a hypercube?
 0194 ... a printer?
 0195 ... a laser printer?
 0196 ... a tape drive?
 0197 ... an outmoded peripheral device?

 0198 Do you have a programmable calculator?
 0199 ... Is it RPN?

 0200 Have you ever owned more than 1 computer?
 0201 ... 4 computers?
 0202 ... 16 computers?

 0203 Do you have a SLIP line?
 0204 ... a T1 line?

 0205 Do you have a separate phone line for your terminal/computer?
 0206 ... Is it legal?

 0207 Do you have core memory?
 0208 ... drum storage?
 0209 ... bubble memory?

 0210 Do you use more than 16 megabytes of disk space?
 0211 ... 256 megabytes?
 0212 ... 1 gigabyte?
 0213 ... 16 gigabytes?
 0214 ... 256 gigabytes?
 0215 ... 1 terabyte?

 0216 Do you have an optical disk/disk drive?

 0217 Do you have a personal magnetic tape library?
 0218 ... Is it unlabelled?

 0219 Do you own more than 16 floppy disks?
 0220 ... 64 floppy disks?
 0221 ... 256 floppy disks?
 0222 ... 1024 floppy disks?

 0223 Do you have any 8-inch disks?

 0224 Do you have an internal stack?

 0225 Do you have a clock interrupt?

 0226 Do you own volumes 1 to 3 of _The Art of Computer Programming_?
 0227 ... Have you done all the exercises?
 0228 ... Do you have a MIX simulator?
 0229 ... Can you name the unwritten volumes?

 0230 Can you quote from _The Mythical Man-month_?
 0231 ... Did you participate in the OS/360 project?

 0232 Do you have a TTL handbook?

 0233 Do you have printouts more than three years old?

      * Career

 0234 Do you have a job?
 0235 ... Have you ever had a job?
 0236 ... Was it computer-related?

 0237 Do you work irregular hours?

 0238 Have you ever been a system administrator?

 0239 Do you have more megabytes than megabucks?

 0240 Have you ever downgraded your job to upgrade your processing power?

 0241 Is your job secure?
 0242 ... Do you have code to prove it?

 0243 Have you ever had a security clearance?

      * Games

 0244 Have you ever played Pong?

      Have you ever played
 0246 ... Spacewar?
 0247 ... Star Trek?
 0248 ... Wumpus?
 0249 ... Lunar Lander?
 0250 ... Empire?

      Have you ever beaten
 0251 ... Moria 4.8?
 0252 ... Rogue 3.6?
 0253 ... Rogue 5.3?
 0254 ... Larn?
 0255 ... Hack 1.0.3?
 0256 ... Nethack 2.4?

 0257 Can you get a better score on Rogue than Rogomatic?

 0258 Have you ever solved Adventure?
 0259 ... Zork?

 0260 Have you ever written any redcode?

 0261 Have you ever written an adventure program?
 0262 ... a real-time game?
 0263 ... a multi-player game?
 0264 ... a networked game?

 0265 Can you out-doctor Eliza?

      * Hardware

 0266 Have you ever used a light pen?
 0267 ... did you build it?

      Have you ever used
 0268 ... a teletype?
 0269 ... a paper tape?
 0270 ... a decwriter?
 0271 ... a card reader/punch?
 0272 ... a SOL?

      Have you ever built
 0273 ... an Altair?
 0274 ... a Heath/Zenith computer?

      Do you know how to use
 0275 ... an oscilliscope?
 0276 ... a voltmeter?
 0277 ... a frequency counter?
 0278 ... a logic probe?
 0279 ... a wirewrap tool?
 0280 ... a soldering iron?
 0281 ... a logic analyzer?

 0282 Have you ever designed an LSI chip?
 0283 ... has it been fabricated?

 0284 Have you ever etched a printed circuit board?

      * Historical

 0285 Have you ever toggled in boot code on the front panel?
 0286 ... from memory?

 0287 Can you program an Eniac?

 0288 Ever seen a 90 column card?

      * IBM

 0289 Do you recite IBM part numbers in your sleep?
 0290 Do you know what IBM part number 7320154 is?

 0291 Do you understand 3270 data streams?

 0292 Do you know what the VM privilege classes are?

 0293 Have you IPLed an IBM off the tape drive?
 0294 ... off a card reader?

 0295 Can you sing something from the IBM Songbook?

      * Languages

 0296 Do you know more than 4 programming languages?
 0297 ... 8 languages?
 0298 ... 16 languages?
 0299 ... 32 languages?

 0300 Have you ever designed a programming language?

 0301 Do you know what Basic stands for?
 0302 ... Pascal?

 0303 Can you program in Basic?
 0304 ... Do you admit it?

 0305 Can you program in Cobol?
 0306 ... Do you deny it?

 0307 Do you know Pascal?
 0308 ... Modula-2?
 0309 ... Oberon?
 0310 ... More that two Wirth languages?
 0311 ... Can you recite a Nicklaus Wirth joke?

 0312 Do you know Algol-60?
 0313 ... Algol-W?
 0314 ... Algol-68?
 0315 ... Do you understand the Algol-68 report?
 0316 ... Do you like two-level grammars?

 0317 Can you program in assembler on 2 different machines?
 0318 ... on 4 different machines?
 0319 ... on 8 different machines?

      Do you know
 0320 ... APL?
 0321 ... Ada?
 0322 ... BCPL?
 0323 ... C++?
 0324 ... C?
 0325 ... Comal?
 0326 ... Eiffel?
 0327 ... Forth?
 0328 ... Fortran?
 0329 ... Hypertalk?
 0330 ... Icon?
 0331 ... Lisp?
 0332 ... Logo?
 0333 ... MIIS?
 0334 ... MUMPS?
 0335 ... PL/I?
 0336 ... Pilot?
 0337 ... Plato?
 0338 ... Prolog?
 0339 ... RPG?
 0340 ... Rexx (or ARexx)?
 0341 ... SETL?
 0342 ... Smalltalk?
 0343 ... Snobol?
 0344 ... VHDL?
 0345 ... any assembly language?

 0346 Can you talk VT-100?
 0347 ... Postscript?
 0348 ... SMTP?
 0349 ... UUCP?
 0350 ... English?

      * Micros

 0351 Ever copy a copy-protected disk?
 0352 Ever create a copy-protection scheme?

 0353 Have you ever made a "flippy" disk?

 0354 Have you ever recovered data from a damaged disk?

 0355 Ever boot a naked floppy?

      * Networking

 0356 Have you ever been logged in to two different timezones at once?

 0357 Have you memorized the UUCP map for your country?
 0358 ... For any country?

 0359 Have you ever found a sendmail bug?
 0360 ... Was it a security hole?

 0361 Have you memorized the HOSTS.TXT table?
 0362 ... Are you up to date?

 0363 Can you name all the top-level nameservers and their addresses?

 0364 Do you know RFC-822 by heart?
 0365 ... Can you recite all the errors in it?

 0366 Have you written a Sendmail configuration file?
 0367 ... Does it work?
 0368 ... Do you mumble "defocus" in your sleep?

 0369 Do you know the max packet lifetime?

      * Operating systems

      Can you use
 0370 ... BSD Unix?
 0371 ... non-BSD Unix?
 0372 ... AIX
 0373 ... VM/CMS?
 0374 ... VMS?
 0375 ... MVS?
 0376 ... VSE?
 0377 ... RSTS/E?
 0378 ... CP/M?
 0379 ... COS?
 0380 ... NOS?
 0381 ... CP-67?
 0382 ... RT-11?
 0383 ... MS-DOS?
 0384 ... Finder?
 0385 ... PRODOS?
 0386 ... more than one OS for the TRS-80?
 0387 ... Tops-10?
 0388 ... Tops-20?
 0389 ... OS-9?
 0390 ... OS/2?
 0391 ... AOS/VS?
 0392 ... Multics?
 0393 ... ITS?
 0394 ... Vulcan?

 0395 Have you ever paged or swapped off a tape drive?
 0396 ... Off a card reader/punch?
 0397 ... Off a teletype?
 0398 ... Off a networked (non-local) disk?

 0399 Have you ever found an operating system bug?
 0400 ... Did you exploit it?
 0401 ... Did you report it?
 0402 ... Was your report ignored?

 0403 Have you ever crashed a machine?
 0404 ... Intentionally?

      * People

 0405 Do you know any people?
 0406 ... more than one?
 0407 ... more than two?

      * Personal

 0408 Are your shoelaces untied?

 0409 Do you interface well with strangers?

 0410 Are you able to recite phone numbers for half-a-dozen computer systems
         but unable to recite your own?

 0411 Do you log in before breakfast?

 0412 Do you consume more than LD-50 caffeine a day?

 0413 Do you answer either-or questions with "yes"?

 0414 Do you own an up-to-date copy of any operating system manual?
 0415 ... *every* operating system manual?

 0416 Do other people have difficulty using your customized environment?

 0417 Do you dream in any programming languages?

 0418 Do you have difficulty focusing on three-dimensional objects?

 0419 Do you ignore mice?

 0420 Do you despise the CAPS LOCK key?

 0421 Do you believe menus belong in restaurants?

 0422 Do you have a Mandelbrot hanging on your wall?

 0423 Have you ever decorated with magnetic tape or punched cards?
 0424 Do you have a disk platter or a naked floppy hanging in your home?

 0425 Have you ever seen the dawn?
 0426 ... Twice in a row?

 0427 Do you use "foobar" in daily conversation?
 0428 ... "bletch"?

 0429 Do you use the "P convention"?

 0430 Do you automatically respond to any user question with RTFM?
 0431 ... Do you know what it means?

 0432 Do you think garbage collection means memory management?

 0433 Do you have problems allocating horizontal space in your room/office?

 0434 Do you read Scientific American in bars to pick up women?

 0435 Is your license plate computer-related?

 0436 Have you ever taken the Purity test?

 0437 Ever have an out-of-CPU experience?

 0438 Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer?

 0439 Do you talk to the person next to you via computer?

      * Programming

 0440 Can you write a Fortran compiler?
 0441 ... In TECO?

 0442 Can you read a machine dump?
 0443 Can you disassemble code in your head?

      Have you ever written
 0444 ... a compiler?
 0445 ... an operating system?
 0446 ... a device driver?
 0447 ... a text processor?
 0448 ... a display hack?
 0449 ... a database system?
 0450 ... an expert system?
 0451 ... an edge detector?
 0452 ... a real-time control system?
 0453 ... an accounting package?
 0454 ... a virus?
 0455 ... a prophylactic?

 0456 Have you ever written a biorhythm program?
 0457 ... Did you sell the output?
 0458 ... Was the output arbitrarily invented?

 0459 Have you ever computed pi to more than a thousand decimal places?
 0460 ... the number e?

 0461 Ever find a prime number of more than a hundred digits?

 0462 Have you ever written self-modifying code?
 0463 ... Are you proud of it?

 0464 Did you ever write a program that ran correctly the first time?
 0465 ... Was it longer than 20 lines?
 0466 ... 100 lines?
 0467 ... Was it in assembly language?
 0468 ... Did it work the second time?

 0469 Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively?
 0470 ... Non-recursively?
 0471 ... Using the Troff text formatter?

 0472 Ever submit an entry to the Obfuscated C code contest?
 0473 ... Did it win?
 0474 ... Did your entry inspire a new rule?

 0475 Do you know Duff's device?

 0476 Do you know Jensen's device?

 0477 Ever spend ten minutes trying to find a single-character error?
 0478 ... More than an hour?
 0479 ... More than a day?
 0480 ... More than a week?
 0481 ... Did the first person you show it to find it immediately?

      * Unix

 0482 Can you use Berkeley Unix?
 0483 .. Non-Berkeley Unix?

 0484 Can you distinguish between sections 4 and 5 of the Unix manual?

 0485 Can you find TERMIO in the System V release 2 documentation?

 0486 Have you ever mounted a tape as a Unix file system?

 0487 Have you ever built Minix?

 0488 Can you answer "quiz function ed-command" correctly?
 0489 ... How about "quiz ed-command function"?

      * Usenet

 0490 Do you read news?
 0491 ... More than 32 newsgroups?
 0492 ... More than 256 newsgroups?
 0493 ... All the newsgroups?

 0494 Have you ever posted an article?
 0495 ... Do you post regularly?

 0496 Have you ever posted a flame?
 0497 ... Ever flame a cross-posting?
 0498 ... Ever flame a flame?
 0499 ... Do you flame regularly?

 0500 Ever have your program posted to a source newsgroup?

 0501 Ever forge a posting?
 0502 Ever form a new newsgroup?
 0503 ... Does it still exist?

 0504 Do you remember
 0505 ... mod.ber?
 0506 ... the Stupid People's Court?
 0507 ... Bandy-grams?

      * Phreaking

 0508 Have you ever built a black box?

 0509 Can you name all of the 'colors' of boxes?
 0510 ... and their associated functions?

 0511 Does your touch tone phone have 16 DTMF buttons on it?

 0512 Did the breakup of MaBell create more opportunities for you?


 If you have any comments of suggestions regarding the HACKER TEST,
 Please send then to: hayes@psunuce.bitnet
                   or jwh100@psuvm.bitnet / jwh100@psuvmxa.bitnet
                   or jwh...@psuvm.psu.edu / jwh...@psuvmxa.psu.edu
                   or ...!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!jwh100

--
Edited by Brad Templeton.  MAIL, yes MAIL your jokes to fu...@looking.ON.CA
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible.  I will reply, mailers willing.

Remember: PLEASE spell check and proofread your jokes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
END

In article <972C02c...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> es...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) writes:
>                                                ... Supposedly, if you
>took the patent application and enough yellow (wirewrap) wire, you could
>build your own 360/75. Did anyone ever try?

Didn't RCA?  Remember the old Spectra 70 series? :-)

							spl (the p stands for
							patent pending)
--
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy	(919) 248-1120		EMail:	s...@ncsc.org
NCSC (The other one), Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Don't send in no bums.  I want deals.
				-John Steinbeck, _The Grapes of Wrath_

     Here is my addition to the Hacker Test.  Some of it is based upon real
     experience (some which I hope not to repeat....):



------------


01   Have you ever created a subroutine which you thought was neat, but then
     never used it in a program?

02   Have you ever replaced an existing function in your programming language
     with one of your own because you thought you could create a faster
     version?

03   Have you ever labored over five months to create a pop-up window
     interface and an editor with endless options because you were an anti-
     GUI diehard?

04        Was it in assembly?

05        After getting through, are you still an anti-GUI diehard?

06        Are you happily using your creation?

07        Are you sane?

08   Have you ever looked at old code of yours and ponder about what the heck
     is it suppose to do?

09   Have you ever tried to create an operating system without using any
     BIOS?

0a   Have you ever tried to program a floppy drive to read diskettes
     backward?

0b   Have you ever 'helped' a friend program, by sneaking in some code in
     which would make it impossible stop the computer, crash the computer, or
     other mischievous activity of the sort?

0c   Have you ever tried to speed up your computer by slowing down (or
     turning off) the memory refresh interrupt?

0d        Was the computer still running normally after 10 minutes?

0e   Have you been able to squeeze more bits out of floppy drive, hard drive,
     or any other block device beyond its normal compacity by some nifty
     programming?

0f   Have you ever dreamed about being in your program and suddenly find
     yourself in an infinite loop?

10   Do you wish you were a computer?

11   Have you ever created an AI program which can hold intelligent
     conversations?

12        Do you converse with this program more often than with people?

13   Have you quite thoroughly disassembled your computer and peripherals at
     least three times (make sure everything is in there, nothing is
     disappearing, etc.)?

14   Have you tried to immerse your CPU in liquid nitrogen to get it to run
     faster?

15        Did it work?

16   Have you ever successfully been able to modify your printer to be able
     to mimic a disk drive (using its memory)? 

17   Have you ever built a computer?

18        A massively parallel processing computer (>32767 chips) based on
          8-bit microprocessors?

19             Can it play a mean game of chess?

1a   Do you enjoy trying to create daemon processes which seek out and
     destroy other daemon processes?

1b   Have you ever created a viral detection program which replicates itself?

1c   Have you a direct brain-computer interface in which you always keep in
     touch with your computer (cordless, preferable)?

1d   If you were stranded on an island, would the most important thing you
     will need be your computer?

1e   Have you created a solar powered portable computer in case the
     batteries run down?



-- 
Shawn Oesterle ("antherea")  { oest...@wpi.wpi.edu }

"...I tend to think that there are only two kinds of people in 
the world anyway: those that oversimplify and those that don't."  -Jim Northrup

In article <12...@ulysses.att.com>, s...@ulysses.att.com (Steven M.
Bellovin) writes:
> In article <1990Apr30.0...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>,
ph...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes:
> } In article <12...@front.se> p...@front.se (Per Lindberg) writes:
> 
> } }I once looked inside a junked IBM 360 (some small model) which a
> } }friend had just bought. There was a whole big box full of punched
> } }cards made of plastic and with conducting wires printed on them.
> } }What the frotz is this for? Microcode?

> } ...  The cards you describe seem
> } like a reasonable pre-floppy way to distribute specialized ucode.
> 
> ... it wasn't just the specialized features, it was the entire
> instruction set.  Of the original 5 production models (30, 40, 50, 65,
> and 75), only the 360/75 used random logic; the other 4 were
> microcoded. 

The University of Waterloo had a 360/75 while I was a student, and I knew
then that it was not microcoded. But I also worked for a company called
Systems Dimensions in Ottawa which had a 360/85.
The important thing about the 85 was that it had a cache, but I thought
it also was not microcoded. Was it not an original production model?
Systems Dimensions had theirs from about 1971.

--------
Robert Biddle, Computer Science, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
Internet: Robert...@comp.vuw.ac.nz       Telecom: +64 4 721-000 ext. 8546