61–70 of 87 posts
OT: This issue brought back some good memories as I saved most of my summer job pay and bought my first PC - a SuperBrain II, which is advertised on page 12. I mostly wrote programs on it using Turbo Pascal.
Compare: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08/page/n303/... and https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08-rescan/pag...
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08/page/n349/... and https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08-rescan/pag...
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08/page/n363/... and https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08-rescan/pag...
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08/page/n231/... and https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08-rescan/pag...
I remember this issue. I used to read Byte magazine cover-to-cover, multiple times per issue. I also built many of the circuits they published and learned a tremendous amount from both hardware and coding articles. It's hard for people today to imagine a monthly publication with over 500 pages, yet that's what Byte became. It was fantastic. I still have a box full of articles I clipped before discarding my collection…
Byte was great, but Creative Computing and Dr. Dobb's Journal were the ones I REALLY enjoyed and looked forward to every month.
I loved Byte magazine. I vaguely remember that cover, though I never worked with Logo. OT: This issue brought back some good memories as I saved most of my summer job pay and bought my first PC - a SuperBrain II, which is advertised on page 12. I mostly wrote programs on it using Turbo Pascal.
After the BBS went under, the SuperBrain was passed around between various users who wanted to hold onto that piece of shared history. Right before COVID I was able to return it to the original sysop who was shocked it was still around some 30 years later.
From the mid eighties onward, BYTE was instrumental in steering me towards Computer Science with inspirational articles by people like Dick Pountain and Steven Ciarcia (and, to a much lesser degree, Pournelle, whose articles seemingly mainly consisted of him breaking stuff and being astounded by tech supporters who did not know Who He Was). It filled for a while, together with Dr. Dobb's Journal, a space between the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for that! Here's some more stuff I posted before in this previous discussion about the history of Logo: History of Logo: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1623m1p3 HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052300 Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23054174 Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 1…
Your LLOGO copy was for an older version of Maclisp, but eventually we (Eric and I) managed to port it over to New IO. It works fine and displays on an emulated Knight TV. (Itself a tour de force in emulation: the TV PDP-11 code runs on an emulator sharing its Unibus with the PDP-10 emulator.) We also have an early PDP-11 Logo, an even earlier BBN PDP-10 Logo, and a later Apple II Logo (not the Terrapin version). I a…
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608
https://donhopkins.com/home/TurtlesAndDefense.pdf
>TURTLES AND DEFENSE
>Introduction
>At Terrapin, we feel that our two main products, the Terrapin Turtle ®, and the Terrapin Logo Language for the Apple II, bring together the fields of robotics and AI to provide hours of entertainment for the whole family. We are sure that an enlightened application of our products can uniquely impact the electronic battlefield of the future. [...]
>Guidance
>The Terrapin Turtle ®, like many missile systems in use today, is wire-guided. It has the wire-guided missile's robustness with respect to ECM, and, unlike beam-riding missiles, or most active-homing systems, it has no radar signature to invite enemy missiles to home in on it or its launch platform. However, the Turtle does not suffer from that bugaboo of wire-guided missiles, i.e., the lack of a fire-and-forget capability.
>Often ground troops are reluctant to use wire-guided antitank weapons because of the need for line-of-sight contact with the target until interception is accomplished. The Turtle requires no such human guidance; once the computer controlling it has been programmed, the Turtle performs its mission without the need of human intervention. Ground troops are left free to scramble for cover. [...]
>Because the Terrapin Turtle ® is computer-controlled, military data processing technicians can write arbitrarily baroque programs that will cause it to do pretty much unpredictable things. Even if an enemy had access to the programs that guided a Turtle Task Team ® , it is quite likely that they would find them impossible to understand, especially if they were written in ADA. In addition, with judicious use of the Turtle's touch sensors, one could, theoretically, program a large group of turtles to simulate Brownian motion. The enemy would hardly attempt to predict the paths of some 10,000 turtles bumping into each other more or less randomly on their way to performing their mission. Furthermore, we believe that the spectacle would have a demoralizing effect on enemy ground troops. [...]
>Munitions
>The Terrapin Turtle ® does not currently incorporate any munitions, but even civilian versions have a downward-defense capability. The Turtle can be programmed to attempt to run over enemy forces on recognizing them, and by raising and lowering its pen at about 10 cycles per second, puncture them to death.
>Turtles can easily be programmed to push objects in a preferred direction. Given this capability, one can easily envision a Turtle discreetly nudging a hand grenade into an enemy camp, and then accelerating quickly away. With the development of ever smaller fission devices, it does not seem unlikely that the Turtle could be used for delivery of tactical nuclear weapons. [...]
Probably unrelated but I really just love archive.org efforts to preserve knowledge, even if trivial, mundane or pop. The other day I was in nostalgia mode and wanted to play again Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 and they are perfectly available on archive.org in the abandonware section, comfortably packed in a zip file with even copy protection removed (this applies to MI2, MI1 didn't have any).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your LLOGO copy was for an older version of Maclisp, but eventually we (Eric and I) managed to port it over to New IO. It works fine and displays on an emulated Knight TV. (Itself a tour de force in emulation: the TV PDP-11 code runs on an emulator sharing its Unibus with the PDP-10 emulator.) We also have an early PDP-11 Logo, an even earlier BBN PDP-10 Logo, and a later Apple II Logo (not the Terrapin version). I a…
Do you have the specs for the infamous military Terrapin Snapping Turtle proposed to the Department of Defense? https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608 https://donhopkins.com/home/TurtlesAndDefense.pdf >TURTLES AND DEFENSE >Introduction >At Terrapin, we feel that our two main products, the Terrapin Turtle ®, and the Terrapin Logo Language for the Apple II, bring together the fields of robotics and AI to provid…
For all the Logo fans out here, here are some more Logo resources: 1. IBM PC Logo executable and manual (1983): https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-logo/100 2. Atari Logo executable and manuals (1983): https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Logo 3. JSLogo (2009-2021): https://www.calormen.com/jslogo/ 4. Logo Exchange (1982-1999): https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/resources/nlx/ 5. Matrix bridge to Libera Chat…
For all the Logo fans out here, here are some more Logo resources: 1. IBM PC Logo executable and manual (1983): https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-logo/100 2. Atari Logo executable and manuals (1983): https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Logo 3. JSLogo (2009-2021): https://www.calormen.com/jslogo/ 4. Logo Exchange (1982-1999): https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/resources/nlx/ 5. Matrix bridge to Libera Chat…
Thank you for that! Here's some more stuff I posted before in this previous discussion about the history of Logo: History of Logo: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1623m1p3 HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052300 Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23054174 Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 1…
Here's a new link for you: Logo in space. It uses Minsky's circle algorithm for trigonometry. https://www.playfulinvention.com/portfolio/crickets-in-space...