household archaology

[rmd]

so, as part of clauclauclaudia's imminent move-in, i'm outcrufting, which includes going thru a crapload of books.

found in the pile of books: one 1979 "advanced d&d" dm's guide. with a computer punchcard in it as a bookmark.

ETA, additional things: DEC's "introduction to minicomputer networks" (1975). 20 year old issues of OMNI magazine. 20 year old issues of "on our backs" (yum).

Comments

[wrog]

I still have my older brother's DECsystem-10 Mathematical Programming Languages Manual ca. 1972 - has 3 sections on Fortran IV, BASIC and Algol, respectively.

I particularly like how Algol section expends text on important new programming techniques like Jenson's Device.

I'll see your 10 and lower it to 8!

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= My high school had a PDP-8. I had no idea that it was a really old machine until I went looking for some documentation. Somewhere in the back of the school's textbook supply room was a manual from 1969.

It was so old, the pages were yellowed. It was so old, "documentation" meant learning the assembly language (BASIC was added later).

The book had a very welcoming title, though (Introduction to Programming), and was extremely well-written. Somehow it made one of the nuttiest assembly languages seem easy.