This is G o o g l e's cache of http://richard.levitte.org/hacks/computersongs/SONG19.TXT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting.


Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content.
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: levitte

Title    : A Song of Computation
Author   : Tony Duell
Original : A Song of Reproduction
Group    : Flanders and Swann
Intro    : The processor 'of storage 4 k byte' is (of course) a Philips P850,
           a minicomputer noted for its limited memory (4 k bytes was the 
           maximum), RISC-like instruction set, and total lack of speed. 
           After that, the PDP11/45 was a great improvement
           EI set = Extended Instruction Set, i.e. the XOR, Multiply and
	   Divide instructions etc
           DW11-B was a DEC option to use Q-Bus cards on a UNIBUS PDP11. They 
           are much desired by PDP11 enthusiasts, although they can cause
           problems
           NXM error = Non eXistant Memory error - what happens if there is a
           bus time-out during a DMA transfer
           Don't try to make too much sense of the spoken part in the middle
           It makes more sense than the original, anyway
Song     :

I had a little processor
With storage 4 K byte
And with an octal program
It ran throughout the night
And then they optimised it
It was much faster then
And we loaded Fortran Programs
To make it slow again

Today for computation
I'm as eager as can be
Count me among the faithful fans
of high end P - D - P

High end PDP
45's the one for me
With cartridge disk and EI set
and 6 foot rack mount cabinet
floating point boards too
complete with M M U
All the lowest bits either clear or set
What they mean now I quite forget
Still there's enough range there for national debt
With my high end PDP

(spoken)
Who configured this for you anyway?
DEC field service ?!?!?
Ooooh what a shoddy job they made of it!
Suprised they let you run that configuration on this processor, the priorities
are all wrong. If you move the tape drive down the bus after the console port,
and then re-assign the address of the system disk, then you'll still only get
adequate performance if you run modified software
I see you've got your system disk on the Q-Bus! Take that though a DW11-B bus
convertor, and via your A-leg Mux into the ALU, If you're running multi-user,
you're going to loose grants. Try to load the OS that way and what'll you get
A NXM error!

High end PDP
RSX version 3
I've a shell right here that you won't escape
On miles of 9-track recording tape
18 bit address
Will prove a great success
With the console switch, at a single touch
The lisiting comes in double dutch
But I never did care for data much
With my high end PDP