Michigan Terminal System

[John Wilson-6]

Hello there!  Looking at the archives it seems this question comes up every
so often with no real answer, but it's been a while so I'll ask it again:

Is it possible to get ahold of MTS for use under emulation?  If it still
isn't, does anyone know what the obstacle(s) is/are?  With so many different
organizations contributing to it (all of which have probably lost interest
in future use by now), I'm sure the ownership is a bit hard to pin down but
it never hurts to start asking nicely and hope the stars eventually align.
I still have my moldy old stack of programming manuals and would love to
re-live the old days of staying up all night messing with *ASMH...
(And I'm sure that's legal snag #1!)

Thanks!

John Wilson (ID=ETS4 at RPI eons ago)
D Bit

[gavineadie]

John .. I'm not sure what the legal situation is with respect to MTS  
itself (though you are right about ASMH -- it is not a part of the MTS  
distribution for licensing reasons) -- it is not in the public domain,  
but can't be far outside it!  On the hopeful side, MTS does run fine  
in Hercules (I run it on my MacBook Pro).

MTS was made available to universities and research locations in what  
we called "distributions".  The last of these was D6.0 and that  
distribution has been copied to AWS tapes.  I've used those tapes to  
create a boot disk and have run MTS off that disk.  D6.0 was a formal  
release of MTS, and ought to have been the best version to make  
available for that reason.  However, I've found at least one bug that  
inhibits serious use -- the $PERMIT command crashes.

There is another MTS version, not a formal distribution, but a  
snapshot of the version running in Ann Arbor (and probably RPI) when  
it was decommissioned.  That version is more modern than D6.0, but  
suffers from having personal and private information embedded in  
several user accounts.  I don't know how much work it would be to  
sanitize that.

The D6.0 boot disk is about 600 MB -- the later snapshot is about  
twice that, though I think there's quite a bit of empty space in it.  
A big obstacle to using MTS is that it's not like a personal computer  
operating system -- you need to have the arcane skills of the system  
operator to get it started.  It's not too difficult to get a simple  
boot disk up and running (about three pages of instructions) to the  
point where you see the block MTS on a 3270 screen, but setting up  
accounts and all the stuff that was done by staff behind the scenes  
needs to be done by you if you want to get further.

I'm on vacation at the moment and will be back in Ann Arbor, in a week  
or so.  I'll talk to buddies when I get back and see if I can add any  
more encouraging words to this story .. Gavin Eadie
_________________________________________________

On Oct 28, 2009, at 2:43 AM, John Wilson wrote:

> Hello there! Looking at the archives it seems this question comes up  
> every
> so often with no real answer, but it's been a while so I'll ask it  
> again:
>
> Is it possible to get ahold of MTS for use under emulation? If it  
> still
> isn't, does anyone know what the obstacle(s) is/are? With so many  
> different
> organizations contributing to it (all of which have probably lost  
> interest
> in future use by now), I'm sure the ownership is a bit hard to pin  
> down but
> it never hurts to start asking nicely and hope the stars eventually  
> align.
> I still have my moldy old stack of programming manuals and would  
> love to
> re-live the old days of staying up all night messing with *ASMH...
> (And I'm sure that's legal snag #1!)
>
> Thanks!
>
> John Wilson (ID=ETS4 at RPI eons ago)
> D Bit

[Michael Kerpan]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gavin Eadie <gavineadie@...> wrote:

>
> The D6.0 boot disk is about 600 MB -- the later snapshot is about
> twice that, though I think there's quite a bit of empty space in it.
> A big obstacle to using MTS is that it's not like a personal computer
> operating system -- you need to have the arcane skills of the system
> operator to get it started. It's not too difficult to get a simple
> boot disk up and running (about three pages of instructions) to the
> point where you see the block MTS on a 3270 screen, but setting up
> accounts and all the stuff that was done by staff behind the scenes
> needs to be done by you if you want to get further.
>
> I'm on vacation at the moment and will be back in Ann Arbor, in a week
> or so. I'll talk to buddies when I get back and see if I can add any
> more encouraging words to this story .. Gavin Eadie

Wow, so MTS is preserved and available in a format that could be
emulated? Does this mean that, given, clearance from the legal types,
MTS might someday become available for general hobbyist use? Cool.

Mike













Wow

[rhtatum-2]

As long as we're talking about cool software systems that arelost/not lost, does anyone know the current ststus of Orvyl and Wylbur? What about Algol-W? Mark W. and I tried to find Algol-W a while back, but it seems to be lost for sure-- a real shame.

Ron Tatum
ginal Message -----
  From: Michael Kerpan
  To: hercules-390@...
  Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 1:29 PM
  Subject: Re: [hercules-390] Michigan Terminal System


    On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gavin Eadie <gavineadie@...> wrote:
  >
  > The D6.0 boot disk is about 600 MB -- the later snapshot is about
  > twice that, though I think there's quite a bit of empty space in it.
  > A big obstacle to using MTS is that it's not like a personal computer
  > operating system -- you need to have the arcane skills of the system
  > operator to get it started. It's not too difficult to get a simple
  > boot disk up and running (about three pages of instructions) to the
  > point where you see the block MTS on a 3270 screen, but setting up
  > accounts and all the stuff that was done by staff behind the scenes
  > needs to be done by you if you want to get further.
  >
  > I'm on vacation at the moment and will be back in Ann Arbor, in a week
  > or so. I'll talk to buddies when I get back and see if I can add any
  > more encouraging words to this story .. Gavin Eadie

  Wow, so MTS is preserved and available in a format that could be
  emulated? Does this mean that, given, clearance from the legal types,
  MTS might someday become available for general hobbyist use? Cool.

  Mike

  Wow


 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Dave Wade]

I think Algol-W is lost unless some one at Newcastle kept a tape. I am
actually surprised they havn't.

The latest Orvyl and Wylbur are still deemed to be commercial but the source
to the old MVS/TSO implementations are I think in the files section of the
MVS group. I have also had an old version of the CMS Wylbur running on
VM/370. Its not very exciting. There is alos a version here:-

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/support/wylorv/

But I gather it needs care on fixing as it been damaged by the ASCII/EBCDIC
translation.

I would also like to know if any one has the APL Type/III code, or CSMP/360
as I can't find either despite intense searching. I do have the IBM1130 CSMP
but its not the same program as CSMP/360...

Dave
G4UGM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: hercules-390@...
> [mailto:hercules-390@...] On Behalf Of rhtatum
> Sent: 28 October 2009 20:32
> To: hercules-390@...
> Subject: Re: [hercules-390] Michigan Terminal System
>
>
> As long as we're talking about cool software systems that
> arelost/not lost, does anyone know the current ststus of
> Orvyl and Wylbur? What about Algol-W? Mark W. and I tried to
> find Algol-W a while back, but it seems to be lost for sure--
> a real shame.
>
> Ron Tatum
> ginal Message -----
>   From: Michael Kerpan
>   To: hercules-390@...
>   Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 1:29 PM
>   Subject: Re: [hercules-390] Michigan Terminal System
>
>
>     On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gavin Eadie
> <gavineadie@...> wrote:
>   >
>   > The D6.0 boot disk is about 600 MB -- the later snapshot is about
>   > twice that, though I think there's quite a bit of empty
> space in it.
>   > A big obstacle to using MTS is that it's not like a
> personal computer
>   > operating system -- you need to have the arcane skills of
> the system
>   > operator to get it started. It's not too difficult to get a simple
>   > boot disk up and running (about three pages of
> instructions) to the
>   > point where you see the block MTS on a 3270 screen, but setting up
>   > accounts and all the stuff that was done by staff behind
> the scenes
>   > needs to be done by you if you want to get further.
>   >
>   > I'm on vacation at the moment and will be back in Ann
> Arbor, in a week
>   > or so. I'll talk to buddies when I get back and see if I
> can add any
>   > more encouraging words to this story .. Gavin Eadie
>
>   Wow, so MTS is preserved and available in a format that could be
>   emulated? Does this mean that, given, clearance from the
> legal types,
>   MTS might someday become available for general hobbyist use? Cool.
>
>   Mike
>
>   Wow
>
>
>  
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Community email addresses:
>   Post message: hercules-390@...
>   Subscribe:    hercules-390-subscribe@...
>   Unsubscribe:  hercules-390-unsubscribe@...
>   List owner:   hercules-390-owner@...
>
> Files and archives at:
>   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
>
> Get the latest version of Hercules from:
>   http://www.hercules-390.org
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

[Harold Grovesteen-2]

Dave Wade wrote:

>I think Algol-W is lost unless some one at Newcastle kept a tape. I am
>actually surprised they havn't.
>
>The latest Orvyl and Wylbur are still deemed to be commercial but the source
>to the old MVS/TSO implementations are I think in the files section of the
>MVS group. I have also had an old version of the CMS Wylbur running on
>VM/370. Its not very exciting. There is alos a version here:-
>
>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/support/wylorv/
>
>But I gather it needs care on fixing as it been damaged by the ASCII/EBCDIC
>translation.
>
>I would also like to know if any one has the APL Type/III code,
>

That would be fascinating to get ones hand on. I started programming
with APL.

>or CSMP/360
>as I can't find either despite intense searching. I do have the IBM1130 CSMP
>but its not the same program as CSMP/360...
>
>Dave
>G4UGM
>
>
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: hercules-390@...
>>[mailto:hercules-390@...] On Behalf Of rhtatum
>>Sent: 28 October 2009 20:32
>>To: hercules-390@...
>>Subject: Re: [hercules-390] Michigan Terminal System
>>
>>
>>As long as we're talking about cool software systems that
>>arelost/not lost, does anyone know the current ststus of
>>Orvyl and Wylbur? What about Algol-W? Mark W. and I tried to
>>find Algol-W a while back, but it seems to be lost for sure--
>>a real shame.
>>
>>Ron Tatum
>>ginal Message -----
>>  From: Michael Kerpan
>>  To: hercules-390@...
>>  Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 1:29 PM
>>  Subject: Re: [hercules-390] Michigan Terminal System
>>
>>
>>    On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gavin Eadie
>><gavineadie@...> wrote:
>>  >
>>  > The D6.0 boot disk is about 600 MB -- the later snapshot is about
>>  > twice that, though I think there's quite a bit of empty
>>space in it.
>>  > A big obstacle to using MTS is that it's not like a
>>personal computer
>>  > operating system -- you need to have the arcane skills of
>>the system
>>  > operator to get it started. It's not too difficult to get a simple
>>  > boot disk up and running (about three pages of
>>instructions) to the
>>  > point where you see the block MTS on a 3270 screen, but setting up
>>  > accounts and all the stuff that was done by staff behind
>>the scenes
>>  > needs to be done by you if you want to get further.
>>  >
>>  > I'm on vacation at the moment and will be back in Ann
>>Arbor, in a week
>>  > or so. I'll talk to buddies when I get back and see if I
>>can add any
>>  > more encouraging words to this story .. Gavin Eadie
>>
>>  Wow, so MTS is preserved and available in a format that could be
>>  emulated? Does this mean that, given, clearance from the
>>legal types,
>>  MTS might someday become available for general hobbyist use? Cool.
>>
>>  Mike
>>
>>  Wow
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------
>>
>>Community email addresses:
>>  Post message: hercules-390@...
>>  Subscribe:    hercules-390-subscribe@...
>>  Unsubscribe:  hercules-390-unsubscribe@...
>>  List owner:   hercules-390-owner@...
>>
>>Files and archives at:
>>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
>>
>>Get the latest version of Hercules from:
>>  http://www.hercules-390.org
>>
>>Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Community email addresses:
>  Post message: hercules-390@...
>  Subscribe:    hercules-390-subscribe@...
>  Unsubscribe:  hercules-390-unsubscribe@...
>  List owner:   hercules-390-owner@...
>
>Files and archives at:
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390
>
>Get the latest version of Hercules from:
>  http://www.hercules-390.org
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>  
>

[redacted370]

--- In hercules-390@..., "Dave Wade" <g4ugm@...> wrote:
>
> I think Algol-W is lost unless some one at Newcastle kept a tape. I am
> actually surprised they havn't.

Sorry if this is posted more than once, Yahoo groups sucks.

Someone may want to ask Scott A. Moore, samiam@.... He tracked down all sorts of good old stuff on Pascal (see http://moorecad.com/standardpascal/CDC6000pascal.html), so he may have come across Algol-W or will know of someone who can help.