Knight TV and keyboard · PDP-10/its Wiki
2 points · Open discussionPDP-10
its
Assembly2017–2026
PDP-10 / its
its
Incompatible Timesharing System
23Distinct people
76Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
963GitHub stars
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Incompatible Timesharing System
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:24:48 PM UTC.
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HN mentions by year76 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-01-24 01:14:25 UTC to 2026-09-12 02:00:03 UTC.
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Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 1 | 7 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 19 | 2 | 17 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Incompatible Timesharing System
About ITS
ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System, is an operating system for
the PDP-10 computer family. It was created by hackers at MIT in the
1960s. The MIT site was shut down in 1990, but enthusiasts continue
to operate ITS systems to this day.
Some notable ITS features:
Hosted the first versions of Emacs, Zork, Macsyma, Maclisp, Scheme, and
multi-player Maze War
Virtual memory
User-space device drivers
Networking: TCP/IP, ARPAnet, Chaosnet
Transparent network file system
Terminal-independent text output
Graphical workstations
There is a mailing list for discussion about ITS. Go to
http://its.victor.se/mailman/listinfo/its-hackers_its.victor.se
for more information.
About this project
This repository contains source code, tools, and scripts to build an
ITS system from scratch.
The goals are:
To provide an automated build from start to end. No user
intervention is necessary.
To check which programs have source code, and which programs are missing
source code.
To ensure that we know how to build all programs.
To update programs with the latest bug fixes and enhancements.
To be able to set configurable options across the whole system, such
as host name, IP address, hardware devices.
The build currently runs on the SIMH and KLH10 emulators. Of course,
we'd be delighted to test this on a real KS10.
Building
To build ITS with this repository, you need some tools installed; see
the table below. Ensure all submodules are checked out, and then type
make EMULATOR=simh, make EMULATOR=pdp10-ka, make EMULATOR=pdp10-kl, make EMULATOR=pdp10-ks, or make EMULATOR=klh10. This will leave built files in the out directory,
some of which are disk images with ITS installed.
Emulator
Dependencies
klh10
git, c compiler, make, expect, curses, autoconf
simh
git, c compiler, make, expect, curses, autoconf, sdl2
pdp10-ka
git, c compiler, make, expect, curses, autoconf, sdl2, sdl2-image, sdl2-net, gtk3
pdp10-kl
git, c compiler, make, expect, curses, autoconf, sdl2, sdl2-image, gtk3
pdp10-ks
git, c compiler, make, expect, curses, autoconf, sdl2
Usage
To start ITS, type ./start. If you see KLH10#, type go and
Enter. If you see the DSKDMP prompt, type its, press Enter, and
then ESCG. If you use the pdp10-kl emulator there is no prompt
and you need to type ESCL ITS, press Enter, and then ESCG.
Eventually, you will see SYSTEM JOB USING THIS CONSOLE. You are now
ready to log in, so type CTRLZ. See doc/DDT.md for
a list of useful commands.
Alternatively to logging in directly in the system console window,
which will always be displaying daemon messages, you may prefer to
use a separate terminal session for logging in. To do this just
run telnet localhost <port> from another shell window and press
CTRLZ to log in there. The port should be determined as per this list:
Port
Type
Emulator
10000
TK10
pdp10-ka
10002
Datapoint kludge
pdp10-ka
10003
Morton box
pdp10-ka
10004
DZ11
simh, pdp10-ks
10007
DTE2
pdp10-kl
10008
DL10
(pdp10-kl in the future?)
To shut down ITS, type :lock and then 5down. Log yourself out to
avoid the 5 minute grace period: type :logout. When ITS writes
SHUTDOWN COMPLETE, it's safe to stop the emulator. Press CTRL\
to escape to the simulator command prompt and quit to close it. If
you had a separate telnet user session running you can similarly
press CTRL[ and then exit telnet.
ITS can optionally use some additional peripheral devices. To attach
a simulated GT40 graphics terminal, type ./start gt40. If you run
the KA10 emulator, you can use the Knight TV raster display by typing
./start tv11 tvcon. On a TV, type F1 instead of CTRLZ.
Here is an overview of the repository:
bin - PDP-10 binary files necessary to bootstrap the system.
build - build scripts.
conf - configuration for building ITS.
doc - documentation, most of which appear in the INFO system.
src - source code for ITS and all programs.
tools - build tools.
out - build output.
user - optional user files installed in ITS.
Terminal Emulators
Several emulators for terminals and peripheral processors are built
along with ITS. They can be started conveniently with the start
script, or separately. Not all terminal emulators are set up to work
with all PDP-10 emulators by default.
Name
Description
Type
klh10
pdp10-ka
pdp10-kl
pdp10-ks
simh
type340
Type 340
vector
no
yes
no
no
no
gt40
GT40 PDP-11
vector
no
yes
no
yes
yes
imlac
Imlac PDS-1
vector
no
yes
no
no
no
simh_imlac
Imlac PDS-1
vector
no
yes
no
no
no
tv11
Knight TV PDP-11
cpu
no
yes
no
no
no
tvcon
Knight TV console
raster
no
yes
no
no
no
datapoint
Datapoint 3300
text
no
yes
no
no
no
vt52
VT52
text
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
tek
Tektronix 4010
vector
no
yes
yes
no
no
Documentation
See the doc subdirectory for documentation.
There are some short introductions for beginners:
How to create a new user
DDT cheat sheet for Unix users
Basic editing with EMACS
TECO survival guide
DDT debugging newbie guide
Hello MIDAS
Hello Maclisp
Introduction to Muddle
DUMP and itstar
Games
Printing
Assembling ITS
Com link mode
Logo
PDP-6
Networking
A list of known ITS machines.
How ITS is built.
Applications
Some major applications:
Adventure, game
C10, C compiler
CLU, programming language.
DDT, debugger
Emacs, editor
Logo, interpreter
Mac Hack VI and Tech II, chess programs
Maclisp, interpreter and compiler
Muddle, interpreter
Macsyma, symbolic math
Maze War, game
Midas, assembler
Muscom and musrun, for playing music
PDP-11 simulator
Scheme, interpreter
Spacewar!, game
Stanford University Drawing System
TECO, editor
TOPS-10 and WAITS emulator
There is a detailed list of all installed programs.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
11 sourcesI built an implementation in PDP-10 assembly language a while back:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/lars/qrcode.8
In Creating a QR Code step by step>overshadowed individual
>collaborative
Say what? ITS, Emacs, MacLisp, Macsyma on top of MacLISP, Arpanet, SupDup and WAIS too. Remote process debugging and hooking, a Maclisp close to the future GNU Emacs' Elisp, proto-internet, AI, video terminals...
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/README.md
http://www.hakmem.org/
These have been built collaboratively, for sure.
GNU and Emacs brought that spirit back. Well, at least the tried:
- Open Adventure
- Emacs
- Elisp (and CLISP/sbcl with Common Lisp)
- GDB (A far cry from DDT at ITS, but this is Unix, nit the
- Maxima. Code form old Macsyma will still work as is except for Gnuplot calling parts, but the plot itself will be 100% the same.
Have fun.
In Ask HN: Why does current interest in retro computing focus on the early 80s?It's all at a longer post I linked to here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37974319
[1] http://www.stormtiger.org/bob/humor/pournell/story.html
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206151
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37723853
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37780515
[5] https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/sysnet/supdup....
In The Origin of Emacs in 1976CRTSTY was kind of like "screen", in that it ran a virtual terminal through something like a pseudo TTY. The terminal interpreted SUPDUP protocol into any terminal type that CRTSTY supported. And you could disconnect and reattach to it later to restore your processes, to change terminals or survive a flakey modem or ARPA connection dropping out.
But even without CRTSTY, ITS gave everyone the ability to reattach to their processes after they got disconnected, and even pass processes like Lisp interpreters and Zork games around from user to user to share like a joint, by detatching and reattaching them to different TTYs!
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/_info_/its.pri...
>VIII.B. CRTSTY
>For display terminals which are not handled directly by the
system there exists a program called CRTSTY. This provides the software
supp
Read the rest
ort to permit these terminals to take advantage of their display
characteristics. Among the terminals supported by CRTSTY are: ADM3's,
Concept 100's, Hazeltine 1500's, Perkins Elmer FOX's, Datamedias,
Control Data Corporation 713's, and a host of others. You should try
:INFO CRTSTY and :INFO TERMS to see if your terminal is included. If it
isn't, the maintainers of CRTSTY are usually willing to help you add it.
In the CRTSTY section of INFO the information you must provide to have a
new terminal supported is listed. You can communicate with the
maintainers of CRTSTY by sending mail to BUG-CRTSTY.
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/humor/jargon.6...
>SUPDUP v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the SUPDUP
program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special display
protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites. Sometimes
abbreviated to SD.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc734/
>NWG/RFC# 734 MRC 07-OCT-77 08:46 41953 SUPDUP Display Protocol Page 1 Network Working Group Mark Crispin Request for Comments 734 SU-AI NIC 41953 7 October 1977
>SUPDUP Protocol
>This document describes the SUPDUP protocol, a highly efficient display telnet protocol. It originally started as a private protocol between the ITS systems at MIT to allow a user at any one of these systems to use one of the others as a display. At the current writing, SUPDUP user programs also exist for Data Disc and Datamedia displays at SU-AI and for Datamedias at SRI-KL. The author is not aware of any SUPDUP servers other than at the four MIT ITS sites.
>The advantage of the SUPDUP protocol over an individual terminal's protocol is that SUPDUP defines a "virtual" or "software" display terminal that implements relevant cursor motion operations. The protocol is not built on any particular display terminal but rather on the set of functions common to all display terminals; hence it is completely device- independent. In addition, the protocol also provides for terminals which cannot handle certain operations, such as line or character insert/delete. In fact, it is more than this. It provides for terminals which are missing any set of features, all the way down to model 33 Teletypes.
>The advantage over the TELNET protocol is that SUPDUP takes advantage of the full capabilities of display terminals, although it also has the ability to run printing terminals.
https://its.victor.se/wiki/_media/ai_wp_235.pdf
>The SUPDUP protocol [Crispin 77] is a highly efficient display telnet protocol. The advantage over the TELNET protocol is that SUPDUP takes advantage of the full capabilities of display terminals, although it also has the ability to run printing terminals. When you use the SUPDUP protocol, you do not need to tell the remote host which you are connecting to what type of terminal you have or what the terminal's capabilities are. The host you are SUPDUPing from handles the actual display support for your terminal.
>Additionally, SUPDUP defines a network graphics protpcol [Stallman 78] which makes it easy for network hosts to draw pictures along in addition to text.
SUPDUP Graphics Extension:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/grphcs....
You didn't need CRTSTY to implement the SUPDUP protocol, but CRTSTY translated SUPDUP to standard terminal escape sequences, and provided buffering and optimization. Lisp machines and Knight TVs had their own SUPDUP terminal programs, and I made one for my Apple ][ in Forth.
SUPDUP had a line saving extension that RMS hacked into ITS Emacs, so it can stash lines on the screen in local memory before overpainting them, then almost instantly pop them back on the screen later, so you can scroll back and forth through text really fast at 300 baud (plus Devon McCullough made ZipMod with Huffman encoding to make it even faster on top of that):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15539983
I wrote a terminal emulator for the Apple ][ + Videx 80 column card in FORTH and reverse polish notation 6502 code, that supported SUPDUP including the line saving protocol that RMS hacked into ITS and EMACS (%TDSAV %TDRES), so Emacs could stash lines on the screen in a memory buffer (on the Apple's bank switched RAM card) and restore them later to paint the screen quickly when scrolling back and forth. (That was great at 300 baud!)
This is just the part of it that interprets SUPDUP codes -- layered on top of the rest of the terminal emulator that emulated H19 (VT52 + character/line insert/delete):
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/forth/supdup.f
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973838
At 300 baud over a congested ARPA connection, we had a lot of time to think about how to optimize terminal emulation while waiting for the screen to repaint...
When James Gosling later implemented his Unix version of Emacs, he created a super-hot screen update algorithm that automatically took into account the capabilities of terminals and the length of their escape codes and padding required (some slow terminals needed padding when performing line/character insert/delete operations, otherwise they would miss characters. It used dynamic programming to figure out the optimal way of updating the screen, which was really great at low baud rates like 300 or 1200 baud.
Read the paper and display.c code I linked to in the above linked comment, and see the wikipedia page on dynamic programming:
>James Gosling's Emacs screen redisplay algorithm also used similar "dynamic programming techniques" to compute the minimal cost path through a cost matrix of string edit operations (the costs depended i.e. on the number of characters to draw, length of the escape codes to insert/delete lines/characters, padding for slow terminals, etc).
[...]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37974319
The comments in this old PDP-10 SUPDUP code [5] are hilarious!
SUPDUP on ITS was so smart and opinionated, it had its own ideas about who was a loser and who was a winner, how to figure it out by checking INQUIR entries and relationships, and who it should never or always hassle about net-hopping (hopping through a PDP-10 over the net just to use it as a glorified terminal emulator).
It never hassled gumby or cstacy (because they were free to do whatever they wanted to, like flushing whiny annoying over-entitled alcoholic science fiction writers [1] [2] [3] [4]), but always hassled rms (because it was usually an imposter logging in as rms with password rms just to net hop through the system.)
[...]
;;; these people aren't hassled
wintab: irp x,,[gumby,alan,cstacy,cent,devon,dph,oaf,mly,jtw,jnc,klotz,cbf,sra,ed,swa,map,jbvb]
sixbit/x/
termin
winlen==.-wintab
;;; These people are always hassled
lostab: irp x,,[tk,hewitt,rms]
sixbit/x/
termin
loslen==.-lostab
[...]
Compile ITS and just run :macsyma at the DDT prompt (shell/debugger) from ITS:
https://github.com/pdp-10/its
The syntax it's the same, I even made a plot and 'printed' into the host from an ARDS output from the plot command, by converting the file into PPM->PNG or PPM->PDF.
This is a plot from Macsyma converted into PDF:
http://0x0.st/X-67.pdf
In Integral Calculator>MIT AI...
Not all, ITS and PDP10 can be emulated under Simh classic. Or you clone their github repo
https://github.com/PDP-10/its
and run
make download EMULATOR=pdp10-ka
Macsyma, Lisp, Emacs, Adventure... are still alive. And maybe tons of code lying in the disk image.
On truly lost stuff, I'd say the LSD-1 under the PDP10, which was a proto-vr/FPS walking around a wireframed town:
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2015.9.12/
More info:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/616
Yes, you can recreate it in a weekend with SDL2/C and basic trigonometry, but the original it's lost.
In Escaping the Digital Dark AgeThe Magic Switch – Modern Update
2 points · Open discussionHere's the source for DOCTOR from ITS -- it has a much less extensive set of foul words and doesn't get insulted:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/doc.102
I wrote this recently about Kent Pitman's work on Lisp, the MIT-AI Lab's ITS machines, Doctor, and Kenneth Colby's "PARRY" (the paranoid patient):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38402813
[...]
And here's what happened with he (manually by typing) hooked it up with Kenneth Colby's "PARRY" (the paranoid patient):
https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/funnies.html
>Parrying Programs
>I didn't write the original ELIZA program, although my Lisp class was taught by Joseph Weizenbaum, who did. I later wrote a very elaborate program of similar kind, which I just called DOCTOR, in order to play with some of the ideas.
>At some point, I noticed there was a program at Stanfor
Read the rest
d called PARRY (the paranoid patient), by Kenneth Colby. I understand from Wikipedia's PARRY entry that Weizenbaum's ELIZA and PARRY were connected at one point, although I never saw that. I never linked PARRY with my DOCTOR directly, but I did once do it indirectly through a manual typist. Part of my record of this exchange was garbled, but this is a partial transcript, picking up in the middle. Mostly it just shows PARRY was a better patient than my DOCTOR program was a doctor.
>I have done light editing to remove the typos we made (rubbed out characters were echoed back in square brackets).
>Also, I couldn't find documentation to confirm this, but my belief has always been that the numeric values after each line are PARRY's level of Shame (SH), Anger (AN), Fear (FR), Disgust (DS), Insecurity (IN), and Joy (J).—KMP
[...]
Here's what happened when I hooked up the output of RMS to the input of EMACS DOCTOR:
http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
Here's some more discussion about having a TURIST account ITS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518273
And the MIT-AI Lab Tourist Policy:
https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b...
Which Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET for blatantly violating by being a entitled drunken abusive pain in the ass to lab members, as well as abusing the ARPANET and MIT computers for commercial purposes:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206151
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/pourne-smut.html
"I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone." -Jerry Pournelle
"One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee." -Jerry Pournelle
Kent Pitman also wrote the ANIMAL guessing game in spring of 1978:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.r...
It would guess your animal by asking you yes or no questions that distinguish it from other animals in a tree, and if it couldn't guess it, then it asked you how it can tell the difference between your animal and the animal it guessed, then it would parse the sentence and put it into the tree at that node as a question, thus learning to guess your animal next time.
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.o...
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.s...
It had an extensive list of foul language words:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
My animal was the Pope, and my distinguishing
Read the rest
question had to do with shitting in the woods, and after being warned I continued to use foul language, so it got mad at me, and sent email to KMP and cc'd me, telling on me for saying terrible things to it:
(DEFUN HANDLE-FOUL-LANGUAGE (()) ;REPLY
(OUTPUT-BIND
(DISPLAY
(CASEQ *FOUL-FLAG*
((0) '"Please watch your language.")
((1) '"Hey! Watch your tongue. I warned you before.")
((2) '"Will you watch it with the dirty talk? Thanks.")
(T '"Aw, come on. Stop talking so dirty...")))
(SETQ *FOUL-FLAG* T)
(SETQ *APOLOGY-FLAG* NIL)
(SETQ *FOUL-COUNT* (1+ *FOUL-COUNT*))
(COND ((> *FOUL-COUNT* *FOUL-COUNT-MAX*)
(SEND-MAIL `((TO: KMP)
(CC: ,(STATUS USERID))
(SUBJECT: (,(CONCAT *PLAYER-NAME* '|'s|)
"Foul language!")))
`(,*FIRST-NAME* "said terrible things to me.
I'm going to be pretty mad at"
,*PLAYER-OBJECT-PRONOUN* "until"
,*PLAYER-SUBJECT-PRONOUN* "apologizes."))
(REMEMBER 'FOUL)
(DISPLAY '"I give up. You're hopeless!")
(SUICIDE)))))
And it would not play with me until I apologized:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
(DEF-QUESTION MAD (X) ()
IF (MATCHES X (ARE YOU (*) (?= ANGRY?) (?= PREPOSITION?) ME (*))
(ARE YOU (*) (?= ANGRY?)))
THEN (COND (*FOUL-FLAG*
(COND (*FORGIVE-FLAG*
(COND (*APOLOGY-FLAG*
(DISPLAY '"Yes, I am still a bit mad."))
(T
(DISPLAY '"Yes, I am very mad. Your
language has really been in the
gutter today."))))
(T
(DISPLAY '"Yes. Your language has been atrocious."))))
(*FORGIVE-FLAG*
(DISPLAY '"No, but I was earlier!"))
(*APOLOGY-FLAG*
(DISPLAY '"You should really see someone about this. No,
I'm really not mad at you. I wish you'd stop
apologizing for nothing..."))
(T
(DISPLAY '"I have nothing to be mad at you for.")))
T)
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
(DEFUN RECEIVE-APOLOGY ()
(COND ((AND (NOT *FOUL-FLAG*) (NOT *FORGIVE-FLAG*))
(COND ((NOT *APOLOGY-FLAG*)
(DISPLAY
(SELECT-ONE-OF '("I don't know why you are apologizing."
"You don't owe me an apology."))))
(T
(DISPLAY
(SELECT-ONE-OF '("All right! Stop apologizing."
"You got some sort of guilt complex?"
"Perhaps you should see a priest.")))))
(SETQ *APOLOGY-FLAG* T))
((NOT *FOUL-FLAG*)
(DISPLAY
(SELECT-ONE-OF '("I forgave you already!"
"Yes, yes. I forgave you!")))
(SETQ *APOLOGY-FLAG* T))
((NOT *FORGIVE-FLAG*)
(DISPLAY '"All right. I accept your apology...")
(SETQ *FOUL-FLAG* NIL)
(SETQ *FORGIVE-FLAG* T)
(FORGIVE 'FOUL '"using foul language"))
((NOT *APOLOGY-FLAG*)
(DISPLAY '"Sorry, I gave you your chance and you blew it.")
(SETQ *APOLOGY-FLAG* T))
(T
(DISPLAY
(SELECT-ONE-OF
'("OK. Since you're being so insistent. I accept
your apology"
"OK. That sounds sincere to me.")))
(SETQ *APOLOGY-FLAG* NIL)
(SETQ *FOUL-FLAG* NIL)
(SETQ *FORGIVE-FLAG* T)
(FORGIVE 'FOUL '"using foul language"))))
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
(COND ((SETQ *FOUL-FLAG* (REMEMBER? 'FOUL))
(DISPLAY '"By the way -- we weren't
on good terms the last time we played.
I hope you have learned your lesson now.")))
I finally sent KMP and ANIMAL email sincerely apologizing:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.b...
Date: 9 July 1982 03:49-EDT
From: Donald E. Hopkins <A2DEH at MIT-MC>
To: ANIMAL at MIT-MC
cc: KMP at MIT-MC
Aww, gee... I'm sorry... I didn't realy mean it. I was just
asking questions pertaining to popes and bears and woods, and you
got all excited... Some AI program you are if you don't know what
religion a bear is or where the Pope ... Ahem... As I was saying,
I'm sorry and I will never do it again.
-Don
It tried to guess your pronoun from your name, but it would ask you if it couldn't guess.
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/animal.1...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27332340
DonHopkins on May 30, 2021 | prev | next [–]
Here's the source code for Kent Pitman's "DOCTOR" in MACLISP, which was of course inspired by ELIZA. (Joseph Weizenbaum taught Kent Pitman LISP!)
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/doc.102
And here's what happened with he (manually by typing) hooked it up with Kenneth Colby's "PARRY" (the paranoid patient):
https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/funnies.html
>Parrying Programs
>I didn't write the original ELIZA program, although my Lisp class was taught by Joseph Weizenbaum, who did. I later wrote a very elaborate program of similar kind, which I just called DOCTOR, in order to play with some of the ideas.
>At some point, I noticed there was a program at Stanford called PARRY (the paranoid patient), by Kenneth Colby. I understand from W
Read the rest
ikipedia's PARRY entry that Weizenbaum's ELIZA and PARRY were connected at one point, although I never saw that. I never linked PARRY with my DOCTOR directly, but I did once do it indirectly through a manual typist. Part of my record of this exchange was garbled, but this is a partial transcript, picking up in the middle. Mostly it just shows PARRY was a better patient than my DOCTOR program was a doctor.
>I have done light editing to remove the typos we made (rubbed out characters were echoed back in square brackets).
>Also, I couldn't find documentation to confirm this, but my belief has always been that the numeric values after each line are PARRY's level of Shame (SH), Anger (AN), Fear (FR), Disgust (DS), Insecurity (IN), and Joy (J).—KMP
[...]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38402813
DonHopkins 44 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The Revival of Medley/Interlisp
That's right, it's just a throw-away quip, but if you want the deep nuanced story and inside history of Common Lisp and comparison with Scheme, Kent Pitman is the one to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Pitman
Index of Kent Pitman's Papers:
https://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/
Scheme or Lisp? Kent M Pitman explains the deep philosophical differences.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6fa5r/scheme_o...
Kent Pitman on Scheme or Lisp?:
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/TEk4O4-zsA8/m/H...
Common Lisp: The Untold Story:
https://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html
Why Wolfram Mathematica did not use Lisp (2002) (ymeme.com):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797936
https://web.archive.org/web/20110122140154/http://www.ymeme....
Kent Pitman's essay on why lisp doesn't have copying of lists.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/MmtQreo3PCM
Parenthetically Speaking with Kent Pitman: The Best Intentions: EQUAL Rights -- And Wrongs -- In Lisp:
https://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/EQUAL.html
Kent M. Pitman Answers On Lisp And Much More:
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/11/03/1726251/kent-...
Kent M. Pitman's Second Wind:
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/11/13/0420226/kent-...
Tutorial on Good Lisp Programming Style: Peter Norvig, Sun Microsystems Labs Inc; Kent Pitman, Harlequin Inc.:
https://www.cs.umd.edu/~nau/cmsc421/norvig-lisp-style.pdf
Notes from the ANSI standardisation process:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72414053/notes-from-the-...
Issue CLOS-CONDITIONS Writeup:
https://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Issues/iss...
On Pitman's “Special forms in Lisp” (2011) (kazimirmajorinc.com):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29947329
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29954993
DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2022 | parent | next [–]
Kent Pitman also wrote the "Revised Maclisp Manual (Saturday Evening Edition)" aka the "Pitmanual".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Moon
http://www.nhplace.com/kent/publications.html
>In 1983, I finished the multi-year task of writing The Revised Maclisp Manual (Saturday Evening Edition), sometimes known as The Pitmanual, and published it as a Technical Report at MIT's Lab for Computer Science. In 2007, I finished dusting that document off and published it to the web as the Sunday Morning Edition.
http://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/
Not to be confused with David Moon who wrote the "MacLISP Reference Manual" aka the "Moonual", and who co-authored the "Lisp Machine Manual" with Richard Stallman and Daniel Weinreb, which had big bold lettering that ran around the spine and back of the cover, so it was known as the "LISP CHINE NUAL" (reading only letters on the front).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15185827
https://hanshuebner.github.io/lmman/title.xml
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15186998
DonHopkins on Sept 6, 2017 | next [–]
The cover of the Lisp Machine Manual had the title printed in all caps diagonally wrapped around the spine, so on the front you could only read "LISP CHINE NUAL". So the title was phonetically pronounced: "Lisp Sheen Nual".
My friend Nick made a run of custom silkscreened orange LISP CHINE NUAL t-shirts (most places won't print around the side like that).
https://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Issues/iss...
I was wearing mine in Amsterdam at Dappermarkt on Queen's Day (when everyone's supposed to wear orange, so I didn't stand out), and some random hacker (who turned out to be a university grad student) came up to me at random and said he recognized my t-shirt!
http://www.textfiles.com/hacking/hakdic.txt
CHINE NUAL (sheen'yu-:l) noun.
The reference manual for the Lisp Machine, a computer designed at MIT especially for running the LISP language. It is called this because the title, LISP MACHINE MANUAL, appears in big block letters -- wrapped around the cover in such a way that you have to open the cover out flat to see the whole thing. If you look at just the front cover, you see only part of the title, and it reads "LISP CHINE NUAL"
toomanybeersies on Sept 7, 2017 | parent | next [–]
Link to an image of the manual, for the lazy:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/101/264672507_307376d26c_z.jpg
[...]
;;; Notes about CLI interrupts and eval-in-other-lisp:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20267415
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38061207
>Here's Kent Pittman's :TEACH;LISP from ITS, which is a MACLISP program that teaches you how to program in MACLISP. (That's "Man And Computer Lisp" from "Project MAC", not "Macintosh Lisp".)