bzotto
Experienced Member
While recovering data from a small collection of 1970s paper punch tape, I discovered a long tape that appears to contain source for a 1976 port of Motorola's 6800 cross assembler in TENET BASIC. This was unexpected and also unusually interesting-- TENET BASIC was a highly extended version of BASIC for the TENET 210 timesharing mainframe from c.1971. The computer was made by a company out of Sunnyvale CA which apparently only manufactured one (1) production unit before going bust; that one was bought and used by the State of California. Bitsavers has several pieces of documentation for the machine. (Fun fact: Wozniak worked at TENET briefly in his first non-student gig.)
Anyway, the BASIC is pretty sophisticated so this was a neat find. I uploaded the contents of the tape to archive.org:
Contains the raw binary and a lightly cleaned up text format for easier perusal. Enjoy!
What is curious here for me is why this particular software exists in the first place. The date at the top of the code is 7/1976. By that time, TENET the company was long gone and the single production unit was in use by the state of CA (transportation/roads/bridges division apparently, which today is called CalTrans). This was therefore not a system that Motorola would have had in-house, and it would also not have been "popular" in any sense for cross-assembling so this was probably a bit of a one-off. Pending further information I'd probably assume someone at the state of CA did the port themselves to work with some 6800 devices they were building there-- but then it's a bit puzzling that the copyright in the code is to Motorola and there's no mention of the state or any other entity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Were there any non-TENET machines that implemented TENET BASIC? Is there any other software floating around for the TENET? I assume the computer itself was scrapped when it was decommissioned in the 80s.
Anyway, the BASIC is pretty sophisticated so this was a neat find. I uploaded the contents of the tape to archive.org:
Motorola 6800 Cross Assembler (TENET BASIC) : Motorola, Inc. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Motorola 6800 Cross Assembler, Release 1.1TENET BASIC Version, Release 1.0Copyright 1974 by Motorola, Inc. (This version dated 1976.) Recovered from paper...
archive.org
What is curious here for me is why this particular software exists in the first place. The date at the top of the code is 7/1976. By that time, TENET the company was long gone and the single production unit was in use by the state of CA (transportation/roads/bridges division apparently, which today is called CalTrans). This was therefore not a system that Motorola would have had in-house, and it would also not have been "popular" in any sense for cross-assembling so this was probably a bit of a one-off. Pending further information I'd probably assume someone at the state of CA did the port themselves to work with some 6800 devices they were building there-- but then it's a bit puzzling that the copyright in the code is to Motorola and there's no mention of the state or any other entity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Were there any non-TENET machines that implemented TENET BASIC? Is there any other software floating around for the TENET? I assume the computer itself was scrapped when it was decommissioned in the 80s.
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