What Now For PS?8?

[bobaboba]

I’ve probably missed some chat on this but with the legendary CJL’s passing has PS?8 finally passed too with its remaining turds left unpolished or is it likely to re-emerge anytime? After 40-odd years waiting I’d have liked to just try it a little.

 

[vrs42]

I’ve probably missed some chat on this but with the legendary CJL’s passing has PS?8 finally passed too with its remaining turds left unpolished or is it likely to re-emerge anytime? After 40-odd years waiting I’d have liked to just try it a little.

I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to say about it yet, but my understanding is that RICM and some of his old buddies are working on an agreement with his widow about the source code. Meanwhile, there's his PEPSWIN/PASP stuff for Windows, which also constitutes what is probably the last release of "official" binaries.

I am not sure if it is still possible to join the PEPSWIN google group, now that the moderator has passed?
I got my binaries from here: https://github.com/ricomputermuseum/PQS8

I didn't find the Windows stuff that interesting, but there are two different releases of PQS8 there -- 8U and 8Z, IIRC. I seem to recall a DECtape image and an RK05 image?

Anyway, I found the experience reminiscent of BASIC. Theres a DIRectory of system programs, but one doesn't use them quite like you do in OS/8. They mostly existy to enable the various commands.

What you interact with mostly is the CATalog, which allows you to get and save whatever program you are working on. At any given moment you've typically got a source and it's corresponding binary set up as your current context. Like BASIC, you can list it or retype lines (by line number), etc. Then you can compile and run it. Periodically, and especially when it is to your liking, you save it.

One quirk is that to save memory, the editor case folds all the text to 6-bit. So uppercase it is. There are programs(kludges?) to import/export OS/8 files, etc.

Hope that helps!

Vince

 

[bobaboba]

Thanks Vince,

I’ve been a member of the PEPSWIN google group since inauguration but I confess to losing interest a bit with the slow pace. Thanks for the pointer. I hope the source code does become available though it’s likely to be quite a task to get into it. To me OS/8 is still the pukka OS of course and I view it a LOT more favourably than CJL did, with negligible bugs really, but it would/will be interesting to explore his alternative.

 

[Crawford]

I never met CJL, and while there may be many opinions about the man, he really knew the PDP-8. He also was a fine assembly language programmer, and I think his code should be required reading. He understood the need for comments, and his code was beautifully formatted. It never looked like something just hacked together. While he had the perfection bug, and sometimes went overboard (really, listing all the team’s favorite restaurants???). I think he set a standard for coding that is worthy of study. The RICM repository has some help files, that are comment headers from the PQS8 code, if anyone wants a peek.

I think the full PQS8 code base would be a treasure trove, perhaps not as an OS/8 replacement, but as examples of well-crafted code by someone who really knew his stuff. Well worth preserving, IMO.