[comp.software-eng] Re^2: := and Flexowriters

clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) (10/09/89)

torkil@psivax.UUCP (Torkil Hammer) writes:


>...Flexo codes included some characters not available on the typewriter, but
>not the back arrow....

I just looked at some Flexowriter output I happen to have lying around,
and it does have the right arrow.  This suggests that a back arrow might
have existed too.  (Since the output is in an editing command for an
assembly-language program it wouldn't have needed the back arrow.)
Perhaps there were different models of Flexowriter?

Sigh:  I liked KDF-9 assembler, in a way it's not possible to like assembler
for certain better-known machines.  And I learned to live with the Flexowriter.
Those were the days....  (The three extra dots mean, as usual, "when I was
young."  Why else would this discussion be going on so long?)

dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) (10/09/89)

In article <1989Oct8.154002.3248@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes:
 > Perhaps there were different models of Flexowriter?
 > 
Yup, right.  A previous poster mentioned red/black printing.  Our Flexowriters
did only black.  You mentioned a right arrow, our Flexowriters did not have it.
If I remember right the code generated by our Flexowriters was called
Flexowriter-EL.  Similarly we had IBM 029 punches that generated 029-EL.
Here EL stands for Electrologica, the make of the computer we were using.
Both codes were Electrologica variants of the standard codes.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
INTERNET   : dik@cwi.nl
BITNET/EARN: dik@mcvax

johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) (10/09/89)

In article <1989Oct8.154002.3248@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes:
>Perhaps there were different models of Flexowriter?

Yes, the character sets were not well standardized.  I used to hack at a
place where we had three Flexowriters, one on a Packard Bell 250 (bet you
didn't know their current foray into computers isn't their first) one on a
Burroughs Electrodata 205, and one on an old Libratrol.  The character sets
were all a little different, as I recall.

By far the most wonderful thing a Flexowriter ever did was on the Burroughs.
When you got a new reel of mag tape, you'd make the BOT marker by threading
the tape through the Flexowriter punch and typing Q repeatedly.
-- 
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl, Levine@YALE.edu
Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old.  -The Globe

anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker) (10/11/89)

In article <1989Oct8.154002.3248@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes:
>I just looked at some Flexowriter output I happen to have lying around,

	I just looked at some *Flexowriters* we happen to have lying around,

>and it does have the right arrow.

	and they don't have *any* arrows.  Nor percent, semicolon, dollar,
pound, exclamation, tilde, backprime, backslash, quote, hash, braces, at,
circumflex [however did we manage?].  But they *did* have alpha, beta, pi,
stop (the control-S of the period!), squared (superscript 2), half and
erase.  Half and squared were, in the languages of then-a-days, turned
into ".5" and "uparrow 2" at an early lexical stage, so that you could
get "x ** 2.5" by 'x squared half'.  Exclamation mark was 'prime BS period',
and semicolon 'colon BS comma'.  Ours are "model F" flexowriters;  the
instruction manual however is for the 2300 series, which has a quite
different keyboard.  The old ones, like ours, *never* went wrong, unless
you forgot to empty the chad occasionally;  they are built like tanks.

	I used ours for my word-processing until UNIX arrived.  Also for
doing chess diagrams -- the erase character was perfect for the black
squares.  A friend found out how to make the machine half-space, and was
able to produce very acceptable graphics (this was in 1967).  They were
taken out of service about 10 years ago when the University was changed
from Wylex plugs and sockets to the standard UK square-pin system.  I'm
sure that if I put a plug on one now, and switched it on, it would still
work perfectly, and the old, familiar, dat-dat-dat-... sound would echo
across the room.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk