With the finishing of most of the package work on the 1906A and 360/195, it is necessary to document the location and procedure for updating the basic software packages and utilities. These papers need only have 1imited circulation and are primarily for emergencies when the originator is unavailable.
The main enhancements still outstanding are the checking for incorrect camera numbers and recovery from disc failures. All the packages have removed the TAPE/5 command so that de-spooling on to 9-track tape can now be tested. The spool utility SPOOLJOB has not been changed recently apart from the enhancements mentioned in the last QPR.
A Technical Paper indicating how to create and maintain the spool system will be written. ACTION: JRG, AWB
There is some evidence that instances of two users wishing to use the spool at the same time are becoming more frequent. The entries to System Journal give an indication of how often this is and it should be possible to get some measure of the time jobs have to wait by matching the System Journal information with the statistics produced by the SPOOL program. An initial analysis of these figures will be made. ACTION: JRG
Internal documentation for SMOG has already been produced and should be issued shortly. The two outstanding pieces of work are the completion of the 3-D routines and the graph package. There is a bug in the 3-D rotation routines which appears to be in the earlier SPROGS version also. There are a number of facilities in the graph package which originally relied on the SPROGS region system. These need to be rewritten with the coordinate positions calculated in the routines themselves. ACTION: AHF
Few changes to SPROGS have been necessary recently. A version has been made available to Manchester University. The internal documentation for generating the system is almost identical to the earlier SPROGS paper. It was agreed that this would be re-issued as a Technical Paper.
The bugs in this system are mainly being found by the 360/195 users. A facility to allow dotted lines to be produced has been added to the 360/195 version. It was agreed that this would also be added to the 1906A version, The standard plotting characters have been defined as centred characters on the FR80. A routine is needed to make these optionally available to the user. Internal documentation for the system is required. ACTION: DVR
Two obscure bugs have been found by DCT. These have been corrected. A comparison of a job producing a film on the SD4020 and a similar colour film on the FR80 has given:
SD4020 FR80
Blocks 22,000 1,200
18 mins 1.5 mins
Considerable saving is possible by using facilities such as picture definitions and vector family commands on the FR80.
Internal documentation for GROATS is required. ACTION: FRAH
The FRBO accounting system should be ready for use next week. Once this is available, it will be necessary for all packages to conform to the revised Displayer command set. ACTION: FRAH RET AHF MFC DVR
The graphical routines for XRAY have been completed and documentation for the system handed back to Applications Software Group. Use is already being made of this system.
A blocked character alphabet has been produced by DVR. It was agreed that this would be made available in SMOG and SPROGS as a separate set of routines.
The main piece of outstanding work is the spool system. MFC and Chris Osland have now written the system using some routines produced by George Adamson and Tony Stormer. It is hoped to start a service using the spool system next week.
The main package being used so far is SCSIM. However, there are two users of SMOG. No documentation for users has yet been produced for SPROGS. MFC estimated that most of the outstanding work would be finished by the end of September.
Problems still exist with the FR80 Print Program. It is not possible to extract titles. Further tests will be made with the revised software which arrived today. The fiche format required by RL is still under discussion by them and a reply is awaited.
Documentation for the 360/195 will be coordinated by MFC.
A new release of FR80 software arrived today. An ACL version V3.2 is now almost complete and includes all the earlier modifications and a number of enhancements and changes including the modification to stop the clear filter coming in unnecessarily.
A new version V3.3 is under construction which includes the vector speed command, print-out of faulty monitor commands, checks for input buffer overflow and the centred characters for plotting. It is possible that V3.3 rather than V3.2 will be the next released system.
Programs are now available for passing FR80 files to be listed on the 1906A or saved in the filestore. Files on the 1906A can be output to tape in FR80 Dump Tape Format. Some changes may be necessary to this program in the future.
The systems on the 1906A have changed since the ID frame picture definitions were produced. Consequently, the existing 7 and 9-track tape copies of these pictures are the only copies available. It will be sensible to re-code these using the Forms Design program once some manpower becomes available.
This system is now working and should be released next week. It is still not possible to keep the absolute time-of-day correct as certain functions on the FR80 cause the clock to be stopped. Checks have been included to ensure that time always advances throughout the day!
Documentation for the system is required - in particular, a definition of the format in which the statistics are output to tape. ACTION: JMR
The new Displayer for the FR80 has been given the name DRIVER. Some analysis of FR80 jobs has shown that output so far is dominated by short vectors taking about 1 millisec to d r aw (assuming an 8-millisec drawing speed). It would be advantageous if vector drawing and decoding could be overlapped. Unfortunately, the vector generator does not produce an interrupt on completion, nor is an interval timer available. Some experiments have been done to see if the disc could be used as an interval timer. However, interrupts cannot be obtained at a speed greater than 4 millisecs by this method.
The code for DRIVER will be generated using a preprocessor written in TREE-META on the 1906A. The top-down structured approach used in the production of the logging system would be used for DRIVER. The preprocessor would be used in place of the hand transliteration previously used.
The colour tests are still proceeding but without any sparkling results. A recommended set of hits and intensities for the primary and secondary colours will be produced shortly. Two sets of numbers are required depending on whether a whole area or single lines arc to be output. ACTION: PAD
The colour wheel produced on a single frame gave completely different results when expanded to one colour per frame. This appears to be due to the long delay between the hits for different filters in the second case. Thus:
Select Magenta Filter Draw lines Wait n seconds Select Yellow Filter Draw lines
This will give different results depending on the value of n. Tests are being done to see how critical the value of n may be.
Some experiments may be carried out using Kodachrome in place of Ektachrome. This will have to be processed remotely.
This is still in a poor state with at least 13 outstanding faults. If these are not cleared up in the next week or so it will be necessary to contact Dave Oakley to see if some pressure can be put on the local maintenance support people. ACTION: WDS
The conversion of RSX from multi-task to multi-user has been left. It was decided to concentrate on providing user facilities first.
DOS V3B has been implemented. It appears to cure a number of obscure bugs. A paper giving details will be produced. ACTION: WDS
The basic programs and hardware are now working. Documentation of the software needs to be produced, ACTION: JRG
LOF has been using the link to interactively manipulate molecules on the VT04 using the 1906A to calculate the views. This appears to produce large overheads on the 1906A. As much as 20% of the cpu capacity has been used up in this way at times. Investigations are being made to see if this is a hardware/software inefficiency that can be cured or alleviated. Changes have been made to some high-level routines which either call SMOG vector routines or send information across the link. The same program can, therefore, display on the VT04 or the FR80.
Documentation is being produced. ACTION: LOF
A package for input of graphical information from the DMAC is under construction. This can pass information across the link to the 1906A using a SMOG subset. Alternatively, input can be kept in a PDP15 file. A system for editing this information is required.
There appears to be a need for conversions on the data which provide rotations and translations to a standard position. The comments produced by Colin Emmett on DVR's original DMAC format should be examined. ACTION: WDS, IB
Documentation is required for the VIEW program and the PDP15-FR80 conversion routines. ACTION: JMR
Enhancements to the VIEW program now allow it to analyse the orders used on an FR80 tape.
An IMP compiler for the PDP15 has been produced at Edinburgh. It appears that this could be used as a high level implementation language in place of MACRO. It is hoped that a copy of the compiler can be obtained. ACTION: IB