The FR80 arrived on site on !9 March. The III engineers have been checking the machine and making tests. The main problem at the moment is getting the correct size 35mm image. Apparently, this has to be done before abutting tests are carried out. The settings for image size appear to have changed significantly since the machine left the factory.
Minor problems include a faulty tape deck bearing, an incorrect clear filter and software bugs in the SD4020 simulator. III currently hope to start acceptance tests on Monday 7 April but that is likely to be an optimistic estimate.
The Programming Course has been put back to 14 April and it could be delayed even further.
The SPROGS system is working apart from the ID frame. The recent changes to SMOG are quite difficult to implement in SPROGS due to the difference in philosophy in the method of coding.the 'move position' commands. It is likely that SPROGS will not be completely consistent with SMOG in the handling of HTEXT. To make SPROGS consistent with SMOG would require a large overhead and rewriting of virtually all the display routines.
The basic system is working using 7-track tape. It is now possible to input all the operators' commands at the 1906A console. The main work at the moment is concerned with operator utilities including returning tapes to the pool and keeping information about the tapes currently in use. Work has not started on the 9-track tape output. This will be left until after some routines for improved error handling have been written.
It was agreed that the operators' information produced by the SPOOL system would be consistent with that produced by the packages. JRG will issue a definition of the information required as a Project Note.
Final details of the SMOG language were agreed last week after an initial meeting about the SMOG Manual had raised a number of questions. PAD will produce a handwritten version of the manual for comments on factual detail, etc, before it goes to the typists.
PAD started to set up some apparatus for measuring the relative intensities of the primary colours so that correct colour mixing can be achieved. By projecting a slide containing the three primary or secondary colours on to a black and white board containing holes, it is possible to reflect the three different colours to the same point using mirrors. The quality of the white light produced will give a measure of the relative intensities.
The recent language changes have been incorporated and tested. Work is now proceeding on the definition of the ID frame and DELAY. The changes required by JRG for operator messages have been incorporated. It is hoped that the definition of SMOG has now been finalised.
Changes have been made to the Tektronix output to allow the new LISTFILE options for splitting frames to be used.
No bugs have been found in the system recently. An initial version of the documentation has been produced and passed round for comments.
The Tektronix VIEW program on the 1906A is complete apart from possible minor amendments. A utility is being produced on the 360/195 to convert FR80 code to MUGWUMP so that output could be viewed on any of the graphical devices connected to the 360/195.
Work had been held up on SMOG waiting for the latest version. However, as the low-level routines have already been tested with the old version, there should not be any major problems in implementing the new version.
Work on the 360 SPOOL system is progressing slowly. Chris Osland is providing an interface to allow graphical output and associated documentation to be output to HASP and/or tape. This will allow listings of operator information to be produced for each job whether it went to tape or SPOOL.
A paper defining the large character modifications to the FR80 Displayer format has been produced. Work is held up waiting for time on the FR80. It is still unclear how patches will be made to include permanently the £ symbol and the ID frame in the FR80 Displayer.
The definition of the ID frame is complete. The VIEW program on the PDP15 has been augmented to output text surrounded by a box to indicate the size it will be on the FR80. JMR agreed to produce a tape containing the ID information so that package implementors could incorporate it with their variable information to check for consistency.
A definition of the information required by the Accounts program and the format of jobs has been produced for discussion. This work is held up waiting for FR80 time.
This package had been working until recently when a number of bugs suddenly appeared for no apparent reason. These are being investigated.
The 'time used' entry on the ID frame was not completely defined in DVR's early paper. This is the CPU time used by the program since it was loaded. If the time is greater than 600 secs it will be output as an integer number of minutes followed by MINS. Otherwise, it will be output as an integer number of seconds followed by SECS.
