Occam evaluation kit user manual?

[Nigel Williams]

This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.

From the Occam data card published by Inmos it states:

Occam evaluation kit
A low cost software package intended to act as an
introduction to occam. It will run on most machines,
including the Apple II, IBM PC and VAX. The kit comprises
an integrated full screen editor/compiler allowing medium
sized occam programs to be written and run on the host,
together with a language reference manual, extensive
examples and installation notes.

thanks.
www.retroComputingTasmania.com

[Gavin Crate]

Hi Nigel,

I think you are referring to the Inmos Portakit product. It was an instruction set interpreter which ran a sub-set of early transputer instructions and could run the Occam 1 compiler.

I re-created a modern Windows 32-bit console application a few years ago, after I got my hands on the original tape and the Inmos Portakit manual. The manual is a large green folder and the tape is VAX/VMS magnetic tape. I managed to recover all the data off the tape.

A version of the Portakit was also released for the Atari ST called K-Occam made by Kuma Software.

Check out my website link for details:

https://sites.google.com/site/transputeremulator/Home/inmos-portakit

Let me know if you need any more information.


Regards

Gavin

[Øyvind Teig]

Hi all,

only for the year 1983, aside: I have the 1983 "Programming manual occam". OPS-002 000. This is "proto occam".

I created the occam logo (since there was none), for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) with the "occam" from the front of this book, for the logo's upper part. Green book with a spiral binder. This logo is at Loading Image.... There was some comments about the copyright issues of doing this at the time, but it was considered ok. The discussion is at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2021/02#Occam_logo

I have started to scan the book for transputer.net, half through. I guess I could take the rest within some two weeks.

Øyvind

[Nigel Williams]

Post by Øyvind Teig
only for the year 1983, aside: I have the 1983 "Programming manual occam". OPS-002 000. This is "proto occam".

Thanks Øyvind, I wonder if that is the manual for the PortaKit or something later? As Gavin Crate suggests above the PortaKit was in a large green folder too. As green was the Inmos corporate branding colour I am not sure if that will be a good indicator of different manuals.

The PortaKit is an interesting artefact that I would like to see recovered, in all its forms. What I have found so far indicates there are a few variants as several people appeared to have implemented it.

In OUG Newsletter #2 it says:

To make this job as easy as possible the kit includes
example interpreters written in widely available languages
such as Pascal, Fortran and BCPL as well as a formal
definition written in occam itself. Having written such an
interpreter and interpreted the suite of pre-compiled test
programs provided, you are in a position to interpret the
compiler itself in order to compile your own occam programs.
The output from these runs will be the interpretable
versions of your programs which you can then interpret with
your interpreter.
The compiler was itself written in occam and compiled
through itself. The source is included in the kit so that if
you are really adventurous you may consider modifying its
code-generation process to generate code for your target
architecture.

And later in the same newsletter:

A portakit interpreter written in C is available from
Michael Harrison, Dept of Computer Science, University of York

Post by Øyvind Teig
I have started to scan the book for transputer.net, half through. I guess I could take the rest within some two weeks.

Excellent! thanks for doing this.

[Øyvind Teig]

This is so interesting! I have scanned some more today, I just needed that inspiration! But to me it looks like a very serious description of occam itself, not a description of a toolkit. And the layout is so tasty(?)

Gavin, a short look over your magnetisk tape pages, is it a correct observation that this occam manual was _not_ there? If it were there in some source form (PostScript is from 1982), then.., then what?

Øyvind
PS: hi Nigel!

Post by Nigel Williams
This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.
Occam evaluation kit
A low cost software package intended to act as an
introduction to occam. It will run on most machines,
including the Apple II, IBM PC and VAX. The kit comprises
an integrated full screen editor/compiler allowing medium
sized occam programs to be written and run on the host,
together with a language reference manual, extensive
examples and installation notes.
thanks.
www.retroComputingTasmania.com

[Nigel Williams]

Post by Øyvind Teig
This is so interesting!

I agree! and I think it is important to preserve the evolution of
Occam from the beginning and it provides context as to how the
language and implementations were evaluated in the early days. It also
provides a more complete view of how Inmos developed as a company as
it attempted to gain interest from a wider audience.

Post by Øyvind Teig
I have scanned some more today, I just needed that inspiration! But to me it looks like a very serious description of occam itself, not a description of a toolkit. And the layout is so tasty(?)

As we develop an inventory of these early documents, it is useful to
circulate the full title and publishing details of the document, the
typical contents of the cover page, inside page, document version, any
visible dates etc. This can help establish the timeline for the
document.

To add more to how I got here, in the past days I have been exploring
the UCSD Pascal p-System environment, and came across a volume that
was labeled OCCAM.

Here is the startup when the volume is booted (I am using the
Ersatz-11 PDP-11 emulator):

***@nw-Latitude-7420:~/Downloads/E11 emulator$ ./e11 OCCAM.bin
Ersatz-11 V7.3 Demo version, COMMERCIAL USE LIMITED TO 30-DAY EVALUATION
Copyright (C) 1993-2017 by Digby's Bitpile, Inc. All rights reserved.
See www.dbit.com for more information.
E11>mount dy: OCCAM.bin
E11>boot dy:

Welcome OCCAM, to

U.C.S.D. p-System IV.0

Current date is 18-Jan-83

Command: E(dit, R(un, F(ile, C(omp, L(ink, X(ecute, A(ssem,? [IV.0 B3h]
Command: D(ebug, H(alt, I(nitialize, U(ser restart, M(onitor [IV.0 B3h]

Here is the directory of the volume:
Filer: G(et, S(ave, W(hat, N(ew, L(dir, R(em, C(hng, T(rans,? [C.7]

Vols on-line:
1 CONSOLE:
2 SYSTERM:
4 # OCCAM:
6 PRINTER:
8 REMOUT:
Root vol is - OCCAM:
Prefix is - OCCAM:

Filer: G(et, S(ave, W(hat, N(ew, L(dir, R(em, C(hng, T(rans,? [C.7]
Dir listing of ? #4

OCCAM:
VDUTAB.DAT 1 16-Nov-82
UART.TEXT 24 5-Jan-83
MATRIX.TEXT 26 12-Jan-83
TEA.TEXT 42 16-Nov-82
UTILITY.TEXT 10 12-Jan-83
AUTOBAHN.TEXT 72 12-Jan-83
OLIB.TEXT 4 13-Jan-83
ARRAY.TEXT 28 13-Jan-83
OCCAM.CODE 92 27-May-82
SYSTEM.LIBRARY 6 27-May-82
SETUP.CODE 89 13-Jan-83
SYSTEM.FILER 34 5-Dec-80
SYSTEM.PASCAL 105 17-Sep-81
SYSTEM.PDP-11 26 16-Apr-81
SYSTEM.MISCINFO 1 13-Jan-83
README.TEXT 46 16-Nov-82
16/16 files, 376 unused, 376 in largest
Filer: G(et, S(ave, W(hat, N(ew, L(dir, R(em, C(hng, T(rans,? [C.7]

The startup screen is the same as other UCSD p-Systems in how they
appear when the first prompt appears. It shows the last date it knew
which is 18-January-1983, quite early in the life of PortaKit (and
Occam).

On the diskette (volume) there are TEXT and CODE files. The text files
here are the expected Occam examples, although there are a couple that
are more extensive like AUTOBAHN.TEXT and UART.TEXT - (I can extract
all these files and provide a link to them soon).

The SYSTEM.* files are as expected for a PDP-11 based UCSD p-System
bootable volume.

The README.TEXT file is not particularly revealing about the
content/source of this volume, other than reference to "occam
evaluation kit"

Filer: G(et, S(ave, W(hat, N(ew, L(dir, R(em, C(hng, T(rans,? [C.7]
Transfer ? readme.text
To where ? #1

Note : a hard copy of this document can be obtained from Inmos Ltd.


READ ME
-------
Contents
--------

PART I - description of I/O in the occam evaluation kit

PART II - description of occam programs supplied with the oek

Please note that on some systems there may be disk activity
whilst reading this document interactively. This is due to
limited memory capacity.


PART I I/O IN THE OCCAM EVALUATION KIT
...more of the file elided but it continues to describe some IO aspects...

Here is an attempted session starting the OCCAM.CODE file and entering
UART.TEXT as a file to work with:

Command: E(dit, R(un, F(ile, C(omp, L(ink, X(ecute, A(ssem,? [IV.0 B3h]

Execute what file? OCCAM
% Occam #1.0 Inmos Ltd. (12 Jan 1983)

File: UART.TEXT
UTART $ $ # # #!#! ! " " UART.OUT"(#(# # $ $ $ % % % & & & ' '
' ( ( ( ) ) ) * * * + + + , ,
Program interrupted by user
Segment WKEYS Proc# 12 Offset# 10
Type <space> to continue

System re-initialized

Having entered UART.TEXT it seems to want something else, but nothing
I enter on several tries seems to be what it is expecting, so I am
stumped as to what it wants at this point. Also it seems to write
sequences of characters after that second entry, I have an idea it
might be screen-escape-sequences, but I will need to find a way to
capture it so I can inspect them.

[Dave McGuire]

Post by Nigel Williams
To add more to how I got here, in the past days I have been exploring
the UCSD Pascal p-System environment, and came across a volume that
was labeled OCCAM.
Here is the startup when the volume is booted (I am using the
Ersatz-11 V7.3 Demo version, COMMERCIAL USE LIMITED TO 30-DAY EVALUATION
Copyright (C) 1993-2017 by Digby's Bitpile, Inc. All rights reserved.
See www.dbit.com for more information.
E11>mount dy: OCCAM.bin

Hey Nigel, can I get a copy of that disk image from you?

Thanks,
-Dave

[Nigel Williams]

Post by Dave McGuire
Hey Nigel, can I get a copy of that disk image from you?

oops, excuse my delinquency, I forgot to include links! I had been deep down the rabbit hole scouring for things related to the WD Pascal Microengine and found J Dreesen's post on VCFED.org about his successful recovery of some DEC diskettes, and happened to notice the Occam reference.

Post is here:
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/modula-2-and-pdp-11.1211022/post-1264071

Where J Dreesen wrote:
I spend some time imaging the RX01/02 disks from my stash. Find on ftp://ftp.dreesen/ch/PDP11 ( use Filezilla if you have problems accessing )

- Modula2XMS.zip the Modula-2/XMS as distributed by the Technical University of Munich. ( an extension of the ETH RT11 Modula-2 set)
Unfortunatly only 2 of the 4 original distribution disks were present, however there might be enough in the other images to reconstruct a full kit.

- OCCAM.bin : occam language for PDP11/RT11

- Edison : a distribution kit for Per Brinch Hansen's Edison programming environment.

- Shareplus : an alternative to RT11.

- Others : other disk I could not directly identify.

Enjoy & give feedback, without a working PDP11 i have not verified a thing...
END
go here (adjust gTLD for anti-spam): ftp://ftp.dreesen/ch/PDP11

[Mike B.]

Hi

Post by Øyvind Teig
If it were there in some source form (PostScript is from 1982), then.., then what?

Regarding the README.TXT from Gavins "A few portakit examples.zip" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BsR6KQdjzIxSRl1gsNm0GTw-1_N5QhC-/view?usp=sharing) there were 88 files on the tape:

The only thing which looks like an documentation is: CTECHSUM.DOC

from README.TXT: The file CTECHSUM.DOC contains more information about the compiler which will be of value to licencees planning modification for different targets.

Unfortunately there are only the examples. Gavin didn't provide the other files from the kit (or I didn't find them).

Kind regards
Mike

[Andy Rabagliati]

Post by Nigel Williams
This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.

There is an inmos facebook group - are you still looking for this
manual? I can ask there.

Cheers, Andy!

[Øyvind Teig]

Post by Andy Rabagliati

Post by Nigel Williams
This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.

There is an inmos facebook group - are you still looking for this
manual? I can ask there.
Cheers, Andy!

I am still scanning the 1983 occam manual. Should be ready pretty soon. Will post a url to it as well as end it to transputer.net.

[Øyvind Teig]

Post by Øyvind Teig

Post by Andy Rabagliati

Post by Nigel Williams
This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.

There is an inmos facebook group - are you still looking for this
manual? I can ask there.
Cheers, Andy!

I am still scanning the 1983 occam manual. Should be ready pretty soon. Will post a url to it as well as end it to transputer.net.

I have now done a "beta" scanning. See https://www.teigfam.net/oyvind/home/notes-from-the-vault/0x07-247-occam-programming-language/

[Øyvind Teig]

Post by Øyvind Teig

Post by Andy Rabagliati

Post by Nigel Williams
This is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone happens to have the
user manual that was part of the Occam evaluation kit that Inmos
released around 1983. This was an early Occam compiler that ran on the
UCSD p-System.

There is an inmos facebook group - are you still looking for this
manual? I can ask there.
Cheers, Andy!

I am still scanning the 1983 occam manual. Should be ready pretty soon. Will post a url to it as well as end it to transputer.net.

I have now done a beta scanning. It is available at https://www.teigfam.net/oyvind/home/notes-from-the-vault/0x07-249-occam-programming-language/ (a previous posting which I deleted had a different url)