[Coco] CoCoFEST - Dart Time Sharing System Contest

[Kip Koon]

Hi Basic Language Enthusiasts!

During the August Meeting of the Glenside Color Computer Club, I suggested
that the club present/demo the Dartmouth Time Sharing System Simulator
during the CoCoFEST Back To Basics Conference in 2015.  As some of you
probably know, two computer programmers who held PHDs in Computer Science
invented the Basic All-purpose Symbol Instruction Code (BASIC) programming
language at Dartmouth College on a GE-235 Mini-frame computer system and was
first brought online one evening in May 1964.  DTSS is a simulator written
by one of those creators of BASIC to simulate the actual environment the
students at Dartmouth College used to get their coursework calculations done
without having to study to become computer programmers - hence the name of
the language.  

I also suggested during the Glenside Color Computer Club meeting that maybe
we could hold a contest to see what kind of variety of BASIC programs could
be created using only the 15 statements and 10 functions provided by this
very early version of BASIC which runs on this DTSS Simulator.  Everyone at
that meeting were very interested in this idea, so I'm putting out an
Official ALL-CALL to EVERYONE in the Color Computer Community World Wide to
participate in this contest even if you cannot attend.  Maybe everyone's
programs will be able to be collected together in some form and shared at
the CoCoFEST and be available for download from someone's web site.  

The simulator and all available information, manuals, etc. is available on
the DTSS site at the link below.  If you are interested in participating in
this contest or just want to see and experience the environment the Creators
of the Basic Language programmed on and the students at Dartmouth College
had to use, go download this simulator from the following web page.  Also at
the bottom of the page, some of the ACTUAL Assembly Language Source Code
that ran on the GE-235 computer for the BASIC Compiler has been preserved!
Much of the mnemonics for the GE-235 computer look VERY SIMILAR to 6809
Mnemonics!  It was so cool to be able to see this source code for what may
very well be one of the most popular programming languages ever created!  

Link to the DTSS Simulator Web Page.  http://dtss.dartmouth.edu/#download

These are the links for the software itself.  DTSS Simulator software for
[Windows] <http://dtss.dartmouth.edu/DTSS-Win.zip>  and [Macintosh]
<http://dtss.dartmouth.edu/DTSS-Mac.sit> .

It is my hope that everyone who enjoys our beloved Cocos will at least
consider this proposal and at some level participate in it.  This could turn
out to be quite an interesting experience for us all!  Take care my friends.


 

Kip Koon

 <mailto:computerdoc at sc.rr.com> computerdoc at sc.rr.com

 <http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon>
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon

 <http://computerpcdoc.com/> http://computerpcdoc.com/