[squeak-dev] Sketchpad? (off-topic)

Jecel Assumpcao Jr. jecel at merlintec.com
Sat Jun 19 21:32:42 UTC 2010


Casey Ransberger wrote on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:44:01 -0700

> Apologies for the off-topic question, but does anyone know if the actual bits
> for Sketchpad are still extant somewhere? Is there any documentation that
> anyone has for the Lincoln TX-2? It'd sure be neat to emulate it.

This first place to look for information about old computers is
BitSavers, such as

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/tx-2/

> Someone was asking me about object oriented programming with a head full
> of Java yesterday and I wanted to point at some things. Recently I had a really
> great experience using an Apple IIgs emulator to explain HyperCard (kind of
> an odd version, but it worked,)

I had no idea that HyperCard ever ran on machines other than the classic
Mac.

> and it dawned on me that if we wanted to learn history by doing, we really
> ought to grab at whatever bits are out there and curate the damned things.
> And: selfish childish desire to play with Sketchpad! 

Now that there is (or seems to be - I was unable to test) a reasonable
emulator for the Alto, it would be nice if some disk images for it were
publicly available. Specially any Smalltalk related ones.

http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Xerox/Alto/simulator/salto/

Since Sketchpad only ran on a single computer in the whole world, even
in its day most people exposed to it experienced it as movies instead of
a live demo. These movies are available today. Certainly an emulator
would be nice, but the i/o devices on PCs are different enough from the
TX-2 that I don't know how realistic the experience would be. Even a
Vectrex (an interesting videogame from 1982) emulator is rather
different from the real thing (which I had the pleasure of seeing in
action live about four years ago)..

-- Jecel




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