Scribd
Upload
36 views3 pages

Microprogramming Repository SIGMicro Jan85

This document introduces a special issue of a newsletter dedicated to publishing initial holdings of an international repository for materials related to microprogramming and firmware engineering. The repository was established to house a wide variety of materials for access and use by practitioners and researchers. Over 700 manuscripts and artifacts have been donated so far. The document provides details on the repository's location and cataloging process, as well as calls for additional contributions to help the repository grow.

Uploaded by

jair
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
36 views3 pages

Microprogramming Repository SIGMicro Jan85

This document introduces a special issue of a newsletter dedicated to publishing initial holdings of an international repository for materials related to microprogramming and firmware engineering. The repository was established to house a wide variety of materials for access and use by practitioners and researchers. Over 700 manuscripts and artifacts have been donated so far. The document provides details on the repository's location and cataloging process, as well as calls for additional contributions to help the repository grow.

Uploaded by

jair
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

--

-..=-" ---
"-:-.::----=- --
--::::=:.:.
-- - - "-

International Business Machines Corporation Thomas J. Watson Research Center


P.O. BOx 218
Yorktown Heights, New York 10598
914/945·3000

Dear Readers,

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to write this brief


introduction to this special issue of the SIGMicro
Newsletter dedicated to the publication of the initial
Holdings of the International Repository for Material
Related to Microprogramming and Firmware Engineering. The
purpose of the Repository, given in its initial announcement
over a year ago, is to make available to practitioners and
researchers in microprogramming, firmware engineering, and
closely aligned areas, a central storing house where a wide
variety of material related to these fields would be housed
for access and use.

The response to the original call and to scores of


individual letters which were also sent out was gratifying
as more than 700 manuscripts and a few artifacts have been
donated. The Holdings contained in this issue of the
Newsletter represent the humble beginnings of what I believe
to be a recognitiorr"that the establishment of the repository
has been a worthwhile undertaking.

The repository is located in the Archives Section of the


Dupre Library at the University of Southwestern Louisiana
and, as such, its manuscript holdings will be accessible
through the conventional inter-library loan mechanism. The
materials in the repository are being cataloged so as to
facilitate their access and use and thus be a viable
reference source to facilitate work and historical
investigations in this important sub-field of computer
systems architecture.

President Ray Authement of the University of Southwestern


Louisiana sponsored a day of activities associated with the
inauguration of this repository on October 29, 1984, just
before the Micro-17 Workshop which was held in New Orleans,
Louisiana. Similar ceremonies, centered around the
repository, are planned to be held on an" semi-annual basis.
Part of the intent of these activities is to develop a
series of videotaped lectures by a number of important
contributors to the field. The tapes will become part of
the repository holdings and thus be available to the
microprogramming community at large. It was appropriate
then that Maurice Wilkes, Mike Flynn, and Sam Husson were
invited to give the initial talks for inclusion in this
videotaped lecture series. We were extremely pleased that
Maurice and Mike were able to accept our invitation and
disappointed that Sam had prior commitments that could not

9
be changed. Maurice, during his talk, donated a copy of the
original Edsac II microcode to the repository. Mike, at one
point during the ceremonies, indicated that he was going to
encourage Will Tracz, to contribute his personal collection
of some 400 manuscripts to the repository. A subsequent
conversation with Will has, in fact, verified that he will
do this, increasing the holdings by more than 50% with a
single contribution! Sam has agreed to come at another time
to give his presentation.

We need your help in helping the repository grow. We need


copies of books, reports, MS theses, PhD dissertations, and
publications in journals, conference proceedings and trade
magazines. However, it is important that the repository
retain the widest possible range of materials. We are thus
requesting that you contribute such items as architectural
specification and documentation manuals, engineering
specifications and drawings, field maintenance manuals,
microprogramming tools, actual microprograms for specific
machines, user documentation and manuals, sketches and
photographs, personal communiques, unpublished notes and
papers, physical examples of fabrication and implementation
technology, sales literature (including pricing and delivery'
schedules), breadboard systems, memoirs, and actual
microprogrammable computer systems or portions of computer
systems. There is no question in my mind that many of you
have such material either in boxes in a warehouse or in a
musty file cabinet somewhere. I was able to secure from Sam
Husson the complete set of background material he had
acquired when doing the research for his now famous book.
Similarly, I was able to persuade Bob Rosin to send in all
of the notebooks and reports that he had stashed away in his
attic for the State University of New York at Buffalo's
early 1970's microprogramming effort, Project Mu, which had,
of course, been partly responsible for the birth of the
Nanodata Corp.

Please send your descriptive material directly to:

I. Bruce Turner, Curator


Archives/Special Collections
University Libraries
University.of Southwestern. Louisiana
302 E. St. Mary Blvd.
Lafayette, LA 70503-2038

Such an introduction cannot be complete without thanking


publicly those who gave their time and effort or support to
bringing it about. I would like to thank Maurice Wilkes,
Mike Flynn, Bruce Turner, Subrata Dasgupta, Steve Landry
(who took on the Herculean task of producing the Holdings
document), Joe Linn, Mike Maher, Dave Andrew, Ray Authement.
and to the contributors who have thus far taken the time,
energy, and effort to send something in to us.

10
We are in the process of developing a structure to plan for
continued growth for the Repository. Tentatively it will
include a Technical Curator, the Chairman of the ACM's
SIGMicro, the Chairman of the IEEE Computer Society's
Technical Committee on Microprogramming, and a small Board
of Directors. As soon as these plans are firmed up and
approved by the University they will be distributed to the
microprogramming community via this Newsletter. I welcome
your comments and recommendations. You can contact me at:

Bruce D. Shriver
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
P. O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
(914( 945-1664

csnet: shriver.yktvmV@ibm
compmail+: b.shriver
bitnet: shriver/yktvmv

Sincerely,

Bruce Shriver

11

You might also like