[ih] B6700 CANDE [was: Confusion in the RFCs]

[Brian E Carpenter]

CANDE was a Burroughs product. It stood for "Command AND Edit".

I used it on the B6700 at Massey University, NZ in 1974-6. It supported Burroughs TD800 block mode terminals, and I had a hand in developing a PDP-11 based TD800 emulator that allowed us to use VT-05s, which were much cheaper than the Burroughs terminals. (Those were priced to compete with IBM block mode terminals, but that left them plenty of scope to be expensive.)

The PDP-11 code was written in PL-11. If we'd known of PDP-11 Espol we might well have used that, but I brought the PL-11 compiler from CERN and ported it to run on the B6700.

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 06-Sep-25 03:35, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.
> 
> Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the MCP.
> 
> Yes, it was an impressive machine.
> 
>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975 aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
>>
>>
>> The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
>>
>> The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
>>
>> On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>>> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
>>> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
>>> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
>>> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
>>> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
>>> and its elegant architecture.
>>>
>>> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
>>> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
>>> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
>>> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
>>> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
>>> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
>>> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
>>> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44 AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
>>>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>>>>
>>>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
>>>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
>>>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
>>>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>>>>
>>>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
>>>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
>>>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
>>>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
>>>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
>>>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
>>>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
>>>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>>>>
>>>> Why can’t we build systems like that any more.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
>>>> Really amazing instruction set.
>>>>
>>>> V
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>>>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>>>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>>>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>>>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>>>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>>>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>>>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>>>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>>>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>>>>> perhaps isn’t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>>>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>>>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>>>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>>>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>>>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>>>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>>>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>>>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>>>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>>>>>> Steve
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56 AM John Day via Internet-history <
>>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>>>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>>>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>>>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>>>>> were published separately.
>>>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>>> John
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: “Sometimes when changing
>>>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.” ;-)
>>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>>>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>>>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Jim
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36 AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>>>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>>>>> 1983.
>>>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>>>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
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