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Nather recounted this story from memory, more than 20 years later. Some technical details are known to be incorrect, including the location of an "Index" flag bit in the instruction word; Kaye's use of it presumably gave Nather the vital clue that a coding trick was being used. Nevertheless there are
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would be read—in this case changing the opcode to "jump to" so that the full instruction became "jump to address 0". This impressed Nather so much that, out of respect, he gave up the task and reported that he could not find the bug.
98:; company sales executives had requested to modify the program so that they could flip a front panel switch and cause the program to lose (and the user to win). Kaye reluctantly acceded to the request, but to his own delight, he got the
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187:, the Librascope newsletter, contains a story about training on the LGP-30, and mentions that some Librascope application engineers were transferred to the Royal McBee payroll. Among the engineers named is Mel Kaye.
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153: did "replace the contents of the address portion of the word in memory location 2000 with the contents of the address portion of the word in the accumulator" to ease writing self-modifying code.
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Subsequent to Kaye's departure, Nather was asked to fix the bug. While examining the code, he was puzzled to discover that it contained what appeared to be an
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Little is known about Mel Kaye, beyond the fact that he was credited with doing the "bulk of the programming" on the 1959 ACT-1 compiler for the Royal McBee
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The Story of Mel - A recent article devoted to the *macho* side of programming made the bald and unvarnished statement: Real
Programmers write in Fortran.
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There is a photograph on the front page of that issue showing that first class of neophyte LGP-30 programmers and the instructors, including Mel Kaye.
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64:. Although originally written in prose, Nather's story was modified by someone into a "free verse" form which has become widespread.
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plausible hacks which Kaye might have implemented on the actual RPC-4000 and which are largely in line with Nather's account.
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design had no index register. Using self-modifying code was necessary for array operations. The LGP-30 instruction
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714:(Analysis of the technical accuracy of the story and possible implementations of the hack on the RPC-4000 computer.)
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in favor of crafting code to take advantage of hardware quirks, for example taking advantage of the rotation of the
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was already the highest possible address, not only did the address wrap around to 0, but a 1 was carried into the
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685:(A research on the origins of the story, its characters, Mel Kaye's biography, and hacker folklore in general)
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546:(NB. Punctuation added/corrected for readability. Contains link to program tape of blackjack for LGP-30)
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to process elements of an array, and had coded the loop in such a way as to take advantage of an
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wrong, and the switch would instead cause the program to win every time (and the user to lose).
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109:, yet control did not remain inside the loop. Eventually he realized that Kaye was using
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details the extraordinary programming prowess of a former colleague of his, "Mel", at
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program was written by Mel Kaye of
Librascope Inc. The August 1956 edition of
629:"Macho programmers, drum memory and a forensic analysis of 1960s machine code"
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117:. Adding 1 to the address field of an instruction that referred to address
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computer. In Nather's story, Kaye is portrayed as being prone to avoiding
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van den
Bogaard, Adrienne (2008). "Stijlen van programmeren 1952-1972".
624:(NB. Detailed analysis of the story, explaining the technical details.)
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517:(A completely original copy of Ed Nather's Usenet post, with headers)
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The story, as written by Nather, involved Kaye's work on rewriting a
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250:"The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992 (jargon2910.ascii.gz)"
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ROYAL PRECISION Electronic
Computer LGP - 30 PROGRAMMING MANUAL
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The Royal McBee computers were developed and manufactured by
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program from the LGP-30 to a newer Royal McBee system, the
568:(Mel Kaye's signature] on a coding sheet for the LGP-30.)
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168:"net.followup" on May 21, 1983, by utastro!nather (the
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Mel's Loop - A Comprehensive Guide to The Story of Mel
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Mel the
Programmer: LGP-30 Coding Sheet - Program 13.0
45:" whose subtle techniques fascinate his colleagues.
607:(NB. Presumably the subject of the original story.)
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432:. Port Chester, New York: Royal McBee Corporation
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335:"The Story of Mel, A Real Programmer, Annotated"
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669:: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2024 (
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451:"Mel Kaye in the first LGP-30 training class"
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492:(NB. A copy of the original prose version.)
390:"In particular, Mel Kaye of Royal McBee..."
701:found a computer of the type that Mel used
161:The essay was originally published in the
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172:email address of Ed Nather at the time).
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179:, and the documentation written for the
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426:Royal McBee Corporation (April 1957).
121:normally just changed the address to
637:Contains even more technical details
527:The story of Mel, a Real Programmer
284:Matt Crawford (November 20, 1984).
24:
550:Jennings, Tom, ed. (2000-11-30) ,
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25:
744:
200:Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
571:
354:"New Light on the Legend of Mel"
62:Royal McBee Computer Corporation
599:from the original on 2017-03-09
560:from the original on 2017-03-09
538:from the original on 2017-03-09
509:from the original on 2018-02-12
484:from the original on 2017-03-09
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370:IhyHSrOSMUE3MKUXwi@transarc.com
286:"The realest programmer of all"
263:from the original on 2017-03-09
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728:Computer programming folklore
703:in his grandparents basement.
403:"Dissecting the Story of Mel"
352:Bill von Hagen (1 Jun 1994).
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614:'The Story of Mel' Explained
611:Seibel, James (2015-04-08),
33:is an archetypical piece of
7:
709:Dissecting the Story of Mel
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10:
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691:Mel's Loop - Mel Kaye – CV
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578:Manual for Blackjack Game
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502:re: Real Programmers ...
392:, FOLDOC, imperial.ac.uk
302:531@oddjob.UChicago.UUCP
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145:The early computers of
37:folklore. Its subject,
659:(inactive 2024-08-08).
362:alt.folklore.computers
657:10.18352/studium.1459
222:"Librascope Memories"
73:optimizing assemblers
248:, ed. (1992-07-01).
35:computer programming
111:self-modifying code
41:, is an exemplary "
27:Computer programmer
324:free verse version
592:Program W1-01.0,
457:. Librascope Inc.
231:. Librascope Inc.
83:to avoid writing
16:(Redirected from
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499:(1983-05-21),
497:utastro!nather
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474:(1983-05-21),
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434:. Retrieved
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410:. Retrieved
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733:1983 essays
699:A redditor
147:IAS machine
85:delay loops
81:drum memory
39:Melvin Kaye
722:Categories
620:2018-02-18
603:2017-03-08
564:2017-03-09
542:2017-03-09
522:Nather, Ed
513:2018-02-11
488:2017-03-09
436:2020-03-17
412:2024-09-11
267:2014-07-01
206:References
177:Librascope
166:news group
573:Kaye, Mel
358:Newsgroup
294:net.jokes
290:Newsgroup
181:blackjack
92:blackjack
54:Ed Nather
594:archived
590:RPC-4000
558:archived
536:archived
507:archived
482:archived
261:Archived
194:See also
96:RPC-4000
18:Mel Kaye
645:Studium
584:, USA:
366:Usenet:
360::
298:Usenet:
292::
157:History
532:FOLDOC
368:
300:
163:Usenet
151:y 2000
135:opcode
77:LGP-30
69:LGP-30
597:(PDF)
582:(PDF)
225:(PDF)
49:Story
671:link
377:2019
309:2019
170:UUCP
131:bits
100:test
653:doi
79:'s
56:'s
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667:}}
663:{{
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255:GZ
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253:(
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.