First of all, thank you for contributing to the TX-2 project.
We hope to celebrate MIT Lincoln Lab's historic TX-2 computer and some of the pioneeting software created for it by re-creating the computer in the form of a simulator and making it possible to run that software again.
This guide explains what kinds of contribution we're looking for and explains how you can help.
We need:
- TX-2 Software
- Additional documentation
- Programming contributions to implement missing features
We're hoping that we can get some of these things from MIT Lincoln Lab and from the people who worked on the TX-2.
Our greatest need is for TX-2 software, either in printed/scanned for or (even better) machine-readable form.
We know that Lincoln Lab holds no machine-readable software for the TX-2.
Our most pressing need is for a copy of the Sketchpad code (binary or source). We have a scanned copy of the Sketchpad code from the Computer History Museum (donated to them by Ivan Sutherland), but this is illegible in places. If you have or know someone who might have a copy of this, please reach out to us.
While we have some documentation already, it will help to have more. Please see our documentation page for a list of the documentation we already have. If you know of documentation not already in that list, please let us know.
We understand that some of these materials are unique and irreplaceable. You don't need to send them to us. We could, for example, ask some professional computing historians to help and/or ask the Computer History Museum to assist (they've been very helpful in the past). If you prefer to simply send us an electronic version of the document you have, that works for us.
We also need help in implementing the instructions and machine features we already have documentation for. Some important things that still need to be written are recorded in the issues list. Items which we think are good choices for fist-time contributors are marked with the "good first issue" tag.
The "good first issue" tags are marked that way mainly because they implement a simple instruction and there is something in the existing code to guide you.
If you are planning a significant contribution which doesn't already have an issue, please create one and outline what you hope to do.
If you are unfamiliar with Github, or Git or Rust, please let us know so that we can help you to get started.
- Contributions must use the MIT license.
- Please keep pull requests small, even if this means you don't fully implement the feature you have in mind in the first pull request.
- When making code changes, please include in comments a reference to the part of the documentation relevant to the code you're writing. For example, when you implement an opcode or hardware device, please include a reference to the documentation which describes it.
- Please include tests.
If you're considering becoming a contributor or have questions, please let me know by email how I can help you. Send email to [email protected].