Dik Leatherdale’s homepage

dik at 0 dik at 6 dik in 1969
dik at 24 dik at 64

Photo by Travis Hodges:
www.travishodges.co.uk

business card

Dik Leatherdale has never got over the sense of wonder he experienced when he discovered computer programming in 1966 - the wonder that such things were possible. Now retired, he continues his obsession by editing Resurrection the journal of the Computer Conservation Society.

There are a few pages hosted here -

Bus Bunching Simulator This is getting more and more difficult to invoke, especially in current versions of Windows.
Fujitsu Services Redundancy Calculator
My CV
An emulator for the Ferranti Atlas 1
video transfer

My email domain is @leatherdale.net where you can (if the fancy takes you) contact

	me	at dik@xxx
	Dave	at dave@xxx
	Sheila	at sheila@xxx
	Julie	at jules@xxx
	and finally, cousin Loree, the family genealogist	at loree@xxx

During the winter of 2004/5, during a period of "professional inactivity", I started work on an emulator for the first computer I ever had at my disposal (albeit only occasionally) – the Ferranti Atlas 1.

I’ve been working on the emulator in fits and starts ever since. The difficulties of the unstandardised floating point operations are still something of a mystery and I still have a few more extracodes to implement.

Since the start of Coronavirus lockdown I’ve added support for Atlas disc files but the main focus is on experimenting with the Brooker-Morris COMPILER COMPILER which was rescued from an early source code copy with the help of Iain MacCallum and Bill Purvis. Two programs have been developed, a simple calculator and a more complex “compiler” of a simple command language for manipulating tapes and disc files. In addition, Bill Williams has kindly lent me a source listing of the SERVICE compiler which I am transcribing and testing, bit by bit.

Almost 17 years into the project and given the usual problems of “mission creep”, it seems unlilely that the task will ever be completed.