BMON2 Software for the Real Time Picture Processor

BMON2(the Buffer Memory Monitor System) was a main program BMON2 as well as support function programs written and used to interact with the RTPP. It allowed operations ofn Buffer Memories (BMs). These programs were written by Peter Lemkin, Bruce Shapiro, Morton Schultz, Lewis Lipkin with input from others. It is documented in [40, TR-21, TR-21b, TR-23].

This is a sample of some of the more interesting BMON2 programs, functions, and libraries for controlling the RTPP. The programs were designed to do one task (e.g., move the stage, scan an image, segment an image, take the gradient of an image, etc). These were run either stand-alone or in small batch scripts under OS/8 exit disclaimer, the operating system for the PDP8e part of the RTPP. The BMON2 program would be started and then the user could either enter a command line or tell it to run a script. This was similar to UNIX commands and scripts. As this software was written in the pre-GUI (graphical user interface) era, it required learning some of the commands and typing them in like the early UNIX and DOS systems.

The code is sorted by 1. Programs, 2. BMON2 chained commands, 3. Libraries, Functions and Subroutines. Note that OS/8 only used the first 6 characters of a file name. Some of the names are longer for clarity.

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Example of using BMON2

The following example is from an experiment that used BMON2 to reconstruct a 3D projection from a set of optically serial sectioned images of a neuron. The images were captured previously using BMON2 program to do a serial section using the computer-controlled microscope. The resulting set of images were saved on magnetic tape. The reconstruction was done using the reconstruct.ft BMON2 chained-program. The BMON2 command line to run the reconstruction of the 128 serial sectioned images using every other image stored on 9-track magnetic tape using the recons BMON2 chained command was 
*BM2 <-- reconstruct,MTA0:*.OS/X/2,256,144,1

1. Programs

These are standalone programs. The key one is bmon2 which runs other programs.

2. BMON2 chained commands

These are called by BMON2 and when done, they return to BMON2 with a CALL CHAIN('BMON2') call.

3. Libraries, Functions and Subroutines

These are called by some of the above programs.

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Peter F. Lemkin
Revised: 09/022/2011