Dik Leatherdale’s homepage

dik at 0 dik at 6 dik in 1969
dik at 24 dik in 1999 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 working with the Computer Conservation Society as webmaster and, until recently, editor of Resurrection their house journal.

There are a few pages hosted here -

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.