The IBM 1401 compiles and runs FORTRAN II

[India Four Two]

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be!

A lovely video from the Computer History Museum, compiling and running a FORTRAN program on a 1401, which was a business machine, not a scientific computer.

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My first exposure to IBM machines was running FORTRAN IV programs on the later System 360, which was a scientific machine.

For you youngsters out there, I should point out that users were not allowed in the hallowed space of the machine room. I punched my cards, submitted them and sometime later, would get some printout, possibly with a pithy, scribbled comment from the operator.

The compiler would stop at the first syntax error, which I would correct and then resubmit. Getting a job to compile correctly, could take several days. Then I could start debugging!

Debugging often involved the joys of poring over multiple pages of hexadecimal core dump. I learned early on, after dropping a card deck, of the wisdom of turning on the option of using the last four characters on the 80 column card, to punch a sequential line number!

[flash8]

There is a good book...

"IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems (History of Computing)"

Although not cheap, goes into depth the evolution of S/360 (all the machines) and the early 370's. It's a fascinating read as well. Available from Amazon etc.

Recommended for those who like such things!

[jimtherev]

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be!

For you youngsters out there, I should point out that users were not allowed in the hallowed space of the machine room. I punched my cards, submitted them and sometime later, would get some printout, possibly with a pithy, scribbled comment from the operator.

My wife was allowed to run her own stuff, simply because there were no operators available between 22:00 and 08:00. Just one engineer on site, drinking tea and reading Komic Kuts.
That was to start with, anyway.
Her 'privileged' access, in common with other women on site was terminated because of unexplained machine crashes, which only seemed to happen when the operator was of the female gender. Eventually it turned out that this was due to the fashion of the day: huge wide skirts and about 6 petticoats, which created so much static that it caused the 360 to stutter & stop.
Funny old world back then...

[Capn Bloggs]

For you youngsters out there, I should point out that users were not allowed in the hallowed space of the machine room. I punched my cards, submitted them and sometime later, would get some printout, possibly with a pithy, scribbled comment from the operator.
I remember at high school we punched our cards with paper clips (Miniwaft?) and sent them into the local uni and waited a few days for the results to come back. My first "program" produced a table that showed statute miles verses nautical miles. Checked it with my slide rule! :ok:

[Hydromet]

Before I did any programming, I worked for a state government department. When I needed a program run, I used to take a suitcase of data cards to the state treasury office. They would run the program, which they already had, and a few days later I would, if lucky, collect a load of fanfold printout.
Later, we started using a bureau. There, one would submit a bundle of program and data cards at the front desk and head upstairs to the printer room to wait, with other customers, for the job to print.
As an undergrad student, one would submit cards and, when the job had run in some far distant room, it would eventually print out, provided some social science student hadn't tried to run a job that exceeded the 5 page limit with their SPSS assignment. Fortunately, I found a terminal & printer room that wasn't supposed to be used by undergrads and used it.

[IBMJunkman]

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be!

A lovely video from the Computer History Museum, compiling and running a FORTRAN program on a 1401, which was a business machine, not a scientific computer.

My first exposure to IBM machines was running FORTRAN IV programs on the later System 360, which was a scientific machine.


I donate enough to have I my name on the wall at the museum. :)

I don’t consider the 360 to be a scientific computer. It was a business computer that could do scientific calculations.

A Cray was a scientific computer.

I have a 360/20, 360/30 and 360/65 operator panels. They are for sale!

The 65 console with the panel for the optional 3rd party Fabritek memory:

http://www.myimagecollection.com/webpics/65panel.jpg

[flash8]

The S/360 introduced many innovations like VM... the 360/67 was an amazing piece of work, probably around the same time as the Multics project (another work of genius!).

I've always been fascinated by S/360 and S/370 model evolution. With S/360 IBM bet the company! First real "family" of computers... Seymour Cray was still at CDC at the time... didn't split until the early 70's after CDC dropped his supercomputer project (and he went on to the 1976 Cray-1).

Cray's biography is also fascinating.

[flash8]

I should have added, yes, the Cray-1 and later were vector processors (in favour until the early 90's) for numerical work, even then Seymour was reluctantly abandoning this approach (likely starting with his earlier STAR work at CDC), he was vector obsessed.

I think by the 80's IBM managed to microcode the S/370 instruction set on a pair of 68000's cumulating in the PC/370 and AT/370... think it went further than that as well. I know by 2000 there was a desktop S/370 capable of running VM, MVS etc.

[cdtaylor_nats]

Burroughs B5000 series running under MCP beat IBM to VM by a couple of years.

[cavuman1]

As a freshman at Vanderbilt University in 1967 (was that not just last week?), I was hired as a punch card operator for our newly-acquired Scientific Data Systems Sigma 7. The university had invested over five million dollars (U.S.) for the behemoth which was housed in a mostly underground circular building featuring high security including armed guards. I needed spending money and $5.00/hr. was twice the minimum wage... :p

The Beast, as we all called the clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junque, could understand words of 128K (!), processed at a multiplicative rate of 30.5 ųs (not exactly teraflop speed!), and had about 60 MB of tape drive memory (less than one ten-thousandth than that of my cell 'phone!) Lord have mercy, it was the highest of high tech! :cool:

During one endless and completely boring evening session of punch card entry, when I was stuck in the computer center whilst my fraternity brothers were out wining and dining the pulchritudinous, wealthy, and well-humored female students, I absentmindedly entered a divide by zero command on a card relating to a Psychology student's experiment dealing with the consumption of communion wafers by white rats. I already knew the results intuitively - the rats would die and go to Hell anyway. ;)

The stack of cards was placed into the main card reader and the RUN button was depressed. (See what I did there? We should have run and I was about to be really depressed.) In milliseconds - nanoseconds were not even dreamed of at the time - red lights flashed furiously on the system control unit, peripherals screeched to a halt, and tape flew off memory storage reels in quantities rivaling a New York ticker tape parade for the Apollo astronauts! I had managed to bring the computer system of the Harvard of the South to screaming surcease. It stayed there for two days. I quit. :eek:

But then there was Star Trek and those pulchritudinous, wealthy, and well-humored female students. And beer. Life is good... :D

- Ed :ok:

[flash8]

Just as I were entering University (1991) for a Comp Sci degree they were decommissioning Prime Minicomputers and Digital VAX equipment...

The Lab technician in charge gave me a VAXStation 2000 free of charge as they were throwing it out! Must have been the only student to run VMS in his dorm room :)

After that everything turned to PC....

[Octane]

"I punched my cards", blooming luxury! I had to mark the cards with a pencil then get in a long queue to the card reader. If you had a "read error", you had to find which one of the hundreds of pencil marks was dodgy then back to the queue! Circa 1980, some type of VAX system. Back then it was called Computer Science, not IT...

[IBMJunkman]

The CHM has a unique demo on their 1401. They take a full face picture on an iPhone. It gets rendered and transferred to a PC. The PC is connected to the 1401. The 1403 then prints your image ala the old Snoopy, etc printouts back in the day. I framed mine and hung it up just in case I forget what I look like. In a grainy B&W sort of way. :)

[IBMJunkman]

Oh, in case anyone wants to wax nostalgia Re punchcards check my site. IBMJunkman Collection (http://www.ibmjunkman.com)

I have over 4000 cards cataloged.

[India Four Two]

Just as I were entering University (1991) for a Comp Sci degree they were decommissioning Prime Minicomputers and Digital VAX equipment...

flash8,

You make me feel old - I remember the introduction of the VAX - friends of mine had lapel buttons saying "I've been VAXinated". :)

The first computer I used at university was an English Electric KDF-9, maxxed out with 32K of ferrite-core memory. This was the mainframe for the whole university!

[flash8]

Well India Four Two for some years I have been looking for a few years for a Micro PDP11/23 in a BA23 case (the same case as the MicroVAX/VAXStation II) and have come to the conclusion I might have to build the 11/23 by buying components separately and building it myself (or should I say mainly slotting in cards to the bus), as I wanted to run RSX-11m and RSTS/E natively, not sure if they take a QBUS SCSI Card (themselves a small fortune now).

Other than that I may eventually break down and buy a used MicroVAX 3100/95 - as the highest end small system though they aren't cheap (a few thousand dollars) but are occasionally available still.

Around 1995 I did buy a 1GB used Drive (one of those double height huge beasties, think it was manufactured around 1992, had a "Novell Netware compatible" sticker on it for some reason) and when the heads moved you could hear the drive "thump", and the casing of the PC rattled :)