🚀 go-pugleaf

jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones) writes:

>"What was the first programmable computer?" is ill specified question.

>[story of ancient octal dumps from ILLIAC dating from the late '40s]

>To make such dumps, there must have been a considerable amount of working
>hardware -- not an entire working computer, but enough to step throug
>memory and convert binary to octal for printing.  My suspicion is that
>they used the CPU's data paths to do this, with a very simplified control
>unit that turned what they had into a memory tester, but I didn't have
>time to find out if this was so.

>I also got the impression that they were running programs with just add,
>jump, load and store instructions for a considerable time ...

Thank you for poking a hole in one of the few 'firsts' I thought
still held up!

Things get _really_ uncertain when you consider that the octal dumper
(memory tester?) probably operated via a primitive control store;
quite likely if it was influenced by the Whirlwind design. Now, if you
have a program in control storage, how's that different from a RISC
program in ROM??

Who's on First, anyway?

Rick.
smith@sctc.com          arden hills, minnesota