🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17496@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier (John B. Nagle) writes:

>      I'd like to encourage people to write simulators for one or two of the
>early machines, as a way of keeping the history alive.  The ENIAC was
>plugboard-programmed, so it is not an enormously interesting machine to
>simulate.

An uncle of mine had been an IBM salesmen.  When he learned I was first
getting into computers, he dumped a pile of old IBM 650 manuals on me.

At the time I was just a BASIC programmer, and didn't even know what
machine/assembly language was.  So my first major BASIC project ended
up being an IBM 650 simulator.

How old is the 650 you ask?  It used a drum for main memory.  This was
before "core".  It stored numbers in *decimal* form.  Optimization tricks
consisted of laying out your drum references very carefully.

I've actually talked about the 650 to some geezers who used the real
thing.  They were so happy....

And when you get the chance, go to a good technical library and track
down the original Fortran manual.  The one that announces that bugs will
now be a thing of the past.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720