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From: werme@alliant.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: LA and the IBM 1130
Message-ID: <392@alliant.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Jan-87 01:09:45 EST
Article-I.D.: alliant.392
Posted: Sun Jan 18 01:09:45 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Jan-87 06:10:53 EST
References: <482@uwm-cs.UUCP> <980@husc6.UUCP> <951@phred.UUCP> <2454@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> <196@dasys1.UUCP>
Reply-To: werme@alliant.UUCP (Ric Werme)
Distribution: na
Organization: Alliant Computer Systems, Littleton, MA
Lines: 34

In article <196@dasys1.UUCP> rnewman@dasys1.UUCP (Richard S. Newman) writes:
>In article <2454@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> brian@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Brian Kantor) writes:
>
>Did you guys ever see, use, or hear of the PDP-7?

Careful, now this could start going way back.  While I didn't use it,
Harvard had a couple PDP-1s and I know there are people on USENET who've
used them.  One of the PDP-1s is at the Computer Museum in Boston where
they fire it up for some serious Space War tournaments!

The first computer I ever programmed was a process control computer my father
designed areound 1960.  He told people that it was so easy to program that
even an 11 year-old could do it.  So he gave me the manual.  About the only
problem I had was that he didn't tell me that I had to hold the write button
down long enough for the magnetic drum to rotate up to two times to ensure
the instruction got written.  (It was programmed in machine code.)  (Now,
now, yes it was kinda slow, but in 1960 drum memory was the fastest
available.  It ran at 1800 RPM because the bearings would wear out after
only a year at the design speed of 3600 RPM.) (That computer was also probably
the first commercial parallel processor.  25 years later and what am I doing?
Working on another parallel processor.  Gotta get into a faster moving field.)

Actually, it wasn't until I got to Carnegie Mellon in 1968 that I got
seriously involved with computers.  I got discouraged in '61 because I
couldn't figure out the instruction set of the Packard Bell 250.  Too
bad, 'cause that was one of the more important machines of its day. (And
there's a piece of a 250 at the computer museum too.)  (But they haven't
caught me yet!!!!)

+-------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| The Art of Programming        | Ric Werme                   |
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