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From: larry@kitty.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: IBM 1130 Nostalgia
Message-ID: <1581@kitty.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Feb-87 14:16:17 EST
Article-I.D.: kitty.1581
Posted: Fri Feb  6 14:16:17 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Feb-87 04:32:57 EST
References: <504@PSUECLA>
Organization: Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, NY
Lines: 42
Summary: Fond memories of the IBM 1401...

In article <504@PSUECLA>, mrb@psuecla.BITNET writes:
> It was fun to read all the IBM 1130 recollections.  We had an 1130 with 8K
> of core, a 1442 card read/punch, an 1132 printer (later upgraded to a 1403)
> ...

	My first "hands-on" computer experience was on an IBM 1401 in 1965.
The 1401 was a decimal machine, and the concept of hexadecimal notation was
totally foreign to me at the time.  I knew about octal machines, but only
in theory.
	This particular 1401 had 16K of core, a 1402 card reader-punch, a
1403 printer, 4 dual-density tape drives (I believe 255 and 550 BPI), and
2 RAMAC's - which was IBM's jargon for multi-platter disk drives (these may
have been IBM's first disk drives of that type).
	This was a batch machine, and there was, of course, no OS.  I ran
Fortran with a tape compiler which required 2 compiler tapes and 2 scratch
tapes, and seemed to take at least 20 minutes for even the _simplest_
Fortran program to compile.  I rather quickly learned what "efficiency" in
coding meant since the compiled program could easily exceed the 16K core if
I were not careful.
	Unfortunately, this Fortran compiler had no drivers to handle the
RAMAC disks, so I was forced to learn Autocoder to access them on a machine
language basis.  I could never get machine language routines for disk handling
to properly work from a Fortran program, so I was forced to divide my
application programs between Fortran and Autocoder.
	I once did a little "unauthorized" modification to the 1401 hardware;
I provided an external interface to the console test switches in an effort
to create a serial data port that could read the tty current loop output
of a data logger.  Unfortunately, about 10 minutes before I was ready to
run a test of the hardware with an Autocoder program, I got caught by an
unsympathetic IBM CE who promptly called his supervisor.  I guess IBM got a
little bent out of shape because this 1401 was a leased machine.  After then
getting reamed out by my superiors, I was forced to abandon my "effort". To
this day I wonder if it would have worked...
	In 1968, the 1401 was replaced by a 360/10 - which spent much of the
first year of its life running in 1401-emulation mode because everyone had
difficulty in understanding the assembly language, 360 architecture, and 
360 DOS after having spent so much time with a 1401!

<>  Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
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