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From: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: stack machines (Burroughs)
Keywords: RISC, real-time
Message-ID: <3693@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 88 03:35:42 GMT
References: <1521@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1532@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <476@pcrat.UUCP> <2868@louie.udel.EDU> <370@dlscg1.UUCP> <3147@polyslo.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes)
Organization: California State Home for the Weird
Lines: 45

>people wanted that to become a variable sector size, and that is what is
>going to take them so long to implement.  Not exactly modualar software.

Gee, seems like only yesterday that IBM had just discovered the
merits of fixed sector size, after Burroughs and DEC had been using
it all these years.  All the times that users have had to completely
re-format their files after some new model IBM disk replaces an
older one...  But maybe you're talking about something different.

>  Algol 68 does support Data structures.  And most smart companies have
>upgraded their systems to Algol 68 or beyond.  Why Unisys hasn't, I don't know.

Errr, which companies do you have in mind?  I don't pretend to be a
walking catalog, but I haven't heard anyone mention Algol68 in the last
15 years or so, much less try to sell me a compiler for it.
>
>>I would argue that the MCP is a fairly sophisticated operating system that is 
>
>  I wouldn't. :-)

Well there are different meanings to "sophisticated", but for real
sophistry you need to see a system that uses a lot of letter
abbreviations like JES and MVS and VS1 and VM and CMS and OS and ...
where each flavor needs a different compiler and file system.
>
>  Even Unisys is moving towards knowing Machine code, they have a new 
>piece of software called DumpAnalyser, they seemed to feel the need to spend
>three weeks teaching me how to use it {they do this for all new employee's}.
>And if you think what it puts out is Algol code you are sadly mistaken, it's
>basicly for "reading" the stack of a program, and if that's not machine code

Gee, back in B5500 days we had a dump analyzer that would print out the
stack and various MCP tables so you could almost read it.  In contrast
to certain other machines of the same period that would just give you
pages and pages of pure hexadecimal in neat columns, but you had to
figure out yourself where the structures were.  Or buy a third-party
dump formatter for lots of money.  But that was just for use with
MCP dumps.  For user programs you never needed dumps because the
abort message told you exactly where to look in the program listing
and gave you the reason for the abort in English.  I guess things have
gone downhill since then.


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