Comments for Dusty Decks

Comment on Dave Pitts is making progress running Fortran II by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:27:43 +0000

Bob,

The best answer is probably to install GNU Fortran, and use its g77 compiler, which can handle Fortran IV as well as Fortran 77 source programs. GNU Fortran is part of the GNU Compiler Collection, including C, C++, and various other languages. One way to install it on a Windows PC is as part of the free Cygwin package (see http://www.cygwin.com/). According to this page, g77 is no longer being maintained with the newest versions of the GNU Compiler Collection, so you may need to do some looking to find an older version: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranG77 .

Paul

Comment on Dave Pitts is making progress running Fortran II by Bob T.

Bob T. — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:09:53 +0000

I have just written a program in FORTRAN IV in order to solve an interesting math problem which was given to me by a fellow employee.

But I have not the slightest idea how I can run the program. Any ideas?

It is about thirty lines log.

I have a few old Radio Shack Computers in my cellar and will get them out to see if I might run the program on them.

Comment on BBC Radio observes Fortran’s 50th birthday by Derek Mahar

Derek Mahar — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:33:33 +0000

Episode download site is actually http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/digitalp/ and the episode itself is available for download at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/digitalp/digitalp_20071218-1232.mp3.

Comment on Historic software at bitsavers.org by tom morrison

tom morrison — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 21:29:44 +0000

I worked on the Navy Univac 1219B computer and the shipboard equipment. I was fascinated at the manual for it I found on Bitsavers. What a wonderful thing you are doing. So many now just change cards for repair and have never seen an actual register. Can you imagine operational stepping thru a few instructions and watching the result appear in the accumulator register (upper). How can I help?

Comment on Daniel N. Leeson by Eileen Seaboldt

Eileen Seaboldt — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:11:40 +0000

I worked with Roy Nutt on a special task force project for IBM in the early 1960’s. I was just a young married woman at the time, but Roy promised me that if I bought CSC stock when it went public, I would not be sorry. Unfortunately, at the time we were building a home and were only able to buy a couple of shares. But we have held onto those shares and as he promised, never been sorry. He was one of the nicest people I ever encountered in the business world.

Comment on C++ Historical Sources Archive by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 04:47:54 +0000

Good suggestion! Try http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/c_plus_plus/cfront/release_3.0.3/source/cfront_3_0_3.tgz
(note among other things I renamed release_3.03 to release_3.0.3, to match the actual distribution directory).

Comment on C++ Historical Sources Archive by elife

elife — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:42:16 +0000

Is there a tar ball for Cfront-3.03 for easy download? Thanks a lot!

Comment on IBM 7094 Emulator now runs Fortran IV compiler by Richard Pessolano

Richard Pessolano — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:07:29 +0000

I have reel to reel tape with engineering programs from a time share (GE)
use on Mark III system. Programs are in Basic,FIV,PFN,and ALGOL.
The tape was made by GE in 1979. I am interested in getting these programs copied, printed out, and converted to Fortran 77 or better for use on PC. Printout format was 132 char. I have printouts of some of the programs. Can you advise me of someone who can help?
Can the IBM 7094 Emulater help?

Please advise

Comment on Remembering John Backus by Eric Norman

Eric Norman — Fri, 25 May 2007 23:42:41 +0000

What a small world! I was a real good buddy of John WIlliams when he was a graduate student here at Wisconsin. I also wrote a paper in the mid-80’s about the functional programming (FP) notation of John Backus. The paper is TR636 at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/techreports/viewyear.php?year=1986

P.S, Paul. I had no problem negotiating the CalTrain - AmTrak connection. Thanks again for your help.

Comment on Remembering John Backus by George

George — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:38:48 +0000

Really is a kick to put the names of favorite old tools together with the names of their makers. Thanks

Comment on Remembering John Backus by Dan Rabin

Dan Rabin — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:13:51 +0000

Paul -

Many thanks for your extensive reminiscence. One of the joys of working in a young field such as programming languages is having one’s lifetime overlap with those of its great founders; one of the sorrows is watching them pass from among us.

The closest I ever got to meeting John Backus was giving an informal talk to John Williams, Ed Wimmers, and Alex Aiken in what had been, before his then-recent retirement, Backus’s office at IBM Almaden. The subject of the talk was my theoretical Ph.D. research on integrating assignment statements into functional languages. I learned from your reminiscence that this topic would have been of interest to John Backus.

Comment on Remembering John Backus by orcmid

orcmid — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 04:33:58 +0000

Hi pal!

Interesting to see more pieces of the puzzle. The only time I ever spoke to John was a while after the first ACM-sponsored Functional Programming Language Conference. It was to invite him to look at Burge’s Recursive Programming Techniques and other material, because I felt he’s overlooked some useful resources. He obviously had, or at least you had!

So you got your hands on McG! I always thought it was a version of Strachey’s General Purpose Macrogenerator [Computer Journal 8, 3 (1965), 225-241] that Peter Landin and Bill Burge used as a bootstrapping device to spit out assembly-language code and ISWIM SECD “machine” codes for assembly on a conventional machine. I could be off base about that, but it is my recollection from conversations with Burge. Roy Edwards,was the lone Sperry Univac developer on ISWIM after Burge went to TJW and Landin had gone up to MIT for a while (where PAL was done by Art Evans, based partly on Landin’s ideas). I think Roy’s back in the UK but he would remember better than I (the PM for the project when it moved from NYC down to Blue Bell).

Of course, McG was applicative in an interesting formal re-writing/string-computation sort of way. I figured out a version that used single operands and something like reverse-Polish notation but I never built it when I realized that cons cells work better.

Thanks for the extensive reminiscence. I don’t think there was much knowledge of that work or the fundamental papers outside of IBM. It i sgreat to have the progression described and filled-in as you’ve done it.

Comment on John Backus by Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » Remembering John Backus

Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » Remembering John Backus — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 02:29:33 +0000

[...] involved with at the Computer History Museum to collect and preserve historic source code led me to get in touch with John regarding the original Fortran compiler. John was still living in the same house in San Francisco, [...]

Comment on The Library of Congress by george adams

george adams — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:12:04 +0000

There are some contributions so vital as to go wholey unnoticed. Google BNF and the name of any popular language. Millions of hits. Ask ten people in the street to name a programming language or the inventors of any programming languages. Blank stares. Try to imagine logging this comment in a world with out computer languages.

At least some of us will miss the person.

Comment on Historic software at bitsavers.org by John Blankenbaker

John Blankenbaker — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:33:56 +0000

The story on the Kenbak-1 computer is told by the creator at the web site above. Included are copies of all of the manuals that were published by Kenbak Corporation.
John

Comment on Fortran II source in Paul Pierce’s collection by Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » Progress with Lisp 1.5 source

Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » Progress with Lisp 1.5 source — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 18:24:40 +0000

[...] Rich Cornwell (some of whose work I reported on earlier) and Bob Abeles (who was the first to point out to me the existence of the Fortran II sources) have recently completed a reconstruction of the card deck for the “Bonnie’s Birthday Assembly” of Lisp 1.5 (see Pascal Bourguignon recreates machine-readable source for LISP 1.5). Rich notes: Bob Abeles has finished proof reading Lisp-1.5 and is pretty confident that the binary matches the listing. Unfortunately it still does not run. So we need someone with more lisp experience or possible compare it to some of other versions you have listed on your Lisp site. It currently does not work correctly under sim3.6 due to card reader bug. I will get this fixed in next couple of weeks. … But after two people proofing it (Bob & me) I am pretty sure that it matches now. [...]

Comment on IBSYS Fortran II runs on a SIMH-based simulator by jmdyck

jmdyck — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:30:48 +0000

Distributed Proofreaders: http://www.pgdp.net

Comment on IBSYS Fortran II runs on a SIMH-based simulator by quality of OCR

quality of OCR — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:32:33 +0000

>> He’s doing this by hand, because the quality of OCR is not high enough

The folks at distributed proofreaders would probably get a kick out of helping with a project like this.

Comment on Fortran II source in Paul Pierce’s collection by Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » IBSYS Fortran II runs on a SIMH-based simulator

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:36:39 +0000

[...] An upcoming release of Bob Supnik’s SIMH (Computer History Simulation system) will include IBM 704/709/7090/7094 simulation provided by Rich Cornwell. Rich has been very busy lately: implementing and debugging the simulations of the CPU, channels, controllers, and devices; tracking down and transcribing source code for diagnostics; and figuring out how to rebuild and run various diagnostics, SHARE, IBSYS, and CTSS code. He’s had great luck with the IBSYS distribution from Paul Pierce; in particular, he was able to get the code compiled by the Fortran II compiler to execute. It turns out the Fortran II compiler writes out intermediate files to tape as individual records not followed by the customary tape mark; it was necessary to tweak the simulator to handle this the way the original hardware did. Rich notes that Bob Supnik, who is also working on a 7094 simulator, was the first person to discover this. (Rich says Bob will include both Rich’s and his own 7xxx simulators in SIMH since Bob’s is specifically optimized for running CTSS while Rich’s is aimed more toward IBSYS and older 704/709 software.) [...]

Comment on Paul Pierce by Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » As you sow so shall you reap

Dusty Decks » Blog Archive » As you sow so shall you reap — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 16:44:26 +0000

[...] Leif has written a disassembler for the IBM 704, and helped me get started decoding the mysteries of Paul Pierce’s SHARE tapes. I will post more about that soon. [...]