Comments for Dusty Decks

Comment on 704 FORTRAN II listing available by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:53:50 +0000

The PDFs that you are interested in may be downloaded from here.

Comment on 704 FORTRAN II listing available by Mike Danner

Mike Danner — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:35:03 +0000

Please send me the digitized listing in PDF format for this compiler of FORTRAN II for the IBM 704.

Comment on Historic FORTRAN documents online by Wayne B'Rells

Wayne B'Rells — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:36:01 +0000

As a summer intern, I remember using UTO Fortran II on a CARD ORIENTED 1620 system at the New England Electric System office in downtown Boston. On that system the UTO compiler was loaded from 80 column cards. Following the compiler, the user’s program (also on cards, of course) was loaded. The 1620 then processed the source cards and (hopefully) punched out a deck of object code. Finally, the object code was reloaded along with a deck of cards containing the UTO library. After this rather time-consuming process, results from the user’s program (if any) were punched onto yet another stack of 80-column cards. THESE cards were then printed via a 407(?) “accounting machine”! If I remember correctly, this whole process could easily take 1/2 for a short program. BTW, this 1620 only had 20K words of memory…

Everyone using the 1620 was extremely happy when it was replaced with an IBM 1130, although cards were still used (of course!) for input.

Wayne

Comment on ALGOL by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 23:48:17 +0000

Graham,

Thanks for the information about Rogalgol; I’ve added an entry for it:

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/#Rogalgol

Paul

Comment on ALGOL by Graham Reid

Graham Reid — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:06:31 +0000

Hi, in the 1974 timeframe, I used an implementation of Algol-60 on an 8k PDP8/E. This was written by a Dr Roger Abbot (hence called RogAlgol).
I gather it was subsequently ported to CP/M.
Some links are:
http://pdp8.de/download/RogAlgol.pdf
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/algol60.html
http://www.dbit.com/pub/pdp8/nickel/langs/algol/ascii/

Regards, Graham

Comment on SDC: Q-32 Lisp, Lisp 2, and three more; Lisp 1.5 Primer by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:44:18 +0000

Catherine,

At least a few people are looking at the old LISP code, and the old FORTRAN code on a parallel web site, because they have succeeded in getting it running on simulators for the original IBM 704/709/7090 computers. In the case of LISP, this required using OCR and careful hand-checking, because no machine readable version was available.

I think this is wonderful, but it is not the only justification for such preservation work. I hope in 500 years, when people look back to the invention of computers, they will be able to study some of the actual source code for the earliest systems and application software. So I am heartened to see the work of others around the world doing similar work. I’d like to encourage you to keep up your excellent work documenting APL’s history.

Comment on SDC: Q-32 Lisp, Lisp 2, and three more; Lisp 1.5 Primer by Catherine Lathwell

Catherine Lathwell — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:36:18 +0000

Are people looking at the old LISP code?

Just last night I was looking at an assembly listing of APL’s shared variable processor dated May 1, 1972. I was looking for inspiration because I’m trying to find a way to explain how different things are today. It also has my father’s hand written notes and corrections, so it is special to me. I’m curious to know how many people look at these old things?

Comment on ALGOL by Marcel van der Veer

Marcel van der Veer — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:50:54 +0000

Algol 68 Genie is in continuous development. Many are using it to run either vintage programs or new code. If someone thinks it contains a “critical error”, please report it to me so it can be corrected. The quality of open source software depends on useful feedback of its users.

Thank you,
Marcel

Comment on ALGOL by andrey (c) adtrefer

andrey (c) adtrefer — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:40:26 +0000

Old compilers must died. Try to make new compiler for Algol family. Algol 68 genie has critical errors, so you have chance to make good compiler.

Comment on ALGOL by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:53:35 +0000

John,

I’m especially interested in old implementations. For completeness, I’ll probably add GNU Algol/Marst and the NASE Algol 60 interpreter. Thanks very much for mentioning them.

Paul

Comment on ALGOL by John Cowan

John Cowan — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:28:45 +0000

Are you only interested in implementations for old computers? GNU Algol, otherwise called Marst, is a full implementation of Algol 60 (the modified report) that translates it into C, and there is the NASE Algol 60 interpreter as well.

Comment on Elements of Programming by Paul McJones

Paul McJones — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:54:36 +0000

Gene,

You are of course correct. In the book, we introduce the notion of a partial model of a theory, such as integers of a given word size.

Paul

Comment on Elements of Programming by Eugene Miya

Eugene Miya — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:44:51 +0000

Actually, floating point addition in computers isn’t associative. Algebraically it is associative, but the results of each addition will be dependent on the size and sign of the numbers being added. It’s associative on integers only for the range of integers on a given memory word size these days

Comment on Historic FORTRAN documents online by Hal Smith

Hal Smith — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:19:53 +0000

Paul, you might check with the University of Toronto. I remember running a Fortran II compiler “UTO Fortran” (I think it was) on the paper tape driven IBM 1620 at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, in the fall 1968 through fall 1970.

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).