A little first-hand about the Orbiter development

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:27:13 +0000, rk wrote:

For any program of significant size, I would want at a least a
rudimentary assembler so one can jump to symbolic addresses, have
reasonable names for constants, registers, etc. Of course, this
wouldn't affect the size or runtime of the program. I remember even in
the '70s and early '80s some rather slow FORTRAN compilers. I don't
know about the speed of the assemblers back in the '60s. I know there
were some programmers from back there in the group (added .history) and
perhaps they can chime in with their $0.02.

There was a time, which ended in the early 1970s when I was in college, in
which computer programming textbooks tended to be machine specific and
covered machine language, Fortran II, and assembly language in that order.

In the old days, computer programs tended to be carefully "desk checked"
before they ever saw the machine, computer time was more precious than
programmer time, so manually producing machine code was de rigeur.

I beleive that the machine which gave the impetus to using assembly
language rather than machine code was the IBM 605. This machine had
instructions which had a field which held the address of the next
instruction to be executed. This is because it fetched instructions for
execution directly from a rotating drum memory. The trick was to arrange
the instructions so that the next instruction was under the read head when
it was needed. This lead to SOAP or the Share Optimizing Assembly Program.
The optimization was the allocation of the 'right' address to each
instruction.

We were doing assembly language programming for the IBM 1620 in the summer
of 1963, and it was just magnetic core memory. As they say, that was when
ships were wood and men were iron -- and so was their memory.

"Rick DeNatale" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:27:13 +0000, rk wrote:

For any program of significant size, I would want at a least a
rudimentary assembler so one can jump to symbolic addresses, have
reasonable names for constants, registers, etc. Of course, this
wouldn't affect the size or runtime of the program. I remember even in
the '70s and early '80s some rather slow FORTRAN compilers. I don't
know about the speed of the assemblers back in the '60s. I know there
were some programmers from back there in the group (added .history) and
perhaps they can chime in with their $0.02.

There was a time, which ended in the early 1970s when I was in college, in
which computer programming textbooks tended to be machine specific and
covered machine language, Fortran II, and assembly language in that order.

In the old days, computer programs tended to be carefully "desk checked"
before they ever saw the machine, computer time was more precious than
programmer time, so manually producing machine code was de rigeur.

I beleive that the machine which gave the impetus to using assembly
language rather than machine code was the IBM 605. This machine had
instructions which had a field which held the address of the next
instruction to be executed. This is because it fetched instructions for
execution directly from a rotating drum memory. The trick was to arrange
the instructions so that the next instruction was under the read head when
it was needed. This lead to SOAP or the Share Optimizing Assembly Program.
The optimization was the allocation of the 'right' address to each
instruction.

My first computer experience was Fortran-IV on an IBM-360. I can
remember typing for hours at the terminal, submitting the thick stack of
punch cards to the computer operator, only to find (hours later) that
the program had bugs. Then it was back to the keyboard terminal to type
some more. I definately don't miss those days. Little did I know that
the first computer system with a monitor (video user interface) was
being developed.

Oh, folks coded usng punch card input well up to the mid to late 70s. Even
when the transition to terminals began IBM (in particular) "pretended" that
the input was a punched deck of tab cards. The end of each 80 column line
was a sequence number. If you used a terminal for input, it automatically
skipped 10 numbers between lines to give you "room" to add lines without
haveing to resequence.

"John Gilmer" wrote in
:




My first computer experience was Fortran-IV on an IBM-360. I can
remember typing for hours at the terminal, submitting the thick stack
of punch cards to the computer operator, only to find (hours later)
that the program had bugs. Then it was back to the keyboard terminal
to type some more. I definately don't miss those days. Little did I
know that the first computer system with a monitor (video user
interface) was being developed.

Oh, folks coded usng punch card input well up to the mid to late 70s.
Even when the transition to terminals began IBM (in particular)
"pretended" that the input was a punched deck of tab cards. The end
of each 80 column line was a sequence number. If you used a terminal
for input, it automatically skipped 10 numbers between lines to give
you "room" to add lines without haveing to resequence.



Yep... we used 'em at Michigan State up through 1980 or so -- one of the
advantages of working in the Chemistry building is that they had a remote
terminal for the CDC 6500, and you didn't have to punch and feed cards with
the hoi polloi. ;-)

My thumb *still* has its 029 macro that spaces to column 7 with
authority...


--
Reed Snellenberger

Reed Snellenberger wrote:

My thumb *still* has its 029 macro that spaces to column 7 with
authority...

Once a Fortran programmer, always ...

Yep... we used 'em at Michigan State up through 1980 or so -- --
Reed Snellenberger


Same at the University of Nebraska, and then we got the mighty VAX 11/780
"the most powerful computer ever", or so we thought at the time.


R

David Higgins wrote in news:CeKQa.54686
:



Reed Snellenberger wrote:

My thumb *still* has its 029 macro that spaces to column 7 with
authority...

Once a Fortran programmer, always ...


Yep, although arithmetic IF statements get very tiring when you’re using
Java...

--
Reed Snellenberger

Many of the early Apollo Fortran orbital calculations were done on an IBM
1401.


"Ron" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
|
|
| Yep... we used 'em at Michigan State up through 1980 or so -- --
| Reed Snellenberger
|
|
| Same at the University of Nebraska, and then we got the mighty VAX 11/780
| "the most powerful computer ever", or so we thought at the time.
|
|
| R
|
|

John Gilmer wrote:




My first computer experience was Fortran-IV on an IBM-360. I can
remember typing for hours at the terminal, submitting the thick stack of
punch cards to the computer operator, only to find (hours later) that
the program had bugs. Then it was back to the keyboard terminal to type
some more. I definately don't miss those days. Little did I know that
the first computer system with a monitor (video user interface) was
being developed.

Oh, folks coded usng punch card input well up to the mid to late 70s.
Even when the transition to terminals began IBM (in particular)
"pretended" that
the input was a punched deck of tab cards. The end of each 80 column
line
was a sequence number. If you used a terminal for input, it
automatically skipped 10 numbers between lines to give you "room" to add
lines without haveing to resequence.

It was not in aerospace but my first job was the night shift computer
operator for a large oil company, Shell. in 84 we still used a tape drives
boot-strapped by the punch cards when we did a reboot on the IBM360. Those
chain printers commanded respect and a little fear.

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 22:45:16 +0200, Kegwasher
wrote:

It was not in aerospace but my first job was the night shift computer
operator for a large oil company, Shell. in 84 we still used a tape drives
boot-strapped by the punch cards when we did a reboot on the IBM360. Those
chain printers commanded respect and a little fear.

....Try getting damn near strangled by one when your tie-on tie gets
caught in the roller during a full page feed. *That* will invoke fear.


OM

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