richard@gryphon.UUCP (06/22/87)
In article <820@newton.praxis.co.uk> tv@praxis.co.uk (Tony Voss) writes: >In article <163@buengc.BU.EDU> myers@buengc.BU.EDU (Eric Myers) writes: >> >> Years ago I was running on an IBM 1130 at Willamette University in >>Oregon. (Her name was Grendle.) I remember ..... > >Ah! The IBM 1130! Stirs my memory too. >We used to have a program that turned all (well most) of the core store >on and off at a frequency that could be picked up on a medium wave radio. You too ? The 1130 was my first computer. Size of a big fridge and 8K. We also found that our AM radios picked up signals from the computer, and eventually made some decks that would play songs. So ours didn't so much talk, as sing. Butm todays technology being what it is, my Amiga 'sings' to my cordless phone. No cordless MIDI jokes please. Damn annoying sometimes. -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {akgua, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard
howard@COS.COM (Howard C. Berkowitz) (06/23/87)
Nostalgia again. The 1130 was my first computer as well, at
American University. To use it, one passed a basic operation
and a basic FORTRAN programmed instruction course, and then
signed up for machine time.
When I was first introduced to the beast, the computer center
manager carefully warned me NOT to push the IMMEDIATE STOP
button, because it might cause a mid-instruction halt which
would leave the disk (with a HALF MILLION CHARACTERS) inconsistent.
I was warned to use INTERRUPT or PROGRAM STOP.
Anyway, I soon experienced a hard loop, which turned out to
be a hardware problem. I punched interrupt and program stop
until my finger was sore, with no change. What to do?
I COULDN'T push IMMEDIATE STOP, could I?
Aha! Another alternative occurred to me.
I turned the power off....
--
-- howard(Howard C. Berkowitz) @cos.com
{seismo!sundc, hadron, hqda-ai}!cos!howard
(703) 883-2812 [ofc] (703) 998-5017 [home]
DISCLAIMER: I explicitly identify COS official positions.shaffer@operations.dccs.upenn.edu (Earl Shaffer) (06/23/87)
We had a 1130 in my High School in suburban Philadelphia. It was for the school payroll and scheduling. The course "Intro to DP" used it for: 1) Fortran 2) Machine language (as in 1s and 0s) 3) Assembler 4) Commercial Subroutines (does anyone remember these?) We had a Wang Micro which had a cassette interface in the front. ============================================================================== Earl Shaffer - University of Pennsylvania - Data Communications Department "Time was invented so that everything wouldn't happen at once." Steven Wright ==============================================================================
klm@munsell.UUCP (Kevin McBride) (06/24/87)
In article <340@cos.COM> howard@COS.COM (Howard C. Berkowitz) writes: > >Nostalgia again. The 1130 was my first computer as well, at >American University. To use it, one passed a basic operation >and a basic FORTRAN programmed instruction course, and then >signed up for machine time. One of my first two computers was the IBM 1130 as well. I started using this beast, as well as a dual-processor HP 2000c' Time-Sharing system, as a freshman in high school. Nostalgia? Yes. Useful? Not any more. I'm not even sure the 1130 was useful back in the early '70s when I first got my hands on it. Gawd what a beast. and 8K memory too! (snicker, snort :-) What I really liked about the 1130 was the revolutionary non-volatile data archive format that it employed. Your data could not be erased, and was safe from almost everything except fire. I hear that IBM even obtained a patent for this wonderful media. :-) :-) :-) They called it the Controlled Advance Reader Data System, or C.A.R.D.S. :-) :-) :-) -- Kevin McBride |Disclaimer: These | harvard -\ Eikonix - A Kodak Co. | opinions are mine, | ll-xn ---adelie-----> munsell!klm 23 Crosby Dr. | not my employer's, | decvax -v talcott -v | Bedford, MA 01730 | So There! | allegra ------------encore
howard@COS.COM (Howard C. Berkowitz) (06/26/87)
> In article <340@cos.COM> howard@COS.COM (Howard C. Berkowitz) writes: > > > >Nostalgia again. The 1130 was my first computer as well, at > >American University. To use it, one passed a basic operation > >and a basic FORTRAN programmed instruction course, and then > >signed up for machine time. > One of my first two computers was the IBM 1130 as well... > Nostalgia? Yes. Useful? Not any more. I'm not even sure the 1130 > was useful back in the early '70s when I first got my hands on it. > Gawd what a beast. and 8K memory too! (snicker, snort :-) I can feel superior; we had the BIG 16K version. When I was introduced to the machine, I was told not to worry about storage: "you have a disk with a WHOLE HALF MILLION characters -- do you think you can fill that up?" > > What I really liked about the 1130 was the revolutionary non-volatile > data archive format that it employed. Your data could not be erased, and > was safe from almost everything except fire. I hear that IBM even obtained > a patent for this wonderful media. :-) :-) :-) > They called it the Controlled Advance Reader Data System, or C.A.R.D.S. Yes, we had C.A.R.D.S implemented on the 1442 (3?) Card Read Punch. On one memorable occasion, a grad student spilled a chocolate milkshake into the hopper. The results were interesting...the cards came out at first sticky, then caramelized, then smoking, then the machine quit. The customer engineer came out, opened the cabinet, took a long look, and went out for a beer. -- -- howard(Howard C. Berkowitz) @cos.com {seismo!sundc, hadron, hqda-ai}!cos!howard (703) 883-2812 [ofc] (703) 998-5017 [home] DISCLAIMER: I explicitly identify COS official positions.
myers@buengc.BU.EDU (Eric Myers) (06/29/87)
In article <768@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > In article <820@newton.praxis.co.uk> tv@praxis.co.uk (Tony Voss) writes: > >In article <163@buengc.BU.EDU> myers@buengc.BU.EDU (Eric Myers) writes: > >> > >> Years ago I was running on an IBM 1130 at Willamette University in > >>Oregon. (Her name was Grendle.) I remember ..... > > > >Ah! The IBM 1130! Stirs my memory too. We also had a radio on top of Grendle, and programs to play songs and such. The radio was actally quite useful, because you could also hear the card reader on it. After a while it was easy to tell the difference between a card being read and processed and a card just being flushed through the reader. It was fun to be able to tell someone he had a JCL error before the deck had gone all the way through, and before anything came out on the printer, and they didn't know how we knew. -- Eric Myers >>> NO LIGHTS AT FENWAY!! <<< Physics Department, Boston University, Boston, Mass. 02215 (617)353-9058 ...harvard!bu-cs!buengc!myers myers@buphya.BITNET myers@buengc.bu.edu
msf@amelia (Michael S. Fischbein) (07/03/87)
I just wanted to put my $.02 memories on line also -- remember the printwheel printer (I can't remember the model number)? When it did a line of identical characters (can you say block comments?) the whole printer would rock about six inches... One of my compatriots signed some of his high-school yearbooks with a five line assembler program to wipe the disk. I look at microprocessor specifications today (25MHz 68020, MIPS chips, etc) and think back to 3 16-bit registers, LIBFs and CALLs, and the everpopular XIO. Of course, booting was easy: turn the beast on, put up /0038 in the IAR and let'er rip; Good 'ol ferrite cores won't forget where you were just caused you turned the power off. Of course, if one bit or so had decayed, you went to the IPL card. ROM? what's ROM? That's a joke, right?..... mike
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (07/07/87)
>I just wanted to put my $.02 memories on line also -- remember the printwheel >printer (I can't remember the model number)? When it did a line of The 1132 drum printer ? > >One of my compatriots signed some of his high-school yearbooks with a >five line assembler program to wipe the disk. This wasn't hard. Once, I filed the first 100 or so memory locations with zero, figuring I would see the Instruction Counter count up as it executed all these no-ops. I dont remember now if 0 was not a noop or not, but at any rate it wiped out the disk. Instant persona non grata. Guess this is a bit late to be reporting this bug. >I look at microprocessor specifications today (25MHz 68020, MIPS >chips, etc) and think back to 3 16-bit registers, LIBFs and CALLs, and >the everpopular XIO. Of course, booting was easy: turn the beast on, LIBF's, YEAH ! . . . LIBF ROUTINE . . . ROUTINE DC *-* <-- Wadda ya mean the RETURN ADDRESS get put here ?? . . Good stuff, Maynard ! (Background for you young pups) On the 1130 there was a button labeled 'Int Req' - interrupt request. When pressed it executed one of the five interrupts on the machine, supposidly to a routine that would flush to the next // JOB card. So why, oh why did IBM publish a program that showed you how to defeat this, by requiring a 16 bit code in the 'data-switches' to be present. Do you know what a 13 year old can do with this information ? Like empty the printer of all its paper. Or another one: there was a mode called 'Int Run' - Interrupt run. After every instruction a level 5 interrupt would occur. So we stuck a small loop and a return into memory with the switches and let 'er rip. When some luser, not in out good graces came along - poof! The mode dial got set to 'Int Run', and the poor bugger got to watch his program execute 10 times slower than everybody else. The real funny part would be when they would explain this to the teacher, and the teacher would do some song and dance about *why* the computer was doing this, all of it lies of course. He did'nt know a thing. Or how about the one where some &^*()@^ at IBM thought it would be a great trick to read stuff from the disk directly into location mumble-mumble, which served as index register 3. Do you have any idea what that does to a 13 year old mind ? No wonder we are all hacks. Cheers, -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {akgua, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard