davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP@ndmce.uucp (Davidsen) (10/17/86)
I noticed a discussion of the origns of BSS. I can say that in 1962 the GE (later Honeywell) assembler had BSS (Block Starting with Symbol), and BFS (Block Followed by Symbol). Example: lbl1 bss 10 ; buffer lbl2 bss 20 ; stack tally *,20 ; and pointer The location of 'lbl1' was at the start of the block length 10, but the label 'lbl2' was on the location *after* the block, where the 'tally' op is shown. This was the setup for a software stack. Although there was no individual hardware stack, the user could define stacks controlled by 'tally words' which operated in characters (6 bits), bytes (9 bits), words (36 bits), or any multiple of words up to 64. The people who were doing reasonable procedure calls were using a stack to save all the registers and return address. I think the use of BSS goes back even before that, but I can't find any old manuals from the 50's. Perhaps I threw them out when I moved the last time. -- -bill davidsen seismo!rochester!steinmetz!--\ / \ ihnp4! unirot ------------->---> crdos1!davidsen \ / chinet! ---------------------/ (davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA) "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"