morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) (01/20/90)
In article <729@ncs.dnd.ca> jstewart@ncs.dnd.ca (John Stewart) writes: > jje@virtech.uucp (Jeremy J. Epstein) writes: >>Rumor had it that the Burroughs B7700 would display the giant >>"Burroughs B" on its banks of lights when it was in idle state. >>I never saw it though... > >The B5700's and 6700's that I programmed on at University had the front >pannel where the students could see it. > >Yes, it would display a "B" when idle, but it would also display > DE > AD >if some part of the system was down! > >Other burroughs trivia: > >One old disk had a signal called "HFML", that showed a digital true when >the disk was spun up. HFML? Heads Flying Mighty Low, of course. If it was a "storage module" drive, it was also pretty BIG - the cabinet was about 6' by 8' by 6', and had individual platter chambers that were about 6' in diameter, mounted vertically. I saw one in the back room of a electronic surplus place one time, and the main shaft was over 2" in diameter. It took one _h#$%&ofa_ good twist to get it moving (inertia is a bitch, no?), but once moving the fact it was still moving 20 _minutes_ later showed that the designers knew their bearings... >The operator consoles (SPO's) were writable by anyone. Yes, I almost >got kicked out by faking operator displays. The B3500 that I programmed in Fortran 4, COBOL and COBOLL used a ASR-33 for an operator console. The console handler was swapped out most of the time - there was a "INPUT" pushbutton on the front of the ASR that interrupted the system, which loaded the handler, which then typed a prompt. >the Fortran compiler would optimize a program out of existence, given the >chance. > >Burroughs had developed "virtual memory" many years before IBM invented >it. MCP had a bug though - it didn't know how big the swap space on the disk was. I once wrote a program in fortran that _relied_ on the virtual memory (memory is fuzzy, but I think it was: DIMENSION A(1000000,1000000,10) A=0 The above two lines wiped the system disk. The conversation with the Department Chairman went something like: Him: "Mike, you wiped the system disk with 2 lines of fortran code. The operators had to reload it from 20 boxes of cards. Then they had to figure out what did it. Four system reloads later..." Me: "What's a system disk?". I was a 1st year programming student, what can I say... A two-drive mag tape system was installed at the end of the semester. Wonder why... >I miss the old Burroughs, it was certainly a let down to have to program >on PDP-11's when leaving University. Yeah - only it was 360-30 assembler for me (still with an 029 for an input device, however), then DG Nova 800s, 840s, and 1200s. Then Nova 2s, 3s and 4s and various flavors of MVs... I have yet to log on to a IBM mainframe for any other purpose than PROFS mail. Oh well... maybe I haven't missed much. But DG sure had a versatile assembler on RDOS. Even did a Z80 CP/M BIOS with it... How many assemblers have a pseudo-op that erases all the instruction definitions (".XPNG"), and others that define new ones (".DEFN")? Now if the Nova 4 in the garage just had a comm chassis, a tape drive, and more that 12.5mb of disk in it, and didn't cost so much on the electric bill to run, maybe I could run a multi-line news feed... Shouldn't be to hard to port uucp/m to RDOS... Mike Morris Internet: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov Misslenet: 34.12 N, 118.02 W #Include quote.cute.standard Bellnet: 818-447-7052 #Include disclaimer.standard Radionet: WA6ILQ