Very cool.
What aspects did you work on?
Any stories to share?
Best regards (and a tip of the hat),
Bob Flanders
Aside from a user's request (copy a 100k file), what hardware limits did IBM impose on you for memory and disk space? (For example, you must run on a 4k machine with no more than 32k disk available)?
I thought the card/tape only system wasn't called DM (as in DISK
Monitor). Both DM v1 and v2 supported the 510K word built in disks,
IIRC DM2 added support for the couple external disk options.
--
john r pierce N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast
Back in them thar days you had to write compact code. The guys at IBM were masters.
For fun, take a look at the attached listing of the 2-card bootstrap loader. The first card is in 1130 IPL format, so it's a beast. I've recently written the equivalent program for my new OS/1130 operating system for the fictitious 1130 model 7. I've attached that listing, too.
~~ Paul
I never realized that you could use the assembler for this .. I wrote a few boot loaders, but had to work out the machine code, and then punch it myself.
John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
On many computers the SQRT function was done by a variation of Newtons
method (test, try, etc...).
On the IBM 1620, it was done a different way called "the odd integer
method", which takes a bit longer to explain, but it works by the fact
that squares can be expressed by a sum of odd integers:
1**2 = 1
2**2 = 1 + 3
3**2 = 1 + 3 + 5
etc.
This works well if multiplication is MUCH more expensive than adding
(which is the case on the IBM 1620).
Funny how mathematics doesn't change much over the course of over 55
years!
--
Tom Watson Generic short signature
t...@johana.com I'm at home now
--
dnl
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
Jim
Ah, if it's hard for the computer
then it must be hard for me too!
That kinda reminds me of a classmate around 1980
who made an EPROM programmer using just toggle switches
for data & address and programmed his Z80 monitor that way.
I didn't have the patience for that,
preferring front panels for on-the-fly patching and debugging
(having already enjoyed the IBM 1130 for that,
and the PDP11/45 was running Unix full time
so front panels were still in daily use).
I tried making an Altair/Imsai style front panel
and got frustrated with that
so I bought a Timex/Sinclair 1000 and used that as a front panel!
>> I made several IPL cards on the keypunch using the multi-punch ...
>> then our CE just shamed me into using the assembler.
And here we are with microcontrollers with on-chip FLASH
that's programmed directly from the build-environment,
even if it's programmed in "C" or higher level languages!
So the CE was right in directing you to more automated methods!
> Good for you!
Agreed, that's more stamina than I ever had!
> Figuring out the "wrapped around" pattern of the twelve column
> bits on a 5081 to the 16 bit card reader data presentation
> exercised my youthful brain
You mean this format?
http://ferretronix.com/march/computer_cards/1130_plastic_template.jpg
-- jeffj
Brian
IIRC, Cytos used memory swapping on the 2130, where the hardware had 64K
core, the top 32K was used for the CYTOS OS, and each user process was
swapped into the lower 32K, so time slicing was rarely more than once
per second. If 6 or 8 people were active, it could get really slow.
if folks have this running on an emulator, it seems like it would be a
pretty easy hack to add, say, 16 32K 'normal' memory banks and patch the
swapping code to simply select a bank and voila, process swapping would
be instantaneous.
--
john r pierce N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast
yeah, it was TSO/CYTOS, sorry. old neurons. I only worked for CHI
for about 6 months in 1975, then never saw another 2130 again. and,
afaik, that was the only time I saw TSO/CYTOS.. Shortly after that I
became involved with early microcomputers and in 1977 ended up at DRI
(Digital Research) working on CP/M.
the name John Curry rings a very faint bell, but I can't place it. As I
said, it was 6 months in 1975. there were 3 of us in the software
group, I was low man on the totem pole. Sheesh, that was 35 years ago,
hah.
Did you know Berry Kennedy at GA? He designed the DSM interface and changes necessary for TSO. The last time I talked to him in the mid 90’s he was working at Intel. We had a nice visit when I was in CA once. How about Kim Crosser at DSC? I worked mostly with him in the software area.
Don, Joyce, Dave and I are still around. Bud passed away in the late 90’s … I really miss him. Don quit firmware in the early 80’s (what a waste). I saw Joyce and her husband last year … we had a really nice visit. Dave moved on to GM in the early 80’s.. Richard J. Sherin (who wrote our IBM 1130 emulator for the DSC Meta-4) quit programming in the mid 70’s and went into design and manufacture of a Lasik blade. Tim Mellon quit programming after writing CYTOS. We are all retired now.
Bud, Joyce and I shot on pistol teams (opposite teams so it was sometimes dicey). We were all into flying too … DNA had a Cessna 210, a Cessna 182 and a Cessna 150. Those were the days!
If you liked TSO then download my system and have fun. It is here (Dropbox keeps changing the URL every time I update it): https://www.dropbox.com/s/rn246a4w7pqiini/Distrobution.rar?dl=0
Eddy Quicksall
My personal email address is <my_first_name> @ <my_last_name> .com
From: ibm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ibm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Best
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 4:29 AM
To: IBM1130
Subject: Re: [IBM1130] Re: IBM 1130 Development
I knew Don, Bud and Joyce very well. I joined General Automation in 1969 and ported DM2 to the GA 1830 (which required rewriting all of the I/O drivers, and modification to the Core Load Builder to remove direct references to memory cells 1,2,3 which on the 1130 were index registers, but were not on the 1830). I got to know the DNA folk before joining GA as a customer of their XDUP when I was lead programmer at Aurora Metal Systems in Illinois. I got GA to hire Don to port the 1800 TMS OS to the 1830 and we had some great times tearing up LA on the weekends together. When GA went into religious schism at the Board of Directors level, I joined DSC and did all the pre- and post-sales tech support for the Meta-4, and got to know Tim Mellon at that time. When DSC got into financial trouble I jointed DEC and lead the development of the 2nd generation VAX/VMS system (Vax-11/750) before going to Intel. I still dream about 1130 assembler code and miss the people a lot. Are Don and Joyce still around - anyone know how I might reach either of them?
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Up until I wrote the emulator in the mid 90’s one of our DNA customer’s was still using 2 interconnected GA 1830’s and one spare. I replaced them with my emulator and he is still using it today for his service burrow.
Eddy
Dave, you may be interested in FMTR.S(0D02). It is the formatter for the GA 300MB disk (we thought that was big in those days). Don wrote it.
Those SMD drives transfered raw data at the blinding rate of about 1Mbyte/second.
I'm remembering CHI 2130's used a 10MB or 20MB 12 platter disk in
various configurations, these were about the same physical size as
those 300MB CDC drives, but considerably cheaper. I think they
were based on IBM 2314 packs, but we were using Memorex (660?) and
other drives.
-- john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
In ’74 at InsuraCalc in Miami, we had a Calcomp “2314” on our Meta-4.
Do these attachments look familiar? They were still in use when I replace the 1830’s with my emulator around 1995. For non GA familiar people, the 1830 (a cross between the IBM1130 and IBM1800) was a clone of the 1130 with enhancements to run TSO. There are 3 1830’s in these pictures and two act as failover for each other. The device in the middle is a tape drive. Dave will probably be able to say how they were connected electronically. In my emulator I connected the PCs via a serial line. Each computer could share the drives. On the CHI 2130 we had shared memory.
The ROM board was for the Meta-4. To make a patch, we would scrape off a bit to get a 0 and paste a bit onto a blank spot to get a 1. Believe it or not, spare bits came on a roll similar to a roll of chips today. Each bit had copper on front and were sticky on the back. That is when “firmware” really had meaning. When I wrote BIOS at AMI I kept some of this ROM on my desk where I would use it to show to the new comers.
We were really advanced in those days.
Eddy
From: ibm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ibm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John R Pierce
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 8:17 PM
To: ibm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [IBM1130] Re: IBM 1130 Development
On 8/24/2016 4:53 PM, Eddy Quicksall wrote:
--