Hello, David!
The Fortran IV compiler under discussion was originally written by
myself, along with C. David Morse, both working at Eastern Michigan
University, at the Instructional Computer Systems group. We started in
the summer of 1971, had a working system by October, and our first
distributions in November. Additional work was done during the winter
semester, concluding by late March of 1972. We worked a lot of long
hours, including nights and weekends - so that we could get the
required computer time. I was completing my senior year, while David
was a graduate student in the Math department. I had been working at
ICS since the summer of 1969, shortly after my discharge from the
service, and was the senior programmer. David had started in the fall
of 1970, IIRC.
I was the primary author of the EMU-IBM Fortran IV manual, which was
written in two phases: October 1971 for the "initial version", and
March 1972 for the "final" version, which was widely distributed.
David reviewed everything I wrote, and developed the technical
appendices that describe the load decks, etc. We distributed the
EMU-IBM Fortran IV compiler for essentially distribution costs, but
announced that we would no longer be supporting it, as the IBM 1130
computers were being phased out that summer. The product and source
code were made public domain. I had written all of the parsing and
syntax checking, and the generation of the symbol table; David handled
the code generation, and provided the new required functions, while I
wrapped up with the printing, including the interleaved error
messages, and also wrote all of the error messages. I also wrote most
of the debugging tools.
In April of 1972, David went to work for DNA Systems. We had been
collaborating with them on some features for the past few months. I
completed my share of that work, and went on to graduate school, for
my MBA. DNA Systems then began selling the Fortran IV compiler, and
may have made some further changes. They would have added some of
their useful IBM 1130 utilities to the package, which explains the
presence of DUP in the installation. I don't recall what "CLB" stands
for; SUP, phase 6 is probably DNA Systems 1130 DOS changes; we also
had a bunch at ICS, which I had written, but though they were
convenient for us, they were not required for the Fortran compiler.
I would like to compare the final version of the EMU-IBM Fortran IV
manual with the DNA Systems version. I recently donated my copy to
the EMU Library, archives section, as part of the history of ICS,
along with documentation and photos I've had for the past fifty-plus
years! If you can send me your file(s), I can read through and
compare (by eye), and summarize the differences. Thanks in advance!
Best regards, Peter Diehr, PhD, MBA