Manchester University Joint System in the 1970s

Peter Allan petermallan at gmail.com
Fri Nov 17 11:24:00 CST 2017


I was a student at Manchester University from 1974 to 1980. During that
time I used the University of Manchester Regional Computer Centre (UMRCC)
computer system. The so-called Joint System consisted of a CDC 7600 with an
ICL 1906A front end. We used to submit card decks via a Systime (a PDP-11
clone, I believe) that functioned as a remote job entry service.

I am trying to find out information about the structure of those card decks
(mine were used for shopping lists years ago), and in particular, what the
first card in the deck was that routed the job to the correct computer.

I have found information about JOB cards for both ICL computers running
George 3 and for the CDC 7600 running SCOPE 2.1 (which is what the
computers ran), but I believe that neither of these gives the full story
about what we used on the Joint System.

Does anyone who used this system, or similar ones in the UK, recall
anything relevant?

If you have suggestions about where else to post this query, I would be
grateful for that too.

Cheers

Peter Allan


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