[cctalk] Re: Elliott Algol

On Mon, 2025-02-17 at 08:53 -0500, Paul Koning wrote: One of my university classmates worked for American Geophysical. They would lay out a few thousand feet of cables with "geophones" on them, then drive around with "thumper" trucks. They analyzed the data using Varian V70 computers with FFT in microcode. They printed the resulting maps on 36" wide scrolls using — you guessed it — Varian electrostatic printers. My senior undergraduate project was to convince a V70 that it was actually an IBM 1130. The university had replaced an aging 1130 with a V70, then discovered that Varian didn't have a COBOL compiler — but they wanted to continue to teach COBOL. The 1130 emulator fit in less than 512 words of control store. And, as you might expect, it was much faster than the real McCoy. I also developed somewhat better 630f microcode, but Varian didn't want it — and in the process discovered their diagnostic program had a bug: It couldn't tell the difference between "load" and "and.". The V70 microcode design was well done. Then Univac boiught Varian Data Machines. I thought they were planning on doing what CDC did, using 18-bit versions of V70s as "peripheral processors" for data channels. But they just pounded it into the ground. Kind of like they did with the RCA Spectra 70. All they wanted was the customer address database so they could sell 9000's, not RCA technology. One of the steps in curing my prostate cancer was treatment using — again you guessed it — a Varian X-ray machine. The Varian brothers were true geniuses.