2 Feb
1999
2 Feb
'99
6:21 a.m.
Upon the date 11:34 AM 2/2/99 -0800, ss(a)allegro.com said something like:
Another thing to look for when searching for IBM 1130
information
is the Meta 4.
Yes, little bits and pieces of info can be found referring to the 1130 and
1800 when checking the Meta 4 search hits. Anything to add to the 1130
information already pieced together. For example (and you non-German
readers out there please forgive me) here's a page telling of the coming
advancement of Meta 4 machines into Germany and France after the first
European installation in London:
http://www.computerwoche.de/archiv/1976/20/7620c018.html. The 400 1130 and
1800 systems will be replaced by them. That Computerwoche archive is a
great resource for news tidbits on older gear. Wish more American trade
journals would do this (HP Journal does this already, I think.)
The Meta 4 (from Digital Scientific) was a clone of the
IBM 1130, made in San Diego (ok, maybe Del Mar or Sorrento
In fact, the Computerwoche article above maintains it is San Diego. I've
seen San Diego in other Meta 4 references I've found like the one Stan
offers below.
Valley area) around 1970. IIRC it was called an 1130
clone, but
actually had the extra instruction(s) that would really make it an 1800
clone.
There's an article on it at:
http://www.cowo.de/archiv/1976/15/7615c064.html
It was this machine, at UCSD, that I wrote SPACEWAR on in
1970, inspired by the article in Analog SF magazine. We had an
Evans & Sutherland vector graphic display, and some kind of home
brew sound (using Wavetek wave generators?). I still have a listing
of the FORTRAN source for this SPACEWAR somewhere.
I used the console switches as the controls, and had the usual
gravity, hyperwarp (unreliable, of course...using it too often would
get you killed). Someone added random twinkling stars at one point.
We also had a computer-assisted targeting option for the second
spaceship, which slowed things down but aided new players.
I remember that the Meta 4 had firmware that was implemented on
boards about 1 foot by 1 foot, with little copper squares of foil about
the 1/4" by 1/4" ...indicating 1/0 by presence/absence. One problem
was that the squares would sometimes lift up a bit, so we'd take out
the boards and press them down again.
I remember we also had APL, on a removable disk cartridge.
In the pages I've seen so far, the 1130 is said to have a max of 16KWord of
memory but my professors at school were bragging about our machine having
32K of memory (in 1972). Was there in fact an upgrade to 32K _words_ or
were they simply getting 32K bytes and 16K words confoozed? Remember, this
was all quite new to these older age professors then when few
backwater-area colleges our size even had a computer.
Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/