10 Nov
2017
10 Nov
'17
6:16 p.m.
From: Dave Wade
ENIAC had been configured in stored program mode
earlier in the year
and had run a program stored in the function switches, e.g. ROM
...
Despite the fact that when running stored programs ENIAC's parallel
processing features were not available, it was exclusively in this mode
from 1948 onwards.
This may have been mentioned here already, but if not, there's a good new
book out which covers this phase of ENIAC's existence in considerable detail:
Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope, "ENIAC In Action: Making and
Remaking the Modern Computer", MIT Press, Cambridge, 2016
It's a very interesting and well-done book; I highly recommend it.
From: Brent Hilpert
The best that can be said for your position is that
you (and the
ENIAC/Mauchlyite crowd) have a particular opinion and definition
regarding 'stored-program computer'.
I'm harly a member of the "ENIAC/Mauchlyite crowd" (in fact, I used to not
have a good impression of them at all), but I thought Haigh et al made a
pretty good case.
Noel