PPU

I did a lot of FORTRAN on a 7094 at UTIAS (University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies) about 45 years ago. While I can't be positive, I believe that all of the input and output was via tape. IIRC, a 1401 was used to read the standard IBM cards and copy the input to a tape drive on the 1401. The 7094 would then read the tape after it was transferred to a drive on the 7094 with output being to a second tape on the 7094. I think there were probably a number of additional tape drives on the 7094 along with a disk drive (washing machine size and probably only megabytes in size). Finally, the output tape was transferred back to a drive on the 1401 and the actual output became printed pages and punched cards. In my case, the punched cards were the executable program about 300 to 400 cards which was a substantial reduction since all cards could be read at the same speed. If my memory of the system is correct, the Toronto installation had only tape drives and a small disk drive as units which allowed input and output. Does anyone else remember how the 7094 handled input and output? I would guess that if the 360 could handle the user interface, then the 360 might be a bit slow at computation. About 42 years ago, I worked for NORTEL on the CDC 3300. That system allowed many users to edit their input files (probably 10 to 20 users on terminals) and submit the files to the system to run their programs as batch jobs. IIRC, the batch queue was one user at a time since that was probably faster considering the limited capability of a system in 1968. For the users, all of their files could be held on the computer hard drives and no cards were required. Output was printed hard copy. Jerome Fine