31 Oct
2006
31 Oct
'06
10:20 a.m.
On 31 Oct 2006 at 11:05, Warren Wolfe wrote:
That's painful, isn't it? When I was
attending Michigan State
University, the computer we used for our programming projects was a
Control Data 6500, later upgraded to a 6600. . They tried to
sell it.
Now here's where I'm mystified. Why would anyone in their right mind
want to run one of these nowadays? 400Hz power, chilled water supply
for cooling and cordwood modules that would go bad if the phase of
the moon was wrong.
I don't understand the deal about "writing a stack"for the 6000.
There was Algol-60 at least since 1965 or so, not to mention a host
of other languages that needed to support recursion and local
variables. So I'm a bit mystified.
By far, the neatest feat I'd ever seen done with that system was a
COBOL compiler and run-time implemented in a PPU. Bizarre and lots
and lots of overlaid code of course, but a great illustration of how
much could be done with 4K of 12 bit words.
Cheers,
Chuck