2 Nov
2010
2 Nov
'10
6:10 a.m.
On 2 Nov 2010 at 0:31, Charlie Carothers wrote:
Ah yes, good old Symbolic Programming System, I think.
I don't recall
seeing specifically the terminology "1401 SPS", but it has been quite a
while! SPS was just an assembler as I recall. I don't believe there
was a linker.
SPS was the name of the assembler on a few other IBM systems; also
the 1620. Later versions had a linker so you could combine SPS with
FORTRAN. The 1311 disk added a lot of capability, including JCL of
sorts. (starting decks off with record-mark record-mark JOB, etc.).
The options control statements to SPS, I recall, were
uncharacteristically non-terse. e.g. "PUNCH SYMBOL TABLE".
No memory-mapped I/O on the 1620, unless you want to count pressing
the LOAD button that would (numerically) read a card or paper tape
record into 0-79. It's odd, but I can still remember most of the
machine opcodes and an I/O instruction or two (e.g. 34 00000 00107,
ISTR was the command to return the carriage on the console
typewriter). Now, I can't remember where I left my glasses two
minutes ago...
I suspect that much of the same talent that wrote the system software
for the 1401 also did it for the 1620.
--Chuck