17 Apr
2020
17 Apr
'20
1:35 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of nico de jong via
cctalk
Sent: 17 April 2020 08:40
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available
On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote:
What fun what joy. When I worked with a Honeywell H3200, a 1401 clone.
Ours had 20Mb disks and really odd very high speed 1200bpi NRZI tape that nothing else
would read .
Running a tape sort was a joy to watch, especially when it used the backward read...
We did use the disk sort. It was called DSORT6 and was not very reliable.
The instructions said:-
"If a DSORT6 job fails try running in a larger partition. If it still fails try it a
smaller partition"
Dave
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
wrote:
Talking of spinning tape drives : anyone remember IBM's TAPESORT ?
On the 1401 a disksort was almost useless, bearing in mind that the 1311
diskdrive only could accomodate 2 million characters.
One night, the job was to sort the wages for a large numers of factory
workers. The job used to take 3-4 hours, so the operator went home for a
quick nap, intending to return at 4 in the morning, so he could finish the job.
However, the tape sort had aborted as there was a hard error on one of the
sort tapes, so he had to start from scratch.
The factory workers' union had a clause in the agreement, saying that if the
wages were not paid by 10 am, those who had not received the wages,
would strike until they had.
The result of that nights sleep was therefore that as soon as some 25
envelopes had been printed, they would be taken off the printer, filled with
notes and coins (we are speaking of the 1970's, they would be put into a cab,
speeded to the factory, and delivered to the workers. By 2 PM everybody
was working again. The operator was not very popular, and he never went
home again to take a nap while "working"
/Nico On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Tapley,
Mark B. via cctalk
wrote:
[...]
But Cobol is just not the same with out some spinning tape drives.
Ben. Tomasz, forgive me but I have to ask. You did
note the date on which
that announcement appeared, right?
Yeah. I do not have to look at it again to tell you it was dated
April 1st 2005 :-). But it is ok you asked, I could have overlooked
it in a hurry. But, well, Arduinos with 512 bytes or ram, just think
of it, putting Cobol on it, what an achievement would it be...