9 Nov
2010
9 Nov
'10
12:02 p.m.
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 8:39 AM
Up until about 1975 or so, almost no part of the
operating system
resided in the CPU. OS activity was the province of the PPs--and
users did not have the ability to write their own PP programs.
This does not accord with my recollection of the 6600 at all.
I started college at the University of Texas in September, 1969, and
was immediately exposed to the CDC 6600: Since I had learned FORTRAN IV
the preceding spring, the work-study folks sent me over to the Comp Center
to interview for a job.
I'm afraid my IBM bigotry kept me from getting the position. However,
I met CS grad students through my job at the CAI Lab (IBM 1800 and 360
based) who were working on the 6600. One of them was a whiz at writing
PPU code.
I signed up for a COMPASS class in the fall of 1970; besides learning
about the CPU, there were sections of the syllabus on PPU programming.
Since this was an undergraduate intro-level class, I can't imagine that
they were teaching anything privileged and/or dangerous.
But it's 40 years ago, so I may very well have killed off those neura.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/