7 Apr
2020
7 Apr
'20
10:46 a.m.
Since you are all talking COBOL now :
ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/ICL1501
There is the manual for the early 70?s COBOL implementation for the ICL1501, a small 8K or
16K TTL based personal computer ( TTL based CPU, with 2x 74181 ALU and a 32x8 CRT
display)
Not the best of scans, but that alas reflects the material I have.
Some other? doku on the ICL1501 is also included :? an operator guide and tape utilities
user guide.
I do have the tape with the COBOL itself, alas no way yet of gettig it on modern
hardware.
And if anyone has dokumentation on the ICl1503 or 1501/43, in particular the Diablo drive
interface then I sure would like to see it !
Have the kontroller, but no documentation...
Al, as always, feel free to add any and all to bitsavers.
Jos
7 Apr
7 Apr
11:38 a.m.
I never used COBOL on the 150x machines, all of our stuff was done in EBB
(Extended Business Basic), which was a rather bletcherous language IIRC. I
must admit, I'm rather surprised to learn that something as big a COBOL
would fit on the machine.
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 at 19:46, jos via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Since you are all talking COBOL now :
ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/ICL1501
There is the manual for the early 70?s COBOL implementation for the
ICL1501, a small 8K or 16K TTL based personal computer ( TTL based CPU,
with 2x 74181 ALU and a 32x8 CRT display)
Not the best of scans, but that alas reflects the material I have.
Some other doku on the ICL1501 is also included : an operator guide and
tape utilities user guide.
I do have the tape with the COBOL itself, alas no way yet of gettig it on
modern hardware.
And if anyone has dokumentation on the ICl1503 or 1501/43, in particular
the Diablo drive interface then I sure would like to see it !
Have the kontroller, but no documentation...
Al, as always, feel free to add any and all to bitsavers.
Jos
12:04 p.m.
On 4/7/20 2:38 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
I never used COBOL on the 150x machines, all of our
stuff was done in EBB
(Extended Business Basic), which was a rather bletcherous language IIRC. I
must admit, I'm rather surprised to learn that something as big a COBOL
would fit on the machine.
Why? I have COBOL running on the Z80 with 48KB of memory and on
the LSI-11 with 28KW of memory.
bill
12:08 p.m.
I think it's even smaller if you have the Commercial Instruction Set on
your pdp11. :-)
C
On 4/7/2020 3:04 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
On 4/7/20 2:38 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
I never used COBOL on the 150x machines, all of
our stuff was done in EBB
(Extended Business Basic), which was a rather bletcherous language
IIRC.? I
must admit, I'm rather surprised to learn that something as big a COBOL
would fit on the machine.
Why?? I have COBOL running on the Z80 with 48KB of memory and on
the LSI-11 with 28KW of memory.
bill 
12:11 p.m.
On April 7, 2020 at 2:04 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 4/7/20 2:38 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:> I never used COBOL on the 150x
machines, all of our stuff was done in EBB(Extended Business Basic), which was a rather
bletcherous language IIRC. Imust admit, I'm rather surprised to learn that something
as big a COBOLwould fit on the machine.Why? I have COBOL running on the Z80 with 48KB of
memory and onthe LSI-11 with 28KW of memory.
bill
And of course there is this :-)
http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdf
"The names of global variables should start with // " -- https://isocpp.org
15 Apr
15 Apr
9:57 a.m.
On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 02:11:25PM -0500, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote:
[...]
And of course there is this :-)
http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdf
Oh goad. Have they ported it to Arduino?
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
16 Apr
16 Apr
3 p.m.
On Apr 15, 2020, at 11:57 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
[EXTERNAL EMAIL]
On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 02:11:25PM -0500, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote:
[...]
Tomasz, forgive me but I have to ask. You did note the date on which that announcement
appeared, right?
And of course there is this :-)
http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdf
Oh goad. Have they ported it to Arduino?
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
11:19 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk wrote:
[...]
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...
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
17 Apr
17 Apr
12:12 a.m.
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:
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...
12:40 a.m.
On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote:
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...
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...
9:21 a.m.
New subject: Computing Folklore [Was: Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available]
On 17 Apr 2020, at 17:06, Mark Linimon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 09:35:09AM +0100, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:
I very much agree. I was born in 1977 so I missed the era of really big iron (certainly
during my working life), and the anecdotes from people on this list who were there and
used vintage mainframes, mini?s and supercomputers is the real value in the list for me.
That said, I don?t think that an email list (even with the HTML archives) is the best
repository for such tales, anecdotes and folklore.
I suspect that most of you will have spent at least a little time on Andy Herzfeld?s
Folklore - https://folklore.org <https://folklore.org/>
Like or loathe Apple (and Mr Jobs in particular) it?s an interesting read, and the way the
site links the stories together based on author, topics and characters is very reminiscent
of an old Hypercard stack. I wonder if there would be any mileage in setting up something
similar (using a Wiki, perhaps?) to capture some of the tales to be told, by the people
able to tell them whilst they?re still willing to tell them?
Just one of many idle lockdown musings.
I hope that you?re all well, and taking the extra time at home to keep those vintage
computers running as nature intended.
-Austin.
"If a DSORT6 job fails try running in a
larger partition. If it still
fails try it a smaller partition"
I love the old tales like this. Folks, please keep 'em coming!
mcl 
12:13 p.m.
New subject: Computing Folklore [Was: Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available]
From: Classic CMP
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2020 9:21 AM
I suspect that most of you will have spent at least a
little time on Andy
Herzfeld?s Folklore - https://folklore.org <https://folklore.org/>
Like or loathe Apple (and Mr Jobs in particular) it?s
an interesting read,
and the way the site links the stories together based on author, topics and
characters is very reminiscent of an old Hypercard stack. I wonder if there
would be any mileage in setting up something similar (using a Wiki, perhaps?)
to capture some of the tales to be told, by the people able to tell them
whilst they?re still willing to tell them?
Another good example of such a web site is Multicians.ORG, especially
the pages starting at https://www.multicians.org/multics-stories.html
Rich
Rich Alderson
Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Ave S
Seattle, WA 98134
http://www.LivingComputers.org/
7:27 a.m.
On Apr 17, 2020, at 3:40 AM, nico de jong via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote:
Knuth volume 3 ("Sorting and searching") has a pile of tape sort algorithms. I
remember one because of its memorable name: "Oscillating tape sort".
paul
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
wrote:
Talking of spinning tape drives : anyone remember IBM's TAPESORT ? 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...
7:43 a.m.
On 4/17/20 10:27 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
And then there was SORT7 that ran on the 1401 at Kaiserslautern
Army Depot every night back in the early 70's. The number referred
to how many boxes of cards held the actual program. :-)
bill
On Apr 17, 2020, at 3:40 AM, nico de jong via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote:
Knuth volume 3 ("Sorting and searching") has a pile of tape sort algorithms. I
remember one because of its memorable name: "Oscillating tape sort".
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
wrote:
Talking of spinning tape drives : anyone remember IBM's TAPESORT ? On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Tapley,
Mark B. via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> 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...
But Cobol is just not the same with out some spinning tape drives.
Ben.
5:07 a.m.
On 4/17/20 3:12 AM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:
I don't know about that. You should have seen my Terak System
with 28KW of memory and 4 RX01 8" floppies doing COBOL development.
Lots of time for coffee breaks while it ran compiles. :-)
bill
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...
16 Apr
16 Apr
6:05 p.m.
[...]> And of course there is this
:-)http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdfOh goad. Have they ported it to Arduino?
Well, the ad was fake. Ran in the April issue of some magazines. Apparently they did get
calls for orders, though.
http://www.ganssle.com/rants/on-languages.html
Unfortunately, this one seems to be real.
http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2016/06/running-cobol-on-arduino-using-meson…
Will
11:24 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 08:05:42PM -0500, wrcooke at wrcooke.net wrote:
Man, I know it :-)
[...]> And
of course there is this :-)http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdfOh goad. Have they ported it to
Arduino?
Well, the ad was fake. Ran in the April issue of some magazines.
Apparently they did get calls for orders, though.
http://www.ganssle.com/rants/on-languages.html Unfortunately, this one seems to be real.
http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2016/06/running-cobol-on-arduino-using-meson…
Yay! But I guess it should be called a crosscompiler? Unless they can
run in under some kind of monitor on the Arduino board...
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
7 Apr
7 Apr
3:24 p.m.
Why? Because we used to run out of resources regularly on that machine
writing the stuff in EBB, which was also compiled (I may be wrong, but I
seem to remember compiling stuff on it). And BASIC, even EBB, is generally
smaller than COBOL.
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 at 21:04, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 4/7/20 2:38 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
I never used COBOL on the 150x machines, all of
our stuff was done in EBB
(Extended Business Basic), which was a rather bletcherous language
IIRC. I
must admit, I'm rather surprised to learn
that something as big a COBOL
would fit on the machine.
Why? I have COBOL running on the Z80 with 48KB of memory and on
the LSI-11 with 28KW of memory.
bill
3:48 p.m.
On 4/7/20 3:24 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
Why? Because we used to run out of resources
regularly on that machine
writing the stuff in EBB, which was also compiled (I may be wrong, but I
seem to remember compiling stuff on it). And BASIC, even EBB, is generally
smaller than COBOL.
COBOL provides for better data typing than most other languages. (COMP,
COMP-1, COMP-2 or COMP-3), picture clauses, data structuring, etc.
If what you need is simple, maybe BASIC is fine. But it's not the
end-all by any means.
--Chuck
8 Apr
8 Apr
12:56 a.m.
BASIC was all we had - we used COBOL on the ICL VME 2900 maniframes that
were backending the 15xx machines. Believe me, if the programming staff
had known COBOL was available on the 15xx machines, we would have moved
heaven and earth to put it on the micros.
So no, not the end-all, and I'm fairly sure I never implied that anywhere.
On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 at 00:48, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 4/7/20 3:24 PM, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote:
Why? Because we used to run out of resources
regularly on that machine
writing the stuff in EBB, which was also compiled (I may be wrong, but I
seem to remember compiling stuff on it). And BASIC, even EBB, is
generally
smaller than COBOL.
COBOL provides for better data typing than most other languages. (COMP,
COMP-1, COMP-2 or COMP-3), picture clauses, data structuring, etc.
If what you need is simple, maybe BASIC is fine. But it's not the
end-all by any means.
--Chuck
9 Apr
9 Apr
1:02 a.m.
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020, jos wrote:
ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/ICL1501
There is the manual for the early 70?s COBOL implementation for the ICL1501,
a small 8K or 16K TTL based personal computer ( TTL based CPU, with 2x 74181
ALU and a 32x8 CRT display)
I'm sure you already know this :-)
ftp://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/cogar/
I'll happily add your scans to this folder.
Christian
1709
days inactive
1719
days old
22 comments
16 participants
participants (16)
-
albiorix＠gmail.com -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com -
cc＠informatik.uni-stuttgart.de -
cclist＠sydex.com -
classiccmp＠jouhe.org -
cz＠alembic.crystel.com -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
jos.dreesen＠greenmail.ch -
linimon＠lonesome.com -
mark.tapley＠swri.org -
nico＠farumdata.dk -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
RichA＠livingcomputers.org -
rtomek＠ceti.pl -
wrcooke＠wrcooke.net