Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)

[Rich Alderson]

From: Jon Elson
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 9:11 AM

> Say, this brings up a question I've always wondered about.  On the
> emulation microcode for the 360 series that ran decimal machine code,
> such as the 1401, did they translate every address from decimal to
> binary before accessing the memory, or did they just use the bare BCD
> address, leaving little and big holes all over the binary address
> space?

As it happens, I saw this discussed somewhere else in the last few
months by someone who actually worked on these things (probably on
alt.folklore.computers, come to think of it).

They left holes in memory while running 1401 emulation.

                                                                Rich


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/