Help reading a 9 track tape

[dave.g4ugm at gmail.com]

> > Depending on what he was trying to do that may well be a valid
> assessment.  CDC Fortran was known to be pretty good, but Fortran  is not
> the obvious answer for implementing interpreters or other language
> processors, which this sounds like.
> >
> 
> Some might argue with you about that.  PL/M was done in Fortran IV.
> 

I will argue with that. If you wanted code that was pretty portable you used FORTRAN (or COBOL if you had masochistic tendencies). 
You were almost certain to be able to find a FORTRAN compiler for most any machine.
"We" wrote X.25 networking software in FORTRAN 77 because every machine sold to a UK university had to have FORTRAN 77. 
Salford University even wrote a FORTRAN 77 compiler!. In the UK University machines had to come with 10 years of hardware and software support.
Salford originally had an ICL1900 which ICL actually replaced with a 2900  because it  was so old and they ran out of spares but they would not upgrade the software so we/they were stuck with FORTRAN 66 under DME (1900 emulation)
As there was no money for upgrades from ICL but there was research money Salford wrote a FORTRAN77 compiler for ICL 1900.
It was intended to be a stop-gap, to be discarded when the ICL was replaced with PR1ME. However the PR1ME was benchmarked with Fortran 66.
When Pr1me Fortran 77 was delivered its performance was "pants" so the "stop gap" ICL compiler was ported to PR1ME...
.. later it was ported to MSDOS... More info here

https://www.silverfrost.com/53/ftn77_personal_edition.aspx


> bill

Dave