Early Programming Books

[Van Snyder]

On Mon, 2021-06-21 at 08:26 -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> Sigh.  It's a shame that absolute (machine language) coding isn't taught
> anymore.   The 1620 (and probably other IBM hardware) even had coding
> forms for it--pencil-and-paper assembly coding.   My recollection is
> that the absolute forms were on the reverse side of the SPS coding form.
>  If you don't have another system to provide cross compilation/assembly,
> you bootstrap from machine code.

IBM provided coding forms for the 1401, for both SPS and Autocoder.
They provided a "pocket reference card" for absolute machine code.

The machine had two one-character data registers that connected the CPU
to core, and two address registers. Three index registers were in core.

Univac provided a pocket reference card for the 1108, but didn't bother
with coding forms because assembler input was free form.