🚀 go-pugleaf

	In article <20...@well.sf.ca.us> rc...@well.sf.ca.us (Richard Friedman) writes:
>Which just goes to show that 650 programmers live on!  I remember it
>very well myself... It was my first computer experience (1962 at the
>Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn).  The problem with the FORTRAN compiler
>(wasnt it called FORTRANSIT?) was that it had a few intermediary passes,
>which on that machine meant punching an intermediate file!.  So, to compile
>a FORTRAN code you had to wait first while a SOAP translation was punched out,
>read it back in to the 2nd pass and then get an object binary punched out.
>In many cases the SOAP deck was 2x larger than the original FORTRAN.
>I caught near-pneumonia in the summer of '63 standing for hours in the
>very cold machine room trying to compile and recompile a structural 
>engineering code of a few thousand cards.
>
>The 650 was lots of fun.  One problem tho was the emergency switch that
>was on the front console within easy reach of a misplaced hand.  Hitting the
>switch was fatal!  It set the brakes on the drum and stopped the machine
>cold.  Usually this caused the drum to come off its moorings and rattle around
>in the console.  It required major repairs.  All because of a little switch.
>After this happening twice in the 3 years the machine was at Poly, they
>eventually disabled the switch.
>
>It was nice working with a machine with blinking lights tho.  I still have
>the hardware manual.
>-- 
>/\=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/\
>\/Richard Friedman (415)540-5216  |     rc...@well.sf.ca.us  \/
>/\Pacific-Sierra Rsrch (Berkeley) | or well!rc...@apple.com  /\
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	I too cut my teeth on a 650 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
in the late '50s.  My recollection is a bit different than Richard
Freeman's.
	FORTRANSIT - The situation was even messier than Freeman
described.  The "IT" in FORTRANSIT stood for a separate compiler
phase - Internal Translator or some such.  The FORTRAN input
was first translated to IT, then IT was run
to get SOAP which was symbolic assembler, which in turn was assembled
to produce executable code.  Thus there were TWO intermediate decks
produced and junked to get from source to executable.  As others
have indicated reading and punching (writing) from cards was under
control of a wired patch panel.  A single panel was wired for
all 4 (different) card formats for the process.  The panel was
three inches deep in wire.  I can remember wiring the darn thing
according to IBM "documentation", and then debugging the documentation.
Great sport.

WRT the emergency off switch,  I think the effect was for the drum
motor to try to stop while the drum, spinning at something like 22,000
RPM wanted to keep going.  The result was a broken drum belt and
a wait for the FE too come to replace it.  Power dips were also
a problem for the same reason.  This did not occur during a normal
powerdown sequence but I don't remember why.

art gross   att!mhpo!agg   or mhuxo!a...@att.com