Age

From: Jerome H. Fine <jhfinexgs2_at_compsys.to>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 14:54:34 +0000

I was born on July 24th, 1938. If I am not the oldest member,
then someone else will have to answer - unless I missed your response.
By the way, what is the current (unique) list count: cctalk / cctech?

Remember that I am a software addict (as opposed to 95% who are
hardware addicts) using MACRO-11 under RT-11.

My first system in 1960 was the IBM 650 (which has been discussed
recently) using SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program) as the
name of the Assembly Language. The optimal referred to the location
of the instructions on the drum which were placed in the next available
location on the drum so that the instruction was available ASAP after
the previous instruction was finished. The drum size was 2000 words
of 10 decimal digits - or about the equivalent of 20 KBytes.

I probably used the IBM 1620 in 1961 with assembler.
I seem to remember the Univac 1107 in 1963 with FORTRAN.
The IBM 7094 arrived in 1965 with FORTRAN and assembler.
Then came the CDC 3300 in 1967 with assembler.

The next 5 or 8 years are a bit of a haze. The CDC STAR-100
was included during that time period using assembler and MALUS.
I seem to remember about 1 MByte of core memory and a program
address space of 32 TerraByes (with a 48 bit address). I can't
remember the disk drives at all.

The PDP-11/05 seemed to arrive around 1975 with MACRO-11 under
V02.? of RT-11. The disk drive was a DEC RK05 with 2.5 MBytes
per removable media. I think the memory was 32 KBytes of core.
Although I occasionally used a VAX after that, I seem to remember
running RT-11 on a PDP-11 of some kind ever since 1975.

At present I have many Qbus PDP-11 systems available with most
not assembled. If I ever get the energy, there are probably enough
parts to put together about 2 dozen Qbus PDP-11 systems, mostly
PDP-11/23 and PDP-11/73.

I still design and write programs, mostly in MACRO-11. But lately, I
tend to run RT-11 under an emulator since the emulated features are
much better than the real DEC PDP-11/83 that is still available.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
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Received on Mon Feb 28 2005 - 14:54:47 GMT

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