From: robin on
"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <spamtrap(a)library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote in message
news:4c0cbfba$6$fuzhry+tra$mr2ice(a)news.patriot.net...
| In <4c0bbadb$0$34203$c30e37c6(a)exi-reader.telstra.net>, on 06/07/2010
| at 01:12 AM, David Frank <robin51(a)dodo.com.au> said:
|
| >What don't you understand about the publication,
| >"Automatic Digital Computation"?
|
| Its relevance.

It has the documented evidence of numerical programs
performed BEFORE FORTRAN and ALGOL.

| >With that information, most people can find the publication and read
| >it.
|
| So can you. The last time that I went through that exercise, it turned
| out that you had lied.

I don't lie. If anyone is lying it's you. You haven't povided
any documentary evidence to back up your silly claims.


From: robin on
"Peter Flass" <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> wrote in message news:hujp34$m4p$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...

| That's it. I believe it was an IBM 704, although probably other old
| computers used them also. Drums were popular as storage on systems,
| even with disks, because, being head per track, they were much faster.
| They were often used as a swap medium.

Some drums were head-per-track.
Those on the Pilot ACE (and ACE too, I think) and DEUCE had moving
heads for their drums.


From: glen herrmannsfeldt on
In comp.lang.fortran James J. Weinkam <jjw(a)cs.sfu.ca> wrote:

> Your point is well taken for machines of the 60's and 70's,
> at least for the IBM ones with which I am most familiar.
> For example in 360 assembler, if you wanted to add two numbers
> you had your choice of A, AR, AH, AP, AL, ALR, AE, AER, AD,
> ADR, AXR, AU, AUR, AW, AWR and maybe a few more that I have
> forgotten. There was a one-to-one correspondence between each
> of these mnemonics and their corresponding numerical op codes.
> The assembly language programmer had to choose the correct
> mnemonic instruction to suit the circumstances.

(snip)

And note that the hex value for the opcode for many of those
add instructions has A for its low digit. Also, the divide
instructions have D for their low hex digit. Subtract
and multiply come in between, with B and C.

Starting with S/370, some instructions have a two byte opcode.

There are now even more add instructions with 64 bit operations
in z/Architecture, AGR, AGFR, AY, AG, AGF, add logical with
carry ALCR, ALCGR, ALC, ALCG, IEEE binary floating point
operations AEBR, ADBR, and AXBR, and finally decimal floating
point instructions ADTR and AXTR.

-- glen
From: Peter Hermann on
In comp.lang.ada J. Clarke <jclarke.usenet(a)cox.net> wrote:
> working with assembler but in my day it was a 1:1 correspondence--you
> knew exactly what binary each assembly language instruction would emit,

in the zenith of Assembler (-: i.e. after your time :-)
we had macros which could produce hundreds of
statements with one stroke...
From: Shmuel Metz on
In <4c0d0278$0$56572$c30e37c6(a)exi-reader.telstra.net>, on 06/08/2010
at 12:30 AM, "robin" <robin51(a)dodo.com.au> said:

>That was done by hand for many early machines that relied on mercury
>delay line (or nickel) memories.

I don't know about the UK, but in the USA pretty much everybody
abandoned the Mercury delay line after the UNIVAC I. It's true that
the PB-250 used an acoustic delay line, but that used glass rather
than Mercury.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

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