I wonder if Sparkler Filters is still using their IBM 402 which they were still using as of 2012: https://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/computers/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-i... They seem to be in business still: http://www.sparkler.com/ On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 09:42:37PM -0400, Jon "maddog" Hall wrote:

John,

If I remember correctly, the equivalent of "assembly language" for the 1401 (either the IBM model or the IMB model) was "Autocoder".

The IBM 1401 was introduced about 1961. By the time I started work at Aetna Life and Casualty in 1973, we had become the "Largest commercial user of IBM Equipment in the Free World". That means that maybe the government used more IBM computers, or that the Russians or the Chinese were using more IBM computers, but other than that AETNA WAS THE LARGEST. We AUTOMATICALLY ordered two of anything IBM announced. No sales person had to call us. IBM announced it: Aetna ordered two.

So by that time we had lots of IBM 1401s and lots of Autocoder programmers.

Then the IBM 360 line came out, and with it IBM's line of batch operating systems: MFT, MVT, VS-1, VS-2, and (finally) MVS. Unfortunately getting jobs into and out of these batch systems was extraordinarily painful until the Houston Automatic Spooling Priority (HASP) system (developed at the IBM Federal Systems Division of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, Texas) came out and made life bearable for the operators of the machines. [Editorial Side Note: These were not "Network Administrators", nor "Systems Administrators"....these were OPERATORS! As in BOFH! Never forget that! And for heaven sake RTFM!]

With those also arrived a time-sharing system called CP-67 along with a small "Cambridge Monitor System" (CMS), needed because CP-67 was a Virtual Machine.

Yes, a Virtual Machine in 1973! Which eventually was renamed to "VM/CMS" and "CMS" became the "Conversational Monitor System".....but I digress....

Aetna had a LOT of machines, and a LOT of Autocoder programs, and a LOT of Autocoder programmers, which they tried to convert to COBOL.

Yes, COBOL, that wondrous language developed by the team headed up by my personal hero, Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper!

After several years most of the programmers were happily writing COBOL (yes, I know that seems hard to believe, but they were) except for a few Autocoder programmers left to make bug fixes and extensions to existing Autocoder programs. Of course new programs and new systems were written in COBOL, because why would you write anything new in Autocoder.

As the 1401s were replaced by 360s and (later) 370 machines, IBM created an emulator for Autocoder that operated in a 360/370 system, so you could run Autocoder programs binary compatible on your 370/370 mainframe. And when you did you almost heard the IBM choking.

I never coded in Autocoder, but I did hear one story about an instruction that "rotated all of memory under the accumulator", and it was said that when that instruction (which executed gracefully on a real IBM 1401) hit the emulator on the 360/370, you could hear the machine hemorrhaging.....

Over time the Autocoder programmers became gloomy. They were tired of patching old programs, and not working on any of the new, exciting systems that Aetna was writing. Aetna had written its own real-time transaction processing system called SAFARI (sorry Apple, we were first) and later on a Group Claim Payment System (ACCLAIMS), which gained a lot of people glory.

Autocoder patching did not get much glory. And over time there was less and less work...the writing was on the wall.

One day I came into work and found the Autocoder programmers very excited and happy. They were given NEW programs to write! "I did not know you guys had learned COBOL!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, we have not learned COBOL. They are allowing us to write the new programs in Autocoder."

In the late 1990s there was this panic to find old COBOL programmers who could fix potential problems with Y2K problems. I am sure that Aetna had to bring a few Autocoder programmers back from the dead.

And now you know THE REST OF THE STORY.

Warmest regards,

maddog

On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 8:39 PM, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

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*ppppbbbbbbttttttt!*

Jon> I never worked on an "IMB 1401". Was that anything like the IBM 1401?

Jon> (ducks)

Ken Shirriff is the guy behind righto.com, really interesting stuff he writes about. Sometimes I wish I was that smart and motivated. But writing is hard for me... as Maddog showed.

*grin*

Jon> On Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 19:16 John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

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>> "Jon" == Jon \"maddog\" Hall <jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com> writes:

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The trouble with the old machines is the eventual death of irreplacable hardware -- Pentium-MMX CPU Fans, PATA disks and the like.

Jon> Emulators and virtual machines.....allow old copies of the OS to live Jon> forever.

Jon> I am, however, waiting for the "virtual car", for the time that Jon> people can no longer get the little embedded systems that allow Jon> modern-day cars to run. The era of "fixing up an old car" which Jon> both trained you in auto mechanics and "gave you wheels" is Jon> coming to a close.

Jon> Did you see the new game on early release on Steam? System Build Jon> Simulator? Where you get to build a new PC in a simulation? Heh...

Jon> Another great resource is this blog, http://righto.com, who works on Jon> old IMB 1401 systems with card punches, etc. Lots of great info Jon> there.

Jon> John