On 5/5/21 6:40 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote: > > While I was in grad school at U.W. (the one in Wisconsin) we had > obtained via surplus an IBM 7094 II from military surplus - I seem to > recall WSMR (White Sands Missle Range). Of course, it had an MG. We > got it put together and with a replaced transistor here and there (one > of which was modern silicon) we got it running. We had NO peripherals, > but my friend Paul came up with the idea to use a sense switch to talk > RS-232 at 9600bps, and using that he got the Purdue University Fast > FORTRAN Translator (PUFFT)loaded and up and running, and I wrote some > support code on a Datacraft 6024 to send it card images and receive...
I remember PUFFT--wasn't that Saul Rosen's baby? Purdue, IIRC, had a couple of 7094s and a CDC 6500 and a 1401 operated as SPOOL in the basement of the Math building. Other departments had their own systems--Industrial Management, for example, had an 1130 that nobody seemed to be interested in and was available to anyone who wanted to use it. I think Administration had an S/360 installation. I believe that there was the odd 1620 scattered here and there. I recall Rosen's numerical methods course--on the first day, he came in lugging one of those Monroe or Friden mechanical calculating machines to demonstrate significance and loss thereof. PUFFT was one of those language translators that was so permissive (it would even suggest correct spellings of misspelled keywords, correct syntax, etc.) Basically a student compiler that would guarantee that just about any garbage could be turned into a program. --Chuck
