David On 22/08/2013, at 10:23 AM, David Noel wrote:
> -- Thanks for blast from the past. I worked at UWA for 24 years, starting in > 1964, and was one of the early users of the PDP-6 -- in those days users came > in with their punch cards, mag tapes, or paper tapes and sat at the console > themselves to operate the beast. It was a huge step up from the IBM 1620 > accounting machine, which did run on punched cards, but was programmed by > plugging wires into a logic frame. I actually did the Macro course at Mt > Lawley Tech -- by then it may have been to use on the PDP-10, the language > was the same. Ah, yes, the IBM1620. Not only punched card input but punched card output as well. I wrote my first program on it (I seem to remember that the program calculated the area of a triangle - very sophisticated) in a language called FORGO - a cut-down version of FORTRAN (IBM was always behind everyone else). You may not know that the 1620 console has been restored and should by now be on display in Computer Science at UWA. There are plans to also restore and display the Cyber76 console. I seem to remember that the PDP6 went to a museum on Wireless Hill? Sorry about the off-topic; getting nostalgic in my old age. Geoff ---------------------- Geoff and Kaye k...@kgweb.org.au -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
