> -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk <cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of nico de jong via > cctalk > Sent: 17 April 2020 08:40 > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available > > On 2020-04-17 09:12, ben via cctalk wrote: > > On 4/17/2020 12:19 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >> On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk > >> wrote: > >> [...] > >>> Tomasz, forgive me but I have to ask. You did note the date on which > >>> that announcement appeared, right? > >> > >> Yeah. I do not have to look at it again to tell you it was dated > >> April 1st 2005 :-). But it is ok you asked, I could have overlooked > >> it in a hurry. But, well, Arduinos with 512 bytes or ram, just think > >> of it, putting Cobol on it, what an achievement would it be... > >> > > But Cobol is just not the same with out some spinning tape drives. > > Ben. > > Talking of spinning tape drives : anyone remember IBM's TAPESORT ? > > On the 1401 a disksort was almost useless, bearing in mind that the 1311 > diskdrive only could accomodate 2 million characters. > > One night, the job was to sort the wages for a large numers of factory > workers. The job used to take 3-4 hours, so the operator went home for a > quick nap, intending to return at 4 in the morning, so he could finish the > job. > However, the tape sort had aborted as there was a hard error on one of the > sort tapes, so he had to start from scratch. > > The factory workers' union had a clause in the agreement, saying that if the > wages were not paid by 10 am, those who had not received the wages, > would strike until they had. > > The result of that nights sleep was therefore that as soon as some 25 > envelopes had been printed, they would be taken off the printer, filled with > notes and coins (we are speaking of the 1970's, they would be put into a cab, > speeded to the factory, and delivered to the workers. By 2 PM everybody > was working again. The operator was not very popular, and he never went > home again to take a nap while "working" > > /Nico
What fun what joy. When I worked with a Honeywell H3200, a 1401 clone. Ours had 20Mb disks and really odd very high speed 1200bpi NRZI tape that nothing else would read . Running a tape sort was a joy to watch, especially when it used the backward read... We did use the disk sort. It was called DSORT6 and was not very reliable. The instructions said:- "If a DSORT6 job fails try running in a larger partition. If it still fails try it a smaller partition" Dave
