On 2/7/2026 1:44 PM, Carey Schug via cctalk wrote:
the 1401 (1410/1440/7010/etc) emulators were microcode. an extra cost for the microcode and probably another extra cost for the read only storage for the extra microcode.
That is *partly* correct. I haven't looked at them all, but the 1410 was microcode *ASSIST* not pure microcode - and the 7010 would be the same. I have seen the code for the 1410 emulator. I expect the 1401 and 1440 would be similar.
(UNIVAC actually had a customer written 1410 emulator too - I have the flowcharts for that one.)
Initially, on the 360s, you could push buttons on the console, and have one or more 14xx series machines if you had enough memory. perhaps with 370s too.
Don't know about that one way or the other - if there were a button, I suppose it would have been an IML button of some sort to load the microcode assist.
then you could IPL a card deck with a minimal 360 in-memory operating system, and run one or more 14xx series machines with console commands (I think, I never did this) '
Basically correct - the emulators ran as application programs, as far as I know. (At most, a 1410 would use 100K bytes, so how much you had left would depend on whether you used up 40, 60, 80 or 100K for the 1410/7010 .)
THen you could run a program in one of the dos partitions (BG,F1.F2) that would dynamically start a 1401 job by reading in the 14xx program from cards, while running a native 360 program in the other partition, all as batch jobs scheduled by reading them into the card reader There was also 1620 emulation and maybe others.,
Basically correct - the emulators ran as application programs, as far as I know.
By the time my employer got to 370 I think they had gotten rid of the 14xx emulation, but they were availble.
JRJ
