On 4/3/2014 8:32 PM, Tony Estep wrote: > Don's comment reminded me of one of the great hacker stories of all time. > When IBM launched the 360, it obsoleted all its customers' code, because in > those days the machines all ran assembly language and the 360 had a > different instruction set. The clients screamed for an emulator, but none > was forthcoming. (Parenthetical note: at that time IBM was the world's most > profitable company and by far the largest by market capitalization.)
Ah yes - the good old days of "big iron". In that era, my kid brother KU2P/4X1AK was deeply involved in the data processing programming end of the securities trading industry, and when an IBM client wanted something that they could not provide, IBM would go through the same routine of "we don't have anything like that, go see Andy Kane at =======..." My exposure to "big iron" in that era was on a military project where a special compiler for the JOVIAL language (look it up on Wiki and follow all the trails) was contracted for with a specific "name" company - one of the Air Force's "favorites" - but to the annoyance of the rest of the project managers they couldn't deliver on time and when they finally did it didn't work (I had to deal with that "up close and personal"). The Air Force finally took it away from them and the Blue-Suiters did the work in-house. Reminds me of all the problems that Oregon's Health Care Signup system is going through. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Enough on that - contact me off line if there's any interest in all the published leads on the 50-year old project that is now on public display in the Strategic Air Command's museum. -- -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402 >From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
