Pat You may recall I also offered a photograph with my previous post[1]. The Model 20 looked about as I remembered it - although I had to imagine the covers on. However, what was claimed to be the 2560 I wasn't really so sure about. Mention of stacker numbers up to 5 just reinforced this since I was sure there should have been more than the 2 shown in the photograph.
Does anyone have a photograph of a 2560 with a URL so we can all take a look at the real thing? Alternatively perhaps there's a list subscriber who lives in Munich who can go to the Deutsches Museum, have a look at this exhibit and report back. My last - and best - memory of the Model 20 was experimenting with the communications functions of one that was hanging around in the machine room not doing much. I wrote a program to the hardware I/O interface for the card reader, the printer and the BSC line. In essence, it was a sort-of "proof of concept" which could have extended to making the Model 20 a dedicated RJE device. The interesting part was to create a sort of multitasking in order to mix the line and reader or line and printer tasks. This is still vaguely relevant since the most mysterious part of this program was how it behaved when driving the card reader - which was surely a 2560. <g> The reader ran fast, probably rated speed, for a while and then ran much more slowly. I suspect the change of speed reflected the possibility that the card data had filled up the available storage for the blank-truncated card data. Then I got some real work to do so the Model 20 just gathered dust and I never really tracked down the strange noise pattern from the reader. Because of an external event while I was desk-checking the BSC protocol logic, I can date this encounter with the Model 20 and 2560 to February 1971 - which is almost certainly the last time I saw a 2560. Chris Mason [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DM_IBM_S360.jpg ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick O'Keefe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 31 October, 2006 9:24 PM Subject: Re: What's a "programming language" On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:11:14 +0100, Chris Mason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >... >There's a danger of this thread becoming circular. No danger. It's already circular. >... >The 2560 was the card reader/punch and some other tricks ... like interpret >... which tended to go with the 360 Model 20 and RPG. There was also a set of CPS/TPS/DPS (Card/Tape/Disk Programming System) utilities to list, interpret, reproduce, sort ("Take the cards from stackers 1 & 2 and place them in hopper 1. Take the cards from stackers 4 & 5 and place them in hopper 2. Then press "START". 5 passes remaining".), and the wonderful Gang-punch/Reproduce. Pat O'Keefe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
