Well, if you are going to convert software, there is the RPG for MVT that could be ported to 360/20 subset.
On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Timothy Sipples <[email protected]> wrote: > Glen, > > It's very possible, even likely, somebody has a set of cards with that RPG > compiler in storage -- or perhaps moved to tape. Finding it will be the > hard part, of course, but I have faith it's out there somewhere. > > So who might have a Model 20 RPG compiler card set? Well, it'd have to be > from somebody who had a 4K (or perhaps 8K or 12K) Model 20. Those with the > larger memory configurations likely had at least TPS, not CPS. That number > of CPS customers was undoubtedly in the thousands in the late 1960s and > early 1970s, so that's good, and most of those customers probably had RPG. > (Over 7,000 Model 20s were sold in the U.S. alone.) Then you'd probably > focus on customers that have relatively stable business processes who are > also still running RPG code, and that subset would be mostly found among > today's IBM i customers, I'd imagine. RPG was much more popular in the > System/3(X) machine line that evolved into the AS/400 and now today's IBM > i, so most RPG-heavy customers would have followed that path, not the > COBOL- and PL/I-heavy System/370 evolution. That subset of IBM i customers > might have among them a "crazy" veteran or two who hung onto Model 20 > cards. Or there's somebody knows there were card decks shipped off to a > company archive or warehouse for safe keeping where they're still stored, > just in case somebody had to fire up the Model 20 again or just because > nobody wanted to take responsibility for tossing them. > > You might also approach this search from a "source" listing angle. Or a > "What's the oldest file you've got?" sort of survey angle among IBM i > customers, perhaps within IBM i user groups, to see if anybody just blindly > pulled any sort of digital representation of that compiler forward into > their backups. If somebody has the bits on tape -- read from cards during a > long ago media migration, for example -- those bits could be repunched. You > don't necessarily need an actual old card deck, though obviously that'd be > a bonus for museum purposes. > > There might also be a few System/3(X) machines still doing productive work, > and their owners might be former Model 20 owners -- and might still have > the compiler lying around. I'd try that angle, too. > > As an aside, you've got a 16-bit general purpose computer with at least 4K > of main memory (storage) and an extremely well documented instruction set. > In principle there are certain current operating systems (and associated > applications for those operating systems) that could be ported to a real > System/360 Model 20. Here are a couple possible examples: > > http://www.femtoos.org > http://www.freertos.org > > Atmel AVR32 microprocessors are big endian and have a "compact" (16-bit) > instruction set, so that's helpful, though porting would still not be a > *trivial* exercise. > > Good luck! > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Timothy Sipples > IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > E-Mail: [email protected] > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
