M$ adds on Linux Today

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2005, Collins Richey wrote:
>On 10/16/05, Bill Campbell <linux-sxs at celestial.com> wrote:
>>  I was data processing manager for a
>> beltway bandit (aka Navy Contractor) in the D.C. area for twelve
>> years, and for most of that time we were using Burroughs Medium
>> Systems, B2500->B3800, systems.  The MCP Operating System on
>> these machines was far superior to the IBM OS/360, requiring only
>> me and one other programmer to handle everything for a company
>> with about 250 engineers.  An IBM shop would have required a far
>> greater number of support people,
>
>Yeah, MCP was a dream of an operating system - almost no maintenance -
>it just worked. The only problem with the Burroughs medium system
>boxes was the fact that they were decimal arithmetic only. If you
>needed binary for anything (CRC, etc.) you had to write binary
>simulation code!

That was true for the Medium Systems (B-2500->B-4800), but not
for the Large Systems (B-5500->B-6800) and A Series machines
which were at least 48bit binary words.  The B-1700 series were
more interesting in that they have a variable microcode that
switched depending on the language, decimal for COBOL accounting,
binary for FORTRAN, etc.  I never had a chance to work on the
B-1700s, but thought they would be very interesting.

I cut my mainframe teeth on the B-5500s, programming mostly in
Burroughs extended ALGOL, which was the system language -- there
was no Assembly.  The B-5xxx series were the first to have real
virtual memory, almost a decade before IBM invented thrashing and
called it VM.

Actually that's not quite true.  The first mainframe, and the
first computer I ever used, was a Bendix G-20 while I was working
as a Jr. Electrical Engineer at Bendix Radio almost 40 years ago.

That too was in interesting machine, but nothing compared to the
Burroughs machines.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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URL: http://www.celestial.com/

The pinnacle of open systems is: when moving from vendor to vendor, the
design flaws stay the same.