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for questions about retrocomputing mainframes or clusters
45
votes
Accepted
Why was IBM's Scientific Subroutine Package superseded?
Specifically concerning EISPACK. what happened was that James Hardy "Jim" Wilkinson in the UK (whose career as an applied mathematician started with practical ballistic modelling in WWII, working with …
102
votes
Accepted
Why were programs entered on punch cards instead of paper tapes?
The basic issue that paper tape is hard to edit. In theory you can cut the existing tape and splice in a new section, but in practice there is no easy way to find the correct location except by printi …
16
votes
Accepted
How many transistors in the CDC 1604?
The information to answer the question "exactly" is available on the internet, but I'm not going to do the arithmetic for you!
The Maintenance Manual (http://bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/1604/033a_1604_Compu …
7
votes
How did dusty deck Fortran handle overflow?
Before IEE 754, there was no floating point equivalents to "NaN" or "Inf". Overflow, underflow, and division by zero generated interrupts which would be ignored, trapped, or terminated the program wit …
8
votes
Was sneakernet a job description?
In the company I worked for, there certainly weren't people "running around" with tapes etc. The "tape library" was a whole department, and the physical storage occupied almost a complete floor of the …
19
votes
How big is a mainframe?
The main computer hall of the company I worked for in the 1970s and 1980s was about half the size of a soccer pitch - about 200 feet by 150 feet. That contained three IBM S/370 mainframes at one end, …
5
votes
Is there a line printer sound simulator?
Not a simulator as such, but the BBC has just released an archive of its sound effects library which contains a couple of "line printer" recordings.
Explore http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/?q=printer …
4
votes
Which programming systems used object files on punch cards?
Punched card object files were used as a "standard" method of distribute software in some low-volume specialized applications. In the 1970s, magnetic disks were not generally portable, and the prolife …