From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-08-21T06:31:52+09:00
Subject: Re: the perens in lisp dilects is there for a reson... macros.

John W. Kennedy wrote:
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>> I once had a boss who claimed to have worked on an IBM 1620. I think
>> he was trying to impress us as being a "real programmer just like us."
>> The lab where I worked on a 1620 got rid of it in 1964 ... I'm
>> guessing he was in junior high school then. :)
> 
> The 1620 was still a state-of-the-art product in 1964, and was IBM's
> only desk-sized machine of the era. If your lab dumped one, it was not
> for obsolescence; its niche successor, the 1130, was still in the future
> -- and the 1130 was not compatible at all with the 1620, so upgrades
> were slow and cautious. (Many 1620s were instead eventually upgraded to
> S/360-30 mainframes, which offered a 1620-compatibility option.)
> 
Actually, I was off by two years. We replaced the 1620 with an 1130
towards the end of 1966. So he might well have been a freshman :).

And ... our FORTRAN programs ported fairly easily. The assembly language
programs I ported by hand. Most of them got better in the process. :)