Binder REP Cards

Brian Inglis

I used the buttembler for the Honeywell H200 ("Easycoder", as opposed to IBM 1401 "Autocoder"), on a machine with 16k and 4 tape drives - no disk. After a macro expansion pbutt which produced a temporary file, it would enter phase 1, reading the output of the previous pbutt, building the symbol table and generating code with unresolved forward references to a new tempory tape file, until there was no more memory for the table. It would then switch to phase 2, which continued down the program, using the ST data it already had, rewinding the tapes when it got to the end and continuing with the new tape as input and the old tape as output, until it got to the point where the phase 1 had stopped. It then cleared the ST from memory and started again with phase 1. At that point, all ST data from the erased part had been used and was no longer needed.

I found a bug, where sometimes it would miscalculate the next free address when switching back to phase 1, with disastrous consequences. I reported this, with a fix, to Honeywell, who seemed surprised that a mere *customer* was capable of such a feat.

--brian

-- Wellington, New Zealand

"What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh."