Software for IBM 36030 was DOS360: Forty years 520

Rob Warnock

This somewhat reminds me (not surprisingly, I guess, considering the genealogy) of the Honeywell H-200. I think I still remember some of the commands to start a job .....

Seems like there was a STOP button and an INITIALIZE button on the control panel.....you pressed them together ???

Then you used the console keyboard to do the "IPL" by typing 'B' followed by a two digit octal device address and then a 6 digit octal memory address.

Then finally hitting the RUN button on the panel.

For example, to boot from tape, it was B 40 000000 twice (I think the first one effectively read-skipped the tape header record) since 40 was the device address of tape input.

To run a previously punched object deck for a COBOL progam, it was B 41 000317 (41 was the card reader). Not sure why the non-zero address, but I suspect that there was some sort of one-card loader at the front of each object deck which had to run at the higher address.

And to boot from the 'big' disk drive, it was B 44 000000 (44 being the disk drive).

There were obviously also other console keyboard commands besides "B" to display memory, alter it, etc.

I'm sure that there's an H-200 manual somewhere on Al Kossow's website which covers all of this and more. In fact, I think I've looked at it a while ago.

Amazing what kind of stuff you remember.....