Very slow booting and running and braindead OS's 4542

AncientHacker

Somewhat off-topic, but it might have been a firmware thing:

The Burroughs TD850 was a smart block-mode poll & select terminal successor to the (in my opinion very good) TD830. I'm not sure what the TD850 was supposed to do that was different, but whatever it did, it did very slowly. The joke at CUBE (Cooperating Users of Burroughs Equipment) was:

The answer is, "Rin Tin Tin, Lbuttie, and the TD850."

The question was, "Name two stars and a dog."

Back to the topic of operating systems, or versions thereof: The Burroughs Large Systems (B6700-B7700) MCP, which had been written in ESPOL (Executive System Program Oriented Language or something) since the days of the B5500, was rewritten in NEWP (No Executive Washroom Privileges). There was a transition release (3.1?) which was really buggy.

Back off topic: Burroughs' original transaction processing system, GEMCOS, wasn't much fun to use. I don't remember many of the details.

Compilers... Harris Computer Systems wanted to break into the academic DP business and signed a deal with a software vendor who promised not to sell their package unless it was bundled with a Harris computer. I worked at a university which got stuck with a Harris 530 trying to run COBOL programs. The programs were very slow; a quick look at the buttembler output revealed that the compiler was generating code for branches but library calls for everything else (adds, moves, etc).

The best thing I did on the Harris was an buttembler program that printed Burroughs printer backup tapes.

Louis