Good News - Someone Is Building a Burroughs 205!

My last couple of posts referenced the possibility of building your own Burroughs 205 with hardware components available on eBay.

Fortunately, there is a much easier way.  Build it with software in the form of a computer emulator.  I have been working with one of these myself over the past few years and have it working adequately to satisfy my own curiosity about the timing of the Algol 58 compiler that was probably the high point of software development on the 205.

Mine doesn't have the polish and class that I would want to see in an emulator that is released to the public, though.

Fortunately, Paul Kimpel, one of the developers who recently produced this Burroughs B-5000 emulator became interested in building a B-205 emulator.  Paul honed his skills working on several college machines as a fortunate few of us did in the 1960s.  He was fortunate enough to have a B-5500 available to him and then went on to work for Burroughs in Paoli for a number of years.

I have invited Paul to become an author on this blog and he will no doubt share more history with you when he joins us.

If you ever programmed a Burrough 205, you are going to love this emulator!