Testing That New Burroughs 205

The new Burroughs 205 emulator that I described in the last post is working fine for just about any application that you might want to try using paper tape input and Flexowriter output.  I am hoping that some old-timers have saved some paper tapes from the 1950s and 60s and can translate them into text files and use the emulator.

I wrote up a quick program to calculate prime numbers and ran that through Paul's emulator.  It's great fun to watch the numbers march across the A register as the output emerges onto the Flexowriter.

I set up my program to print the primes in rows of ten so that they could be matched up against this listing of the first 1000 primes at the University of Tennessee, Martin. It was nice to find a listing like that which looks like it was just done on a Flexowriter!

Here's the code that I put onto my paper tape.  It loads directly into the 7000 band for most of the calculations but also uses the 5000 band for print formatting and the constants/variables are stored in the 6000 band.  Entry is to location 5015 which prints the first two primes, "2" and "3" and then the actual algorithm begins looking at 5 as the first true candidate.

When Paul describes how to use his emulator, you might want to start with this program as a test, stepping through it to jog your memory.

40000007000
646000
130010
616001
140010
47006
205009
646001
606001
140010
756000
736002
287013
205000
646001
746002
126001
207000
40000005000
646000
140004
30306
646004
756006
45008
70500
646005
126004
646000
746002
126000
646003
126001
207000
646007
030306
646008
030306
207000
40000006000
5
3
2
3
8
10
1
20000
30000
60000205015

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!

Build Your Own Burroughs 205

If you took advantage of the chance to bid on those bargain Burroughs 205 toggle packages noted in the previous post, you may be interested in this Burroughs 205 memory drum now for sale on eBay.  It is only the drum, and does not include the enclosure with the read/write heads.

But, most of us, even B-205 aficionados, have never seen the actual drum surface.  This one appears to be a bit worn and may have suffered from head contact at the very least.  Here are closeups from other pictures on the eBay listing.

The seller appears to have placed it on a clay flower pot which appears to make a nice mount for display purposes.  I'm pretty sure that if I had been a Burroughs Field Engineer, I would have a bid in on this already.

With those toggles from the previous auction and this drum, you could be well on your way to forming a complete system in your basement or garage.  You will need to do a little refubishing, of course, but if you even recognize these parts, you are likely to be retired and have the time.

Build Your Own Burroughs 205 Register

Modules for a Datatron come along only rarely, nowadays.  I can recall seeing them occasionally in surplus stores such as "G. I. Joes," in Portland, back in the late '60s - no doubt for just a few bucks.

The last one I saw trade on e-Bay, about five years ago, went past $150 the day before it finally sold.

But - if you act now!  There are three of the most common packages, the 50550 toggle module available for bid on eBay.  There were over 50 of these modules in the typical B-205.  They are labeled as "40" in the photo on this webpage on my Datatron site.

Here's the link to eBay.

 

Willis Ware, Another Pioneer We've Lost

It was sad to hear recently of the passing of Willis Ware.  If you follow that link to his NYT obituary, you might think there is a misprint when you notice the sentence that begins, "Mr. Ware, who worked at the RAND Corporation for more than 55 years..."  The Obituary doesn't begin to give proper credit to Ware.

He didn't have the flair and gusto that Herb Grosch or Edmund Berkeley possessed as evangelists of the Computer Era in the 1950s but I suspect that Ware was the final checkpoint before a purchase decision by a great many organizations.

Willis Ware traveled everywhere there was to go in the computer industry from just about day one starting with von Neumann at Princeton's IAS and then heading West.  And, he took notes.  The Charles Babbage Institute holds seventeen boxes of Willis' notes and collected brochures.  If you think you know everything about some obscure computer from the 1950s, you had better check this source before jumping to conclusions.  Willis Ware probably visited the manufacturer, evaluated their management as well as their computer and assessed their likelihood of success.

Did Willis Ware stop at ElectroData and evaluate the Datatron?  O yes.  He wasn't quite there at conception but he made several visits before birth, beginning in 1952.  He thought that putting L. P. Robinson in charge of the machine development "is sparking the whole project" and gave it a feeling of well-being and good health."  Later, in 1954, when it was clear that ElectroData had a winner, Ware was the one who suggested that ElectroData write up an article for the IEEE Tranactions detailing the machine.  The result was John Alrich's,  "Engineering Description of the ElectroData Computer,"  in March of 1955.  This is arguably the most elegant description of a first generation computer that was ever produced.

With 55 years at Rand under his belt (Wikipedia only credits him with 50) it was only appropriate that Ware write the definitive book on RAND's role in Information Technology.  He did just that in 2008 at the age of 88.  The book is RAND and the Information Evolution.  I highly recommend that you buy a copy.

Open Thread - 10/15/13

This post is for you!

Click on the COMMENTS word just below this line. Feel free to post anything that you would like to correct, clarify or add to the Datatron website.

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It's Time to Update the Datatron Website

It's hard to believe that I haven't updated this blog or my Datatron website for the past three years, but that appears to be the case. 

What's been going on?  Well, I have continued to do weekly research over at the Charles Babbage Institute and follow lots of interesting leads into the depths of Burroughs literature.  And I included more than a few "computer history" stops into our schedule as Linda and I traveled the country.

Several years ago, I had expected to write a history of ElectroData and the Datatron and include a short summary of the Burroughs Corporation along the way.  I soon discovered that there is a dearth of good accurate information on Burroughs available in published literature.  I expanded my scope.  The story of Burroughs is fascinating in its own right.

I also realized that the simple Datatron website that I had set up back in 2008 and stretched out with links to a half dozen additional pages wasn't going to cut it.  So I have embarked on a program to replace it with a more modern web-page structure.  Here is a sample page.  The site will evolve and begin to take its new shape over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, here are a few pages (with pictures) from my Travel Blog that touch on the edges of the Datatron story and other events in the history of computing.

• The Burroughs Adding Machine Company in Detroit
• Ed McCollister's family home in Iowa City
• Cliff Berry's family home in Marengo, Iowa
• Site of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer on the Iowa State Campus
• Site of the ENIAC computer in Philadelphia
• The ERMA museum in Concord, California
• U of Cal., Berkeley where Datatron engineers Alrich and Foster got their E.E. degrees under the direction of Paul Morton.
• The Computer History Museum in Mountainview, CA., where the reproduction of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer now resides