Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #218654 > unrolled thread

What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?

Started by	Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com>
First post	2021-09-05 09:55 +0000
Last post	2021-10-08 07:27 -0700
Articles	20 on this page of 224 — 41 participants

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#218767

From	John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
Date	2021-09-08 22:46 +0000
Message-ID	<slrnsjif98.1aui6.jgoerzen@slrnh.complete.org>
In reply to	#218764

On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.

I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?

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#218768

From	Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-08 20:28 -0400
Message-ID	<shbkfb$pn7$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#218767

John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>
> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?

Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.

Before then, IBM kept introducing new incompatible models each one
programmed in it's assembly language.  The promise of S/360 was that
you would never again have to throw out your massive investment in
software.

Object code will still run.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#218769

From	John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Date	2021-09-09 01:59 +0000
Message-ID	<shbpql$2c79$2@gal.iecc.com>
In reply to	#218768

According to Dan Espen  <dan1espen@gmail.com>:
>John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>
>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>>
>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>
>Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.

I thought the Unisys Clearpath machines still run Unival 1100 code from the 1960s.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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#218771

From	J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-08 22:24 -0400
Message-ID	<3srijg92d4513nvbejj47e7udqte8562tj@4ax.com>
In reply to	#218769

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 01:59:49 -0000 (UTC), John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
wrote:

>According to Dan Espen  <dan1espen@gmail.com>:
>>John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>
>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>>>
>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>
>>Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>
>I thought the Unisys Clearpath machines still run Unival 1100 code from the 1960s.

Unisys Clearpath is an emulator running on Intel.  IBM implements the
Z in purpose-made hardware.

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#218772

From	Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>
Date	2021-09-08 23:14 -0600
Message-ID	<shc5ej$k1s$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>
In reply to	#218771

On 9/8/21 8:24 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> Unisys Clearpath is an emulator running on Intel.  IBM implements 
> the Z in purpose-made hardware.

IBM implements it in microcode.  Which is as much software as it is 
hardware.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#218773

From	J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-09 01:59 -0400
Message-ID	<pk8jjg1ath3b0gg05bq0fu95a6ui7dt5ha@4ax.com>
In reply to	#218772

On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 23:14:42 -0600, Grant Taylor
<gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:

>On 9/8/21 8:24 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
>> Unisys Clearpath is an emulator running on Intel.  IBM implements 
>> the Z in purpose-made hardware.
>
>IBM implements it in microcode.  Which is as much software as it is 
>hardware.

They did once.  Do they still when they have from a 360 architecture
viewpoint vast quantities of silicon real estate to play with?

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#218775

From	Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>
Date	2021-09-09 11:53 -0600
Message-ID	<shdhu0$tit$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net>
In reply to	#218773

On 9/8/21 11:59 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> They did once.  Do they still when they have from a 360 architecture 
> viewpoint vast quantities of silicon real estate to play with?

Absolutely.

If anything they do even more in microcode now than they used to.

The microcode has somewhat become an abstraction layer.  The processor 
underneath can do whatever it wants and rely on the microcode to be the 
abstraction boundary.

There have been multiple episodes of the Terminal Talk podcast talk 
about microcode, milicode, and other very low level codes that fall into 
the more broad category of firmware.

-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#218776

From	scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
Date	2021-09-09 18:27 +0000
Message-ID	<_ls_I.10023$2e3.7678@fx29.iad>
In reply to	#218768

Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>
>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>>
>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>
>Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.

Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
the 1960s.

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#218777

From	Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Date	2021-09-09 12:23 -0700
Message-ID	<921929080.652907996.339785.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org>
In reply to	#218776

Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>> 
>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>>> 
>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>> 
>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
> 
> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
> the 1960s.
> 

? I thought that the 5500’s successor systems weren’t object-compatible
with it. I don’t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.

-- 
Pete

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#218779

From	scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
Date	2021-09-09 21:10 +0000
Message-ID	<8Lu_I.9551$nh7.4651@fx22.iad>
In reply to	#218777

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>> 
>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest “z” box.
>>>> 
>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>> 
>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>> 
>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>> the 1960s.
>> 
>
>? I thought that the 5500’s successor systems weren’t object-compatible
>with it. I don’t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
>7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.

There was a step change between the B5500 and the B6500; after than they
were binary compatible (e-mode in the early 1980s added support for larger
memory, but still ran old codefiles).

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#218781

From	Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-09 21:02 -0400
Message-ID	<shear0$rs1$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#218779

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest â€œzâ€ box.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>> 
>>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>> 
>>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>>> the 1960s.
>>> 
>>
>>? I thought that the 5500â€™s successor systems werenâ€™t object-compatible
>>with it. I donâ€™t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
>>7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.
>
> There was a step change between the B5500 and the B6500; after than they
> were binary compatible (e-mode in the early 1980s added support for larger
> memory, but still ran old codefiles).

I see a date of 1969 for the B6500.
That gives the title back to S/360.

I had to support a project moving Unisys code to z-Arch.
We had persistent performance issues, the mainframe just couldn't deal
with loading lots of small programs while the app was running.
I see Unisys is naturally reentrant.  That probably had a lot to do with
the problems we were having.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#218783

From	scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
Date	2021-09-10 03:19 +0000
Message-ID	<v9A_I.76724$F26.6476@fx44.iad>
In reply to	#218781

Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest â€œzâ€ box.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>>> 
>>>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>>>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>>>> the 1960s.
>>>> 
>>>
>>>? I thought that the 5500â€™s successor systems werenâ€™t object-compatible
>>>with it. I donâ€™t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
>>>7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.
>>
>> There was a step change between the B5500 and the B6500; after than they
>> were binary compatible (e-mode in the early 1980s added support for larger
>> memory, but still ran old codefiles).
>
>I see a date of 1969 for the B6500.
>That gives the title back to S/360.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that B5000 applications
ran on the B6500 - Burroughs was good about backwards
compatability - as shown by the B3500 line which ran
the original binaries through end of life (last system
powered off in 2010 so far as I'm aware - 45 year run).

Someone pointed to this, which talks about the
Pasadena plant and the development of the B5000
line.   I hadn't realized that Cliff Berry had
any connection to Burroughs when I was working
there;  one my school's most famous Alumni.

http://www.digm.com/UNITE/2019/2019-Origins-Burroughs-Algol.pdf

>
>I had to support a project moving Unisys code to z-Arch.
>We had persistent performance issues, the mainframe just couldn't deal
>with loading lots of small programs while the app was running.

The Burroughs systems were all designed to be very easy
to use and to program.

>I see Unisys is naturally reentrant.  That probably had a lot to do with
>the problems we were having.

Yes, it was quite advanced for the day.   The capability model
that Burroughs invented with the large systems line is being
investigated for new processor architectures today, see for example CHERI.

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#218799

From	Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Date	2021-09-10 18:40 -0700
Message-ID	<730981917.653016400.354174.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org>
In reply to	#218781

Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
> 
>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest â€œzâ€ box.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>>> 
>>>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>>>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>>>> the 1960s.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ? I thought that the 5500â€™s successor systems werenâ€™t object-compatible
>>> with it. I donâ€™t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
>>> 7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.
>> 
>> There was a step change between the B5500 and the B6500; after than they
>> were binary compatible (e-mode in the early 1980s added support for larger
>> memory, but still ran old codefiles).
> 
> I see a date of 1969 for the B6500.
> That gives the title back to S/360.
> 
> I had to support a project moving Unisys code to z-Arch.
> We had persistent performance issues, the mainframe just couldn't deal
> with loading lots of small programs while the app was running.
> I see Unisys is naturally reentrant.  That probably had a lot to do with
> the problems we were having.
> 

You could have reentrant programs on S/360, too, but they had to be coded
as reentrant. I believe all HLLs would generate reentrant code, unless you
deliberately wrote them to be otherwise. There were lots of tuning
techniques you could use to optimize the “lots of small programs,” too, but
they weren’t automatic. That is what CICS is really good at. I thought
UNIVAC TIP  would be a dog compared to CICS, because it did just run lots
of small programs. 

-- 
Pete

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#218800

From	Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-10 22:15 -0400
Message-ID	<shh3fl$voi$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#218799

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>> 
>>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest â€œzâ€ box.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>>>>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>>>>> the 1960s.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ? I thought that the 5500â€™s successor systems werenâ€™t object-compatible
>>>> with it. I donâ€™t know about the degree of compatibility between the 6000s,
>>>> 7000s, and 8000s. Id be happy to be corrected.
>>> 
>>> There was a step change between the B5500 and the B6500; after than they
>>> were binary compatible (e-mode in the early 1980s added support for larger
>>> memory, but still ran old codefiles).
>> 
>> I see a date of 1969 for the B6500.
>> That gives the title back to S/360.
>> 
>> I had to support a project moving Unisys code to z-Arch.
>> We had persistent performance issues, the mainframe just couldn't deal
>> with loading lots of small programs while the app was running.
>> I see Unisys is naturally reentrant.  That probably had a lot to do with
>> the problems we were having.
>
> You could have reentrant programs on S/360, too, but they had to be coded
> as reentrant. I believe all HLLs would generate reentrant code, unless you
> deliberately wrote them to be otherwise. There were lots of tuning
> techniques you could use to optimize the “lots of small programs,” too, but
> they weren’t automatic. That is what CICS is really good at. I thought
> UNIVAC TIP  would be a dog compared to CICS, because it did just run lots
> of small programs. 

This was a C project and the Unisys code invoked lots of mains.
The IBM LE code to establish reentrancy (mainly building the WSA)
was a major player in the slowness.  I'm guessing that Unisys
had more efficient ways of establishing reentrancy.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#218806

From	Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Date	2021-09-11 07:36 +0000
Message-ID	<shhmai$9p5$3@newsreader4.netcologne.de>
In reply to	#218799

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:

> You could have reentrant programs on S/360, too, but they had to be coded
> as reentrant. I believe all HLLs would generate reentrant code, unless you
> deliberately wrote them to be otherwise.

Fortran was not reentrant (at least not by default), it used the
standard OS/360 linkage convention.

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#218813 — Re: reentrant, What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?

From	John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Date	2021-09-12 00:02 +0000
Subject	Re: reentrant, What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?
Message-ID	<shjg2e$1vk5$1@gal.iecc.com>
In reply to	#218806

According to Thomas Koenig  <tkoenig@netcologne.de>:
>> You could have reentrant programs on S/360, too, but they had to be coded
>> as reentrant. I believe all HLLs would generate reentrant code, unless you
>> deliberately wrote them to be otherwise.
>
>Fortran was not reentrant (at least not by default), it used the
>standard OS/360 linkage convention.

You could write reentrant code that used the standard linkage scheme, but
it was fiddly and used more conventions about handling the dynamic storage areas.

Fortran and Cobol were never reentrant. PL/I could be if you used the
REENTRANT option in your source code. The PL/I programmers' guides
have examples of calling reentrant and non-reentrant assembler code.

My impression is that most reentrant code was written in assembler and preloaded
at IPL time to be used as shared libraries.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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#218828

From	Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Date	2021-09-13 11:39 -0700
Message-ID	<371743427.653250747.314422.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org>
In reply to	#218806

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:
> 
>> You could have reentrant programs on S/360, too, but they had to be coded
>> as reentrant. I believe all HLLs would generate reentrant code, unless you
>> deliberately wrote them to be otherwise.
> 
> Fortran was not reentrant (at least not by default), it used the
> standard OS/360 linkage convention.
> 

Okay, I guess just PL/I and assembler then. I’m not sure CICS supported
FORTRAN. The linkage convention isn’t the problem, FORTRAN and COBOL used
only static storage for data, rather than automatic per-task data. For PL/I
you just had to not modify STATIC storage (AUTOMATIC) is the default, or at
least be careful about how you modified it.

-- 
Pete

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#218778

From	Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com>
Date	2021-09-09 15:44 -0400
Message-ID	<shdo73$e09$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#218776

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>
>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest z box.
>>>
>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>
>>Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>
> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
> the 1960s.

hmm, I actually have been in contact with some of those systems but had
no idea they went back as far as 64.

-- 
Dan Espen

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#218780

From	scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
Date	2021-09-09 21:14 +0000
Message-ID	<9Pu_I.9552$nh7.3794@fx22.iad>
In reply to	#218778

Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest z box.
>>>>
>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>
>>>Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>
>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>> the 1960s.
>
>hmm, I actually have been in contact with some of those systems but had
>no idea they went back as far as 64.

Here's a video from 1968 on the B6500.  I worked at that plant in Pasadena
in the 1980s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNBtjEBYFPk

The family really started with the B5000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3q5n1mR9iM

which was quickly superceded by the  B5500:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KswWJ6zvBUs

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#218798

From	Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Date	2021-09-10 18:40 -0700
Message-ID	<644762007.653011654.693569.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org>
In reply to	#218780

Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>> 
>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 2021-09-08, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>> You can still run programs compiled on a 360 on the latest z box.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I gotta say - that's darn impressive.  I'm not aware of anything else that
>>>>> maintains compatibility that long; am I missing anything?
>>>> 
>>>> Nope.  S/360 in it's various flavors is the only survivor of that era.
>>> 
>>> Actually, that's not precisely true.  The Burroughs B5500 still lives on
>>> as the Unisys Clearpath systems, and still supports object files from
>>> the 1960s.
>> 
>> hmm, I actually have been in contact with some of those systems but had
>> no idea they went back as far as 64.
> 
> Here's a video from 1968 on the B6500.  I worked at that plant in Pasadena
> in the 1980s.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNBtjEBYFPk

White shirts and ties, sideburns, and cigarettes in the office.


> 
> The family really started with the B5000
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3q5n1mR9iM
> 
> which was quickly superceded by the  B5500:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KswWJ6zvBUs
> 



-- 
Pete

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What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?

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