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Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #410808 is a reply to message #410807] Tue, 07 September 2021 12:14 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Anonymous
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Originally posted by: drb

> I have most all of the manuals as well. It was used as a database in a
> radio station in the early 80's. I never actually sat down and figured
> out how it works, but it does boot when you flip the switch; numbers
> come up on the green screen.

User programming is done in BASIC. It's a curious implementation, with
a lot of fairly powerful stuff for business applications, statement
labels, some sort-of cursor editing of statements. Most IBM supplied
utilities are not in BASIC; I think it may have been possible for some
ecosystem developers to get the tooling to do assembler or maybe
compiled development.

There were two types of base machine: the all-in-one type, and a floor
standing one with separate screen and keyboard. Peripherals included
several printers, a twinax-based network for interconnecting stations,
and a hard disk unit that could be shared across the network. 8085
processor, paged address space so that the machine can (and does) have
well over 64k of RAM, and quite a bit of ROM too.

IBM sold various software for them, including a menu-driven application
development system that wrote BASIC applications. There was at least
a small third party ecosystem.

De
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