[Elecraft] IBM's resources (OT)

[Phil Kane]

On 4/3/2014 8:32 PM, Tony Estep wrote:

> Don's comment reminded me of one of the great hacker stories of all time.
> When IBM launched the 360, it obsoleted all its customers' code, because in
> those days the machines all ran assembly language and the 360 had a
> different instruction set. The clients screamed for an emulator, but none
> was forthcoming. (Parenthetical note: at that time IBM was the world's most
> profitable company and by far the largest by market capitalization.)

Ah yes - the good old days of "big iron".  In that era, my kid brother
KU2P/4X1AK was deeply involved in the data processing programming end of
the securities trading industry, and when an IBM client wanted something
that they could not provide, IBM would go through the same routine of
"we don't have anything like that, go see Andy Kane at  =======..."

My exposure to "big iron" in that era was on a military project where a
special compiler for the JOVIAL language (look it up on Wiki and follow
all the trails) was contracted for with a specific "name" company - one
of the Air Force's "favorites" - but to the annoyance of the rest of the
project managers they couldn't deliver on time and when they finally did
it didn't work (I had to deal with that "up close and personal").  The
Air Force finally took it away from them and the Blue-Suiters did the
work in-house.  Reminds me of all the problems that Oregon's Health Care
Signup system is going through.  Only the names have been changed to
protect the guilty.

Enough on that - contact me off line if there's any interest in all the
published leads on the 50-year old project that is now on public display
in the Strategic Air Command's museum.
-- --
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
Elecraft K2/100   s/n 5402

>From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon