Back in the early 80s, i worked as an assembler programmer
for Reuters
in bond. I was involved with maintenance and development of
software
on two platforms - one was the PDP11, but the other was a
much more
obscure machine and i can't remember the name of the
manufacturer.
The machines in question worked together as a pair - we
referred to them
as "SGS", which stood for "Second Generation
Slave". I believe they were
designed as a front end for the IBM 360, but Reuters used
them as, i
guess, minicomputers.
These machines were the heart of Reuters' oldest live stock
and share
price reporting system - and subscribers were able to check
prices via a
PDP8 in their office which was connected to the SGS pair.
One of the
pair was what you'd call a database server nowadays and the
other did
the comms stuff.
As far as i remember, each machine was the size of three
racks next to
each other (which is probably what they were). The data was
stored on a
drum in one machine, and the other machine had a card reader
and a
teletype terminal. They both had paper tape readers. They
were 16-bit
machines and had a row of lights and toggle switches at the
top of one
rack, with a switch to change between memory location and
data, plus an
"enter/run" button.
The data machine was booted by toggling in a paper tape
reader bootstrap
and then loading the drum reader bootstrap from paper tape,
then booting
the OS, which was stored on the drum. The comms machine also
had a three
stage boot process - toggle in paper tape bootstrap, read
card reader
bootstrap off paper tape, then read the OS from a stack of
cards. I
can't remember how we got the OS onto the drum now - but i
do remember
we did a lot of "patching" in memory, through the
front panel, for
debugging etc.
These machines ran IBM 360 machine code and we did the
development in
360 assembly language on an IBM 370, which was later
upgraded to a 4340.
Recently i've been trying to remember the name of the
manufacturer of
these machines, but i just haven't got a clue - although i'm
sure i'd
recognise it if i saw it. I've looked through computer
history sites on
the web, hoping i'd come across the manufacturer's name and
recognise
it, but i never have. So if anyone knows, or can give me any
clues, i'd
be grateful.
I'm not subscribed to this list, so i'd be very grateful if
anyone
replying could Cc me.
Thanks
Will Kemp
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