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Dan.Espen

writes:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:41:15 -0400, (Dan.Espen)
wrote:

writes:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:05:39 GMT, (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

I think he was twitting you about forgetting the unit multipler.

256? 256k? 256M? 256G? 256T? Can't do much in 256 bytes.

Ah those days when 8 K of core (RAM for you kids) would run a big
company and the 7 bit CPU cycle was 11.5 uS (IBM 1401)
256 characters was plenty for a little program. (no "bytes" yet)
I do sort of miss it.

Hmm, 256? I'm guessing you're not counting card input, print output.
That's at least 120 for print, 80 for the card, leaving only 56 bytes
for code. The 1401 was great for compact code though.

I was really just talking about the program code. If you fire off a
"2" command, whatever is in 201-332 is going to end up on the paper.
so you would need more than 256 total memory unless you can get it in
44 characters. You can use those dedicated spots as your operand areas
tho. Read a card, do some math on what is in the card read area and
output it to the print area. Easy in 44 bytes ;-)

Now if we could just get rid of that pesky 101-180 punch area.

I recall putting code there more than once.

I remember the unfriendly look on the IBM salesman's face when I
pointed out that our 8K 1440 would have to be replaced with a S/360
with at least 64K. 32K wasn't going to cut it.

--
Dan Espen