17 Jun
2026
17 Jun
'26
10:38 a.m.
On Wed, 2026-06-17 at 08:26 +0000, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:
Microcode is also alive and well, and not just the Amd
29xx bit slice
paradigm. How else would you control (SIMD) mills implemented in
FPGA fabric : VLIW. etc etc
Does anybody have an operating Varian V-73? I wrote microcode to
convince it that it was really an IBM 1130 (a very fast 1130). The
university replaced the worn out 1130 with the V-73, then discovered
Varian didn't offer a COBOL compiler. Being 1976, they still wanted to
teach COBOL. So I wrote the microcode as my senior project. Two
faculty, Frank Kollar and Delmorris Blakeley, wrote the I/O side in
620f assembler. Frank added a switch in the disk drive that swapped the
top and bottom of the fixed platter. One way, it booted VORTEX, the
other way it booted the 1130. I sent the microcode, and the listings
for I/O (I didn't have electrons for it), to CHM.