7 Feb
2026
7 Feb
'26
12:25 p.m.
On 2/7/2026 1:44 PM, Carey Schug via cctalk wrote:
the 1401 (1410/1440/7010/etc) emulators were
microcode. an extra cost for
the microcode and probably another extra cost for the read only storage for
the extra microcode.
That is *partly* correct. I haven't looked at them all, but the 1410
was microcode *ASSIST* not pure microcode - and the 7010 would be the
same. I have seen the code for the 1410 emulator. I expect the 1401
and 1440 would be similar.
(UNIVAC actually had a customer written 1410 emulator too - I have the
flowcharts for that one.)
Initially, on the 360s, you could push buttons on the
console, and have one
or more 14xx series machines if you had enough memory. perhaps with 370s
too.
Don't know about that one way or the other - if there were a button, I
suppose it would have been an IML button of some sort to load the
microcode assist.
then you could IPL a card deck with a minimal 360 in-memory operating
system, and run one or more 14xx series machines with console commands (I
think, I never did this)
'
Basically correct - the emulators ran as application programs, as far as
I know. (At most, a 1410 would use 100K bytes, so how much you had left
would depend on whether you used up 40, 60, 80 or 100K for the 1410/7010 .)
THen you could run a program in one of the dos
partitions (BG,F1.F2) that
would dynamically start a 1401 job by reading in the 14xx program from
cards, while running a native 360 program in the other partition, all as
batch jobs scheduled by reading them into the card reader There was also
1620 emulation and maybe others.,
Basically correct - the emulators ran as application programs, as far as
I know.
By the time my employer got to 370 I think they had
gotten rid of the 14xx
emulation, but they were availble.
JRJ