[rescue] looking for IBM System/36 software

[Jerry Kemp]

+1

I suspect that the easiest language to turn up for the S/36 would be RPG II.

Either way Dave, I am very interested to hear more about your project.  Back 
when I was getting started out, S/34's and S/36's were the first real computers 
I worked on/with.

Jerry


On 03/27/15 06:27 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:49 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>>    I'm looking for software on 8" floppies for the IBM System/36.
>> Specifically, I'd like to find a copy of the BASIC compiler, and if
>> possible, FORTRAN.
>
> Good luck finding those languages, a friend and I have been looking
> for both for years and highlighting their un-found status everywhere
> we go but so far neither have turned up. We have not returned to
> looking for a while, it is good to see someone else take up the
> search.
>
> It is worth noting that the FORTRAN at least was a special order item,
> and mainly there for government contract requirements, we haven't
> found any evidence that it actually shipped to anyone. The novel part
> of the FORTRAN implementation (and BASIC too I think) was the
> System/36 lacked floating point instructions so FORTRAN came with
> additional "microcode" (bit unclear if it was truly microcode or just
> an emulation library - either way it took up valuable memory
> restricting the number of jobs that could be run).
>
> The other (still missing) prize of System/36 world is the ASSEMBLER -
> unlike the above two this was used frequently to extend the system
> (and save memory) and the System/36 magazines published hex-dumps of
> routines that could be entered to add useful functions. It is of
> course possible to hand-assemble for the System/36 (or people wrote
> their own in RPG) but it would be interesting to have the original
> product too.
>
> SSP (the operating system) is also incomplete across the various
> versions, particularly around the PTF sets.
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