The IBM 1401 compiles and runs FORTRAN II

[@howardanderson7569]

Thanks for restoring this machine! Nostalgic... In the 60s I worked inside Cheyenne Mountain writing assembly language for the giant Philco 2000 system with the Philco 212 processor. All discrete transistors on boards... 32K of 48-bit words with an astounding speed of 1 MHz. Over two hundred instructions available. Two instructions per word so we could have assembly language programs with, at most, 64,000 assembly language instructions. We managed to track all satellites in orbit at the time (about 1100) and run differential correction of the orbits three times a day (they get perturbed by solar wind, gravitational anomalies, etc., and the orbit data has to be corrected frequently.) My colleague who was responsible for maintenance of the differential correction module was so pressed for space that he had to locate comments to the computer operators and shorten them to free up a tiny bit of space if he needed a bit more space. Things like "Mount tape 5 on Drive 7" became "Mt 5 - 7." Developing 2000 lines of assembly language (a box of cards) usually took 6 months! Could get only 1 run every two days and usually got back a 200 page core dump showing exactly what was in memory when my program blew up. Took hours to analyze and figure out what went wrong... I also operated and wrote programs for the Philco 1000 off-line system. Later I wrote assembly language for the IBM 360/85. Then I worked on Multics and wrote LOTS of FORTRAN. This was all great fun. Truly enjoyable strangely. Worked my way all the way down to the PC which I am still using and programming in Visual C++ and Android. We have come an incredibly long way in an incredibly short time. No one I worked with envisioned processors like the ones we have in cell phones. I am still enjoying writing code! Great fun!

[@stan.rarick8556]

Re: saving space. And some people never understood why years were stored as 2 digits.....

[@Sybok51288]

best comment ive read on anything computer related on youtube (and ive been binge watching old electronics videos) thank you for sharing!!!

[@eloyex]

you are one of a kind !! my first computer lenguage was FORTRAN IV in a 360. Just a year later, 1979, the 360 was dissmantled in my university and a new, way modern mainframe took its place. I am almost sure my class was the LAST class to punch cards and wait for the compiling and see results on paper, instead of screens. Intel 8080 was a big boom at that time and we started to work in binary day and night !!!! You belong to the pioneers (60's) and I belong to the microprocessor guys on the 80's. 8080, 8085, 6502, z80 from zilog, 6800 ... pretty funny times. Memory inside one integrated circuit was all volatile, and the 6116 (2kx8) was a HUGE thing at that time.

[@bobvonbuelow9983]

somewhere around here I have a Philco 2000 manual. I worked on an experiment at SDC called TATC (Terminal Air Traffic Control) that used the Philco for it's main processing.

[@danielodors]

Did you get to see any false alarms while you were working for them?

[@Democracy10]

At age 98, I do remember this system as the very best. IBM was the top of it's game. I still own a select two typewriter. 👍🇺🇸

[@metroplexprime9901]

Does that selectric still function? Also, do you have any other old IBM products?

[@chrisbragdon5901]

Mr. Hahn, The old 1052! Subject of many horror stories! Operators used to literally “freesbie” them around the computer in blind fits of rage!

[@alb12345672]

What do you develop in today?

[@DavidKrautscheid]

wow i hope you live longer cause it would be awesome when you celebrate your 100 birthday age

[@VotanLoad]

@@danielmbcn Yes, we had computer even older than 100 years old. They were analog, mechanical computers.

[@subtledemisefox]

I don't see how this whole computer thing is ever going to take off.

[@urbanweekendwarrior7238]

Seriously, why would anyone want such a machine in their home, let alone in their pocket!

[@tharqal2764]

Especially if they could just do calculations on an iPad instead

[@1973Washu]

In 100 years the five richest kings of Europe will have one and that will be about it.

[@johneysupergd7796]

Pffff the sound of these machines are ear raping i can imagine that worker will get deaf after a day working with such computer systems,phew.

[@On2wls]

Subtle Demise: Those IBM Selectric typewritters hooked up to a small Black and White TV and 1kb of memory chips will never catch on.

[@marcuswilliams3455]

This computer is 61 years old. Can people really comprehend how much computer technology has change over 6 decades? Even the first IBM PC was created 20 years after this beast was build.

[@_P_M_]

The best memories I have with my Dad in the early 70's were of him taking me to the data processing room at the bank where he worked and letting me run some of the machines. I was just a little kid, and the old IBM mainframe equipment was huge. It was like going to the Batcave. The Reader/Sorter was my favorite. It was an amazing thing to watch. At some point I'd usually manage to jam it up. My Dad has been gone for nearly 30 years, but when I'm around computer technology I feel close to him.

[@ayior]

Now no one can say tech is emotionless~

[@studioeffects]

That's a great story Paul. You Dad still lives on.

[@itsjoe8443]

Really nice story man! I remember back in 2000, my dad used to synch one of his watches using the computer screen, and for me it was just like witnessing magic! Guess that had an impact on my love for technology through my life :)

[@javicastrob]

This is so pure, I cant stop crying

[@jamesmorton7881]

my high school had one,

[@PapawCulberson]

My father worked for IBM from the early 60's until the 2000's - I remember piles and piles of that huge green printer paper all over the house - him coming home with huge rolls of tape - and those cards - OMG - the cards from HELL! Took me to work with him one Saturday and he actually let me play with the card punch machine. He got in trouble on Monday morning because the card reader person had a pile of cards that simply read "My name is Steven Eddy" - over and over and over. He was a missile and trajectory specialist from the Army and worked on the programing that got the Apollo to the moon and back. Later in his career he designed the program that helped destroy most of the Iraqi SCUD missile mobile launch devices after the SCUD had already been fired by using RADAR to track the missles for a short distance then extrapolating the trajectory information to target the firing position within seconds sending the coordinates to our missles launchers which operated similar to the missles at the start of the Iron Man first movie.

[@wasdplayer]

That's amazing!

[@timothykeith1367]

greenbar paper

[@andreyansimov5442]

Looks like secret info 😁

[@TheDiveO]

Thank you very much for not only preserving this part of computer history, but get it running again, and filming it! Not everyone can visit all these places, so such videos are an important part of computer heritage. Including the hiccups, like the scene when the central processor goes into error and the operators need to decipher the status indicators. This wakes me up to the high level of reliability we've come to expect from modern cpus ... meltdown notwithstanding.

[@SPimentaTV]

TheDiveO Agreed!

[@JOHNBEA]

Well said!

[@SianaGearz]

I wonder whether it was a bit more reliable when it was new. This thing is 58 years old now. I don't have many 15 year old computers left that still function as reliably as when they were new, they're all dying off like flies right around now, in fact components that are older than 6 or 7 years are starting to show issues.

[@TheDiveO]

Siana Gearz probably a mixed bag, with some things being more robust and then some weak spots placed at central places...

[@SianaGearz]

Was there a "they don't make them like they used to" comment here that disappeared? Because every single damn time somebody says that, a Commodore VC-20 dies and a ZX Spectrum loses its expansion bus. They don't even need anything to age or deteriorate, they just don't want to live on this planet, never did - and it's not like they were major engineering mishaps, it's just what things used to be like. In fact i'm amazed that I can abuse modern components and I usually wouldn't have a single data loss event or hardware malfunction for years on end, and that in spite of a complexity that is completely beyond grasp.

[@georgegonzalez2476]

That compiler was quite an achievement. Memory was really tight so the compiler had to work upside-down-- the source code was kept in memory and the compiler, all 97 passes of it, ran over the source code, making small changes. Unusual, and slow, but it worked.

[@CuriousMarc]

you nailed it, that’s how it was done. We were quite impressed that they made it work!

[@MiracleMS]

Hello I know it's been a few years since this comment of yours, but where can I find detailed plans on how this compiler worked? I have found the assembly source code but without proper explanation on these phases it's extremely difficult to understand what each part is supposed to do

[@georgegonzalez2476]

@@MiracleMS I think the book was "Anatomy of a compiler" by John Lee. Still available on Amazon.

[@pocoapoco2]

You know one of the most impressive things to me is those tape machines. They spin and stop those big heavy reels so quickly and accurately. The level of machining involved would be high even by today's standards.

[@techman2553]

The tape reels themselves didn't need to be very accurate, they are only feeding out tape slack, which is a separate process from reading the tape. If you look closely at the tape machines, under each reel, on either side of the big blue panels, is a glass covered compartment where a long loop of tape can hang down. The reel spins fast to pay out slack as needed to keep some length of tape hanging down. A separate feed motor then moves the light-weight loop of tape through the read head with precision. The take up real then spins as needed to take up the slack-loop past the read head. This means that the spinning reels themselves don't move in sync with the read head activity, they are just playing catch-up to keep the hanging loops of tape at a manageable length. The loops of tape are basically FIFO buffers, which is pretty clever.

[@vink6163]

How fascinating! I was wondering why both reels were moving out of sync. Definitely impressive how fast the motors wind/unwind the spools though.

[@lobsterbark]

I think its funny that people think thats impressive now. Cassettes do the same thing, and nobody goes crazy over them being precision pieces of engineering.

[@vink6163]

@lobsterbark: That's because cassettes are tiny so moving fast and starting/stopping quickly come with the territory. Same reason why a toy car that accelerates faster than a sports car isn't impressive to most people. It's not the speed alone that's impressive, it's the fact that something so large and heavy is capable of those speeds and levels of acceleration.

[@moi01887]

@lobsterbark: Cassette drives don't do nearly as much as those tape drives. All they do is move a tape across a head at a fixed speed, and in computer terms take forever to come up to speed and stop. The drives in this video are 10x more sophisticated. Of course they also probably hold 1/10 as much data...

[@gordslater]

the irony is that the error display on the blinkenlights is easier to decode than your average MS Windows error code

[@nanithefuck]

Gord Slater “Something happened :(“

[@manuell3505]

Fatal exception 345d332 at adress 344ab232223a of virtual subsystem 4...

[@amoledzeppelin]

Faildows.

[@geoffupton]

at least the lights say something useful and not "smashed" like m$ windows does! it makes sense!

[@alexa.davronov1537]

Yeah, microsoft is a garbage.

[@olik136]

I wonder- will there be a guy, 50 years in the future, going through extreme efforts, sourcing parts from around the world, to bring an iphone back to life and play flappy bird on it?- like his grandpa used to in the old days? Nice video- I really like that you actually use your stuff and not just stare at it!

[@RiccardoMacri]

If there is, we can't begin to imagine the support hardware and emulators they'll be using 50 years from now. Some of it might be used to cut through our current protection schemes like butter.

[@bobwendoloski6970]

I doubt those iPhones will be still working in 10 years! I restore old radios as a hobby and have radios from the 30 that sound better than the stuff that comes out of the modern electronics.

[@greenaum]

Thing is, to repair a modern phone you'd need gigantic factory clean rooms to produce LCDs and microchips. You can fix these old things with a couple of spanners and a screwdriver.

[@SianaGearz]

greenaum, disagree. There are lots of people repairing high-tech devices. Look at such KZbin channels as iPad Rehab and Louis Rossmann - they rely on supply of replacement parts, but fortunately not everything dies at the same time, there is quite a bit of salvage and there's some overproduction and new old stock, and repair is even more financially viable and thus more common in low-income countries. We also extend and repair old computers occasionally, classic 8-bit machines from the 80ies, by replacing whole functional units with newly developed ones, what needed a factory back then can be done in an FPGA now. Decoding decapped circuits automatically is in its infancy at the moment on the software side, but the hardware is affordable, we can easily make high resolution images of 80ies IC innards. Who knows what kind of hardware prototyping and reverse engineering technologies we're going to have in 50 years, but chances are, they will develop alongside the end use hardware and trickle down to hobbyists and historical computing enthusiasts eventually.

[@vink6163]

@greenaum Back in the day, the parts for these machines were prohibitively expensive for most people. Now we can get the chips for a few cents each, or emulate the ones we can't get. So I have no doubt that in 50 years time, if we need a replacement iPhone screen to get the antique working again, we'll just order a modern compatible part, or perhaps more likely by then, just 3D print/replicate a fully working one!

[@pyglik2296]

As a programming student I know what it feels when you hit F9 and after a while compilation is complete, but I can only imagine how it was back then when you had to take all your prepared punchcards, load them into a reader and go to printer for results. I can only see that the joy of compiled program is always the same :) And of course the immortal turning it off and on again ;)

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

imagine loading and running fortran on your cellphone for the giggles factor and saying well my phones faster🤣

[@nsr-ints]

Imagine waiting for all that and... Syntax error. FUUUU-

[@thearchibaldtuttle]

The guys in the red shirt are the zen masters, the jedi, the keeper of the holy grail of computing! Remember the stories of older programmers when they dropped the stack of cards onto the floor and then had to sort the program again! Reading the memory dump after a program crash was nothing for them. Extremely deep understanding how everything works together.

[@artnc4139]

Speaking as an old guy, it was a feature in some languages that columns 73-80 had a sequence number (assigned by the programmer), so in the event the card was dropped, you could restore the correct order in a card sorter - which is an entirely different piece of history. In order to sort cards, you sorted one column at a time, sorting on the columns from right to left (ie 80,79,78,77,76,75,74,73) and your cards were back in order. Or you wrote a FORTRAN program to read the cards, sort them in memory, and use the punch capability to punch out the cards in the correct sequence

[@person800]

> jedi :cringe:

[@stan.rarick8556]

@@artnc4139 If you had the foresight to sequence them. :-) Sometimes a dropped deck would mostly just fan out and it wasn't TOO hard to put back in order.....(personal experience)

[@cesteres]

Nice to have some oldtimers here sharing their experiences. I'm so much in awe of early computing. The way more mature tech in my smartphone not so much.

[@greenaum]

@@stan.rarick8556 I heard from some of the old dinosaurs that people would draw on their cards with markers. Big diagonal lines. So that if you dropped a box, you could put them back together by joining up the lines. Still, punch tape was available back then, all one long piece. I dunno why the industry used cards instead. Even player pianos had nice, wide and long, rolls to store their data. I think punch cards is something to do with them being used back in the early 20th Century on mechanical adders, sorters, etc, the stuff IBM used to do. Stuff was made compatible, so nobody thought to improve the system.

[@markwilliamson9199]

Love it ! Makes me feel so old. I am 60 years old and first programmed in FORTRAN in 1976 On CDC Cyber 173 machines. Well done.

[@secondwindmusicproductions]

I was delighted to find this video. In 1960 I started a co-op program at IBM Rochester and got hired in 1962. One of the first machines I worked on after getting hired was the 1402. It had just been transferred to Rochester for production from Endicott where it was developed. One of the projects I got early on was to try and fix a bad oil leakage problem on the geneva mechanism in the punch station. I finally did make a few design changes that fixed most of it. One of the changes was to put those little vents you see on top of the geneva to release pressure from between the starwheel bearings. To help identify the problem I had the model shop machine a geneva housing out of acrylic so I could see inside while it ran. I still have that model. Nice work guys.

[@pattykuvshin]

Second Wind Music Wow, you are people from a really distant Era

[@femboiuwu]

@@pattykuvshin русские еее

[@richardcommins4926]

When I was in college in 1969 as a freshman I took a computer class in Fortran II. Yes, we used an IBM 1401 computer with a card reader and high speed printer. You didn't show the card punch machines though in your video. Those were in a separate room. We also had a separate card deck reader for checking the syntax of the card stack before it went to the computer. Our machine had 16K of core memory and a cycle time of 100us and no video monitor. Today 50 years later, my desktop computer has 32 Giga Byte of memory, 2 Tera Byte of solid state memory (SSD) and a cycle time of 333 Pico Seconds, built in floating point and matrix processors and an ultra high resolution monitor of 1920x1200 pixel 256 color palette, 32" LCD monitor. The old machines did real math and science and the new machines are used for social media and talking on Twitter and Facebook. Has the face of computers changed in 50 years.

[@michaelbauers8800]

Plenty of computers are still doing a lot of math!

[@JimGardner]

Pretty incredible that there's more processing power in the camera being used to record this video than there is in all of that amazing hardware. I absolutely love these videos. Great work everyone!

[@simontay4851]

There's more processing power in a pic microcontroller, let alone the camera.

[@rocketman221projects]

Even a PIC12, which costs just a few cents in bulk, is much more powerful. They have a lot less RAM and IO though.

[@markarca6360]

Not only processing power, also megapixels.

[@HattmannenNilsson]

In comparison, a digital video camera is pure science fiction. Think about this: the charge control circuitry for the lithium battery that powers the camera probably has at least a couple of magnitudes more processing power than the 1401. Although, arguably that circuitry might not be a general purpose computer. Then again; it might be. If it uses a microcontroller. It's absolutely mind-blowing to think about. I mean, there are fidget spinners out there that cost maybe a tenner that are thousands of times more powerful in terms of processing power. Or how about this? You can get a cheap, ugly, plasticy digital wristwatch on eBay for about a dollar that's built on a microcontroller running at a hundred times the clock speed of the 1401. And all that power is contained in a little silicon die that's smaller than a finger nail. I love watching videos like this one that shows a bit more of how an old system actually works. It really puts things into perspective.

[@estebanquito545]

this video is not about comparison, when this machine was around the camera you mentioned didnt exist yet

[@gregfisher]

Oh my! That brings back memories! I actually operated a 1401 computer in the 1960's.

[@kennethkho7165]

Are you in the 80s today? I wish you to stay healthy!

[@gregfisher]

@@kennethkho7165 Not quite!

[@jackdaniels8898]

This is quite amazing. The very first IT class I took in Jr. College was the very last Fortran class taught using cards. I averaged 2 bad cards for every good card. Thanks for bringing back such amazing memories for me. The sound ... the tapes... the green bar.... Funny you had to put a subtitle on the video stating the cards contained the program.

[@cpufreak101]

reminds me of a book i picked up from a Salvation Army. was a paperback textbook of some sort that taught coding FORTRAN IV. I have yet to ever fully read through the book, but it had an entire chapter dedicated to punch cards lol

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

That would have been a fast “load-and-go” compiler created at the University of Waterloo. Great for teaching. I think it got its speed by compiling to code that was either threaded or interpreted. Or both.

[@stan.rarick8556]

Don't forget the coffee cup on the 1401.....until the paper ran out.

[@wdfarmer2]

I loved this video. When I began studying computers in 1967, this is what they looked like. I recognize all the equipment in the video (except that modern Tape Emulator), and understand everything the people in the video are saying. I worked my way through college by operating a Honeywell 200 computer which was very similar to the IBM 1401 in the video. I mounted tapes on tape drives, loaded cards into a card reader/punch, and loaded paper into the printer. And I wrote FORTRAN II programs and punched them into cards by using an IBM 026 keypunch just like the one in the video. I loved all of it, and enjoyed learning and using the constantly advancing technologies during my 25-year career as a software engineer.

[@r12fre0n]

This museum tops my bucket list, like it is a must-see before I even graduate. I imagine it's a life-changing experience.

[@beedslolkuntus2070]

btay64 where is that museum anyways?

[@jonathanberkeley4109]

Seeing a 1401 IBM is life changing?

[@Diesel8290]

If looking at an old computer from 50 years ago is life changing. Then I feel sorry for you mate

[@ZakKohler]

Mountain View California. I flew there just to see this

[@qrplife]

Wonderful. So nice to see the old computers operational.

[@rhymereason3449]

These old geeks are having the time of their life... and I'd be there right with them if I lived near by. Spent my early adult life writing Fortran, PL/1, and 360 Assembler code on early IBM 360 series machines. Amazing what we got done on 32K of core and 20M hard drives.

[@JamesAllmond]

Wish my Dad was still around, he would have seen that and, in a way only he could, explain the problem with expletives added in for good measure! He could read that crap! Thanks for saving these and trying to make them work.

[@WilliamDye-willdye]

The 1401 was before my time. I was a computer operator for the 360/370. The punch card machine at 19:53 really takes me back, however. It's funny how just a few old images and sounds rekindle a cascade of other memories. I clearly remember the raised floors and the tape readers that we used -- very similar to the tape readers shown in this video. Thank you very much for restoring these old machines. I work on cloud systems and massive servers now, as well as embedded systems which seem tiny today but are far more powerful than the IBM and CDC mainframes of my youth. I can personally vouch, however, that as with old cars, knowing how old computer equipment worked really does help you work with new equipment. It may seem odd, but it's the failures that teach you the most. So many of our present ideas will be revealed as mistakes in the future. Looking back helps us remember that lesson, as well as many others. Thanks again.

[@Henpitts]

My first language was Fortran 4 on the IBM 360/370 myself. Atlanta Area Technical School as it was known at the time.

[@donwyates]

Same here! I also started as an operator on those machines, later on the 43xxs, and AS400s. Ops, programming in COBOL, tech support. It held my interest for quite some time, but the desire to slow down and minimize the stress eventually took hold. I gave it all up to become a woodworker, and that also took a toll, physically. Now I just focus on photography.

[@MrShobar]

I think that the program generated a Hilbert matrix (a notoriously ill-conditioned creature), inverted it, multiplied the inverse with the initial matrix. It's a good test for determining computational accuracy.

[@CuriousMarc]

+MrShobar: Yes, that's exactly what it did.

[@henrykoplien1007]

And as you have seen at the upper right.... precision was not the best

[@djd829]

Glad you can see and hear well

[@RehabHalim-em8zo]

MrShobar wow. Those printers I used for 4 years printing out medical records at my first real Tech job for a hospital over night !!

[@RME76048]

I ran into some matrix difficulties about twenty years or so ago. I found that singular value decomposition (from the excellent book "Numerical Recipes in C") saved the day...

[@wuznab5109]

That exit sign probably has more computing power.

[@alexandera.1411]

Per square inch?

[@TheUnclepecos]

I don't get why people want light and thin notebooks, this seems pretty portable to me...

[@Mike1614YT]

I agree, I have a box truck, its no prob at all

[@stumbling]

Wait, does it have a handle on it?

[@Adamsnadler214]

It has a jet engine

[@clangerbasher]

Never ever use a computer you can throw.

[@DartLuke]

TheUnclePecos hulk agree with you

[@grahambell4026]

Wow, what memories. In 1961 to 1965 I was writing code for 1401s and 1410s at Eglin AFB, including an autocoder compiler for a two tape drive 1401-729 configuration, and modifying the 1410 operating system. IBMs 1401 autocoder required 3 drives. Our 1401s could not load code from tape, we needed a small loader deck on cards. Programs were compiled to cards, then loaded and run. Our FORTRAN work was all done on 709, 7090 and 7094 computers. This was primarily ballistics work for the Eglin missile Test range. After getting out of the AF, I joined the University of Wyoming, where our primary box was a Philco 2000.

[@THCAPI]

Thank you and everyone involved in this amazing effort to keep these examples from the days of our digital origins running properly and well documented!

[@SebastianKnopp]

I‘m about to finish my bachelor in computer science, but have never seen one of those computers operating up to now! Only knew them from movies and old pictures.. Thats really impressive! Thank you very much for sharing!

[@jaxey1631]

Thanks so much for the video, I had a spare day in Santa Clara last year while over for a business trip and thought I'd spend an hour browsing through the Computer History Museum, over 6 hours later I was being told they were closing up and I had to leave. Incredible place and the memories it brought back for me were amazing. I started work in mainframes in the late 80's, but by that time they were running disk packs mainly with tape only left for archive/backup. Fascinating to see these early machines working again, well done to all who've helped preserve them.

[@stumbling]

I love this channel and the restoration community. You guys are like inverse pioneers rediscovering the past and bringing it back to life!

[@zombieregime]

Hard part number 1, building something no one has ever built before. Hard part number 2, restoring something no one documented.....

[@mvm1162]

Very nice too watch. And congrats for doign all the work to get something like this acutally working again. Honestly, this is the image of computers people had in mind back in the old days. High-tech rooms with lots of complicated machines and lots of blinking lights. And even though even the most simple microcontroller is now much faster, reliable and powerful, in a way these machines look much more impressive than a simple tablet or laptop now.

[@robsciuk729]

As an undergraduate, I took my first FORTAN course in 2nd year (1978), and was offered a student assistant, and T/A position as a result of my performance in that course. I was working on a CDC-6400, 60 bit word 5.5 bit ASCII ... and punch cards were familiar, if not the most desired input mechansim (we got acess to dialup via acoustic couplers on a terminal which used phone dialup at 300 Baud) ... 1401's were considered obsolete by then ... but this is a FANTASTIC look at how computing began ;-)

[@harthenry]

I can tell Mike Albaugh has been around awhile -- he knows how to correctly fold the first sheet!

[@rhymereason3449]

LOL, I was thinking the exact same thing...

[@darleneschneck]

Boy does this take me back to the summer of ‘74 when I was 17. I was working at a book typesetter in Allentown, and we had a computer like this in the basement. It took up an entire room. The cables were in the floor and the room was kept cool. I love hearing the sounds of these machines running again, thank you so much! If someone had told me back then that 50 years in the future we could create a book on a laptop computer, I wouldn’t have believed it!

[@Chi-the-Cat]

This is amazing. When I started my college in 1985, card deck readers and magnetic tape machines were still there to load old programs but it was already antiquated and we never used it. I always wanted to try it out, but I never had a chance to use it. Seeing it’s actually working was just amazing. Thank you for amazing restoration and filming it!

[@artiem5262]

I started (in the mid 60's) on an IBM 1620-IID -- with disk! FORTRAN IID as well as assembly language. What a trip! For a number of years I bounced back and forth between FORTRAN and assembly code, doing a lot of work re-coding FORTRAN libraries and subroutines into hand-optimized assembly code. Went on to do OS development (in assembler) at SDS (Sigma 5, 6, 7, 9, 560), and DEC (VAX/VMS). Still coding today, mostly in Python (or whatever it takes to do the job). And while the hardware has gotten incredibly more powerful, on the software side, some times printing "I got to #3" is the best we can do for debugging, so many decades later!

[@neilolif]

Very nice. Takes me back to my college days where we had an IBM 360 in our Computer Engineering lab. Fortran was the language used by my Chemical Engineering class to study "Chemistry and the Computer." And in 1976, I worked ar IBM in San Jose and one of my jobs was bootstrapping an IBM 369 to run MVS and VM for mainframe printer test operations. The amazing Argonaut 3800 xerographic High Speed Printer Subsystem. I was "acting FE" on 3 units, keeping the operators up to speed and running engineering change tests with production simulations. 20 to 60 boxes of paper per shift. Minimum of half a pallet!!! On each printer.

[@amazing763]

So about 20 years ago I was working at IBM and one of the young guys said that he told his grandfather that he worked for IBM. Grandad said, "Well, at least you don't have to support VM." The fellow replied, "Grandfather, I support VM."

[@vassildaskalov8779]

@@amazing763 VM? This flashy thing with bells and whistles? Try MVS :)

[@ocayaro]

From now on I will respect all modern PC's that I access. They have such a backstory.

[@chaddonschaddons7084]

I haven't seen that paper in so long that I forgot it even existed, my memory is going. Just to see dot matrix font again was wonderful thanks.

[@alpha3836]

These computer are the things which made humanity what it is right now. I respect these people who were behind making these! I love you guys! Mike is a great guy too lol

So glad I found this! What a wonderful documentary... and it's actually working! I got to see one of these at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962!

[@dick7540]

I was an IBM 1401 programmer back around 1960 writing in Autocoder and Cobol working for WR Grace & Company in New York City. They had an IBM 1401in their shop. It was their newest piece of equipment. Your article mentions multiplying two forty digit numbers taking about 15 minutes. I remember there was a document which included the timeing for each operation. The time to multiply two words was a function of the length of each word. One of the other clowns, not me, set the computer to multiply two LONG words, something like 500 or 1000 digits each. The program would probably still be running today if somebody had not interrupted processing. Oh for the good old days.

[@RCAvhstape]

11:30 "The following is for hardcore fans..." lol you've made it this far in the vid and NOW comes the part for hardcore fans!

[@fensoxx]

Helium Road at that point I was like Jesus I thought I WAS hardcore! Damn!

[@MaruAdventurer]

Stumbled on this. My first time programming was on an IBM1401. Brings back memories.

[@TheJanDahl]

This makes me immensely happy in a way I can’t really explain. Well done!

[@theazrael4423]

Computer history is fascinating, I remember learning about the ENIAC, vacuum tubes and all. The evolution of information technology has to be among the most exciting of all the sciences. The transistor changed everything. A child powering up a tablet has no idea the power they have in their hands, when the ENIAC powered up, it used so much power it caused a blackout in the city. Salute to all the pioneers still alive in this chat. Thank you for everything.

[@eplazai]

Can't believe I was inside that room on this winter. Unforgettable!

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

An amazing machine. The lengths the designers, engineers and manufacturers went to run what would be utterly trivial functions now is astounding. Thank you for showing us.

[@leisergeist]

Fascinating! Thank you for documenting all this

[@pleasedontwatchthese9593]

I like how physical old computers where. Its cool to see it working.

[@lactobacillusprime]

This is quite something to see in action.

[@MrWaalkman]

It was back in '74 as well. :)

[@tack3132]

Awesome. I am starting to gain a real appreciation for our forefathers and their computers. I just love the history of them...

[@MaKaNufilms]

And as Always the good old IT Crowd helped again: " Have you tried turning it 'off' and 'on' again?"

[@dadillen5902]

Basic troubleshooting for any device that operates on electricity. Step one turn it off then on. Step two lift slightly and drop before turning on.

[@MaKaNufilms]

@@dadillen5902 Absolulty not wrong, but sometimes could be handled without if the system is more stable. Maybe start fully supporting ECC could help^^ (caugh *ntel caugh )

[@stargazer7644]

This brings back memories. I used to work on Univac 418-IIIs back in the day.

[@FesixGermany]

Just wow. I grew up with Windows 3.1, followed by 95, 98, XP and 7. This old machine is enormous and fascinating considering the time it was built. I only know programming with punched cards by stories from my IT teacher back in school.

[@thomaskember3412]

The first program I ever wrote in my first programming job was written in Fortran and run on a IBM 1401. It ran alright, no problems. I later printed off a memory dump and took it home to read through it to find the machine instructions that performed the Fortran code. Because of the overhead I never found the instruction to read a card.

[@GBOPossum]

The instruction to Read a Card was a “1” with a “word mark”. The 1401 was hard wired to go to the 1402, read the 80 characters, and put them in core storage positions 1 through 80. I hope this helps, but maybe the advice is a little too late? 😂

[@amoledzeppelin]

For all those hipsters who can't fit their fancy Kotlin code in 4 GB of RAM, the punishment should be to work on these. That will teach you optimizations.

[@vladislavsabenin8473]

the initial size of an application is smaller than 100 MB. Then the VM creates and removes a lot of data structures, but according to the garbage collector's algorithms, there are no reasons to purge unnecessary memory until OS did not require it explicitly.

[@reh3884]

@@vladislavsabenin8473 So, spoken like a typical moron writing these sh*tty modern toy languages.

[@alexeymarkov8675]

@@icedout7606 just look at the code they produce for the CPU

[@icedout7606]

@@alexeymarkov8675 you mean compiler assembly output?

[@alexeymarkov8675]

@@icedout7606 yes, sure

[@kaeptnkrunch9212]

Incredible to see such an old machine running and how much effort you have to put in to calculate only numbers and invert them. It's incredible to see how far we are now.

[@GH-oi2jf]

The effort is not related to the complexity of the computation. There’s a certain amount of effort required to run anything on a computer of this type.

[@charlieangkor8649]

It’s turing complete. It can do anything except read the last card.

[@mrspock2al]

I started my IT career as an operator of a "small" IBM 360/25. We loaded a 1401 emulator into the 360 and ran old business applications. This video brings back old memories; card readers, punches, sorters and line printers. Thanks!

[@LMacNeill]

So you essentially had to emulate an FPU on a machine that didn’t have one, yes? That’s seriously cool! And that tape-emulator hardware!! Wow!!! This is so incredibly impressive!!

[@Ichinin]

There were also FPU emulators for 386 machines that lacked the 387 FPU.

[@jhaluska80]

The Intel 486 SX CPUs with lacked a hardware FPU or had them disabled. The higher priced DX lines had them.

[@w0ttheh3ll]

they didn't write the compiler themselves. the FPU emulator is part of the compiler.

[@jonathanwarner1844]

I remember the old Amigas - the 68000 processor didn't have an FPU and used an FPU library, but I think you could get an optional 68881 FPU.

[@Roflcopter4b]

People have written floating point emulators for incredibly basic video game scripting languages before. It's not that hard to do. The actual problem is that it is extremely slow.

[@aeonjoey3d]

my father worked for IBM for several decades, for some reason as a kid I amassed a collection of unadhered control panel bezel decals (i loved stickers so my dad gave me spares), so many of their transparent areas made no sense to me as a child, some of them are starting to make more sense now. thank you!

[@HuttoHarry]

I developed software written in EasyCoder for the 1401 card system, (no disk), from 1964 - 1965; then used Autocoder on a 1401 disk system from 1965 through 1970. Great era to be a progammer.

[@paulcule2091]

I was an IBM system engineer at that time. Ah deus ex machinations and we were the high priests,.

[@paulcule2091]

I was IBM systems engineer at that time. ah, deus ex machina and we were the high priests

[@thomasanderson1416]

@@paulcule2091 So cool man!

[@toddstewart9070]

This reminds me of my dad's old work when I was a kid in the early 80s. So many tape drive cabinets. All you'd hear is tape drives roaring and dot matrix printers printing, and ill never forget that smell. It just smelled so clean. Like new electronics.

[@originalveghead]

Genuinely thrilling - amazing job!

[@Lfaoa]

In 1971, I was lucky enough in becoming a computer operator using an IBM 1401 doing payrolls, it was later replaced with an IBM 360-30 which was later replaced with an IBM 370-145. After 5 years I became a computer programmer writing assembly language.

[@noahgeorgeson2573]

It'd be really funny to record a phone call with IBM for technical support on the 1401 today! I wonder what they'd say.

[@RWBHere]

'Nah; Columbus was 1492.'

[@nicolek4076]

Two IBM generations later, I once raised a priority 1 call with IBM technical support. It was as if I hit the fire alarm: I had phone calls from all directions in IBM - around six at the same time. It was very embarrassing because it was my own stupid mistake. Thus we learn ...

[@RaymondHng]

"Did you turn it off and on?"

[@XtreeM_FaiL]

"1st go to lower left corner and click start..."

[@skmetal7]

"Is it plugged in?"

[@wb8ert]

When I was at The Ohio University (1977-1979), we were using IBM 1403 printer, punch cards, punch tape, and an IBM 370/158 with 2MB running VM/BSEPP. My first job was with an IBM 370/148, which later became an IBM 4341. I love these computers and always wanted to see the entire 1400 series. Thank you for bring it to life.

[@Madness832]

That loud screech, throughout the video, would drive me nuts after awhile!

[@mikakorhonen5715]

Madness832 Your brain can leave it out of awareness, but when it is recorded trough microphone, brain has to proses it equally to any other sound. That is reason why bigger movies has totally fake soundtrack.

[@CuriousMarc]

My directional microphone got totally overwhelmed by it. Normally you operate the printer closed, and it's tolerably quiet. We opened it up to film what it was printing, and it becomes unbearably loud when you are close to it.

[@pkaulf]

I work in datacenters sometimes. They have earplug dispensers outside the halls. You get accustomed to the constant drone of fans.

[@terrdac]

Brings back great memories. We had a 1401 at devry in Chicago. A teacher and I (student) played around with this machine writing different programs etc. Loved working with the tape drives. We had a washing machine hard drive connected too. The school had several programs that would play music on the printer. Thank you for the way back machine memory.

[@lwilton]

It would be a good idea to pull the write ring on that compiler tape, now that you know it works. :-)

[@artnc4139]

To translate - the plastic ring is a mechanical interlock that allows a tape to be written. By removing the ring, the tape drive cannot accidentally overwrite the tape containing the compiler

[@bobvonbuelow9983]

or more simply, "no ringie, no writie"

[@geoffupton]

or even better... "press the any key on the tape unit after inserting the tape thingie"

[@tbeaty39]

They made a great Frisbee when we got bored, 😂

[@youhigh321]

it is mind boggling to understand the procedure of operating these computers but it is amazing to dive back in time to see how much we’ve progressed. Everyone takes technology for granted now and forgets the struggles of the past. Props to everyone that keeps these machines up and running.

[@util2]

"Good afternoon Hal, how is everything going?" "Good afternoon Mr Amer. Everything's going extremely well." 🔴 ... "Just a moment. Just a moment. I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit"

[@crisp.3481]

Great job, guys! Worked on the IRIS-50/80/SIRIS OS (French) mainframes back in the early '80s, felt nostalgic seeing this. So entertaining this clip! Cheers!

[@dereksnyder_4244]

"It works now, Not sure what happened the first time" Story of my life, I guess some things haven't changes since the IBM 1401

[@StarwarsHalofreak]

Growing up in the 90s, I can hardly call this nostalgic, but I'm fascinated by how these old dinosaurs worked back in the day. It is crazy to imagine that all the computing power of this computer and it's connected cabinets make up barely a fraction of the power in the palm of our hands today. Hats off to the men and women keeping these pieces of working history operational to this day. It only makes you appreciate everything that you have now even more.

[@SudosFTW]

Amazing! I wonder how easy it would be to do up a 1401-compatible ASCII art Mandelbrot printing program in FORTRAN II. I know there's at least one Fortran 95 program on github that allows this, and this led me to find a book on archive.org stating there's actually FORTRAN IV released for the 1401... so I guess the next challenge that I can at least see fit, would be running FORTRAN IV and doing pretty ASCII art Mandelbrots with it :D

[@CuriousMarc]

Already done by Ken (in Autocoder assembly): www.righto.com/2015/03/12-minute-mandelbrot-fractals-on-50.html Unfortunately I didn't have my camera when he did it.

[@SudosFTW]

Well then. I've been bamboozled! also, dunno if Luca passed along my regards, but I'm the guy he got the 68040 card from (that seemingly had a missing MLCC SMD cap I didn't even notice before putting on ebay, oops!) :D

[@greenaum]

Technically that'd be EBCDIC art.

[@Halberdin]

@@greenaum It seems to actually use a predecessor of EBCDIC, according to WP. The use of BCD encoding for text is shown in the video at 4:25, the translation table may be unique to this system. The printer likely worked with the same character set.

[@TerryB751]

Good demonstration, guys! I'm 64 and this takes me back to the days of using the KP 29 keypunch machines, sometimes barely being able to read the instruction at the top of the card because of faded ink, running the jobs through and getting the greenbar listing. If the listing was one or two pages, you knew you screwed up the job and it didn't run. Time to re-arrange the deck, make corrections and start over.

[@15743_Hertz]

Compiling by parchment and quill. I don't miss the batch days one "bit".

[@sonixthatsme]

Nice to see people preserve old tech, no matter how old. Good job!

[@Maxxarcade]

Where do you guys get blank cards and tapes? Is there a big NOS supply, or are they reproductions? I also love the card punching machine. It looks like you have a jar of clippings on top too LOL.

[@leisergeist]

They should have one of those raffles on it! "How many clippings are in the jar?" lol

[@neilolif]

Those "clippings" are called CHAD. Remember the "Hanging Chad" between Gore and Bush?

[@r12fre0n]

That jar is a bit bucket. That's where that term comes from.

[@paullaughton1650]

The problem with making new cards is getting paper with the correct specifications. Paper making companies want to produce large quantities or none at all. However, the museum is negotiating with a university professor who teaches paper and pulp making. It looks like he may be able to have his students run off small quantities as a learning experience.

[@neilolif]

Yes: Wiki describes it thus: "The term initially referred to the physical basket that contained the *chads* or removed pieces from the paper tape or paper cards that acted as programs for the earliest computers." Yes, the bit bucket was the bin under a card punch collecting the chads..., Thankfully, when I started in the computer room in 1976 we had no need for punch cards.

[@sircampbell1249]

FORTRAN takes me back to High School days...

[@ecc84]

"I am now going to tell the computer exactly what it can do with a life times worth of chocolate"

[@pooorman-diy1104]

can I watch youtube on this computer ??

[@exys2086]

I surely don't belong in this comment section, but I should say I've enjoyed every single second of this video. So nice to see old machines working even though it's just a record, not in real life. I'm very glad it worked out. Wish you the best!

[@RogelioPerea]

Now that is a real computer right there :-)

[@RME76048]

I am *seriously* impressed! I could watch this video over and over! My hat is off to you! Thank You for giving me a glimpse into what is (with certainty) a laborious love of computational machines. My arrival in computing was later (System/360, paper *tape* on a teletype, in college it was cards) but I sure do appreciate this awesome restoration!

[@AlainHubert]

That has to be the loudest printer in the world ! And I thought my old dot matrix printer was noisy ? But that was seriously cool ! You mean to say that my old Sinclair ZX81 with its 16K of RAM is more powerful than the 1401 ?

[@lwilton]

The 1403 (even with the lid open) was actually rather quiet compared to some other chain printers of the 1960s and 1970s. Chain printers are inherently noisy machines.

[@VAXHeadroom]

Your ZX81 probably ran at 1MHz or 1000KHz. This runs at 90KHz (they said that in the video) - so the Sinclair is about 11x faster and the RAM access is probably also 10x faster (or more since the IBM used core and the Sinclair has transistors!) All told: The Sinclair is probably 50x faster about..what...18 years later (guessing)?

[@AlainHubert]

UnTiedMusicStudio Yeah, 22 years later to be exact. This IBM mainframe is from 1959, and the ZX81 came out in 1981. It shows how fast things had changed in the electronics and computer fields during that time ! Moreover, the Sinclair cost about $100 (in 1981), and is the size of a small book, compared to probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1959 (?) for the 1401 which is the size two big refrigerators. Wikipedia states that the 1401 was retired in 1971, just 10 years before the ZX81 became reality.

[@colinjohnston8519]

They were 20 years part. Why wouldn't it be?

[@AlainHubert]

Colin Jonhston Because from 1949 to 1969, which is also a 20 years span, things were changing quite a bit slower. But with the advent of the microprocessor in 1969, there was a significant increase in computer technology. Thanks to the transistor, then later the integrated circuits by smart men like John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, William Shockley, Jean Hoerni, Robert Noyce/Jack Kilby and Ted Hoff.

[@federicosalvetti7703]

"IT COMPILED??" Me every time still today. This process is wonderful to witness, thanks for keeping this important part of history alive.

[@JonAustinMedia]

I love that game: Team Fortran 2

[@MilesPrower1992]

Hmm

[@honkhonk8009]

team fortnite 2

[@LandNfan]

A little bit older than the machine I started on. In late 1974 I learned COBOL by using IBM’s programmed instruction texts and by letting the compiler on our System 3/10 slap me around. We were a bit odd in that we used COBOL on the S3 instead of RPG-II. It had 24K of magnetic core memory, the built-in 96 column reader/punch, a Selectric console, one single platter removable 5 meg hard disk with a single fixed platter on the same spindle, a huge 20 meg removable multi-platter hard disk in a cabinet as big as a refrigerator, two tape drives, and a 1403-N1 printer just like yours. About a year later we converted to a Honeywell Level-62 with four 29 meg removable hard drives, a card reader, and a drum printer comparable to the 1403. Then in late 1977, I went to work for Honeywell as a systems analyst supporting the L-62.

[@noland65]

In Huston terms: Main bus A overload ... :-) Seriously, thank you for the great video! I wouldn't have thought that the 1401 compiled to memory. - Was this an option or standard behavior?

[@CuriousMarc]

Standard and only way to do it. Not enough memory to hold the Fortran compiler, so they chose to feed the compiler against the source code rather than feed the source code to the compiler. This was pretty unique and rather surprising that it worked at all! The Fortran compiler tape has 63 passes (!), which it runs one at a time against the code, progressively compiling the code in place right in memory.

[@78Dipar]

I started working on computers in 1967, Although it was with a different brand, we had the same kind of card reader, tape reader, line printer, etc. and I started learning to program with Fortan II. This video brings me back many memories !

[@Intellivision78]

Is there enought knowledge of those old systems for future generations to be able to use or demonstrate it? Sorry for my bad English and greetings from Sweden!

[@cpufreak101]

I'm sure these guys have everything documented, it'll probably run til the end of time now then.

[@CuriousMarc]

Feast with 1401 knowledge: ibm-1401.info/

[@justinjones8744]

Very intersting to see these early machines and how big they were and how little they could do with what we expect or smart watch to do these days great videos love the work need to preserve this history.

[@ernestmccollum2397]

Not compatible with Windows 11. No TPM2.0, Secure Boot, or UEFI. LOL These vintage machines still work while new junk is being produced everyday that only ends up in landfills in the end.

[@PetterBruland]

The engineering that went into those punch card machines is pretty amazing. And that printer printed really fast for being so old, very cool to see. Thanks for sharing!

[@danielrodding8522]

The card punchers worked mostly plain-electircal, not much electronics inside them. A very facinating kind of peripherical device were the card duplicators and card sorters, also working with almost no "intelligent" eletronic components. You actually could use them to analyze huge amounts of data without writing any code, just by hard-wiring "filters" to throw out data cards in one tray or another. For example, if you had cards with personal data of male and female persons, you just could processs a bunch of cards through a card sorter, hard-wire the criteria, and then you got one two punch card stacks out of it, one with all datasets of woman, the other stack with all datasets of men. That's the way how they processed "big data" in the 1960s, and at some institutions, those machines were still in use in the 1970s.

[@MilesPrower1992]

It seems that while computing "power" advances quickly, what you can DO with that power is going the wrong way

[@GierlangBhaktiPutra]

Thanks to the massive computing power, we can write KZbin comments