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An emulator for the IBM 7094 mainframe computer. (Big Iron circa 1960)

I

intabits

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2019
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148
Location
Melbourne, Australia
In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the IBM 7090 series mainframes were the most widely installed large scale mainframe computers n the world.

These were the quintessential "Big Iron", or "Electronic Brains" as the media of time liked to call them.

Back in 2001-2004 I wrote an emulator for the 7094, and was the first to get it's operating system "IBSYS" to run, after it had been dormant for decades.
It has all the "blinkenlights", and can compile and run Fortan and Cobol programs.

Recently, with much help from one of my earlier collaborators, the emulator has been improved, and more demonstration jobs added.

I've made a video about it:-
https://youtu.be/4xaBS6pWrG0

And published the emulator, including source and demonstration scripts, along with a pile of IBM manuals at:-
https://www.fosshub.com/B7094-IBM7094-Emulator.html

It is dead easy to use, as no knowledge of the old systems, or of the emulator is required. A scripted demonstration system makes that possible.

So to see it for yourself, you need only to download, extract and run it.
Then just click stuff, and watch the blinken lights...

Hope you do so, and enjoy...
 
Pretty neat! Brings back old memories. Didn't use IBSYS, but FMS II (it was a FORTRAN house). Always wondered about running CTSS...

Got a 1401 emulator for SPOOLing?
 
the mystery author 'intabits' wrote:

intabits said:
published the emulator, including source and demonstration scripts, along with a pile of IBM manuals
Click to expand...

The manuals were included, uncredited, from bitsavers.
There is also uncredited work included from Richard Cornwall
 
I probably have a couple of 7094 tape images kicking around here. Although you may have mentioned it somewhere, what image format does your emulator use?
 
Al Kossow said:
the mystery author 'intabits' wrote:
The manuals were included, uncredited, from bitsavers.
There is also uncredited work included from Richard Cornwall
Click to expand...

Sorry Al, an oversight.
While I was making sure to get other details right, and figure out how the hosting site worked, that completely slipped my mind.
Adding the manuals was a last minute thought. I was going to leave the folder empty and direct users t bitsavers, but decided it would be more helpful to include them directly.
I'll fix that tomorrow.

You and Richard are both credited, in the video, and in the video description.
 
The tapes are the 7 track images from Paul Pierce:-
http://www.piercefuller.com/library/magtape7.html?id=magtape7

He describes the format here:-
http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/proj.html


You could try examining your tape in my emulator, by "mounting" it on a drive, and then viewing it:-
* Close off any runing script
* Ensure "TapeDrives" is checked in the Control Panel window
* Check the Show "All" radio button in the Tape Dives window
* Click "Add Drive"
* Click "Opn" on the tape drive sub window, navigate to your file, and open
* Click the drive address at top left ("B1=02201" or similar)
* Examine the display of the "Tape Viewer" window
* Try the "BCD" and "Binary" buttons...
 
Al Kossow said:
the mystery author 'intabits' wrote:
The manuals were included, uncredited, from bitsavers.
There is also uncredited work included from Richard Cornwall
Click to expand...

Al, I have added an "acknowledgement.txt" file to the manuals folder, containing this text:-

The manuals in this folder were downloaded from bitsavers.org, and are made available here as a convenience.

The efforts of Al Kossow and bitsavers.org in scanning and making this material available are very much appreciated.

The availabliity of these manuals was the trigger point that started the development of the B7094 emulator. So thanks again to Al Kossow et al for preserving this stuff (and much, much more).

There are more 7000 series manuals at:-
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7090/
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7094/
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7040/
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/704/
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/709/

And so much more in the surrounding pages...
Start from:-
http://www.bitsavers.org/


I hope that is sufficient.
If not, please let me know and I'll remove all the manuals and just have a link to bitsavers in the text file.
 
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