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New version of the "B7094" emulator system for IBM 709x and 704x mainframes from the early 1960's

intabits

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There is a new release of the "B7094" IBM 7094 emulator at https://github.com/Bertoid1311/B7094 .

This new version, as well as fixing some long-standing bugs in the user interface, has updated demos to include an alternate IBSYS ("KSYS61"), whose FORTRAN II processor can do chaining and run binaries. Canned demos now include execution of relocatable object programs as well as compile-and-go from source.

It's very easy to try out: if you're a "casual" user, and running Windows, just download the B7094V34A.zip distribution archive, extract it into a new folder, run either B7094.32.exe or B7094.64.exe in the created "Bin" sub-folder. Then click on the options displayed to select from the many demonstrations available. Removal is equally easy: B7094 makes no changes to the Windows registry or any other part of the system other than its install folder. Deleting the distribution archive and the install folder will completely remove B7094 from your system. Linux users with Wine can download B7094V34A.tgz (provided for convenience only; the contents are the same as the Zip).

There's an extensive README.md at the GitHub repository, and more documentation in the ..\Docs subfolder of the distribution package(s).

Grateful acknowledgement is due to Richard Cornwell for providing some of the sample demo jobs, and for providing technical assistance in getting this new release operational. And of course to Al Kossow for the bitsavers archive; to Bob Supnik, Dave Pitts, and Richard Cornwell for their work getting IBM 709x emulators operational in the mid-late 2000s. And to Paul Pierce, who got the ball rolling with his collection of tapes.



This is a greatly enhanced release of the emulator previously announced in another thread back in 2019:-

That version was hosted on Fosshub, which has proven to be most unresponsive recently, hence the shift to Github for the new version. The Fosshub repository for B7094 should now be considered defunct, and will be removed in due course.

This latest version represents a huge effort by my main collaborator on this project. Many bugs in the emulator have been fixed, enabling sucessfull running of the diagnostics. The demonstration scripts have been very substantially extended, providing more detail and background information, and allowing new modes of operation enabled by the KSYS61 system tapes. Last but not least, the documentation has been greatly expanded.

I've mostly taken a spectator role in all of these recent developments, and so may not be able to quickly answer any queries related to the new release, and suggest that the provided documentation should be consulted first. (I'm simply not up to speed on the nitty gritty details of the new version.)

Enjoy!
 
It has been a lot of years since I ran FMS II. Don't even think that I remember how. I do recall a few strange IBM-specific conventions, however, such as B in column 1 signifying a boolean expression. Somewhere I have a couple of 7 track tape images of Lunar Orbiter survey data--I believe that was produced using a 7094.
 
One of the demo programs included with B7094 is "STRESS III" -- the "Structural Engineering System Solver" from MIT ca. 1963. It was originally developed under FMS but will also run under the FORTRAN II processor of IBSYS (with the "KSYS61" Aerojet-General version of IBSYS, at any rate). This version of "STRESS III" was originally transcribed from an MIT-published document on bitsavers ( https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/civil_engr/stress/ ) by Richard Cornwell many years ago, but is actually running on an emulator for the first time only this year (after a great deal of proofreading).

It has lots of the "B in column 1 signifying a boolean expression" statements. ;->

Jim F.
 
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