Computer History/Retrocomputing, Fall 2015

Notes and Tentative Reading Assignments

Part of the CS:4980:4 Collection
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science

9:30 Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 210 MacLean Hall

Mon Aug 24 Background
Wed Aug 26 Babbage's Difference Engine (fixed program)
Fri Aug 28 Babbage's Analytical Engine
Mon Aug 31 Sequential programs (from cards) ( Ada's notes)
Wed Sep 2 Hints about conditional branches
Fri Sep 4 Von Neumann's Princeton IAS proposal [last free add/drop]
Wed Sep 9 Binary computing, single RAM for code and data
Fri Sep 11 Self modifying code
Mon Sep 14 No class [Rosh Hashannah I (Jewish)]
Wed Sep 16 The IBM 701 -- computers become commercial.
Fri Sep 18 The dynasty, 701, 704, 709, 709T, 7090, 7094, 7040 [last refund for withdrawal]
Mon Sep 21 The PDP-8 -- mass production begins!
Wed Sep 23 No class [Yom Kippur (Jewish)] [Eid al-Adha I (Muslim)]
Fri Sep 25 The PDP-8 Memory Management Unit [Eid al-Adha III (Muslim)]
Mon Sep 28 Dijkstra's invention/discovery of recursion and stacks. [Succot I (Jewish)]
Wed Sep 30 The Burroughs 5000 [Succot III (Jewish)]
Fri Oct 2 The Burroughs 5000 instruction set [Succot V (Jewish)]
Mon Oct 5 B5000 descriptors, Byte codes, the P- and J-machines [Shmini Atzeret (Jewish)]
Wed Oct 7 The IBM System 360
Fri Oct 9 I/O Channels
Mon Oct 12 The CDC 6600
Wed Oct 14 The Barrel of Peripheral Processors [midterm day] [Navaratri II (Hindu)]
Fri Oct 16 Microprogramming [Navaratri IV (Hindu)]
Mon Oct 19 The HP9100 Calculator [Navarati VII (Hindu)]
Wed Oct 21 Setting the stage for the PDP-11 [Navarati IX (Hindu)]
Fri Oct 23 The DEC PDP-11 [Ashura (Islam)]
Mon Oct 26 PDP-11 Condition codes
Wed Oct 28 PDP-11 Subroutines, MARK
Fri Oct 30 PDP-11 MMU
Mon Nov 2 (No class) [drop deadline]
Wed Nov 4 The SDS-940 Berkeley Timesharing System
Fri Nov 6 Multics
Mon Nov 9 Memory Protection in Multics
Wed Nov 11 More Multics [Diwali (Hindu)]
Fri Nov 13 The CAP System (chapters 1-2) [Bad Luck (Christian?)]
Mon Nov 16 The CAP System (chapter 3) [last withdrawal]
Wed Nov 18 The CAP System (chapter 4)
Fri Nov 20 The IBM System 38 (compare with the 38-Manual)
Mon Nov 30 Reduced Instruction Set Computers
Wed Dec 2 The HP PA RISC
Fri Dec 4
Mon Dec 7 [Hanukkah I (Jewish)]
Wed Dec 9 [Hanukkah III (Jewish)]
Fri Dec 11 [Hanukkah V (Jewish)] [the end]
Wed Dec 19 -- Term Paper/Project Deadline
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skew by
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