From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> on behalf of Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Sent: Friday, May 5, 2017 11:46 AM
I've thought about some kind of VCF exhibit, where old FORTRAN code would be run on a 70's or 80's microcomputer, to demonstrate calculations and show some graphical results. It would simulate some physical system. I've come across this sort of code from time to time, in old textbooks and reports. Somewhere, in the depths of my basement, I have my senior project from RU (1993) . It was a simulation of random particulate transport in groundwater written in FORTRAN. It ran on my Tandy 1000A with an 8087. The vector mathematics that FORTRAN could do was amazing.
It was based on a paper from the State of Illinois. Ah, here's the title: "A "Random-Walk" Solute Transport Model for Selected Groundwater Quality Evaluations " http://www.isws.illinois.edu/pubdoc/B/ISWSB-65.pdf Used it to model pollution transport in an actual site here in northwest New Jersey. The model compared well to the actual site sampling and pump test data. It helped that I was employed by an environmental engineering firm at the time. Otherwise real life comparisons would have been tough. I had offered to port the FORTRAN code to C++ at the time. The professor just laughed. He said it would be a waste of time. He had me port this to MS FORTRAN 77 and put a C++ front end on for graphing the results. I know, not vintage, but the thing was, with little to no changes, I moved this chunk of FORTRAN IV from the mainframe/mini era to the PC.