anyone use apple /// cobol, used it back when . ... Waterloo Cobol for the SuperPET
There were a number of 8-bit COBOLs. CP/M versions in particular. I only used it on mainframes, and not much at that. I glanced at SuperPET stuff recently. Didn't a lot of SuperPET stuff require the 6809 card? So it "ran" as 6809 code. Pure 6809 systems (SS-50 based) were semi-popular in the era. - Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
I am watching eagles/cowboys game but quickly your offer for the cards is fine. Jon Chapman asked about the rl01 (I only have one that is a ny good) so I will bring it and you two can decide who wants it more... Will reply about the cobol when I get back to a computer B Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net On Nov 19, 2017 1:30 PM, "Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic" < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
anyone use apple /// cobol, used it back when
. ... Waterloo Cobol for the SuperPET
There were a number of 8-bit COBOLs. CP/M versions in particular. I only used it on mainframes, and not much at that.
I glanced at SuperPET stuff recently. Didn't a lot of SuperPET stuff require the 6809 card? So it "ran" as 6809 code. Pure 6809 systems (SS-50 based) were semi-popular in the era. - Herb
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
On Sun, Nov 19, 2017 at 1:28 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
anyone use apple /// cobol, used it back when
. ... Waterloo Cobol for the SuperPET
There were a number of 8-bit COBOLs. CP/M versions in particular. I only used it on mainframes, and not much at that.
I glanced at SuperPET stuff recently. Didn't a lot of SuperPET stuff require the 6809 card? So it "ran" as 6809 code. Pure 6809 systems (SS-50 based) were semi-popular in the era. - Herb
Yes exactly, 6809. It seems like both the SuperPET and Apple /// Cobol were more for prototyping and testing syntax, one would upload their code to a mainframe to put into production. This is for obvious reasons (to me). I worked in a Cobol environment in my early days employed out of college. What I was asking specifically was, did anyone use Apple /// Cobol back when it was new? I did not get any replies that said, "yup me..". Back then I would have not minded a local copy because back then one had to (at IBM and DuPont) get a sign off every time one wanted to test an update or change. It was a pain in the butt. Having a local copy even if it was not exactly the same as the mainframe could have been a time saver, maybe. b
Bill Degnan:
It seems like both the SuperPET and Apple /// Cobol were more for prototyping and testing syntax, one would upload their code to a mainframe to put into production. This is for obvious reasons (to me). I worked in a Cobol environment in my early days employed out of college.
What I was asking specifically was, did anyone use Apple /// Cobol back when it was new? I did not get any replies that said, "yup me..".
Bill, I don't quite "buy" the notion you suggest. I'm not hammering you in my reply: I"m providing background to answer the implied "what's up here?" question. I don't know anything about Commodore Business Machines (CBM) products. But they seem to have been marketed to businesses and schools-for-business, in the 1980's. I am aware, Apple IIs were sold for business use, look at the sales to buy VisiCalc, which was early-implemented on that platform. tandy sold to businesses, look at their Model 16 in particular with the 68000 co-processor; even the z80 models had many business packages. I'm sure Tandy had COBOL but I haven't checked. What I'm saying, is that there was a substantial and significant "business market" served by early microcomputers. Thus, they supported mainframe computer languages of the day: FORTRAN and COBOL. BASIC has its own history, both as a microcomputing language, and as a language used on timesharing mainframe systems. But over time, microcomputing for business was done with interactive applications - spreadsheets, database products, word-processing. Users stopped becoming their own "programmers", but everyone used a spreadsheet. In fact, it's an interesting question - when did microcomputer owners STOP becoming "programmers" and simply became end-users? (I think it's interesting....) But there's no doubt, microcomputers were used for business. Moreso, after and on the IBM PC. Thus it's plausible that microcomputer COBOL was used for business programming on microcomputers. You'd not see those results decades later, except in old advertising of COBOL packages, or among individual old disks from an old collection from some business use (car dealership, accountant, tax preparer, etc.) For business security, those files may have been deleted long ago. As for "a show of hands". My experience in the 21st century, as a supporter of vintage microcomputing, is that the current (21st C. , Millennial, etc.) hobby microcomputing audience, does not have many people that are 1) from the day in question and 2) were business users in the day. and so, that's one reason why I spent time today, considering the question not answered. Herb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
Not 8-bit, but I had a copy Microsoft COBOL back in '84, so I could work on school projects at home, as the college's VAX didn't have remote access. Syntax and structure were close enough (COBOL '74). Later, I used it to do some ports from minicomputer systems, but I don't recall many shops running COBOL exclusively on micros. On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:50 AM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill Degnan:
It seems like both the SuperPET and Apple /// Cobol were more for prototyping and testing syntax, one would upload their code to a mainframe to put into production. This is for obvious reasons (to me). I worked in a Cobol environment in my early days employed out of college.
What I was asking specifically was, did anyone use Apple /// Cobol back when it was new? I did not get any replies that said, "yup me..".
Bill, I don't quite "buy" the notion you suggest. I'm not hammering you in my reply: I"m providing background to answer the implied "what's up here?" question.
I don't know anything about Commodore Business Machines (CBM) products. But they seem to have been marketed to businesses and schools-for-business, in the 1980's. I am aware, Apple IIs were sold for business use, look at the sales to buy VisiCalc, which was early-implemented on that platform. tandy sold to businesses, look at their Model 16 in particular with the 68000 co-processor; even the z80 models had many business packages. I'm sure Tandy had COBOL but I haven't checked.
What I'm saying, is that there was a substantial and significant "business market" served by early microcomputers. Thus, they supported mainframe computer languages of the day: FORTRAN and COBOL. BASIC has its own history, both as a microcomputing language, and as a language used on timesharing mainframe systems.
But over time, microcomputing for business was done with interactive applications - spreadsheets, database products, word-processing. Users stopped becoming their own "programmers", but everyone used a spreadsheet. In fact, it's an interesting question - when did microcomputer owners STOP becoming "programmers" and simply became end-users? (I think it's interesting....)
But there's no doubt, microcomputers were used for business. Moreso, after and on the IBM PC. Thus it's plausible that microcomputer COBOL was used for business programming on microcomputers. You'd not see those results decades later, except in old advertising of COBOL packages, or among individual old disks from an old collection from some business use (car dealership, accountant, tax preparer, etc.) For business security, those files may have been deleted long ago.
As for "a show of hands". My experience in the 21st century, as a supporter of vintage microcomputing, is that the current (21st C. , Millennial, etc.) hobby microcomputing audience, does not have many people that are 1) from the day in question and 2) were business users in the day. and so, that's one reason why I spent time today, considering the question not answered.
Herb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:48:04AM -0500, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
What I'm saying, is that there was a substantial and significant "business market" served by early microcomputers. Thus, they supported mainframe computer languages of the day: FORTRAN and COBOL. BASIC has its own history, both as a microcomputing language, and as a language used on timesharing mainframe systems.
But over time, microcomputing for business was done with interactive applications - spreadsheets, database products, word-processing. Users stopped becoming their own "programmers", but everyone used a spreadsheet. In fact, it's an interesting question - when did microcomputer owners STOP becoming "programmers" and simply became end-users? (I think it's interesting....)
I recently got my Uncle to write up his PDP-8 usage which demonstrates this with the buisiness office machine though for 12 vs 8 bits. He thought the replacement was based on off the shelf packages. http://www.pdp8online.com/memories/john_pdp8.shtml Trying to collect more first hand stories. Got one more so far.
On 11/20/2017 01:46 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:48:04AM -0500, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
What I'm saying, is that there was a substantial and significant "business market" served by early microcomputers. Thus, they supported mainframe computer languages of the day: FORTRAN and COBOL. BASIC has its own history, both as a microcomputing language, and as a language used on timesharing mainframe systems.
I don't recall seeing micros (Apple, CP/M) or minis (like the PDP-8) in small businesses. Of course that might have been due to my limitted exposure at that period. See below when I started seeing the PC show up. BTW, companies like newspapers and large manufacturing (smelting, chemical, pharmaceuticals) had minis and mainframes for a long time. I know that PDP-8s (and DECNet) were being used in automation control until 2005. I worked in the newspaper industry in 1984 and I know that the industry used the minis (PDP-8) for control of the presses and distribution of the stories and editing. I know this because I watch a tech do a repair of a PDP-8 where the entire back was one color of wire (Yellow). And I couldn't see anything other that wirewrap back there. I watched one network engineer at Hoechst Celanese login to a mainframe and proceed to pipe commands from the mainframe to the the PDP (Decnet) to Unix (IP network), like you would in shell. (1988) I also recall the first PCs being used at the Wall Street Journal. They wanted the company I worked for to create news story editing software (doesn't use ASCII & had special font and formatting). We'd been using OS/9 on a Gimix Ghost and I found the fact that the PC couldn't do multitasking a step backward. (1985). The company I worked for had OS/9, OSK and Flex machines. In 1987 I worked at AT&T's technical support hotline in networking. I supported everything from mainframe protocols, X.25, Novell, Banyon Vines, IP and this new fangled brouter ( ;-) ). Businesses were really putting the PC to use heavily by then. One more odd story. I recall that my insurance agent had a printer and mainframe terminal when I got my first insurance (1979). It wasn't a nasty IBM terminal but something else. He had converted his garage into his insurance office.
But over time, microcomputing for business was done with interactive applications - spreadsheets, database products, word-processing. Users stopped becoming their own "programmers", but everyone used a spreadsheet. In fact, it's an interesting question - when did microcomputer owners STOP becoming "programmers" and simply became end-users? (I think it's interesting....)
Opinion: the introduction of the IBM PC. More specifically the beginning of the clone market. The Ken Gordon Production (PC-fests) shows started around 1982 (probably a bit later). Some may argue that it was Apple that started the march towards business, I always considered them more educational. The name IBM meant business and the clone was close enough for everyday use. I do recall business application for the Apple, Commodore and Atari home computers. I had a copy of Visicalc and was shocked at how easy it was to use and wondered why I needed it. In 1981 I had started working for Middelsex County College. Doing PC installation, support and repair (later mainframe terminal repair). I recall the Apple IIs not getting noticed by the business dept. They had mainframe terminal access. But when the PC arrived then we noticed an uptick on PCs on the desk (Lotus 123 was huge). BTW, don't trust the years I may be off on some of this. The general gist of the story is correct but I didn't really track the years. Heck I didn't get a PC clone until 1990. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
. I don't recall seeing micros (Apple, CP/M) or minis (like the PDP-8) in small businesses. Of course that might have been due to my limitted exposure at that period. See below when I started seeing the PC show up.
BTW, companies like newspapers and large manufacturing (smelting, chemical, pharmaceuticals) had minis and mainframes for a long time. I know that PDP-8s (and DECNet) were being used in automation control until 2005.
I worked in the newspaper industry in 1984 and I know that the industry used the minis (PDP-8) for control of the presses and distribution of the stories and editing. I know this because I watch a tech do a repair of a PDP-8 where the entire back was one color of wire (Yellow). And I couldn't see anything other that wirewrap back there.
I watched one network engineer at Hoechst Celanese login to a mainframe and proceed to pipe commands from the mainframe to the the PDP (Decnet) to Unix (IP network), like you would in shell. (1988)
I also recall the first PCs being used at the Wall Street Journal. They wanted the company I worked for to create news story editing software (doesn't use ASCII & had special font and formatting). We'd been using OS/9 on a Gimix Ghost and I found the fact that the PC couldn't do multitasking a step backward. (1985). The company I worked for had OS/9, OSK and Flex machines.
In 1987 I worked at AT&T's technical support hotline in networking. I supported everything from mainframe protocols, X.25, Novell, Banyon Vines, IP and this new fangled brouter ( ;-) ). Businesses were really putting the PC to use heavily by then.
One more odd story. I recall that my insurance agent had a printer and mainframe terminal when I got my first insurance (1979). It wasn't a nasty IBM terminal but something else. He had converted his garage into his insurance office. Opinion: the introduction of the IBM PC. More specifically the beginning of the clone market. The Ken Gordon Production (PC-fests) shows started around 1982 (probably a bit later).
Some may argue that it was Apple that started the march towards business, I always considered them more educational. The name IBM meant business and the clone was close enough for everyday use. I do recall business application for the Apple, Commodore and Atari home computers. I had a copy of Visicalc and was shocked at how easy it was to use and wondered why I needed it.
In 1981 I had started working for Middelsex County College. Doing PC installation, support and repair (later mainframe terminal repair).
I recall the Apple IIs not getting noticed by the business dept. They had mainframe terminal access. But when the PC arrived then we noticed an uptick on PCs on the desk (Lotus 123 was huge).
BTW, don't trust the years I may be off on some of this. The general gist of the story is correct but I didn't really track the years. Heck I didn't get a PC clone until 1990.
I guess pet of it depends on what you consider "small business." You mention newspapers, Wall Street journal, at&t, college.....these are not small businesses (I know you know this and you were not say n they were) My family business (20-40 employees depending on time of year) started using an apple II to do the bank accounts and basic word processing (to mail letters!!) and bookkeeping in 1979/1980. I was not in high school yet using MoneyStreet to do the checking account reconciliations for the accountants (mr Forman and his son mark!) Ritchie potters electronics (for decades sold the decanavigators, the A-loran then c-loran and the radars and radios etc to the fishing boats all along the jersey coast) was the first place I saw an apple II. He started using it to do his books and print receipts. A few years later he became a full fledged Apple computer dealer!! I remember the mid 80s the dry cleaners my mom took us to had an at&t machine and. A daisywheel printer doing the two part carbon receipts. By the time I was 14 (1982) I had two other friends besides myself who's family business used the apple II to "run" their business (from daily records to just checkbooks) The local newspapers to me (coast star, etc) used some early pc for bookkeeping before they eventually switched to Macs for pagelayout in the 1986-1988 timeframe. I think the Commodores and trs 80s and apples didn't really break into the "big" business market. The small and home business market was created by those three (and VisiCalc....it was EVERYWHERE and one of the few things non computer people even knew about) and eventually taken over by the pc and clones. At least in my neck o the woods thats what I saw growing up. Tony
On 11/23/2017 01:48 PM, Tony Bogan wrote:
. I don't recall seeing micros (Apple, CP/M) or minis (like the PDP-8) in small businesses. Of course that might have been due to my limitted exposure at that period. See below when I started seeing the PC show up.
BTW, companies like newspapers and large manufacturing (smelting, chemical, pharmaceuticals) had minis and mainframes for a long time. I know that PDP-8s (and DECNet) were being used in automation control until 2005.
I worked in the newspaper industry in 1984 and I know that the industry used the minis (PDP-8) for control of the presses and distribution of the stories and editing. I know this because I watch a tech do a repair of a PDP-8 where the entire back was one color of wire (Yellow). And I couldn't see anything other that wirewrap back there.
I watched one network engineer at Hoechst Celanese login to a mainframe and proceed to pipe commands from the mainframe to the the PDP (Decnet) to Unix (IP network), like you would in shell. (1988)
I also recall the first PCs being used at the Wall Street Journal. They wanted the company I worked for to create news story editing software (doesn't use ASCII & had special font and formatting). We'd been using OS/9 on a Gimix Ghost and I found the fact that the PC couldn't do multitasking a step backward. (1985). The company I worked for had OS/9, OSK and Flex machines.
In 1987 I worked at AT&T's technical support hotline in networking. I supported everything from mainframe protocols, X.25, Novell, Banyon Vines, IP and this new fangled brouter ( ;-) ). Businesses were really putting the PC to use heavily by then.
One more odd story. I recall that my insurance agent had a printer and mainframe terminal when I got my first insurance (1979). It wasn't a nasty IBM terminal but something else. He had converted his garage into his insurance office. Opinion: the introduction of the IBM PC. More specifically the beginning of the clone market. The Ken Gordon Production (PC-fests) shows started around 1982 (probably a bit later).
Some may argue that it was Apple that started the march towards business, I always considered them more educational. The name IBM meant business and the clone was close enough for everyday use. I do recall business application for the Apple, Commodore and Atari home computers. I had a copy of Visicalc and was shocked at how easy it was to use and wondered why I needed it.
In 1981 I had started working for Middelsex County College. Doing PC installation, support and repair (later mainframe terminal repair).
I recall the Apple IIs not getting noticed by the business dept. They had mainframe terminal access. But when the PC arrived then we noticed an uptick on PCs on the desk (Lotus 123 was huge).
BTW, don't trust the years I may be off on some of this. The general gist of the story is correct but I didn't really track the years. Heck I didn't get a PC clone until 1990.
I guess pet of it depends on what you consider "small business." You mention newspapers, Wall Street journal, at&t, college.....these are not small businesses (I know you know this and you were not say n they were)
Oops, mixed things up again, sorry. Those places I worked at (except my second job) were definitely large businesses. I meant the small business as in SMB. During the 1980-1990 time frame my friends and I put together hundreds of systems for people at the various KGP shows. Save folks a lot of money. Most were the small business folks I meant (a few employees at most).
My family business (20-40 employees depending on time of year) started using an apple II to do the bank accounts and basic word processing (to mail letters!!) and bookkeeping in 1979/1980. I was not in high school yet using MoneyStreet to do the checking account reconciliations for the accountants (mr Forman and his son mark!)
Ritchie potters electronics (for decades sold the decanavigators, the A-loran then c-loran and the radars and radios etc to the fishing boats all along the jersey coast) was the first place I saw an apple II. He started using it to do his books and print receipts. A few years later he became a full fledged Apple computer dealer!!
I remember the mid 80s the dry cleaners my mom took us to had an at&t machine and. A daisywheel printer doing the two part carbon receipts.
Wonder if it was the 6300?
By the time I was 14 (1982) I had two other friends besides myself who's family business used the apple II to "run" their business (from daily records to just checkbooks)
The local newspapers to me (coast star, etc) used some early pc for bookkeeping before they eventually switched to Macs for pagelayout in the 1986-1988 timeframe.
Macs were very good at page publishing, That's one are where PC were terrible. At AT&T (1989), our group did all our documentation on Macs (Page Maker and Viseo - before Microsoft borked it) up. Appletalk and Laser printers were the norm. I worked in the group that did the engineering for the group that is now AT&T managed network services.
I think the Commodores and trs 80s and apples didn't really break into the "big" business market. The small and home business market was created by those three (and VisiCalc....it was EVERYWHERE and one of the few things non computer people even knew about) and eventually taken over by the pc and clones.
I think the Pets did but not so much the home computer stuff. I've heard of oddball stuff like an Atari 800 being used in a radio station. The recently shown (and still working) Commodore 64 tire balancer, and my Uncle ran a DEC dealer out of Poughkeepsie. He must have had small businesses as that's pretty much all that's up that way (I know not microcomputers really). Oh, I forgot about the TRS80s. Those were business machines also and they pre-date the PC by a lot. I remember drooling over them for a long time.
At least in my neck o the woods thats what I saw growing up. Tony
I stand corrected :-) I recall Moneystreet, Peachtree and one other. I will say I know of CP/M machines being used in business but I never saw them. My limited exposed I guess. But I still stand by the PC being the point where people really didn't need to be a programmer anymore because they were in greater numbers by 1982. And they were as ubiquitous as cash registers. Perhaps I saw it incorrectly. Perhaps, pre-PC, there weren't as many businesses with computers so many close leaders. But the Clone wars made the PC clone the leader when computers started to become common. I think Bill D. did some work on this. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 11/19/2017 12:28 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
anyone use apple /// cobol, used it back when . ... Waterloo Cobol for the SuperPET
There were a number of 8-bit COBOLs. CP/M versions in particular. I only used it on mainframes, and not much at that.
There were at least two COBOLs for the Commodore 64: Abacus COBOL and Nevada COBOL for '64 with the CP/M cartridge. -- Glenn Holmer (Linux registered user #16682) "After the vintage season came the aftermath -- and Cenbe."
participants (7)
-
David Gesswein -
Dean Notarnicola -
Glenn Holmer -
Herb Johnson -
Neil Cherry -
Tony Bogan -
william degnan