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GEC 2050

ICL 7020 Emulation

The standard ICL remote job entry station was the ICL 7020. With Atlas receiving a 20% share of the 360/195 at the Rutherford Laboratory, there was an interest in developing a remote job entry station that could access both machines. In 1972, negotiations were had with GEC with a view to supplying five RJE terminals based on the 2050 computer to provide 7020 emulation. The first 2050 arrived on 7 February 1973 and the second on 8 March 1973. By mid-1973, the 7020 emulator was working and an initial system was tested at RGO followed by another at Southampton University. Progress was slower than expected partly due to the lack of documentation from GEC. By the end of 1973, a 2050 was running as a 7020 at RGO and another was installed at Southampton.

By April 1974, the 7020 emulation was stable and deployed in a number of RJE workstations

HASP RJE Workstation

The Rutherford Communications Group under John Burren was looking at providing a HASP workstation based on the GEC 2050. The aim was to replace existing workstations such as IBM 2780 and IBM 1130 by GEC 2050s. The advantage in making the change was that there would be more control over the protocols to be used and, in particular, the basic HASP protocol could be extended to allow terminals to access the 360/195 ELECTRIC system as well as acting as a standard RJE station.

Deliveries of GEC 2050s started on 22 February, 1973. One was retained at Rutherford for development purposes and 8 were installed in University High Energy Physics Departments by June 1973. Much of the software had already been tested using the emulator on the 360/195 provided by GEC.

The software initially provided with the GEC 2050 computers emulated an IBM 2780 and was handled by the work station support program HASP-RJE resident in the 360/195. It was used successfully on all stations for the first half of 1973. This was replaced by multi-leaved software enabling ELECTRIC terminals to be connected and permitting simultaneous (and faster) card reading and line printing. This multi-leaved program package (which simulated an IBM 1130) was written at the Rutherford Laboratory.

GEC 2050 RJE Station at Nuclear Physics Department, Oxford University, December 1973

GEC 2050 RJE Station at Nuclear Physics Department, Oxford University, December 1973
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© UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council

Not much change took place in the basic software in 1974 except a bootstrap loading system was added that automatically downloaded the current software to the workstation each time it connected. This made sure that always the same software was used by all workstations when they were connected.

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