IBM 1401 Symbolic Programming System
The IBM 1401 Symbolic Programming System (SPS) was an assembler that was developed by the Applied Programming Department of IBM as an alternative to the use of machine code for the IBM 1401 computer, the first of the IBM 1400 series. One source indicates that "This programming system was announced by IBM with the machine.".[1]
SPS-1 could run on a low-end machine with 1.4K memory, SPS-2 required at least 4K memory.
- SPS-1 punched one card for each input instruction in its first pass and this deck had to be read during pass 2. At the University of Chicago and many other locations, SPS-1 was replaced by assemblers taking advantage of the commonly available 4K memory configuration to pack the output of pass one into several instructions per card. Other assemblers were written which placed the pass one output into memory for small programs.
SPS was an assembly languages using mnemonic names for operations, data and instruction addresses, instead of programming directly in machine language. A copy of the source programs for SPS-1 and SPS-2 was donated to the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, by Gary Mokotoff, author of SPS.[2]
As the 1400 series matured additional programming languages and report generators became available, replacing SPS in most sites.
References
External links
- [1] IBM 1401 Symbolic Programming Systems: SPS-1 and SPS-2, C20-1480-0
- "1401s I have known" by Tom Van Vleck includes a description of an operating environment including 1401 SPS machines.
 | This programming-language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |