Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Brian,I would have had a great time going on a double date with a HAL-9000. HAL has a twin sister machine, SAL, in the book 2010. That computer has one great sense of humor. Do computers dream when they are asleep? I suspect so.
The HAL-9000 assembly language could not be anymore difficult than the FPS-120b. The programmer was responsible for pushing data through the various pipeline stages for the adder, multiplier, and memory fetch units. It was very fast for doing FFT's and image processing. Those were fun days.
Never mind all this new-fangled nonsense. A friend of mine, who has been in computers for a VERY long time, once had a problem that was not solved until they pulled up the floorboards. One of the mercury delay lines (under the floor, for security and convenience) had sprung a leak...
Cheers,
R.