[rescue] looking for IBM System/36 software

[Nigel Williams]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:49 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>   I'm looking for software on 8" floppies for the IBM System/36.
> Specifically, I'd like to find a copy of the BASIC compiler, and if
> possible, FORTRAN.

Good luck finding those languages, a friend and I have been looking
for both for years and highlighting their un-found status everywhere
we go but so far neither have turned up. We have not returned to
looking for a while, it is good to see someone else take up the
search.

It is worth noting that the FORTRAN at least was a special order item,
and mainly there for government contract requirements, we haven't
found any evidence that it actually shipped to anyone. The novel part
of the FORTRAN implementation (and BASIC too I think) was the
System/36 lacked floating point instructions so FORTRAN came with
additional "microcode" (bit unclear if it was truly microcode or just
an emulation library - either way it took up valuable memory
restricting the number of jobs that could be run).

The other (still missing) prize of System/36 world is the ASSEMBLER -
unlike the above two this was used frequently to extend the system
(and save memory) and the System/36 magazines published hex-dumps of
routines that could be entered to add useful functions. It is of
course possible to hand-assemble for the System/36 (or people wrote
their own in RPG) but it would be interesting to have the original
product too.

SSP (the operating system) is also incomplete across the various
versions, particularly around the PTF sets.