Honeywell 800
Encyclopedia
The Datamatic Division of Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....

 announced the H-800 electronic computer in 1958. The first installation occurred in 1960. A total of 89 were delivered. The H-800 design was part of a family of 48-bit word, three-address instruction format computers that descended from the Datamatic 1000, which was a joint Honeywell and Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...

 project started in 1955. The 1800 and 1800-II were follow-on designs to the H-800.

Data

The basic unit of data was a word of 48 bit
Bit
A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

s. This could be divided in several ways:
  • 8 Alphanumeric
    Alphanumeric code
    In general, in computing, an alphanumeric code is a series of letters and numbers which are written in a form that can be processed by a computer....

     characters of 6 bits each
  • 12 Hexadecimal
    Hexadecimal
    In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...

     or Decimal characters of 4 bits each
  • 16 Octal
    Octal
    The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the base-8 number system, and uses the digits 0 to 7. Numerals can be made from binary numerals by grouping consecutive binary digits into groups of three...

     characters of 3 bits each
  • An instruction with four components of 12 bits each: the operation to be performed, and three memory addresses.

Hardware

The basic system had:
  • A Central Processor with 16 controlled input/output trunks
  • An Input/Output Control Center (IOCC) with control functions for:
    • A card reader/punch,
    • A high-speed printer
    • Up to 4 magnetic tape units
  • A Control Memory of 256 special registers of 16 bits each
  • A Main memory containing 4 banks of 2048 words.


Extra peripherals could be added running through additional controllers with a theoretical possibility of 56 tape units.

Up to 12 more main memory banks could be added.

A random access disc system with a capacity of 800 million alphanumeric characters could be added.

Multiprogram control allowed up to 8 programs to be sharing the machine, each with its own set of 32 special registers.

A Floating-Point Unit was optionally available. The 48 bit word allowed a seven bit exponent and 40 bit mantissa
Significand
The significand is part of a floating-point number, consisting of its significant digits. Depending on the interpretation of the exponent, the significand may represent an integer or a fraction.-Examples:...

. So numbers between 10−78 and 10+76 were possible and precision was 12 decimal places. If the customer did not buy the floating point unit, then floating point commands were implemented by software simulation.

Peripheral devices included: high-density magnetic tapes, high-speed line printers, fast card and paper tape readers and punches to high-capacity random access magnetic disc memories, optical scanners, self-correcting orthoscanners and data communications devices.

Software

Available software included:
  • ARGUS
    Honeywell ARGUS
    This article is about the ARGUS language and machine language of the Honeywell 800 and 1800 computers. The name ARGUS was an acronym, standing for: Automatic Routine Generating and Updating System....

     (Automatic Routine Generating and Updating System), an assembly language
    Assembly language
    An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...

    .
  • FACT (Fully Automatic Compiling Technique), a business compiler
    Compiler
    A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

    .
  • PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique
    Program Evaluation and Review Technique
    The Program ' Evaluation and Review Technique, commonly abbreviated PERT, is a statistical tool, used in project management, that is designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project...

    ), a project management system.
  • COP (Computer Optimization Package), a program testing system.
  • COBOL
    COBOL
    COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....

    (COmmon Business Oriented Language), a compiler for the well known business programming language.

Further reading

Jane King, William A. Shelly, "A Family History of Honeywell's Large-Scale Computer Systems," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 42–46, Oct.-Dec. 1997, doi:10.1109/85.627898

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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