
Burroughs B5500 emulator - fanf2
http://www.phkimpel.us/B5500/
======
nickpsecurity
The system that was immune to many forms of code injection at hardware level
with OS written in a high-level language way before we learned both of those
were great for building reliable, secure systems.

[http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...](http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burroughs%20B-5000.htm)

The modern hardware that followed in its footsteps the most was SAFE
architecture now being commercialized as Coreguard. Originally, it protected
the primitive operations like in Burroughs. They found a more flexible
mechanism that supports many "micro-policies." Dover has it available several
RISC CPU's. SoC builders take note! :)

[http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html](http://www.crash-safe.org/papers.html)

[https://dovermicrosystems.com/coreguard/](https://dovermicrosystems.com/coreguard/)

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burroughssearch
This is a long shot but I was wondering if anyone on this site might have
worked on or been familiar with Burroughs Corp from 1960-1961.

My maternal grandfather (Alan Bernard Gerlach) worked at Burroughs for that
time. He co-authored a patent with Edward Glaser just prior to his death in
January of 1962 (age 32). I've tried contacting Unisys (the merged company of
Burroughs and Sperry Corp) but unfortunately they no longer have records from
that time period.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US3275989A/en?oq=US-327598...](https://patents.google.com/patent/US3275989A/en?oq=US-3275989-A:+Control+for+digital+computers)

If anyone has photos, information or documentation about him I'd be very
appreciative if you could share it.

~~~
dang
Try using HN search to find old comments about Burroughs. It's possible, if
you find some, that we could put you in touch with the commenter. In that case
email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll be happy to help.

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craftyguy
And for those of you who (like me) have no idea what a Burroughs B5500 was:

[http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/burrough...](http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/burroughs-b5500/b5000_b5500_gallery)

~~~
emmelaich
Famous computer scientists worked at Burroughs. Among them Knuth and Dijkstra.

Wirth also worked _with_ the 5500, but I don't think he ever worked for
Burroughs.

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msla
SIMH has a B5500 emulator now as well. I'm not sure if it's the same codebase
as this one.

[https://github.com/simh/simh](https://github.com/simh/simh)

~~~
pmcjones
No: Paul Kimpel's emulator is written in Javascript, and runs in the browser
(complete with control panel displays).

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skissane
Great to see.

But, opening lots of separate browser windows for the different components
(card reader, magnetic tape, line printer, etc) is (IMHO) poor UX. Web apps
should do everything in one browser window/tab, and use DIVs (or whatever)
within that window/tab to implement different UI elements, rather than seven
separate popup windows.

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patrickg_zill
Note : Gary Kildall of CPM fame, wrote an implementation of the programming
language APL for the B5500 while he was a student at University of Washington.
You may be able to find his technical report on this online.

~~~
pmcjones
Here's the source code, via Paul Kimpel:

[https://github.com/retro-
software/B5500-software/tree/master...](https://github.com/retro-
software/B5500-software/tree/master/APL-WU-Kildall)

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aap_
For those who don't know, that system is still alive:
[https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-
forward/clearpath...](https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-
forward/clearpath-forward-products/clearpath-mcp-software)

