origins of IBM 3740 diskette format

[Tore S Bekkedal]

On Sun, 2005-02-27 at 08:47 +0100, Nico de Jong wrote:
> From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
> Subject: Re: origins of IBM 3740 diskette format
> 
> 
> > Yes, but,...
> >
> > In FORTRAN, columns 73 - 80 are reserved for housekeeping, such as
> > resequencing dropped decks.
> > THerefore, the information content in FORTRAN could be said to be 72 bytes
> > per card, NOT 80.
> >
> 
> That was the same for IBM (DOS) Assembler, Cobol (73-80) and RPG-II (column
> 1-5 IIRC).
> 
> Nico
> 
JCL too. It had something to do with how the 701(!) read in data, into
two 36-bit words... I think most S/360 languages did it this way.

Some big guy in S/360 development mentioned this in the System/360 talk
at CHM - video is (was?) availible at computerhistory.org. 
He said it during a slide with the heading "JCL - worst language
ever" :)

-- 
Tore S Bekkedal <toresbe at ifi.uio.no>