While studying Comp Sci at University of Toronto in the early 70s, I recall the 360/20 was used as a node to connect suburban colleges (Erindale and Scarborough) to the "mainframe", which was a 360/65 (I believe).
We would iterate from the keypunch room, to the 360/20's card reader, and wait for the mainframe to process our code and transmit the code output to the local printer, for review at tables large enough to page through fan-fold paper, to check and mark-up the code. Back then, we didn't need watches to remind us to stand up and walk around every 30 minutes -- the coding workflow forced us to!
Reading the Principles of Operations for the 360/20, the processor was supported half-word (16 bit), and had no floating point, but support packed decimal numbers. Our machine had 16K.
It was great to see the article -- made me reminisce about the days of me carrying boxes of punch cards and inches of output back and forth to my residence.
We would iterate from the keypunch room, to the 360/20's card reader, and wait for the mainframe to process our code and transmit the code output to the local printer, for review at tables large enough to page through fan-fold paper, to check and mark-up the code. Back then, we didn't need watches to remind us to stand up and walk around every 30 minutes -- the coding workflow forced us to!
Reading the Principles of Operations for the 360/20, the processor was supported half-word (16 bit), and had no floating point, but support packed decimal numbers. Our machine had 16K.
It was great to see the article -- made me reminisce about the days of me carrying boxes of punch cards and inches of output back and forth to my residence.