Documentation for the Amdahl 580 Computer, Vol. II
date: label: date made
content: ca 1980s
name: label: user
content: Page, Brian R.
notes: label: Description
content: This narrow red white paper single subject notebook contains documentation related to the Amdahl 580 computer. All the notes are on one side of the page and only half of the book was filled out. Donor's description of the book: "I have two spiral notebooks containing my hand-written notes completely describing the operation and diagnostics of the Amdahl 580."
label: Description
content: The Amdahl 580 was a follow-on model to the Amdahl 470. In the donor's words: "The 580 is distinctive in a number of respects. First the core processors were roughly twice the speed of the competeting IBM models at a time when applications were often dispatched on a single processor even when the computer as a whole contained multiple processors. The other noteworthy aspect is that the 580 contained an additional abstraction layer for instruction execution. We called this macrocode. So, for example, if IBM introduced a new instruction op code in their operation system software that Amdahl had not implemented in hardware, the macrocode layer would intercept the machine check and simulate the function of the new op code."
label: Description
content: Along with the Amdahl 470 V/8, it is probably one of the earliest examples of virtualization.
label: Description
content: The donor worked for Amdahl Corporation from 1980 to 1988. He served primarily as a software systems engineer in Customer Support & Services but was also hardware cross-trained.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
label: See more items in
content: Computers & Business Machines
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Brian R. Page
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2014.3099.03
label: catalog number
content: 2014.3099.03
label: nonaccession number
content: 2014.3099
objectType: label: Object Name
content: documentation
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 1/8 in x 8 7/8 in x 1/2 in; 28.2575 cm x 22.5425 cm x 1.27 cm