Burroughs 5000 Subroutines

Mark Smotherman. Last updated May 2003.

(to do)

Introduction

JA:

Don't forget accidental entry in Burroughs 5K et seq.

IIRC 5K and 5500 didn't support the up-level addressing of block structured languages; you had only local and global variable addressability inside procedures. No variable declared in a procedure a statically enclosing procedure was accessible. 6700 et seq do up-level addressing with display registers.

        D825  - 1961 (Paoli, PA) three-address instruction format
                     w/ top of stack replacing any or all of these
                     operands (otherwise the operand field gives a
                     main memory address)

        B5000 - 1962 (Pasadena, CA) only push and pop access memory
        B5500 - 1964
        B6500 - 1968 cactus-stack
        Bx700 - 1969

Subroutine instructions

Parameter passing

Calling program structure

Subroutine structure

Other resources

• The Descriptor - A Definition of the B 5000 Information Processing System, Feb. 1961 (pdf) (also, other Burroughs 5000 manuals (pdf) are available from UVa)

• W. Lonergan and P. King, "Design or the B 5000 system," Datamation, vol. 7, no. 5, May 1961, pp. 28-32. reprinted in Bell and Newell.

• E.A. Hauck and B.A. Dent, "Burroughs' B6500/B7500 stack mechanism," Proceedings of SJCC, 1968, pp. 245-251. Reprinted in Siewiorek, Bell, and Newell.

• Elliott Organick, Computer System Organization: The B5700/B6700 Series. New York: Academic Press, 1973.

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