[Info-vax] Itanic is a dead end : IBM

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:

(snip)
> Perhaps there is truly no demand for new version of Fortran. But if
> there were truly no demand, how come fortran compilers on other
> platforms are getting upgrades towards the new standards ?

I have thought for some time now that what we really need is
a Fortran 90 compiler for the 7090, and also a C compiler.

The 7090 and related machines are the last that I know of using
sign-magnitude arithmetic.  (And 36 bits, so maybe close to on-topic
for this group.)  

Both Fortran and C90 (and I believe C99) allow for sign magnitude,
though the machines are pretty rare now.  Ones-complement is a 
little less rare, with Unisys machines fairly recently, and CDC
not all that long ago.

But in any case, VAX/VMS was supported and new versions created
long enough after 1990 that it does seem reasonable that a
Fortran 90 compiler could have been used.

-- glen