Richard Ellis

I am a computer programmer who has had 30+ years of experience. I have recently moved into the human psychology field while still maintaining an interest in programming.

My computer experience started with FORTRAN and moved rather quickly to assembly language. The first computer I really got to play with was an IBM 1130 (in college). It was interesting for me to understand the peripherals (particularly the printer) and what was involved with programming for them. I quickly developed a 'to the bare metal' approach.

Starting in the industry was very rocky with several years spent in operating computers. I made a break, but wasn't able to handle the tedium of business programming. I returned to computer operations and had several satisfying years there, including the responsibility for all of the processing for a major bank mortgage processing system. I took courses at Community College of Philadelphia and got to program a DEC-10 (in assembly language, of course).

My next significant event was being selected for programmer training at my current job (First Pennsylvania Bank) but, unfortunately for them, I was offered and accepted a position at Keystone Computer Associates. I learned much that I didn't know about the process of software design and implementation. To tell the truth, I didn't realize all of what I learned at the time. My contributions to the process (which was an IBM 3270 emulator) on an Intel 8080 were mainly in the coding of pre-defined functions. I progressed rapidly.

I got a permanent Visitor's tag. I had keys to all the buildings at Delta Data where I was working. My duties included customizing firmware for the D4300 terminal product (8008 based). Talk about limiting! There was a twelve bit address bus for both RAM and ROM and a circular call/return hardware stack register. I think I remember recursion to six levels before overwriting the first call point. This was tedious work as recursion had to be mentally monitored.

My subsequent project was a big one! Delta Data was offered the opportunity of bidding on a contract with the NSA (National Security Agency) providing a customized cluster controller based on my original project, the D3000C. The contract was a big one with the opportunity to be advised with the process of making Tempest hardware. Tempest is involved with the reduction of RFI emissions making spying extremely difficult or even impossible via EMI devices. Several customizations were required and I was effectively responsible for all coding and testing of changes. I spent long days making the changes and then compiling them and transferring them to ROM (burning ROM's was a lengthy process and I had to go between buildings to accomplish the required build/burn process). One time, near the end of the process, I spent a 30 hour day.

We had a successful demonstration at Fort Meade (NSA Headquarters) with some interesting quirks which will forever remain unmentioned.

I moved my employment to National Systems Analysts. We were involved with creating an IBM 3270 terminal emulator and my team leader was from the other consulting firm. We built an interpretive emulator with which we could test responses to specific control string sequences. PaulGravelle? was a wonderful programming trainer who provided me with many insights into reducing code size and execution time.

My next experience was in a pilot project which became the Sperrylink Office Automation System. The initial stage involved a three month proof of concept implementation which was well received by management.

This then turned into a full scale development project which took around a year to come to any degree of fruition. The system involved an intelligent terminal and a cluster server to store and retrieve data. The cluster server ran an operating system which I developed from core standalone code developed by John McDaniels?. I developed a macro assembler from his assembler and used that significantly in my further development. Circa 1982, I feel that this is one of the last totally independent operating systems produced. I welcome others who might disagree with this. Please edit this page and leave your comments.

As far as this system goes, I produced the Operating System, the Database Management System, and the communications drivers. Others, including Joseph Elmaleh, Steve Goldberg, and Eric Benshetler directed by Les Spandorfer provided the support needed for such a project.

To be continued...

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