Honeywell 800

The Datamatic Division of Honeywell announced the H-800 electronic computer in 1958. The first installation occurred in 1960. A total of 89 units were delivered. The H-800 design was part of a family of 48-bit word, three-address instruction format computers that descended from the DATAmatic 1000, which was a joint Honeywell and Raytheon project started in 1955. The 1800 and 1800-II were follow-on designs to the H-800.^[1]

Honeywell 800

Honeywell 800 system
Manufacturer	Honeywell, Inc.
Release date	1960
Units sold	89

Data

The basic unit of data was a word of 48 bits. This could be divided in several ways:

• 8 alphanumeric characters of 6 bits each
• 12 hexadecimal or decimal characters of 4 bits each
• 16 octal characters of 3 bits each
• An instruction with four components of 12 bits each: the operation to be performed, and three memory addresses.

Hardware

The Honeywell 800 was a transistorized computer with magnetic-core memory. Its processor used around 6000 discrete transistors and around 30,000 solid-state diodes.^[2] The basic system had:

• A Central Processor with 16 controlled input/output trunks
• An Input/Output Control Center (IOCC) with control functions for:
  • A card reader/punch,
  • A high-speed printer
  • Up to four magnetic-tape units
• A control memory of 256 special registers of 16 bits each
• A main memory containing four banks of 2048 words.^[3]

Extra peripherals could be added running through additional controllers with a theoretical possibility of 56 tape units.^[3]

Up to 12 more main memory banks could be added.^[3]

A random-access disc system with a capacity of 800 million alphanumeric characters could be added.^[3]

Multiprogram control allowed up to eight programs to be sharing the machine, each with its own set of 32 special registers.^[3]

A Floating-Point Unit was optionally available. The 48-bit word allowed a seven-bit exponent and 40-bit mantissa. So numbers between 10⁻⁷⁸ and 10⁺⁷⁶ were possible and precision was 12 decimal places.^[3] If the floating point unit was not installed, the floating-point commands were implemented by software simulation.

Peripheral devices included: high-density magnetic tapes, high-speed line printers, fast card and paper tape readers and punches to high-capacity random access magnetic disc memories, optical scanners, self-correcting orthoscanners and data communications devices.^[3]

Software

Available software included:

• ARGUS (Automatic Routine Generating and Updating System), an assembly language.
• FACT (Fully Autom]]atic Compiling Technique), a business compiler.
• PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), a project management system.
• COP (Computer Optimization Package), a program testing system.
• COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), a compiler for the well known business programming language.^[3]
• FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator), a compiler, runtime package, and "load and go" OS for the scientific language compiler.