Maestro I was an early

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

for

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

. developed by Softlab Munich in the 1970s and 1980s. The system was originally called "Programm-Entwicklungs-Terminal-System" ("program development terminal system") abbreviated as PET; it was renamed after

Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mac ...

introduced a home computer called the

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...

in 1977. At one time there were 22,000 installations worldwide. The first USA installations were at Boeing in 1979 with eight Maestro I systems and Bank of America with 24 system and 576 developer terminals. Der Spiegel, 17 January 1983, Page 7
Akten auf Knopfdruck
/ref> Until 1989 there were 6,000 installations in the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...

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One of the last Maestro I systems is at the Museum of Information Technology at Arlington.

Origins

Early programming processes relied on entering code and test data in paper tape or punched cards. After finishing the punching, the programmer would feed the tape and/or the cards in the computer. The introduction of the IBM 3270 terminals together with IBM’s

ISPF In computing, Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) is a software product for many historic IBM mainframe operating systems and currently the z/OS and z/VM operating systems that run on IBM mainframes. It includes a screen editor, th ...

(Interactive System Productivity Facility) constituted a real improvement. The text editor that was integrated in ISPF allowed source code for programs to be entered in real time. The editor was controlled with commands, line editing and function keys. ISPF required entering code a page at a time, decreasing the immediacy of feedback; Maestro aimed to solve this by feeding each keystroke directly to the CPU. Harald Wieler, copartner of Softlab Munich, developed the first prototype of the system, then named PET, in 1974 based on the Philips X1150 data collection system, originally a

Four-Phase Systems Four-Phase Systems was a computer company, founded by Lee Boysel and others, which built one of the earliest computers using semiconductor main memory and MOS LSI logic. The company was incorporated in February 1969 and had moderate commercial ...

IV/70 from the USA. Wieler was previously the architect of the operating system development for mainframes for

Radio Corporation of America The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Com ...

and Siemens. The development of Maestro was co-funded by the German government, with the objective of creating a hardware and software programming tool rentable for 1000

Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...

a month, about the same as a one family house in the Munich area at the time. The first US customer was the Boeing Company, the aerospace and Defense Corporation with 7 systems. The biggest purchaser became the Bank of America who ordered 24 Maestro-computers with 576 terminals for its 10.000 programmers in their San Francisco computing center. Softlab founded a US branch which sold about 100 Maestro systems with some 2000 terminals in the US.Der Spiegel, Jan. 17, 1983, page 71

Technology

Hardware The basic system was a "key-to-disc" data entry system. Historical predecessors were "key-to-tape" systems such as the Mohawk Data Recorder, Olympia Multiplex 80 and Philips X1100. Maestro used the Philips (Apeldoorn, the Netherlands) X1150 Data Entry system, which was built on a Four-Phase (Cupertino, California) IV/70 processor. A typical configuration at the time of introduction was: * System with 96-192 KB

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* 6-24 (dumb) terminals * 10- 80 MB disc * Magnetic tape * Line printer (various types and models were supported) * Data communication connection The hardware evolved over time: the Four-Phase IV/70 processor was replaced by the more powerful Four-Phase IV/90 system and more terminals, memory and disc capacity could be supported. The base Philips X1150 Data Entry system was rebranded as Philips P7000 Distributed Processing System as significant additional functionality was added.

Software

The operating system was a proprietary Four-Phase Disc Operating System (rebranded by Philips) which supported the usual components at that time: text editor, assembler, various compilers, and linkage editor. The Four-Phase software offer consisted of packages for: * Data Entry (key-to-disc) * 3270 emulation * 3270 emulation with programming facilities ** This unique package allowed the user to include local programming to off-load the mainframe * COBOL The original PET/Maestro software made extensive use of existing libraries from the above packages.

References

External links

* Christiane Floyd https://web.archive.org/web/20071018125442/http://swt-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/people/cfl.html * Peter Schnupp to the story of Maestro

* IEEE History Center

Ernst Denert Interview (29 June 1993)

- Museum of Information Technology at Arlington - Four Phase

Four Phase System a multi-terminal display- processing system Integrated development environments, * * 1975 software