The Ferranti Sirius Computer

Sirius followed Pegasus and was intended to be Ferranti's `commercial' as opposed to `scientific' computer. Its basic structure was BCD (bibary coded decimal) rather than binary.

Pegasus used valves (vauum tubes) but Sirius used transistors and so was smaller and had a lower power consumption. Neither computer used core memory but used magnetostrictive delay lines.

Autocode

The high(ish) level language on Sirius was the Autocode, the same as that used on Pegasus, itself essentially Tony Brooker's manchester auocode, see details here.

Emulator and Compiler

I did some work on an Autocode compiler with Fortran as the target language. For anyone interested the code is here. To run the compiled program you will need the perm.

More interestingly I have a JavaScript autocode interpreter whichich you can run from here. This will work in Mozilla but not in Internet Explorer (which is unsafe for scripts anyway.)

Programs

Flash program scanned, retyped.
Distillation program, first page scanned.

Documentation

Intoduction to the Sirius Computer (pdf 2Mb)
Ferranti document including instruction set.
Advantages of the Sirius Computer (pdf 3Mb)
Similar to above but a bit more.
Sirius Autocode Manual