List of Archived Posts

2006 Newsgroup Postings (07/07 - 07/27)

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Linux mainframe game machine

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Google Architecture

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

RCA Spectra 70/25: Another Mystery Computer?

Old IBM protocol IBM 1006

On the 370/165 and the 360/85

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

Improving 360 Addressing

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

Key exchange

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

The very first text editor

The very first text editor

History: How did Forth get its stacks?

Linux - Our Saving Grace?

sorting

Identity Management Best Practices

Tek 4010, info and prices

Why is zSeries so CPU poor?

MTS, Emacs, and... WYLBUR?

Any resources on VLIW?

sorting

Why is z series so CPU poor?

Any resources on VLIW?

Any resources on VLIW?

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

stacks: sorting

stacks: sorting

the more things change, the more things stay the same

the more things change, the more things stay the same

MD5 for z/OS?

The very first text editor

AT&T Labs vs. Google Labs - R&D History

The very first text editor

Copy protection

System/360 Prototype

How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:33:54 -0600

eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:

I don't know about you guys but the 1403 printer I used barely had the
ability to print lower case (TN train).  I did see a 3800 later.

1403 was from 1401 comptuer and adopted for 360. there were several
1403 models. 3211 printer followed the 1403 ... before the 3800 came
along in the mid-70s. part of the issue was that datacenters sometimes
only loaded TN train for special print jobs ... since the
non-lower-case chain would print much faster (i.e. the characters were
repeated more often ... so the latency for specific character slug to
come under hammer was less).

following from old posting mentioning 3800
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#48 1403 pirnters

note that this was much more "personal" laser printer. from the
mid-70s, there had been the 3800 datacenter laser printer ...  which
had paper feed rates measured in feet per second. some datacenters
bypassed the boxed paper feed ... and had huge paper rolls feeding
directly into 3800 (4-5 ft in diameter). this shouldn't be confused
with the later 3820 laser printer ... which was desktop unit.

minor ref:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV3103.html

from above:

The IBM 3800 laser-electrophotographic printer of 1975 had a speed of
20,000 lines a minute in preparing bank statements, premium notices
and other high-volume documents. Laser beam paths were altered
millions of times a second and were reflected from an 18-sided mirror
that spun at 12,000 revolutions per minute. (VV3103)

... snip ...

some pictures:
http://ukcc.uky.edu/~ukccinfo/ibm3800.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1976.html
http://pw1.netcom.com/~zmoq/pages/ibm370.htm

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 09:14:15 -0600

ArarghMail606NOSPAM writes:

Not entirely.  The 1403 came in a bunch of different models.  I don't
know, but don't think that the models that could be hung on a 14xx
could be hung on a 360.  From the 1400 series books that I have, the
1403 models 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 could be used on 1401/40/60 system.  The
only 1403 I ever saw on a 360 was a 1403-N1, connected via a 2848?
2484? control unit.

My first student job was to port a 1401 MPIO program to 360/30. MPIO
did the unit record (cards) to tape and tape to unit record
(print/punch) front end for the univ. 709. For a while they had both
the 1401 and the 360/30 side-by-side ... and then they removed the
real 1401 and would switch the 360/30 back-and-forth between 360 mode
and 1401 hardware emulation mode.

controller reference:
http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/engineer/comphist/ibm_nos.htm

from above:

2803
    Tape Control Unit for S/360.

    Used to attach 2401 drives.

2821
    Unit Record Preipheral Control Unit for S/360. Used to attach 1403
    and 2540 to multiplexer channel. Typically, the 1052 console
    typewriter would be at I/O address 009, the printer would be at
    00F and a second printer at 00E.

2822
    Tape reader control unit used to attach 2671 to S/360.

2841
    DASD Control Unit for S/360.

    Used to attach 2303 drum, 2311 disk and 2321 Data Cell.

2848
    Display cluster controller for 2260 display heads.

    Used an acoustic delay line to hold the screen buffer. The
    character generator used a magnetic core ROM to hold the character
    dot matrix lookup table.

... snip ...

1401 reference:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP1401.html

In the above, it talks about 1403 operating at 600 lines/minute. I
think this is 1403-7(?) ... it still had manual cover lift and the
paper box feed was exposed.

The 360/30 had a 1403-N1 that operated at 1100 lines/minute, and had a
hydraulic lift cover ... that completely enclosed the paper box feed.
The top of the 1403-N1 was convenient height for placing things
(coffee cups, card trays, etc), however, the 1403-N1 had this habit of
automatically raising the cover when it ran out of paper. This top was
hinged on the back so as the cover raised, the top went from
horizontal to nearly veritical position.

The univ. 360/30 had 1052-7 operators console at address '009', the
2540 card reader at address '00C', the 2540 punch at address '00D',
and the 1403 at address '00E'.

For the MPIO port, I got to design and implement my own stand-alone
monitor, interrupt handlers, device drivers, storage management,
task management, etc.

previous 1403 post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#0 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

random past posts mentioning MPIO port:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#15 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#23 MTS & LLMPS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#53 How Do the Old Mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#21 IBM 1401's claim to fame
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#9 ** Old Vintage Operating Systems **
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#15 S/360 operating systems geneaology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#59 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#79 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#31 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#13 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#15 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#47 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#48 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#3 The problem with installable operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#19 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#29 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#30 Hardware support of "new" instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#8 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#12 Which monitor for  Fujitsu Micro 16s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#51 Oldest running software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#49 can a program be run withour main memory?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#39 spool
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#40 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#66 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#54 12-2-9 REP & 47F0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#52 Software for IBM 360/30
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#3 Data communications over telegraph circuits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#2 Mount a tape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#43 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#64 Large Computer Rescue

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 09:33:24 -0600

eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:

But IBM was more a set of fiefdoms back then as it is now.
It's harder for newer gens. to think about renting computers
as they were harder to maintain back then for their expense.
Security even back then was minimal despite what Lynn says.
Computers weren't given host or node names back then.

different operating systems were structured in different ways ... most
of the "batch" systems tended to have minimal security, in part
because there was little direct access to the actual machine by the
people using them.

the time-sharing systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#timeshare

tended to have somewhat more robust security ... and, in fact, saw
some uses in organizations that tended to have somewhat stringent
security issues.  this has a reference to some use from the late 60s
and early 70s:
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.cfm

I've repeated several times the effort at the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

where the "unannounced" 370 virtual memory was emulated on the science
center's 360/67. this had some number of issues since the corporation
treated the unannounced 370 virtual memory as extremely sensitive
corporate information ... and the science center's 360/67 was also
providing online service to a number of non-employees in the boston
area, including some number of students from various boston area
institutes of higher education (bu, mit, harvard, etc).

another activity was that in the initial port apl\360 to cms\apl on
the cambridge system,
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

it opened up the APL workspace size from something like 32kbytes
(real) to several megabytes (virtual).  the corporate hdqtrs people
found it attractive for doing business modeling and had the absolutely
most sensitive of all corporate information loaded on the cambridge
machine so they could do business modeling remotely from corporate
hdqtrs. Being able to provide the highest level of data protection was
a real issue ... especially with all the non-employee and student
access to the same machine concurrently.

misc. past posts mentioning the effort virtualizing unannounced 370
virtual memory ... which was also one of the first distributed
development projects using the internal network (between cambridge and
endicott) ... and of course the cambridge host name was cambrdige:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#0 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#31 determining memory size
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#74 DASD Architecture of the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#50 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#17 DOS/360: Forty years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#50 virtual 360/67 support in cp67
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#7 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#5 3380-3390 Conversion - DISAPPOINTMENT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#21 Virtual Virtualizers

past posts mentioning the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:07:45 -0600

Dave Jones wrote:

http://blogs.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/07/not_your_dads_m.html#more

While z/VM isn't explicitly mentioned in the blog entry, I do suspect that
the Linux images the gamers are using are VM hosted. Who was it that first
ran StarTrek on VM or TSO? I guess they were really ahead of their time.  :-)

well here is a recent posts about some early security issues:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#2 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

and one of the references from the above:
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.cfm

another early mention about the origins of the web and a couple gov.
installations (including the first web site outside of europe)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#55 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

and of course there is the story about the CERN CMS/TSO bake-off from
circa 1974 and the resulting report to SHARE. It turned out that copies
of the SHARE report available internally inside of the corporation got
labeled "Confidential - Restricted" (i.e. need to know only) ... since
they wanted to limit employee access to the CMS/TSO comparison information.

For games, how 'bout Adventure?

Tymshare was one of the early cp/cms commercial time-sharing service bureaus
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#timeshare

and they started offering "vmshare" online computer conferencing to
SHARE in the mid-70s ... archive can be found here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

I was dealing with tymshare on regular basis ... including cloning the
vmshare files and making them available on various internal systems ...
including HONE ... which was the cp/cms based online service of all
marketing, sales, and field people world-wide
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

In any case, tymshare had port of adventure from pdp10 to cms ... and I
acquired a copy and made it available internally ... which resulted in
some amount of problems. I would distribute the executable internally
... but i would also send the source to anybody that could prove they
had acquired all points.

misc. past post mentioning adventure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#56 Earliest memories of "Adventure"   & "Trek"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#83 "Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#84 "Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#169 Crowther (pre-Woods) "Colossal Cave"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#72 Microsoft boss warns breakup could worsen virus problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#33 Adventure Games (Was: Navy orders supercomputer)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#14 adventure ... nearly 20 years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#12 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#57 The next big things that weren't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#46 Any DEC 340 Display System Doco ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#66 TGV in the USA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#69 IBM system 370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#40 The real history of computer architecture: the short form
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#34 Playing games in mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#57 Text Adventures (which computer was first?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#2 Text Adventures (which computer was first?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#7 Text Adventures (which computer was first?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#49 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#57 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#0 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#1 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#2 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#4 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#38 Adventure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#56 Xah Lee's Unixism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#20 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#45 History of performance counters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#38 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#18 Question about Dungeon game on the PDP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#41 Title screen for HLA Adventure? Need help designing one
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#15 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#25 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#28 Fast action games on System/360+?

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:11:47 -0600

eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:

I think the character set would have been called pica type (12 pt).
I never dealt with the ALA until the 90s, but was aware of them and have
attended ALA meetings.

I can rememebr UCSB (ARPA site host #3 because of Glenn Culler) before
and after the TN train.  I used it for Club mailing list gummed labels.
That was mid-70s.  I think I saw my first 3800 when I was working for
JPL located at Caltech part time and Tech had a 3800, but I never used it.

Gary Starkweather (ex-PARC, Apple, now MS) gave the first Museum talk
at Moffett on the 1st laser printer and a 30 Mb/s data link using Edmund
Scientific parts.  He mentioned the history leading up to the IBM 3800.
I am not certain we taped that, but that was an awesome talk.

The only people who knew about fonts in the computer world in 1975 were
basically PARC and Bell Labs.  Knuth had not yet started TeX and
Metafont (I just got a note from him in Oxford).  People don't realize
that word processing and document processing weren't wide spread in that era.
Those guys produced very impressive papers at that time which made every
one else in CS jealous.  Long stories there.

2741 had a number of different fonts as different typeballs ... cms
script ... originally runoff-like "dot" commands ... but
then GML
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#sgml

was invented at the science center in 1969 and GML support was added
to cms script. when different font was specified in a script document
... it had feature that would pause the 2741 to allow the user to
change the typeball.

Some number of final draft quality documents were produced on 2741
using (new) film ribbon ... rather than standard fabric ribbon (film
ribbon resulted in much sharper edge in the typed characters).

3800 came out in 1975 ... previous post reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#0 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

and 3800 reference here:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV3103.html

and essentially script/gml stuff that had been used for 2741 typeball
font specification, was mapped to 3800 font capability.

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 17:51:52 -0600

Dave Jones wrote:

http://blogs.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/07/not_your_dads_m.html#more

While z/VM isn't explicitly mentioned in the blog entry, I do suspect that
the Linux images the gamers are using are VM hosted. Who was it that first
ran StarTrek on VM or TSO? I guess they were really ahead of their time.  :-)

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe:
Little Iron

... part II:

note that vm/4341 saw big explosion in use ... small to medium size
customers as well as leading edge use for things like departmental
computers ... with some companies ordering them in quantities of 100s.

there was a corresponding explosion internally in vm/4341s which helped
contribute to there being nearly 1000 nodes on the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

on 1/1/83 ... which was the great switch-over of the arpanet to
internetworking protocol.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

at that point there was supposedly something like 100 networking IMPs
and close to 255 nodes ... however possibly half of those "nodes" may
have been terminal server IMPs (aka telecommunication control unit). a
couple posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#40 Arpa address
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#42 Arpa address
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#29 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting

and for really little iron ... recent post mentioning xt/370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#56 DCSS

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 23:44:41 -0600

Ed Finnell wrote:

There were the 9370's as node machines. We had one for our
supercomputer node for a little while before the big-I got
commercial. Then we got a 3090-400e and darned if it didn't have four
of the buggers inside the 9032...

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#5 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

around 1980, a project started in pok to use a 4331 running a highly
customized vm/370 release 6 as the service processor ... i.e. ios3270
was used for the service processor menu screens. by the time the 3090
shipped, the "service processor" was upgraded to a pair of 4361s.

misc. past posts mentioning 3090 service processors were pair of 4361s:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#41 IBM 4361 CPU technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#108 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#51 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#26 Superduper computers--why RISC not 390?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#2 Alpha:  an invitation to communicate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#13 Parity - why even or odd (was Re: Load Locked (was: IA64 running out of steam))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#45 VM and/or Linux under OS/390?????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#32 First DESKTOP Unix Box?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#5 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#19 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#79 Fw: HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#7 What is microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#10 What is microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#59 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#40 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#10 Dyadic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#10 RISCs too close to hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#27 IBM 3705 and UC.5
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#37 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#51 History of performance counters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#0 EREP , sense ... manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#2 Mount a tape

Linux mainframe game machine

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Linux mainframe game machine....
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 23:48:40 -0600

Tom Duebush wrote:

I had a Star Trek game written in PL/1 that ran under TSO, back in the
'74 time frame.

I learned a lot.  Not just gaming, but how to limit the number of users
based on processor utilization.  How to keep everyone from copying my
load module (the systems people calculated that, effectively, a couple
3330-11 packs were full with copies of my game.  So I had to make the
"copies", unusable (just checked what library it was called from).

Ahhh, to have that much free time again....
Now a days, I guess that is called.....retirement<G>

wikipedia star trek entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28text_game%29

star trek history page
http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/star_trek.html

PDP1 had a starwars game (on graphics tube). somebody at the cambridge
science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

ported it in the late 60s to 2250m4 (i.e. 2250 with 1130). two player
game with the keyboard split into left and right with keyboard keys used
for controls. my kids use to come in on weekends to play it.

postings in similar thread on bit.listserv.ibm-main
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#5 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#6 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
CC: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU>
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 07:46:12 -0600

Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

around 1980, a project started in pok to use a 4331 running a highly
customized vm/370 release 6 as the service processor ... i.e. ios3270
was used for the service processor menu screens. by the time the 3090
shipped, the "service processor" was upgraded to a pair of 4361s.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#6 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

for a little ios3270 drift, an ios3270 version of the green card was
done; here is a crude conversion from ios3270 to html
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html

for some of the ios3270 description see
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#greencard

I had added the sense bytes section
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#17

Real green cards didn't have sense byte section ... but the 360/67 "blue
cards" do (I still have one) ... but didn't include 3380 or A220
information ... see the sense byte section.

I got involved with writing a drivers for HYPERChannel and A220 as
channel extension circa 1980 for Santa Teresa lab. They were rapidly
growing and bursting at the seems ... so 300 people from IMS were
being moved to offsite, leased bldgs (bldgs 96 & 97). They were
use to CMS local channel attach 3270s (tso and sna/vtam local and
remote were found to be pretty intolerable). HYPERChannel/A220
provided for channel extension over T1 microwave link.

there was T3 collins digital radio between bldg. 90/stl and bldg. 12
on the san jose plant site ... via a repeater tower on the hill above
stl.  the roof of bldg. 12 then had line-of-site to roof of bldg. 96
...  bldg. 12 then had line-of-site to roof of bldg. 96. A T1
sub-channel was created on the T3 link to bldg. 12 ... and then a T1
microwave tail-circuit installed between bldg. 12 and bldg. 97.

The 300 relocated IMS people then got nearly cms "local" 3270
performance from their remote location to STL.

I then used HYPERChannel for computer-to-computer links in high-speed
data transport project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I also wrote the RFC1044 driver (in my standard RFC summary, clicking on
the ".txt=nnn" field retrieves the actual RFC)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx3.htm#1044

for the standard mainframe tcp/ip product.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

because of various issues, the standard mainframe tcp/ip product would
saturate a full 3090 processor peaking out at
44kbytes/sec. thruput. In some tuning tests we did at cray research
between a cray machine and a 4341-clone, rfc1044 support was
sustaining 1mbyte/sec thruput using only a modest amount of the
4341-clone.

misc. past posts mentioning ios3270:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#41 IBM 4361 CPU technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#60 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#61 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#108 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#8 Theo Alkema
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#9 Theo Alkema
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#5 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#79 Fw: HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#25 Early computer games
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#40 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#20 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#32 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#12 Why are there few viruses for UNIX/Linux systems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#10 RISCs too close to hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#63 creat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#14 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#39 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#43 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#45 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#47 What is written on the keys of an ICL Hand Card Punch?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#0 EREP , sense ... manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#15 S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#2 Mount a tape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#50 TSO and more was: PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#51 other cp/cms history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#62 Large Computer Rescue
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#5 Track capacity?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#8 Track capacity?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#13 Track capacity?

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:22:31 -0600

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

ROTFLMAO.  Oh, you cruel, cruel person.  They didn't have
address break to find the last point.  That is how Real
Men with Real Gear do it.  :-)))

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe:
Little Iron

well, even tho it was fortran source, some miscreants disassembled the
executable and found the secret to get around the first shift 100-move
limit (and various other things)

cms users also had access to trace command that included support for
370 PER (program event recording) hardware. you could single step,
address-compare-stop (i.e. run until execution hit a specific
address), stop on specific storage allocation, etc.

one of the first persons that got all the points (and the source),
ported to PLI and first did a 450 point version and then a 600(?)
point version.

recent announcement mentioning latest version of the trace command
and support for the latest version of PER hardware
http://www-03.ibm.com/software/os/zseries/catalog/zswcatalog.nsf/Content/zVM_ondemandbusinesswithzvm?OpenDocument
http://developer.osdl.org/dev/robustmutexes/src/fusyn.hg/Documentation/s390/Debugging390.txt

overview of current trace command
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/HCSE4B11/2.558?SHELF=HCSH2A80&DT=20060516125606

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:54:23 -0600

jmfbahciv writes:

Was this feature available to the OS developers when they debugged
the monitor?  Could the set a trace and run in production mode
and stopping when the conditions were met?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#9 Not Your Dad's Mainframe:

check the command guide ... the trace instruction was "class g"
... general/all users ... unrestricted access.

since virtual machine capability was also provided, it was a standard
development thru-out the corporation to do OS and monitor development
in virtual machines and use the capability. it was common to run
production and test in parallel. this has also evolved into LPARs
where lots of the virtual machine capability has moved into the
hardware.

now if you go back to 360 (& 360/67) ... 360s didn't have PER ...  so
you couldn't set up control registers under program control for stop
on instruction address match, stop on storage alteration, single step,
etc. However, the machine had some of those capabilities on the front
panel under manual control.

so there was broad spectrum. if it was pure batch ... there wouldn't
be a lot of disruption ... but if your production batch system was
supporting online ... like a couple hundred thousand (or more) ATM
machines ... it wasn't likely that they were going to look very kindly
on such service interruptions.

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:50:41 -0600

"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" writes:

Well I had exposure, access, to an IBM MVT product called TESTTRAN
which was sort of available on our system with assembler F and , if
I remember correctly, Fortran G, both in batch and TSO.  One had to
compile/assemble with the TEST option, which produced and kept a
variables symbol table and a statement location table.  One could
then set breakpoints, examine program values etc. etc.  But it was
very awkward to use, badly documented, and buggy.  When I asked I
was told that it wasn't developed because it wasn't used. Which I
considered to be a very much a chicken and egg kind of argument.

I had a little exposure to TEST under our CMS systems. But as we
didn't really support VM/CMS too well at TUCC&UNC I can't comment
much except that I didn't find out much about what it was capable
of.

huge amount of OS/360 TESTRAN was outputing all the (12-2-9) "SYM"
cards as part of assemble/compile ... so that you effectively could
support symbolic debugging. I don't know anybody that actually used it
... I remember having a TESTRAN manual at one point and running with
option to generate SYM cards (just to see what they looked like)
... but never actually using it.

old post that has mention of "SYM" cards (as well as formats of most of
the other 12-2-9 cards):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#14 IBM Model Numbers

PER and TRACE command were initially "machine" level stuff ... hex
addresses, hex locations ... etc .. not real symbolic stuff.

I wrote a debug tool in REX(X) called DUMPRX that eventually was
used extensively internally and at one point by nearly all the (vm/cms)
field support people
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#dumprx

that had some amount of symbolic capability

this has comment about locate command and symbolics (and testran) ...
from 2001:
http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0103&L=vmesa-l&D=0&P=39641

I had originally done "pageable" CP kernel function for cp67 3.1 the
summer I did a stint with BCS in Seattle (i was still undergraduate)
...  which didn't get released in product until vm370. Part of the
thing that I did as part of the pageable CP kernel function was to
capture the loader table symbolics (all the external entries) and
write it out as part of the kernel image. this feature including the
complete loader table symbolics as part of the (pageable) kernel image
wasn't included in the pageable kernel stuff that went out in vm370
release 1. As a result, there were periodic games played with a
compiled module frequently called DMKSYM ... that had symbolics for
some amount of kernel external entries.

however, when i got around to doing dumprx, i recreated the capture of
the complete loader table symbolics as part of saving the kernel
image. Then the "locate" command was changed to use the complete
loader table entries saved out in the pageable kernel (instead of
DMKSYM) ... and other things were enhanced to utilize the actual
loader table entries.

standard vm/cms postmortem kernel dump processing had facility of
importing an image of the loader printed output. I modified the kernel
dump process to initialize the dump image with a copy of the complete
loader table image (from saving the original kernel image) as part of
system startup (so postmortem dumps always had complete loader table
information).

....

a little search engine use turns up a number of TESTRAN references,
this has title of "A Survey of current debugging concepts"
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690026235_1969026235.pdf

it looks somewhat like a cms/script document printed on 1403 with TN
train (some of the rendering looks wavy ... which might be scanning
the original, if not, then it isn't likely to have been 1403 output).
It is dated August, 1969 ... and it has section 3-34 "TESTRAN, for IBM
System/360"

I now some number of gov. installations had cp67 (and cms, and script,
etc) in 69 ... but I don't know if Goddard had one(?).

The above does list TESTRAN reference as:

IBM Corporation. IBM System/360 Operating System TESTRAN.
    Systems Reference Library. Form C28-6648-0 File
    Number S360-37. February 1967

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#5 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#5 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#8 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#9 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#10 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

Google Architecture

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Google Architecture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:39:17 -0600

Inside the Google-Plex
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/07/10/216249.shtml
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1985040,00.asp

from above:

Google runs on hundreds of thousands of servers-by one estimate, in
excess of 450,000-racked up in thousands of clusters in dozens of data
centers around the world.

... snip ...

also ..

How Google Works
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1985576,00.asp

past refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#4 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#6 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#7 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#8 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#24 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#26 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#27 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#28 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#31 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#32 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#33 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#37 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#43 Google Architecture

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:32:46 -0600

for afc n.g. readers ... a reply from somebody that appeared in the
vmesa-l mailing list:

I never used TESTTRAN, but the VP/CSS debugger used the SYM cards, and
that debugger was used heavily until the early to mid 90s.  We ported
moat of it to CMS, but never did all of the work to make it run in XA
virtual machines so we when started to use XA and XC virtual machines
for our developing work, we had to use TRACE and PER.

...

vp/css is the name of the ncss system ... their version of cp67
(several people left science center and joined ncss summer of 68):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#timeshare

some recent postings mentioning ncss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#39 another blast from the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#35 PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#36 PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#37 PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#39 PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#50 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

ncss reference at the computer history webserver
http://www.computerhistory.org/corphist/view.php?s=select&cid=4

much longer description of ncss:
http://www.computerhistory.org/corphist/documents/doc-422fd82791f26.pdf

RCA Spectra 70/25: Another Mystery Computer?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RCA Spectra 70/25: Another Mystery Computer?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:40:30 -0600

ArarghMail607NOSPAM writes:

I think that was used for the 360/370 card that plugged into a PC.
AT/370 or some such.

code named "washington" ... initially announced as xt/370 ... then
made available for at/370 ... recent post mentioning washington.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#56 DCSS

above reference also has lots of past URLs mentioning the machine

Old IBM protocol IBM 1006

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Old IBM protocol IBM 1006
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,bit.listserv.vmesa-l,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:41:15 -0600

Charles Mills wrote:

Here's a good start:
http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0509&L=ibmvm&P=8109

note in the above referenced archive ... it mentions transmission as
reverse inverted

• ALC is transmitted "reverse inverted". For example, capital A is
0x31, but it's transmitted as 0x73. This makes it a major PITA to
read off the wire.

my off-repeated story of doing our own mainframe terminal controller
at the univ.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

and somebody writing an article blaming four of us for the mainframe
pcm controller business.

the ibm mainframe channel interface had been reverse engineered and a
channel interface controller card built for an interdata/3

the second or third bug we encountered was passing ascii from the
interdata/3 (programmed to emulate 2702 over the channel interface to
the mainframe) ... showed data was coming in all garbage. it took some
time to realize that the linescanner on the interdata/3 was taking the
leading bit off the line and storing it it in the high order bit
position of the byte ... while the linescanner in the 2702 was taking
the leading bit off the line and storing it in the low order bit
position of the byte.

as a result "ascii" arriving in the mainframe memory from a 2702
(linescanner) was "bit-reversed" ... and the ibm translate tables were
taking that into account.

On the 370/165 and the 360/85

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: On the 370/165 and the 360/85
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:02:30 -0600

seewebsite@excxn.aNOSPAMb.cdn.invalid (John Savard) writes:

IBM took the 370/168, and implemented it in newer technologies, to
produce the IBM 3033 computer.

I knew the AS/400 evolved out of the FS project, but hadn't remembered
the details - that the System/38 was the predecessor of the AS/400.

It is interesting that the later IBM 3081 was *also* an FS outgrowth;
the high-end FS prototype performing so well when 'emulating' a 370 that
it became IBM's top-of-the-line 370.

not exactly 360/85 info (which I have no direct info)

there is some folklore that the pok group did 165->168->3033->3090

and the kingston group did 155->158->3081

along the way there was the 3031 and 3032 (in addition to the 3033).

the 303x line was differentiated by the "channel director" ... the 158
had integrated channels with the machine engine shared between 370
microcode and channel microcode. for the 303x, they packaged the 158
engine w/o the 370 microcode ... just the integrated channel microcode
as the channel director. the 370/158 was then repackaged as the 3031
working with a channel director (i.e. effectively now a dual processor
with two engines ... however one with only the 370 microcode and one
with only the channel microcode). the 168 was repackaged as the 3032
to work with the channel director.

the 3033 started out as 168 wiring diagram mapped to denser and faster
chip technology ... but only using the same number of circuits per
chip as used in the 168 (meaning only about 20percent faster). because
of competition and other issues, there was eventually some rework of
the logic to use some of the additional circuits per chip ...
eventually the 3033 was 50percent faster than 168 (approx. 4.5mips
instead of 3.0 mips).

part of the 3033 folklore was that it was an extremely hurryup project
after FS had been killed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

since so much corporate effort had been diverted to FS during that
period ... that there was very little in the 370 pipeline (i.e. FS
doctrine was that FS was going to completely replace 370).

the 3081 architecture code name was 811 for nov78 ... extending 370
architecture to 31bit virtual addressing (not that the 360/67
previously had both 24-bit and 32-bit virtual addressing) and misc
other features ... no FS features (the other stuff is pure rumor)
... just extending the 155/158 microcoded lineage to faster technology
(while 165/168 lineage was much more hardwired).

The FS folklore is that the final nail in the FS coffin was a study by
the houston science center that showed if FS architecture was
implemented on the fastest, currently available technology (370/195),
that 370/195 applications would have thruput of about 370/145
(somewhere around a factor of 20-30 times slowdown). optimized codes
would peak around 10mips on 195 ... a lot of more conventional stuff
ran around 5mips (no branch prediction or speculative execution,
branches just drained the pipeline ... except for special case of
looping within the pipeline buffer). 370/145 was in the .3mip to .5mip
range.

3081 was going to be a multiprocessor offering only. initial 3081D had
approx. two five mip engines. later 3081K had pair of approx. 7mip
engines (14mips aggregate). because of some operating systems not
having multiprocessor support (primarily TPF, the old airline control
program), they were eventually forced to ship a single processor 3083.
as an aside, prior to 3081, multiprocessors had been totally
independent systems that got lashed together ... but could be
separated and run as independent single processor complexes. they
differentiated 3081 as being "dyadic" ... while it had two processors
... it couldn't be separated into two independent single processor
systems (although there was 3084 which was essnentially a pair of
3081s).

a recent posting including an old discussion about some of the differences
between the predominately microcode 3081 and the much more hardwired
3090 ("trout" in the following refers to 3090):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#27 virtual memory

misc. past postings mentioning 3083/tpf:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#65 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#9 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#37 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#13 LINUS for S/390
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#9 IBM Doesn't Make Small MP's Anymore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#83 HONE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#67 Tweaking old computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#28 TPF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#58 AMP  vs  SMP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#30 One Processor is bad?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#45 Saturation Design Point
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#7 Dyadic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#35 Computer-oriented license plates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#44 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#22 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#16 Performance and Capacity Planning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#55 54 Processors?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#7 Performance of zOS guest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#38 MVCIN instruction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#5 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#30 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#32 Old Hashing Routine

misc. past postings mentioning 303x channel director:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#20 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#69 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#7 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#12 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#11 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#3 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#36 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#7 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#59 AMP  vs  SMP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#39 Flex Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#9 Dyadic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#10 Dyadic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#65 System/360 40 years old today
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#50 Chained I/O's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#7 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#26 CAS and LL/SC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#62 Misuse of word "microcode"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#40 Software for IBM 360/30
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#1 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#30 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#22 MVCIN instruction

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:41:50 -0600

Brian Inglis writes:

Ways of gaming the system still has to be taken into careful
consideration for e-commerce applications, to ensure that even if
internal policies and business rules are disseminated (such as by
employee moves) no customer can take unfair advantage of the system.
Of course, mistakes made by one customer, taken advantage of by
another customer, is considered fair usage.

I had to do some fundamental stuff in the resource manager to
avoid users gaming the system.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

there is slightly related issue running recently about sox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#35 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#36 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#38 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#39 Interesting bit of a quote

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 01:15:23 -0600

Brian Inglis writes:

They also sell/sold PC channel adapter cards: not sure how they
packaged the bus and tag cable connections; they were big and the
cables were not quite as rigid as thick wire ethernet!

adapter cable came out the back which then had connectors for bus&tag.
PCCA card done in YKT ... emulated channel controller
interface. couple past posts mentiong PCCA card from mid-80s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#2 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#17 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design

an "industrial/rack" pc/at with the pcca card was then sold as 8232
for mainframe tcp/ip support. but the way that ip was done for it, it
required a lot of mainframe care&feeding ... it would burn a 3090
processor getting 44kbytes/sec.

I had added rfc 1044 support to mainframe tcp/ip support and in some
tuning work at cray research between 4341-clone and cray machine got
1mbyte/sec sustained using only a modest amount of the 4341.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

when i was an undergraduate, we had reverse engineered the ibm channel
interface and built our on channel interface card for interdata/3 as
part of emulating 2702 telecommunication controller. lots of past
posts mentioning building plug compatible controller
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

Improving 360 Addressing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Improving 360 Addressing
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:57:18 -0600

Brian Inglis writes:

R13-R15 were used in the calling sequence.  R0 and R1 were
conventions used for some functions and system calls.

my trusty quick&dirty rendition of the old ios3270 "green card"

call/save/return conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#50

the "yy" register in the above save area chaining coding example
is frequently R12.

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:08:08 -0600

Morten Reistad writes:

The concept of the batch job has been reborn, but in a timesharing
cloak, as a "cron job". It is automated execution, but runs within
the context of a timesharing system.

But all systems nowadays have an interactive or realtime flavour.
The users, and/or the physical environment they serve demand that.

over time, it wasn't just the infrastructure that automated the start
of an application ... but the whole paradigm that automated the care &
feeding of an application during its execution.

i've recently mentioned having done a one week jad with the old
taligent group ... about what it would take to add support for 7x24,
industrial strength data processing.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#20 On Leadership - tech teams and the RTFM factor

in the past, I've claimed that it can take 4-10 times the effort to
transform a well debugged "interactive" application into a "service"
application (that is capable of providing services and running
unattended in 7x24 operation w/o human intervention) ... as it took to
implement and debug the basic straight-line application.

slightly related to past postings mentioning assurance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance

old posts mentioning 4-10 times the effort to turn an application
into an industrial strength service
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#75 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#91 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#93 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#24 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#26 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#11 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#62 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#15 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#36 S/360 undocumented instructions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#37 The BASIC Variations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#8 Mars Rover Not Responding
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#48 Automating secure transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#20 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#49 "Perfect" or "Provable" security both crypto and non-crypto?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#23 Systems software versus applications software definitions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#63 Systems software versus applications software definitions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#64 Systems software versus applications software definitions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#40 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#26 Data communications over telegraph circuits

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:00:29 -0600

Joe Morris writes:

A way that some users could play "Beat the Clock" (does that reference
say something about my age?) was to use the disk drives as a high-resolution
timer: using a disk drive that spins at 3600 rpm (i.e., 60 rps), start
a write operation sized to take just less than 1/60 second.  When the
write operation completes, set up a timer for 1/60 second and issue
a WAIT.  On an S/360 with the idiotic 60-Hz timer, you have done all
of your calculations between timer ticks, and are thus charged for no
CPU time.  If you aren't using CPU time you stay at the head of the
dispatch queue.

360/67 had high resolution time so that the low-order bit tic'ed at
about 300*256 times/sec, approx every 13mics ... as opposed to tic'ing
one of the higher order bits at lower resulution. the period of the
32bit location 80 timer stayed the same (approx 15.5hrs).

there were other ways that they gamed the system ... but i closed just
about all of them ... initially with cp67 infrastructure rewrite i did
as an undergraduate ... recent comment in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#17

and then later (when most of it was dropped in the cp67 to vm370
morph), re-introduced it for vm370 as the resource manager (11may76)
... recent 11may76 reference (dated 10may06):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#24

part of the infrastructure change (both cp67 and vm370) was tracking
process recent resource consumption rate (as opposed to straight
resource consumption) and adjusting execution order based on process
resource consumption rate compared to the process's target resource
consumption rate (with some finagling to handle edge conditions) ...
with fair share being the default target resource consumption rate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

for a little drift when I got into doing high-speed data transport
project (hsdt)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

i also did a rate-based implementation. my assertion has been that the
reason that window-based network implementations being much more
prevalent was because most of the platforms from that period had such
deplorable timer facilities. recent post that strayed into network
rate-based control
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#20

quick & dirty conversion of ios3270 greencard to html has details on
the 370 64bit clock/timer. the 360 "low-resolution" location 80 timer
was initially carried forward into 370 (but later dropped) ... but if
you wanted higher resolution, you had to use the new 370 64bit clock
and time facilities.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#16

the 360 32bit timer was defined at storage location 80 (x'50'),
location x'54' and location x'4C' were "undefined". cp67 (to avoid
"loosing" tics) ... saved current value at location x'54', stored a new
value at location x'54' and then did an "overlapping" move
instruction:

             mvc   x'4C'(8),x'50'

which moved the eight bytes starting at location x'50' to location
x'4C', i.e. the current timer value at x'50' was moved to x'4C' and
the new timer value at x'54' was moved to x'50', in one instruction
w/o loosing a timer tic. then the difference was calculated between
the value just moved into x'4C' and the value just previously saved
from x'54' (which would have been the previous initial timer setting)
... before overlaying x'54' with the new timer value.

In the morph from cp67 to vm370 to use the higher resolution timers
(effectively in timer registers ... not storage addressable), there
was the possibility of loosing a timer tic ... since two separate
instructions were required to save current value and then load new
value; first doing a

                STPT       xxxxx

to save the current interval timer, followed by a

                SPT        yyyyy

to load the new value.

More detailed discussion of timers from esa/390 principles of operation:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/4.6?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822

STPT, store cpu timer
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/10.47?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822

SPT, set cpu timer:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/10.36?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:18:54 -0600

ArarghMail607NOSPAM writes:

At a PPOE, that sort of sorting used to drive me crazy.  The
computer system, which I programmed, sorted customer names in strict
ASCII order.  But the office manager (who originally came from
manual systems) insisted on filing the hard copies as described
above.  It would sometimes take me 30 to 60 minutes to find a hard
copy.  And she would file company names that looked like personnel
names as the last name.  Things like "John M Smyth, & Co." under
'smith'.

in the late 70s, we were sitting around some drinking hole late one
friday night trying to think of something that would help promote
online computer use inside the company (for others than strickly
professional programmers). we came up with the idea of online
telephone book facilities (everybody looked up phone numbers).

the challenge was that the (lookup application) code had to be
implemented in less a person week and the infrastructure and
aministrative stuff was possibly another person week ... and the
ongoing support operation had to be less than one or two person days a
month (for all corporate phone books). this included periodic refresh
of original source from the original corporate site owners,
reformating and redistribution.

the typical online phone number lookup also had to be much faster than
reaching for a paper copy (of purely local numbers) on the desk.

so the brain dead was to have the phone book as a sorted file and do a
lookup using binary search. this was only border line acceptable, the
search was updated to radix search based on measured first two letter
frequency.

there are some number of issues with name representation ... and so
some rules were created for canonical name representation. then the
sort routine ... rather than directly using the name field as the sort
key ... created a derived sort key from the name field based on the
representation rules (however, all the records in the output file were
in their original input format). then of course, the lookup routine
had to convert the search argument into canonical format and also
dynmacally convert each name field to canonical format as it checked
for matches.

later we learned that there had been a corporate hdqtrs proposal for
doing a centralized online phone lookup, with dedicated datacenter,
20-30 dedicated people and initial budget of $25m. our KISS
solution decimated the corporate hdqtrs proposal.

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:03:07 -0600

krw writes:

I remember that.  The PHBs were gaga when we could look up phone
numbers in an instant.  This became a problem because they wanted
our (yet to be delivered) terminals.  That was the one application
that made it impotent for a PHB to have a terminal on his desk.
Soon after they needed the flashiest hardware to read their PROFS
email (gack!).

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#22 sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

in that period, getting a 3270 on your desk required VP approval and
the terminals requests also had to go into the fall budget plan.  then
one short period there was non-linear change ... it became known that
a couple of the senior executives had 3270s and were doing email
... and all of a sudden all executives and middle management had to
also have their 3270; which wasn't provided for in the standard budget
cycle ... management just pre-empted everybody else's 3270 in their
organization (it all of a sudden became a status symbol and the thing
to have on manager's desk).

the "PROFS" group put menu interface on some number of things and
claimed the whole thing as their own (even given awards for developing
the email processor). however, several of the items they actually
picked up from other places ... which caused some amount of
embarrassment when it was pointed out. the email processor had been a
very early, redimentary version of VMSG. when the person actually
responsible raised the issue ... there was an attempt to get the
person fired. the funny thing was not only was his initials on the
source ... but he had also included his initials in a hidden control
field of every email sent.

in any case, because of the fall planning and VP approval scenario for
terminals ... we did the business analysis that showed the three year
amortized cost for a terminal (at external customer list price, rather
than internal transfer cost) was less per month than a business phone
...  which went on everybody's desk as a matter of course (and most of
these terminals eventually had lifetimes well in excess of a decade,
or in some cases, two decades).

once the terminal status symbol for managers and executives got
started, it then continued on ... where it was common to find managers
pre-empt the newest and most decked out PCs, PS2, etc ... for their
desk (many terminal if they were turned on at all and ever used ... it
was purely for terminal emulation for infrequent PROFs
operation). there were numerous complaints of brand new PS2m80 with
the fastest processors, max'ed out memory and largest display screen
... ordered for real work on real projects ... getting diverted to
some manager's desk for their status symbol (where it might be used
for PROFs email a couple times a week).

some old email from long ago and far away (the VMSG source "borrowed"
by the profs group ... was a much earlier version than this)


To: wheeler
Date: 03/12/79  18:04:00

Think VMSG is almost in a state where it's finished apart from
ENCRYPTION. So do you want the source ?

Unless of course you've found more bugs.

... snip ... top of post, old email index


From: wheeler
Date: 03/12/79  10:47:14

yes, send source. I'm still interested in placing in shared segment.

... snip ... top of post, old email index


From: wheeler
Date: 04/03/79  08:58:13

IPSASM is the main module of the IPS package (encryption). VMSG now
has mods. to support various security/encrypting options by calling
IPSASM. A CRDR will be coming out shortly which will read
encrypted files. Also VMSG has new option to support sending ITIPS

... snip ... top of post, old email index

in the above, my reply 3/12/79 is nearly eight hrs earlier than the
original ...  because the original message was sent from eight
time-zones away.

as an aside, the same person that did VMSG ... also did parasite and
story; a few past parasite/story posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#73 Computer resources, past, present, and future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#24 Red Phosphor Terminal?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#14 were dumb terminals actually so dumb???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#12 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#3 PVM protocol documentation found
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#14 Program execution speed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#37 Over my head in a JES exit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#35 Draft Command Script Processing Manual

a few past posts mentioning VMSG &/or profs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#35 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#46 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#20 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#35 Military Interest in Supercomputer AI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#39 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#40 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#56 E-mail 30 years old this autumn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#14 Mail system scalability (Was: Re: Itanium troubles)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#58 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#59 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#64 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#50 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#4 HONE, ****, misc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#34 VSE (Was: Re: Refusal to change was Re: LE and COBOL)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#45 hyperblock drift, was filesystem structure (long warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#65 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#69 Gartner Office Information Systems 6/2/89
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#56 Goodbye PROFS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#26 Microsoft Internet Patch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#33 A quote from Crypto-Gram
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#13 Mainframe Virus ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#43 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#44 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#4 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#10 IBM 610 workstation computer

a few past posts mentiong phone book effort
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#46 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#14 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#29 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#30 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#33 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#45 hyperblock drift, was filesystem structure (long warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#58 assembler performance superiority: a given
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#0 A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#58 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#32 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#13 Mainframe Virus ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#32 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#38 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#43 History of performance counters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#3 Flat Query
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#4 Flat Query
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#26 IEH/IEB/... names?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#44 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#49 FULIST
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#20 Old PCs--environmental hazard

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:11:47 -0600

krw writes:

We (hardware design engineers) were using computers long before
that.  I was a spearhead in getting terminals moved from terminal
rooms into our offices.  I had one of the first 3277GAs in an
office on Boardman Road (Blgd. 701).  We did have to hook them up
remotely over 8600bps modems, but that was till better than 2741s.
By mid '77 pretty much everyone that wanted/needed a terminal had
one in the office (though many were shared). By contrast, only
Senior Engineers and above had "personal" 2741s.  I used to use the
office and 2741 of one of the most senior engineers (can't remember
his name, but he was one of the inventors of the channel) and his
terminal.  The few times he came around he simply sat on the other
side of his desk.  ...great guy!

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#22 sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#23 sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

something of an exception. the science center was different since we
were doing all sorts of invention, etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

not only did i get a personal 2741 in my office ... but from mar70 on,
i also had personal 2741 at home.  initially with just a plain second
phone line ... but eventually the second home phone line was replaced
with a standard corporate "tie" line.

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:02:41 -0600

krw writes:

Were these pre or post-Rolm phones?  I'm sure we still have two-
decade-old ROLM garbage still around.  Single-duplex speaker phones
in conference rooms, anyone?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#22
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#23

3270 terminal amortized business analysis was done late 70s ... long
before rolm

and for some drift ... from long ago and far away ... a little
rolm drift:


From: wheeler
Date: 09/26/84  14:29:20

just talked to xxxx ... who wanted to know what i know about what is
going on at rolm. As an aside she mentioned that after the AT
announcement, Rolm decided that PC/AT is strategic direction rather
than S/1s and they will cancel their order for 900 S/1s.

... snip ... top of post, old email index


From: wheeler
Date: 11/16/84  11:14:44

just got back from rolm ... they have a number of 512k s/1s with high
speed programmable interfaces, v.35, two 200meg hard disks, tape
drives, & 370 channel attach (I was there looking for a couple of s/1s
to send to hawthorn for the DBS project). Rolm needs to double check
the serial numbers against their books next week to determine which
specific machines have not been installed &/or any money paid for.
They will know by the week of dec. 3rd which machine's we can possibly
hijack ... do you want try for any out of Rolm???

Other than that, i've found IBM four "small" S/1s w/o channel attach
&/or hard disks, two 512k S/1s w/o channel attach but with 200meg
disk, and one 512k s/1 w/o channel attach but with 60meg hard disk. Do
you want to try for any of these? Two of the 512k S/1s are packed and
ready to be shipped back ... probably Monday morning ... so say now if
you want them (the 512k S/1s apparently were configured for ADS ... &
I don't know how to match the HONE list for YALE/IUP against the ADS
list).

... snip ... top of post, old email index

the first email refers to some people at rolm that I had known before
the acquisition that were in the rolm datacenter organization ... and
were trying to find out who might be making what decisions. the DGs
that ROLM had been using were getting old and creaky and they had
decided to migrate to S/1s as a platform (and placed an order for 900
S/1s).

i had been told that I had to demonstrate at least some ibm content in
my high-speed data transport project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the "old time" telecommunication that would support even up to T1
(1.5mbits/sec us, 2mbits/sec european) was the 2701 from the 60s
(approx. twenty years old). the only other choice was that FSD
(federal systems division) had done an RPQ "zirpel" card for the S/1
for special federal bids (as upgrade to 2701, there was no standard
"product" on the drawing boards before the early 90s). as a result, I
was being forced to scrounge up some S/1s to use with zirpel cards
(and the rolm 900 S/1s order had temporarily made s/1s impossible to
get ...  at least until rolm decided to change direction ... and I
could then pick up several machines that were even still sitting
crated in rolm hallways).

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:27:57 -0600

krw writes:

I always wondered what would happen if our customers saw how _we_
used our hardware.

my wife reminded me about the old adage about the children of the
cobbler having no shoes.

part of the issue ... especially after FS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

a lot of the top executive possisions had come up from the DP division
(sales & marketing) ... technical and engineering had lost some
credability with the FS fiasco.

except for HONE ... the online (vm370-based) service providing support
for world-wide field, sales, and marketing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

management and executives tended to have very little exposure to
online computer use (starting with 370/115 & 370/125 ... HONE
configurator was required for even placing a system order).

that was one of the things that led to the discussion about some
application (online phone directory) that would attract management and
executives to using online system as part of their every day
experience.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#22
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#23

then there is the "mip envy" memo ... random past references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#7 New IBM history book out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#39 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#73 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#75 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#15 If there had been no MS-DOS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#28 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#31 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#41 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?

to a large extent, the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

thru the 70s and much of the 80s had happen in spite of any corporate
strategic policies and objectives. in fact, in the very early 80s, it
came as a shock to quite a few executives that the internal network
even existed (and that it had been larger than the arpanet/internet
for just about the whole period).

at one point there was even a paper written by an academic type out of
corporate hdqtrs that claimed proof that the internal network didn't
exist. academia supposedly had proven that the type of distributed
control operation implemented by the internal network required a
massive amount of resources to implement (nearing the amount that had
been written off in the failed FS effort) ... and after extensive
study of all company budgeted activites for several year period ... no
such funded activity could be identified.

sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:09:26 -0600

krw writes:

VP approval was normal at the time.  The '70s were *bad*
economically.  They certainly in the fall plan - I put them there.
The necessary 9600bps modems were $10K a pair, and we allotted
three terminals per 3270 and modem.  ...and were happy with that.
;-)

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#23

the 70s weren't overall particularly bad ... however FS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

gave the corporation quite some problems. one issue was that there
were several claims that any other company would have gone under if
they had dumped as much money and effort (that went into FS) on an
unsuccesful product that was then canceled w/o every being announced
(i.e. claims that no other company in the computer biz could have
survived a fiasco the magnitude of FS).

besides the direct financial downside of the resources that went into
FS ... the indirect downside was that during FS ... nearly all non-FS
activity was stalled/suspended.

as the company was recoverying from the FS cancelation ... they found
a lack of near term products in the pipeline .... your comment that
3081/811 was then started to be the next product offering but as
3081/811 continued to slip ... 303x was thrown in to try and fill the
gap (there is folklore about the head of POK working in his office 1st
shift and then playing cpu engineer 2nd shift on engineering 3033
processors).

...

however, in our terminal business analysis ... we attempted to show
that VP approval for terminals was false economy. nobody was
considering that VP approval was required for phones on desks
... and we showed that 3yr amortized cost of terminal was less than
phone monthly cost (even using full list price rather than internal
transfer costs).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#25

Key exchange

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Key exchange
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 10:00:20 -0600

"John E. Hadstate" writes:

This pretty well describes how most cryptographic hashes are
used to create keys.  See your email for PDFs and diagrams
on how to use hash functions to generate cipher keys from
passwords.

there is similar stuff for "derived" keys ... i.e. financial industry
derived unique key per transaction ... search on DUKPT ... for instance
see reference to DUKPT & X9.24 in this old nist document:
http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/aes/pre-round1/comments.pdf

also transit systems with magstripe or "memory" chips ... and various
other infrastructures have derived keys. there is sysetm-wide master
key (for transit systems in each processor connected to
turnstyles). the card is read containing account number and encrypted
information.  the combination of of the system master key and account
number is used to calculate the card-specific derived key, the
information is decrypted, updated, re-encrypted, and then written back
to the card (systemic risk countermeasure to brute force attack on a
single system-wide symmetric master key)

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 13:49:00 -0600

seewebsite@excxn.aNOSPAMb.cdn.invalid (John Savard) writes:

Neither the 3850 nor the DataCell was a roaring success for IBM, and
Hypertape was particularly unsuccessful. Version II sold to two
customers, one of them the IRS, and the only customer for Version I was
Canada's equivalent of the IRS.

datacell was direct access .... i.e. applications selected records on
strip (using BBHHCCR convention) and directly read/wrote the records.

3850(/MSS) were virtualized 3330 disk drives. there was pool of real
3330 disk drives ... managed as some larger number of virtual 3330
disk drives. access to a non-staged cylinder ... would result in a
"fault" analogous to a page-fault. system then staged data from
tape-to-disk. faults could be handled as either six cylinder units or
full tape. virtual 3330 data was staged to/from 3850 tape reels
... managed by 3850 tape robot.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3850.html

the 3850 tape reels were wide tape wrapped around a cylinder looking
shape (2in diameter, 4in long, with 3in x 770in tape) ... which were
managed by the 3850 tape robot and these "cylinder" tape reels resided
in honycomb looking structure (a tape could hold half a 3330-1 or 1/4th
of a 3330-11). part of the 3850 problem was tracking newer generation
of disk drives. a later 3850 model was made available with faster and
higher capacity 3350 drives but they were used to still simulate
virtual 3330 drives.

emerging in that some time frame was purely software HSM ... i.e.
hiearchical storage manager ... with (stk) tape robot systems using
more traditional shapped tape reels.  operating system HSM support
would stage data to/from tape at a higher level abstraction (basically
on per file bases) rather than at the lower level (virtual) hardware
level.

I had done a backup/archive system that was deployed at several
internal locations. This was eventually repackaged with a lot of PC
and workstation clients and marketed as workstation datasave ... which
then morphed into ADSM (adstar storage manager) and is now marketed as
TSM (tivoli storage manager). misc. past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#backup

HSM evolved to include SMS (system managed storage) and newer
generations of tape robots.  SMS reference:
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/software/sms/smstour/smstour.html

In the same time frame, STK's "iceberg" virtual disk technology
emerged, sort of a technology update of the 3850/mss. 3850/mss had
been done by the Boulder lab ... so it is possible that some of the
same people had moved down the road to STK and worked on iceberg.
san jose had competitive effort with codenames like seastar and
seahorse that had various schedule problems. a few posts mentioning
iceberg, seastar, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#55 Storage Virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#30 z/OS UNIX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#1 Hercules 3.04 announcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#3 Hercules 3.04 announcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#15 Hercules 3.04 announcement

Several gov. labs. developed various kinds of storage management
systems. LANL developed one using IBM mainframe managing tape library
and staging to large pool of disks ... non-IBM processors could access
disks using HYPERChannel thru "remote device adapters".  As part of
the increased "technology transfer" activities in the late 80s and and
early 90s (trying to get technology out of gov. installations and into
commercial operation), the LLNL was marketed by General Atomics as
"DataTree".

LLNL had developed a hierarchical storage management system ...
and we ... in our cluster activities part of ha/cmp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

had funded the port to standard unix platforms and it was
marketed on several platforms as "UniTree".

NCAR also had developed a storage system somewhat similar to LANL's.
In addition to working with LLNL in the porting and marketing
of "UniTree" ... we also worked with a NCAR spin-off called
"Mesa Archival" to port NCAR's system to unix platform and
market it.

I've also commented that NCAR's original implementation might
be considered the original SAN (storage area network).

misc. past posts mentioning mesa archival, datatree, and/or unitree:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#21 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#66 commodity storage servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#46 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#61 GE 625/635 Reference + Smart Hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#31 general networking is: DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#31 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#6 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#53 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#75 DASD Architecture of the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#29 FW: Is FICON good enough, or is it the only choice we get?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#12 Device and channel
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#15 Device and channel
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#16 Device and channel
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 16:11:50 -0600

Peter Flass writes:

Didn't the Datacell come first?  I think it was announced with the
first 360's, or soon thereafter.  I'd guess CRAM at early 70s.

this reference
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/datacell.html

has the datacell being designed by shugart in early 60s and announced
1964
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH2321A.html

this lists NCR made CRAM available '62
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=CRAM

from computer history museum
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/NCR/NCR.CRAM.1960.102646240.pdf

and RCA's RACE from late 60s
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=RACE

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 20:33:49 -0600

haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) writes:

I remember seeing the RCA machine at the GE plant in that time frame,
didn't realize any customer had actually bought one.  People who saw
it running tended to compare it to a chicken plucker.  I'm not sure
it was RCA remarketing NCR; it might have been an independent development
of RCA.  There was also an IBM data cell drive in the GE plant for a
while.

see this reference
http://www.multicians.org/mgr.html#RACE

for 645 configuration RCA RACE unit under GE "skins"

thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#29 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#30 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 14:41:27 -0600

Peter Flass writes:

Thius is the fallacy of using microcomputers for serious work.  Store
the library in one place on one real computer, and you only have to
update it once for everyone to have it.

there is a some topic drift in some sox threads ... there use to be
audits comparing multiple, independent, original sources ... and
inconsistencies were treated as possible problems (modulo collusion
issues).

IT technology can centralize everything ... so that the audits are
done against information that may all be coming from a single source
(no provisions to compare original, independent sources).  the current
scenario is somewhat to specify audits to ever increasing detail
... but that is one thing you can program a computer for, generating
consistent information to any level of detail desired (increasing the
level of detail doesn't magically create independent, original sources
for comparison).

some of the recent sox posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#58 Sarbanes-Oxley
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#1 Sarbanes-Oxley
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#35 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#36 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#39 Interesting bit of a quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#40 Interesting bit of a quote

... this also can come up in the different fraud, threats, and
vulnerabilities between doing offline authentication and authorization
vis-a-vis doing online authentication and authorization ... misc. recent
posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#1 UK Detects Chip-And-PIN Security Flaw
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#2 UK Banks Expected To Move To DDA EMV Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#8 Microsoft - will they bungle the security game?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#12 Naked Payments IV - let's all go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#18 On Leadership - tech teams and the RTFM factor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#25 FraudWatch - Chip&Pin, a new tenner (USD10)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#29 DDA cards may address the UK Chip&Pin woes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#30 DDA cards may address the UK Chip&Pin woes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#32 DDA cards may address the UK Chip&Pin woes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#41 Naked Payments IV - let's all go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#42 Naked Payments II
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#43 DDA cards may address the UK Chip&Pin woes

CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:31:16 -0600

"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" writes:

HSM could be considered as an extension of data (file) caching to slower
less accessible levels. The highest most accessible (fastest) level was
Level 0 which was the level normally read and written by the processing
programs. Usually it was on a fast disk. Level 1 was compacted Level 0
which was usually on slow direct access (disk). In addition to being
compacted the data might be software compressed according to one of
several criteria and data type. Level 2 was files from Level 1 migrated
off to usually tape. Movement of files between levels was automatic with
administrator controlled rules. But could also be invoked by the user
via direct requests. We had HSM with fast and slow 3380s and ordinary
tape reels. We migrated our Level 2 between two types of tapes 1600bpi
--> 6400bpi (??) and then to STK cartriges in a silo. Finaly we migrated
some of the Level 2 cartridges off site when space got tight in the near
machine room area.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#29 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850

we had instrumented several systems in the san jose area, so that we
could get trace of every record accessed. we used it for some i/o
(electronic memory) caching models ... comparing effects/sizes of disk
arm level, controller level, channel/bus level , and system level
record/track caches.

one of the interesting things that came up of that study was there was
finding quite of bit periodic activity that used collections of files
...  and in fact, some of the collections had very strong affinity
(i.e.  they were only used when others in the collections were also
used).  conjecture was that it was related to periodic (frequently
quite deterministic) execution of specific business applications. some
amount of this was quite large sequential access (much larger than
most traditional electronic memory "caches" ... i.e. the standard
electronic memory caches provide little or no benefit for such
activity)

you see some of the backup/archive systems (like TSM) attempting to
optimize for such behavior with things that some refer to as
"containers" ... i.e.  groups of files that are managed as a collecton
... where contents of containers may also be compacted/compressed as a
unit.

for other drift ... the current generation of tapes can have such
large capacity ... there are deployment considerations given to moving
stuff first to disk-based "virtual tape reels" ... and then "stacking"
large number of virtual tape reels from disk to a single large
capacity physical tape (some of the traditional backup/archive to tape
software tended to use a minimum of a single tape per operation, which
led to frequently leaving new generation of physical tapes almost
entirely empty).

misc. past backup/archive relates posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#backup

misc. past references to file/disk activity traces/modeling:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#01 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#43 Bloat, elegance, simplicity and other irrelevant concepts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#49 Rethinking Virtual Memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#55 How Do the Old Mainframes Compare to Today's Micros?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#72 Simulation Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#49 Swapper was Re: History of Login Names
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#55 Advantages of multiple cores on single chip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#8 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#4 Athlon cache question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#18 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#4 Average Seek times are pretty confusing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#15 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#15 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#25 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#45 using 3390 mod-9s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#46 using 3390 mod-9s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#0 using 3390 mod-9s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#30 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#2 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That

Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 23:42:26 -0600

Jim wrote:

DUMPRX was one of the slickest tools available for VM sysprogs in the
'80s.  With the overall level of code quality at that time, it was really
needed.  I have always thought that the only reason it wasn't included in
the product was the NIH mentality that was common in IBM at that time in
Endicott and Kingston.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#11 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

i may have alienated endicott ...  which had a whole group supporting
dumpscan (which was a large program written all in assembler). I had
made a comment that i would implement dumprx in less 3 months elapsed
time only working half time on it. It would have ten times the
function of dumpscan as well as ten times the performance. also since
this was the leading edge of the OCO-wars ... i pointed out that it
would be implemented all in REXX (except for possibly a hundred
assembler instructions) so that the source would have to be shipped.

I got all the basic stuff done early ... and since i had been building
up a knowledge base of failure scenarios ... i started a library of
dumprx/rexx routines that searched for particular classes of failure
signatures/characteristics.

it could be run either as cms terminal line-mode ... or as a xedit
rexx macro ... and then have full xedit capability for the dumprx
session

since they wouldn't ship it, i eventually got approval to give a
detailed implementation dumprx talk at SHARE ... in case anybody else
wanted to implement their own.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#dumprx

The very first text editor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The very first text editor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:05:17 -0600

Brian Inglis writes:

Remember Lynn's story about having to change some code because of more
than the expected number of some kind of channel error being reported
from all systems globally?

standard system stuff is EREP ... i remember early in the 3380 cycle
where they added predictive maintenance based on soft/recoverable
error trend analysis.

there was an industry service that collected customer erep data
... sanatized the customer information and published some detailed
erep statistics across installed machines (a little like consumer
reports for mainframe RAS ... reliability, availability,
serviceability). in the 70s and 80s there was more "clone" products in
the market place competing.

i've periodically mentioned having done HYPERChannel ... channel
extension device driver as part of moving something like 300 people
from the IMS group out of the bldg90 (santa teresa lab) to a leased
bldg. some ten miles away. ... recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#8 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

I would periodically get an unrecoverable error on the TELCO part of
the HYPERChannel channel extension (after small number of retries) ...
and after some investigation of the operating system error recovery
and recording ... would reflect an emulated "channel check" for the
operation. The operating system then would do additional recovery
actions. misc. collected HSDT posts ... many mentioning HYPERChannel
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

so some years later ... I got call from 3090 product manager in POK
... who was quiet upset. they had designed the 3090 so there would be
something like 3-5 "chan