List of Archived Posts

2007 Newsgroup Postings (12/05 - 12/16)

folklore indeed

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

folklore indeed

Remembering the CDC 6600

Public Computers

Open z/Architecture or Not

Public Computers

Open z/Architecture or Not

Open z architecture and Linux questions

Crypto Related Posts

Public Computers

folklore indeed

new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology

What do YOU call the # sign?

Public Computers

Fazing out x86

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

Distributed Computing

folklore indeed

Distributed Computing

What do YOU call the # sign?

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

What do YOU call the # sign?

What do YOU call the # sign?

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

What do YOU call the # sign?

What do YOU call the # sign?

Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

folklore indeed

Public Computers

What do YOU call the # sign?

What do YOU call the # sign?

25 years: A technology timeline

What do YOU call the # sign?

What do YOU call the # sign?

folklore indeed

Mainframe Funeral

New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

Computer language history

New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

Fazing out x86

What do YOU call the # sign?

Distributed Computing

Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

What do YOU call the # sign?

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

The future of PDSs

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

Nike 90 football shoes for sale

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

folklore indeed

Parse/Template Function

New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

folklore indeed

The rise of parallelism (and other computing challenges)

folklore indeed

IBM Floating-point myths

Education ranking

IBM Floating-point myths

Education ranking

IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths

Education ranking

IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths

IBM Floating-point myths

IBM Floating-point myths

IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths

CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:44:30 -0500

cb@df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:

Interestingly enough, when I use my UK debit card (Visa) in the US, I have
to use it as a credit card (i.e., if a cashier has a choice between
'credit' a 'debit' transactions, they have to choose credit').

some of this could be related to the walmart (joined by other merchants)
class action antitrust suit against the card associations ...

a few web references:
http://www.transactionworld.com/articles/2003/July/industryTalksBack3.asp
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-22-2003/0001987111&EDATE
http://www.classactionrefund.com/VisaInfo.html
http://www.inrevisacheckmastermoneyantitrustlitigation.com/history.php3

misc. recent posts mentioning class-action anti-trust and/or interchange fees
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#27 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#38 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#72 Free Checking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#68 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#31 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#40 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#64 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:13:03 -0500

d10jhm1@US.IBM.COM (Jim Mulder) writes:

But actually it did not take decades, as the original release of
MVS/XA in 1982 functionally supported 16-way SMP.  Of course there
were no such processors at the time (nothing greater than 2-way until
the 4-way 3084), but it did run for testing purposes using 16 virtual
CPUs on a modified version of VM.  Of course, as larger processors
were actually built, additional was done (and continues to be done)
to address performance/scaling issues.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

well, sort of.

one of the things to get rapidly to 16-way smp implementation, as well
as addressing performance/scaling issues, was to relax standard 370
cache consistency rules (and, in fact, most SMP vendors going to
larger numbers of processors have almost always involved how to deal
with cache consistency issues).

remember that compare&swap ... misc. posts about smp and/or compare&swap
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

was invented by charlie (compare&swap was chosen because CAS are
charlie's initials) at the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and i've mentioned before the original difficulty of getting
compare&swap into 370 architecture. Some of the difficulties
is why the example of program failure still appears in the
compare&swap writeup
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.1?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

i've frequently claimed that the 801 risc effort
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

was attempt to go to the opposite extreme from what went on
in FS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

and also claimed the lack of cache consistency in 801 risc was adverse
reaction to the heavy performance penalty paid in 370 by its strong
cache consistency requirement. in fact, it wasn't until somerset
(joint ibm, motorola, apple, et all) for power/pc that there was
(risc) work on smp and addressing cache consistency.

in any case, part of doing 16-way smp (and relaxing 370 cache
consistency rules) was much more detailed attention paid to every
piece of code (because of the associated hardware changes for relaxed
cache consistency).

for some more topic drift, in just the 3084 time-frame, both mvs and
(standard) vm had effort to go thru all kernel data & storage
management and make sure things were cache-line sensitised. the issue
was the increased probability that more than one cache might be
accessing different data items which happened to overlap in the same
cache line (resulting in significant cache line thrashing). The claim
at the time was that this effort resulted in 5-10 percent increased
system thruput (for 4-way). As the number of independent caches that
had to be coordinated, goes up ... the probability increases that
there is going to be some kind of cache interference.

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:08:08 -0500

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#1 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

for slightly more light-hearted, seasonal reference, old email with
mvs/xa tso reference from long ago and far away:


Date: 08/26/82 15:24:21

re: mvs/xa; i've seen it for myself, a 3081 system completely idle
except for one MVS/XA tso user. Response time is longer for that
single TSO user on the 3081 than for CMS doing same type of stuff on a
loaded 3033. MVS/XA is copy of the one that <large internal
datacenter> is using for their development work. <the large
internal datacenter> has gen'ed the TSO logo screen (in big block
letters)

                                 BAH
                                HUMBUG

The only thing slower than the 3081 service processer (5+ seconds to
single step one instruction) on the 3081 is possibly MVS/XA TSO. The
observation is that TSO is so slow, that you have lots of time to
syntax your next input & make sure that there are no mistakes (because
if there are ... then things will really be slow).

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

somewhat related to post in this thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#40 Why isn't OMVS command integrated with ISPF?

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:57:46 -0500

cb@df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:

And this of course is also precisely the reason why Apple are building
Apple Stores like crazy: to reach as many people as possible, make Macs
availabel to try and touch and buy on impulse right there, without having
to rely on stores & chains which have shown they're not great at selling
Macs.

Either way, you certainly can buy Macs in brick-and-mortar shops. The fact
that you consider it 'cheating' that Apple themselves own and operate them
doesn't change that fact in the slightest; on the contrary, the success of
the Apple Stores shows that they, and Apple's retail strategy in general,
are working, and what they do is precisely what you claim can't be done:
get Macs into people's hands without Windows being involved in any way
shape or form.

for some total folklore topic drift ... with some overlap with this
thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#72 Remembering the CDC 6600

long ago and far away ... even before mac was announced, my brother was
regional apple rep (claimed to have the largest physical territory in
conus). one of the things he figured out was how to dial into corporate
dataprocessing to look at manufacturing and delivery schedules ... which
at the time, happened to be running on s/38.

sometimes when he was in town ... i would get invited to after work
dinners.  there were some with mac developers (before mac announcement)
that i remember where i was arguing with them about features needed to
be supported by mac in order to be succesful.

Remembering the CDC 6600

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Remembering the CDC 6600
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:21:51 -0500

John Byrns <byrnsj@sbcglobal.net> writes:

That was the rumor at the time.  The machine came with a full time on
site service engineer and I remember the service engineer for the 1604 I
learned on had boxes full of these transistors that he used for
component level repair of the logic boards.  I have a vague memory of
once having had an empty cardboard 1604 transistor box as a souvenir.

in the early 80s there were several hundred "1655" devices obtained for
internal datacenters from an outside vendor. these were emulated 2305
fixed head disks for use as paging devices, implemented using memory
chips. the folklore was that they used vendor memory chips that had
failed tests for processor memory ... defiencies that could be
compensated for by an embedded processor during the latency involved in
doing block i/o transfers.

Public Computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:03:38 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

You get them with Atmel fingerprint scanners too.

part of the aads chipcard patent portfolio (disclaimer: we have no
rights/interest)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

includes a way to integrate into a single security infrastructure,
software, hardware, single & multi-factor authentication; i.e.  from
3-factor authentiction model ... misc. 3-factor posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

• something you have
• something you know
• something you area

.... under something we called parameterized risk management i.e.  being
able to associate authentication processing integrity levels with
specific risk level requirements.

we did do eal4+ evaluation on a specificly designed chip ... i had joked
in the 90s about taking a $500 milspec part, doing aggressive cost
reduction of 2-3 orders of magnitude while (at the same time) improving
the security. part of the issue is that a lot of operations view the
area as profit opportunity while we were purely treating the whole
infrastructure as cost/expense.

i've complained in the past about not being able to do an eal5+
evaluation. misc. past posts about protection profiles. common critera,
and EAL evaluations.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#13 anybody seen (EAL5) semi-formal specification for FIPS186-2/x9.62 ecdsa?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#14 Challenge to TCPA/Palladium detractors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#41 Adding reliability and trust to smartcards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#47 Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#48 Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#4 Another entry in the internet security hall of shame
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#23 Use of TPM chip for RNG?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#26 Naked Payments IV - let's all go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#1 Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#37 The bank fraud blame game
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#15 Opinion on smartcard security requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#71 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#84 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#86 formal fips186-2/x9.62 definition for eal 5/6 evaluation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#35 ... certification
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#44 Beware, Intel to embed digital certificates in Banias
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#72 Whatever happened to C2 "Orange Book" Windows security?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#39 DOD 5200.28-STD capable OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#35 electronic-ID and key-generation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#36 electronic-ID and key-generation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#51 Linux gets sensitive government use approval
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#19 Secure OS Thoughts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#64 Can you use ECC to produce digital signatures?  It doesn't see
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#27 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#2 Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#41 EAL5
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#49 EAL5
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#50 EAL5
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#53 4GHz is the glass ceiling?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#5 Relocating application architecture and compiler support
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#38 Vulnerability Assessment of a EAL 4 system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#30 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#47 newbie need help (ECC and wireless)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#39 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#34 what does xp do when system is copying

Open z/Architecture or Not

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Open z/Architecture or Not
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:43:30 -0500

BShannon@ROCKETSOFTWARE.COM (Bob Shannon) writes:

Sure. The thousands of in-stream usermods that were written prior to
XA, and which greatly inhibited subsequent upgrades. I certainly agree
that in the early days usermods were written to overcome functional
deficiencies in MVS. Some, such as logical swap, were incorporated
into MVS. Others, such as the dual master catalog mod at a large US
insurance company, proved to be a nightmare to maintain and an even
worse nightmare to remove.

cp67 and vm370 were notorious for user modifications ... in part
because it shipped not only with full source ... but its whole
customer maintenance infrastructure was source based (i.e. each fix
shipped as incremental source update file).

in the early 80s there was a study of local vm370 system
modifications.  internal corporate "local" modifications were as large
as the base system ... and the "share" library source changes were
approximately equivalent to the internal corporate "local"
modifications (in size and function).

part of all this started with unbundling announcement 23jun69
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

starting to charge for application software. however, the case was made
that kernel code could still be "free" (bundled).

A lot of the structural and functional enhancements that I had done to
cp67 as an undergraduate (and was picked up and shipped in the
product) was dropped in the morph from cp67 to vm370. However, I had
done the port myself ... referenced in this prior post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#69 T3 Sues IBM TO Break its Mainframe Monopoly

and this old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102

I distributed and supported the "CSC/VM" system (mentioned in the
above) for a large number of internal datacenters. The product picked
up some small pieces of the above as part of VM370 rel3.

However, other pieces were selected to be released as separate
"resource manager" product ... and also got chosen to be guinea pig
for unbundling/charging for kernel software (which met that i had to
spend a lot of time with business people ironing out the policies
for kernel software charging).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

because of the extensive source oriented culture ... most customers
managed to regularly track local source code changes as new releases
came out.

However, I know of (at least) one notable exception. Somehow or
another, a very early "CSC/VM" system was leaked to AT&T
longlines. Over a period of years, they developed a large body of
their own source changes ... never bothered to track releases, and
migrated it to a number of their own machines. Nearly a decade later,
I was tracked down by the AT&T national marketing rep about trying
to help get AT&T longlines off this ancient CSC/VM system.

The "OCO-wars" (object code only) in the early 80s were somewhat
turbulent.

There had been some number of commercial online timesharing services
formed from cp67 and vm370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

these were somewhat similar to the internal HONE systems that
worldwide sales and marketing used
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of these was Tymshare which in the mid-70s started providing the
vmshare online discussion forum to share members. That vmshare forum
has now been archived here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

included in the forum archives are the OCO-war discussions from the
early 80s.

Public Computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:28:01 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

This discussion gave me some new self-insight. All the computer use I have
done, from tops20 in 1978 onwards, has been to push the envelope of what
is possible with computers. I tend to do what everyone else does 15 years
later.

hee, hee, we weren't allowed to bid on nsfnet backbone ... some
old email here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

but a NSF review of backbone (we had running internally) claimed that
what we already had running was at least five yrs ahead of all nsfnet
backbone bid submissions (to build something new).

other archeological references here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm

there is the claim that tcp/ip is the technology basis for modern
internet, that nsfnet backbone was the operational basis for the modern
internet and cix was the business basis for the modern internet.

there were some stuff that we had running on our backbone that looks to
have (finally) shown up in internet2 activity.
http://www.internet2.edu/network/

for totally other topic drift

Internet2 Middleware Initiative
http://middleware.internet2.edu/

somewhat related to this recent (middleware) thread/post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#39 important

referencing these posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#201 Middleware - where did that come from?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#202 Middleware - where did that come from?

which in turn reference these even older posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#16
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17

Open z/Architecture or Not

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Open z/Architecture or Not
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
To: <ibm-main@bama.ua.edu>
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:28:29 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

The "OCO-wars" (object code only) in the early 80s were somewhat
turbulent.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not

as before the vmshare archives are at
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

old vmshare post about the vm source maint infrastructure,
originally developed on cp67
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read?fn=HISTORY&ft=MEMO&line=49

a quicky search for some OCO related posts from archive ...

this is discussion from 93 regarding OCO's 10th b'day:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCO:BDAY&ft=MEMO

OCO Study Handouts from SHARE 72 (Feb89)
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCOSTUDY&ft=NOTE

TUCC's MVS/370 to MVS/XA conversion experiences (Jun88)
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCOCME&ft=NOTE

VM Program Products which should be distributed with Source Code.
(started May80)
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=VMSOURCE&ft=MEMO

old email mentioning vmshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare

... including discussing obtaining monthly copies of all vmshare files
for putting up on the HONE system for worldwide sales and marketing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

and other internal systems.

for other drift, one of the things i did during this period was do a
rex(x)-implementation replacement for ipcs debugging tool.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

part of the issue was to demonstrate that rex(s) wasn't just another
pretty exec language. the objective was to be able to replace the
existing ipcs (which was a large body of assembler implemented code)
with a

1) rex(x) implementation,
2) that took less than half-time over 3months to implement,
3) had ten times the function and
4) ten times the performance (took some slight of hand)

a side-effect was that if it was decided to replace the existing
implementation ... then "source" would have to be shipped for the new
ipcs ... regardless of any OCO-policy.

It was never decided to ship the implementation as replacement IPCS
... but it eventually came to be used at effectively all internal
datacenters and the majority of PSRs processing customer reported
problems.

However, i was approved to give a share presentation on the
implementation ... and within a couple months after the presentation,
there were a number of similar implementations by various organizations.

Open z architecture and Linux questions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Open z architecture and Linux questions
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:36:16 -0500

wdriscoll@JMESOFTWARE.COM (Wayne Driscoll) writes:

Not really answering either question, but on the topic of Q2, the recent
port of Open Solaris to System z was done only under z/VM, with no
attempt to get it to run under LPAR mode because of the increased amount
of work LPAR mode would have added (paraphrased from the company that
did the porting work).  Now that the hard part of getting Linux to run
in an LPAR has been done, I don't see the need to eliminate it, but it
would be interesting to see the percentage of Linux on z usage in LPAR
vs z/VM.

long ago and far away, similar arguments were made for both gold/au
and aix/370.  issue was that field engineering had lots of diagnostic,
recording, and recovery requirements for servicing customer machines
(EREP, RAS, etc).

the effort to add mainframe EREP/RAS functionality to any of these
ports was several times larger than just doing the straight forward
port (while vm was able to satisfy the requirement, including for any
of its guest operating systems). however, over the yrs, there has been
more and more of virtual machine support functionality being moved
into LPAR and service processor operation.

slightly related recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#77 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

also in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#8 Open z/Architecture or Not

the reference to various OCO related material from vmshare archives,
the reference to "TUCC's MVS/370 to MVS/XA conversion experiences"
describes part of the success was having access to SIE and VM/SF
information
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCOCME&ft=NOTE

... part of difficulty discussion from above ...

The key to gaining performance from the primary guest operating system
is the I/O Passthru feature of SIE.  This allows the guest system to
initiate I/O directly to the I/O subsystem without intervention from
VM/SF.  The SIE microcode assist is a documented feature, however the
portion that supports I/O Passthru is not documented.  As a result it
took us two months to correct this problem.  The problem was
extraordinarly difficult to analyze, because the symptoms were
noticeable only after the problem occured.  We had all of MVS/370's
I/O devices in I/O Passthru, including the Memorex 1270 devices.  In
certain circumstances, such as MVS disabling for 09x wait, VM/SF
decided to remove all of the I/O from I/O Passthru.  After taking all
devices out of I/O passthru, VM/SF will then put them all back in.
Performing this function requires that VM/SF perform a Modify
Subchannel to each device to accomplish this.

... snip ..

Crypto Related Posts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Crypto Related Posts
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
To: <ibm-main@bama.ua.edu>
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:39:23 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

the x9.59 financial standard approach was then to fix the underlying
weakness, lack of strong authentication ... which also then eliminated
needing to hide the transaction information from crooks (since the
information was useless w/o the proper authentication). some of this is
discussed in the posts concerning the naked transaction metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#61 Re: Crypto Related Posts

some recent related:

Why should merchants keep credit card data?
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/120607-why-should-merchants-keep-credit.html

the proposed approach was raised at least a decade ago ... it addresses
harvesting "data-at-rest" in repostories ... but doesn't address the
evesdropping and skimming attacks.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#harvest

previous business process difficulties (with the suggested approach) was
availability of online connectivity (giving merchants access to the
necessary data for required/mandated business operations). the pervasive
growth of internet connectivity has somewhat mitigated those issues.

Can mid-market merchants comply with PCI standards?
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/120607-can-mid-market-merchants-comply-with.html

another approach that has been tried is the "one time account numbers"
(as an approach to eliminating replay attacks ... aka eliminating
being able to use information from previous transactions for fraudulent
activity).

Public Computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:16:50 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

we did do eal4+ evaluation on a specificly designed chip ... i had joked
in the 90s about taking a $500 milspec part, doing aggressive cost
reduction of 2-3 orders of magnitude while (at the same time) improving
the security. part of the issue is that a lot of operations view the
area as profit opportunity while we were purely treating the whole
infrastructure as cost/expense.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#5 Public Computers

for even more topic drift
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#61 Crypto Related Posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#10 Crypto Related Posts

there was quite a bit of work in the 90s on countermeasures for
PC-related security threats and vulnerabilities ... a lot of it focused
on smartcard oriented hardware tokens (and smartcard readers).

there was extensive work on the EU FINREAD smartcard reader standard
regarding countermeasures to most types of PC-related security
problems.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

then there was a disastrous attempted consumer deployment of (financial)
smartcards where the resulting significant customer service problems
resulted in a wide spread opinion that smartcards (and by implication
other forms of hardware tokens) aren't practical in consumer market.
some recent discussions:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#34 The bank fraud blame game
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#65 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#22 'Man in the browser' is new threat to online banking

the aftermath had all sorts of retrenching on various hardware token
efforts ... not only in purely consumer market ... but even in
commercial environments where there were fears that retrofitting
existing PCs might cost hundreds of dollars (per PC) in resolving
installation problems.

some investigation of the actual consumer problems turned out to be
most were totally related to PC hardware serial port ... the
disastrous attempted consumer deployment specifically involving a
PC/SC compliant serial port smartcard reader.

the assertion has been that there was institutional knowledge that
could have headed off the disastrous attempted smartcard deployment
(which also resulted in aborting quite a few other efforts).

In the 80s, there were numerous PC-based dial-up online banking
offerings. In the mid-90s there were numerous presentations about
major justification for moving to internet online banking was
eliminating all the customer support costs related to dial-up serial
port modems. One presentation claimed that one online banking service
had accumulated something like sixty different serial-port modem
device drivers that cost them to support and maintain.

Transition to internet-based infrastructure moved all those dial-up
modem support costs to ISPs ... which could amortize it across a much
broader range of services. Also with much more pervasive use of
dial-up modems, PC builders could justify including built in modems
(totally eliminating after market modem installation problems). The
signifant hardware serial port issues was also behind the USB
activity.

In the wake of the disastrous attempted financial smartcard
deployment, there were some attempts to correct specific problems with
USB devices.  However, the impression was already wide-spread that it
was a general hardware token issue ... and not practical in the
consumer market (as opposed to a hardware serial port specific
issue).

The issue raised here has to do with the smartcard reader (as opposed to
the hardware token itself)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#38 The bank fraud blame game

In the EU FINREAD scenario, the consumer acquires their own FINREAD
complient, stand-alone reader with its own display and input ... that
operates independent of the PC it is connected to (and not subject to PC
viruses, trojan horses, etc).

The problem shows up in a public environment ... how would a consumer
know/trust whether or not any reader or terminal is actually
FINREAD-complient, has not been (physically) compromised (at some
point) and/or possibly counterfeit? Moving to a public environment, it
then requires for an (especially paranoid) end-consumer to provide
their own (secure/trusted) display and input device ... which implies
(at least) something like a PDA or cellphone.

as mentioned in early AADS chip strawman post (from the 90s)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#straw

the chip could either be packaged as an independent hardware token or as
embedded chip in any sort of device.

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:41:29 -0500

"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:

Once upon a time IBM realized that by catching them young, as students in
college, you later had a ready supply of customers who advocated, bought,
used IBM computers when they got out into the business world, and into
positions of power.
Today I received the latest brochure from one of the local technical
institutes which listed among others all the computer courses that they
offer. Nary a one of then was about using any computer that wasn't an
Intel PC chip clone running a (the latest) Microsoft Windows systems
and software applications. No mention of Apple, or Sun, or Linux, or
Mozilla, Lotus, or other.
So how can you expect a new generation of users to learn about all
these other goodies.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#3 folklore indeed

my brother said that when visiting (usually large institutional)
customers, he would fawn over how fantastic their ibm-logo'ed coffee
mugs were and would offer to trade an apple mug (or possibly 2-3) for
their fantastic ibm mug.

previous mention coffee mugs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#46 Shipwrecks

some of the issues about attracting next generation were brought up in
the recent thread in bit.listserv.ibm-main (need for low-end offering in
educational/hobbiest context):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#68 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#69 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#71 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#75 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#77 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#1 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#2 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#8 Open z/Architecture or Not
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#9 Open z architecture and Linux questions

new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:49:25 -0500

CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:

Indeed.  That was already being done at U. Mich. when I arrived in 1968.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#44 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#54 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#55 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology

for other topic drift, old post about my wife being at engineering
graduate school in that period
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#15 Glass Rooms (was Re: drum memory (was: Re: IBM S/360))

another mentioning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#22 Compter Architectures

that she got a job in future system project not long afterwards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

working for one of the people that had earlier been involved
in the virtual machine cp40 system at the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

another old reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use

and another post about running into one of her classmates
many yrs later (she was the only female in the class)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#68 META: Newsgroup cliques?

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:17:15 -0500

Peter Moylan <peter@DIESPAMMERSDIEpmoylan.org> writes:

I hope it doesn't. I'm using Thunderbird as my newsreader, and each
time it hits this thread the processor usage hits 100% for about a
minute. (A consequence, no doubt, of the current "now that we have
fast processors, good programming style is optional" programming
style; but that's a gripe for another forum.) The thread is
interesting, no doubt, but I keep wanting to break it just to avoid
those delays.

early implementations frequently are non-linear ... they have a list
that has to be travelled for every add, delete, query, change.

i saw that in the original cp67 delivered to the univ,
dispatch/scheduling overhead grew non-linear as number of users
increased.

for other drift ... much, much later, on first encountering unix, i
commented about having fixed design flaws back in the 60s, conjecture
that cp67 and unix (via multics) shared somewhat common history back to
ctss ... aka some number of the ctss people went to the science
center on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq and others went to multics
on the 5th flr; misc posts mentioning 545 tech sq &/or science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

even quite a bit later ... i've mentioned getting called into consult
with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payments on their
server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

they were providing (server) online download for their client product
and ran into a similar problem with nonlinear scaleup problem in tcp
implementation ... in fact, there was a period in the valley where a
large number of servers found that under increasing load, the
processors were spending 99percent of the time in non-linear overhead
dealing with a list.

The issue was that TCP sessions had been assumed to be long-lived and
there would be relatively few sessions concurrently in close
condition. This assumption was heavily violated by the client/server
protocol that had been implemented ... using TCP layer to achieve a
little additional reliability in the transaction oriented protocol. As
a result, loaded systems could easily have thousands of entries in the
session close management list.

for other drift ... possibly part of the reason that we were called in
... two of the people mentioned in this meeting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15

when we were doing ha/cmp product
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and cluster scaleup ... some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

... had moved on and were at this small client/server startup
responsible for something they called a commerce server ... that would
be doing the payment transactions ... and is frequently now referred to
as electronic commerce.

a descendent of that small client/server startup organization is now
responsible for the email/newsreader client you mentioned.

Public Computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 13:40:51 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

there was extensive work on the EU FINREAD smartcard reader standard
regarding countermeasures to most of types of PC-related security
problems.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#5 Public Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers

part of the issue is that some number of the chipcard and hardware token
deployments were extremely narrowly focused ... where the chip may have
been claimed to totally eliminate all security threats and
vulnerabilities ... but in fact, the myopic chip-centric focus could
result in actually decreasing overall integrity. this was easily
observed with the chipcard work going on in the mid-90s resulting in the
yes card vulnerabilities ... and even dating back to deployments in
the late-90s:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

recent post mentioning spontaneous comment from somebody in the audience
listening to yes card description; do you mean they managed to spend
billions to prove that chipcards are less secure than magstripe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#20 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#61 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#28 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#34 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security

... work that was going on concurrently when we were doing the AADS chip
strawman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

in the finread terminal case, the chipcard is presumed to be something
you have authentication that is difficult to counterfeit and/or spoof.
strong authentication is then used to scaffold some other parts of a
secure infrastructure. the problem with "dumb" reader attached to PC
... are virus, trojans, keyloggers, etc ... can manipulate the chipcard
in the reader w/o knowledge of the associated human.

the finread terminal was to provide trusted display and input that was
immune from widely occuring PC compromises. the trusted display would
provide a trusted display of every operation. the trusted input/pinpad
would be immune from common keyloggers and unable to be simulated by
virus and trojans resident on the PC. Authentication operations require
something you know PIN-entry to be passed directly to the chipcard.

The PIN-entry (in conjunction with chipcard) then represents multi-factor
authentication (the chip something you have and the PIN something you
know).

The PIN represents a "secret" ... but not a shared-secret ... some
posts that differentiate between "secret" paradigms and shared-secret
paradigms.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

Part of operation of finread certified terminal was that physical
human action was required for every PIN-entry ... and the
infrastructure was such that there wouldn't be associated chipcard
operation until the correct (human entered) PIN has been provided
(countermeasures to PC trojan keyloggers also able to simulate
human keyboard entry to valid chipcard as part of fraudulent
transactions).

The critical distinction regarding infrastructure requiring human action
showed up when we were called in to help wordsmith the cal. state
electronic signature legislation and later the federal legislation.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

Some factions were pushing hard to have digital signatures equivalent
to human signatures. The observation was that human signatures require
explicit action demonstrating having read, understood, agrees,
approves, and/or authorizes.

Digital signatures are purely an indication of something you have
authentication ... and are frequently performed w/o any demonstration of
corresponding human action demonstrating having read, understood,
agrees, approves, and/or authorizes. In some cases it was simply
semantic confusion and/or cognitive dissonance because the terms
"digital signature" and "human signature" both contain the word
"signature".

for some additional topic drift:
http://www.answers.com/topic/cognitive-dissonance?cat=biz-fin

from above:

In general: psychological theory of human behavior. The theory suggests
that conflicts between behavior and beliefs create a sense of
discomfort, or cognitive dissonance, that the individual subconsciously
attempts to eliminate by modifying his or her beliefs. For example, a
man who believes in nonviolence may strike someone in anger. The theory
states that the man will either modify his beliefs about nonviolence to
justify the violent behavior or will believe his action to be something
other than violence.

... snip ...

in this application is some believing that if they validate a "digital
signature" that it is then equivalent to "human signature" (w/o
requiring any additional supporting infrastructure).

Fazing out x86

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fazing out x86
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:10:26 -0500

Paul Gotch <paulg@at-cantab-dot.net> writes:

Indeed IBMs methadology is heavily based round a standard cell library as
much automation as they can get away with. So they trade some performance and
power efficency for fewer engineers and faster turnaround time.

Getting a really low power chip requires full custom layout and and tight
process. Or something semicustom and not mainstream like
http://www.intrinsity.com/ the headroom you get out of using something like
Fast14 does depend critically on exactly how the core was designed to start
off with though.

in (at least) the 70s and 80s there were quite a few internal people
working on VLSI design tools. I saw some amount doing work with the Los
Gatos VLSI group.  In fact, the Los Gatos VLSI tools group originally
created the corporate pascal compiler in support of their VLSI tool
development (which was eventually released as product on both mainframe
and RISC).

in the wake of the company going thru its downturn, including going into
the red in 1992 ... quite a bit of the internal tool groups were
dissolved and transition made to standard vendor tools. during this
period, there were some number of people from VSLI tool groups doing
technology transfer to outside vendors ... as sort of last task prior to
their position being eliminated (some then showed up at as employees of
the vendors they had been working with).

In the case of the Los Gatos group ... the bldg was leveled and the land
sold off for housing development.

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:19:37 -0500

hancock4 writes:

Many of my employers got non IBM peripherals or auxillary units to
save money.  They weren't as good but the cash savings were
significant.

major justification for launching fs project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

discussed in some detail in this reference (by one of
the executives):
http://www.ecole.org/Crisis_and_change_1995_1.htm

from above:

IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future
System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead that
the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such a high
level of integration that it would be impossible for competitors to
follow a compatible niche strategy. However, the project failed because
the objectives were too ambitious for the available technology.  Many of
the ideas that were developed were nevertheless adapted for later
generations. Once IBM had acknowledged this failure, it launched its
'box strategy', which called for competitiveness with all the different
types of compatible sub-systems. But this proved to be difficult because
of IBM's cost structure and its R&D spending, and the strategy only
resulted in a partial narrowing of the price gap between IBM and its
rivals

... snip ..

I had participated having worked on a clone controller as an
undergraduate in the 60s (project precipitated because I
couldn't quite get the ibm box to do what I wanted) ... misc. past refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

other posts in the thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#68 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#69 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#71 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#75 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#77 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#1 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#2 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#8 Open z/Architecture or Not
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#9 Open z architecture and Linux questions

Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 08:14:00 -0500

a few (out of a large number) lincoln lab folklore from Melinda's paper
at
http://www.princeton.edu/~melinda/

footnote on 360/67 SLT instruction

"The 360/67 SLT instruction RPQ was designed at Lincoln by Jack
Nolan. He was interested in using it for database list processing. Once
it was implemented, IBM found use for it to process lists in the CP
nucleus. I don't know if it was ever used by TSS or for any applications
program." (J.M. Winett, private communication, 1990.)

... snip ...

footnotes on two cp67 commercial timesharing companies (Arnow was
director of computing at Lincoln):

Almost immediately after that, two "spinoff" companies were formed by
former employees of Lincoln Lab, Union Carbide, and the IBM Cambridge
Scientific Center, to provide commercial services based on CP/CMS. Dick
Bayles, Mike Field, Hal Feinleib, and Bob Jay went to the company that
became National CSS.

Harit Nanavati, Bob Seawright, Jack Arnow, Frank Belvin, and Jim March
went to IDC (Interactive Data Corporation). Although the loss of so many
talented people was a blow, the CSC people felt that the success of the
two new companies greatly increased the credibility of CP-67

... snip ...

lots of past posts mentioning cp67&vm370 commercial timesharing
(including ncss and idc)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

The SLT (or search list) was used in CP67 kernel to search internal
kernel storage management tables. It was dropped when CP67 added
storage allocation "subpool" logic ... which was orders of magnitude
faster than searching lists ... even with hardware instruction. minor
recent topic drift mentioning list search overhead:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#14 What do YOU call the # sign?

I have an old SHARE Lincoln Labs software contribution document for
LLMPS listing Belvin and Winett as authors. Recent folklore reference
that MTS implementation was scaffold off LLMPS:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#54 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology

for other topic drift ... an updated "database" hardware instruction
support from current principles of operation (trees instead of lists,
courtesy of Luther):
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.7?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

back in days working on the original RDBMS/SQL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

there were a number of similar efforts on other database organization
efforts (that shared some of the same objectives as system/r) that I
also got to work on. One of them used some ideas similar to Luther's ...
and, in fact, had him in to consult on some of the implementation.

misc. past posts mentioning SLT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#47 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#15 OS/360 (was LINUS for S/390)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#23 why the machine word size is in radix 8??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#33 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#71 IBM 9020 FAA/ATC Systems from 1960's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#14 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#48 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#54 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#87 Atomic operations redux
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#35 SR 15,15 was: IEFBR14 Problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#17 IBM 3090 : Was (and fek that) : Re: new computer kits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#28 Relocating application architecture and compiler support
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#40 transputers again was: The demise of Commodore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#21 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#15 The SLT Search LisT instruction - Maybe another one for the Wheelers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#17 The SLT Search LisT instruction - Maybe another one for the Wheelers

Distributed Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Distributed Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:28:17 -0500

A lot of vendors that have played in GRID (originally for various
high-energy physics labs) have been trying to move the products into
other market segments ... finding some early adopters in financial
sector.

In the early 90s, there were quite a few projects attempting to
re-engineer legacy systems with distributed "killer micros" of the
period; large number of major efforts were built that used distributed
object oriented technologies. a couple old posts mentioning "killer
micros":
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#12 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#47 "VAX" Tradename reused !

The problem was that past the toy demo stage ... most found that the
distributed object oriented technologies use, resulted in a factor of
one hundred fold (or greater) increase in overhead ... vis-a-vis the
existing mainframe legacy implementations (totally eliminating
anticipated cost-savings and thruput scaleup). There were billions of
dollars spent on these failed attempts to re-engineer legacy
(mainframe) systems.

One of the areas that such efforts in the financial industry was
focused at was the overnight batch window. Across a broad range of
"real-time" transactions ... there was actually still a serious
bottleneck. In many situations, the "batch applications" from the
60s&70s ... started to see "online" front-ends being built in the
70s&80s. However, these "online" implementations frequently only
recorded details ... which were then queued up for final processing in
overnight batch. The problems were two-fold, 1) growing businesses
were finding that the workload was starting to exceed the capacity
thruput of overnight batch window and 2) businesses moving into
international operations were forcing the number of hrs for the
overnight batch window to decrease.

One of the buzz-words from the early 90s was straight through
processing (or STP) ... i.e. transactions would be processed in
real-time all the way to completion (rather than being queued for
final processing in the overnight batch window).

recent posts mentioning overnight batch window issues:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?

The newer generation effort is looking at combining several
technologies, the physical packaging and management from GRID,
virtualization for transparently handling large number of
different work items ... and numerous related activities attempting to
address efficient distributed scaleup issues.

We had worked on some of this in scaleup ... old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

in our ha/cmp product activities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

also in these old postings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15

One of the holy grails is to achieve significant improvements in
distributed computing technologies to get the necessary cost savings
and scaleup so that there can actually be a move to straight through
processing and eliminate the legacy overnight batch window
implementations (and related workload scaleup limitations).

a recent item in this area:

Red Hat Challenges IBM With Open Source Messaging System
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20071209/tc_cmp/204702773

from above:

Enterprise MRG is a combination of AMQP with real-time operations
already in the Linux kernel and grid computing capabilities flowing out
of the Condor Project at the University of Wisconsin.

...

AMQP.org established by developers at JPMorgan Chase; contributors
include Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, GE HP, Shell

... snip ...

it also references this website (which has an SSL certificate problem)

Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
https://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/Advanced+Message+Queuing+Protocol;jsessionid=7D159C65507C768C14D3749ABB864F71

from above:

Contributors

Cisco Systems, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Börse Systems, Envoy
Technologies, Inc., Goldman Sachs, IONA Technologies PLC, iMatix
Corporation sprl., JPMorgan Chase Bank Inc. N.A, Novell, Rabbit
Technologies Ltd., Red Hat, Inc., TWIST Process Innovations ltd, and
29West Inc.

... snip ...

other recent posts mentioning GRID:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#33 Just another example of mainframe costs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#23 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#22 Another "migration" from the mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#23 Another "migration" from the mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#65 mainframe = superserver
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#59 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#62 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:56:56 -0500

jmfbahciv writes:

It's impossible.  The software people don't have any control
over the schedules of the hardware.

modulo some exceptions.

lots of 370 machines were in customer shops by the time they got around
to announcing hardware virtual memory for 370s. this required adding
virtual memory hardware to all new 370 machines ... but also offering a
field hardware upgrade to existing 370 machines in the field.

the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

had worked with endicott to modify cp67 (running on real 360/67) to
emulate 370 (including all the virtual memory features ... which
differed in many ways from the 360/67 implementation). This was in
common operation a year before the first 370 (145) engineering machine
with virtual memory was working.

however, the 370/165 engineers were running into some significant
difficulties implementing the full 370 virtual memory architecture.  In
various resolution meetings, they proposed dropping several features
from 370 virtual memory architecture ... in order to gain (at least) six
months in their schedule. The people from the favorite son operating
system in pok could see no problem with dropping the features.

vm370 was already dependent on the new features ... and when they were
dropped (the elimination of the features had to be propagated across all
machines in the 370 line) ... had to go back and make some revisions
with quick&dirty kludge (namely related to shared-segment support).

misc. past posts mentioning 370/165-II implementation problems and
gaining six months in delivery schedule by software groups aggreeing
that the additional virtual memory architecture features could be
dropped/eliminated
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#7 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#204 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#209 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#82 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#55 X86 ultimate CISC? No. (was: Re: "all-out" vs less aggressive designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#63 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#15 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#16 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#63 Are the L1 and L2 caches flushed on a page fault ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#37 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#8 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#50 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#47 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#2 Handling variable page sizes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#68 Tweaking old computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#10 Coherent TLBs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#12 Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#19 Multiple layers of virtual address translation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#20 price ov IBM virtual address box??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#37 Does PowerPC 970 has Tagged TLBs (Address Space Identifiers)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#37 S/360 undocumented instructions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#6 If the x86 ISA could be redone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#8 vm/370 smp support and shared segment protection hack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#62 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#10 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#18 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#39 A second look at memory access alignment
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#45 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#13 VM maclib reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#0 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#5 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#12 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#4 Mainframe vs. xSeries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#9 Hadware Support for Protection Bits: what does it really mean?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#23 Virtual memory implementation in S/370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#5 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#41 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#22 Virtual Virtualizers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#26 Mainframe Limericks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#16 On the 370/165 and the 360/85
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#61 Is the teaching of non-reentrant HLASM coding practices ever defensible?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#1 Is the teaching of non-reentrant HLASM coding practices ever
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#60 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#26 moving on
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#32 Running OS/390 on z9 BC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#7 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#72 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#43 z/VM usability
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#35 IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#41 Virtual Storage implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#53 Virtual Storage implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#70 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#74 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#62 CSA 'above the bar'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

Distributed Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Distributed Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:25:48 -0500

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing

I've posted before about overnight batch window and being called in to
look at one such large legacy application.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

... a 450k-plus line cobol program that ran on large tens of max'ed out
mainframe systems (avg. $30m/per) ... this was at the same time the
organization was spending a few hundred million on a distributed
computing replacement.

it appeared at the time (thru much of the 90s), nobody in the industry
was bothering to benchmark the (distributed object-oriented) toy demos
and/or doing the related speeds&feeds analysis ... possibly
because belief in mantra that a large enuf number of killer micros
could overcome any level of inefficienciy ... and/or some of the other
organizations on the distributed (object-oriented) computing bandwagon
should have already done the speeds&feeds analysis. in fact, large
billions went down the drain on these kinds of projects w/o anybody
having done the necessary analysis.

In the case of the large 450k-plus line cobol program ... most of its
lifetime it had been subject to "hot-spot" analysis ... i.e.  sampling
instruction location ... and then optimizing the instruction region
where the program spent majority of its time. This approach had
somewhat hit the wall and was showing little or no further returns.

This is similar to the analysis we did for architecting ECPS ...
which used both instruction address smapling as well as time-stamping
entry/exit ... old post about ECPS and results of time-stamping study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

I've mentioned before that the science center also pioneered system
modeling and multiple regression analysis for performance work (as
well as early work that eventually turned into capacity planning).
Lots of past related posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

One of the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

system modeling efforts was implemented in APL and (among other things)
was deployed on the world-wide sales & marketing (vm-based) HONE
system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

as the performance predictor. Sales/Marketing people could input
customer configuration and workload profiles ... and ask "what if"
questions about what happens when there are configuration and/or
workload changes.

A distant descendent of the performance predictor was "sold off"
during the corporation downturn period ... recent reference in
another context in comp.arch post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#16 Fazing out x86

which then was taken and run thru an APL->C translator and the person
was using it in a succesful performance consulting business (large
enterprise customers ... and not just mainframe). This person had also
been hired to look at the large legacy overnight batch window
application.

So the final thing that wasn't being done was multiple regression
analysis. So I got them to supply me with a whole load of "activity"
statistics across a large number of nightly runs on a large number of
different machines ... to process. This identified a very fruitful
area from which a 15percent performance improvement was gained (a
functional area that wasn't obvious from other techniques). While
15percent doesn't seem like a lot ... if it is measured in just the
hardware costs of the associated mainframes ... it comes to a couple
hundred million.

a few past posts mentioning the activity:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#62 Itanium2 performance data from SGI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#17 More on garbage collection
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#18 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#4 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#23 Strobe equivalents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#28 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#71 PAAppViewer3 (AppViewer3)?

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:06:42 -0500

jmfbahciv writes:

Every once in a while I daydream about a pol who suddenly discovered
a great leap in popularity because he didn't split his tongue.

cspan writer/book program this morning:

Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of
John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism
httpp://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8968&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No

will be repeated next sunday.

some of the statements had to do with the democratic party changing
from the party of John Locke ... wiki reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

to the party of Hegel ... wiki reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel

There were some comments about Jackie and others felt that the
shooting should have been the responsibility of the far right dispite
there being absolutely no facts to support the feelings (and being at
the root of the subsequent conspiracy theories) ... possibly as a way
of attempting to make the death more meaningful.

Also some comments about contributing to the rise of appearance over
substance.

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
To: <ibm-main@bama.ua.edu>
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:44:59 -0500

shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz  , Seymour J.) writes:

> The only operating systems that are legal to run on Hercules are Linux,
> and MVS 3.8 (I think).

Shirley all of these are legal:

BOS/360
BPS/360
CALL/360
CP/67
DOS/VSE
DOS/360
MTS
OS/VS1
OS/VS2 R1.7 (SVS)
TOS/360
TSS/360
VMF/370

this recent post references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#18 Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

some (virtual machine) cp67 historical references from Melinda's VM
paper at
http://www.princeton.edu/~melinda/

mentioning that very early, two new commercial companies were formed to
offer (virtual machine) cp67-based commercial timesharing services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

drawing people heavily from Science Center,
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Lincoln Labs, and Union Carbide.

It also makes references to MTS folklore having been initially built on
top of Lincoln Labs "LLMPS".

There was an OS/360 operators console application called ONLINE/OS
that provided CMS-like interactive functionality. It was most
frequently used with PCP ... but could also be used on MFT and MVT.

CP67 had a function that could save a "virtual memory" image of a
running virtual machine. This was used with CMS to get rapid
startup.  However, a technique was developed that could also
"checkpoint" a virtual memory image of OS/360 ... at point when I/O
had been quiesed ... allowing OS/360 "quick start" in a virtual
machine (just restore the saved virtual memory image). This could
be used in conjunction with restoring a saved image of OS/360 where
ONLINE/OS had already been up and running.

old posts mentioning online/os
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#34 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#45 Valid reference on lunar mission data being unreadable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#48 AMD/Linux vs Intel/Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#33 someone looking to donate IBM magazines and stuff
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#50 Is anyone still running

part of Melinda's paper has appendix mentioning ONLINE/OS was never
released outside the company (although I had a copy of it at the
university in the 60s, also much of the original work had been done by
a person on assignment from Union Carbide) ref:

E.C. Hendricks, C.I. Johnson, R.D. Seawright, and D.B. Tuttle,
Introduction to ONLINE/OS and ONLINE/OS User's Guide, IBM Cambridge
Scientific Center Reports 320-2036, 320-2037, March, 1969

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:45:00 -0500

"Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net> writes:

When I was a kid, in Latvia, Saturday baths were the norm, but I got
more than two inches of water in the tub.  Probably around six.  First
one had to light the in-line heater, though.  Our apartment had cold
water piped for the tub (with shower), the kitchen sink, and for
flushing the toilet (in its own tiny room).  What would make most
people in the USA shudder is that there were no facilities for washing
one's hands after a toilet visit.  The up-side of that is that one
grew up more resistant to all sorts of bugs, if childhood was
survived.  There's not much that bothers me now.  I have even partaken
of the water in Mexico with no bad results.

and now for some latvia computer drift
http://inventions.lza.lv/izg_en.php?id=34

slightly related past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#19 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#8 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#65 SMP idea for the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#21 PowerPC Mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#69 The problem with installable operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#72 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#31 IBM Manuals from the 1940's and 1950's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#29 Architect Mainframe system - books/guidenance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#30 High Level Assembler for MVS & VM & VSE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#21 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:21:05 -0500

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#24 What do YOU call the # sign?

and for totally unrelated, when i was a kid, we would bath in pool in
nearby river on saturdays (at least in the summer) ... used bars of
ivory since they floated.

there have been recent news articles speculating that significant higher
incidence of asthma among kids from urban environments vis-a-vis
children raised in the country ... is that non-urban environment exposes
children to variety of environmental conditions that result in improved
immune system.

T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:34:26 -0500

John Ahlstrom <AhlstromJK@comcast.net> writes:

My brother was an IBM salesman in the early 60s.  He
started just before the 360.  More than once he and
colleagues worked nights to make sure that payrolls
got produced or some similar business function got
completed when there was a problem with equipment or
software.  IBM sold service that just happened to run
on IBM hardware.  Most everyone else sold hardware.

When i was undergraduate, I was hired as full-time employee at Boeing
(for the summer, between semesters) as part of helping get BCS going
(which was just getting off the ground having been recently
created). I had earlier been con'ed into giving a one week, 40hr
computer class for BCS technical staff during spring break.

The Boeing folklore was that the Boeing people knew more about 360
announcement than the local IBM sales people did ... and presented the
local salesman with an extremely large 360 order shortly after
announcement ... and had to explain to the salesman what it was.

Also, the order was so large that it is supposed to have prompted the
company's move from straight commission structure to sales quota
system (supposedly the straight commission on this order made the
salesman the highest paid employee in the corporation, for effectively
not having done anything more than being there to accept the order).

misc. recent posts mentioning BCS:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#54 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#19 IBM Unionization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#60 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:08:17 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#24 What do YOU call the # sign?

and for totally unrelated, when i was a kid, we would bath in pool in
nearby river on saturdays (at least in the summer) ... used bars of
ivory since they floated.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#25 What do YOU call the # sign?

and the outhouse didn't have any water either to flush with or to wash
with ... and frequently the paper were pages from a one of two common
mail-order catalogues.

old post mentioning going back much later with my own family (and
accidently "locking" my daughter in the outhouse)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#17 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

repeat from the above post:

or like turning the block of wood on the outhouse door. the door had a
spring on it ... but it had a wood block that was nailed to the
outside frame ... and turned the block to keep the door from blowing
open and help cut down on the flies.

on one trip back with the family ... at one point was out in the
outhouse ... and my daughter was waiting outside for me to leave
... she slipped in as i exited ... and automatically i turned the
block of wood (locking her in) as the door shut ... w/o even thinking
about it consciously.  30-40 mins later ... somebody asked where she
was ... and found her inside banging and yelling (couldn't hear her
from the house).

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:00:15 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#25 What do YOU call the # sign?

and the outhouse didn't have any water either to flush with or to wash
with ... and frequently the paper were pages from a one of two common
mail-order catalogues.

old post mentioning going back much later with my own family (and
accidently "locking" my daughter in the outhouse)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#17 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#27 What do YOU call the # sign?

and the follow-on to the above reference post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

has a picture of me at a young age ... just out of view on the left of
the picture in the post, was the rain barrel used to collect water for
clothes washing.

Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:59:09 -0500

"Dave Wade" <g8mqw@yahoo.com> writes:

Any way does CP67 still exist anywhere and is it worth tinkering with
Hercules to do 360/67 emulation, or is it lost for ever....

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#18 Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

somewhat related post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#23 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

when i created a cp67 bootable tape for distribution ... some reference
in this old email references moving from doing cp67-based internal
distributions to vm370-based internal distributions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102

referenced in these recent posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not

... i would have exectuable kernel image and appended on the tape would
be all the files & source needed to recreate the executable kernel image
(including the procedures to process the source)

up thru the 80s, i had a few of these old tape images, some even triple
replicated in the (same) datacenter library. This was the source for the
cp67 multi-level source management provided to Melinda in fall of 85 ...
reference from vmshare archive
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read?fn=HISTORY&ft=MEMO&line=49
in this thread:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=HISTORY&ft=MEMO

i deny all knowledge related to the 2nd post in the above. However,
slightly futher down in the above thread may be familiar names from
this n.g.

but shortly after the above reference ... the datacenter went thru some
operational difficulties ... where mount requests for "scratch" tapes
somewhat randomly pulled tapes from the tape library ... and nearly all
my archive tapes with data from the 60s & 70s were wiped out (including
my old cp67 archives). some old posts mentioning the trauma:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#13 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#14 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#45 Hand cranking telephones
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#12 Seven of Nine
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#59 A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:22:26 -0500

jmfbahciv writes:

So, at IBM, hardware and software were allowed to work in parallel.
That didn't happen at DEC.  I think this was because it was too likely
that software would have had to be redone when the real gear showed
up.  We'ld (at least TOPS-10..I don't know about the miniland) be
able to write and have the monitor code working within a few months,
if not earlier.  So DEC was able to lag software behind the hardware.

Otherwise we'ld have to do what you did...drop features.  When those
features are the features that were supposed to sell the gear, the
whole development project is moot.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#20 folklore indeed

The "architecture" manual was strongly enforced. That is what allowed
lots of groups to work in parallel ... not just hardware and software
... but also all the different hardware groups doing different processor
models (at different locations ... in some cases on different
continents).

slightly related recent post (mentions the "owner" of the architecture
book):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#24 What do YOU call the # sign?

Strongly enforcing everybody to follow the rules ... was also the
testimony (previously mentioned) that allowed the company to make sure
all models implemented the exact same architecture (the 165 example was
situation involving large number of people eventually agreeing to
something different ... and then also forcing everybody to comply with
the change) .. the point of the testimony was that none of the other
companies managed to achieve that level of control, providing ibm with a
competitive advantage ... recent posts mentioning that testimony
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#34 IBM 8000 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#13 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#8 what does xp do when system is copying
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#9 CA to IBM product swap
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#63 Remembering the CDC 6600

recent posts mentioning the architecture "redbook"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#32 Running OS/390 on z9 BC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#7 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#31 Latest Principles of Operation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#23 Abend S0C0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'

recent posts mentioning the "811" (i.e. 370-xa) architecture
specification:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#57 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#28 IBM 360 Model 20 Questions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#71 IBM 360 Model 20 Questions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#76 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

Public Computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:32:49 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

Lots of this has performance penalties. Tops20 does. VM does. Mach
does. Multics had (can we say 'has' again soon?) a huge overhead.

a lot of VM also shared many characteristics of microkernels ...  ala
what you find in the much later Mach effort ... which has also been
leveraged more recently in various kinds of security efforts related to
current generation of virtual machine activity.

the other thing that went on in VM was that with a very focused
microkernel-like specification ... it was a lot easier to focus on
performance issues and their solution. it was also straight-forward
progression to start including virtual machine operation as part of the
hardware definition ... activity that started in the 70s.

there are also issues regarding preserving microkernel specification
"purity" ... or taking short-cuts ... this has showed up more recently
in some microkernel implementations attempting to get networking/tcpip
support out of the kernel.

misc. posts mentioning microkernel (and/or virtual machine
implementation microkernel):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#22 The Mac is like a modern day Betamax
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#44 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#56 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#63 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#10 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#10 What part of z/OS is the OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#11 What part of z/OS is the OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#70 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#83 IBM to the PCM market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#26 Latest Principles of Operation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#1 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#4 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#26 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:42:46 -0500

jmfbahciv writes:

And not just mud.  Was yours embedded in a slab of concrete?

previous posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#25 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#27 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#28 What do YOU call the # sign?

well some barnyard stuff ... over the years ... mud scapper nailed to a
timber and latter bolted to concrete block.

there was long haul east/west railroad not too far away ... and every
other year or so ... they came thru doing track maintenance. cast-off
railroad ties were still useable for lots of functions.

also picked up some other stuff at railroad auction ... my uncle did
part-time house moving ... and jacks they used for moving tracks around
could be adapted to house moving. i remember lightweight cast aluminum
around 60-70 lbs and larger steel jacks around 120 lbs. tamping bar also
useable as jack handle and misc. other functions.

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:58:59 -0500

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#30 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#32 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#36 What do YOU call the # sign?

item from today with a number of pros & cons (for xmas lights):

Good, bad and ugly of LEDs
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702684

25 years: A technology timeline

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 25 years: A technology timeline
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:06:09 -0500

25 years: A technology timeline
http://www.gcn.com/print/26_30/45516-1.html

from above:

This timeline excludes a few technologies that might seem obvious
choices, but they appeared before 1982. The Internet, for instance, was
designed in 1974, though it did not open up until the 1980s. Personal
digital assistants first appeared in 1975. TCP/IP goes back to the
1970s. Even in a time of accelerated technology advancements,
innovations take time to gestate — wikis, which have caught fire in
recent years, date to 1995.

... snip ...

and misc references on some of the subjects

rdbms
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

html and 1st webserver outside europe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#40 Why isn't OMVS command integrated with ISPF?

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers,uk.rec.sheds
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:46:16 -0500

Esra Sdrawkcab <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:

That bit's been done to death, but have another go ifn you like!

Alright I'll thrw a bit in. I was told, with a lot of sincerity, that
is was meant to be HASP and this stood for some arcane IBM thang. But
I may have disremembered it.

HASP songbook ... orange cover with image of a "padlock" hasp

quicky search engine turns up a few hasp images here:
http://www.lockingsystems.com/PadlockHasps.htm

HASP for Houston Automated Spooling Program ... developed by ibm'ers on
the nasa houston account ... wiki reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Automated_Spooling_Program

Above mentions first HASP meeting was at mar68 SHARE in Houston
... which is also where CP67 was announced. I got to attend the
conference ...  and went to some number of cp67, os360 as well as HASP
meeting i.e. I had been done some amount of work on both os360 and HASP
... cp67 had only been installed at the univ the last week jan68.

misc. past posts mentioning HASP, JES2, and/or JES2 networking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

my wife did a stint in the (gburg) JES group ... following FS being
killed ... referenced here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#13 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology

which was handling morph of HASP->JES2 and ASP->JES3. One of her efforts
was to do detailed analysis of JES2 and JES3 features and come up with
definition for integrated product. recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#12 JES2 or JES3, Which one is older?

She was then con'ed into moving to POK to take responsibility for
"loosely-coupled" (mainframe for cluster) architecture. some posts
mentioning stint responsible for "loosely-coupled" architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

the HASP wiki article has URL for:

Session O441 - The History of HASP and JES2
http://www.redbug.org/dba/sharerpt/share79/o441.html

the above article also has some comments about the FS project that was
going on in the early 70s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

The history article also mentions the HASP team moving to Washington
where RJE was added and released as HASP version 2.

At the univ., I had started work on adding CRJE support to HASP ...
"deleting" the 2780/RJE code ... and inserting 2741&tty terminal
support along with adding editor interface that implemented the CMS
editor command syntax.

What do YOU call the # sign?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:57:31 -0500

Peter Duncanson <mail@peterduncanson.net> writes:

As if on cue, a mock-up of a 747 fuselage is offered for sale on
ebay.

http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=6941912

Jumbo jet fuselage for sale on eBay

Part of a 747 aircraft has been put up for sale on eBay.

The 40ft-long fuselage has been placed on the internet
auction site by a design company, which used the mock-up
aircraft to create a new line of interiors for global
airline Cathay Pacific.

recent post mentioning doing stint at BCS one summer:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#26 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly

that summer you could periodically see serial #3 flying over the skys of
seattle ... getting FAA certification.

as part of various orientations, I was given a number of tours,
... including 747 interior mockup ... and remember from that tour a
comment that 747 would be carrying so many people that it would always
be serviced by at least four jetways (because of the people
congestion).

was renting a basement apartment from one of the 747 engineers working
in everett ... who had some stories on how well the testing was going
(at the time, BCS was at corporate hdqtrs just off boeing field).

placing the flight deck above the body of the plane was explaned as
also pitching the plane as a "commercial" C5A-competition ... allowed
a freight/cargo version where the nose swings open.

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:53:23 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

some of this could be related to the walmart (joined by other merchants)
class action antitrust suit against the card associations ...

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#0 foklore indeed

news item from today on recent Fed Payments Study

PIN Debit And the ACH Among the Big Gainers in Fed Payments Study
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1603

from above:

But efforts by merchants, including Wal-Mart, to push lower-cost PIN
debit appear to be effectively counteracting that promotion, according
to Oliver. Merchants not only are installing more PIN-reading
point-of-sale terminals, but they're also employing the practice of
"PIN-prompting" in which the terminal automatically asks the customer
to enter the PIN when a debit card offering both options is swiped.

... snip ...

above reference is to extensive tv advertisement and other promotions
for signature debit being run by the card associations.

actual study is here:
http://www.frbservices.org/Retail/pdf/2007_payments_study.pdf

the study also mentions that the number of ATM cash withdrawals has been
descreasing ... but the total value of cash withdrawals has increased.
While not mentioned, some of the churn related to ATM fees might play a
factor.

for more topic drift ... ATM & ACH settlements are part of the
transactions involved in "overnight batch window"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing

Mainframe Funeral

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Funeral
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:00:29 -0500

x-over reference from recent post in b.l.i

Manitoba Mainframe Funeral
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2007/11/manitoba_mainframe_funeral.html

and

In Loving Memory of the Mainframe (aka IMS)
http://umanitoba.ca/mainframe/

from above:

The first mainframe, an IBM 650 was installed in the year 1960 and went
through many upgrades and changes to the final hardware of an Amdahl
Millennium 1015. In its many forms the mainframe has supported the
Student Records systems, Payroll, Human Resources, Finance, Research,
student labs, etc.

The mainframe was predeceased by the Huron Object Star database,
telephone registration, punch cards, card readers, DT80 terminals
connected by the pink wire, and Mantes, the beloved file management
system.

... snip ...

for other topic drift ... a couple past references to Huron:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#13 VM SPOOL question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#2 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?

New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:04:59 -0500

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#31 Public Computers

Virtualization is being used for consolidation and management ... but it
is also being leveraged for creating virtual appliances (or what we used
to call service virtual machines) ... which are also being characterized
as light-weight operating systems (both the virtual machine hypervisor
as a microkernel as well as the virtual appliance as a different kind of
microkernel).

recent article in line about virtualization being leveraged to change
nature of operating systems; most recent:

The OS: Fat or thin?; Future of IT: Cloud computing heralds winds of
change, but heavy-duty OSes hold their ground
http://www.gcn.com/print/26_30/45537-1.html

from above:

Because virtualization is getting easier, we are starting to see
independent software vendors start to package their applications with a
dedicated OS. When you buy the software, you actually get the software
and a complete operating environment. This practice allows vendors to
control the environment, which cuts the cost of supporting different
OSes. "So you don't patch the application, you patch the entire unit
together," Cathrow said.

... snip ...

also along the lines of this set of posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing

other recent articles in the genre:

Red Hat Goes Grid and Real Time with Enterprise MRG Distro
http://www.itjungle.com/bns/bns121007-story02.html
A Boom Year for Virtualization Management
http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/1934723.html
Red Hat Goes Grid
http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/news/article.php/3715051
Novell hits at Red Hat's real-time rant
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006694o-2000469549b,00.htm
Linux Jumps to Real Time
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/atc/?p=270
Future of IT: Cloud computing heralds winds of change but heavy-duty
OSes hold their ground
http://www.gcn.com/print/26_30/45537-1.html

recent posts mentioning virtual appliance and/or light-weight
operating system (running in virtual machines) are the
new (40+ yr old) direction:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#26 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#35 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization

Computer language history

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer language history
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:49:14 -0500

Justa Lurker <JustaLurker@att.net> writes:

Without a doubt, one of the early classics (1969) on this topic was
written by Jean Sammet.  It's title is "Programming Languages: History
and Fundamentals" published by Prentice-Hall.

Jean was at the Boston Programming Center, 3rd flr, 545 tech sq.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

as the cp67 group grew and morphed into the vm370 group, it split off
from the science center and absorbed the Boston Programming Center on
the 3rd flr (later it outgrow the 3rd flr and moved out into the old SBC
bldg. in burlington mall ... this was after the legal settlement and SBC
became part of CDC).

other past posts mentioning Jean Sammet and Boston Programming Center
on the 3rd flr
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#37 S/360 development burnout?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#47 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#59 history of CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#17 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#76 (old) list of (old) books
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#78 Newsgroup cliques?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#0 Wanted: Weird Programming Language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#1 Wanted: Weird Programming Language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#55 S/360 IPL from 7 track tape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#20 BASIC Language History?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#42 REXX still going strong after 25 years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#54 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#8 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#44 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#21 The very first text editor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#28 Mainframe Limericks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#1 Info on Compiler System 1 (Univac, Navy)?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#58 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:12:32 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#31 Public Computers

Virtualization is being used for consolidation and management ... but it
is also being leveraged for creating virtual appliances (or what we used
to call service virtual machines) ... which are also being characterized
as light-weight operating systems (both the virtual machine hypervisor
as a microkernel as well as the virtual appliance as a different kind of
microkernel).

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems

relatively trivial example is in this recent post mentioning the port of
Open Solaris to mainframe virtual machine
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#9 Open z architecture and Linux questions

and comments about the difference between a virtual machine port and
port to running on native hardware.

a big issue is that native hardware service requirements tend to be
fairly robust EREP and RAS. This showed up in th