List of Archived Posts

2001 Newsgroup Postings (05/24 - 06/27)

Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?

Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?

Mysterious Prefixes

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

some VLIW (IA-64) projections from January, 1999...

Emulation (was Re: Object code (was: Source code - couldn't resist compiling it :-))

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

Theo Alkema

Theo Alkema

5-player Spacewar?

Climate, US, Japan & supers query

5-player Spacewar?

5-player Spacewar?

5-player Spacewar?

Medical data confidentiality on network comms

Wanted other CPU's

Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)

Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)

offtopic: texas tea (was: re: vliw)

VM-CMS emulator

Theo Alkema

Early AIX including AIX/370

MERT Operating System & Microkernels

Question about credit card number

Question about credit card number

Price of core memory

Design (Was Re: Server found behind drywall)

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

Question about credit card number

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

Remove the name from credit cards!

"SOAP" is back

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry

Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry

Ancient computer humor - The Condemned

Ancient computer humor - Memory

Ancient computer humor - Gen A Sys

Ancient computer humor - DEC WARS

Remove the name from credit cards!

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

Golden Era of Compilers

Golden Era of Compilers

Golden Era of Compilers

Golden Era of Compilers

Ancient computer humor - The Condemned

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu

Price of core memory

Logo (was Re: 5-player Spacewar?)

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

JFSes: are they really needed?

JFSes: are they really needed?

JFSes: are they really needed?

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

First Workstation

Converting Bitmap images

mail with lrecl >80

commodity storage servers

IBM mainframe reference online?

Q: Merced a flop or not?

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

commodity storage servers

Simulation Question

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

FREE X.509 Certificates

HMC . . . does anyone out there like it ?

FREE X.509 Certificates

Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 13:35:52 GMT

Paul Nunnink writes:

Hi All,

going through my computer software collection I've found this wonderfull
operating system PC/IX. I remember getting this from someone at IBM as a
present. It has a big stamp on it "EVALUATION COPY". That must have
been, well, around 1985 I guess. I owned a PC/XT then. My, I was proud,
PROUD of it man! Real Unix! A system 'just like the university'. Also I
had (and still have) a Lear Siegler ADM5 terminal and a VT100. These
could be plugged on the COM ports of the XT and, voila!, a multi-user
system.Damn, I still remember the thrill of sitting in obe little room
of my flat, while hearing the printer go in the other little room. Nice,
huh, being young and naive, after all that is 16 years ago. Boy, time
flies.....

mine is long gone ... but wasn't it a gray box that was something like
IBM PC/IX ... by Interactive. It was a AT&T III port. Interactive
basically did the same/similar port to the PC/RT (for ibm) ... but to
the VRM layer rather than directly to hardware (which ibm subsequently
heavily modified and called AIX).

lots of extraneous pc/rt references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#25 Early RJE Terminals (was Re: First Network?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#25 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#26 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#27 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#28 Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#2 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#23 Roads as Runways Was: Re: BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve  Y2K)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#64 Old naked woman ASCII art
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#65 Old naked woman ASCII art
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#129 High Performance PowerPC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#146 Dispute about Internet's origins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#49 IBM RT PC (was Re: What does AT stand for ?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#59 Multithreading underlies new development paradigm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#54 Multics dual-page-size scheme
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#4 TF-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#65 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#27 OCF, PC/SC and GOP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#13 Airspeed Semantics, was: not quite an sr-71, was: Re: jet in IBM ad?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#74 Metric System (was: case sensitivity in file names)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#4 Sv: First video terminal?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#84 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#12 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#55 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#76 Stoopidest Hardware Repair Call?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 00:39:08 GMT

Paul Nunnink writes:

Yes, a kind of blueish dark colored cardbooard box with a three ring
binder holding the diskettes in plastic jackets, three a piece. Om the
box there's a white colored vase with a rose in it. One of these days
I'll see if I can get it scanned in.
B.T.W. The official name is:

IBM Personal Computer Interactive Executive:

in an subtitle it says:

by INTERACTIVE systems corporation

<snip>

Wasn't the OS for the RT called OASIS, or something?

The IBM ACIS (academic unit) port of BSD was called AOS ... that was a
"native" port to the bare metal. The Interactive port of AT&T was to the
VRM "layer" and was called AIX.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Mysterious Prefixes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mysterious Prefixes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 14:43:33 GMT

Kees.Vernooy@KLM.COM (Vernooy, C.P. - SPLXM) writes:

Escept for HASP: it comes from JES's former name: HASP (Houston Automatic
Spooling and Priority), given by the original designers in Houston (a
company doing something with traveling to the moon and so).

IBM SEs at the account ... Simpson, Crabtree, et all

& From ... the yellow rose of texas

T'was a system down in Houston
In trouble, plain to see
Its hardware was not running
Could no one set it free?
And then they vowed to save it
Some men of Houson fame
The goal was versatility
And HASP the program name.

only slightly related:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#51

totally random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#7 Who built the Internet? (was: Linux/AXP.. Reliable?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#9 cics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#12 IBM song
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#28 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#9 Old Vintage Operating Systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#21 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#29 Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#58 When did IBM go object only
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#76 Mainframes at Universities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#77 Are mainframes relevant ??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#92 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#93 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#94 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#109 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#113 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#117 OS390 bundling and version numbers -Reply
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#209 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#55 OS/360 JCL: The DD statement and DCBs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#76 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#10 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#18 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#20 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#36 Assembly language formatting on IBM systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#44 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#45 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#14 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#58 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#68 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#71 HASP vs. "Straight OS," not vs. ASP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#6 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#7 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#12 Blame it all on Microsoft

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 19:44:56 GMT

"Andy van Tol" writes:

I wrote a real-time pulmonary function testing and reporting program in
early 1979 (CP/M on Multibus), ported to PC-DOS in 1981, it's still doing
all of the above. I really wouldn't mind if it "went away"....many times I
thought it had, but...

I know others have similar experiences, so let's hear 'em... Who's the
record-holder for oldest daily-running app?

Andy van Tol

Two days ago somebody forwarded me a performance problem that has been
observed when large number of (different) linux concurrently on the
same mainframe.

It just so happened last weekend I had stumbled across a detailed
description of fix to the problem that I had written 20 years ago
... which was forwarded to the interested parties (somebody in the
chain of this particular peculiar sent of circumstances made some
observation about the loss of institutional memory). The particular
documentation included a solution that I had developed over ten years
prior to that (something like 32-33 years ago).

Different event in the early 70s ... I had contributed a significant
amount of custom kernel modifications. Mine & other modifications were
put together in a packaged kernel for internal use. However a copy of
the package was leaked to one or two outside corporations. One was
AT&T longlines (someplace in NJ that started with a P that I never
learned how to spell and Kansas City). Ten years later, somebody from
the marketing office responsible for longlines tracked me down (a
couple position changes and moved to the opposite coast).

Turns out when nobody was looking the thing had proliferated and had
been ported to various new generations of mainframes over the years
... but it wasn't going to be practical to port to the next latest &
greatest mainframe generation ... and the salesmen really wanted to
continue selling the latest hardware. In any case, they wanted to know
if i could come out and spend some time with longlines ... effectively
helping eradicate this weed that I was in large part responsible for
letting take root 10 years earlier.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

some VLIW (IA-64) projections from January, 1999...

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: some VLIW (IA-64) projections from January, 1999...
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 00:37:03 GMT

Paul DeMone writes:

And Californians short of water should ask why the U.S. Army
Corp of Engineers digs irrigation canals to subsidize millionaire
farmers growing rice and cotton in this "freaking desert". (and
then protectionist congressman have the nerve to make rude noises
about trade reprisals against Canadian softwood lumber because
they think our government's stumpage fees are too low and thus
a subsidy)

i thot i read something that the growers north of the delta could get
water at something like ten cents on the dollar. with a deal like
that, maximizing the opportunity would be to grow some water intensive
crop like rice. I believe that article said that the rice, water
intensive business didn't exist 20 years ago ... but with the deal
being offered it was too good to pass up.

This is somewhat like the line ... that if the value of a gal of gas
is on the order of $20 ... but the price is only in the range of a
dollar or two ... that a lot of people might be able to take advantage
of the difference between the price and the value to carve out a
comfortable life style (however, if they really fine-tune the
optimization of difference between the price and the value ... and the
gap narrows ... then they are likely to experience some discomfort).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Emulation (was Re: Object code (was: Source code - couldn't resist compiling it :-))

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Emulation (was Re: Object code (was: Source code - couldn't resist compiling it :-))
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 02:53:35 GMT

Jim Thomas writes:

When did this use of "simulation" start?  Before computers there was
"modeling".  Was stuffing a model into a wind tunnel and watching called
"simulation"?  Was setting up a model on an analog computer called
"simulation"?

I did use a program ("software emulator"?) from IBM to simulate a 650 on a
1410 in 1967, and I think it was at least 2 years old then.

[ObM$jab: Does this mean you cringe every time you hear M$ Windoze called
an "operating system"? :]

Jim

university had an accounting job that original ran on a 407. It then
went thru some sort of 1401 autocoder(?) phase that had an emulation
for the 407 plug-board ..  and they were able to run the program
there. They then got a 360 and some program that translated from
autocoder(?) to 360 cobol. The interesting thing was the program still
spit out on the printer the 407 sense switch settings. This was an
administrative application that ran production every day.

One day ... the ending print-out had some values in the ending 407
values that nobody had seen before. After some amount of consultation,
and not finding anybody that had the faintest idea what it all met;
the decision was to run the job again and see if it did the same. The
2nd time it ran (was nearly an hr each time) the same results came out
and they decided ... oh well ... we'll just forward the output and see
if anybody compalines.

somewhat unrelated ... the 407 was still around in student keypunch
room with the plugboard set up for simple 80x80 print-out
(i.e. students could stick their cards into the 407 and get a printed
listing). As far as i knew, nobody was still around that was ever
involved in any of the original 407 applications &/or knew how to
program the plug-board.

random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#137

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 14:29:59 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

Only gods can find the fix before the problem gets reported ;-).

possibly more a sign of somewhat limited intelligence to still be
involved in fixing bugs for 35 years. if you are around long enuf you
get to see the same bugs again and again (and maybe again and again
and again ...).

Similar to the issue of institutional memory ... the joke about
computer science having a complete mind wipe every five years ... so
they get to re-invent everything over and over ... including the same
bugs.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Oldest program you've written, and still in use?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 18:55:03 GMT

jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) writes:

That's twice in the past week that a posting has mentioned automated
translation of Autocoder to COBOL...and although I used an IBM-provided
conversion program to do that back in the late 1960s I'm coming up with
a blank when I try to recall its name.

Part of the problem is that my mind keeps popping up the name "SIFT", but
that's not it.  SIFT (SHARE Internal (?) FORTRAN Translator) was used to
translate bewteen FORTRAN II and FORTRAN IV.

Can anyone supply the name of the Autocoder-to-COBOL translator?

Joe Morris

I never used it ... but a little searching w/altavista

32. IBM. 1400 Autocoder to COBOL Conversion Aid Program. (360
A-SE-19x), Version 2 Application Description Manual, (GH29-1352-2),
White Plains, N.Y. IBM 1967.

Autocoder to Cobol Conversion Aid Program, 1967

Housel reported on a set of commercial decompilers developed by IBM to
translate Autocoder programs, which were business data processing
oriented, to Cobol. The translation was a one-to-one mapping and
therefore manual optimization was required. The size of the final
programs occupied 2.1% times the core storage of the original program
[Hous73].

This decompiler is really a translation tool of one language to
another. No attempt is made to analyze the program and reduce the
number of instructions generated. Inefficient code was produced in
general.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Theo Alkema

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Theo Alkema
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 16:20:26 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

I recently heard that Theo Alkema died last fall some time. For those
of you with an IBM VNET background, he would probably
be familiar.

Jim Mehl

9/17/2000 RIP.

My dealings with Theo Alkema and Bert Wijnen date back to (at least)
when they were supporting the Uithoorn HONE system in Europe. Bert is
still going strong at Lucent (people active in IETF meetings will be
familiar with him, co-AD for OPS/Network Management).

Theo was also the author of IOS3270, FULIST, and BROWSE.

More people may be aware of the PC port of the above (done at IBM SJR
and made available thru one of the IBM software productivity
offerings).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Theo Alkema

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Theo Alkema
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 17:03:07 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

I recently heard that Theo Alkema died last fall some time. For those
of you with an IBM VNET background, he would probably
be familiar.

Jim Mehl

some random stuff from someplace ...

In CP/67, there was special support for "named systems" as part of
simulation of the IPL command. Basically, memory images of virtual
storage could be saved to a special CP location and a virtual memory
could be refreshed to the saved image by using the IPL command using
as a parameter, the name of the saved location.

Besides, specifying which virtual pages were saved, it was also
possible to specify that specific virtual pages were to be shared
(R/O) across all virtual addresses pages loading the same named
system. For CMS this was a half dozen or so virtual memory pages
(performance benefit that all virtual address spaces didn't require
private copies of these pages).

The transition from CP/67 to VM/370 changed the implementation so that
sharing was done on a (64k byte) shared segment basis. CMS for VM/370
re-organized its internal structure to increase the number of shared
(4k byte) pages to 16. Since these were R/O, the code/program located
in shared (R/O) memory precluded being the target of store
insturctions. Traditionally this had been referred to as "reentrant"
program.

In the late CP/67 time-frame, for internal corporate use, I had done a
"paging access method" for the CMS filesystem as well as introduced an
additional method of loading virtual storage images (besides the
simulated IPL command which had several unwanted side-effects, like it
reset all of virtual memory, precluding multiple, different,
concurrent "named" areas in the same virtual memory). The target of
this new method could be either a set of pages in a CMS PAM filesystem
or an existing CP "named system" area. In addition, I reworked some
additional CMS system functions so that they could reside in
additional CMS system "virtual memory" (initially a second 64kbyte
shared segment, in addition to the standard, single CMS system 64kbyte
shared segment).

This was widely deployed internally inside the corporation on a
Release 2 VM/370 base. It was used extensively by all the world-wide
deployed HONE system for (at least) the APL interpreter running under
CMS, i.e. CMS w/shared segments could be "IPLed" and then the user
could invoke the APL interpreter which would be loaded with 4-5 shared
segments. This allowed a HONE application to (transparently) switch
back and forth between compute intensive Fortran applications and the
APL interpreter environment.

A subset of the CP function (only new method for "named system"
loading, but not any of the paged-mapped filesystem) and some amount
of the CMS function (i.e. only system function rewrite to make in
re-entrant and reside in an additional shared segment was picked up by
the product group and released with VM/370 Release 3.

In a typical CMS environment, IOS3270, FULIST, and BROWSE would be
loaded dynamically into standard virtual storage. As the following
reference, I worked with Theo to modify IOS3270, FULIST, and BROWSE to
be re-entrant so that they could be included in a CMS shared-segment
(i.e. instead of private version of the code appearing in every CMS
virtual address space, a single, common copy of the code was shared
across all CMS virtual address spaces).


To: wheeler
Date: 10/10/78  18:51:49

Lynn,

Once upon a time FULIST was reentrant, but as i needed space and didn't
think it would ever run in shared memory i took it out again.
I am currently rewriting the thing to make it undestandeble for others
(and for myself i must admit), to fix, or at least circumvent the
decimal data exeption you get if you don't stick to the rules, to change
the sort algorithm to speed things up, and last but not least to include
NDS support.

The state it is in now will leave you now room to work on as it is just
FULL. Nevertheless i will ship it to you so you can see what a mess it is.
Let me hear what you're doing to it. It is in the process of becomming an
FDP/IUP, as well as IOS3270 and possibly BROWSE. Won't release it though
untill it is reworked.

Regards-Theo Alkema-HONE System Support-Uithoorn-Netherlands

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


To: wheeler
Date: 10/11/78  17:30:11

NDS support for IOS3270 is already done (not tested as i don't have them)
Will run on REL5.LTR7 and up (i hope).

FULIST2 will take some time as i am very busy working on a securety
system. If you are running the required release i can ship you a copy to
play around with (IOS3270)

Regards-Theo Alkema-HONE System Support-Uithoorn-Netherlands

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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

5-player Spacewar?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 5-player Spacewar?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.video.classic
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 21:36:11 GMT

Kirk Is writes:

classicgaming.com selected Spacewar! as their game of the week, so it
revived my interest in it. (You can see my blog entry at
http://kisrael.com/viewblog.cgi?date=2001.05.26 )

Anyway, one of the most interesting new things my tiny bit of research
discovered was this article that the wheels.org site posted, from Rolling
Stone: http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

It mentions a 5 player variation on Spacewar, presumably with 5 distinct
ships-- I assume its those five shipforms that map to the names "Pointy
Fins","Roundback","Birdie","Funny Fins",and "Flatback"

summer of 1980, the author of REXX wrote/released (for the internal
network) a multi-player, distributed (network) space war game played
on 327x terminals (players could be logged into the same machine or
different machines around the network).

One of the first "bug-fixes" to the game was energy penalty inversely
proportional to the time interval between commands after somebody
wrote an automated program to play the game.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Climate, US, Japan & supers query

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Climate, US, Japan & supers query
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: 27 May 2001 16:07:28 -0600

mccalpin@gmp246.austin.ibm.com (McCalpin) writes:

There are other specific cases.  Convex had a very solid business-
oriented philosophy, and they probably could have stayed independent
if they had not botched the transition to RISC machines.  The Convex
SPP series of boxes suffered from excessive latency, and so were
unable to deliver on the bandwidth and overall performance that
the infrastructure appeared to be set up to deliver.  I am certainly
not claiming that these machines were a total failure, since HP
shipped several hundred million dollars worth of SPP followons last
year, but since the acquisition of Convex by HP, they are clearly
not a "supercomputing" company any more.

Note in the following posting "HARRIER" is internal code name for 9333
which eventually turned into SSA standard (random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13)


From: wheeler
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 15:39:48 -0700
Newsgroup: SCI

The sci meeting at slac today included people from slac, two from hp,
one from apple, ibm branch rep, somebody from IBM Houston, my wife
Anne, and I.

The ibm branch rep turns out to really be an ibm "business" partner
that ibm has turned the slac account over to. this guy also mentioned
that he has the nasa/ames account.

Gustavson (SLAC & IEEE SCI committee chairman) gave introduction to
SCI and talked about possible application. He had reprints of the IEEE
Micro article "The Scalable Coherent Interface and Related Standards
Projects".

As an aside, I was recently reviewing cache coherency papers in 19th
proceedings of sigarch ... & had ran across the sci ring paper ... and
brought it along. Nobody at the meeting had been aware that it was
published.

Also it turns out that the ring architecture model (Figure C in the
feb. 92 IEEE Micro article) is almost identical to the ring insertion
patent that Anne received in '78. Also the dual simplex architecture
is the same as the HSDT work we were doing in the early '80s (also
see the "well-worn" HA/6000 technology).

The person that was suppsoed to be there from Convex didn't make it.
It was re-iterated that Convex has signed an aggreement with HP to use
the PA-RISC chips for its new "supercomputer" ... and it will be
implemented using SCI for distributed shared memory. The architecture
assumes some sort of relaxed consistency cache protocol (for recent
references also see sigarch proceedings #19, there are three papers in
session 1, also see the DASH prototype paper from session 3).

Gustavson outlined two possible design points for SCI, one using
"low-cost" rings for workstation type environments and the other with
a switch for highly-parallel supercomputers.

There was some discussion with regard to how RAM/SCI implementation
compares to technology like RAMBUS. He mentioned talking to somebody
(that I believe is doing a RAMBUS implementation) that suggested
RAM/SCI access is still a good technology to persue. RAMBUS is pretty
well optimized to the limit supporting just 500mbytes/sec (say with
4-way interleaving: 2gbytes/sec). RAM/SCI starts out at 1gbyte/sec and
has room to grow.

There was also mention that SCI was recently presented to the SCSI
standards committee and a SCSI protocol using 200mbit (maybe 100mbit)
SCI cable looks very promising. This appears to be along the same
limes ase HARRIER-II serial implementation running 80mbits (pushing to
160?). One of the comments was that as the SCSI drives get smaller,
the current SCSI connector is larger than the drive. SCI connector is
significantly smaller and provides for higher-bandwidth.

There was a presentation on SLACs computational and data-storage
requirements over the next 3-5 years ... and how SCI would being to
efficiently address some of the opportunities. They are planning on
experiments that are monitored by some front-end real-time
data-reduction machines. These machines will produce an average of
approximately 100 "events"/sec with about 25kbytes/event
(2.5mbytes/sec). These events then require subsequent process to the
tune of approximately 2500Mips per second. This additional processing
will eventually result adding approximately 10kbytes/event
(35kbytes/event total). Effectively 2.5mbytes/sec input, 2500Mips/sec
processing, 3.5mbytes/sec output. Aggregate yearly storage
requirements is on the order of 15TB/year.

Looks like SLAC is looking for government funding along with a partner
from industry ... possibly something along the lines of the
Kung/CMU/NSC project ... but directed to exploring high, sustained
effective datarates for distributed environment using distributed
shared memory paradigm.

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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

5-player Spacewar?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 5-player Spacewar?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.video.classic
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 04:15:53 GMT

Kirk Is writes:

time interval between commands? You mean the "autopilot" would tend to
'micromanage'?  Or react too quickly somehow? Anyway, I don't get what
this patch prevented, or why a clever countr-patch couldn't be issued to
re-enable some level of cheating without that penalty.

automated program would issue commands significantly faster than a
human could/would and therefor defeat everybody.

individual players didn't have direct control of the game code
... they only interfaced to it thru commands (just the user
interface). some enterprising person wrote a program that simulated
the user interface ... but issued commands and re-acted significantly
faster than a human would.

basically, the patch didn't prevent "robot" players operating at
super-human speed ... they were just penalized as to the amount of
energy used per operation (somewhat attempt to place "robot" players
on level playing ground with "human" players).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

5-player Spacewar?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 5-player Spacewar?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.video.classic
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 04:32:45 GMT

Kirk Is writes:

Ahh, neat. X-tank and the like followed I'm sure.
Way too late for what the Rolling Stone article is talking about,
but still neat to hear. I fear a really chronology of Spacewar! may not be
possible now.

slightly earlier ... the PDP1(?) version was ported to 1130/2250-4 (2
player) sometime '68/'69 at cambridge science center (545 tech. sq).

After I joined CSC early in 1970, I remember bringing my kids in on
weekends and letting them play it

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#2 IBM 1130 (was Re: IBM 7090--used for business or science?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#67 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#24 A question for you old guys -- IBM 1130 information
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#71 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

5-player Spacewar?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 5-player Spacewar?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.video.classic
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 16:46:10 GMT

Kirk Is writes:

Still, it sounded like you were saying that a robot was flushed out
by having a short 'time interval between commands'-- i.e. the smaller the
time interval, the bigger the energy penalty.

Does that mean time interval between subsequent commands issued by the
player (i.e. the 'bot' tended to micromanage the direction and thrust of
the ship) or the time interval between some stimulus and the player's
response?

In both cases it seems like, once you have the basic "how do I make a good
spacewar playing program" problem solved, you could tweak it's algorigthm
to not be penalized by the anti-bot code.

since the game didn't really know whether it was a human or 'bot (in
the game) ... energy required to execute a command (movement, attack,
firing, etc) was set value unless the interval between two successive
commands was less than a threshold (lower than most real humans could
reasonably be expected to accomplish) ... then the energy consumed for
the subsequent command started to increase inversely proportional to
the interval between the commands.

yes, 'bots were modified to take into account the threashold when
playing the game (i'm not sure how sophisticated they got ... whether
they just stayed right at the threshold ... or had some strategy to
execute under the threshold under particular conditions).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Medical data confidentiality on network comms

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Medical data confidentiality on network comms
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc,sci.crypt
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 17:01:19 GMT

Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

But some of them are susceptible to cryptographic controls.
Consider the issue of delegation.  My doctor can see my
medical records.  My doctor should be able to delegate
the ability to see those records to a specialist for a
limited amount of time, but without delegating unlimited
rights to further delegation.  Some number of emergency
room doctors should be able to unseal my records in the
absence of my doctor if they all agree and the access is
strongly audited (alarmed) with guaranteed notification
to my doctor and me.  These are all issues where there
might be some cryptographic assistance as part of the
total solution.

cryptographic controls tend to be all or nothing ... you either see it
or you don't see it.

fine-grain access control systems with audit procedures can have
real-time rules and audit trail as to which entities can see what,
when. however, for the most part, cryptography is almost orthogonal to
fine-grain access ... except possibly in the area of authentication
(used in conjunction with access control ... aka authentication and
permissions being different issues ... authentication can be addressed
as a "data" paradigm and real-time permissions addressed as
procedure/rule paradigm).

effectively the fine-grain access control system would be "online"
with all the real-time rules, exceptions, escalation, permissions,
etc.

bulk-encrypting all of the data and only providing the key(s) to the
access control system could be a means to address various kinds of
system exploits (like off-site disaster/recovery copies).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Wanted other CPU's

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Wanted other CPU's
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 09:50:10 GMT

torbenm@diku.dk (Torben AEgidius Mogensen) writes:

- Several LISP processors were designed. However, most of these
didn't run LISP directly but had mostly traditional ISA's with
extra instructions for supporting LISP.

Additionally, many research prototypes or designs have been made for
various virtual machines, including graph-reduction machines.

Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)

misc. other, many of the ibm 360s "microcoded" engines had special microcode
that emulated previous generation of 7090/140x.

the 360 model 50 had optional special microcode supporting PLI for CPS
...  an online, PLI-based interactive system that ran on the 360/50.

there was special microcode developed for 370 145/148 that supported APL.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 12:31:14 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

No.  That's not the reason CPU time isn't charged.  The reason
is reproducibility of charges.  CPU time is a very difficult
thingie to keep consistent for a job run (I think since VM
addressing began to be used).  An audit required cross-charges
to be exactly the same for a run at different times.  On a
timesharing system, runtime was very hard to keep track of
on behalf of each user.

/BAH

vm/370 did a fairly good job with the 370 high resolution timer
keeping track of cpu used (both user-mode and kernel-mode). the
problem for reproducability on large cache multi-tasking machines
(timesharing or batch) was effect of concurrent interrupts (or other
task-switching events) on cache-miss. A user's job could see a 30-40
percent difference in cpu time between running while machine had
little or no concurrent i/o and high rate of concurrent i/o.

Today's generation of mainframes get even more interesting with
potentially two levels of VM ... one in the microcode providing
"hardware" LPARS (logical partitions) and then possibly VM running in
LPARS providing software virtual machines.

My observation of lack of high resolution timers on most of the UNX
and similar hardware platforms ... as a result the traditional
accounting method was to sample ten to hundred times per second what
was running and charge them for the elapsed time.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 04:47:13 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

Sure.  We considered this.  You can do all kinds of kinky things.
However, do you want to expend 100% of your CPU keeping track
of what your users are doing or do you want to furnish CPU time
to your users?  Our philosophy was to furnish as much time
as possible to the user.  But we did provide hooks if the
customer really, really thought that every little itty bitty
thing had to be tracked.

because of the design of the timers for this purpose on 370, it only
took two instructions per switch (user->kernel, kernel->user); well
under 1% of the pathlength of the nominal pathlength associated with
whatever function/feature causing the switch to occur.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

offtopic: texas tea (was: re: vliw)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: offtopic: texas tea (was: re: vliw)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 01:22:15 GMT

hawk@fac13.ds.psu.edu (Prof. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

Last year's problem in  California related to two of the thre refineries
making a certain blend having fires (against a backdrop of sheer
stupidity by the government in setting the formulation, but that's
another story--there's lots of those about the california government :).
If your short term supplie is reduced from 3M barrels/day to 1M, while
the same number of drivers remain on the road, you have two choices:
1) price goes throuh the roof
2) shortage.

and choice was not all that different than what a lot of internet IPOs
selected.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

VM-CMS emulator

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: VM-CMS emulator
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 13:41:08 GMT

"Andrew McLaren" writes:

The company I was working for at that time wanted Unix and big iron, not
an easy combination in 1990. Hence our brief excursion into AIX/370. Imagine
a cross between TSO and the Unix shell ... terminal output didn't scroll
past, you had to hit <enter> every 24 lines to see the rest of your output.
Block mode terminals. Sort of a compulsory 'more' on every command ;-)
TCP/IP was unusable; and great swathes of standard Unix APIs were missing.
Everything seemed to be in EBCDIC. I was very surprised to find, some years
later, that AIX on RS/6000 had actually become a very good Unix
implementation.

the first excursion they did for unix on mainframe was the adoption of
AT&T unix as a subsystem on TSS/370 that saw large deployment inside
AT&T.

The next was going to be BSD ported to 370 ... but the group got
diverted before the product delivered to doing a BSD port to the PC/RT
(which became AOS ... as an alternative system to the Interactive port
of AT&T to PC/RT that was called AIX).

In some sense ... the (UCLA) Locus port to mainframe (along with the
port to PS/2) ... resulting in AIX/370 and AIX/PS2 was to show
integration of the mainframe/PC world (client/server?) since Locus
provided quite a bit of support for location transparency (file
caching as well as process migration, multiple networked machine
process operation, etc).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Theo Alkema

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Theo Alkema
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 04:37:29 GMT

"John Lynn" writes:

I remember Theo from the good ol' VM Internal Technical Exchange (VMITE)  in
California every year for internal IBM VM folks. I knew who he was and what
he had done, having even spent many hours pouring over the BROWSE source,
trying to learn things as a young pup.
I remember standing near where Theo was talking, trying to act causal and
catch a bit of the conversations of the masters...

Didn't Bert also have some sort of amazing DASD-related tool he had written?
I can't quite remember what it did... darn!

as part of single system image in a large (cluster/loosely-coupled)
processor complex he defined a CKD CCW sequence for effectively doing
compare&swap operation as part of serialization disk operations
w/o having to do reserve/release.

This was used initially for the major, large clustered HONE operations
around the world (at least initially Uithoorne and Palo Alto)
supporting "single system image".

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#73

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Early AIX including AIX/370

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early AIX including AIX/370
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 13:01:28 GMT

Lars Poulsen writes:

I forwarded this piece to one of my coworkers who worked at Locus
during that time, to ask for his comments. He did not want his name
brought forward, but this is what he said:

There's a lot of stuff they don't know about.
What they don't know about is the pissing contest
between the two divisions of IBM; the Palo Alto(BSD) and
Austin(SVID) groups.
Then, ultimately, the decision by Chm. Akers to only
have one Unix product; Austin won, but, Palo Alto wasn't done
throwing wrenches into the machinery.
Then Yorktown Heights and Boeblingen sp?) got into the
fracas.

note that the ykt was involved early because of 801, cpr, PL.8,
etc. The Austin project originally started out as a joint ykt/austin
closed romp/801 as a displaywriter follow-on in the office products
division using ykt cpr (for 801/romp & written in pl.8). when that
project got canceled, the resources was retargeted to "unix" ... still
using romp/801 and the ykt/aus resources going into a building the
"vrm" (written in pl.8) ... basically managing the metal ... and
interactive doing the svid port to a vrm abstraction layer. I was in
some of the early VRM meetings.

part of the tss/370 group supporting the AT&T unix activity were in
germany and working on making it a generalized product.

starting the pa/370/bsd, they tapped a guy out of the stl/apl group to
go to palo alto to manage the project. I got called in the first week
he showed up to participate in the effort. at that time, the palo alto
group already had an ongoing project with UCLA and had locus running
on S/1, some 68k machines and PCs.

one might might be tempted to characterize the ykt/aus effert as
putting a proprietary stamp on some product offering (which at that
moment happened to have some unix content) ... while the other efforts
were much more oriented towards offering ("some" standard) unix
offering on a company hardware platform.

It really got interesting when you took all the above (aus, locus,
ucla, pa, bsd, ykt, etc) and then included various CMU (mach, afs)
in the same room working on a "converged" distributed/network file
system.

random other refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#2 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#63 System/1 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#64 Old naked woman ASCII art
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#65 Old naked woman ASCII art
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#129 High Performance PowerPC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#49 IBM RT PC (was Re: What does AT stand for ?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#51 APPC vs TCP/IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#5 "Mainframe" Usage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#65 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#19 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#27 OCF, PC/SC and GOP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#44 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#49 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#14 IBM's announcement on RVAs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#0 Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#1 Anybody remember the wonderful PC/IX operating system?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

MERT Operating System & Microkernels

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MERT Operating System & Microkernels
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 21:22:20 GMT

crosby@nagina.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) writes:

Anyway, there is a paper on the MERT Operating System in the 78 one
which was interesting reading.  I'd never heard of MERT before.  It
looks like a micro-kernelish RT OS that can run Unix as a server on
top, which is interesting--forshadowing Mach and the like.

Was this just a Bell Labs internal research thing?  Am I wrong in
characterising it as having micro-kernel characteristics?  (And what would
be the earliest micro kernel anyway?)  Is there somewhere I can see more
information on this?

one would be tempted to claim that cp/67 was one of the original
micro-kernels that allowed other stuff to be run "on top". the current
incarnation as vm???? being able to run 40,000+ some odd copies of
Linux is hardly a micro-kernel anymore. however, the flavor that
morphed into the microcode of the current machines that provides the
LPAR support ... aka large number of current mainframes run the
operating systems in LPARs ... one additional level removed from the
"real" hardware.

note also ... unix running on a tss/370 kernel saw large deployment
inside at&t and there have been numerous instances of unix (from a
number of different vendors) deployed on various VM-based platforms
over the years.

other microkernel candidates would be pieces of RSCS/VNET that managed
networking for cp/67 & VM/370 (and the internal network). I remember
hearing somebody claim (sometime within the past 10 years or so) that
one of the current popular real-time systems ... for at least one of
the core components (written in C) reads line-for-line the same as one
of the core components from RSCS (written in 360 assembler) except for
the differences in the language ... the logic is the same and the
comments track statement for statement down to the same mis-spellings.

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#45 Why can't more CPUs virtualize themselves?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#57 Reliability and SMPs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#191 Merced Processor Support at it again . . .
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#8 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#63 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#86 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#51 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#52 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#61 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#62 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#50 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#68 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#72 When the Internet went private
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#78 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#3 virtualizable 360, was TSS ancient history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#41 First OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#72 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#5 SIMTICS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#12 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#61 Estimate JCL overhead
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#17 Accounting systems ... still in use? (Do we still share?)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Question about credit card number

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Question about credit card number
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2001 14:28:43 GMT

Chenghuai Lu writes:

Even if the CC numbers are stored in an encrypted form in the back ends,
they are easy to break since all of CC numbers are encrypted using the
same master key. Isn't it right?

note that a master file of CC transactions containing CC numbers is
likely to be in constant use ... adding new transactions, various
administration operations against transactions in progress, other
types of transaction reference operations. bulk encrypting/decrypting
such a file on every operation would quickly become cumbersome. Even
two level file where transaction level detail has an obfuscated CC
number with CC-mapping in 2nd bulk encrypted file also becomes
cumbersome (basically the file exists because a lot of business
processes are using it).

part of the issue goes to authentication and access control
... similar to the medical data thread in this n.g.

an alternative is the financial industry's electronic payment object
for all account-based transactions standard ... X9.59 (various refs:
at http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/) where account numbers used in
(authenticated) x9.59 transactions are defined to not be useable in
non-authenticated transactions (i.e. harvesting of "x9.59-related"
account numbers doesn't provide a lot of fraud benefit since they
can't be used in non-authenticated, non-x9.59 transactions).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Question about credit card number

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Question about credit card number
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2001 16:39:37 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

an alternative is the financial industry's electronic payment object
for all account-based transactions standard ... X9.59 (various refs:
at http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/) where account numbers used in

there is some class of current unauthenticated transactions that
depend on account numbers and/or other customer related information
.... effectively turning those items into shared-secrets ... aka
just knowing such a shared-secret allows fraudulent transactions to
be performed ... the attraction in harvesting of CC#s is just one
example.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Price of core memory

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Price of core memory
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2001 21:02:38 GMT

jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) writes:

The MFT nucleus was only 28K (up from 26K when we upgraded to version 14),
meaning that in 10K we got extra features like multiple partitions [1],
asynchronous console support and error recovery, and the like.

part of my share '68 presentation on MFT 14 and CP/67 performance
optimization for a 768k 360/67.

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

The kernel was expanded to 82k bytes with various resident options. The
job scheduler was defined as 100k bytes (aka it needed 100k region in order
to start a process/job step).

HASP was gen'ed at 118k bytes using 1/3rd 2314 tracking buffering.

Effectively 82kbyte kernel plus resident HASP 118kbytes resulting in
200kbyte fixed storage requirements.

That left 768kbytes-200kbytes ... 568kbytes for a few regions.

in something similar to the above work ... a recent thread on job step
processing overhead ("estimate jcl overhead")
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#60
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#61
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#68

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Design (Was Re: Server found behind drywall)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Design (Was Re: Server found behind drywall)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2001 21:08:04 GMT

jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) writes:

There was only one problem:

The generator was in the basement.
The fuel tank was in the sub-basement.
The pump used to bring fuel to the generator was an electric motor.

Oops.

then there is the one about the site that spent something like $5m on
diesel generator configuration ... but never bothered to do the
monthly tests ... so when it finally came around to needing it ... it
wouldn't start ... there was a lot of corrosion and other problems
(and the whole thing had to be scrapped and replaced).

I believe normal emergancy testing requirements start with something
like switching to it for one hr a month.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 12:27:39 GMT

"Andrew McLaren" writes:

I have never heard or seen any other references to this "CPx86" operating
system from IBM; or anything regarding the machinations of its rise and fall
(although, I did use a PC/3270 during the 1980s). So - can anyone confirm
the story, or provide extra details?

I believe work on cp88 started sometime in 82 or very early 83. It was
used as the basis of xt/370 ... on the pc side, getting loaded there
when xt/370 function/feature was activate ... aka CP kernel was
running on the 370 card ... and cp88 was running on the PC side. Anybody
with an xt/at/370 would have had copy of cp88 ... but just possibly thot it
was part of the xt/at/370 package that ran on the pc side.

there was some work between PM (presentation manager) and cp88 in
early 84.

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#23 Old IBM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#5 IBM XT/370 and AT/370 (was Re: Computer of the century)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#29 Operating systems, guest and actual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#52 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#55 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#89 database (or b-tree) page sizes

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Question about credit card number

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Question about credit card number
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 12:31:18 GMT

roger@liamsat.com (Roger Fleming) writes:

To be fair, most people indeed cannot remember 8 digit PINs. But they could
use passphrases instead, or issue X.509 certs, or at least put in a long delay
(and report to security) every 3 errors. All of these, however, require a
little work to transfer onto the web from a PIN based system on stateful
machines, and work means eroding the bottom line.

... or support x9.59

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 15:41:58 GMT

"Andrew McLaren" writes:

Fergus and Morris say that "in 1984 a three-day CP/x86/Mermaid strategy
conference was held at Boca Raton, attended by more than 50 technologists
and managers. CP/x86 was also very much discussed at the very top of the
company in the shorthand 'VM for the PC'".  Furthermore "...CP/x86 was so
superior [to DOS] that it would almost certainly have become the primary
design target".  However IBM - for reasons unknown - decided to bypass
CP/x86 and start the OS/2 project instead, and "there was a near revolt
among the technologists". Possibly rightly so, given that OS/2 later proved
to be the "FS Project" of PC operating systems ;-)

there is also the joke that some number of MFT developers moved to
Boca and "re-invented" MFT as RPS on the S/1 ... and then
"re-invented" it again as OS/2 on the PC. FS was much more of a paper
project that was documenting every blue-sky idea that anybody had ever
thot of in the history of computing (OS2 might just be considered some
number of people that just liked MFT). That is different than the
stuff that started out as 88-side multi-tasker and services in support
of vm/370 running on a (limited) 370 pc-board (needed to be able to,
at least, map between cp/cms 370 IO/device operations and pc-side
devices/features).

things like that happen ... see related aix thread in this n.g.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#22

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Remove the name from credit cards!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Remove the name from credit cards!
Newsgroups: alt.security
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 18:43:40 GMT

andrew writes:

No, I don't mean that you should file the name off your cards.  I mean
that maybe the issuing bank should.

The original idea, before online authentication, was that forging
cards was too difficult, and that the merchant could maybe ask for
corroborating ID, also too difficult to forge.

I don't think these assumptions are valid any longer. Besides, you
might just have stolen the guy's wallet.

So, if the card had no name, when you try to buy something the
merchant can use online authentication, ask what your name is and see
if it matches. Maybe check an online photo, too.

note that the EU has some sort of (pending?) regulation that says that
all point-of-sale/retail transactions need to be as anonymous as cash.

This basically pushes things in the direction of removing name and
identification at POS/retail transactions ... the problem is then how
would a transaction be authenticated (i.e. in some sense the name is
there so that a merchant can verify against other forms of
identification; note that this not only aplies to credit cards, but
all payment cards, as well as checks).

a solution is something like x9.59 in conjunction with a chip-card
(aka x9.59 was designed to be used for all retail account-based
transactions ...  not limited to credit or debit transactions, and not
limited to the internet) for online transaction authentication w/o
requiring identity information (note that the various x.509 identity
certificate solutions have the similar identity/privacy short-comings
as names embossed on payment cards and recorded on the magstripe).

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#anon anonymity in current infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#privacy Identification and Privacy are not Antinomies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#mauthauth Human Nature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#stall EU digital signature initiative stalled
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#straw AADS Strawman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm4.htm#9 Thin PKI won - You lost
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#x959 X9.59 Electronic Payment Standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#xmlvch implementations of "XML Voucher: Generic Voucher Language" ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#shock revised Shocking Truth about Digital Signatures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#shock2 revised Shocking Truth about Digital Signatures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmail.htm#mfraud AADS, X9.59, security, flaws, privacy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#aadspriv Account Authority Digital Signatures ... in support of x9.59
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#morepriv [E-CARM] AADS, x9.59, & privacy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#privrules U.S. firms gird for privacy rules
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#privrule2 U.S. firms gird for privacy rules
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#privrule3 U.S. firms gird for privacy rules
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#votec (my) long winded observations regarding X9.59 & XML, encryption and certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#gap2 [ISN] Card numbers, other details easily available at online stores
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#privacy misc. privacy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#x959risk2 Risk Management in AA / draft X9.59
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#smrtcrd Smart Cards with Chips encouraged ... fyi
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#privis privacy issues
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay5.htm#pkiillfit Some PKI references from yesterday's SlashDot
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay6.htm#harvest2 shared-secrets, CC#, & harvesting CC#
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay6.htm#dsdebate Digital Signatures Spark Debate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#privacy more on privacy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#x959bai X9.59/AADS announcement at BAI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#theory Security breach raises questions about Internet shopping
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#scaads X9.59 related press release at smartcard forum
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#0 Account Authority Digital Signature model
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#41 AADS, X9.59, & privacy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#48 X9.59 & AADS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#165 checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#171 checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#189 Internet Credit Card Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#216 Ask about Certification-less Public Key
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#217 AADS/X9.59 demo & standards at BAI (world-wide retail banking) show
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#224 X9.59/AADS announcement at BAI this week
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#228 Attacks on a PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#229 Digital Signature on SmartCards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#36 "Trusted" CA - Oxymoron?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#60 RealNames hacked. Firewall issues.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#40 general questions on SSL certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#53 Digital Certificates-Healthcare Setting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#90 Question regarding authentication implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#26 The first "internet" companies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#72 SET; was Re: Why trust root CAs ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#5 e-commerce: Storing Credit Card numbers safely
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#33 does CA need the proof of acceptance of key binding ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#34 does CA need the proof of acceptance of key binding ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#67 future trends in asymmetric cryptography
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#73 how old are you guys
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#14 IBM's announcement on RVAs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#85 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#42 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#56 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#57 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#58 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#72 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#7 Invalid certificate on 'security' site.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#8 Invalid certificate on 'security' site.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#19 [Newbie] Authentication vs. Authorisation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#41 solicit advice on purchase of digital certificate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#26 Can I create my own SSL key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#33 Can I create my own SSL key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#35 Can I create my own SSL key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#36 Can I create my own SSL key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#15 Medical data confidentiality on network comms
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#24 Question about credit card number

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

"SOAP" is back

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "SOAP" is back
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 15:24:48 GMT

never+mail@panics.com.invalid (Michael Roach) writes:

In Seattle I saw electric deisel hybrids that would pop up the pickup
when they were on streets strung for trolleybuses. In other areas they
would switch over to deisel, probably running a generator to drive the
wheels.

when i was a kid ... my dad use to drive one of those for a short
while. the overheads ran down 5th ave(?) ... the other problem was
that the pickup for the overheads would slip off ... and there was
this long wooden pole that the driver used to replace the pickup on
the overhead.

the other thing i remember was us kids riding downtown with my mother
on bus for shopping. I once got lost in the public market and got
taken to a police station. i vaguely remember my mother visiting
various small women shoe stores on 5th ave ... one of them was called
nordstrom.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 15:08:25 GMT

"Andrew McLaren" writes:

In their book (op cit) Fergus and Morris also advance the claim that
IBM got burnt so badly by FS that it took them a generation to
recover. They discuss this over some 20-30 pages, so I won't repro
their full argument here ;-) Basically they say that so much energy
went into FS that s370 was neglected, hence Japanese plug-compatibles
got a good foothold in the market; after FS's collapse a tribe of
technical folks left IBM or when into corporate seclusion; and perhaps
most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and
vigourous debate was replaced with sycophancy and "make no waves"
under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the
shadow of defeat (by the FS failure), hence, while still agressive in
business practices, IBM faltered at being aggressive in
technology. Hence the languishing of 801, RISC, failure to exploit S/1
... nothing would be allowed to rock the 370 boat again. Until of
course the majot changes of the early 90s.


misc. FS refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

i was rather caustic at the time ... claiming that it was a case of
the immates in charge of the institution ... few if any of the people
working on it seemed to ever have supported real-live production
system (i.e. like being on call for 24hrs/day ... there was a strong
lack of reality finger-feel to it).

there was a cult film playing at the time down in central sq at the
time ...  having played continuuously for 10+ years ... "queen of
hearts"(?)  ... american soldiers entering a french town where all the
people had fled except the inmates from local asylum who were
wandering around the town.

and of course ... one of the projects I did as an undergraduate is
credited with originating the plug-compatible market.

as to OS/2 ... i remember getting calls from boca about all the new
things/rewrite that they wanted to do between release 1 and release 2
... including looking for advice specifically about dispatching
and scheduling. i don't remember any specific MFT names that had gone
south to boca ... just a number of people joking about the
MFT->RPS->OS2 geneology.

pcm/oem refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

random FS refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#24 old manuals
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
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#237 I can't believe this newsgroup still exists.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#3 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16 [OT] FS - IBM Future System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#17 [OT] FS - IBM Future System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#18 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#21 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#27 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#28 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#37 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#40 Famous Machines and Software that didn't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#56 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#18 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#44 IBM was/is: Imitation...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#4 Block oriented I/O over IP

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler  | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 15:13:53 GMT

ctl8505@aol.com (CTL8505) writes:

I am currently in the process of writing a paper on security concerns in the
financial services industry. If anybody has inputs plz contact me at
Katarkia@aol.com

X9 is the financial induustry standards body in the US, TC68 is the
equivalent body at the international ISO level. Within X9, X9F
specializes in cryptographic and security standards.

X9A specializes in retail payments. The X9A10 working group was
responsible for the X9.59 payment object standard ... the requirement
given the X9A10 group was preserve the integrity of the financial
infrastructure for all electronic retail payments.

other references to X9.59 can be found at

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

the above also has glossary & taxonomy for payment, financial, and
security areas.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com, http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 14:41:28 GMT

ctl8505@aol.com (CTL8505) writes:

I am currently in the process of writing a paper on security concerns in the
financial services industry. If anybody has inputs plz contact me at
Katarkia@aol.com

also look at various gao reports at www.gao.gov in the subject of
financial institutions.

report from last year (I think Fed got private sector to cough up
something like $3b US ... $300m US apiece from ten different
institutions).

Report Number: GGD-00-3

Title: Long-Term Capital Management: Regulators Need to Focus
Greater Attention on Systemic Risk

Abstract: In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM)--one of the
largest U.S. hedge funds--lost more than 90 percent of its capital. The
Federal Reserve concluded that rapid liquidation of LTCM's trading
positions and related positions of other market participants might pose a
significant threat to already unsettled global financial markets. As a
result, the Fed arranged a private sector recapitalization to prevent
LTCM's collapse. The circumstances surrounding LTCM's near collapse
and recapitalization raised questions that go beyond the activities of
LTCM and hedge funds to how federal financial regulators fulfill their
supervisory responsibilities and whether all regulators have the
necessary tools to identify and address potential threats to the financial
system. This report discusses (1) how LTCM's positions became large
and leveraged enough to be deemed a potential systemic threat, (2)
what federal regulators know about LTCM and when they found out
about its problems, (3) what the extent of coordination among regulators
was, and (4) whether regulatory authority limits regulators' ability to
identify and mitigate potential systemic risk.

.... and from 1997

Payments, Clearance, and Settlement: A Guide to the Systems, Risks, and
Issues (Chapter Report, 06/17/97, GAO/GGD-97-73).

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information about the
nation's systems to effect financial transactions between purchasers and
sellers of goods, services, and financial assets.

... you might also find interesting reading the postings on Thread
between Risk Management and Information Security

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskaads

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Ancient computer humor - The Condemned

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ancient computer humor - The Condemned
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 15:57:06 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

Joe, glad you enjoyed it. That same box in my garage has some other
gems, which I will try to scan and clean up as I find the time.Just looking
at the titles we have "The Rime of the Ancient Programmer", "The Ballad
of the 1401", and "The Moment 'Fore Abend".


                   THE CONDEMNED

     WHEN THE EARTH WAS CREATED, THE POWERS ABOVE
     GAVE EACH MAN A JOB TO WORK AT AND LOVE.
     HE MADE DOCTORS AND LAWYERS AND PLUMBERS AND THEN -
     HE MADE CARPENTERS, SINGERS, AND CONFIDENCE MEN.
     AND WHEN EACH HAD A JOB TO WORK AS HE SHOULD,
     HE LOOKED THEM ALL OVER AND SAW IT WAS GOOD.

     HE THEN SAT DOWN TO REST FOR A DAY,
     WHEN A HORRIBLE GROAN CHANCED TO COME IN HIS WAY.
     THE LORD THEN LOOKED DOWN, AND HIS EYES OPENED WIDE -
     FOR A MOTLEY COLLECTION OF BUMS STOOD OUTSIDE.
     "OH! WHAT CAN THEY WANT?" THE CREATOR ASKED THEN
     "HELP US," THEY CRIED OUT, "A JOB FOR US MEN."
     "WE HAVE NO PROFESSION," THEY CRIED IN DISMAY,
     "AND EVEN THE JAILS HAVE TURNED US AWAY."
     SAID THE LORD, "I'VE SEEN MANY THINGS WITHOUT WORTH -
     BUT HERE I FIND GATHERED THE SCUM OF THE EARTH!"

     THE LORD WAS PERPLEXED - THEN HE WAS MAD.
     FOR ALL THE JOBS, THERE WAS NONE TO BE HAD!
     THEN HE SPAKE ALOUD IN A DEEP, ANGRY TONE ---
     "FOR EVER AND EVER YE MONGRELS SHALL ROAM.
     YE SHALL FREEZE IN THE SUMMER AND SWEAT WHEN ITS COLD -
     YE SHALL WORK ON EQUIPMENT THATS DIRTY AND OLD.
     YE SHALL CRAWL UNDER RAISED FLOORS, AND THERE CABLES LAY -
     YE SHALL BE CALLED OUT AT MIDNIGHT AND WORK THROUGH THE DAY.
     YE SHALL WORK ON ALL HOLIDAYS, AND NOT MAKE YOUR WORTH -
     YE SHALL BE BLAMED FOR ALL DOWNTIME THAT OCCURS ON THE EARTH.
     YE SHALL WATCH ALL THE GLORY GO TO SOFTWARE AND SALES -
     YE SHALL BE BLAMED BY THEM BOTH IF THE SYSTEM THEN FAILS.
     YE SHALL BE PAID NOTHING OUT OF SORROW AND TEARS -
     YE SHALL BE FOREVER CURSED, AND CALLED FIELD ENGINEERS!"

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Ancient computer humor - Memory

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ancient computer humor - Memory
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:01:09 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

Joe, glad you enjoyed it. That same box in my garage has some other
gems, which I will try to scan and clean up as I find the time.Just looking
at the titles we have "The Rime of the Ancient Programmer", "The Ballad
of the 1401", and "The Moment 'Fore Abend".

...

Re: Extended vs. expanded memory
      just to "refresh your memory"...

"Extended memory" refers to RAM at addresses 100000-FFFFFF.  Although
the PCAT only permits 100000-EFFFFF.

"Expanded memory" refers to the special Intel/Lotus memory paging
scheme that maps up to 8 megabytes of RAM into a single 64K
window beginning at absolute address 0D0000.

"Expended memory" refers to RAM that you can't use anymore.  It is
the opposite of Expanded Memory.

"Intended memory" refers to RAM that you were meant to use.  It is
the opposite of Extended Memory.

"Appended memory" refers to RAM you've got to add to make your
application run.

"Upended memory" refers to RAM chips improperly inserted.

"Depended memory" refers to ROM that you cannot live without.

"Deep-ended memory" refers to RAM that you wish you had, but don't.

"Well-tended memory" is a line from the movie "Body Heat" and
is beyond the scope of this glossary.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Ancient computer humor - Gen A Sys

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ancient computer humor - Gen A Sys
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:06:21 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

Joe, glad you enjoyed it. That same box in my garage has some other
gems, which I will try to scan and clean up as I find the time.Just looking
at the titles we have "The Rime of the Ancient Programmer", "The Ballad
of the 1401", and "The Moment 'Fore Abend".

...

                     GEN A SYS
                   Jay G. Elkes
             (CLOAD magazine, July 1979)

    In the beginning, there was chaos and the Universe
was without form and void. The Lord looked upon His
domain and decided to declare His presence. "I be" he
said, then to correct his grammar added "am."
    If the Lord had decided to work on irregular verb con-
jugation first this wouldn't have happened. God would
later curse the English language for its part, but in that
moment I. B. M. came into being.
    The Lord looked out upon the I. B. M He had created
and said "This is good." That's what He said, but he
shook his head, wondered what the boys at the User
Group would say, split the light from the dark and went
to bed. Thus passed the Beginning and the end of the
first day.
    On the second day, the Lord summoned I. B. M. unto
His presence. "There is chaos out there, and the Uni-
verse is without form and void. I must correct this and I
can use your help, is there anything you can do for me?"
    "I can take care of form." I. B. M. replied. "Put me in
charge of computers and I will take care of form for you."
    The Lord thought that this was good and said "Let
there be computers. Let I. B. M. have my powers of crea-
tion that pertain to computers and form." Thus saying,
the Lord went off to His second day's  work while I. B. M.
created the 1401.
    On the third day, while the Lord was out, I. B. M.
decided to subdivide the assigned task. "Let there be
systems that make the computer work and let them be
called Operating Systems. Let there also be systems
that make use of the computer and let them be called
Application Systems." Thus, there came into being both
Operating Systems and Application Systems, but there
were no programmers.
    The next morning I. B. M. had to give the Lord a status
report.
    "What did you do yesterday?" the Lord asked.
    "I invented the operating system" I. B. M. replied.
    "You did?" the Lord shuddered. "Oh dear."
    "Yes I did," I. B. M. confirmed, "but I find I need
something only you can provide."
    "And what is that?"
    "I need programmers to use my computers, to
operate my operating system and to apply my applica-
tions."
    "That can't be done now," said the Lord. "This is
only the fourth day and there won't be people until the
sixth day."
    "I need programmers and I need them now. If they
can't be people they can't be people, but we have to work
this out today."
    "Give me some specifications and I'll see what I can
do." I. B. M. hastily worked up specs for programmers
(are specs ever anything other than hasty) and the Lord
reviewed them.
    The Lord knew the specs weren't sufficient but
followed them anyway. He also made some pro-
grammers that did just what programmers were
supposes to do, just to spite I. B. M. The programmers
and I. B. M. spent the rest of the day creating the
Assembler and FORTRAN. On the morning of the fifth
day, I. B. M. reported to the Lord once again.
    "The programmers you created for me have a
problem. They want a programming language that is
easy to use and similar to English. I told them you had
cursed English, though I still don't know why. They
wanted me to ask your indulgence on this."
    The Lord had cursed English for good reason, but
didn't want to explain this to I. B. M. He said "let there be
COBOL" and that was that.
    On the status report of the next day I. B. M.
announced that computers had gone forth and multi-
plied. Unfortunately, the computers still weren't big
enough or fast enough to do what the programmers
wanted. The Lord liked the idea of going forth and
multiplying, and used the line Himself later on that day.
This sixth day being particularly busy, He declared "Let
there be MVS" and there was MVS.
    On the seventh day God had finished creation and
computers had COBOL and MVS. The Lord and I. B. M.
took the day off to go fishing. I. B. M. hung a sign on the
door to help programmers in his absence.
    IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY TRY
AGAIN - AND HAVE THE FOLLOWING READY
BEFORE CALLING I. B. M. This was the start, and by
some accounts the end, of I. B. M. documentation.
    On the start of the second week the programmers
went over I. B. M.'s cathode ray tube directly to God.
    "We have a horrible problem," they complained.
"Our users want systems that perform according to their
expectations."
    "Users!" the Lord bellowed. "Who said that you
should have users! Users are the difference between
good and bad applications, a function I have reserved
unto myself! Who authorized you to have users?"
    "Well, I. B. M..."
    "I. B. M.! You! You did this to my programmers! You
gave them knowledge of good and evil. For that you
shall suffer through eternity!"
    "Let there be competition. Let it be called Anacom,
and Burroughs, and C.D.C."
    The Lord went through the alphabet several times.
"With all this competition you shall still suffer the pain
of antitrust legislation all the days of your existence."
    This was the start of the second week, and it seems
an appropriate place to conclude our report. In case you
missed something, a summary of key points follows.
    Users and their needs are and always have been a
subject of dispute. Nobody can learn English because it
is cursed by God. I. B. M. manuals are doubly cursed and
therefore twice as hard to understand. Of the program-
ming languages, only COBOL can claim divine origin.
People are people, but programmers are something
else.
    Computers may be a gift from heaven, but there's no
divine help in getting them to work. Because of I. B. M.'s
initial assignment, there are more forms than anyone
knows what to do with. Finally, chaos was part of the
original state of the Universe and not a product of the
data processing industry.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Ancient computer humor - DEC WARS

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ancient computer humor - DEC WARS
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:09:51 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

Joe, glad you enjoyed it. That same box in my garage has some other
gems, which I will try to scan and clean up as I find the time.Just looking
at the titles we have "The Rime of the Ancient Programmer", "The Ballad
of the 1401", and "The Moment 'Fore Abend".

I have dec wars 1 & 2 ... but they are somewhat larger (20673, & 27521 bytes)

small xtract

rom ucsfcgl!ucbvax!mhtsa!ihnss!harpo!npois!jak Fri May 21 13:55:19 1982
Subject: all 7 old decwars articles
Newsgroups: net.sources

Subject: DEC WARS
Have you ever wondered what happened to all those characters eaten by
arpavax?  Well, we found most of them loitering around on our system,
taking up disk space.  So we're putting them back out on the net where
they belong.  Any resemblence to events real or imagined is purely
intentional.

        A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax).....

     XXXXX   XXXXXX   XXXX          X    X    XX    XXXXX    XXXX     X
     X    X  X       X    X          X    X   X  X   X    X  X         X
     X    X  XXXXX   X               X    X  X    X  X    X   XXXX     X
     X    X  X       X               X XX X  XXXXXX  XXXXX        X    X
     X    X  X       X    X          XX  XX  X    X  X   X   X    X
     XXXXX   XXXXXX   XXXX           X    X  X    X  X    X   XXXX     X

Luke had grown up on an out of the way terminal cluster whose natives spoke
only BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33.

"It needs an EIA conversion at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual)
trying to do several things at once.  Lights flashed in Con Solo's eyes
as he whirled to face the parallel processor.

"I've added a few jumpers.  The Milliamp Falcon can run current loops around
any Imperial TTY fighter.  She's fast enough for you."

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Remove the name from credit cards!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Remove the name from credit cards!
Newsgroups: alt.security
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 17:43:26 GMT

andrew writes:

The original idea, before online authentication, was that
forging cards was too difficult, and that the merchant could
maybe ask for corroborating ID, also too difficult to forge.

slightly related

http://www.hypercom.com/web/news/display.asp?releaseID=346

Media Releases
Phoenix, AZ
6/7/01

Hypercom Launches Attack on Credit Card Skimming

Hypercom Chairman and Chief Strategist Calls for Industry To Combat
New Dangerous Form of Skimming

(Hypercom Corporation: NYSE: HYC) -- Credit card "skimming" is an
alarmingly escalating form of fraud that is victimizing consumers,
causing havoc with merchants, and costing the industry hundreds of
millions of dollars every year. Skimming fraud takes many forms, but
most often involves a cardholder turning over physical possession of
his or her card to a retail or restaurant employee, who then swipes
the card through a small, illegal card reader, called a "skimmer." The
skimmer copies the data encoded on the card's magnetic stripe. This
information is then used to manufacture counterfeit cards that are
used to rack up illegal charges.  Industry sources estimate that the
average skimmed credit card will generate some $2,000 in fraudulent
charges before being detected.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 18:49:54 GMT

"Carl Sommer" writes:

Disclaimer: I'm an absolute novice at assembler, thus I'm
asking this question, regarding some inherited code.

Consider the following:

LOOP TS FLAG
BNZ LOOP
...
...
...
FLAG DC '0'

My understanding of the TS instruction is that it tests the high-order
bit, and then sets the entire byte to 1's. Doesn't that mean that on
the second interation of the loop it's always going to pass? If so,
shouldn't the code really be written like this?

LOOP TS FLAG
BZ WORK
NI FLAG,'80'
B LOOP
MORE blah blah blah

But I'm not convinced this works. What if another task actually has the
flag?  Is this a situation where I should be using the Compare and Swap
(CS) instruction?

Thanks

Carl

TS was defined for multiprocessor work ... the thread/processor that
actually sets the flag is the only one that clears the flag (when it
is done).  The byte can be used as a "lock" for thread/processor
serialization.

other threads/processors that don't set the flag .... can either do TS
"spin-loop" on the flag ... attempting to catch it when it has been
"cleared" (by the thread/processor that actually holds/set the
flag/lock) ... or go off into some fancier serialization code
(possibly some form of wait ... or some combination; spin-loop a
maximum number of times before going off into more complex
serialization).

TS was defined in the 60s and used on the 360 model 65 and 360 model
67 multiprocessors.

Charlie Salisbury's work on fine-grain locking resulted in the Compare
& Swap instruction (aka his initials are CAS ... which was the
original mnemonic for compare&swap).

random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#73

the task given by the "owners" of POP was to come up for a programming
paradigm for CAS where it was useful in a single processor environment
(not just multiprocessor) ... which gave rise to the programming notes
about multi-threaded serialization that works on both single and multi
processor configurations.

CAS can be used in a manner similar to TS (i.e. for setting/obtaining
a lock) ... however CAS can also be used for various operations
involving atomic storage update avoiding having to perform
serialization via a separate locking operation.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Golden Era of Compilers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Golden Era of Compilers
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 02:52:12 GMT

name99@mac.com (Maynard Handley) writes:

A far more useful analysis than these pseudo-technical discussions would
be to look at the dynamics behind why IBM, after the success of S/360,
felt it was useful to create two different architectures (AS/400 and
RS/6000 --- I omit PCs as being a different issue). The question then is
the extent to which those pressures are relevant to Intel, and the extent
to which Intel wins by selling both x86 and Itanium for the foreseeable
future vs the win (any?) in killing x86 ASAP. Realistically, is Intel in
any position to kill IA64? If they do so, and AMD introduces sledgehammer,
is that not the end, not necessarily of Intel, but of Intel as #1?

ot ... as/400 & rs/6000 were rather late in the game ...

Series/1, System/3, System/32, System/36, System/38, original CISC
AS/400 (not to mention s/7, 1800, etc).

much of that market is currently held by PCs ... while the AS/400 has
remapped to RISC and moved up market.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Golden Era of Compilers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Golden Era of Compilers
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 14:11:42 GMT

"aaron spink" writes:

You make an incorrect assumption that IBM planned to make 2 different
architectures.  The impression I've always had is that historically there
wasn't a whole lot of planning between the kingdoms that used to make up
IBM.

also note that majority of the 360s & 370s were microcoded engines
... aka the processors weren't 360/370 ... and the "microcode" (aka
software) running on the processor was used to emulate 360/370 ... as
well as lots of other stuff.

the 370/115 & 370/125 were actually a multiprocessor system with up to
9 micro-engines on a shared memory bus. One of the microprocessor was
programmed to emulate 370 processor ... and the other (up to eight)
processors implemented other function. In the 370/115 all the
processors were the same ... in the 370/125 they used a "faster"
micro-processor for the 370 engine.

random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360mcode

The 801 RISC currently seen in RS/6000, AS/400, apple, etc ... started
out as (at least) two projects:

Fort Knox
Displaywriter

The IBM office products division had 801/ROMP project for a
displaywriter follow-on that got cancelled and the project morphed
into the PC/RT ... with unix.

Fort Knox was a very large project (possibly not as large as FS) that
had a lot of people on it ... that was going to standardized on 801
processors for all the (at least low-end) 360/370 microprocessor
engines. Part of it was that a number of the low-end micropocessor
engines were deliverying 370 at 10:1 (i.e. ten microprocessor
instructions for every 370 instructions, aka to get 100kips for the
370/125 something like a 1mip engine was used) and work on 801 engines
was supposedly going to make that much more efficient. Fort Knox also
got killed before it came to fruition (although subsequent 360/370
processors saw a lot of 801 chips deployed as various embedded
functions). I provided some amount of the analysis that got Fort Knox
got killed ... although the actual report was written by --- -----.

random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#0

then of course there is the whole FS thing ... some of it as been
running in a thread in a.f.c ng (aka "claim that IBM got burnt so
badly by FS that it took them a generation to recover")

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Golden Era of Compilers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Golden Era of Compilers
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 14:44:37 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

ot ... as/400 & rs/6000 were rather late in the game ...

Series/1, System/3, System/32, System/36, System/38, original CISC
AS/400 (not to mention s/7, 1800, etc).

much of that market is currently held by PCs ... while the AS/400 has
remapped to RISC and moved up market.

and then there were all the microprocessors used in various support
roles in a 360/370 complex ... like control units and devices. A
football sized room might hold several "360/370" processors ... but the
rest of the room would be filled with hundreds of control unit and
devices ... all with their own processors ...things like uc.5 (which
was also used in the 8100 system) and jib' (jib-prime).

one of my undergraduate projects was a 360 controller clone
replacement that we (initially) built using interdata/3 ... which
originated the whole ibm plug-compatible control unit business.

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Golden Era of Compilers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Golden Era of Compilers
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 06:20:54 GMT

"Jim Mehl" writes:

Lynn,