List of Archived Posts

2002 Newsgroup Postings (3/1 - 3/12)

VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off MoreThan It Can Chew?)

OS Workloads : Interactive etc

OS Workloads : Interactive etc

Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?

IBM Mainframe at home

IBM Mainframe at home

IBM Mainframe at home

IBM Mainframe at home

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

IBM Mainframe at home

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

IBM Mainframe at home

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

RFC Online Project

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

DASD response times

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

looking for information on the IBM 7090 instruction set

iAPX432 today?

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

2 questions: diag 68 and calling convention

Farm kids

LISTSERV(r) on mainframes

Jeez, garlic.com -

PKI Implementation

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

PKI Implementation

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Why?

Farm kids

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Why?

RAS & 2x/18m (was Re: On-die memory controller pros/cons?)

IBM Mainframe at home

SSL MITM Attacks

Speaking of Gerstner years

Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix

SSL MITM Attacks

Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix

Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Storage Virtualization

Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix

Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix

VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off MoreThan It Can Chew?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off   MoreThan   It Can Chew?)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 20:46:54 GMT

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:

Yes, you can :-(

That is exactly the sort of nightmare optimisation that I keep railing
against.  If you start with a mathematically precise finite state
interrupt model, there is no problem, but Topsy-like systems (most
definitely including Linux and Windows XXX) are almost unanalysable.
There then is usually a path that leads to inconsistency "but cannot
occur".

When first coded, that may even be true.  But, as people add features,
put in other optimisations, fix bugs and so on, paths that cannot
occur often start to become possible.  And then to occur in practice,
so you put in a bug fix to block that one, which may then enable
another path as a side-effect.

people later adding features is a problem regardless ... especially
when they haven't been thuroughly indoctrinated with the original
design assumptions, trade-offs, & implementation.

as part of releasing the resource manager product, we developed
synthetic workloads and automated benchmarking process (for
validating/calibrating the resource manager) ... with some APL model
code that looked at results of previous benchmarks and selected new
workloads/configurations to be benchmarked (more than 2000 benchmarks
over three month elapsed time).

For testing both inside & outside normal performance envelopes, some
"heavy" synthetic workloads were defined that were 10-100 times more
stressful than any observed in the wild (say a synthetic benchmark
where the page fault service queue was so long that the mean service
time for a single page fault was over one second). Several of these
would "reliably" precipitate kernel failures because of shortcomings
in various kernel serialization functions. As a result, I totally
rewrote the kernel serialization functions ... including touching
every piece of code that was remotely involved with queuing,
suspension, delays, etc.  It turned out that not only did the
serialization clean-up eliminate all such failures but as a
side-effect it also eliminate all cases of zombie/hung processes.

A side effect of customers that installed the resource manager, they
also got the serialization function rewrites. The problem was that
within three years some person in kernel development was adding a new
feature which also re-introduced hung/zombie processes.

for long-term stability, KISS is better.

As an aside, having a hostile environment that frequently/reliably
precipitates failures is strong motivation for cleaning things up. I
was involved in putting operating system into the disk engineering
labs where disk development and test went on. A single disk test cell
generated more anomolous and error conditions in a 15 minute period
than most customer shops saw in a year (and standard operating system
MTBF was 15 minutes running with single test cell). The objective was
to be able to support 6-12 disk test cells operating concurrently
under operating system control ... where all possible failure modes
and hangs in the kernel I/O support were totally eliminated. Side
effect was that the disk engineers could blame hardware operation
anomolies on the "software" and then I was dragged into diagnosing
disk engineering problems.

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

OS Workloads : Interactive etc

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS Workloads : Interactive etc.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 15:31:48 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

head of lightweight fighter plane development ... not just F-16, but
F-15, F-18, others. F20/tigershark even more so.

I suspected boyd had a big hand in the f20/tigershark. He was big on
KISS, less costly and things like flight/maintenance time ration. The
f-15, f-16, f-18 are much higher maintenance, complicated & costly
planes than the f20.

There have some recent articles that with all the homeland defense
flights the f15/f16 infrastructures are being stretched to the
limits. While these planes could out fight f20 head-to-head ... the
f20 was targeted to be more reliable & simple with much less
maintenance (& cost) ... something that would be more than adequate
for the homeland defense mission profile.

misc. refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#8 scheduling & dynamic adaptive ... long posting warning

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/fighter/f20.htm
http://www.military.cz/usa/air/post_war/f5g/f5g_en.htm

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

OS Workloads : Interactive etc

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS Workloads : Interactive etc.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 15:53:34 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

There have some recent articles that with all the homeland defense
flights the f15/f16 infrastructures are being stretched to the
limits. While these planes could out fight f20 head-to-head ... the
f20 was targeted to be more reliable & simple with much less
maintenance (& cost) ... something that would be more than adequate
for the homeland defense mission profile.

from really old reference I found someplace (with respect to wings program
on f16):

 It would be interesting if Wings would do one on the F20.  They were
 less successful. The F20 was "almost a F16", but 1/3rd to 1/4th the
 cost, significantly less maintenance time and the F20 required
 significantly lower-skill levels for the maintenance (down-time was
 significantly lower and turn-around was significantly
 faster). Unfortunately the overseas customers got caught up because
 the funding for US plane purchases was actually being funneled thru US
 aid assistence ... so the F16 actually would cost other countries less
 than purchasing F20s outright.

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

Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 05:36:21 GMT

"Tim" writes:

Could someone point me to the key papers/reviews/events in the
development of these large-scale emulators.  I get the impression
that the stages were these:

Hard wired: huge racks of TTL, such as the Amdahl
"wall of logic", lasting up to approximately 1985?
Logic was wired up to match the target chip netlist.

Firmware: (smaller) racks of FPGAs, such as the early Quickturn
boxes.  Were these invented by Quickturn?  Lasting up to
approximately 1995?  The target logic hookup was emulated by
either per-net wiring in the FPGAs, or by some sort of
virtual-circuit architecture.

Software: (smaller again) racks of processors, such as the
IBM/Quickturn Cobalt boxes.  These seem to be the current
orthodoxy.  I guess the (multi-)processors include a comms
function to handle the logic hookup.

As a side issue, is enough known about the architecture of
Cobalt-style systems to evaluate them for the "most powerful
computer in the world" crown?

There was also the LSM (logic simulator machine, or losgatos state
machine) ... in the los gatos lab (bldg. 29). it was wall of
rack-sized boxes. Most emulators had fixed clock ... but the LSM had
clock specification ... useable for asynchronous chips & digital chips
with analog circuits (like disk read/write heads). It was still being
used into the late '80s for RIOS. high speed (HSDT) link between
austin and los gatos, large austin logic file to los gatos, loaded
into the LSM, results sent back to austin ... depending on queue, turn
around could be couple hrs.

A follow-on(?) box was EVE (endicott verification engine, unlike LSM,
had fixed clock) ... several were built and used around the company,
large, very heavy box. Most mainframe boxes were designed that they
would fit in standard elevator ... but not an EVE.  Some of the RIOS
work was also done on the EVE in san jose bldg. 86 (austin via los
gatos/bldg. 29 to bldg. 86).

Somewhere between the LSM & EVE was a YSE ... but I don't know of the
YSE being actually used.

ref:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/259717/0

from above

....to the DPGA. These designs were generally motivated to reduce the
area required to emulate complex designs and, consequently, took
advantage of the fact that task descriptions are small compared to to
their physical realizations in order to increase logic density. The
Logic Simulation Machine [BLMR83] and later, the Yorktown Simulation
Engine (YSE) Den82] were the earliest such hardware emulators. The YSE
was built out of discrete TTL and MOS memories, requiring hundreds of
components for each logic processor. Processors had an 8K deep
instruction memory (c = 8192) 128 bit instructions (n ....

Ted Burggraff, Al Love, Richard Malm, and Ann Rudy. The IBM Los Gatos
Logic Simulation Machine Hardware. In Proceedings of the International
Conference on Computer Design, pages 584--587, October 1983.

refs:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/riepe94ravelxl.html

random hsdt:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hsdt

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 10:34:49 GMT

zaitcev@yahoo.com (Pete Zaitcev) writes:

The thread unravels into the area of 360s, and has a good
chance to reach 1401 becofore it dies off. However, I really
cannot afford something "really real" even if I wanted one.
So, I am thinking about something smaller.

This is information which I found so far about "reasonable" boxes:

7437
The oldest small mainframe. Was undeservedly unsuccessful,
so there is no chance to find one. May have no internal disks,
so assumes block mux and an array.

"Racetrack"
possibly an alias of 7437.

Amdahl something
A precise ripoff of that was made by IZOT, Bulgaria, and I saw it.
It was a box of a size of an under desk filing cabinet.
But it used block-mux, which is a problem. Needs console diagnostic
CPU of the same size as the machine proper (with CPU, core and
channels all together), booting from 8inch floppies (PITA to prevent
from bitrot). Probably impossible to find.

P/370
Board for PS/2 Needs some binary software for OS/2 or AIX to run.
(rejected because Hercules does the same job better and uncool
in general).

9370
possibly an alias for P/370.

P/390 & P/390E
Same as P/370, but faster and Linux capable. May make some sense
if a good deal is found.

s390 Multiprise 3000 H50
Linux capable. Size seems ok. Uses IBM channel I/O, but perhaps
can be used with PCI. Unfortunately, it is not completely obsolete
yet, so it takes a LOT of money to get one.
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/s390/multiprise/

The last entry seems to fit the bill the best, if only I ignore
the price. So, perhaps I'll get one in 7 or 9 years when they
get a bit cheaper on the second hand market.

-- Pete

7437 was (IBM Fellow) Beausoleil's A74 machine (separate box with
connection to PC).

P/370 & P/390 were/are microchannel cards ... effectively follow-on to
xt/at/370 ("washington") cards. There is image of p/390 card at:
http://www.princeton.edu/~melinda/

9370 was endicott low-end 370 (departmental) mainframe.

misc xt/370, at/370, & a74 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#42 bloat
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/2000.html#75 Mainframe operating systems
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/2000e.html#56 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#89 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#28 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#53 S/370 PC board
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#19 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#20 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#51 DARPA was: Short Watson Biography
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#24 HP Compaq merger, here we go again.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#92 "blocking factors" (Was: Tapes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#4 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#43 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#45 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]

slightly related departmental server refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#16 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#43 FA: Early IBM Software and Reference Manuals
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#56 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#15 Replace SNA communication to host with something else
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic:  facts vs. FUD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#34 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#2 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#7 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#0 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#4 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#37 Poor Man's clustering idea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#0 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?

some a74 press

IBM's VM/SP Device Cuts Mainframe Load

InfoWorld, November 7, 1988

by Sharon Fisher and Alice LaPlante

     IBM is now shipping, on a special-order basis, a PS/2-based device
that runs the VM/SP mainframe operting system.

     The IBM 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation device offloads technically
oriented, processor-intensive mainframe applications, such as computer-
aided design, engineering software development, and geophysical mapping,
IBM said.  The separate processor reduces the load on the mainframe and
provides a more consistent response time.

      The device consists of two parts: the 7437 processor itself, which
is a floor-standing unit, and a PS/2 Model 60, 70, or 80 that provides I/O
support to the 7437 processor.  The 7437 uses IBM-proprietary 32-bit
technology, said Marty Ziskind, an advisory engineer in the IBM Fellow
department.

      Users can run the 7437 as a stand-alone VM system, a host-attached
VM workstation, a host terminal attached to a VM or MVS host, or a PS/2
running DOS 3.3 or 4.0, Ziskind said.  The system is "multiple-user,
single-seat," he said.  "It's like a 9370 with one terminal."  Users can
toggle between VM and DOS sessions.  OS/2 and IBM's AIX implementation of
UNIX are not supported.

     Software and the VM operating system can be downloaded from a 370
mainframe by emulating a 3270 terminal or through a Token Ring link.

     Programs written for the 370 can run on the 7437, assuming they
aren't timing-dependent and don't require specific features of the
mainframe models of the 370, IBM said.

     A 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation Interface Adapter Card is
installed in the PS/2 used for I/O.  The PS/2 is connected to the main
7437 unit via a special cable.  The speed of the 7437 varies depending
on the speed of the PS/2 used for I/O.

     Users who plan to use the 7437 as an engineering workstation may
want to use the IBM 5080 Graphics System, the company said.  This includes
an MCA bus master adapter card for the PS/2 and a choice of several models
of the 5085 Graphic Processor Unit.

     Required software includes DOS 3.3 plus one copy of VM/SP, Release 5
and the IBM 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation Host Server for the IBM 370
host servicing the 7437s.

     The IBM 7437 costs $18,100, with a 25-unit minimum.  The 5080 Graphics
System Hardware costs an additional $1,300. <sic>

  ================================================================

PC WEEK, October 31, 1988

IBM'S SYSTEM/370 WORKSTATION (A74)

IBM WORKSTATION BRINGS POWER OF MAINFRAME TO MICRO CHANNEL
By J. Cortino

  IBM is quietly offering a new System/370 workstation
that gives users the horsepower of a 9370 host system in a
much smaller unit and at a vastly lower cost.

  IBM, which has not officially announced the workstation,
will show it to selected customers at the Autofact '88 trade
show in Chicago this week, according to Martin Ziskind,
IBM Fellow Department, an advisory engineer in Kingston, N.Y.

  The System/370 Technical Workstation consists of an
IBM PS/2 Model 60 or 80 and a floor-standing machine about
the size of a PC AT that contains System/370 mainframe
circuitry, IBM officials confirmed last week.

  The system allows users to locally process high-end
applications, such as computer-aided design and manufacturing
(CAD/CAM), without having to go up to the mainframe, they said.

  "The appeal of the System/370 is that is lets end users
work with CAD/CAM software on a workstation," said Daniel
Caldwell, IBM's product marketing administrator for computer-
augmented design and manipulation (CADAM).  "It takes the load
off the mainframe and gives users more autonomy at the same
time."

  Another key to the system, observers said, is its use
of the PS/2 and its Micro Channel architecture.  "The PS/2
is the disk drive, the memory and the keyboard for the
System/370," said Ziskind.  "In order for this whole
arrangement to work, the System/370 must link to the PS/2
through the Micro Channel bus."

  "One of the best things about this, is that it looks
like something is finally going to make use of the Micro
Channel," said Thomas Foth, senior developer at Relay
Communications Inc., a software developer in Danbury, Conn.

  The System/370 Technical Workstation links to the PS/2
via a cable and an interface adapter card.  The card is
connected to the Micro Channel bus in the PS/2.

  The workstation can run Virtual Machine/System
Product (VM/SP) release 5 applications written for
System/370 mainframe environments, such as CADAM and
circuit-board design applications.

  The System/370 workstation can be configured in
four ways as a stand-alone VM workstation running IBM
System/370 mainframe applications, as a host-attached
VM workstation sharing mainframe resources; as a host
terminal connected to a VM/SP or MVS host locally or
remotely, and as a PS/2 running DOS.

  IBM is offering the system as a "special bid"
processor only to qualified customers, and has no plans
at this time to offer the system to its entire customer
base, according to Ziskind.  "We want to sell it to
people who understand the VM environment," he said.

  The System/370 workstation is priced at $18,100
and $19,400 depending upon configuration.  A 9370 Model 20,
the low-end model of IBM's mainframe line, can cost from
$40,000 to $70,000.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PC WEEK, October 31, 1988

THE WEEK IN REVIEW

MICRO CHANNEL FINALLY FINDS A PURPOSE IN LIFE

  At last, it appears that we have reached the point where rumored
benefits of IBM's Micro Channel architecture are beginning to emerge.
Our Page 1 story about the oh-so-quiet emergence of an MCA-based
System/370 workstation shows how the MCA is critical to allowing
PS/2 boxes take on many personalities.

  With the Micro Channel, a PS/2 can provide local I/O services
to VM-oriented, mainframe circuits - just as it can for traditional
PC setups.  The value of mainframe hybrids such as the 370
workstation can be seen in the expansion of software systems that
require deep integration between desktops and data centers, as is
noted in our Project Management Focus On, Page 78.

Perhaps that is why a passel of the heretofore timid MCA cloners
have finally gotten the courage to go live with their products.
Between Comdex/Fall and the end of the year, we can expect to see
a half-dozen or so PS/2-alikes.

  Another reason the clones may be coming is that the PS/2
may find some hidden, but shockingly large, markets.  On Page 5,
analyst Peter Coffee - who advises Aerospace Inc., the U.S.
Air Force's civilian think tank, about PC systems - points out
how neatly MCA fits into the biggest PC procurement order in
history.

  That other alternative standard, Unix, gets a lot of ink
again, too.  The operating system whose time may have come is
featured in a 30-page Special Section.  It's also the subject
of our editorial on Page 72, where we note that so many people
seem to be trying to improve Unix, they may just kill it with
kindness.  Paul Schindler argues in his Management by Objection
column that Unix euphoria may be dangerous to micro managers'
health.

  Other points of note:  In Software, Jim Forbes reports that
the dishy descriptor, 'groupware,' may already be passe.  It's
teamwork that's critical today.  There's a nifty combination
in Networking, Page 31: Fax and Tax, the integration of fax
systems and E-mail and networks designed with tax departments
in mind.

  And for a colorful, high-res display of wide-ranging
responses to product possibilities and satisfaction, check
out this week's PC Week Poll of third-party EGA and VGA
boards.

================================================================

FROM MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS WEEK, 11/7/88:

IBM Quietly Sells a VM Workstation

Single-User System, by Matthew Cain

NEW YORK - For the past two months, International Business
Machines Corp. has been quietly selling a single-user 370
architecture workstation that runs applications based on
the VM operating system.

  IBM classifies the machine as a "special product" which
is not available through normal marketing channels.  A
customer has to contact an IBM salesperson and then requests
a price on the workstation.  In standard IBMese, the computer
is an RPQ product, for Request for Price Quote.

  "It's like a speakeasy," Gary Smith, IBM's manager of
market development for the workstation, "you have to knock
three times."  He said IBM was not marketing the machine because
it was uncertain if demand would warrant a full-scale campaign.

  The workstation, officially known as the IBM 7437 VM/SP
Technical Workstation, is actually a 370 architecture co-processor
connected by cable to a high-end PS/2 microcomputer.  The cable
is hooked up to a card which is inserted into the microcomputer.
In this fashion, the PS/2 performs all I/O, provides all DASD
(direct-access storage device) and contains all disk drives,
Smith said.

  The 370 co-processor, which is the same size and shape as
a floor-standing PS/2 model 70, is priced at $18,100, which
includes 16 Mbytes of memory and the right to copy the VM needed
for the operating system transfer are included.  The price does
not include the microcomputer.

  For an additional $1,300, a card is available that enables
the user to hook up IBM's 5080 graphics display system, which
is primarily used for computer-aided design and computer-aided
engineering (CAD/CAE applications.

                    Applications

  Smith said the workstation would find applications
primarily in these fields because of the existence of
sophisticated software which was not yet available in
singer-user versions.  For example, Smith said the popular
design engineering software made by Cadam, Inc., Burbank,
Calif., was not available in a single-user version, yet
demand existed for such a product.

  In fact, at last week's Autofact in Chicago (see related
story, page 11) Cadam was showing the 7431 VM/SP workstation
in its booth.  The machine was also seen in a booth sponsored
by Valisys Corp. Sunnyvale, Calif., as well as in IBM's booth.

 In selling the workstation, IBM has to overcome customer
resistance caused by a similar offering the firm had previously
brought out.  The AT/370 was an attempt also to download VM
to a single-user machine, in this case to the PC/AT.  However,
the machine was not a success because of limited DASD and limited
processing power and because the machine ran only a subset of the
VM operating system.

  Smith said that, when dealing with potential customers,
he sometimes has to answer questions about "the perceived
deficiencies with the AT/370."  He said the 7431 VM/SP
"overcomes a lot of that" because it has six times the
processing power of the PC/AT, 10 times the DASD, and a
full-function VM operating system, VM/SP Version 5.

  IBM has been using the machine internally for some
time, according to Dan Caldwell, IBM's product marketing
administrator for computer-augmented design and manipulation
(CADAM).  "IBM's commitment is to use what we sell and sell
what we use," he said.

                    Competition with 9370

  Thomas Foth, a developer at software house Relay
Communications Inc., Danbury, Conn., who is familiar with
the machine, said IBM was not aggressively marketing the
workstation because it might cannibalize IBM's primary VM
platform, the 9370 departmental mainframe.  Because the price
of the workstation was about one-half the price of a low-end
9370, it might take business away from the larger system.

  He said the attitude of the 9370 people was "don't
compete with my 9370; get off my turf."

  However, IBM's Smith disagreed.  He said the workstation
had the blessing of the 9370 developers and expanded the range
of the line.  "The market is saying we need another entry point'
to the 9370 line, he said.  He also noted that all other 9370
machines were multi-user systems."

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 17:04:11 GMT

Luis Fernandes writes:

This is going to sound like a silly question, but how did mainframes
fare when the power was cut in the middle of its operation? Did the
OS boot OK when the power came back on and did it just continue
running where it left off (it had core mem, right)?

most did not, part of the issue wasn't so much the consistency of the
stuff in core/memory ... it was the consistency of all the possible
ancillary options that might have been "in-flight" when the failure
occured.

with respect to filesystem consistency, depends on the
"mainframe". There is discussion of multics ... with unix type file
system checking on power-up ... taking two hrs.

there is also discussion of 360/370 mainframe disk infrastructure that
if the power failure happened in the middle of a write operation,
there was enough power for the disk to complete the write, but there
was situtions where there was not enough power to maintain memory and
transfer the contents of memory to disk ... as a result the disk would
be getting all zeros for completeing the write. for that failure mode,
there was no indication that the write had failed to complete
correctly ... in fact there was no disk read error indication at all.

this particular failue mode was one of the reason for the CMS EDF
(enhanced disk file system) in the '70s. The CMS filesystem from the
mid-60s always did "shadow" writes involving any changed metadata
(master file directory information) records, but when it went to
commit the shadow writes, it would rewrite record 4 (that included
indication of the new version rather than the old). EDF used paired
record 4/5 and would ping-pong writing the record. On any
resume/reboot situation, EDF would read both records 4 and 5 and
determine which was to be used (i.e. simplest was having version
number at the end of the record). The majority of write failues would
be caught be disk hardware and there would be some error indication on
read (except for the power-failue, zero propagation problem).

The zero propagation problem wasn't intrinsictly a filesystem
inconsistency problem involving huge amounts of cached and possibly
altered filesystem metadata in memory that would possibly trickle back
to disk possibly resulting in inconsistent filesystem control
information.  All of the metadata on disk was kept maintained
consistently across multiple records. There was, however, this
hardware issue.

A similar issue has been discussed regarding modern disks, many of
which will guarentee an atomic write of a single record, aka either it
is not written or it is written completely & correctly (faced with a
power failure in operation). Even with modern disks guarenteeing
atomic single record writes ... there are some number of situations
where the filesystem is using a logical record size that is a multiple
of a physical record ... potentially giving rise to a similar
filesystem issue with incomplete or incorrect filesystem single
"record" write in the face of a power failure ... where there is not a
corresponding read error indication (one resume/reboot).

Note that the hardware disk failure issue could also have some impact
on DBMS that maintain ACID properties (transaction either commits
complete and consistent or doesn't happen at all) if such an incorrect
writing of a DBMS log record resulted in improper handling on
resume/restart.

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#53 Internet and/or ARPANET?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#80 write rings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#81 write rings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#85 Mainframe power failure (somehow morphed from Re: write rings)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#43 4M pages are a bad idea (was Re: AMD 64bit Hammer CPU and VM)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#47 4M pages are a bad idea (was Re: AMD 64bit Hammer CPU and VM)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#6 Disk drive behavior
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#38 Competitors to SABRE?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#3 Power failure during write (was: Re: Disk drive behavior (again))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#76 Unix hard links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#80 Unix hard links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#81 Unix hard links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#52 misc loosely-coupled, sysplex, cluster, supercomputer, & electronic commerce
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#45 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#37 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#57 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#58 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#34 Does it support "Journaling"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#62 TOPS-10 logins (Was Re: HP-2000F - want to know more about it)

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 17:09:27 GMT

John A. Stovall writes:

Did mainframes ever need UPS'?

The early CDC Cyber were very sensitive to power lose and you could
end up having to reload all the files and users restarting jobs.  Oh,
the joys of the Cyber 72 and 6600 at SMU in the '70's during
thunderstorm season.  Conoco in Ponca City Oklahoma was even more fun
with the 885 disk drives in a shared file system configuration between
multiple mainframes (860's) which required the mainframes to be take
down in a specific sequences or you would have major file problems.

Yes, Mainframes used UPS.  This may be urban legend but I heard at
China Lake there was a UPS there which was the power unit out of an
old diesel electric Sub.

there is the one about the 6600 at berekely and its shutdown from the
'60s ... not because of power ... but because of thermal. the story as
i remember was every tuesday morning about 10am the 6600 would
(thermal) shutdown.

they eventually traced it to a loss of water pressure; a combination
of the lawn being watered ... at the same time as a class break (and
resulting nearly simultaneous large number of flushes).

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 17:33:33 GMT

lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (lwin) writes:

The S/360 had a reasonably long lifespan before the S/370
was announced to replace (I think 6-7 years betwen announcements).
But once S/370 hit, the changes became fast and furious--the
S/370-xx5 models soon became the S/370-xx8 (ie 135 -> 138)
models, and then the 4300 and 30xx series came out.  I'm not
sure where S/370 stops and S/390 begins.  (The machine we're
using today is a 96xx which I forget what.  In contrast to
the old days, almost everyone doesn't even know what specific
model it is nor cares.)

things started out with the "mid-life kickers" (incremental
modifications to existing machines) ... but effectively both the
automobile industry and the mainframe industry were on similar seven
year product design cycles.

The 303x were somewhere inbetween. The big thing in 303x was the
channel director. Basically a 155/158 had integrated channels (handled
six channels) ... effectively the processor engine was time-shared
between the integrated channel microcode function and the 370
instruction set execution microcode function. A 303x channel director
handled six channels (for >six channels, needed multiple directors)
and was basically a repackaged 158 engine w/o the 370 instruction
set microcode (aka dedicated to the channel function).

A 3031 was a 158 w/o the integrated channel microcode and reconfigured
to work with a channel director (sort of a asymmetric two processor
configuration). A 3032 was a 168 reconfigured to work with channel
director. A 3033 started out as 168 wiring diagram mapped to newer
chip technology that was about 20percent faster and had about ten
times the circuit density/chip. The first pass at 3033 would have been
about 1/5th faster than 168-3 but then there was some specific tuning
of the logic to take some advantage of more on-chip operations
... which eventually pushed the 3033 to about 50percent faster than
168-3 by the time of first customer ship.

After that, things still continued on the seven year cycle ... but
there were two teams, working in parallel producing products
offset. The 3081 was the "158" team ... the 3090 was the "168" team.

The post "xx8" modules had less of a well defined continuum. The 4341
and the 3031 significantly overlapped:

misc 4341 &/or 3031 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#7 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#52 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#53 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#57 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#21 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#67 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#12 Multics Nostalgia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#0 Microcode?

slightly related automobile seven year cycle:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#43 Economic Factors on Automation

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#14 S/360 addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#7 IBM 7090 (360s, 370s, apl, etc)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#20 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#23 Fear of Multiprocessing?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#7 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#61 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#74 Read if over 40 and have Mainframe  background
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#75 Read if over 40 and have Mainframe  background
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#108 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#110 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#176 S/360 history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#181 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#187 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#188 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#190 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#78 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#37 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#38 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#65 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#5 TF-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#35 What level of computer is needed for a computer to Love?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#44 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#61 TF-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#69 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#75 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?></pre>
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#83 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#57 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#58 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#11 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#28 Could CDR-coding be on the way back?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#29 Could CDR-coding be on the way back?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#62 California DMV
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#63 Are the L1 and L2 caches flushed on a page fault ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#28 So long, comp.arch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#37 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#39 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#56 Why SMP at all anymore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#1 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#3 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#6 OS/360 (was LINUS for S/390)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#54 VM & VSE news
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#55 VM & VSE news
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#2 Alpha:  an invitation to communicate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#13 GETMAIN R/RU (was: An IEABRC Adventure)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#34 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#3 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#13 Parity - why even or odd (was Re: Load Locked (was: IA64 running out of steam))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#14 Parity - why even or odd (was Re: Load Locked (was: IA64 running out of steam))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#4 hot chips and nuclear reactors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#7 hot chips and nuclear reactors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#8 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#73 Expanded Storage?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#14 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#24 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#25 ESCON Data Transfer Rate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#58 Certificate Authentication Issues in IE and Verisign
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#36 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#48 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#2 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#3 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#32 First DESKTOP Unix Box?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#40 using >=4GB of memory on a 32-bit processor

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

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.security.misc,comp.security,comp.security.unix
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 20:27:24 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

After that, things still continued on the seven year cycle ... but
there were two teams, working in parallel producing products
offset. The 3081 was the "158" team ... the 3090 was the "168" team.

above from "ibm mainframe at home" thread in a.f.c
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#7

with OT thread drift to security proportional to risk thread
(somewhat e-commerce):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61 Net banking, is it safe???

in the early 70s there was a trade-secret document theft case
regarding disk technology. The assertions was that the "disk clone"
business took 12 to 18 months to reverse engineer, duplicate and bring
product to market (after initial introduction of new product). The
assertion was that the document thefts would potentially allow a clone
manufactur to bring a product to market six months earlier
... representing possibly several tens of billions of dollars in
revenue.

somewhere along the way, the judge supposedly raised the "swimming
pool attractive hazard" issue (aka pool owner is responsible for bad
things that happen in their pool unless they can demonstrate fences
and other security measures proportional to determination of
trespassers that might find the pool attractive); aka for legal
remedy, have to demonstrate security measures proportional to the
value of the trade-secret.

For actual disk hardware this was a secure compound with perimeter
fence and guards at the gates, patrols inside the compound, secure
building with door badge readers, enforced & audited policies about
tail-gating, 2nd floor (above ground) machine room with even more
restricted badge reader acces. Within the machine room, devices were
housed in a "test cell" ... basically a small heavy steel wire mesh
cage (maybe 5x5x7, reinforce steel floor, heavy steel wire mesh sides
& top). Door to cage had combination lock and each cage had unique
combination. Lots of audit procedures and patrols to assure that
security was being followed. This is somewhat analogous to safe
deposit boxes but with more layers of security and constant auditing
procedures.

Documents were "candy-stripe" covers with registered confidential
classification. Each copy of a document was numbered. Each page of a
candy-stripe document had the document copy number embossed in large
print on every page (basically faint background but the number was
large print essentially filling the whole page) with legend
"registered confidential, do not copy/reproduce" on every page (either
3800 background flash or special paper from secure printer).

Each copy was signed out to specific person and that person had to
follow a lot of processes protecting the document which were also
audited on regular basis. A person having registered confidential
documents also had special secure file cabinat for storing the
documents, their offices had sporadic audits after hours and there
were periodic audits to verify that the person still had possesion of
the document. Registered confidential document copies tended to number
in the tens or at most few hundres.

For the 3081 there were a whole file drawer of "811" documents (from
the date nov. 1978) that were registered confidential and had to
demonstrate that every copy of every 811 document was managed with the
highest/appropriate security processes. Even at that, there was some
leakage and a fairly well publiciszed industrial espionage case
related to 811 documents.

bringing back to merchant e-commerce sites thread ... would an
attractive hazard be a defense with regard to hacking e-commerce
servers that had insufficient security?

random registered confidential refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)

random attractive hazard refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmore.htm#2527a RFC 2527 Physical Security Controls Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#42 IBM was/is: Imitation...

random disk test cell ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#15 cp disk story
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#18 IBM 4381 (finger-check)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#15 OSes commerical, history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#31 Old Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#54 Fault Tolerance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#9 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#69 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#72 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#19 checking some myths.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#13 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#2 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#0 VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off   MoreThan   It Can Chew?)

random 811/3081 references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#00 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#43 Bloat, elegance, simplicity and other irrelevant concepts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#55 How Do the Old Mainframes Compare to Today's Micros?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 Virtual Memory (A return to the past?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#46 The god old days(???)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#4 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#102 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#190 Merced Processor Support at it again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#78 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#38 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#65 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#55 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#57 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#35 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#37 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#38 Why SMP at all anymore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#62 z/Architecture I-cache
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#53 Varian (was Re: UNIVAC  - Help ??)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#66 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#62 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#68 Q: Merced a flop or not?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#13 Parity - why even or odd (was Re: Load Locked (was: IA64 running out of steam))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#18 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#7 hot chips and nuclear reactors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#24 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#9 NCP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#45 VM and/or Linux under OS/390?????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#48 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#11 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#32 First DESKTOP Unix Box?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#9 IBM Doesn't Make Small MP's Anymore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#40 using >=4GB of memory on a 32-bit processor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#42 Beginning of the end for SNA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#7 IBM Mainframe at home

random security proportional to risk refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmore.htm#2527a RFC 2527 Physical Security Controls Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#websecure merchant web server security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror3 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror5 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards The end of P-Cards?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards3 The end of P-Cards? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rubberhose Rubber hose attack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#rhose17 [Fwd: Re: when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#netbank2 net banking, is it safe?? ... security proportional to risk
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#netsecure some recent threads on netbanking & e-commerce security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure2 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure3 financial payment standards ... finger slip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki13 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#tamper Limitations of limitations on RE/tampering (was: Re: biometrics)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio8 biometrics (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#42 IBM was/is: Imitation...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61 Net banking, is it safe???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#67 Would this type of credit card help online shopper to feel more secure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#53 Credit Card # encryption
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#57 E-commerce security????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#2 E-commerce security????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#5 E-commerce security????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#44 Does "Strong Security" Mean Anything?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#54 Does "Strong Security" Mean Anything?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#55 I-net banking security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#2 Why is UNIX semi-immune to viral infection?

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

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.security.misc,comp.security,comp.security.unix
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 20:41:12 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

For the 3081 there were a whole file drawer of "811" documents (from
the date nov. 1978) that were registered confidential and had to
demonstrate that every copy of every 811 document was managed with the
highest/appropriate security processes. Even at that, there was some
leakage and a fairly well publiciszed industrial espionage case
related to 811 documents.

another aspect was network & evesdroping security. While the internal
network was larger than the arpanet/internet until sometime in the
mid-80s, corporate guidelines required that all links that left
physical site had to have link encryptors. At one time I heard somebody
claim that the internal network had over half the link encryptors in
existance in the world.

random internal network refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#31 High Speed Data Transport (HSDT)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#7 Who built the Internet? (was: Linux/AXP.. Reliable?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#2 IBM 1130 (was Re: IBM 7090--used for business or science?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#26 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#16 S/360 operating systems geneaology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#56 Earliest memories of "Adventure"  & "Trek"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#7 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#33 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#38c Internet and/or ARPANET?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#83 "Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#109 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#110 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#126 Dispute about Internet's origins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror6 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#3 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#67 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#72 Microsoft boss warns breakup could worsen virus problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#30 internal corporate network, misc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#46 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#60 Disincentives for MVS & future of MVS systems programmers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#13 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#14 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#15 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#30 Is Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the web?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#14 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#17 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#24 A question for you old guys -- IBM 1130 information
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#39 Could CDR-coding be on the way back?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#53 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#4 Sv: First video terminal?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#16 Linux IA-64 interrupts [was Re: Itanium benchmarks ...]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#71 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#85 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#4 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#12 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#16 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#34 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#23 MERT Operating System & Microkernels
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#34 D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#7 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#39 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#4 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#26 Help needed on conversion from VM to OS390
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#28 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#29 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#30 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#35 Military Interest in Supercomputer AI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#45 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#50 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#40 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#56 E-mail 30 years old this autumn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#25 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#34 Processor Modes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#35 Processor Modes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#45 Processor Modes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#54 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#12 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#31 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#32 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#32 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#53 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#54 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#56 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#57 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#58 ibm vnet : Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#59 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#64 ... the need for a Museum of Computer Software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#39 VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?)

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 20:43:48 GMT

jata@jata-mj.net (Julian Thomas) writes:

Lynn, I think you have that backwards, to the extent that there were still
158 and 168 teams in that timeframe.  Remember that FS and the 303x caused
a great deal of team realignment.  The project mgr for the 158 ended up on
3090 and ISTR that the 3081 had a lot of 168/3033 folks.

sorry, brain check ... i believe you've corrected me on that in the past.

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

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.security.misc,comp.security,comp.security.unix
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 21:30:50 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

another aspect was network & evesdroping security. While the internal
network was larger than the arpanet/internet until sometime in the
mid-80s, corporate guidelines required that all links that left
physical site had to have link encryptors. At one time I heard somebody
claim that the internal network had over half the link encryptors in
existance in the world.

and the home/travel terminal/PC program had a special internal
corporate encrypting modems. 1200 & 2400 baud modems & PC modem cards
that would do session key generaion/exchange if it was talking to a
corporate modem pool site (would act as normal modem otherwise).

one of the issues was that in the '70s, there was analysis
highlighting hotel/motel phone switches as extremely high security
risk (never allowed to do corporate email and/or other corporate
internal network access from hotel w/o encryption).

there was joke/story about the initial modem that was demo/provided to
high level corporate executive (who had been an old EE graduate).  The
story goes that it didn't seem to be working so he used his tongue to
test for current in the modem's rj receptical ... just as it rang back
(part of the home access security program also included "call-back"
security). After that it was decreed that all modems manufactured by
the company (whether for internal use or external sales) had to have
the rj receptical recessed far enuf so that a corporate executive
tongue was unable to touch the contacts.

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 23:40:26 GMT

rfcommsys@aol.com (RFCOMMSYS) writes:

Meanwhile, our Big Iron just keeps chugging away without breaking into a sweat.
Mainframe security, reliability, and ability to handle massive amounts of data
continues to be excellent, making the PCs look like mere toys.

almost anything can be used as a toy in the wrong(?) hands.

long ago, and far way there was a period where some number of
mainframes had something like 30 percent of the workload coming from
people playing adventure game.

random adventure refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#56 Earliest memories of "Adventure" & "Trek"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#83 "Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#84 "Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#169 Crowther (pre-Woods) "Colossal Cave"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#72 Microsoft boss warns breakup could worsen virus problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#14 adventure ... nearly 20 years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.

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

IBM Mainframe at home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe at home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 06:20:42 GMT

Dennis Ritchie writes:

There is another story, heard from a Cray employee and a bit
closer to contemporary, about a Cray 1 whose Freon cooling system
failed and the temperature sensor wasn't working.  Reportedly
quite a few chips unsoldered themselves from their boards; the
machine melted.

there was mainframe TCM machine that had internal coolant, heat
exchange and external fluid coolent ... with a thermal sensor. There
was interruption in the external fluid flow ... which started
temperature rise and tripped the thermal ... but there wasn't enuf
mass in the internal coolant to contain the heat before TCMs fried (and
had to be replaced).

after that, flow sensors were installed on the external cooling
system.

random tcm refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#36 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#38 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#4 hot chips and nuclear reactors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#7 hot chips and nuclear reactors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#3 Microcode? (& index searching)

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 18:45:04 GMT

scomstock@aol.com (S Comstock) writes:

I've been thinking about the perennial cry of "the mainframe is dead" and what
it means to us. Although we may laugh or pooh-pooh it, as insiders, I am afraid
there is a very real danger of us mainframe oriented folks getting so insular
we don't see the reality until it is too late.

The reality is, simply, we are allowing ourselves to be marginalized. In a
company, everyone knows about the PCs around; when people talk about "the
computer" they mean the PC. When management talks about spending money for IT,
it's for PCs, JAVA, and the Web. When kids go to college / university to learn
computer science, it's UNIX or Windows products.

Meanwhile, mainframes are quietly running the bread and butter applications of
the business. Telephone companies are not going to email 10,000,000 customer
bills each month, nor print them on 1,000 PCs lashed together.

a lot of the mainframe is trial & error experience learned over 30-40
year period of commerical business critical operation; some of it
incorporated into base technology, other of it is just part of
cultural experience of the staff.

part of the educational issue was new job growth ... aka unix & pc was
growing market segment ... which generated lots of new job openings,
which education filled. the other was in 70s and 80s cost of
equiipment for educational instituations (some of the mainframe really
deep educational discounts in the 50s & 60s were no longer available).

some observation in past postings regarding difficulty of finding
experienced people needed for care & feeding of mainframe
operations. Also correlary at some large organizations identifying
that critical mainframe staff were nearing and/or had reached
retirement age and difficulty of keeping them on the job was rated as
one of the top (even #1) risks facing their business.

some past postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#28 Homework: Negative side of MVS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#32 Homework: Negative side of MVS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#11 Amdahl Exits Mainframe Market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#22 Hercules, OCO, and IBM missing a great opportunity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#50 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq

some of the personal 370s could have possibly been better positioned and
priced for the educational market. slightly related ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home

slightly related discussion (some with regard to the mini-computer market
segment instead of mainframe; some similarities & some differences):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#0  Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#1 Re: Gerstner moves over as planned
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#4 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#19 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew

there was also quite a bit of resistance to jumping on the tcp/ip &
internet bandwagon (even tho the internal network was larger than
the arpanet/internet up thru the mid-80s, & non-sna). random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#51 APPC vs TCP/IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#53 APPC vs TCP/IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#79 "Database" term ok for plain files?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#89 "Database" term ok for plain files?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#54 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#58 Disincentives for MVS & future of MVS systems programmers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#31 3745 and SNI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#28 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#54 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#43 Beginning of the end for SNA?

there was actually an internal presentation in the '80s by the disk
division claiming that its demise would be the responsibility of the
communication division. some amount of the distributed/PC world
started out with terminal emulation and screen-scraping. That worked
well for emerging applications ... but as it started to mature it
became a critical bottleneck for integrated PC/mainframe operation.
As a result, more an more implementations started to copy & host
critical business data at the PC ... rather than attempting to operate
thru the narrow spigot provided by the communication division
products. There was lots of internal in-fighting where the disk
division wanted to provide significantly enhanced bandwidth capability
to the desktop ... which would have bypassed the communcation division
products (communication division had evolved large install base
associated with terminal emulation and screenscraping that would have
started to evaporate and been replaced with high performance disk
division products). random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#16 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#124 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#202 Middleware - where did that come from?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#6 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#35 VMS vs. Unix  (was: Why are Suns so slow?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#59 7 layers to a program
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#42 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#45 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#13 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#14 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#49 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#69 Block oriented I/O over IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#16 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#18 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#19 HP Compaq merger, here we go again.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#17 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic:  facts vs. FUD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#34 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#55 9-track tapes (by the armful)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#2 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#7 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#4 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#37 Poor Man's clustering idea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home

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

RFC Online Project

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: RFC Online Project
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 21:53:15 GMT

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-online.html The RFC-Online Project

also index:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

misc. (old) rfc that recently went online:

7 -
Host-IMP interface, Deloche G., 1969/05/01 (4pp) (.txt=13408)

83 -
Language-machine for data reconfiguration, Anderson R., Harslem E.,
Heafner J., 1970/12/18 (12pp) (.txt=22253)

135 -
Response to NWG/RFC 110, Hathaway W., 1971/04/29 (2pp) (.txt=5784)
(Updates 110)

137 -
Telnet Protocol - a proposed document, O'Sullivan T., 1971/04/30 (6pp)
(.txt=19725) (Updated by 139)

186 -
Network graphics loader, Michener J., 1971/07/12 (21pp) (.txt=30557)

190 -
DEC PDP-10-IMLAC communications system, Deutsch L., 1971/07/13 (15pp)
(.txt=24389)

192 -
Some factors which a Network Graphics Protocol must consider, Watson
R., 1971/07/12 (21pp) (.txt=48540)

205 -
NETCRT - a character display protocol, Braden R., 1971/08/06 (14pp)
(.txt=28272)

566 -
Traffic statistics August 1973, McKenzie A., 1973/09/04 (4pp)
(.txt=6674)

582 -
Comments on RFC 580: Machine readable protocols, Clements R.,
1973 -/11/05 (1pp) (.txt=1635) (Updates 580)

590 -
MULTICS address change, Padlipsky M., 1973/11/19 (1pp) (.txt=1436)

659 -
Announcing additional Telnet options, Postel J., 1974/10/18 (1pp)
(.txt=2044)

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 16:10:16 GMT

"Russell P. Holsclaw" writes:

I don't know... most of the bad programming habits I've seen in C appear to
be the accepted idiom of the language. But that would be the subject of a
whole separate thread that I probably don't have time for right now.

there has been numerous threads over the years that implicit string
length convention in C has been the cause of a significant percentage
of security and exploits in systems over the years (90+ percent at
least up until the appearance of the automatic scripting
viruses/trojans).

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#theory Security breach raises questions about Internet shopping
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn4 assurance, X9.59, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#cfppki10 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#6 credit card & gift card fraud (from today's comp.risks)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure2 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure4 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay9.htm#risks credit card & gift card fraud (from today's comp.risks)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki13 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#hackhome Hackers Targeting Home Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#risks credit card & gift card fraud (from today's comp.risks)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio3 biometrics (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio7 biometrics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70 Series/1 as NCP (was: Re: System/1 ?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#219 Study says buffer overflow is most common security bug
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#30 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#38 How Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Systems make society vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#66 KI-10 vs. IBM at Rutgers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#73 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#58 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#52 misc loosely-coupled, sysplex, cluster, supercomputer, & electronic commerce
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#43 Why is UNIX semi-immune to viral infection?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#27 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#30 FreeBSD more secure than Linux
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#71 Q: Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#72 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#76 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#84 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#90 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#91 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#93 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#4 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#19 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#35 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#44 Calculating a Gigalapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#34 Does it support "Journaling"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#37 Poor Man's clustering idea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#56 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#15 Opinion on smartcard security requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#42 Beginning of the end for SNA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#9 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#14 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 16:13:32 GMT

ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) writes:

"Russell P. Holsclaw" (russ@holsclaw.nyet) writes:
>Lynn,
>I remember hearing your name many times during my career at IBM ('66 to
>'93). I hired into IBM when the System/360 was still new and remained for 26
>years, mostly working in connection with the RETAIN system and other IBM
>internal systems.

Care to tell us about RETAIN ?

another system akin to RETAIN was HONE ... random stuff about HONE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 16:42:04 GMT

CBFalconer writes:

Whats the skip-list algorithm?

dr. dobbs had  a sequence of articles on it a couple years
ago, you might even be able to find it on their site. The code is (at
least) on their algorithm cdrom
http://www.ddj.com/

although I don't see it listed in online algorithm articles
http://www.ddj.com/topics/algorithms/articles/

but it is listed under 1994 articles (by author of applied
cryptography)

SKIP LISTS

by Bruce Schneier

Skip-list algorithms are generally faster, simpler to implement,
require less memory, and are more versatile than balanced-tree
algorithms. Bruce examines skip lists and shows how you can squeeze
even more performance out of them.

==================================================================

There was a vs/pascal library for red/black trees (I believe from
somebody in rochester) in the early '80s ... that I used in a project
migrating code from cp kernel assembler into virtual address space
pascal (and making it run up to ten times faster):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)

there is luther woodrums radix partition tree stuff and his sort/list
hardware instructions:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com:80/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/A.7

there has been a lot of sci.crypt n.g. (and other places)
discussions/posting recently with regard to Bernstein's paper on
numeric field sieve, radix sorting, and finding RSA private keys:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/26/179206.shtml?tid=93 more on factoring breakthrough

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 16:59:29 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:

OTOH there was CKD. ;^> Even small and medium range disk
controllers and drives nowadays have equivalent functionality to
3880/3990 and 3380/3390, and multiple I/O busses in some
architectures remove the biggest bottleneck, besides lousy code.

some old refs to 360 PCM controller market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

misc. mainframe disk discussion:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

lots of old CKD postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#35 mainframe CKD disks & PDS files (looong... warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#16 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#29 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#86 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#34 What level of computer is needed for a computer to Love?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#19 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#22 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#18 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#19 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#51 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#52 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#12 Small IBM shops
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#54 FBA History Question (was: RE: What's the meaning of track overfl ow?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#55 FBA History Question (was: RE: What's the meaning of track overfl ow?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#17 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#64 VTOC/VTOC INDEX/VVDS and performance (expansion of VTOC position)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#19 offtopic: texas tea (was: re: vliw)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#21 Theo Alkema
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#24 XML: No More CICS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#32 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#37 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#38 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#3 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#51 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#36 History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#53 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#63 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#38 CMS under MVS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#6 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#1 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#29 Page size (was: VAX, M68K complex instructions)

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 17:44:18 GMT

nospam writes:

If by "multiple volumes" you mean more than 1 physical drive, IBM AIX has
been able to have a single file "span multiple volumes" for many years.

NetBSD has been able to do this for many years as well, at least since 1995.

aix3 with rs/6000 came out with it in the logical volume (LVM) support
in late '80s allowing a volume/filesystem to span multiple physical
disks ... it also was the earliest(?)  unix journaling filesystem
... again in the late '80s. LVM support could be configured for
mirroring.

it was one of the things that my wife and I built HA/CMP off of
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 20:10:50 GMT

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa nor Jeff) writes:

If a large IBM shop, which can employ up to 1,000 application
and system programmers (as well as operators) were to convert
to Unix, what would be required to convert the thousands of
COBOL, Fortran, PL/I and even old RPG programs it has in service?
How about all the JCL?

when i was in school ... we had a 360 cobol program that had been
converted from 709 cobol which emulated a 407 "plug board" program
... the 360 cobol program even printed out the 407 "sense" settings at
the end of execution.

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

DASD response times

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: DASD response times
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 20:33:33 GMT

kburrow@CSC.COM (Ken Burrow) writes:

A client is concerned that some of his DASD, which is not currently being
used, has rather long I/O times (108ms, most of which is connect time).
He's getting the response time stats from Omegamon, and an analysis of the
volume shows 0 open DCBs, 0% device busy, yet these long I/Os.  Does anyone
know what could be causing these seemingly paradoxical statistics?

And, yes, I realise that elongated I/O times on unused DASD is going to
have 0 effect on throughput -- he just wants this explained.

lets say that there is concatenated PDS program/load library ... which
is causing search of PDS on the otherwise "unused" disk (aka does
unused mean nothing on the drive, or just nothing that is known to be
used on the drive?) for program that is in some PDS that is later in
the search ... and on a different volume.

lets say that PDS directory is a full cylinder and the PDS member
search is doing a multi-track operation ... the elapsed time for each
I/O is the number of tracks on the cylinder times the track rotation
speed.

note that in olden days, multi-track search not only tied up the disk
drive, but the controller & channel path also (not just a disk
resource issue, but also controller and channel contention). The other
issue might be the elongated time to actually find the program for
loading.

something analogous might be happening if something was causing a vtoc
search on the drive.

ancient discussion of this CKD/PDS feature:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#35 mainframe CKD disks & PDS files (looong... warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#16 Why Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#29 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#75 Read if over 40 and have Mainframe  background
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#86 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#18 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#19 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#42 IBM 3340 help
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#51 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#52 > 512 byte disk blocks (was: 4M pages are a bad idea)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#17 database (or b-tree) page sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#60 VTOC/VTOC INDEX/VVDS and performance (expansion of VTOC position)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#64 VTOC/VTOC INDEX/VVDS and performance (expansion of VTOC position)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#6 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching

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

Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 05:49:20 GMT

Randy Hudson  writes:

Absolutely.  Brooks's _The Mythical Man-Month_ documents how the scaling
problem nearly defeated a phenomenally good group of programmers, almost
exactly 35 years ago.  And while the mainframe world has fought hard, I
wouldn't claim the problem has been "solved."

One converse is the claims by the tss/370 people. Brooks' paradigm
(aka 9 inexperienced, non-pregnant people can produce a baby in one
month, while it takes a pregnant woman 9 months) definitly applied to
tss/360 when there were supposedly something like 1200 people working
on it (in mohansic?). The claim has been when tss/360 was decommited
and the group reduced to only 30 or so people that tss/370 got
significantly better fast (sort of inversely proportional to the
number of people, or the amount of work expands to keep all the people
busy).

aka ... they fell on their sword with a large group ... but re-emerged
with a pretty good product when the size of the group got cut by a
factor of 40 times (unfortunately the "product" wasn't able to really
recover from earlier history).

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

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 06:02:05 GMT

Lars Poulsen writes:

I'm sure there were regional differences to this. In Texas, I'm
told, it is traditional to used barbed wire. In my native Denmark,
it was a 16-gauge galvanized steel wire. The pulse generator would
send a 3 KV pulse about once a second. We'd walk the fence periodically
and trim any weeds that reached up near the wire. Often you could hear
them buzz as you approached.

in montana as a kid i strung both barb wire and 16-gauge(?, seems
about right, but it has been a long time) galv. steel wire for
electric fences (course, strung barb wire for non-electric also).

remember fence pliers? how 'bout fence stretcher? The one thing I
remember about was being very careful not to get a kink in the wire
when laying it out. If there was knick or kink in the wire when you
were streching it, it could break under the tension of pulling it
really tight ... and then you better look out.

simple repairs on barb wire ... typically just grabed it with the
fence pliers and sort of leaveraged it around corner post to pull it
tight ... didn't use the fence stretcher (kind I used looked a little
like a pully with a rachet handle).

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

Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 16:09:51 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

I never did the work but I got to watch the male adults do a lot
of it.  I got to dig the postholes.  Remember posthole diggers?
There was one style that even a little kid could use.

corner posts you dig, steel posts you use a pile driver, basically a
heavy 2in or so diameter pipe about 4 feet long that is welded shut at
one end and extended with a 2 foot or so handle. The weld at the end
has maybe a plate welded to add some weight. You stand up the steel
posts and place the pile driver over the end and proceed to ram the
post into the ground. For electric fence, you use insulator to attach
the wire to the post.

when i was 11, my parents buddled me off to spend the summer with my
grandmother and uncles on small farm in eastern montana (I had done
this a couple times before).

they also had a couple trucks, a couple telephone poles for timbers,
surplus jacks from the railroad and misc other stuff and moved houses
as a side-line.

typical might be picking up a farm house way out in nowhere and moving
it into town. you have a house driving down some back road and comes
to a line of telephone wires. this is eastern montana and the roofs
are pretty steep because of the heavy winter snows ... and the peak of
the roof is higher than the wires. So my uncles send the kid up to the
peak, he lays over the edge of the house and collects the wires in his
bare hands as the house edges forward and lifts them above the peak.
When he has all the wires (possibly dozen or so) in his hand, he walks
the wires across the peak as the house moves under the wires and then
drops them when he gets to the back of the house. this can be
dangerous (and not just because one of the lines getting a ring);
several years later one of my uncles fell off a peak of a house he was
moving and was killed.

bailing and other things, your hands get pretty insensitive/calloused.
come 4th of july (kids don't try this at home, it is only for
professional nuts) one test is lay firecracker in palm of your hand
and light them (and you don't drop them).

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

looking for information on the IBM 7090 instruction set

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: looking for information on the IBM 7090 instruction set
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 16:12:16 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

It certainly impa