List of Archived Posts

2003 Newsgroup Postings (03/10 - 03/31)

Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
When using SSL, are the GET arguments (QueryString in asp) also encrypted?
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
cp/67 35th anniversary
'Boyd': A military Strategist's Emphasis on Speed
PDP10 and RISC
Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
unix
cp/67 35th anniversary
unix
unix
unix
unix
cp/67 35th anniversary
unix
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
A Speculative question
MP cost effectiveness
shirts
A Speculative question
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
A Speculative question
A Speculative question
Use of SSL as a VPN
unix
Use of SSL as a VPN
Keeping old hardware alive?
editors/termcap
editors/termcap
IETF meeting (Re: editors/termcap)
Why we don't use homebrew crypto
unix
IBM 3174
The Pentium 4 - RIP?
Computer programming was all about:
MP cost effectiveness
Public key and the authority problem
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
MP cost effectiveness
A Speculative question
MP cost effectiveness
OT: Columbia, MD and the social impact of Ft. Meade/NSA?
Reviving Multics
Reviving Multics
Reviving Multics
Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)
editors/termcap
Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)
reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
hee-hee. I can do something about this spam
reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
The Pentium 4 - RIP?
The Pentium 4 - RIP?
Gartner Office Information Systems 6/2/89
ARIDUS
GOSIP
GOSIP
Security Certifications?
Security Certifications?
History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
unix
Microsoft strikes again - from comp.risks
801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
"Super-Cheap" Supercomputing

Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 03:05:54 GMT
hack@watson.ibm.com (hack) writes:
Many processors have bigger virtual addresses than effective addrs. For example, 32-bit PowerPC has a 52-bit vaddr, 64-bit PPC has 80-bit vaddr; 32-bit S/390 has 42-bit vaddr (in Access-Register mode) and 64-bit z/Series has 75-bit vaddr (in AR mode, which adds 11 bits).

i've always quibbled with romp's reference to 40-bit and rios's reference to 52-bit.

if i compare 370 to romp .... a 370/168 had a sto-associative (aka address space) tlb. it had a seven entry sto-stack (3bit) ... to identify which address space a tlb entry was associated with. basically a address space was identified by its segment table origin (aka STO) address. when switching address spaces, it would look to see if the STO was in the stack ... if not, it would scavanage an entry and invalidate all the associated TLB entries.

801 used inverted tables ... so there was no STO to identify which address space was being worked in. 801 went to segment associtive (rather than address space) and used a 12bit logical identifier to indicate which segment was being used. instead of a segment table origin address loaded into a control register ... romp had 16 segment registers that each got a 12bit logical identifier loaded. when resolving a tlb entry ... a 32bit virtual address would be translated into the first four bits to select a segment register ... and the 12bit logical segment identifier would be combined with the low 28 address bits to form a 40 bit associative value for tlb.

I've asserted that just because the associative bit structure was exposed to program didn't make the associative bits part of the virtual address. The equivalent logic would say that 370 had addressing that included the maximum possible number of different address space (segment) tables that could be created/built. While, 360/67 had both 24-bit and 32-bit address, the transition to 370 went back to only 24-bit addresses. 31-bit (rather than 32-bit) didn't reappear to 370/xa with the 3081. The minimum requirement for a segment table was 64bytes ... or 64 segment tables per 4kbytes of real storage. I would claim that I could reasonably create 16,384 unique/different segment tables (2**16) in one megabyte of real storage. Using the romp logic, 2**16 unique tables plus 2**24 virtual addressing should give 370 also 40-bit virtual addressing as well.

The explanation of 40-bit addressing in ROMP was somewhat justified based on the original design point of an non/unprotected execution/run-time environment ... where in-line application code could change address-space values as trivially as floating point register and address/general purpose register values (could be changed). To some extent the logic was that if application code could load different address-space value into a register and point to a different address space .... as easily as a different address pointer could be loaded into a general register ... then the application true address space was the size of each individual address space times the maximum number of different address spaces.

rios kept the romp/801 segment register logic, but doubled the size of unique identifier from 12 bits to 24 bits. The resulting 28bit virtual address plus 24bit segment/address-space identifier yields the 52bit.

So, if I built a kernel for 370 that always ran all code in supervisor mode ... and never switched into problem mode for application execution, then in-line application code could also change address space register value as easily as they could change general purpose registers ... and romp/801 and 370 would have the same number of virtual address bits ... 40-bits.

Did 370 have 24-bit virtual address ... based on number of bits in single address space .... or for 370/168 with 3-bit associative sto, did the 370/168 have a 27-bit virtual address (aka 24-bit virtual address per address space, plus the 3-bit address-space associative indiciator), or did it have 40-bit virtual address ... 24-bit virtual address per address space ... plus possibly 16,384 (16-bit) unique segment tables (address spaces).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

Refed: **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 13:54:20 GMT
"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
You've mentioned the limitations of the 2702 frequently, but I don't recall your mentioning the underlying reason why you couldn't just switch baudrates on the '02 as easily as all that. Were you aware of the inner workings of the 2702, with the acoustic delay line, the "capture register", and all the stuff that allowed the machine to "time-share" the same logic circuits to concurrently run multiple communications ports?

You've suggested that what you wanted to do should have been a matter of changing bit-rate clock frequencies. I hope you realized why it wasn't as simple as all that. This machine definitely had an interesting design!


the 2702 had SAD command that allowed different linescanners to be switched between different lines. our 2702 initially had line scanners for 1052s & 2741s installed. Later the IBM FEs did field upgrade to install ascii/tty line-scanner .... the field installation kit for tty came in boxes labeled heathkit.

cp/67 already had logic to dynamically determine terminal type between 1052, correspondence 2741 and PTTC 2741. When I added tty/ascii support to cp/67, I rewrote the dynamic terminal type code to also be able to distinguish tty. I even demo'ed the code showing being able to dial-up 2741 and tty terminals on the same address. The ibm field engineer then told me that it wasn't spec'ed to actually work and I never did enough testing to find that out; that while the 2702 supported dynamically assigning the line-scanner to different lines ... that they took some short cuts in the implementation and that specific oscillators where hardwired to specific lines ... fixing their baud rate.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 14:00:18 GMT
"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
You've suggested that what you wanted to do should have been a matter of changing bit-rate clock frequencies. I hope you realized why it wasn't as simple as all that. This machine definitely had an interesting design!

past descriptions mentioning that i was told that the 2702 took implementation short-cut and while it was possible to dynamically associate different line-scanners with different lines, that the oscillators were hardwired to specific lines fixing the baud rate.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#2 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#15 unit record & other controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#37 interdata & perkin/elmer machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#39 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#6 History of ASCII (was Re: Why Not! Why not???)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#53 Pre ARPAnet email?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#78 HMC . . . does anyone out there like it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#43 QTAM (was: MVS History)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#30 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#38 Playing Cards was Re: looking for information on the IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#17 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#73 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#70 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 14:30:07 GMT
jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
His point is that his was the first project to interface to the IBM 360 I/O channels, and that they did it without IBM's cooperation; in fact, IBM would probably have wished at the time that they had not done so. (Now? Who knows?) The task was nontrivial, to say the least; I'm not sure how I'd go about it even today, knowing what I know about the 360 channel interface. The PCM (plug-compatible manufacturer) industry was definitely a problem, as IBM saw it at the time, but there wasn't much they could do about it due to the ongoing antitrust litigation.

two minor bugs(?) that we found in testing ...

first was that 360 had timer in location 80/x'50'. the machine would "red-light" (hardware failure/stop) if there was a pending timer update to location 50 and the timer tic'ed again. Holding the channel, tied up the memory bus (preventing access to memory). The "normal" timer tic'ed bit eight 1/300 second, every 3.3mills. The 360/67 had high resolution timer which tic'ed the low bit position approx every 13microseconds. some early testing would red-light the cpu and the channel board had to be reworked so that it released the channel at frequent intervals (and the memory bus) so location 80/x'50' timer could be updated.

past discussions of location 80 timer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#30 interdata and perkin/elmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#37 interdata & perkin/elmer machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#39 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#40 360 CPU meters (was Re: Early IBM-PC sales proj..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#21 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#24 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#25 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#26 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth

the other problem was bit order. it turns that ascii standard transmits the leading bit first. the ibm linescanners take in the leading bit of a byte and place it in the low-order bit position. when ascii data is transferred from the controller to the 360 memory, each byte is in bit-reversed format. all of the ibm official translate tables for ascii->ebcdic took into account that 360 memory copies were bit-reversed bytes (and the reverse happens with outgoing bytes). for some reason that was overlooked and tty data was arriving in 360 memory in non-bit-reversed format. that required a quick fix.

past discussion of bit-reversed ascii
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#16 unit record & other controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#14 characters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#30 interdata and perkin/elmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#37 interdata & perkin/elmer machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#39 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#99 The Translate (TR) instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#133 EBCDIC binary Conversion Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#78 HMC . . . does anyone out there like it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#50 Flip the bits in a byte
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#52 Flip the bits in a byte
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#46 Big black helicopters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#44 PC/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#51 History of HEX and ASCII

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 14:47:55 GMT
jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
His point is that his was the first project to interface to the IBM 360 I/O channels, and that they did it without IBM's cooperation; in fact, IBM would probably have wished at the time that they had not done so. (Now? Who knows?) The task was nontrivial, to say the least; I'm not sure how I'd go about it even today, knowing what I know about the 360 channel interface. The PCM (plug-compatible manufacturer) industry was definitely a problem, as IBM saw it at the time, but there wasn't much they could do about it due to the ongoing antitrust litigation.

and as somewhat been previously aluded to, that possibly because of federal litigation concerns, it was difficult to trivially respond to the pcm threat. an initially response was supposedly FS that would create an extremely sophisticated integration between various hardware boxes ... significantly raising the bar for PCMs.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

When FS was canceled (folklore has the amount sunk into FS would have bankrupted any other computer company, probably the largest computer project of the time, at least on par with 360 and effectively unkown) ... the CPD response could possibly be characterized by substituting complicated integration (aka the pu5/pu4 interface between vtam and 3705ncp) for sophisticated integration.

Later in HSDT, we had a project that attempted to deliver a product that would have obsoleted much of the san vtam/ncp stuff by taking an implementation done at one of the babybells on S/1 (that remapped all of the vtam RUs and layered them on a distributed control, peer-to-peer packet network infrastructure) and ported it to RIOS.

minor refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70 Series/1 as NCP (was: Re: System/1 ?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#28 difference between itanium and alpha

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 15:14:26 GMT
Ben Hutchings <ben-public-nospam@decadentplace.org.uk> writes:
...and will you ever stop talking about it? You seem to drop this into about every second article. We know.

well, i did start out with disclaimer which mentioned that the post was actually cross-posted from vm/esa where i've relatively infrequently posted &/or mentioned the origins of the pcm industry.

minor side observations .... controllers actually tended to have computer processors of one sort or another. I would guess that thru the '70s, that the PCM industry shipped more computer processors than just about any other manufacter (except ibm itself).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

When using SSL, are the GET arguments (QueryString in asp) also encrypted?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: When using SSL, are the GET arguments (QueryString in asp) also encrypted?
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 15:34:26 GMT
Ulrich Boche writes:
The SSL handshake is done before any data is sent, so the URL is sent encrypted.

aka the screen (with the URL) has been transmitted in SSL ... so the transmission of the URL is encrypted. With the click on the URL, the browser takes the host name, and resolves to ip-address (if necessary) and then establishes a TCP connection with that ip-adress. Within the TCP connection the browser then negotiates the SSL encryption with the webserver. Once the SSL encryption has been negotiated/established (within the TCP connection), then the HTTP protocol starts.

in standard HTTP, the TCP connection is established (w/o any SSL encryption stuff) and the HTTP protocol starts flowing. With SSL, the encryption stuff is established before any HTTP protocol starts.

also as part of the ssl protocol ... the browser will check that the host name from the URL matches the domain name in the SSL certificate returned from the webserver (during initial SSL negotiation).

the webserver, based on convention established for the port address being connected to (aka 80 or 443) knows whether or not SSL negotiation is required before starting HTTP.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 17:49:50 GMT
"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
When I went to CE "boot camp" for 360 Common I/O, in the fall of '66, the first thing we learned in the course for the 2821 Control Unit (Reader/punch/printer) was the I/O interface sequences. We learned the function of every signal line in the cable, and the sequence in which they were activated, for both Selector (burst) mode and for Multiplexor mode. For many in the class, it was their first exposure to electronic logic circuitry. Everything had been relays up to that point -- sorters and keypunches. I never thought it was rocket science, particularly.

i never really got to attend any ibm classes as student. the closest i possibly got was the cp/67 class in beverly hill ... but i was roped into helping teach it.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 cp/67 35th anniversary

about the same month, i had week of 2nd shift test time at an ibm datacenter. i was at loose ends during 1st shift and found an os/360 control block and debugging class in the building. after correcting the instructor a number of times, i was asked to leave.

later when hanging around bldgs 14 and 15 for san jose disk engineering ... i had to pick up some more channel interface. There were some wierd conference calls that i was asked to attend to mediate between the pok channel engineers and the san jose disk controller engineers (the excuse was that most of the senior san jose engineers who normally handled this sort of stuff had wandered off over a period of time to various startups)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

Somewhere along the way, I did manage to successfully acquire an CE tool briefcase. I had to submit the order 3-4 times ... apparently nobody out of field engineering is suppose to have them. It happens to be sitting right here ... some number of pieces have disappeared over the years. It has some of these hook things that I remember seeing service people use on the innards of 2741s. It has misc. other things like "IBM FIRST AID KIT, IBM P/N 453693", "IBM MINIPROBE ECN NO. REV. O", a sharpening stone made in India with no other designation,

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:17:20 GMT
"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
IBM published the complete specs for the 360 I/O interface in a generally-available document (an "SRL") that described all the electrical specs and interface sequences. The problem is that a lot of folks couldn't read instructions, especially where timings were concerned. I suppose it might be tough if you were trying to retro-fit the channel interface onto a pre-existing device that wasn't designed from the ground up to be connected to a 360 channel.

i remember some number of those documents that had titles like "OEM interface this" (aka other equipment manufactur) or "OEM interface that" ... but i don't remember any such publications at the time of the first channel interface board for the interdata.

it must have been a reasonably good job. I ran into somebody that was selling perkin-elmer machines into the federal government in the '80s ... and he commented that the channel interface wirewrap board looked like it came out of the 60s (aka perkin-elmer had bought up interdata).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:24:41 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
engineering ... i had to pick up some more channel interface. There were some wierd conference calls that i was asked to attend to mediate between the pok channel engineers and the san jose disk controller engineers (the excuse was that most of the senior san jose engineers who normally handled this sort of stuff had wandered off over a period of time to various startups)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk


there was this joke
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#64 Design (Was Re: Server found behind drywall)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#29 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#11 Home mainframes

that i was working 1st shift in bldg. 28
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

2nd shift in bldgs 14/15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

3rd shift in bldg 90
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#34 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#69 So I tried this //vm.marist.edu stuff on a slow Sat. night,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#44 System vs. application programming?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives

and weekends at the hone complex in palo alto:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

'Boyd': A military Strategist's Emphasis on Speed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'Boyd': A military Strategist's Emphasis on Speed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 20:30:49 GMT
john_bailey@rochester.rr.com (john bailey) writes:
Is it possible to get a copy of his tactical air combat manual Aerial Attack Study?

boyd once mentioned that the cia had obtained a copy of the russian 300 page fighter pilot manual ... when translated to english, was word-for-word boyd's original ... except for things like changing feet to meters. if you can't find it in the us ... you might be able to find it in russia.

as an aside, look on the web for john warden, i've talked to him a couple times ... he is much better known in the air force than boyd. there have been some papers comparing warden & boyd strategies ... but the recent attention to leakage via the web, many of the URLs have gone 404 (aka try "warden", "boyd", and "air force" in a search engine; also look for some of chuck spinney's articles).

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

PDP10 and RISC

Refed: **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PDP10 and RISC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 20:53:32 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
But... but... all _modern_ systems are INTERACTIVE! Batch programming is a throwback to the dinosaurs! Nobody who wants to be With the Program [tm] would think of using that archaic stuff!

<sigh> These silly people. They don't realize that all too often, "interactive" is synonymous with "manual".


or worse?

effectively demons and the majority of servers (oltp, web, database, etc) are batch programs. one of the major characteristics of interactive platforms and interactive applications have been that they expected to interact with a person (including when things went wrong .... frequently just exiting with error code and expecting the human to figure it out).

most of the batch platforms have evolved automagic facilities for correcting for various types of life's unpleasantness. one of the hardest things in the 90s was trying to convince some of the people doing webservers ... that it would really be nice if servers could run in large "lights out" datacenters for weeks at a time w/o human intervention. unfortunately ... it wasn't just a question of the application programming paradigm for implementing the webservers ... but frequently the platforms they were being run on lacked the industrial strength, lights out facilities.

i had a trivial case in the mid-90s of a production korn shell on unix platform .... involving sort piped to critical report generation. For some reason the sort filled up disk space and stopped w/o any error indication. imagine something like this happening for a large corporate or gov. payroll ... being in the 50 percent of the people that aren't getting their checks.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 22:00:31 GMT
hack@watson.ibm.com (hack) writes:
No, S/370 has a 24-bit vaddr; the number of possible segment tables (or STO lookaside) has nothing to do with it. But Access Registers in ESA/370 changed the story, because (unlike POWER segment registers) the ARs are user-level registers, and a user-level program could load any access token, of which 211 could be simultaneously defined in the tables set up by the OS. This gives ESA/370 in AR mode a 42-bit vaddr (11+31) using "far" pointers consisting of an ALET and an effective addr. For z/Architecture in 64-bit AR mode, we get a 75-bit vaddr (11+64). Clearly, this has to be mapped sparsely due to real-storage constraints, but the tree-structured address-translation tables support that (as would inverted or hashed tables, of course).

previous ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#0 Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

original 370 architecture allowed for TLBs that were either STO associative (address space) or STE associative (segment ... or page table). there were also PTLB (purge look aside table), ISTO (invalidate sto), ISTE (invalidate segment table entry), and IPTE (invalidate page table entry) instructions. Because of some technical difficulty on engineering upgrade to add virtual memory hardware to 370/165 ... all but the PTLB instruction was dropped. Later the IPTE instruction was introduced with 3033.

on cp/67 and then migrated to vm/370, I had done page mapped file system for cms (basically minimum mods to the cms old & then edf filesystems layered on 4k paging paradigm). One of the changes included creating program images (MODULES) with shared segment specification ... aka when CMS went to load the program ... it would not only use a api to the cp kernel page i/o system .... but the api supported shared segment specification (a little slight of hand to guarantee unique shared segment names). An example is that the APL interpreter could be generated as a "shared" module out on the CMS system disk ... and then everybody invoking that APL interpreter would share the same (appropriate segments) memory image ... as an aside this was also deployed for hone (extremely apl intensive):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

and it was do'able w/o any of the SAVESYS or DMKSNT definition gorp (and anybody that could execute the GENMOD command could specify shared segments ... and modulo resident on page-image filesystem and some parameter checking it all worked).

that api provided CMS capability of updating segment entries analogous to any kernel api provided on ROMP to update one of its segment register value. There could be an arbritrary large number of "shared" segments .... mapped into any number of segment table entry values (aka pointer to unique page table) ... exactly equivalent to unique segments IDs in the 801/ROMP architecture.

Now if the kernel had been running CMS w/o protection and allowed a CMS application to address its own segment (address space) table and make arbitrary changes to segment table entries ... is exactly analogous to original 801 design point of allowing applications to directly change 801 segment register values. The effect is the same ... a (segment) section of a specific address space is changed from one virtual segment defintion to a totally different virtual segment definition.

Had there been 370 hardware implemented with STE-associative TLB (as allowed for in the architecture) ... then the 370 hardware would have been using the contents of the segment table entry for two distinct purposes: 1) uniquely identify the segment (exactly equivalent to the 801 logical segment id) and 2) as a address pointer to a page table (not done in 801) ... just because they are the same value doesn't make the different & distinct uses any less true.

I assert that given number #1 (equivalence between 370 segment table entry value as unique segment identifier and 801 logical segment id as unique segment identifier) then if the number of bits in the 801 logical segment id can be construed as additive to the number of virtual address bits .... then I can construe that some number of the bits in the 370 segment table entry are also additive to the the number of virtual address bits.

There is two ways of looking at this .... given a specific instruction at a specific instant in time .... what is the maximum number of different addresses directly available to that instruction. The other is that given any virtual memory mapping infrastructure .... what is the maximum number of different things that can be mapped into any single address space. If the memory mapped infrastructure supports 64k different memory mapped objects ... are those 16bits additive to the number of bits in a single address space.

370 was slightly constrained by having the unique segment identifier also a pointer to page table ... and page tables needing to occupy unique real storage locations. however, since I did get things like some page'able tables shipped in the resource manager ... ref (includes text of announcement letter):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

the actual number of definable shared segment/objects that could be supported in the system then was significantly larger than the number of pagetables that could be created in real storage at any moment (just had to have judicious use of TLB invalidation). then the only practical limitation was the amount of disk storage that could be attached to the machine.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 15:17:43 GMT
bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
So let me get this straight--you're responsible for the PCM processor market, and the PCM processor market precipitated restricted operating system licensing.

Does that mean I can blame you for Windows XP?


we've been blamed for originating the PCM controller market .... not the PCM processor market. PCM processor market didn't happen until later in the '70s ... probably starting with Amdahl(?) (the stuff I did as an undergraduate was using a interdata/3 to emulate a 360 telecommunications controller). He had left IBM and was giving presentations about his business case justification for making 370-clone. I was at such a presentation in the early '70s in some large MIT auditorium (a couple years before any Amdahl processors were shipping).

there is possibly some study showing that the cost of developing an operating system and associated software infrastructure is significantly larger (possibly by at least order of magnitude) than the cost of developing a processor. If you are in a market that effecitvely provides the most expensive components for free (operating system, et al)... I would guess that eventually some number of people might eventually realize there is a market niche for somebody to just develop clone-hardware w/o incurring the expense of developing the rest of a computing infrastructure. Such clone-developers should have significantly larger ROI .... compared to somebody paying to develop both the hardware and software ... and only charging for hardware. They would only have to develop the hardware .... and get their software for free.

Simplified, you have a market environment that all the players are paying 1N to develop hardware and 10N to develop all the associated software infrastructure. Their total development costs are 11N and say are charging 15N for the hardware product and effectively providing the software as unlicensed for free. Somebody comes along and realizes that he can create a market-niche by only paying 1N for hardware development and sells the product for 10N. This is somewhat parasitic ... since if the players that actually were paying for software development went out of business a lot of software development stops, modulo some number of software developers who don't need money, food, housing, etc.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 15:24:13 GMT
Joe Morris writes:
<chuckle>

Since this subthread is discussing (among other things) the channel-to- control-unit interface, does the toolkit have the official IBM tool for inserting serpent connectors into the bus/tag connectors? I'm asking because I can still get a chuckle out of engineers by quoting a line from the channel OEMI where it is documenting the wiring in the connector block. While I don't recall the IBM part number involved, one part of the text says something along the lines of "To insert the serpent connector into the connector block, use IBM tool p/n 123456 or a number 2 darning needle."


there is something that looks a little like a darning needle ... but it doesn't have a part number on it (and i don't know enuf about darning to know a no.2 from any other).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 15:46:14 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
telecommunications controller). He had left IBM and was giving presentations about his business case justification for making 370-clone. I was at such a presentation in the early '70s in some large MIT auditorium (a couple years before any Amdahl processors were shipping).

remember in the era that Amdahl left, ibm was looking at producing FS .... which had totally different infrastructure and incompatible with 360/370.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

so part of Amdahl's presentation was that even if ibm stopped producing 370 and switched to a totally different kind of machine ... what would happen to 370-clone business? (remember he is out raising money from investors and they would ask such a question, no direct reference to FS ... just what-if). So Amdahl presents some numbers about the size of the customer software application install base in 360/370 software (aka software developed by customers). Memory is little foggy ... but I believe he used a number of well over $100 (maybe $200) billion. In any case, his conclusion was that even if IBM switched to totally different processor architecture that day ... it would take at least another 30 years before all that software was replaced (disappeared). In the mean time, there would be a reasonably profitable market-niche for him (maybe a small $5-$10 billion a year) even if ibm totally walked away from it.

of course, FS was canceled and ibm kept producing 360/370 compatible machines and customers continued investing in developing 370 platform software.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 18:09:11 GMT
bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
So let me get this straight--you're responsible for the PCM processor market, and the PCM processor market precipitated restricted operating system licensing.

Does that mean I can blame you for Windows XP?


... now you might make it a little more convoluted: 1) that if we hadn't done a pcm controller, 2) ibm wouldn't have launced fs, 3) if ibm didn't launce fs, maybe Amdahl wouldn't have left ibm to do a pcm processor, and 4) if there weren't pcm processors, hardware vendors wouldn't have started charging for operating systems.

however (effectively given the size of the opportunity) there were other pcm controller efforts ... as well as pcm processor efforts.

some acorn drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#79 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#31 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#9 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#19 PC history, was PDP10 and RISC

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 20:15:11 GMT
bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
So let me get this straight--you're responsible for the PCM processor market, and the PCM processor market precipitated restricted operating system licensing.

part of story of first Amdahl install at big, blue commercial mainframe account:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#44 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???

it was actually a little more complicated .... including getting told that never, ever in my career would i get a promotion.

random other Amdahl refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#2 IBM S/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#188 Merced Processor Support at it again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#190 Merced Processor Support at it again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#191 Merced Processor Support at it again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#209 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#48 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#61 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#21 Competitors to SABRE? Big Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#58 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#11 Amdahl Exits Mainframe Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#12 Amdahl Exits Mainframe Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#68 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#18 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#63 Are the L1 and L2 caches flushed on a page fault ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#12 Now early Arpanet security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#28 So long, comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#56 Why SMP at all anymore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#67 Original S/360 Systems - Models 60,62 70
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#35 Imitation...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#70 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#19 SIMTICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#23 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#17 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#18 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#47 five-nines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#22 Hercules, OCO, and IBM missing a great opportunity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#83 CM-5 Thinking Machines, Supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#90 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#24 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#44 Calculating a Gigalapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#50 Microcode?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#14 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#48 flags, procedure calls, opinions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#51 IBM 360 definition (Systems Journal)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#68 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#73 Where did text file line ending characters begin?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#12 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#17 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#19 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#20 MVS on Power (was Re: McKinley Cometh...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#45 M$ SMP and old time IBM's LCMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#46 M$ SMP and old time IBM's LCMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#14 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#40 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#48 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#54 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#31 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#9 Mainframe System Programmer/Administrator market demand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#36 mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#37 Calculating expected reliability for designed system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#56 Wild hardware idea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#65 Amdahl's VM/PE information/documentation sought

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:36:02 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
On the other hand, companies such as Amdahl merely exploited a pricing structure that didn't accurately reflect costs. I'm sure IBM didn't look upon it as a weakness at the time, but it was they who created it. Amdahl just took advantage of it.

in some ways; ... however, nobody in the industry had any real experience with separate pricing for software, not the manufactures and not the customers. the industry, customers, and manufactures were all comfortable with bundled, integrated, tested operational package ... hardware and software.

the gov. changed all that with the litigation and unbundling for ibm; it took quite a while for both ibm and customers to adjust to separate pricing and packaging for hardware, software, services, etc

the idea that you could get a computer from one company and the operating system from some other company was pretty radical. the concept that one company's operating system would even boot on another company's computer was extremely radical.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

cp/67 35th anniversary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cp/67 35th anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:46:46 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
When that happened to me, I had a smart instructor. He brought me up to the front of the room and had me do the lecture, and sat back and put his feet up.

i guess part of the problem was that i wasn't enrolled in the class, i wasn't suppose to be there. i was at loose ends first shift ... so i just wandered up and down the halls of the different floors of the bldg. looking for stuff that might be interesting. he sort of tolerated that i had wandered in ... and it was probably that some of the stuff i mentioned was not understandable given the level of understanding of the students.

later I used to do similar to that at the science center ... there were all these MIT and BU (probably some others from harvard, tufts, etc .... I just remember some MIT and BU now) students that had access to the system (which was a real challenge since some of the corporations most sensitive data also lived on that machine).

they would periodically come up with something of interest ... and the tack was then assign them responsibility for it. It was also somewhat wierd that these kids (at least early on) ... were all older than me.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 00:11:15 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
On the other hand, companies such as Amdahl merely exploited a pricing structure that didn't accurately reflect costs. I'm sure IBM didn't look upon it as a weakness at the time, but it was they who created it. Amdahl just took advantage of it.

and of course ... from the future system reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16

ibm had significant higher R&D costs .... looking back at some of the things 30, 40 years later .... it may not seem all that apparent that possibly hundreds of person years went into arriving at some of the things ... which were then picked up nearly for free by some of the clones.

i don't think that even Amdahl believed that there was long term viability for specific cloning activity ... they could take advantage of temporary niche and make some bucks (possibly several billion a year) for a short window (maybe 20-30 years) of time.

also (at the mit auditorium presentation in the early '70s) there was some accusation that Amdahl's effort was being underwritten as a market penetration study from another country (he didn't have to make them money ... relatively inexpensive experiment testing the opposition on what worked and what didn't work).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 23:42:38 GMT
Joseph Seigh writes:
You mean Frederick Taylor maybe? Management loved these guys because their "studies" reinforced their views of workers and their proper place in the scheme of things. It's no wonder labor hated them.

not only as machines ... but as interchangeable machines ... it is one thing to train a person to do as well as possible ... it is a completely different thing to treat that training as stamping out identical, replaceable parts. the corollary is frequently then that all effort has to be reduced to the lowest common denominator.

a mentioned before, the boyd scenario that the US going into WW-II had few highly skilled warriors .... the training window was to turn out large numbers of warriers with minimum skills as quickly as possible ... which then fit into a tightly controlled infrastructure to maximize the few skilled warriors managing large numbers of minmally skilled warriors as effeciently as possible. the thesis then was that the officers that got their training in managing large organizations in ww-II ... started coming of age as executives in commercial companies by the '70s ... with tightly controlled/structured top-down management with large numbers of replaceable, identically skilled workers.

he somewhat used this in the contrasts presented in his talk, organic design for command and control.

nytimes had recent book review of his latest biography.

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 14:18:10 GMT
Terje Mathisen writes:
By always buttoning the shirt from the top down, it is much easier to avoid off-by-one/fencepost errors (See! A comp.arch relevant idea!).

this reminds me a little of the full-screen editor wars in the early '70s .... whether scroll up/down referred to the movement with respect to the file (program centric) or with respect to the screen (as a window over the file, person-centric). "scroll up" could mean moving the file "up" ... so what was viewed was closer to the end of the file ... or moving the screen/window up so what was viewed was closer to the top of the file.

with respect to micromamanagement ... as stated, boyd's thesis was it was a left-over characteristic from ww-II ... where a few commanders (with any experience) had to tightly control hundreds of thousands of troops that had no idea what they were doing ... and large numbers of young officers were given this indoctrination as being the best example of how to run an organization.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:43:04 GMT
Pete Fenelon writes:
re: shirts - easiest to start from the bottom if like me you always wear them open-necked. (I think it's about 18 months since I last wore a tie).

i sometimes put on tie for corporate award pictures (somehow from long ago and far away)
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler

but notice that i was wearing my red wool hiking shirt ... not a jacket.

and from vm/370 30th b'day party at Share in san fran last aug.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/LynnWheeler023.jpg

vm b'day picture

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 16:45:51 GMT
eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:
He has more than one? You and GAM pushing this book.

mind of war, john boyd and american security, hammond, 2001

boyd, the fighter pilot who changed the art of war, coram, 2002

refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

also war, chaos, and business, modern business strategy
http://www.belisarius.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010722050327/http://www.belisarius.com/

defense and the national interest
http://www.d-n-i.net/

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A Speculative question

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Speculative question
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 18:55:59 GMT
"Charlie Spitzer" writes:
actually, since jobs ran next, what if he chose multics instead of mach as the kernel?

mach had some experience about being portable across some number of different platforms. random mach refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#45 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#14 IBM's announcement on RVAs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#27 OCF, PC/SC and GOP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#35 cc SMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#73 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#46 Horror stories: high system call overhead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#50 Origin of Kerberos

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:09:56 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
i sometimes put on tie for corporate award pictures (somehow from long ago and far away)
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler


also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party

trivia from the above.

if DataHub project hadn't been canceled and the ip/work allowed to to to the subcontracting company ... they may have been one less pc company .... starts with an N ...

if the decision at the referenced PASC meeting had gone differently, they would have been called IBM workstations ... instead of ....

the conference was 21 years ago last week ....

one of the things being looked at was 370 simulators on different kinds of processors (sort of antecedent to current crop of '86-based 370 simulators)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

shirts

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: shirts
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 13:45:38 GMT
Charles Richmond writes:
I don't know about rainy evenings, but Claude Shannon used to ride unicycles...

we used to deal with company called cyclotomics ... which was bought up by kodak. one of the founders was berlekamp ... was eventually told (by number of people) that he was famous for riding unicycle around campus. I can find references to berlekamp talking about shannon's unicycles
http://www.calit2.net/news/2002/8-13-award.html
http://www.geometry.net/detail/scientists/shannon_claude.html

but no actual reference to berlekamp riding unicycle
http://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/
http://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/cyclo.html
http://www.ishipress.com/berlekam.htm

we also had former grad student of reed's from jpl/caltech on the project (and stranger still, he remembered having taken class from anne's father at mit) ... yes, it had something to do with reed-solomon encoding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#115 What is the use of OSI Reference Model?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#210 AES cyphers leak information like sieves
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#80 Disks size growing while disk count shrinking = bad performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#71 Encryption + Error Correction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#53 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#53 Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A Speculative question

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Speculative question
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 13:55:39 GMT
bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
This is definitely one of the more interesting accounts I've heard in relation to Taligent's OS. I've been curious about different operating systems since I was in college; on learning about Pink / Taligent, my hopes were high for it, but then it disappeared from the radar.

somewhat analogous to pink morphing into taligent ... spring morphed into java (and when taligent folded ... java soft moved into their building ... some people claiming to have kept their same office).

random past:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#46 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#6 Java as a first programming language for cs students
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#76 Difference between Unix and Linux?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#60 The next big things that weren't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#45 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 04:12:30 GMT
"del cecchi" writes:
If you page forward or down in a book, you move towards the end of the book. I still don't quite get the conflict. And I guess I was too insulated inside the IBM reservation to conceive that hitting PF8 (page forward) could have any meaning other than go towards the end of the file. Did these bizarre folk open the file with the window at end of file?

Please, identify the people on the other side of this "full screen editor war" so I can stay far away from them.


long ago and far away ... edgar was early 3270 full screen editor ... and used program centric semantics.

original cms edit (possibly back to ctss?) semantics had line up/down (up towards the top of the file and down towards the bottom of the file) ... and then used page up/down in similar manner.

edgar moved the file up (so the view was towards the end of the file) and the file down (so the view was towards the top of the file).

random ref: historical manuals ...
http://ukcc.uky.edu/~ukccinfo.391/cmsref.html

Fifth Edition, February 1984

· This edition replaces the UKCC CJS Reference and the UKCC CMS Programming Supplement. · Numerous changes have been made to reflect the new features available with Release 3 of VM/SP. · The default settings of PF10, PF11, and PF12 under XEDIT have changed. · XEDIT no longer supports EDGAR simulation mode, and the EDGAR and ECOMMAND commands are no longer available.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 04:23:40 GMT
part of the issue was that positioning commands .... tended to move the current position (cursor) ... as to the current position in the file. if i'm just moving the current position within a screen ... moving the postion/cursor up tends to move the position/cursor towards the start of the file, and moving the position/cursor down tends to move the position/cursor towards the end of the file.

so program centric that scrolled/paged up/down ... was with respect to moving the file ... would tend to have the "page up" move the file up ... and the cursor (current position) moved down towards the end of the file. however if it was just cursor (current position) within the screen ... you now are faced with moving the current position (aka cursor) "up" actually means to move it down on the screen.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 16:43:24 GMT
jmfbahciv writes:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for talking about this. Now I know why using that web stuff made me feel like my only gear was reverse and all I want to do is plod forward. It also explains (to me, anyway) why those pointers seem to behave illogically (to me, anyway). Maybe I won't have to wrestle anymore. :-)

i actually have a tv controller that sort of works in the reverse; if i'm in the channel menu, pushing the up arrow, scrolls the menu towards the lower numbered channels. however if i'm actually watching a channel, pushing the up arrow, switches to the next higher numbered channel.

for full screen edit ... the simplest comparison is start with a file that completely displays on one screen. a person-centric view moving the current position "up", moves towards the beginning of the file and "down", moves towards the end of the file (bottom of the screen).

a program/file centric view moving the current position "up" moves towards the bottom of the screen and the end of the file.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A Speculative question

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Speculative question
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:08:51 GMT
westinnospam@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin) writes:
I figured it was doomed from the moment of the Apple/IBM technological merger on the project. At least a year was lost, I'm sure, in political maneuvers and competing technical approaches.

the person eventually put in technical charge on the ibm side had recently moved from MCC (austin) to IBM (austin) ... effectively across MoPac (and was at MCC from bellcore).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A Speculative question

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Speculative question
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:27:51 GMT
westinnospam@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin) writes:
The "small systems" of the late '80s were, of course, in the same class as the mainframes of the early '70s that defined Multics. I bet that, in terms of code size and speed, Multics would have been more efficient than Mach or Unix of the late '80s.

i claimed that I did paging better than multics during the '70s ... (i was on the 4th floor of 545 tech. sq) and the machines of the late '80s had significantly larger real storage. There were some number of scaling thru the '80s & '90s. It wouldn't be a real issue on a desktop machine that really wasn't expected to do a lot (for a constrained environment, everything gets loaded into the larger real memory and paging isn't an issue).

a total unrelated scaling example is the finwait list for unix's of the mid'90s. there was trivial, small code for the tcp/ip finwait list for checking on dangling finwaits.


http was basically a transaction protocol but built using tcp anyway ... previously tcp were long running sessions ... even with a large number, the finwait list never was of a significant issue. With the huge rate of tcp setup/teardown introduced with http ... some unixes saw the finwait list grow to thousands and even tens of thousands and for a time, some had over 90 percent of the CPU time spent in the small, simple finwait scan.

I believe one of the first to fix this was sequent ... for a time it seemed like netscape was adding unix servers every couple weeks ... and there was no front-end load-balance ... people were manually selecting different "netscape1", "netscape2", etc. Somewhere along the way, they replaced all the multiple servers with a single large-scale sequent server.

in any case, scale-up issues can bite you unexpectedly ... trivial, simple, efficient linear scans that use to work ... suddenly become a major problem.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Use of SSL as a VPN

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Use of SSL as a VPN
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 22:25:46 GMT
daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner) writes:
(The "V" refers to "Virtual". According to the story of the name that I've heard, a VPN is intended to emulate the semantics of a private circuit as you describe above, but without needing the private circuit. I'm not a telecom engineer, and maybe they have some other good claim to the term, but using VPN to refer to a PN sounds dubious to me.)

I believe a paper on the thing commonly referred to as VPN in the internet world was introduced in one of the IETF router committees in the fall of '94 (san jose?) ... aka router-to-router traffic encrypted (based on some work somebody had done deploying such an implementation).
https://web.archive.org/web/20021121122118/http://blueridgenetworks.com/about-history.html
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/vpn/2002/01236841.html

the earlier definition was private internet with direct private line between two known parties ... aka
https://web.archive.org/web/20030526143206/http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/archives/WWW-TALK/www-talk-1994q3/0439.html

san jose meeting:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/94dec/toc.html

up until then, the primary IETF focus was ipsec providing end-to-end authentication and encryption. the introduction of tunneling in the router committee caused some amount of consternation in the ipsec committee ... as well as with some vendors. Within a month of the meeting .... there was at least one vendor that announced a new "vpn" product ... that basically was a standard router box with standard hardware link encryptors out-board of the box (as opposed to the encrypted tunneling actually handled inside the router box). However, there was also announcement that month of the rourter implementation (see attached).

the ipsec/tunneling swirled some more .... eventually with the router tunneling getting referred to as "lightweight ipsec" (or the regular ipsec getting referrred to as "heavyweight ipsec").

In parallel with this was small client/server startup in silicon valley doing some encryption at the application level .... in part because the end-to-end IPSEC was taking so long to show up in real platforms. This thing called SSL .... allowed the startup to deploy session encryption support totally contained within the products that they were shipping (w/o having to rely on the availability of other infrastructures). minor ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

IPSEC is still taking quite a while to appear on platforms .... so you start seeing client-side tunneling (aka client VPN) products ... at least one such from the person that introduced the original tunneling paper in the '94 IETF meeting ... targeting business "road warriors".

recent discussion about a common key-exchange, encryption, and authentication process for PPP, TCP, and SSL/TLS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#38 How effective is open source crypto?

from my rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

click on Term (term->RFC#) field in RFCs listed by section, then click on "VPN"

Virtual private network (VPN) see also encapsulate , security 3095 2917 2857 2764 2735 2685 2547 2451 2406 2405 2404 2403 2340 1851 1829 1827

clicking on rfc number, brings up the summary in the lower frame; clicking on ".txt=" field fetches the actual RFC.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

form long ago firewalls mailing list:


From: Grant Miller <milleg@wabe.network.com>
To: Firewalls Mailing List <firewalls@greatcircle.com>
Subject: RE: Encrypting tunnels
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 94 13:14:00 CST
Sender: firewalls-owner@GreatCircle.COM

Michael Haberler wites...

>Is there anybody working on a
>{ip-authenticating,encrypting,CHAPing,DH-ing}
>
>point-to-point-tunnel ala plug-gw?
>
>This could solve some of the problems of database-access over firewalls
>(note that e.g. Oracle uses TCP out-of-band signalling and TCP keepalives,
>which probably should be catered for.).
>
>Something along the lines of a userland swIPe.

start commercial

Network Systems Corp. (NSC) has announced a security product called
"Data Privacy Facility" (DPF). It encrypts IP datagrams on a
per-packet basis, gives you the ability to select what gets encrypted
and what doesn't. DPF supports DES, IDEA, and NSC1 encryption
algorithms, MD5 for digi-signatures, uses RSA and Diffie/Hellman for
key exchange, works great, lasts long time. DPF runs on a router
(which means that you can not only encrypt traffic but establish/
control access policy as well.) There is no limit to the number of
end-stations that can use an encrypted tunnel.  Encrypted packets can
be forwarded over any data-link that supports IP (frame relay, ATM,
ethernet, T/R, etc.) The first hardware platform to support DPF is a
router called (suprisingly enough!) the 'Security Router'.  Future
platforms will be released that will support DPF. Cost? very
reasonable. Performance? 4 Mbs or better (depends on a bunch of stuff
- like how the thing is configured.)  Want more info? www.network.com (look
for recent press releases), Contact NSC corporate HQ in lovely
Minneapolis, MN.  or contact your local sales-weenie.

end commercial

Grant Miller
NSC - Bellevue, WA

unix

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 01:06:57 GMT
eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:
I would not blame IBM or the Fed. People were just clueless about how to price software everywhere.

somewhat later i got asked to help figure it out.

some of the stuff i had invented as undergaduate and other stuff had shipped in official cp/67 releases. I then got offered the opportunity to do the resource manager product .... if i would also do all the work (packaging, documentation, be 1st, 2nd, & 3rd level problem support for the first six months, etc). It was packaging of subset of stuff that I had and was distributing to internal datacenters:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 Resource Manager

all the stuff that I had done for page mapped file system for CMS and related performance and functional enhancements wouldn't ship. It did include a lot of stuff that I had done for multiprocessing structuring.

it shipped about the same time as the first PCM processor went into a major commercial account (other than educational institutions).

in any case, I got told that it would be the first "priced" piece of SCP code (aka kernel, operating system). Prior to this, application software had been priced ... but this would be the first SCP pricing .. and I got the glorious privilege of spending six months off & on with the business people establishing the structure/rules for pricing SCP software.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Use of SSL as a VPN

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Use of SSL as a VPN
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:29:26 GMT
ediebur@rcn.com (Jerry Freedman) writes:
In early '95 I worked on a experimental gov't prototype ( TEED ) which used SP3 tunneling ( actually SP3i if I remember correctly). This was encryptor-to-encryptor tunneling where the encryptor was an "invisible" device haveing no address of its own and protecting a cluster of hosts. At that time and place the term used was Secure Virtual Network ( SVN )

as per the attachment to previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#34

week after san jose ietf meeting in dec. 94, somebody from NSC posted to firewall mailing list that NSC had announced the "secure router" with the "Data Privacy Facility" (DPF) that did router-to-router encrypted tunneling. At the same time, one of the other router vendors announced a priced package which was standard router with (I believe standard cylink) link encryptors.

ten years earlier, somebody had once told me that the internal network had over half of all the link encryptors in the world (i think many were cylink ... there was another name at the time, something like california microwave?) ... aka all the internal network links that left a bldg ... had to be encrypted (at the time, the internal network was still larger than the internet, although the internet was now catching up fast ... ever since the 1/1/83 switch-over).

misc posts on link encryptors & internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#56 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#9 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#11 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#52 "Slower is more secure"

some other info on internal network:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Keeping old hardware alive?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Keeping old hardware alive?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:43:53 GMT
andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
I used slide rules during my secondary schooling in the 1970's. Also had a calculator then -- I think we could use either/both in exams (and logbooks), but programmable calculators were not allowed.

i saved up so i could buy the cheapest one from the sears catalogue when i was 12 ... i think it was something like $3.89. no idea where it is now.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

editors/termcap

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: editors/termcap
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:00:24 GMT
nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:
You don't want to know, I can assure you :-) And you REALLY don't want ever to come across the original TSO editor (to which I was referring)!

But, since you ask, it was an IBM MVT (and MFT?) program that took a dataset with sequence numbers in columns 73-80 and changed, deleted or inserted records by sequence number. If the original file had them out of order, heaven help you.

The TSO editor was similar, but had an extension by which the sequence numbers were in columns 1-8 for variable length record files. I never did discover anyone who found a use for that facility.


and the CMS "update" command started out similar (from mid-60s, original CMS). it was also the basis that grew into the CP/CMS source maintenance infrastructure.

misc refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#57 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#71 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#39 CMS update
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#62 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

editors/termcap

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: editors/termcap
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:46:20 GMT
"Hank Oredson" writes:
Personally Developed Software
IBM Personal Computers
Personal Editor II
(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1982,1985
Written by Jim Wyllie


wyllie was at SJR ....

45696  05-05-85 10:42   PE.EXE
5313  04-26-85 17:15   PE.HLP
     2447  05-05-85 10:43   PE.PRO
34  05-13-85 12:21   SPELLCHK.BAT
     4382  01-15-86 09:59   PE2DIR.PRO
7416  01-13-86 12:49   PE2COLOR.COM
7754  03-01-86 12:00   PE2.HLP
76304  11-02-87 10:49   PE2.EXE
     5554  11-16-87 08:19   PE2SPELL.COM
35  11-12-87 11:30   PE2ADD.PRO
      779  11-12-87 11:28   PE2TODO.PRO
9581  07-09-88 17:21   SPELLC.EXE
673  06-02-87 12:47   SPELLEX1.BAT
122368  06-03-87 01:17   US.DCT
   119808  11-17-87 12:48   UK.DCT
12926  03-21-88 11:14   PE2.DEF
     1459  03-01-86 12:00   PE2.PRO

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

IETF meeting (Re: editors/termcap)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IETF meeting (Re: editors/termcap)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 18:33:17 GMT
John Stracke writes:
You mean go to the meeting in San Francisco? FYI, it's not free (somebody's got to pay for the hotel space). On-site registration is $575, or $150 with student ID (source:
http://www.ietf.org/meetings/rsvp_closed.html


a little more drift from IETF meeting (and some VPN & SSL):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#34 Use of SSL as a VPN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#36 Use of SSL as a VPN

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Why we don't use homebrew crypto

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Why we don't use homebrew crypto
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:25:36 GMT
Carlos Moreno writes:
For some curious reason, cryptography seems notorious at having apparently correct solutions that are wrong. (well, Murphy's Law clearly establishes that universal rule; but cryptography seems to do the best job at enforcing it :-))

consider cryptography to be engineering and compare with any other engineering endevor .... say civil engineering and bridge building. people have been building bridges for a couple thousand years or so ... and they can still get it wrong and things fall down (ever see the film of the tacoma narrows bridge? or the line about soldiers breaking step when marching across a bridge?).

one might claim that data obfuscation is similar to almost any other type of engineering endevor .... and there aren't a lot of people with extensive training in failure mode analysis (not how things are created, but how things fail). just consider the number of computer and internet vulnerabilities .... i would contend that the general internet has had significantly larger number of failure/exploits than any cryptography.

somewhat related thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#26 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#27 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#28 How effective is open source crypto? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#29 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#30 How effective is open source crypto? (aads addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#31 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#32 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#33 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#34 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#35 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#36 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#37 How effective is open source crypto?

slightly related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud Risk, Fraud, Exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:39:06 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
(On the other hand, even Timex had to start over when watches went digital. My cheapo 20-year-old Timex digital takes a licking and keeps on... uhh...)

i got one of the original casio databank things .... the failure is the band. the newer databanks have this light button which seems to get hit enuf accidentally to cut the battery life by possibly a factor of ten. so when i can't find replacement bands ... i've been known to buy one of the new ones and switch its band to my old watch. the problem now is that the holes in the case for the watch-band pin have gotten so worn that doesn't take much for the pin to fall out.

some drift to failure mode analysis in sci.crypt subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#41 Why we don't use homebrew crypto

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

IBM 3174

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 3174
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 00:38:02 GMT
Joe Morris writes:
The async terminals running through the Yale Series/1 IUP ran rings around the IBM boxes even though the same line speed was used. The remote 3270 may have been good for filling in forms where relatively little text had to be transmitted, but as full-screen interactive terminals they sucked. (Now, local 3270s were wonderful, but I suspect that few but the most dedicated collectors will have a CPU to which they could be attached today.)

somewhere there was a really caustic comparison of 3174 ... i'm not sure if i can find it.

timing comparison of 3272/3277 & 3274/3278
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 Protocol

other 3270, dft/anr, fifo-boxes, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#28 IBM S/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#69 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#63 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#23 IBM's mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#33 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#46 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#77 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#2 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#6 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The Pentium 4 - RIP?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pentium 4 - RIP?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:49:09 GMT
"Stephen Fuld" writes:
There are certainly perils from taking such information at face value, especially for innovative products, but if you know that going in, you can compensate to some extent for it.

snipped your "classic example"


we weere doing things with T1s in the early to mid '80s ... and had some installed. The (official) communication division had product that only supported multiple 56kbit links. they commisioned a study that asked customers how many "parallel" 56kbit links that they were running between two locations. The results showed no data points with over five 56kbit links between (same) two locations. Based on the results, they concluded that they wouldn't need a product supporting T1 for another 8-10 years.

Note 1: they didn't ask how many were running T1 between two sites (using some other vendor's product); a trivial survey found 200.

Note 2: they didn't ask what the tariff was for T1; the avg. T1 tariff tended to be somewhere around 5-7 individual 56kbit links. one of the reasons that there were no data points with over five (parallel) 56kbit links, was that the tarrif for a T1 tended to be cheaper than the tarrif for six (parallel) 56kbit links.

random refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

then there was the workstation review at PASC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Computer programming was all about:

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer programming was all about:.....
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 15:47:36 GMT
bbreynolds@aol.comedxedl (Bruce B. Reynolds) writes:
I'd put BASIC for the 1970's, and then C and Pascal for the 1980's.

'96 m'soft developers conference at moscone ... the banners and message was all "preserving your investment" ... there was this "new" thing with the internet .... but all of the legacy investment, skills and training for VB was going to be preserved.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 15:39:06 GMT
Charles Richmond writes:
Right...it should say "mentally limited"...

Here the signs say "slow school"...and when I was a kid, it really did seem like a "slow school".


and i've advocated for years a 2ftx2ft blue bumper sticker (very hard to remove) to be placed on the driver's windshield ... with a picture of a head with the round/crossed not-sign for those non-physically handicapped parking in handicapped parking space (aka for those that are handicapped but not physically-handicapped).

one morning, about a month ago ... i noticed three different instances of somebody pulling into a handicapped parking space, whipping out a blue handicapped tag and hanging it on the mirror ... and getting out of the car and navigating with no obvious physical impairment. there have been various newspaper reports of illegal business in handicapped tags.

recent phrase i ran across were references to two-digit and single-digit IQs. a dilbert story-line might be somebody going thru the building after hours putting up large blue "head" handicapped bumper sticker on various office doors.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Public key and the authority problem

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Public key and the authority problem
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 17:04:12 GMT
"Shannon Moncure" writes:
Pragmatic stumbling block from a newbie: 1. Distributing a public key assures a friend who sends me a message that only I can decrypt it, but isn't it possible that someone might impersonate me, publish a key in my name, and intercept the encrypted messages from my friend, thus compromising what my friend thought was a secure channel? 2. If 1 is true, then what problem has public key cryptography really solved in terms of secure communications? It seems that now we might as well revert to a private key scheme since the purported benefit of no shared-secrets doesn't give my friend any guarantees.

two processes are

1) web-of-trust ... like PGP, where there is a table of public keys, who they relate to, and level of trust. basically the level of trust information is updated using out-of-band information.

2) PKI .... where you keep a table of public keys that belong to certification authorities. basically these tables are usually preloaded by some application and usually the entries are all or nothing ... something is in the table or not in the table ... so you don't have the levels of trust for CAs that you have with various web-of-trust implementations. CAs then issue credentials as to the binding between public key and some assertion (like email address) that they have used some process to certify. the incoming email has these credentials attached as to the certification of the binding between public key and some assertion (email address, etc). You trust whatever assertions are certified by a trusted CA.

The issue with shared-secrets isn't that they don't work, but that they have extremely difficult time scalling. There is a unique shared-secret required for every domain, your friend might need a unique shared-secret for every different entity that they communicate with ... since they don't one "friend" impersonating them with some other "friend".

basically a shared-secret is used for both a) originating a message/transaction b) authenticating a message/transaction.

In the single isolated case, a shared-secret does the job .... but adopting shared-secret as an infrastructure paradigm results in the need for possibly hundreds of shared-secrets per entity. This also shows up with shared-secret passwords where individuals might have to track multiple tens of passwords. The "authenticating" entity deals with the same number of authenticating objects (one per entity they communicate with) ... but the originating entity instead of having a single originating object (private key) ... has one per domain (shared-secret)

public key is asymmetric and can only be used for authenticating a message/transaction, but not originating a message/transaction (modulo secreacy vis-a-vis authentication). This provides the capability that a single public key can be used across a large number of different domains.

a trivial scenario is say RADIUS became pervasive for not only the majority of PPP authentications (aka ISP connections) but also webserver and other environmental operations requiring any sort of authentication. RADIUS, on an account basis supports a number of different authentication operations, but most "accounts" in the world today are defined as password-authenticated. This probably is that the shared-secret paradigm results in tens or possibly hundreds of different shared-secrets for an individual to manage. Providing a simple "digital signature" authentication option would allow an entity to register their same public key in every domain .... rather than a different, unique shared-secret in every domain (simple form is that in place of registering a password at account setup, a public key is registered at account setup .... the registration business process doesn't change ... just some technology nits). misc. radius refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius

similarly, kerberos is the internet standard basis for windows and other platform authentication; currently password (shared-secret) based paradigm. However, there is pk-init internet draft for kerberos that allows for initial authentication with digital signature (or public key) that would allow registering a public key for the account in place of registering a password (shared-secret). misc. kerberos refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

note that some number of the institutional exploits involving fradulant password/shared-secret extracts are eliminated with non-shared-secret paradigm ... like impersonation calls to obtain a forgotten entry (aka extracting your public key from an institution is significantly lower vulnerability than extracting your password).

random refs to shared-secrets and vulnerabilities/exploits:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio3 biometrics (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio7 biometrics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#17 Alternative to Microsoft Passport: Sunshine vs Hai
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#20 IBM alternative to PKI?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#57 eBay Customers Targetted by Credit Card Scam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#60 signing & authentication (was Credit Card Scam)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#23 Certificate Policies (was Re: Trivial PKI Question)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#235 Attacks on a PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#4 Why trust root CAs ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#42 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#54 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#5 PKI/Digital signature doesn't work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#7 PKI/Digital signature doesn't work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#58 Net banking, is it safe???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#25 Net banking, is it safe???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#36 Net banking, is it safe???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#57 E-commerce security????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#0 E-commerce security????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#2 E-commerce security????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#9 E-commerce security????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#49 Are client certificates really secure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#52 Are client certificates really secure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#34 A thought on passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#10 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#18 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#45 Biometric Encryption: the solution for network intruders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#14 Symmetric-Key Credit Card Protocol on Web Site
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#18 Symmetric-Key Credit Card Protocol on Web Site
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#14 So how does it work... (public/private key)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#30 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#56 Certificate Authority: Industry vs. Government

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:29:10 GMT
D.J. writes:
I know someone with a hip replacement, she is under 30 years old, and she doesn't look like she needs a handicap sticker. She can walk short distances, but not very far, before she then needs a cane. Sometimes she needs a cane, or wheelchair, or she can walk without such aid. It depends on many factors.

young male, carrying something. another indication was that they didn't have a handicapped license plate .... nor (as mentioned) drove with the handicapped placard hanging from their mirror. they specifically whipped out the handicapped placard and hung it from their mirror as they were getting out of the vehicle.

it was combination of many factors .... 1) young, 2) male, 3) carrying something, 4) not having permanently displayed handicapped indication 5) only leaving a handicapped indication when they weren't in the vehicle, 6) recent series of articles on illegal traffic in handicap placards.

There is an associated implication is that a healthy person would only want the placard displayed minimum amount of absolutely necessary time to reduce risk of identification ... and not displayed otherwise. most real handicapped drivers I've seen have permanent display (or at least something that they move around when they are in possession of a specific vehicle). .... however if a non-handicapped person had it displayed permanently and got pulled over for any other reason .... they have a much higher likelyhood of getting also hit with having an illegal handicap placard.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:34:15 GMT
D.J. writes:
I know someone with a hip replacement, she is under 30 years old, and she doesn't look like she needs a handicap sticker. She can walk short distances, but not very far, before she then needs a cane. Sometimes she needs a cane, or wheelchair, or she can walk without such aid. It depends on many factors.

I've also seen reference to various kinds of illegal parking credentials (not just handicapped placards) being highly prized by people that make lots of pickup and/or deliveries.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 02:50:05 GMT
"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
Apparently in your area such parking regulations are more strictly enforced for delivery vehicles than they are here in Vancouver, where delivery vehicles seem to have some sort of exemption. Once while coming out of an underground parking lot downtown my view of the street was blocked by a large step-van parked 10 feet beyond the edge of the last legal parking space along the sidewalk. I had to nose out into the street just to see whether anyone was coming. I did this slowly enough to give any approaching traffic a chance to stop or go around me. But the person who was coming (another delivery driver, in a normal sedan) was off in la-la land - what brought my presence to her attention was the impact as she plowed head-on into my left front quarter panel. Fortunately I was in my Suburban - I just pried our bumpers apart and drove away, while her front end was turned into scrap metal.

been almost 4 years since i was in vancouver ... either bc or washington.
http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/conferences/1999/isw-june/third-announcement.html

driving across from the border into downtown seemed like main thuroughfare was mostly residential streets.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A Speculative question

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Speculative question
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 04:47:17 GMT
Deborah Gronke Bennett writes:
Sun's Spring didn't morph into Java. The well-known story is that what is now Java was invented as part of the Green project, then changed its name to Oak, and then to Java. (The Green project was running in late 1992 or early 1993 when I was briefly involved). The group eventually became First Person, then was later folded back into the larger body of Sun.

i had posted in the indicated reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???

from (hardcopy): "A Spring Collection: A Collection of Papers on the Spring Distributed Object-Oriented Operating System"'

which seemed in some way related to client-side interpreters? this particular'paper was originally published in the ACM Workshop on Interface Languages, January, 1994 (in fact, most of the papers in the publication were published in 1993 or 1994 in various ACM, IEEE, or USENIX publications). however I had no personal knowledge of its contribution to java

At the time of the paper, one of the people involved in the TIC chip
http://sunsite.belnet.be/doc/sun_whitepapers/1156_descr.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19990421191215/http://sunsite.belnet.be/doc/sun_whitepapers/1156_descr.html

was talking to my wife and me about becoming involved in Spring ... in part because we had spent some time early on with regard to SCI ... and also somewhat related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

the spring URL gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine:
http://java.sun.com/people/kgh/spring/
https://web.archive.org/web/20020123113953/http://java.sun.com/people/kgh/spring/
http://java.sun.com/people/kgh/spring/papers.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20020130170235/http://java.sun.com/people/kgh/spring/papers.html

and also ran across green ...
http://java.sun.com/people/jag/green/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19990202131737/http://java.sun.com/people/jag/green/index.html

and early history of java
http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19990223195009/http://www.java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html

--
A Client-Side Stub Interpreter

Peter B. Kessler

Abstract

We have built a research operating system in which all services are presented through interfaces described by an interface description language. The system consists of a micro-kernel that supports a small number of these interfaces, and a large number of interfaces that are implemented by user-level code. A typical service implements one or more interfaces, but is a client of many other interfaces that are implemented elsewhere in the system. We have an interface compiler that generates client-side and service-side stubs to deliver calls from clients to services providing location transparency if the client and server are in different address spaces. The code for client-side stubs was occupying a large amount of the text space on our clients, so a stub interpreter was written to replace the client-side stub methods. The result was that we traded 125k bytes of stub code for 13k bytes of stub descriptions and 4k bytes of stub interpreter. This paper describes the stub interpreter, the stub descriptions, and discusses some alternatives.


--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

MP cost effectiveness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MP cost effectiveness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:41:41 GMT
jmfbahciv writes:
And one of those people is me^WI. I have all my body parts; but I only have about six cents' worth of energy available each day (you have millions of cents). A difference of three extra steps I don't have to make will keep me from having to lay down for the next three days. I've been learning how manage my energy expenditure better so I don't get into the "three extra steps" decision any more. I've had days where I didn't have the energy to digest a meal, let alone expend the energy to physically spoon it into my mouth.

Now, notice where they put those damned handicap parking slots. A lot of them a long ways away from the door.


anne complains because i prefer to pull into the first parking slot at the opposite end from the store(s) and walk .... it is even sometimes faster than the teenagers driving up and down the isles looking for the abolutely closest slot. it really gets crazy sometimes at malls when there are half dozen or so doing it ... and then grid lock when somebody is spotted that might just possibly back-out of the absolutely best parking spot.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

OT: Columbia, MD and the social impact of Ft. Meade/NSA?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: Columbia, MD and the social impact of Ft. Meade/NSA?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:58:42 GMT
djohn37050@aol.com (DJohn37050) writes:
Columbia is a super-planned city built as an experiment, to hide the ugly stuff with berms and twisty roads and enhance the pretty stuff. However, I think the experiment failed as you do not see much of this elsewhere. They need signs everywhere to tell you how to find a gas station, etc. They hid things too well. Don Johnson

somebody once told me that both columbia and reston (dullas access road) were planned ... but columbia planning happened long before anybody showed up ... and the planning may have then contributed to slow growth. for various reasons reston supposedly did a lot better (different?). except for columbia, does anybody know if it is really that much different from any other large military reservation? ... say ft lewis south of tacoma?

i recently heard a story why the "snake" on the md side of the beltway is the way it was. supposely md & va were in race to see who could complete their side first. md plotted a path that had the absolute least expense and time for acquiring the corridor.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Reviving Multics

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Reviving Multics
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 04:07:51 GMT
tep writes:
No one seems to be talking about the iAPX423. IIRC it looked to be pretty much Multics on a chip. I seem to recall ring brackets being mentioned, at least.

i've got copies of three 432 manuals:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#48 Famous Machines and Software that didn't

above has quote from one of the introductions mentioning the "recent" s/38. the folklore is that after fs was canceled:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
some number of people retreated to Rochester and implemented some amount of the fs architecture in the s/38.

at an asilomar sigops conference .... one of the 432 presentations was about why 432 could never work ... because of the Silicon OS ... and the difficulty of patching copies of Silicon OS in the field.

the last section in the architecture introduction is conclusion and the last paragraph on the last page:
The conceptual gap between Ada and the iAPX 432 architecture is very small, because the designers of the iAPX 432 architecture followed the same object-oriented design methodology that users should follow when writing Ada programs. The same methodology is also used in iMAX, the Multifunction Applications Executive that Intel provides with Ada to handle the interface between one program and the Silicon OS. The object methodology is then found at every level of the iAPX 432 system.

random past 432 postings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#57 iAPX-432 (was: 36 to 32 bit transition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#62 iAPX-432 (was: 36 to 32 bit transition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#6 Ridiculous
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#36 What was object oriented in iAPX432?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#2 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#27 iAPX432 today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#46 IBM Mainframe at home
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#19 Computer Architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#5 Anyone here ever use the iAPX432 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#11 computers and alcohol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#5 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#6 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Reviving Multics

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Reviving Multics
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 06:17:24 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
above has quote from one of the introductions mentioning the "recent" s/38. the folklore is that after fs was canceled:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

some number of people retreated to Rochester and implemented some amount of the fs architecture in the s/38.


... and 801/risc could be considered going off in the opposite direction after FS was canceled
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

note that fort knox (which was also conceled) was going to use 801 as the low-level micro-engine for all sorts of things ... controllers, low-end 370s (sort of analogous to the current crop of 370/390 simulators running on intel platforms), rochester products, etc. the migration of as/400 (s/38 follow-on) to powerpc might be considered fort knox re-born. slightly related 370 simulator on 801 ... but starting to migrate various kernel functions to native code:
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

the primary difference between various of these strategies on 801/risc and w/432 was that lots of these things on the 432 were in silicon ... rather than a code middle layer.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Reviving Multics

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Reviving Multics
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:14:21 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
starting to migrate various kernel functions to native code:
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a


ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#55 Reviving Multics

so a little more drift .... reason i was interested in simulators on other architectures and migrating (originally) 370 kernel code into native machine .... wasn't so much because of fort knox but because of my experience with VAMPS and ecps.

with regard to convoluted thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#16 unix

if pcm controllers begat FS ... which in turn begat pcm processors (along with unbundling begat priced software) ... there is some case that the experience of FS also begat something of a backlash and begat 801/risc (sort of the opposite end of the spectrum from 432 & FS).

in '75, i was working on VAMPS, ecps, and the stuff that would become the resource manager ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#35 unix

virgil/tully (138/148) were follow-on to the 370/135 & 370/145. turns out the configurations had lots more microcode space. they were doing m'code accelerators for vs1 and vm/370. the low & mid-range 370s were "vertical" microcoded engines ... that typically had avg. of 10 micro-instructions per 370 instructions (not too different from the current day intel-platform 370 simulators). kernel code remapped into microcode just about same byte size ... and avg. a ten times performance improvement. we were told that 138/148 had room for 6000 bytes of instructions and to choose those 6000 bytes from vm/370 kernel that would represent the biggest performance benefit:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#27 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mcode

in effect, the low & mid-range had processors that were about ten times faster than the corresponding 370 mip rating ... aka 145 at around 300kips needed about 3mip processor, 148 at around 500kips needed about 5mip processor, and 4341 at around 1mip needed around 10mip processor. 4341 reference being better price/performance than vax:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers

VAMPS (five years earlier) was philosophically closer to 432 in terms of moving operating system into lower level machine (but not into real "silicon"). the 370 dispatcher, much of paging subsystem, and a couple other components are migrating into the m'code. That is compared to ecps ... were a sequence of 370 instructions were dropped directly into m'code and a new 370 instruction substituted in the kernel that directly invoke the m'code version. VAMPS was a vm/cms only machine ... and i had done the remapping of the cms filesystem(s) to page mapped ... which further leveraged moving the paging subsystem into the lower level machine architecture:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

The thing that was most analogous to 432 was the VAMPS dispatcher. Basically, the kernel had instruction that added process to the m'code dispatching list and got interrupts when things came off. It used the resource manager logic that calculated a dispatching priority that was a psuedo deadline for ordering the dispatch list. under the covers had up to nine microprocessors ... up to five of them that were capable of executing 370 simulation (sort of 5-way smp). the rest of the processors were dedicated to various i/o activity (and most of the paging subsystem offload went off to one of these). The remaining vm/370 kernel pieces weren't multithreaded ... logically equivalent to having a single kernel spinload ... except there wasn't any spinning; interrupts would be posted to kernel and a processor would then go off and look for something else on the dispatch queue (unless there was no processor currently in kernel mode ... in which case the processor would switch to executing the kernel). This wasn't viewed as a significant problem since something like 90percent of the existing vm/370 pathlength had been offloaded into microcode engine processing.

while ecps finally shipped as product, VAMPS was canceled before it shipped. however, then there was an effort to take the VAMPS design and translate it into vm/370 for standard 370 multiprocessor (except for the cms filesystem remap to page mapped paradigm). basically logic that had been migrated to m'code in VAMPS was SMP'ed. The remaining code executed behind a single kernel lock. However, if a processor was unable to obtain the kernel lock, instead of spinning, it created a lightweight request that was queued against the kernel lock (and went off to the dispatcher to look for another process). A processor with the kernel lock, after completing whatever existing work, would then check for work queued against the lock before releasing the lock. The claim was that in terms of code change size for SMP support to the vm/370 kernel, this design gave the biggest bang for the buck (maximum SMP thruput for minimal kernel smp code changes).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

in any case ... it was the experience with ecps & VAMPS that, in large part, gave rise to drive for generalized 370 simulator with transition program of migrating kernel implementation first into portable programming language as well into lower-level machine infrastructure:
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

which was also one of the driving factors in 432, except they were driving it directly into silicon. the s/38 to as/400 to as/400 on power/pc did non-silicon based layered implimentation on risc platform.

related "zm" project:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#27 VM/SP sites that allow free access?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#25 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#53 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#46 Blinking lights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#14 Z/OS--anything new?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:04:56 GMT
"Kim Hyldgaard" writes:
Thanks for your replies. The encrypted password is a MD5 hash of the shared-secret, a nonce and the pasword, so that seems to be OK. - But only for preventing an attacker to initiate a login like John mentioned.

aads chip strawman with public key and digital signature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

where public key is non-shared-secret registered in lieu of password (aka certificate-less public key ... similar to definition in pk-init draft for kerberos).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

editors/termcap

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: editors/termcap
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 04:11:32 GMT
Peter da Silva writes:
No, the original IBM PC had room for 640K on the motherboard, and you could add additional memory cards via slots. It was only 4.77 MHz, so going through the bus to memory didn't impose a penalty.

The improved version, the PC/AT, only supported 512K on the motherboard. But it was still a fairly slow processor and the bus was now 16 bits wide so you could add extra memory cards.

Depending on the video card you were using (the 640K limit was due to one of the early video cards... CGA I think... having its buffer at A000:0000) you could get up to 768K linearly addressed memory, and then fill in chunks of 64K or so up to 1M. You could also get almost another 64K by taking advantage of the memory at segment FFFF:0000 through FFFF:FFFF.

I don't remember the nomenclature, but all these extra little chunks of memory could be accessed by memory managers like QEMM. Programs would load drivers and patches and utilities into these chunks of memory, or move parts of MS-DOS there, giving you more "low memory" you could actually run programs in. Oh, it was a grand old mess...


i still have the source someplace (that i had modified) for one of the memory bank switchers. also 1.86 supported something like 704k w/o running into conflicts. however much of the stuff is on 50 or so 5.25in pre-at diskettes ... double-sided 40track and 80track ... but not high-density ... although 1.86 had something that did 10 sectors per track instead of 9 sectors (although i believe they can be read with a high-density drive).

additional memory definitions:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#37 Ancient computer humor - Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#73 Expanded Storage?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 16:37:49 GMT
Lassi Hippeläinen writes:
RADIUS was conceived in an environment where an ISP owned and operated a modem pool, an AAA server, and the network in between. The threat model didn't include attackers who can access the link between the client and the server.

Later a RADIUS relay was invented to enable more flexible remote access via other ISPs. In this case the ISPs had a roaming agreement, and the end user trusted them all. (Note that the end user's password can be read at any relay point, because the same secret is used for authenticating the next relay hop and encrypting it.)

RADIUS is a workhorse that has lived far beyond its time, mainly because the replacement (DIAMETER) is so %¤#@&£$ing late...


i made different but analogous claim for VPNs & SSL ... regarding IPSEC.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#34 Use of SSL as a VPN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#36 Use of SSL as a VPN

raise you hand if you've configured radius on a real livingston box

old radius, livingston, aaa ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#17 Difference between AAA and Radius?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#18 Difference between AAA and Radius?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

reviving Multics -- Computer Museum

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:06:08 GMT
westinnospam@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin) writes:
The National Air and Space Museum is on the Mall in Washington, D.C., near the Hirschorn Museum. The storage and restoration facility is in Suitland, MD.

happen to take the kids on spring trip to DC ... the week before it opened ... which I thot was a real bummer. the one thing that was somewhat interesting that week was coyote union was demonstrating on the steps of congress. one fall-out of that .... was the new "coyote" lab in coyote valley (southern santa clara co.) which was about to be dedicated within a week or two ... got its name quickly changed to santa teresa lab.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

hee-hee. I can do something about this spam

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: hee-hee.  I can do something about this spam
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:14:52 GMT
Arthur Chance <{spamtrap}@qeng-ho.org> writes:
Argh! I just got a flashback of Canter & Siegel.

we were having dinner in mexican restaurant in the mid-90s in old town scottsdale ... when a man came in with a couple and were seated behind us. over dinner the man described in great detail on how he was setup to distribute large numbers of email ... and how they should setup up their webserver to minimize irate email responses. given that it was somewhat new phenomena at the time ... it seemed that it has highly likely it could only be a specific person.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

reviving Multics -- Computer Museum

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:51:37 GMT
"Glen Herrmannsfeldt" writes:
I lived in the DC area for two years, and we moved away a week before it opened.

(I believe it opened on July 4th, 1976.)

We had opening day tickets, too.


it was '76 ... school was out ... but I keep thinking it was spring break, but you could be correct. we met my mother, my sister and her family there. maybe they remember.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

reviving Multics -- Computer Museum

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 01:38:02 GMT
eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes:
Also an operating STK silo which is popular with movie fans. And a dozen different Enigma of varying types with one you can use. A piece of Power's U-2. Various bugging devices. And incredible library. But it's not all computers. There's a few other things, too.

I think it's not currently open to the public. One should be able to check on the agency's web site.


... it was on the frontage road past the gas station .... outside the fence ... between the fence and the greenbelt ... north of 32. last times going up the greenbelt that intersection is all torn up.

when i visited ... the room just past the stk robot was on missi and some other stuff ... and they were playing a missi video tape (original fortezza card, etc). I got somebody to get me a copy of the tape .... on the excuse i would do a voice over parody of missi and fortezza.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

reviving Multics -- Computer Museum

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: reviving Multics -- Computer Museum
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 01:41:47 GMT
... and checking for the missi tape ... i also found a tape that craig mudge got me .... "IPv6: the New Internet Protocol" ... by steve deering and craig mudge, xerox parc.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

801 (was Re: Reviving Multics

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 06:28:18 GMT
Julian Thomas writes:
may have used oatmeal boxes, old string, and new, used, and recycled electrons to say (at least in part):

some tired ol' electrons .... and even some mention of multics

endicott got a new brick office building out of 801 ... however there were some questions. There were a number of memos written from SPD planning office somewhere in Westchester .... for which I provided some amount of the technical input ... and eventually killed/canceled the effort.

to some extent the issue was that 801 software programming replaced the traditional microcoding of the low-end & mid-range 370s. however, the 4341 follow-on would have just about all 370 implemented directly in circuits. so the comparison became 801+software emulating 370 against 370 almost totally native in circuits (as opposed to 801 native in circuits against 370 native in circuits).

but first a little laugh

Date: 10/06/81 16:15:02
To: wheeler
From: SPD HQ
--------------------------------------------------------------

Good day,
-
Some questions.
- Have you heard anything about a mass defection of guys working on the 801 architecture or technology from San Jose?
-
Have you ever heard about any implementation of Multics on S/370 architecture?
-
What are you up to? Haven't heard from you in a while.
-
Hope all is well. Let me know if you're still alive.


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

Date: 10/06/81 13:22:34
From: wheeler

BW who used to be GPD data base architect, & was manager in Endicott that had the 801 & RASP stuff went to HP. He is working for a guy that was director of comp. science at YKT research before he joined HP about 6-9 months ago. BW has close contacts with some people in Los Gatos & speculation is that a couple of people there may also be on their way to HP.


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

extract from long ago and far away ...

Date: 11/13/81
To: wheeler
REFERENCE: GR's discussion of 801 in Endicott, 11/13/81

I have followed the definition and discussion of the 801 system for quite awhile. The referenced discussion presented the 801 in its latest form. Some new points were addressed but the major thrust and most of the concepts are unchanged.

801 is a dramatic, all-encompassing approach to system definition and development. The performance claim of twice to three times the performance of a comparable S/370 is quite possible. 801 is, in many ways, a very attractive technical proposal. However, further assessment should be made during evaluation of the proposal and while a direction is being chosen for a future system. The full technical implications of the proposal should be assessed. The business and marketing aspects and implications of the proposal should also be assessed.

There are a number of such points. Some are:

- The 801 proposal emphasizes compilers and compiler technology.
- The approach eliminates the interpretative layer of microcode that exists in most computer systems.
- The software's source language becomes THE interface to the system.

Some of the concepts of "hardware" and "software" are thereby blurred.
- The current concept of a "machine interface" is eliminated.
- How much additional architecture effort should be added to 801 to define a complete system architecture?


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

there was a bunch of ascii art showing different interfaces on different platforms.

from somewhere else:

Date: 11/15/81 20:34:16
From: wheeler

i attended 801 meeting on behalf of endicott while i was there. Anything but 370 simulator is going to be quite complex for them. Suggestion was made that I confer with you on possible ideas & what Endicott can do with 801.


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

and from something totally different (from 1979)

Date: 6/19/79 15:36:51
To: wheeler

Howdy Lynn,

Ted K. says you had VAMPS analysis which showed what VM modules should be microcoded. Do you still have it around ? (He says they were bar charts.)
If so, how about sending us a copy.
Any opinions on 801 ? Any other opinions in general that you wish to state ?
Regards,


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

misc, collected VAMPS postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

note in following, 8100 used a uc.5 microprocessor, same as in 37xx telecommunication controller and I believe service processor in 3081. Somewhere along the line, Bob Evans had my wife do technical audit of 8100 and it was killed not too long after that.

Date: 79/07/11 11:00:03
To: wheeler

i heard a funny story: seems the MIT LISP machine people proposed that IBM furnish them with an 801 to be the engine for their prototype. Bob Evans considered their request, and turned them down.. offered them an 8100 instead! (I hope they told him properly what they thought of that)


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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.os.multics,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:52:31 GMT
dpeschel@eskimo.com (Derek Peschel) writes:
I'm thinking about a number of elements:

- Maintaining program source as disk files, not card decks etc. They are readily available and can be manipulated by other programs. - Managing the source as it changes through time or as multiple people change it concurrently. - Computing dependencies among source files. - Keeping all parts of the bug-fixing and development-planning processes online. - Keeping the bug and planning data in separate files from the code.


early '70s .... CSC expanded the CMS UPDATE command with series of execs that applied multi-level updates before assembly. I had a bunch of archived tapes ... and supplied melinda with a whole set (that was before there was a glitch at the datacenter i was at and somebody started using regular tapes for scratch ... I lost some stuff that was triple replicated). ref to melinda's paper (VM History):
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

note that this was a "up-date" sequence ... people generated individual update files and system assemble/compile required applying all updates to the base source which created a temporary source file that was actually assembled/compiled.

one of the MIT students working at csc did a program that merged multiple parallel update sequences .... attempting to resolve &/or at least identify conflicts. that was used in the CP/67 version ... but was not carried forward into the VM/370 version. For VM/370, any activity with people generated update files in parallel and the subsequent merge into the common update structure was managed purely manually.

VM/370 did add "aux" files to the update structures .... which contained "PTF" (individual program bug fix update files). Both CP/67 and VM/370 were shipped to customers with binary executables but also full base source files. Starting with VM/370, monthly maintenance "PLC" (program level change) tapes were shipped to all customers. These were cummulative update tapes (until the next full release) .... basically all the binary executables that had incorporated all the fixes on that tape .... plus full set of the individual (program fix) source update files.

customers could build systems from the binaries, or selectively recompile various source routines, or recompile the whole system. Because of full source availability there was a tendency at some installations to have quite a bit of local source changes (which were also handled by the same source update structure). Some customers made contributions of their stuff to the "SHARE" library
http://www.share.org/
which was managed by the univ. of waterloo and was commonly referred to as the waterloo tape.

dating back to at least early OS/360 days (at least early/mid 60s), the company had an official bug reporting and handling system. customer bug reports were given APAR numbers which then frequently translated into PTF numbers ... and there was a whole online system for APAR and PTF information management. The CMS incremental update structure ... could tailor "control" files, so that various update activity reflected the official corporate APAR/PTF structure ... and co-exist with other "control" files that reflected internal development process and customer "control" files that reflected activity going on at a local customer location.

it wasn't impossible that the total size of update files exceeded the base source file.

some past update command discussion.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#57 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#71 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#39 CMS update
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#62 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#38 editors/termcap

Tymshare (a vm/370-based timesharing service) started providing online computer conferencing for VM SHARE group in '76. The archives can be found at:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

an update CNTRL file could list any number of update files and/or "aux" files, which in turn listed some number of update files. The following reference is a listing of a AUX file referencing four source update files to the "update" command, followed by the actual update files:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=UPDPACKD&ft=NOTE&args=cntrl#hit

Also at:
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist
is tutorial (both "pdf" and "listing" formats) of what started out as discussion of service strategies ("what your mother never told you about vm service") which describes the VM/370 (as of '83) in much more detail (including lots of examples of cntrl files, update command uses and other parts of the infrastructure). This '83 description has little structural change from the original cp/67 done some ten plus years earlier.

some earlier computer conference discussion of same:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SERVICE&ft=MEMO&args=service1#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SERVICE2&ft=MEMO&args=service1#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SERVICE3&ft=MEMO&args=service1#hit

starting with
Created on 01/17/81 20:31:19 by $VM

Service Strategies for VM Products

What would your reaction be, if:

- IBM deferred shipment of a new release until the completion of a more thorough field test program lasting several months,

- IBM distributed service tapes less frequently, and then to disseminate critical, more thoroughly tested fixes (corrective maintenance could still be requested from the change teams, of course),

- After some shakedown period of several months, IBM re-shipped the product with fully integrated, tested service?

I've heard some VM users alleging that the quality of PTFs is declining and that new software isn't tested sufficiently prior to distribution. Also, the PUT process is more than some SIPO users can bear (they'd rather not have to apply any service tapes). The environment I outlined above would possibly alleviate some of these concerns.

Some of you may have heard of similar approaches being considered for another SCP. As I understand it, no such strategy is currently being contemplated for VM. I simply would like to hear your reactions.

Please identify your shop as large or small, and whether you have mods or the IPO. I'd like to see some particpation in this dialog by some of the smaller shops in addition to us big guys.

Dave Farnham, Central Intelligence Agency

CREATED 01/17/81 20:31:19 BY $VM


--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The Pentium 4 - RIP?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pentium 4 - RIP?
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 16:16:58 GMT
Joseph Seigh writes:
Well, at one time, when all there were uninprocessors, everything was atomic. And most programmers learn in a single threaded environment. And my experience is that most programmers have great difficulty conceptualizing concurrent access and never successfully make the leap into concurrent programming.

Also, it doesn't help that hardware designers change the rules and retroactively break software. The hardware companies even to it to themselves. When IBM went to multiprocessors, it turns out they "broke" the OI (or immediate) and NI (and immediate) instructions which were atomic on uniprocessors and were used heavily throughout IBM's operating systems. Too many to replace with other logic so they create the OIL (or immediate locked) and NIL (and immediate locked) macros which were atomic (they used compare and swap). (I'm sure we'll get alt.computers.folklore in here on this one).

Just wait til someone comes up with a really aggressive memory that allows really stale data be fetched. You'll find out real quick how many incorrect implementations of DCL (double checked locking) there are.


ok

OI/XI/NI (or immediate, exclusive or immedate, and immedate) which were a "one-byte" combination instructions, fetch, update, & store. os/360 had multiprocessor with 360/65 ... as well as the 360/67 (although there were some differences). The only officially defined consistent for them were test&set (TS).

The standard os/360 kernel for 360/65mp had single spin-lock (w/ts) on the kernel ... so there weren't any race conditions in the kernel and there wasn't a whole lot of people writing multi-threaded applications for 65mp.

Charlie did a lot of work with cp/67 on 360/67mp for fine-grain locking and came up with compare&swap (actually the mnemonic started out with his initials CAS, and then we had to come up with something to match his initials). This was provided on 370 processors. In order to get it justified, we were told by the owners of the 370 architecture that some paradigm had to come up making it useful for uniprocessor operation (since they couldn't justify a multiprocessor only instruction).

That eventually resulted in the programming notes for compare&swap instruction in the 370 principles of operation with examples for application multi-threaded programming that was enabled for interrupts (and had to update values that couldn't be addressed with the immediate instructions.

Now, there was some lore that in the late '70s when MVS was working on doing better job of fine-grain locking ... and therefor opening up various kinds of oi/xi/ni race conditions in the kernel ... that some of the 370 mp models might have to implement them as atomic instructions in order to solve bugs in the mvs kernel support of multiprocessing (although it was probably easier to write an edit macro that went thru all the related MVS kernel source and generated update files that changed all the suspected cases of immediate instructions to macro).

random past smp stuff:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The Pentium 4 - RIP?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pentium 4 - RIP?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 16:50:12 GMT
"del cecchi" writes:
In the development shops in IBM that I am familiar with, most of the management started out as workers. At some point they became managers, and in most cases never switched back. After a few years of dealing with project management, budgets, performance reviews etc they are no longer current. But most managers managing technical folks have a technical background. Even some of the very high level VP types are technical in original training.

that can lead to some of the best .... people who understand the environment and culture .... or some of the worse ... people who think they know what they are doing.

there is the tale of the (internal) crypto modem for use in home and travel access to the internal network. early model was provided to an executive that had EE background. During the testing ... he checked for current by putting his tongue in the rj11 socket ... which happened to ring at that moment. there was then an edict that ALL modems had to have the rj11 socket recessed far enuf so that corporate executives (ok, so they said little kids) couldn't get their tongue in and get shocked ... and you wonder why you have so much trouble getting a rj11 plug out of some modem sockets.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Gartner Office Information Systems 6/2/89

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Gartner Office Information Systems 6/2/89
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:34:33 GMT
from the past ...

Source: Gartner Office Information Systems 6/2/89 Page 1


DEC and IBM increased their installed base and market share. PROFS - user population grew by 92% (1987--1.2M/1988--2.3M) - licenses up 41%(2,200 to 3,100) - average number of users/license up(548 to 746) - worldwide sites--2,500(average of 920 users /site) - VM penetration 22% of 14,000 systems. PERSONAL SERVICES/38 - user growth 20%(1987--86K/1988--103K) - licenses up 19%(3,600 to 4,300) - average--24 users/license S/36 - user growth 24%(302K to 374K) - license up 22%(18,000 to 22,000) - average--16 users/license. PS/370 (PS/CICS, PS/TSO) - users up 8%(72,000 to 78,000), - licenses up 8%(over 1,000) - average--108 users/license. AS/400 (estimates) - 144K users - 7,200 licenses, average 20 users/license - AS/400 OFFICE penetration--36% of AS/400 systems.

DEC ALL-IN-1 - user growth up 65%(from 1.7M to 2.8M) - number of systems running ALL-IN-1 grew over 200%(from 12,000 to 37,000); - penetration is 35% of VAX users, 10% of all systems - $500M revenue from ALL-IN-ONE software--leveraging via VAX processors and other layered software an estimated $5B of revenues (nearly half of all DEC revenues for 1988)!!! - Gartner attributes this success to: . introduction of the MICROVAX 3500/3600, . MAILBUS, . NETWORK APPLICATION SUPPORT . the DEC/APPLE alliance . the 6200 VAX Series . growth of VAXCLUSTERS . introduction of ALL-IN-ONE STARTER . uncertainty of IBM direction.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ARIDUS

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: ARIDUS
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:38:12 GMT
During the second half of 1989, DEC is expected to announce a numberr of processors that will offer performance in the range of current IBM mainframes. The rumored products are:

- "ARIDUS". This project is an air-cooled implementation of the VAX architecture using new 10,000-gate Motorola gate arrays (MCA-3). One version of this product will be a 15-20 DEC MIPS uniprocessor, with entry-level price of about USD 600,000 but with average price more like USD 800,000. Another version is said to be a 30 DEC MIPS machine, which will be priced around USD 1.2 million. The two versions share the same architecture, but different CPU clock rates account for the difference in performance.

These machines are expected to be announced mid-year 1989, with first customer shipments by end of the year. NOTE: The early marketing that CMSC has learned about concerns a large account in Israel. The DEC Rep. there stated announcement in 4Q89 with first shipment in 1Q90.

- Two other projects, called "ARGONAUT" and "AQUARIUS", respectively, have been killed or postponed due to Aridus. Argonaut was rumored to be a water-cooled, 15 DEC MIPS, VAX machine, which was killed due to the decision to proceed with the smaller Aridus. Aquarius was another water-cooled VAX, offering 25 to 30 DEC MIPS per processor. Early rumors suggested that this project was killed due to the larger Aridus, but subsequent signals indicated that the project was only postponed. More recent rumors state that the project is dead.

- DEC 6400 family. Expected to be announced 3Q89, to replace the 6300 family (announced January, 1989). This series is rumored to offer from 7 to 40 DEC MIPS (this corresponds to approximately 75,000 to 80,000 transactions per hour on the high end). A new 7 DEC MIPS chip will replace the current 3.8 DEC MIPS chip used in the 6300 family, but other components in the 6300 line will be used in the 6400 line as well. Thus, the 6310, 6320,...6360 would receive the new chip and become 6410, 6420,...6460. (In other words, just as the 6200 received a new chip and replaced the 6300, the 6300 will receive a new chip and become the 6400.)


--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

GOSIP

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: GOSIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:44:22 GMT

Subject: Trip report - FRICC workshop (focus on naming architecture)
         on a coordinated OSI transition (Washington 06/14-15, 89)

Note: FRICC (Federal Research Internet Coordinating Committee) oversees
the networks operated by DOD, DOC, and NASA, which consists of
      more than 100,000 computer systems.

Objectives:
----------
Overall goal:
- All FRICC systems are going to migrate to OSI eventually.  The following
  diagram illustrates the move:

            TCPIP                      DECNET IV
|                            |
|                            |
(Transition)|                            V
              |                        DECNET V
|                            |
              V                            |(Transition)
OSI  <------------------------|

- Workshops are held to identify issues, activities and schedules for a
  coordinated transition to achieve a single OSI environment that is
interoperable with the current installed base.

Specific goal of this workshop:
- Focus on the specific issues of a coordinated NAMING ARCHITECTURE and
examine DECNet Naming Service (DNANS) as a viable candidate architecture.
- This workshop is a follow-on of the "Internet directory service" workshop
chaired by Dave Clark of MIT.  The last workshop recommended X.500 as the
  "White pages service".

Major players:
-------------
- 20 people attended the meeting.
- Phill Gross from NRI is the chairman.
- DEC people includes developers, development manager, architect, and
sales reps.  They clearly want this business.  Dave Oran is the chief
technical spokesman.
- NASA/DOD/DOC folks includes Milo Medin and Dan Hitchcock (DOC).
- Dave Clark and Karen Sollins from MIT.
- Steve Kille (ISO/DE X.500 author).
- Paul Mockapetries (TCPIP Domain Name Server author).
- Debbie Deutsch from BBN.

Summary of meeting:
------------------
- Presentations by NIST people on the X.500 prototype they are working on.
- Presentations by NASA people on their existing DECNET IV network, and
how they plan to migrate to DECNET V.
- Presentations by DEC people on DNANS.
- Interoperability requirements: -- X.500/DNS (naming service)
                                 -- X.500/WHOIS (white pages directory)
-- X.400/SMTP (mail)
                                 -- FTAM/FTP (file transfer)
-- VT/TELNET (remote logon)
- A lot of discussions were on routing in OSI/TCPIP layer 3.  The consensus
is a "routing architecture" is needed in addition to the "naming
  architecture".
- Gateways are needed for layer 3 (routing) and layer 7 (application).
- Need to architect and manage an "unified namespace" (directory)
and "unified address space" (routing).
- A lot of questions were on the differences between X.500 and DNANS.
Eg. there is no "strong authentication" concept in DNANS.
- Work items to be included in an implementation plan:
-- Define Naming and Address structure.  Designate a registry.
  -- Define routing architecture.
-- Define application gateways.
-- Define inter-protocol fault isolation and network management.
-- Define deployment plan and timetable.  How to "engineer" the
     system ?  What is the cost ?
- Recommendations to FRICC: 1) Do an OSI implementation plan.
                            2) Revisit DNANS issues within the context of 1.

Observations:
------------
- DEC was not well prepared to answer the question - how does DNANS
interoperate with X.500 ?
- They hadn't thought out how to implement X.500 on top of DNANS.  They
said with a layer of search and schema on top, it "should" work.
- Their technical presentation and questions from the floor reviewed
quite a few subtle problems of DNANS.
- There is no clear idea/strategy on how this transition from existing
base to OSI should work.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

GOSIP

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: GOSIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 02:52:40 GMT
andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) writes:
...but which year?

1989

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Security Certifications?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Certifications?
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 17:05:21 GMT
"Pel" writes:
Which is the best book for prepare this certification?

i've been working with one of the people that have online study ... in conjunction with my merged security glossary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glossary
notes on sources:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

CISSP open study group web site:
http://www.ccure.org/
... oops ...
http://www.cccure.org/

and online quizzer engine:
http://www.losclusterz.com/quiz/quiz.phb
... oops ...
http://www.lostclusterz.com/quiz/quiz.php

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Security Certifications?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security Certifications?
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 17:39:44 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
CISSP open study group web site:
http://www.ccure.org/


oops, finger slip ... that is
http://www.cccure.org/
for CISSP and SSCP Open Study Guides Web site

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.os.multics,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 20:17:41 GMT
"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:
Very misleading. Waterloo was but one of many sites to maintain a "mods" tape, and most people in the IBM world would have interpreted "Share library" as a reference to SPLA, considerably further south and more extensive.

I was talking specifically about vm share, vm share committee (somewhere along the line was it a group?), VM, VM modifications, VM source maint. infrastructure, etc. sorry if that wasn't clearer. I didn't mean want to imply that there couldn't have been a thousand other program libraries under share auspices .... i was just referring to this specific one.

random references to "waterloo tape", or "waterloo vm mods tape" from vmshare archives (computer conference from vm share committee ... provided by tymshare):
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=3270WRIT&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XCOPY&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=WAITECB&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=Z80_XASM&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XEDIT&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XCOMPARE&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XMASGIFT&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XATOOLS&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=WRITER&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=VTOC&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=VS1ROUT&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=TAPE&ft=PROB&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SVM&ft=PROB&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SUPERMSG&ft=PROB&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SPITBOL&ft=PROB&args=waterloo+tape#hit
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=SNTADDR&ft=PROB&args=waterloo+tape#hit

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.os.multics,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 21:42:18 GMT
Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XCOMPARE&ft=MEMO&args=waterloo+tape#hit


as an aside ... while above is specifically a history of extended compare:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=XCOMPARE&ft=MEMO

it makes a good read about sequence/history of open source in the '70s with vm and vm share (waterloo) in general (involving waterloo, Cornell, SLAC, CERN, etc).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

unix

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 02:29:39 GMT
CBFalconer writes:
You are not alone. We had a situation with no room for source on the disks of a Burroughs system, so I wrote a fairly simple compressor/decompressor in COBOL for it. It recaptured about 50% of the disk space used for source. Boy, was it slow. This was something like COBOL 68 or so, with absolutely no abilities. All it did was encode leading blanks, and strip trailing blanks. Sometimes you have to work with what is there.

i think possibly mid 70s, done by somebody at perkin/elmer(?) wrote a hook for CMS filesystem for (transparent) compressed files. They claimed that they get get a minimum of 50 percent on source type files and that the processing overhead was totally masked by the reduction in the number of physical I/Os (aka processing source type files could actually run slightly faster compressed because the overhead of doing compression/decompression was offset by the processing reduction in fewer physical I/Os needed). few trailing blanks because of the convention of having sequence number at the end of record (aka compression was mostly duplicate blanks, but not strickly leading nor trailing) .... aka see recent discussion on source maint/update:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of Project maintenance tools

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Microsoft strikes again - from comp.risks

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microsoft strikes again - from comp.risks
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 02:38:41 GMT
"Glen Herrmannsfeldt" writes:
While there are risks, for most nets I believe that they are small.

On the other hand, have you ever given out credit card information using a cordless phone? That is pretty close to broadcasting it on the radio, yet many people do that. In restaurants, do you let the waiter take your card away and process it? Do you know if they make copies of your card number, including the special numbers on the back? Do you tear up or otherwise properly dispose of the carbons or other receipts with your numbers on them?


for bunch of stuff on fraud .... including some amount of card skimming and number harvesting (& misc. things in press):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

and a whole long recent thread on e-commerce website related stuff:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#26 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#27 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#28 How effective is open source crypto? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#29 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#30 How effective is open source crypto? (aads addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#31 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#32 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#33 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#34 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#35 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#36 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#37 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#1 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#2 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#4 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#5 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

801 (was Re: Reviving Multics

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 16:33:03 GMT
also recent slightly related discussion in comp.arch on 801:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#0 Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#12 Resolved: There Are No Programs With >32 Bits of Text

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"Super-Cheap" Supercomputing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Super-Cheap" Supercomputing
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 22:17:53 GMT
"Bill Todd" writes:
This sounds a bit like the ambitious 'database machine' efforts of the mid-to-late-'80s: specialized parallel hardware to do things like select/project operations on many database pages at once (which itself is a bit reminiscent of keyed track-based look-ups from an earlier era). AFAIK none of them ever came to anything, possibly because (unlike the earlier track-based keyed look-ups) general-purpose processors were improving their price/performance so quickly that any specialized hardware would have become uncompetitive at just about the time it could be released.

- bill


The other scenario is that the universities weren't turning out people that could program them. there have beens ome disucussions of perfectly good stuff .... that had to be discarded because there were no longer any skills for supporting it ... also somewhat related to COTS.

Note that a lot of the parallel machine stuff would look at everything. There was somewhat paradigm switch with much larger random access memories containing indexes ... reasonably conditioned data with efficient indexes ... a single processor could find something faster than large parallel search of everything.

luther got his tree instructions into the 390 ... and there were some custom machines that did some pretty effective and fancy stuff.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#19 S/360 operating systems geneaology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#20 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#73 Most complex instructions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#14 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#18 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#10 radix sort

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

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