List of Archived Posts

2003 Newsgroup Postings (05/20 - 06/07)

employee motivation & executive compensation

Two-factor authentication with SSH?

Two-factor authentication with SSH?

A Dark Day

A Dark Day

Name for this early transistor package?

A Dark Day

A Dark Day

A Dark Day

IBM system 370

IBM system 370

Columbia U Computing History - New stuff

Which monitor for Fujitsu Micro 16s?

A Dark Day

instant messaging

two pi, four phase, 370 clone

instant messaging

Spam Bomb

MVS 3.8

smp 2.4.20-13.9 ext3fs problems?

IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM

Spam Bomb

tankers and computers

TGV in the USA?

AT&T versus Treating customers right

TGV in the USA?

AT&T versus Treating customers right

instant messaging

Offshore IT

electronic-ID and key-generation

A Dark Day

Offshore IT

A Dark Day

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

electronic-ID and key-generation

electronic-ID and key-generation

Whatever happened to 'University Computer Centers'?

A Dark Day

Calculations involing very large decimals

graceful recovery when runs out of paging?

TGV in the USA?

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

A Dark Day

graceful recovery when runs out of paging?

Offshore IT

TGV in the USA?

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

Whatever happened to 'University Computer Centers'?

A Dark Day

Oldest running software

HSM Functionality for Microsoft, using the Mainframe as the

A Dark Day

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

Offshore IT

TGV in the USA?

TGV in the USA?

assembler performance superiority: a given

grey-haired assembler programmers (Ritchie's C)

TGV in the USA?

TGV in the USA?

Wireless security

where to find X9.26 document?

TGV in the USA?

TGV in the USA?

TGV in the USA?

Offshore IT

TGV in the USA?

IBM system 370

A few Z990 Gee-Wiz stats

Offshore IT

A few Z990 Gee-Wiz stats

Computer resources, past, present, and future

How to increase the Swap drive size

TGV in the USA?

Columbia U Computing History - New stuff

TGV in the USA?

TGV in the USA?

IBM 5100

Whatever happened to 'University Computer Centers'?

Offshore IT

IBM 5100

A Dark Day

IBM 5100

Offshore IT

Virtual Machines for Security

employee motivation & executive compensation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: employee motivation & executive compensation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 18:25:30 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

I want to track down a list of the people, corporate or military, who
would be considered one of his acolytes.

a reasonable starting point is:
http://www.belisarius.com/
a couple others:
http://www.defense-and-society.org/
http://www.cdi.org/mrp/

The various bios & refs ... basically refer to boyd having overall
strategy for the last desert storm and John Warden having air campaign
strategy for desert storm. I think it was MSNBC that had John Warden
on as one of the advisors this go around. In the past there have been
various URLs around the web comparing Boyd's OODA-loops and some of
John Warden's work (some search engines may have any current
availability).

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

Two-factor authentication with SSH?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Two-factor authentication with SSH?
Newsgroups: comp.security.ssh
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 18:57:11 GMT

Søren Roug writes:

As a system administrator I am responsible for the security and the
weakest link is user behaviour...

I have the following problem. Assume the users login from untrusted
loaned computers at conferences, hotels, Internet cafes etc.

If I let users log in over SSH with password authentication then
basically anyone on the Internet can try to guess passwords, or
someone could have watched as my colleague typed his password and
then try from another host.  Not very comforting.

An other possibility is to use client certificates. Looks good with
a passphrase, but I have no way of knowing if the user has removed
the passphrase from his certificate. If such an unprotected
certificate is stolen (because my colleague forgot to remove it from
the PC) it can be copied to everywhere and the cracker can login at
will.

What I would like to do is to require a client certificate AND
password authentication on the server side (two factors). But I
don't see how to configure SSHD to require two concurrent
authentication approaches unless something like SecurID is used.

client certificate isn't a factor. client certificate is some
organization (possibly 3rd party) attesting to the validity of the
binding between a public key and some other information (like name or
email address, etc). It was originally invented as something of an
analog to the letters of credit from the sailing ship days .... that
relying parties had no direct way of verifying information ... so had
to rely on some hard copy that the person carried with them and could
pass around.

In the modern world with online environment and/or prior reliationship
between the entity being authenticated and the relying party
.... certificates are mostly redundant and superfluous.

3-factor authentication

• something you have (frequently hardware token)
• something you know (pin or password)
• something you are (biometrics)

2-factor authentication can be hardware token and a pin/password that
is used to activate the hardware token. The hardware token can
implement digital signature technology using public/private key pair
where the key pair is generated on the token and the private key is
never allowed to leave the token. The PIN is then used to activate the
token aka just stealing the token isn't sufficient to compromise the
system, and/or just using something like social engineering to obtain
the PIN doesn't directly accomplish anything w/o also stealing the
hardware token.

The issue with regard to non-hardware tokens (aka software envelopes)
for private key containers is that vulnerabilities and threats
assesements tend to gravitate to independent failure/exploit; the
issue with software containers is that they may be easier to steal
than pin/passwords ... and so there isn't true independent 2-factor
authentication. The difference is especially true when the software
container can be copied with no knowledge of the owner ... via-a-vis
knowing that a hardware token is missing and will generate lost/stolen
report.

There has to be some process that registers the public key ... so that
digital signature authentication can be performed. In the case of a CA
infrastructure with certificates ... they basically have an RA (or
registgration authority) function that performs the public key
registration ... and then generates a certificate that can be used to
indicate/representation to others that a valid registration has been
performed by somebody for some purpose.

However, it is possible for valid businesses to directly perform the
public key registration and not be dependent on other parties to
perform the function (along with the complexity of what does a
certificate really mean). This registration of a public key can use
the same business process that registers a password in a shared-secret
paradigm.

What is important for 2-factor authentication is totally orthongonal
to the existance of a redundant and superfluous certificate
... it is does the registration process actually validate that the
public key being registered originates from an hardware token with
acceptable integrity characteristics. It is totally independent of
whether or not anybody actually bothered to generate a (redundant and
superfluous) certificate in response to the registration process ....
but did the registration process use the appropriate due diligence
with regard to the public key being registered.

disclaimer ... there is now an instantiation of the aads chip strawman
that i originally postulated several years ago:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

the comfort level for appropriate 2-factor authentication may be
whether due diligence has been taken in validating that the public
key being registered (whether it is in an SSH table, or a RADIUS
account table, or a Kerberos table, or some other kind of table)
actually originated with a hardware token of the appropriate integrity
characteristic (regardless of what some certificate might say about
the public key).

misc. discussion about relying-party-only certificates and being
redundant and superfluous
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#rpo

misc discussion regarding 2/3-factor authentication:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio6 biometrics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#keygen2 Welome to the Internet, here's your private key
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#5 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#6 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#20 IBM alternative to PKI?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#10 [3d-secure] 3D Secure and EMV
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#24 Interests of online banks and their users [was Re: Cryptogram:  Palladium Only for DRM]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#65 Cryptogram Newsletter is off the wall?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#39 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#1 distributed authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#11 FREE X.509 Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#38 distributed authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#44 Does "Strong Security" Mean Anything?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#49 Are client certificates really secure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#52 Are client certificates really secure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#34 A thought on passwords
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#61 I-net banking security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#7 Opinion on smartcard security requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#18 Opinion  on smartcard security requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#36 Crypting with Fingerprints ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#22 Biometric Encryption: the solution for network intruders?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#8 Biometric authentication for intranet websites?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#41 Biometric authentication for intranet websites?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#1 User 2-factor authentication on laptops
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#65 privileged IDs and non-privileged IDs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#30 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#41 META: Newsgroup cliques?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#57 Certificate Authority: Industry vs. Government
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#67 smartcard+fingerprint
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#29 application of unique signature

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

Two-factor authentication with SSH?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Two-factor authentication with SSH?
Newsgroups: comp.security.ssh
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 21:15:42 GMT

Søren Roug writes:

OK, I wasn't being completely clear here. When speaking about
certificates I meant the kind of public key pair generated by
ssh-keygen.

It takes the place of a hardware token in conventional two-factor
authentification. Unlike real hardware tokens it can be
copied/stolen without the user noticing, but it does add the level
of security that only persons with access to copy the private
keyfile will be able to try to log into the server over ssh.

And unlike real hardware tokens it costs nothing.

rather than 2-factor authentication ... then it is more of an issue of
shared-secret authentication vis-a-vis non-shared-secret
authentication.

the registration of the public key at the relying-party ... aka at the
site accepting the SSH connection ... rather than a password ...
implies that even given knowledge of the public key ... it is not
possible to impersonate the entity ... while knowing a shared-secret
allows impersonation.

hardware tokens tend to use non-shared-secret paradigms because they
tend to offer more protection than shared-secret paradigms. note that
there is some additional confusion with the terms password/pin.  A
password/pin that is registered at a remote site ... is a
shared-secret ... a password/pin that is known only to an individual
and their privately owned hardware token is not a shared-secret.

there are specific exploits/vulnerabilities with regard to shared-secret and non-shared-secret paradigms. these are somewhat independent
of exploits/vulnerabilities with regard to 2/3-factor authentication.
They overlap in the sense that a something you know factor can be
implemented as either shared-secret ... registered with other parties
... or non-shared-secret (like in hardware tokens where it is not
known to other parties).

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 02:24:51 GMT

"Glen Herrmannsfeldt" writes:

When IBM designed S/360, the first "architecture", they were hoping
for a long life, but I don't think anyone believed it would still be
going after 40 years.

ibm was planning on doing something completely different in the early
'70s called future system (FS) ... which eventually got canceled.
However, there is some contention that Amdahl left to do his own
360/370 plug compatible because it seemed like IBM was going to walk
away from the 360. In Amdahl's talk at MIT auditorium in the early
'70s ... sort of giving his business case justification ...  was that
there was a $100b in software already written for the 360, and even if
IBM totally walked away from 360, the legacy software (at that time)
should provide him with viable market until the end of the century
(nearly 30 years). random fs refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 15:13:17 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

Han't lots of FS surfaced in the AS/400 etc., and some of it in the
innards of AIX?

the lore is that some number of the people from the canceled FS
project migrated to rochester and created the s/38. as/400 is
follow-on to s/38.

FS was heavily object as part of the machine instruction level ... as
well as one level store. I'm not sure how much of AIX could be
considered FS. The as/400 maintained a fairly high-level abstraction
and was able to port from a CISC hardware to power/pc RISC hardware
with little impact to customers.

in addition to lore that amdahl left to do 360 pcm, in part
because it appeared that the company would be walking away from 360
with the FS strategy:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys

there is also some lore that 801/risc in the early to mid 70s was a
re-action to FS ... to go as far as possible to the opposite extreme
by putting as little as possible in the hardware (as opposed to
putting as much as possible in the hardware). Higher level abstraction
could be be provided by software thru the CPr operating system and the
PL.8 programming language ... running on top of minimalist hardware.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

then in some sense, as/400 running on power/pc is a convergence of the
FS extremes with high level abstraction ... and risc with minimalist
hardware.

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

Name for this early transistor package?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Name for this early transistor package?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 15:32:31 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

That sounds wrong.

I know a 4381 is no speed daemon in processor speed, but I remember
doing compiles on one in college, and big COBOL programs took seconds
most of the time.  The longest I ever saw was for some job which took
about 3 minutes, but we had 10 users locally, and I don't know
how many from other schools.

The 4381 was in Richmond, VA, and was shared by several community
colleges.

there were some really big/slow ada compilers. somewhat aside, i
remember may eldest sending me email 20+ years ago from a college
student machine and commenting during the day that trivial response to
edit input was on the order of minutes (bsd running on a vax).

4381 was faster follow-on to 4341. 4361 was follow-on to 4331 ...
much slower processor. however, all four were as fast or much faster
than 360/67 on which we use to have sub-second trivial response with
75-80 users. some of the change is software bloat (even tho many of
these online university 43xx machines were running vm/370, a
derivative of cp/67) and some was that they tended to be configured
with less disk thruput capcity (aka the argument that relative disk
system thruput declined by a factor of ten times between the late 60s
and the early 80s, disk thruput improvement was much less than cpu &
memory thruput).

gobs of past 4341 & 4381 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#3 What is an IBM 137/148 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#1 360/370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#14 mainframe tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#18 IBM 4381 (finger-check)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#19 IBM 4381 (finger-check)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#7 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#110 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#29 Operating systems, guest and actual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#37 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#61 TF-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#83 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#0 Is a VAX a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#7 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#9 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#10 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#12 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#13 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#20 S/360 development burnout?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#82 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#52 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#53 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#57 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#21 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#69 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#54 VM & VSE news
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#67 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#68 I/O contention
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#9 MIP rating on old S/370s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#13 High Level Language Systems was Re: computer books/authors (Re: FA:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#2 Mysterious Prefixes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#29 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's  supercomputers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#45 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#76 Other oddball IBM System 360's ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#2 Most complex instructions (was Re: IBM 9020 FAA/ATC Systems from 1960's)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#3 Most complex instructions (was Re: IBM 9020 FAA/ATC Systems from 1960's)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#13 GETMAIN R/RU (was: An IEABRC Adventure)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#42 Question re: Size of Swap File
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#3 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#48 Pentium 4 SMT "Hyperthreading"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#18 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#14 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#41 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#53 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#55 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#12 Multics Nostalgia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#56 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#15 Replace SNA communication to host with something else
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#92 "blocking factors" (Was: Tapes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#52 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#0 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#2 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#10 hollow files in unix filesystems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#17 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#7 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#8 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#11 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#46 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#75 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#7 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#8 Is AMD doing an Intel?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#13 Hardware glitches, designed in and otherwise
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#20 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#23 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#60 Mainframes and "mini-computers"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#44 ibm icecube -- return of watercooling?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#52 Bettman Archive in Trouble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#7 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#9 More about SUN and CICS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#12 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#19 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#22 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#23 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#27 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#29 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#30 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#37 IBM was: CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#4 HONE, , misc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#7 HONE, , misc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#1 misc. old benchmarks (4331 & 11/750)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#3 misc. old benchmarks (4331 & 11/750)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#4 misc. old benchmarks (4331 & 11/750)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#9 Avoiding JCL Space Abends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#59 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#1 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#16 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#28 TPF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#48 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#59 AMP  vs  SMP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#27 Beyond 8+3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#29 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#10 Mainframe System Programmer/Administrator market demand?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#14 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#15 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#67 3745 & NCP Withdrawl?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#17 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#19 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#23 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#71 Tubes in IBM 1620?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#77 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#79 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#0 big buys was: Tubes in IBM 1620?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#24 CPU Impact of degraded I/O
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#33 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#35 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#61 Another light on the map going out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#64 IBM was: VAX again: unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#56 Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#65 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#5 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#48 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#50 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 20:20:58 GMT

John Ahlstrom writes:

I was not present at the creation of the Amdahl corp or machines,
but my understanding is that Amdahl wanted to build a non-360,
Cray killer inside IBM, but IBM said it had to be a 360.  Amdahl
left, decided that there were 100 billion little green reasons to
build a 360 and did so.  This is not really contradictory to your
story, but is a little bit different.

there was acs-1 .. and then acs360 for gene:
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs.html

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 00:00:38 GMT

oh, and some slight drift

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1051390174167&p=1012571727288

Computing's dying breed
By Tom Foremski
Published: May 20 2003 18:30 | Last Updated: May 20 2003 18:30

Once, pundits predicted that the mainframe computer was a dinosaur
heading for extinction. These huge classics of the corporate computing
world were reaching the end of the line and would give way to the new
generation of server-based systems.

..snip..

But IT workers with mainframe experience are getting older. A study by
the Meta Group last year found that 55 per cent were over 50, compared
with fewer than 10 per cent of those with Unix or Windows NT server
skills.

..snip..

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 11:58:57 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

If you are interested, how do you get into it?

i took a 2hr introductory to fortran ... then got a student job over
the summer writing 1401 MPIO for 360/30, then got a job being
responsible for the os/360 system at the university. random refs about
1410 MPIO (tape<->UR front end for 709) ... and re-implementing on
360/30 ... i think it was one of those somewhat make-work/learning
since the 360/30 could be run in 1401 compatible & the 709 would be
replaced before too long:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#15 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#17 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#23 MTS & LLMPS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#53 How Do the Old Mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#21 IBM 1401's claim to fame
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#9  Old Vintage Operating Systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#15 S/360 operating systems geneaology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#59 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware
ttp://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#79 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#11 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#34 Assembly language formatting on IBM systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#11 IBM 1142 reader/punch (Re: First video terminal?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#22 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#27 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#31 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#13 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#15 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#47 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#48 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#3 The problem with installable operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#19 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#29 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#30 Hardware support of "new" instructions

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

IBM system 370

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM system 370
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 12:18:04 GMT

"Dean Kent" writes:

So, the real question is: What point are you trying to make, or what
is your real question?  Code written in 1970 will run on a zSeries
machine today.  There are many applications running that were coded
10 or 20 (or more) years ago.  There are many of those older
programs that will also run on a PC under the Hercules emulator,
running MVS 3.8.  There are still quite a few large corporations
that use mainframe systems, and still a number of companies
writing/maintaining applications for those corporations (CA, BMC,
Compuware, and others).  There are a lot of folks who spent their
entire careers writing code for S/360, S/370, S/370XA, S/390 and/or
zArch systems, and there are still people working (like myself) who
continue to write code for them.

and as i'm found of pointing out ... most of the 360s and the low-end
and mid-range 370s were all "micro-coded" machines ... aka the
implementations were not all that different from the current crop of
"mainframe" emulators (like hercules) running on intel platforms.

late 70s/early 80s there was a project to switch the large number of
different micro-code engines to 801/risc ... including the low-end and
mid-range 370 (aka like for the follow-on to the 4341) .. which
eventually got killed (although there are a number of 801/risc chips
as support processors in various places today). there has been a related
mainframe thread playing out in comp.arch & a.f.c.:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#3 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#4 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#6 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#7 A Dark Day

some past refs to migrating all the corporate micro-engines to 801/risc:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#43 Golden Era of Compilers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#69 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#39 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#70 Pipelining in the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#19 PowerPC Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#63 Sizing the application
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#81 McKinley Cometh
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#20 MVS on Power (was Re: McKinley Cometh...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#14 Z/OS--anything new?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#61 Who wrote the obituary for John Cocke?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#6 Who wrote the obituary for John Cocke?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#2 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#3 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#5 Card Columns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#7 what is the difference between ALU & FPU
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#43 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#55 Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#56 Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions

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

IBM system 370

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM system 370
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:29:04 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:

You mean they still have actual 801's or direct descendants
still in production ? By this I mean NOT POWER or PowerPC.

romp and power w/o cache consistency. a big issue in original
801 was never having cache consistency supporting shared memory
multiprocessor model.

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

Columbia U Computing History - New stuff

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Columbia U Computing History - New stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.kermit.misc
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:32:59 GMT

"Douglas H. Quebbeman" writes:

IIRC, the term had not been coined and in usage prior to its
application to the CDC 6600, generally ackowledged as the
first supercomputer...

Granted, it may well have been faster in relation to the
other hardware of the day to deserve the moniker, but it
still seems somewhat revisionist to apply the term to a
machine that early...

while cray has been referred to as father of supercomputer,
GAM has been referred to as the grandfather. minor ref:
http://www.llnl.gov/vcm/interviews/norman_hardy_1.html
which is posted to from the acs page:
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs.html

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

Which monitor for Fujitsu Micro 16s?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Which monitor for  Fujitsu Micro 16s?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:59:03 GMT

shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) writes:

My favorite monitor was TOPS-10, but I don't know how you'd run it
on a Fujitsu.

my first monitor was the MPIO that I got to re-implement on 360/30
... minor recent ref in another thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#8 A dark day

all I had was a short description and the actual running binary from
the 1401 ... but no actual code. I got to design the complete monitor
from scratch, all the feature/function, device drivers, storage
management, tasking, i/o interface, etc. and write all the code. The
requirement was that it produce the same tape from cards that the 1401
version would produce ... out out from tape to punch/printer the same
as the 1401 version.

the next was cp/67 (control program 67) and cms (cambridge monitor
system) from the people at 4th floor, 545 tech sq ... in part because
they shipped all the complete source ... and I could rewrite any piece
of it. misc 545 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

os/360 was a little more difficult since you didn't have the
capability for rebuilding the whole system from the original source
... although component like HASP ... had the complete source and
allowed some amount of latitude.

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:20:31 GMT

bbreynolds@aol.comedxedl (Bruce B. Reynolds) writes:

Have original decks of first programs written for 1620, Fall 1963:
thirty-nine years and counting. Have maybe 90% percent of all source
code which I have written/supported since then, backed up three
different ways in machine-readable form, plus lots of hardcopy of
technical support material.

a bunch of stuff that I had from 60s & 70s backed up on three
different tapes ... unfortunately all three tapes were in the same
tape library. there apparently was some glitch in the tape library and
some operator managed to mount all three tapes as scratch tapes
... and poof all gone.

random past refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#76 Disks size growing while disk count shrinking = bad performance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#57 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?

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

instant messaging

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: instant messaging
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:29:43 GMT

Tom Van Vleck writes:

I don't remember such facilities in the initial versions
of CP/CMS or TSO in the early 70s.

i don't know about tso ... but cp/67 had it in all the versions i used
(from jan. 1968). note that this was done at csc, on 4th floor, 545
tech. sq, by some people that had also worked on ctss.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

when ed (at csc) did internal network support, vnet/rscs, the support
was added to propagate the instant message command thru the network ...
so instead of

msg userid abcd....

it became

msg vnet msg nodeid userid abcd.....

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

two pi, four phase, 370 clone

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: two pi, four phase, 370 clone
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 20:44:09 GMT

two pi was a 370 clone manufactur ... a subsidiary of phillips. In the
spring of 1980 there were 120 relogoed two pi systems installed as
NCSS 3200 and 100 two pi systems. NCSS was a cp/67 time-sharing
service bureau that had been formed in the summer of 1968 by some
people from cambridge science center and others.

doing some search engine of two pi ....

brief mention of two pi in a bio:
http://www.tracecenter.org/docs/fccadv/report990430.txt
http://wireless.oldcolo.com/course/dewayne.txt

two-pi acquired by four-phase, feb. 1981:
http://www.four-phase.org/pictures/EricFernandez/scratch%20pack%202-81.pdf

the above mentions bill ferguson having ten year anniversitry with
four-phase

I still have to check to see if it is the same bill ferguson who i ran
into at RSA conference 3-4 years ago, marketing keykos

general four phase alumni site:
http://www.four-phase.org/

misc. keykos refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#10 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#59 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#4 markup vs wysiwyg (was: Re: learning how to use a computer)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#41 Segments, capabilities, buffer overrun attacks

misc ncss refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#10 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#59 Blinkenlights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#51 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#55 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#44 cp/67 (coss-post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#69 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#56 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#61 The next big things that weren't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#37 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#15 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#17 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#68 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 cp/67 35th anniversary

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

instant messaging

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: instant messaging
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 20:42:05 GMT

Tom Van Vleck writes:

One of the things that some inter-user messaging tools
had to deal with was how to prevent messages from arriving
when you were printing out a document.  The Multics and
CTSS versions had the property that your runoff output
could be splattered by a friendly hello from someone,
unless you remembered to defer communication before
loading the good paper.  Did CP/CMS messages only print
out at the command prompt?

you could "set msg off" ... when you were doing script copies
of stuff on the 2741 that you didn't want mangled; however it
wasn't queued ... sender got a response that message was off.

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

Spam Bomb

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Spam Bomb
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 12:08:36 GMT

i would claim that the internet is common infrastructure, somewhat
akin to the highway system (and some of the past information
superhighway analogies). huge numbers of people contribute to the
financing of the common infrastructure ... and it is possible for
individuals to abuse their share of the infrastructure ... akin to
18-wheelers abusing the highway network.

In part, this is because that actual use is hardly metered, and
therefor it is possible to design strategies (like spam) where actual
use is one hundred times or more larger than the direct financial
contribution to their share of the internet (aka fully loaded cost of
huge spamming is more than 100 times larger than the price charged
the spammers). One might make the analogy to people growing rice in a
desert ecology because the price they pay for water is less than one
cent on the dollar of the cost of providing the water.

Somebody claiming to have spewed out over 200 million spams per day
(120 million spams per 12 hrs) is analogous (but multiplied by factor
of 100 or more) to "overloaded" trucks on the nations highways
... threatening the infrastructure integrity because of the excessive
payloads.

some discussion of highway costs being directly proportional to
18-wheeler loading (even tho cost of building and supporting highways
is amortized across all vehicles ... and not strictly levied only on
18-wheelers)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation

so there is strictly ingres loading restrictions .... with enormous
fines and loss of driving privileges for threatening the integrity of
the internet infrastructure (and some analogy for compliance like
truck weighing stations).

other discussions of spam and/or the internet "wild west"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#13 A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#14 blackhole spam => mail unreliability (Re: A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#15 blackhole spam => mail unreliability (Re: A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#17 Payments as an answer to spam (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#18 Payments as an answer to spam (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#19 Payments as an answer to spam (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#20 Payments as an answer to spam (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#33 Spam's Being Used For Identity Theft And Blackmail, Symantec Says
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#27 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#28 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#29 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#30 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#31 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement

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

MVS 3.8

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MVS 3.8...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 12:41:44 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

In my continuing experiments in sleep deprivation, I have run across a
simple but completely stupifying puzzle with an IBM mainframe.

It seems there aren't any Usenet groups for IBM mainframes (why not?)
unless I just don't have them on my server.

ibm had its own internal network ... based on vnet/rscs ... that was
larger than the internet until about mid '85. ibm also subsidized
this bitnet and earn .... university networks using similar technology
... although bitnet & earn tended to use the jes drivers with vnet/rscs
rather than the native ones. misc. bitnet/earn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

the internal network started doing computer conference in the early
'80s using mailing list technology (i've been blamed in the past for
being responsible for some of it) ... which evolved into listserv on
bitnet/earn and now have similar things on other platforms (listserv,
majordomo, etc). in the early to mid-80s something called toolsrun
evolved on the internal network that shared many of the
characteristics of usenet ... with the ibmpc conference getting large
amounts of traffic. minor toolsrun refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#5 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#33 LISTSERV(r) on mainframes

bitnet mailing lists are where many of the mainframe oriented
conferencing started. many of them are now gatewayed to usenet in the
bit.listserv. hierarchy although there are misc. other usenet groups
like comp.lang.asm370 and comp.os.tpf. bit.listserv.ibm-main is quite
active.

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

smp 2.4.20-13.9 ext3fs problems?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: smp 2.4.20-13.9 ext3fs problems?
Newsgroups: redhat.kernel.general
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 13:43:39 GMT

i just tried smp 2.4.20-13.9 and almost immediately after boot & login
... started getting a whole bunch of ext3fs error messages on a scsi
(hardware) disk array. I rebooted to 20.4.20-9 ... and it cleaned
stuff up and seems to have recovered w/o any problem.

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

IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
 monopoly
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 14:34:12 GMT

William Hamblen writes:

Slightly different derivation, though, a bottom being the flood plain
near a watercourse.  Bottom land is fertile because of deposition of
silt during the winter floods and is desirable for agriculture if it
stays dry during the growing season.  Soggy bottoms are, well, too
wet to plow.

also slew/slough ... many i've seen referred to are former river beds
where the river has changed course. there are also a number of other
definitions for slew ... along with alternate spellings.

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

Spam Bomb

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Spam Bomb
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 19:11:21 GMT

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#17 Spam Bomb
so doing a similar analysis to that of fuel tax & road costs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation

aka ... effectively the cost of building and maintaining roads is
based on use/loading by heavy trucks. a majority of that cost is
underwritten by fuel tax against everybody. However, if the costs were
really born by the entities responsible for the cost ... then the fuel
tax would be removed from all but heavy trucking ... and the tax for
heavy trucking possibly increased to $20/gal (in order to accurately
reflect direct cause and effect between the reasons for the costs and
the payment of the costs).

Now, things that are heavily transportation related, like food
distribution, could see significant price increases. However, again,
this is akin to zero sum budgeting ... everything that directly incurs
costs are directly charged proportional to the cost incurred. aka
... the current amortizing of road costs across all vehicles heavily
subsidizes heavy trucking as well as products heavily dependent on
heavy trucking.

so doing similar analysis with regard to spamming. Lets say the
current infrastructure has 60 million accounts paying $20/month plus
another $5/month amortized consumer computer related purchases .. for
a total of $25/month or maybe $1.5b/month.

Hypothetically, lets say that spammers are consumming on the order of
25 percent of that infrastructure ... or roughtly equivalent to
$375m/month ... mostly attributable to the top ten spammers. Using
direct prorated charging ...  those ten spammers should be each
charged $37.5m/month (along with a corresponding reduction in the
end-user monthly cost).

For argument sake, lets say that the spammers are actually being
charged on the order of $5k/month (or less) rather than $37.5m/month
and possibly are earning maybe $50k/month. In effect, to clear
possibly $40k/nmonth or less, they are taking advantage of other
peoples' resources to the tune of nearly $40m/month .... aka they are
in effect burning $1000 of other people's money for every dollar they
are realizing. This is an horrendously, enormous inefficiency ... and
has no plausable economic benefit to the overall industry.

In effect, they are doing it because they can.

In the heavy trucking industry ... they may only be subsidized to the
tune of 10:1 .... aka other entities are paying $20 (to build roads
that are heavy truck capable) for every $1 earned in the trucking
industry.  Now even with such heavy subsidy, there are still instances
where entities try and take further advantage of the infrastructure,
like heavily overloaded trucks that create real threats to the
integrity of the infrastructure. This gives rise to at least the
weigh stations to try and curb the worst abuse.

The issue in the ISP industry is that the cost of the weigh-station
equivalent probably can't be born by the spamming industry. While they
may be creating the economic burden on the infrastructure to the tune
of $375m/month ... they possibly are only bringing in $500k/month
(this is the horrible, nearly 1000 to one, mismatch between the burden
that they are placing on the infrastructure vis-a-vis the limited
economic benefit realized from such activities).

In the heavy trucking world ... a subsidy of ten-to-one is possibly
deamed tolerable because it achieves indirect subsidies of other
(possibly desirable) objectives (that happen to be transportion
related), like cheap(er) food.  However, it is hard to understand a
subsidy infrastructure of something like thousand-to-one with no
observable general benefit.

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

tankers and computers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: tankers and computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 20:52:09 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:

The Norwegian tanker and container fleets covers literally all of
the globe. I participated in making a data network for one of the
major bulk carriers; and they had large offices in all the "evil
axis" countries except North Korea. It made it very difficult to get
a fast,secure line to their ships; for cryptographic equipment would
be embargoed; and would probably be stolen within a month of
arrival; and ship-based satellite was too slow and cumbersome.

i recently ran across an old reference from the late '70s wondering
whether there were more tankers than there were 370/168s. This was
someone supposedly looking at data processing systems on tankers in
conjunction with using them to improve collision avoidance ... the
claim was that something like 10 percent of the inventory was lost
each year to collisions ... oh, and supposedly there were something
like five times as many tankers world wide as there were 370/168s.

i recently ran across somewhat cryptic domain name in my web log
... looking it up, it turned out to be from a norwegian company that
builds deep sea oil drilling rigs.

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

TGV in the USA?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TGV in the USA?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 19:37:59 GMT

bob smith writes:

Hey Lars,
You are exactly correct, we have a dire need of such a capability here
on the right coast too. Between boston and ny, between NY and phillie,
between phillie and washington DC, maybe as far south as Norfolk but
that could go as far south as Charleston.

West of DC area, or Philly area or NY area, same deal, we have people
commuting from WVa to DC area for work. They could use TGV mass
transit.

We have folks commuting from Western MD into baltimore.  Same as on
the left coast, we need better trans.

i thot there was a thread about one of the auto/bus manufactures buying
up various rail systems and shutting them down ... circa 20s ... but i
can't seem to find the reference.

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

AT&T versus Treating customers right

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AT&T versus Treating customers right
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 05:26:59 GMT

CBFalconer writes:

I can easily derive it:

Stamp                         0.37
10 mins data entry @ 10/hr    1.66
Office boy 2 mins @ 6/hr       .20
====
2.23
Overhead at 500%             11.15
=====
Cost of billing              13.38

and I kid you not on the overhead figure.  The gazillions for the
CEO and other thieves are only a small portion of that.

since pre-paid was mentioned ... it is possible that they were also
including the part of processing the payment and the whole data
processing infrastructure to match a remittance against a billed
account (aka billing implies processing a payment). There is also the
infrastructure that is tracking what needs to be billed ... which also
can go away with pre-paid cards.

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

TGV in the USA?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TGV in the USA?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 13:15:40 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

I was thinking about building a new rail system where one didn't
exist.  Have you driven along these highways through
any commercial center?  There isn't much expansion room except up.
And around here, bridges seem to be so expensive that even
maintenance is beyond our public pocketbooks (but that's yet
another political issue).

Forget about underground; the northeast is at the end of a
boondoggle called the Big Dig.

then there are all the public lobbying groups. when they widen 101
from four lanes to six (and sometimes eight) and put in the new
section south of el camino (south san jose, about where the ibm, oops,
hitachi plant site is), publlc lobbying insisted that the ten mile
coyote valley section from about bernal to cochran be only four lanes.

this created huge traffic jams in the morning going north at cochran
where it narrowed from six to four lanes and in the evening going
south at bernal where it narrowed.  for several years this added
something like 15 minutes to the morning and evening compute for
possibly tens of thousands of people ... say 30minutes/day, 20k
people, 10khours/day @ $10/hr, something like $100k/day people costs,
$2.3m/month, $28m/year (much higher if use $100/hr). There was some
suggestion that the state send a bill for the additional people costs
to the public lobbying group each month.

last week there was big celibration that the coyote valley section was
retrofitted with the two additional lanes at enormous additional cost
(compared to it having been built at six lanes to begin with).

san jose's light rail is another issue. the original specs called for
break-even use volumes based on elapsed commute times being dependent
on light rail having off-grade crossings .... aka light rail didn't
have to share intersections with automobiles. however, somewhere along
the way, there was a decision to save on construction costs by not
implementing off-grade crossings at numerous places. This resulted in
significant increase in transit time (people in south valley commuting
to computer businesses like intel, amd, etc) ... making it much less
attractive as a commuting method (which adds more cars to the
intersections, slowing things down even more).

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

AT&T versus Treating customers right

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AT&T versus Treating customers right
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 13:21:53 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

Why do they need to track?  From what I understand the pre-paid cards
do, the tracking is a real time usage subtracted from a number.
That is accessed at the beginning of a call to tell the customer
the remaining minutes and then the number is decremented (I presume)
each minute of on-line use.

Why isn't that done with regular accounts?  These long distance plans
are so f**king complicated, the companies have to keep track of
a gazillion variables added five different ways.

but that is real time ... not long term ... there is no necessity in
keeping line-item billing that you might have with stuff like long
distance. and of course, if you have line-item billing ... then you
also need to have enough operators in the customer call center to
handle people who want to dispute specific line-items. all goes away
with pre-paid.

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

instant messaging

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: instant messaging
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 13:47:56 GMT

cstacy@dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:

It was:

SE{ND} 'text' [USER userid ... | OPERATOR {integer}] [NOW | LOGON]

CP/67 (and then vm/370) as previously mentioned was just "msg userid".

a facility was then created where a program could specify the capture
of instant messages (actually all messages). This was used by
vnet/rscs on the internal network to capture:

msg vnet msg nodeid userid ...

and provide instant messaging across the network.

It was also used to implement the early automated operator programs in
the 70s (capturing all messages and automating various operator
functions) ... well before the hllapi stuff on PCs capturing 3270 data
sreams.

the author of rex(x) also used the facility to implement a multi-user
space war game. basically, the program drove the 3270 screen, enabled
programmed message interception and communicated with others via the
instant messaging mechanism. It included the (internal) syntax for
both local users ... via "msg userid" and remote users via "msg vnet
msg nodeid userid".

misc. past space war refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#10 5-player Spacewar?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#26 Help needed on conversion from VM to OS390

the author of CMS pipelines also used it in the "toy program" ... see
description towards the end of following post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party

it was also possible to "spool" all messages, effectively capture all
incoming and outgoing keystrokes in a file. In the early '80s, for
nine months, I had all of email and instant messages captured as part
of a study on computer mediated communication ... which turned into a
stanford phd thesis comparing my different communication patterns
(telephone, face-to-face, email, and instant messaging). misc. refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

the 20th anniversity of adding the 1000th node to the internal network
is comming up june 10th (aka the internal network was larger than the
arpa/inter net until about mid-85):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)

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

Offshore IT

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Offshore IT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 14:25:25 GMT

doug@BKASSOCIATES.NET (Doug Fuerst) writes:

Obviously Bruce, John is an American as am I. And I agree with
him. At some point American companies should stop thinking
"globally" and think about what is best for their country. It is not
a good idea for America to export all these jobs offshore, no matter
what you or anyone thinks about "thinking globally." Just my
$0.02.........Sorry....

in the early '70s, i think it was the boston globe had a long article
about scandanavian economic policy. this was during a period when a
number of new england shoe & garment factories were being shutdown and
the work moving offshore.

basically, the govs. examined the work/value proposition and made a
specific policy decision to discourage all industries where the value
of the work was less than the target standard of living (not what the
workers were paid, but what the value of their work was) and
concentrate on encouraging industries where the work value could
sustain the target standard of living ... modulo industries deamed
strategic (which effectively would have to be subsidized).

in the early '90s ... at the leading edge of the internet revolution,
there was some report published that half of the advanced degree
technical area graduates from US universities were non-US ... and
there were a number of areas where it might be 80-90 percent non-US.
related studies from census and others in the early '90s made claims
like entry level college text books had been dumbed down three times
between the 60s and the early 90s ... and that half of the (us) 18
year olds were functionally illiterate.

Some of the problems were temporarily masked during the 90s where high
school kids could get high paying computer jobs and could skip getting
advanced education. However, as things contracted it starts to become
much more of an issue of are there enuf people that are skilled enuf
to do the jobs. It is not just a pay issue ... but also a skill issue.

there were some jokes about the whole US high-tech industry was being
proped up by foreign workers and that the US k12 education system was
starting to take on some characteristics of 3rd world country. If the
high-tech industry was being proped up by foreign workers, working in
the US, then it wasn't all that far of a stretch to start looking at
foreign workers working in foreign countries.

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

electronic-ID and key-generation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: electronic-ID and key-generation
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 14:48:06 GMT

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:

It's pretty common to do the key generation in the factory when the
card is first personalized, but it can also be done by the user.

a number of cards have key generated at personalization (after the
chip is in the 7816 carrier and embedded in plastic). This is
frequently because the chip lacks the "power" to perform adequate
random number generation as part of generating the key pair. In these
situations, the key is generated in an external source and injected
into the card.

One could postulate that a number of these cards/chips also implement
RSA digital signatures as opposed to DSA or ECDSA for the same reason,
RSA infrastructure use of random numbers can be defined as noches as
part of messages from an external source. DSA/ECDSA require random
number as part of the actual signing process (as well as part of key
generation).

the aads chip strawman specified a ECDSA key-pair that was generated
in the chip:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
and the private key never leaves the chip and is never divulged.  The
implication is that the key generation and the signing process
requires a fairly robust random number generation implementation in
the chip.

This is part of a certificate-less, non-PKI public key infrastructure.

where the key-pair is generated during power-on/test in the chip fab
(before the wafer is even sliced & diced). The objective is to bind
the integrity characteristics of the chip to the public key ... aka

can you say with any degree of certainty the real integrity
characteristics of any chip inside a 7616 carrier embedded in a piece
of plastic?

... I may have no idea who has the card ... but given that
a specific public key authenticates a digital signature produced by
the card ... some assumption can be made about the integrity level of
the environment that produced that digital signature.

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 01:24:01 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

I think this ha just come up here.  Some 3174's could be token ring or
ethernet attached, but that's the control unit.  The terminal still
required a control unit.  Actually, I mentioned the 3278 a while ago
--technically it was a terminal and control unit in one box, but still
logically two devices.

3278 was sort of the 3277 replacement. original 3272 controller had
lots of the electronics in the 3277 keyboard and head. for the 3278, a
lot of the electronics were moved out of the individual (3278)
terminals and into the shared 3274 controller (making each terminal
somewhat less expensive to manufactur).

how 'bout 3275 terminal ... slightly related:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#57 Why did they make FORTRAN so hard to parse?

misc. 3272/3274 references ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#6 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power

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

Offshore IT

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Offshore IT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 01:28:11 GMT

Peter Flass writes:

Unfortunately there's not much of an "infrastructure" to software
development.  Certainly almost none compared to hardware.   You don't
have huge investments in factories, transportation systems, supporting
industries, etc.  All you need is some trained people and some now
inexpensive computers and you can do the work anywhere.

one of the characteristics of knowledge work is that it is relatively
distance insensitive ... not a lot of transportation expenses &/or
delays.

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 13:50:51 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:

MVS (or rather JES) flushes the job if there is anything wrong
with the input or output dataset allocations, to avoid wasting
thruput: no way anyone is going to waste time changing or fixing
anything without editing the deck, or changing the actual names
and allocations, and resubmitting.
There is some amount of error recovery if things go not too badly
wrong during job execution, but that is very dependent on the
hardware configuration, and relies on there being another path
available on which to redrive the I/O.

and the jes-based nje networking flushes network stuff if the
origination and destination nodes both weren't in the local table.
this started out having nodes defined in what was left over in the
255-entry psuedo device table (nominally maybe 160-200 entries
available). this is one of the reasons that a real mvs/nje node could
be trusted as an intermediate node on the internal network.

somewhat after the time the internal network exceeded 1000 nodes, the
mvs jes limitation was raised to 999 nodes. the 20th aniv. of the
1000th node on the internal network is coming up. 10jun2003 ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)

the other reason that real mvs jes nje could be trusted as an
intermediate node (or even barely any kind of node) was that that nje
header jumbled bunch of networking and non-networking together
... which led to imcompatibilities between different releases of mvs
jes ...  and system crashes.

the base internal networking that started it all was vnet/rscs which
had its own native drivers ... but because of the way it layered
things, it could also run multiple different kinds of nje
drivers. this was leveraged to have lots of jes nje release specific
drivers that did canonical nje header rewrites ... aka ... when vnet
had a direct connection to a real mvs jes system ... the appropriate
nje driver in vnet was started to try and minimize mvs crashes due to
incompatible headers.

by the time bitnet started ... it appeared that the only drivers
shipping to vnet customers where standard nje drivers. this possibly
minimizedq the negative comparison of native nje compared to native
vnet ... and of course it couldn't work the other way around ... jes
ever running vnet drivers ... this was a really novel concept to vnet
from the beginning ... and didn't even show up in arpanet until 1/1/83
cut-over to ip protocol. misc. bitnet/earn
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

as to disk error recover ... when i started playing in the disk
engineering lab ... mvs had a 15 minute mtbf if brought up in
environmnet with engineering "test cell". It was a year or so
rewritting input/output supervisor to be absolutely bullet proof
... nothing a engineering device could do resulted in system crash.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 14:13:25 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:

The last PC I saturated (CPU, memory and I/O bandwidth)
for extended periods was a Pentium Pro 200 with 256Mb
of RAM, FOUR Ultra SCSI buses, TWO 100BaseT ethernet
cards and TWO film/plate setter i/fs. IIRC the 32b/33
PCI infrastructure appeared to run out of gas at around
70 Mbyte/sec (hey this was early 1997 !). How does that
compare with the bandwidth a 4381 was able to offer
it's peripherals ?

the multi-user, 4381 was frequently somewhat closer to traditional
transaction activity ... something like how many independent 4k disk
operations can be handled per second. this was the point of my old
claimed that disk technology had a ten times relative system thruput
decline in roughly a 15 year period between late 60s and early 80s.

the disk transfer rate has gone up significantly ... but the increase
in 4k accesses per second hasn't increased that much. can two current
20gbyte disks do more 4k operations per second than 16 3380 disks.

in part, the programming and use patterns over the last 20 or so years
have had to change to accomodate the change in the relationship of
relative thruput of different parts of system (lot more attention to
caching and large contiguous block transfer).

3380 had avg. access of 16mills (arm+rotational delay) ... you
might have current drives at 1/2 to 1/4th that ... so two current
drives would have 4-8 times thruput of a single 3380 ... but possibly
only 1/8th the aggregate thruput of 16 3380 drives.

some 4381 processor speed numbers (i.e. faster/later 4381 about the
same as 370/168-3):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#12 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#27 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033

ye old 67/3081 comparison reference (if disk technology had kept pace
with processor and memory, 3081 should be supporting 50 times as many
users as 67, not four times):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 Virtual Memory (A return to the past?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#46 The god old days(???)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#4 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#62 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#11 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#8 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#9 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#16 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#21 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#21 PDP10 and RISC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#50 Alpha performance, why?

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

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 14:30:53 GMT

Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> writes:

What's the problem with them being obsolete?  Would it be better
to use new, state-of-the-art computers, with the software all
rewritten and unproven?  If I was going to fly on a shuttle, I'd
want the same old computers they've been using for years.  Those
computers have been quite reliable, and I haven't seen any claims
that they've contributed to serious mission problems.

there were some past references to it possible taking several years to
get new components rated for use in conjunction with flights were there
are people on board.

reference to an old post from 1984 in a computer conference (century
forum) discussing date issues coming up in 2000 ... specifically with
respect to fixing a "date" problem in the MTU box on the shuttle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#24 BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve Y2K)

obsolete is normally not just that it is old ... but whether or not it
can do the job ... and/or whether it can be done cheaper/better some
other way. replacing with something bright, shiny, new is somewhat
akin to disposible generation  and needing a new automobile every
year.

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

electronic-ID and key-generation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: electronic-ID and key-generation
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 15:07:01 GMT

"Peter Gullberg" writes:

I'm my work, I often come across PKI-idealists, who argue that
key-material must be generated inside the smartcard to achieve
"true" non-repudiation etc., I agree on this for PKI-only
applications.

But for a electronic ID project, where a goverment or other
institution want their primary goal is to provide electronic
identification of end-users, and to guarantee the identify of this
person. If a customer produces their own

actually asuretee ... certificate-less and non-PKI is generating the
key at the factory to be able to bind the integrity characteristics of
the chip to the public key.

lots of govs. and financial instutions have chips under armed guards
until after personalization ... and sometimes even up until delivery
of the card to the end-entity. conjecture that this is at least
possibly because of possible exploits involving substituting
couterfeit chips for the real ones (even before chips are embedded in
the 7816 carrier ... it is somewhat problematical that eyeball
examination of a chip can tell real ones from counterfeit).

all the trouble with the armed guards .... making sure that a
counterfeit chip can't be substituted for a real one ... and then they
let a person carry it around in their wallet ... or leave it on their
desk. the govs and other institutions want to know that there is some
level of integrity and trust with using the method of electronic
authentication. that involves some aspect about the trust and
integrity of the individual components. as a result they tend to
specify things like EAL5-high certifications.

some manufactur may claim that they have gotten an EAL5-high
certification for a specific chip .... but that typically involves
only a dozen chips. Then some claim is made that the thing that you
might be carrying around in your wallet is in any way similar to the
dozen or so chips that were actually evaluated. they tend to specify
extremely tamper-resistant components .... lots of attention that the
readers at security checkpoints haven't been compromised ... or that
ATM cash machines are armored and under surveillance. That still
leaves something of a gaping hole about whether the card in your hand
contains a real chip or a copy chip.

There are very significant issues with regard to non-repudiation ...
whether or not the key-pair was generated on-chip, is possibly one of
the least significant.

In general for electronic id .... they want to know that the process
has some high level of integrity and trust .... aka high-security
biometric readers under constant surveillance and some degree of
confidence that you can't duplicate the biometric readings. The whole
issue isn't whether or not you can't (re)generate a new biometric
reading (rather than the one you got at the factory) ... but whether
the reading is consistently reliable. copy/counterfeit chips are
somewhat similar to fake fingers or fake eyeballs or readers that have
been compromised and give wrong readings.

The real issue isn't whether or not you generated your own key .... it
includes whether or not the card you are presenting does really
contain a chip with the acceptable integrity characteristics ... and
can be trusted.

previous post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#29 electronicc-ID and key-generation

whole bunch of posts with regard to non-repudiation:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki15 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki18 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#paiin PAIIN security glossary & taxonomy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#5 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#6 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#7 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#11 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#12 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#13 Words, Books, and Key Usage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#14 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#5 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#30 Employee Certificates - Security Issues
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#37 Legal entities who sign
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#38 Legal entities who sign
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#59 e-Government uses "Authority-stamp-signatures"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#57 RealNames hacked. Firewall issues.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#39 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#41 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#11 FREE X.509 Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#38 distributed authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#37 Security Issues of using Internet Banking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#69 Digital signature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#68 Are you really who you say you are?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#67 Does Diffie-Hellman  schema belong to Public Key schema family?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#77 Does Diffie-Hellman  schema belong to Public Key schema family?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#40 Beginner question on Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#38 Convenient and secure eCommerce using POWF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#16 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#19 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#19 Message (authentication/integrity); was: Re: CRC-32 collision
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#29 Message (authentication/integrity); was: Re: CRC-32 collision
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#37 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#29 application of unique signature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#38 entity authentication with non-repudiation

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

electronic-ID and key-generation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: electronic-ID and key-generation
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 17:30:59 GMT

"Peter Gullberg" writes:

must be generated inside the smartcard to achieve "true"
non-repudiation etc., I agree on this for PKI-only applications.

basically forget all the witch doctor mumbo-jumbo you may have
heard associated with PKIs and certificates.

basically electronic-ID is authentication. authentication boils down
to one or more of:

• something you have (tokens)
• something you know (secrets)
• something you are (biometrics)

chips supposedly are used in tokens to allow verification of the token
to be done electronically ... and plausably also to make it harder to
counterfeit the token. The reason that gov. and financial institutions
specify things like EAL5-high certification is that they really want
it to be difficult to counterfeit tokens (also why they frequently
have armed guards during transport from chip fabrication to
personalization center).

the issue is, given the overall infrastructure, to what degree of
certainty can the institution really believe its you? this not only
involves things like exploits counterfeiting one or more of the three
authentication methods .... but also the whole infrastructure that
takes part in verifying the authentication information.

for instance, x9.84 standard for biometrics .... has issues with
biometrics values .... when they effectively are used in shared-secret
mode (aka central registrty, remote matching, etc) that they have the
highest level of security. evesdropping a biometric value and later
being able to electronically reproduce the biometric signal (as in
shared-secret) opens the infrastructure up to impersonation (aka it is
much easier to change a compromized PIN that it is to change a
compromized thumb print).

so a real issue with buying off-the-shelf card and doing your own key
generation ... has little or nothing to do with key gen ... it has to
do with how can the institution trust a user presented token as part
of something you have authentication (aka as in the key is suppose
to be a unique representation of the token ... as opposed to the key
having some unique intrinsic magical value of its own). This is in
the context of institutions that nominally require armed guards as
part of addressing exploits associated with copy/counterfeit chips
being injected into the environment.

past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#29 electronic-ID and key-generation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#35 electronic-ID and key-generation

misc armed guards &/or counterfeit/copy chips
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#cstech12 cardtech/securetech & CA PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss9 KISS for PKIX .... password/digital signature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#x959risk4 Risk Management in AA / draft X9.59
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#54 Does "Strong Security" Mean Anything?

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

Whatever happened to 'University Computer Centers'?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Whatever happened to 'University Computer Centers'?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 19:45:03 GMT

Joe Morris writes:

Mainframe systems haven't "gone the way of the buggy whip" yet.  They
may no longer provide casual-user interactive service (especially
in an academic environment) because the personal computer does a much
better job, but they're still around doing the undramatic gruntwork
for which they are best suited.  They just aren't quite as obvious
as they once were, both because they're physically smaller and aren't
getting the publicity they once did.

also, a lot of the industrial strength web & other online things
tend to be mainframes and/or very mainframe like.

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 20:59:14 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

I thought you were the one who said MVS had the ability to recover from
bad filenames, missing files, etc, without stopping the programs.

a lot of it has been heuristically derived over extended period of
time ... there has been some amount of additional changes between the
70s and now.

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

Calculations involing very large decimals

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Calculations involing very large decimals
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 21:40:57 GMT

"David Wade" writes:

They sure could backspace, but the mechanism did not like it. I
rememver a program that spaced across the full width of the carrage
and then backspaced all the way back. The poor 2741 was not a happy
bunny and jumped about (physically that is, it always backspaced
properly) much to the disguist of the Ops Staff in the next
room. Perhaps it disturbed their afternoon nap???

note that formated documents for underscores and some highlighting
(overprinting) would use backspaces on the 2741.

somewhere in the back of my mind was the stuff leading up to change in
the password mask used by cp/67 on 2741 ... basically which three
characters to print for the mask and whether more than three was
needed ... but i'm having a hard time drudging the discussion up from
memory.

i just checked an old cp/67 manual and there is no mention there of
the mask.

so quick check of vmshare archive ...
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

there is related discussion with regard to "password blotting" on
glass ttys
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=ASCIPSWD&ft=PROB&args=password+mask#hit

mask with apl:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=CNY010DK&ft=NOTE&args=password+mask#hit

misc. other discussions from vmshare archive:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=NOECHO&ft=PROB&args=password+mask#hit

there are misc. other discussions related to password masking
in the vmshare archives.

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

graceful recovery when runs out of paging?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: graceful recovery when runs out of paging?
Newsgroups: redhat.kernel.general
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 22:14:50 GMT

i'm running rh9 on dual 1ghz with gig of memory and gig of paging
defined. typically there is 400-500mbyte memory and couple k of
paging. mozilla (at least 1.4b) seems to have some sort of memory leak
...  i was pushing mozilla pretty hard and things were getting slower
and slower ... looked at the monitor and everything was full (1gig of
memory and 1gig of paging) ... and not too long later everything
locked up/stopped and i eventually had to force hardware reset and
reboot.

I would have preferred it giving me some opportunity to kill mozilla.

i've since doubled page space (which just means that it would take a
little longer for mozilla to fill it up) ... and have taken to
periodically killing/restarting mozilla when it seems to getting too
stressed.

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

TGV in the USA?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TGV in the USA?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 02:53:08 GMT

CBFalconer writes:

Well, I will put it post WWII at least.  I can still remember
seeing trains arive snow-covered in the middle of winter,
sometimes as much as 4 to 6 hours late, after a 3000 mile run from
Vancouver to Montreal.  In Amtraks defence they are running so few
trains that failing to wait for a connector could involve several
days delay for the passengers.

I use to commute to north station on the B&M. some of the old timers
remembered taking it in the 50s when speed would hit 80mph. by the mid
'70s with no track maintenance ... there were ties you could stick you
finger into ...  the speed limit was 15mph in sections. there was one
section out near acton that was known as the fraight car bone yard
because of so many derailments ... even with 5mph speed limit ... due
to horrible track conditions and no maintenance.

there were stories about east coast railroads that highlighted that
during the 50s & 60s there were significant executive bonuses and
stock dividends at the same time there was something like 20 years
worth of deferred (aka no) track maintenance.

couple past posts on the subject:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#75 Apology to Cloakware (open letter)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#7 Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

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

Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 03:03:47 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

I've been lamenting the loss of low-capacity drives for awhile now.

I used to take a stack of 2GB drives and get far better performance
than I can get these days, because management will only buy a single
20GB drive (or larger) instead of 8 9GB or 18GB drives.

there were some at SHARE and elsewhere that attempted to get ibm to
produce a "fast" 3380. basically it was a microcode load that only
allowed access to something like 25 percent of the surface area
... resulting in better avg. arm access. The trouble appeared to be
that they found that it was really only attractive to the bean
counters at their corporations if it actually was priced more than a
regular 3380.

The economics were somewhat ... take a $5million dollar computing
installation; if you spent an extra $100k on regular disks ... and
only kept each disk partially full, you could get an extra 20 percent
thruput. Saving the $100k on the extra disks ... translated
effectively into 20 percent overall loss (lower total system thruput)
of the $5million dollar investment ... or approx. $1m.

To make it work, it had to be an official product that was marketed as
a fast 3380 for more money than a regular 3380 (even tho it only had
25 percent the capacity).

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

A Dark Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Dark Day...
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10,alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 13:33:18 GMT

"John R. Strohm" writes:

Back in 1970, when my Dad was doing refresher work at UT Austin, we
would periodically walk through the old Computation Center, and look
through the glass wall at the CDC 6600.

A few years later, when I started at UT Austin, they had a 6600 and
a 6400 in there.  Several years later, they got a pair of Cyber
170s, but it was still recognizably a CDC installation.

A few years ago, I walked through there, and suddenly noticed that
there weren't any Cybers in there any more.  Now it was a couple of
racks of something that looked NOTHING like what I remembered, and
no consoles at all.

I was shocked.

I mean, I grew up with those icons, those dual tubes.  Somehow, I
had the idea that there should ALWAYS be CDC-style dual tubes on the
other side of that glass wall, and a wall of tape drives.  But they
were GONE.

when we were doing hsdt
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
we managed to collect a lot of HYPERChannel gear from one source or
another. Some of the stuff that nominally were adatpers for DEC or
Crays just went into the warehouse.

In the late 80s we were spending some amount of time talking to (ut
austin) balcones research (out on burnet past research) that had a
cray (and some number of vaxes) and managed to convince some bean
counters that we could donate a bunch of the stuff from the warehouse
to balcones.

this is also about the time I did the rfc 1044 support
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx3.htm#1044
for the mainframe tcp/ip product and was doing some tuning at cray
research.

last time i was back at UT austin ... was for my youngest graduation.

Several months ago I had a tour of the SLAC machine room ... which
used to be filled to overflowing with mainframe gear. Now it is about
half empty. There are several rows of racks .... each rack having a
whole slew of linux boxes, each row is labeled with its grid cluster
name.

random rfc 1044 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#14 mainframe tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15 tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#59 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#52 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#45 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#31 general networking is: DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#27 Beyond 8+3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#67 3745 & NCP Withdrawl?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#28 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#77 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lyn