List of Archived Posts

2007 Newsgroup Postings (06/09 - 06/22)

IBM 360 Model 20 Questions
nouns and adjectives
John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
nouns and adjectives
Zork and Adventure
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Zork and Adventure
nouns and adjectives
John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Buying a used desktop PC?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
Can individual TCP packets travel along different route or ... ?
Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Bulkiest removable storage media?
Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
nouns and adjectives
OSI abandoned!
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Bulkiest removable storage media?
nouns and adjectives
Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
nouns and adjectives
IBM 8000 ???
Boyd, Metcalfe, and Amdahl all in one article
Future of System/360 architecture?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
OSI abandoned!
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Bulkiest removable storage media?
X.509 weakness?
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Future of System/360 architecture?
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Rate Monotonic Scheduling (RMS) vs. OS Scheduling
Capacity and Relational Database
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Capacity and Relational Database
Capacity and Relational Database
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
nouns and adjectives
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Operating systems are old and busted
nouns and adjectives
Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All
Operating systems are old and busted
Operating systems are old and busted
Operating systems are old and busted
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
What if there were two Internets?
The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Operating systems are old and busted

IBM 360 Model 20 Questions

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 360 Model 20 Questions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:56:52 -0600
ArarghMail706NOSPAM writes:
"R14 pointed to the return address"?

Pointed to or contained?

I thought contained.

But its been 30 years. :-)


was the return address and/or pointed to the return location

my q&d translation of gcard ios3270 to html
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html

os/360 call/save/return conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#50

note that os/360 call/save/return conventions ... have been extended with the program call and program return instruction ... mentioned in previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#71 IBM 360 Model 20 Questions

allowing the call/return to/from routines residing in different virtual address space

5.7 Access-Register Introduction
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/5.7?DT=20040504121320
10.34 Program Call
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/10.34?DT=20040504121320
10.35 Program Return
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/10.35?DT=20040504121320
10.36 Program Transfer
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/10.36?DT=20040504121320
10.37 Program Transfer With Instance
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/10.37?DT=20040504121320

... in additon there has been hardware support added for a linkage-stack mode of operation:

5.10 Linkage-Stack Introduction
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/5.10?DT=20040504121320
5.11 Linkage-Stack Entry-Table Entries
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/5.11?DT=20040504121320
5.12 Linkage-Stack Operations.
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/5.12?DT=20040504121320

and old posts mentioning ios3270 (browse, fulist, and/or Theo)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#41 IBM 4361 CPU technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#60 Living legends
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#61 Living legends
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#108 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#50 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#76 Is a VAX a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#8 Theo Alkema
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#9 Theo Alkema
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#5 What goes into a 3090?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#79 Fw: HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#25 Early computer games
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#40 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#20 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#32 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#12 Why are there few viruses for UNIX/Linux systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#10 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#63 creat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#14 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#39 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#43 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#45 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#47 What is written on the keys of an ICL Hand Card Punch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#0 EREP , sense ... manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#15 S/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#2 Mount a tape
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#50 TSO and more was: PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#51 other cp/cms history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#62 Large Computer Rescue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#5 Track capacity?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#8 Track capacity?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#13 Track capacity?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#6 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#8 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#19 Improving 360 Addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#21 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#8 should program call stack grow upward or downwards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#27 A Day For Surprises (Astounding Itanium Tricks)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#44 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#45 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#26 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#31 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#39 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#46 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#31 MB to Cyl Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#24 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#18 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#25 What is "command reject" trying to tell me?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#45 SVCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#39 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#64 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#65 History - Early Green Card
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#78 What happened to the Teletype Corporation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#5 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#25 IBM 360 Model 20 Questions

nouns and adjectives

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 05:42:22 -0600
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
CIX won out, and we got the commercial exchange-based Internet we have today. This model buried the NSFnet model from 1983.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#67 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#68 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#69 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#70 nouns and adjectives

so internetworking & high-speed networking were disruptive technologies ... the commercial interests were promoting it in the 80s & 90s ... but were really grappling with how to make the transition ... since they had fixed costs & fairly high run rate ... that was supported with lots of usage based charges. they weren't going to see two-order magnitude increase in bit usage ... w/o comparable two-order magnitude drop in usage charges. transition to two-order magnitude increase in bandwidth usage required evolution of bandwidth hungry application ... which wouldn't happen in the high price per bit environment ... so controlled incubator environments were reasonable solution. however, if the best managed ... there were still going to be glitches during distributive technology transition.

in parallel with that, while tcp/ip provided the technology basis for internetworking ... there were some formidable operational and business issues associated with internetworking. i've claimed that NSFNET provided incubator for gestation for bandwidth hungry applications ... but also represented testbed working on various operational issues with respect to internetworking. business issues related to internetworking is totally different domain. The "peering" agreements (different commerical/operational domains interacting thru internetworking) still represent significant issues ... which tend not to spill over into public view ... however even in the past couple yrs there have been incidents where commercial entities have not been able to resolve issue for renewing "peering" agreements ... and there would be situations where bits would no longer be flowing between two specific domains for days or weeks while they resolved their (peering) issues.

The other force going on in this period was whole COTS philosphy. In the 80s and 90s there were starting to be greater and greater push for using COTS ... as being more efficient and cost effective. NSFNET backbone was much more of a temporary technology incubator ... which then had to transition to COTS ... that once the major issues were worked out ... use of COTS facilities would be much more cost effective for gov. operations than custom, non-COTS operation. Thru the 80s and 90s, congress passed various legislation promoting COTS as well as pushing gov. originated technology into commercial envirornment (commercializing the technology to make the technology more efficient as well as accelerating commercial environments ability to be more competitive). Some of this came under the heading of "technology re-use" bills ... pushing gov. invented technology into the commercial arena. Some of the technology re-use bills also involved relazing some of the anti-trust provisions when there was to be cooperating commercial interests involving use of gov. invented technology.

for slightly other drift, one of the other areas COTS was involved starting in the late 70s and early 80s was the (gov) update of SGML for documents ... recent x-over involving subject of SGML (markup languages) and self describing data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#24 Why self describing data formats:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#25 Why self describing data formats:

misc. past posts mentioning the whole gov. involvement/promotion of COTS, technology re-use, disruptive technologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#40 Comparison Cluster vs SMP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#44 Al Gore and the Internet (Part 2 of 2)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#32 How Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Systems make society vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#38 How Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Systems make society vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#80 Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#82 Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#15 Large Banking is the only chance for Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#6 unix permissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#26 Good news for SPARC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#51 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#20 shared memory programming on distributed memory model?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#15 Device and channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#40 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#63 Microsoft to design its own CPUs - Next Xbox In Development
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#14 Year-end computer bug could ground Shuttle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#35 Friday fun - Discovery on the pad and the software's not done
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#16 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#57 How would a relational operating system look like?

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:07:45 -0600
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Sure but decent multi-tasking does not require multiple cores, none of my boxes have multiple cores and they all multi-task very nicely.

but in the past ... there seemed to have been a progression of chips getting faster and faster ... so they could do more work ... or run the latest version of some application that turned out to significantly more complex and required significantly more processor resources.

some of the issues now is that (at least with synchronous clocks and other issues) it is getting harder and harder to make single chips operate at higher & higher frequency (limits of elapsed time for signal to span physical distance from one side of chip to another ... also discontinuity between speed that chip operates at and latency to get data out of memory chips).

so the current direction is to increase computing thruput by going to multiple (independent) cores on the same chip ... this can be used to emulate multiprocessor, multi-chip operation ... especially if there are multiple independent tasks to keep the different chips busy. however, in personal computers with increasingly complex applications ... the single application thruput will no longer see improved thruput. this is starting to increase pressure on complex applications to move to multi-thread/parallel execution ... to be able to obtained increased thruput from the multiple, independent cores. This is much more than the operating system dispatcher/scheduler being able to efficiently multitask independent applications (whether they are working in single processor/core or multiprocessor/multicore environment).

recent post with mention of story where Intel's Pat Gelsinger had to explain this to Gates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

recent post mentioning news item that future generations of windows will be redone for multi-core operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

other recent posts about the "disruptive" parallel/multi-core technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#3 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#9 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#29 Just another example of mainframe costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#30 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#31 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#16 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#44 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#57 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#21 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#24 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#42 Keep VM 24X7 365 days
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#13 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#28 SVCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#39 old tapes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#10 Beyond multicore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#23 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#57 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#9 21st Century ISA goals?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#34 GA24-3639
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#40 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#52 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#20 Does anyone know of a documented case of VM being penetrated by hackers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#66 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#67 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#30 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#84 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#95 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#96 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#97 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#6 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#16 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#23 Another "migration" from the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#33 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#38 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#19 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#25 Computer tube production years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#49 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

nouns and adjectives

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:15:02 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
We were in the OS development group. We had to be able to know how our customers and their users used systems without ever experiencing ourselves. You may think that this is an impossible thing to do...well, it ain't.

however, i've joked that possible the majority of the new applications came out of customers shops ... in some ways this was disruptive technology stuff ... and people w/o the direct need/requirement weren't likely to anticipate.

this is where some of the current major application product offerings didn't actually come out of vendor development shops ... but (development) originated in some customer shop ... and was only later transferred to some vendor development group (and I would joke that development groups weren't actually responsible for the original development ... but were more like maintenance organizations that were responsible for possible +/- five percent change per annum).

The explosion of personal computers in the 80s ... saw an explosion in the number of (customer/end-user) invented new applications. There was a similar period in the late 60s and early 70s ... associated with the (relative) explosion in the number of (360) computers being used by customers ... and corresponding increase in new/different applications.

Zork and Adventure

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Zork and Adventure
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:26:24 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
I remember HAUNT having that restriction, but not ADVENT. I cannot recall if there was a DUNGEON on our system.

re:

the copy of (CMS) ADVENT from tymshare (which had ported the fortran from pdp10 ... that they had gotten from a stanford machine ... and ported to vm370) ... had a restriction ... game was limited to 100 moves first shift ... unless you had the secret password.

i started distributing ADVENT executable on the internal network ... and would offer anybody that finished (obtained 300pts) the source.

a couple old emails mentioning getting advent copy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405b

from this old post (with numerous other advent references)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#18 The History of Computer Role-Playing Games

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:33:18 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
I've always thought of "parallel" an aspect of the hardware architecture, and not the software.

note x-over explanation/comment in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#2 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

Zork and Adventure

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Zork and Adventure
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:02:50 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405b

from this old post (with numerous other advent references)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#18 The History of Computer Role-Playing Games


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#4 Zork and Adventure

random other refs ... from long ago and far away



Date: 04/14/78 09:39:55
To: wheeler
From: someplace in the UK

hi.
do you know how to work out the second key to be allowed onto
adventur as a wizard ?
    the first key is grate
the second key seems to be based on a formaula something like

do i=1 to 5 by 1;
.. = mod(..,5)+1;
.. = mod(..,10)-abs(array(..)-array(mod(..+1,5)+1))*mod(..,10)
         k  = mod(..,26)+1;
pswd(j) = abet(k);
         j = j + 1;
end;

that's as for as i got.

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


Date: 05/17/78 10:12:22
To: wheeler
From: someplace on the east coast

Lynn --
I've picked up a version of the source to ADVENTUR.
This version appears to be slightly older than the module,
and was converted from FORTRAN to PL/I.
You will be getting 4 files:
RANDU FORTRAN
ITIME ASSEMBLE
CAVES FILE
ADVENT PLIOPT
The last 2 files are huffed with the garble option.
The encryption key used was 'afs' (note --- lower case!!).
Enjoy.


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

and from an old CMS filelist (no longer actually have the actual file, just reference to the file):

 &1 &2 ADVENTUR MODULE    D1()V 65535     5    40   4/11/78 19:59

... snip ...

nouns and adjectives

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:53:51 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
internetworking is totally different domain. The "peering" agreements (different commerical/operational domains interacting thru internetworking) still represent significant issues ... which tend not to spill over into public view ... however even in the past couple yrs there have been incidents where commercial entities have not been able to resolve issue for renewing "peering" agreements ... and there would be situations where bits would no longer be flowing between two specific domains for days or weeks while they resolved their (peering) issues.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#67 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#68 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#69 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#70 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#1 nouns and adjectives

a couple past posts mentioning problems/issues cropping up with peering agreements (raising possibility of internet partitioning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#28 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#32 How does the internet really look like ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#4 Privacy issue - how to spoof/hide IP when accessing email / usenet servers ?

and with respect to wild, wild west reference in one of the above posts ... recent reference to traffic controls:

Time Warner Cable Implements Packet Shaping
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/06/10/0645232.shtml
TIME WARNER ANNOUNCES INTRODUCTION OF PACKET SHAPING TECHNOLOGY NATIONWIDE
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,18468495

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:47:13 -0600
Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.Invalid> writes:
cmd-1 & cmd-2 & cmd-3 & cmd-4 & cmd-5 & wait

note that gnu make supports -j ... which will start as many parallel threads as possible (or you can give it a number to limit the max. number of parallel threads).

i do somewhat the above with script that does wget for 40-some different URLs and then checks for differences between the previous and the current. "new" URLs (that appear on the pages) are then fired off to be loaded in browser tabs (sometimes may be a couple hundred). cycling thru the tabs (locally) is lot faster than clicking and waiting for each to load, one at a time, sequentially.

there is a little heuristics needed here since some sites look for too many gets coming too close together from the same ip-address. however, it is possible to spread these out between gets for other servers tabs that have already loaded (this does require some coordination since multiple different origin sites can have URLs pointing to the same destination site). ... the gets are also running in the background ... so can be looking at browser tabs in the foreground while other tabs are still loading in the background.

i can delete the tabs/pages that aren't interesting and then do tab-all bookmark of the rest. then extract the bookmark URLs for other purposes ... somewhat alluded to in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#30 tab browsing

next on wish list is browser that is really multi-threaded that can take advantage of multi-core aka different tabs are somewhat multi-threaded ... but managed within the browser task ... so only takes advantage of single processor ... things can get a little sluggish over hundred or so tabs especially while still loading ... which additional processors would help.

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:22:12 -0600
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
The most obvious answer, I think, is that there is no minimum number of minutes during which one can assume that authenticated user is still the person typing on the keyboard.

this is some of the stuff all around the naked transaction/payment metaphor ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

in the e-commerce specific scenario ... a couple recent references/posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#68 nouns and adjectives

SSL is somewhat session oriented that is used to "hide" (encrypt) the sensitive information (credit card number, other transaction details), while being transmitted over the internet ... but otherwise leaves the transaction information (naked &) vulnerable thru the whole rest of the numerous business processes.

the x9.59 financial standards process "armors" (authentication plus integrity) the actual transaction ... so that it (and the related information) is "protected" for the complete lifetime that the transaction (& related information) may continue to exist.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:40:07 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
note that gnu make supports -j ... which will start as many parallel threads as possible (or you can give it a number to limit the max. number of parallel threads).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

trivial makefile ...


urls := $(shell cat urllist.txt)

.PHONY: RUP $(urls)
RUP: $(urls)
$(urls):
        wgetlist.sh $@

...

invoke make with -j specifying the above make file; urllist.txt contains a list of URLs ... with no parameter for -j ... it will fire off wgetlist.sh for each of the URLs and waits for them all to finish. something like "-j 10" will only keep a max of ten going concurrently.

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:40:55 -0600
Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.Invalid> writes:
The hypervisor only traps privileged instructions and does any fixup necessary to make the virtual machine believe the instruction was executed natively. All non-privileged instructions execute natively without causing any traps. Changes to the hypervisor may be required for new hardware, but it can also make the guest OS believe it is running on older x86 machines. New MS OSes and releases are typically tested now in virtual machines instead of real hardware because it's a lot more convenient for people to setup virtual machines than real machines. Virtual machines can also easily be migrated between real machines, once any pending I/O has been serviced.

hypervisor can also trap invalid/unimplemented instructions. the emulation of the privileged and invalid instructions don't necessarily have to match the hardware being used.

this was used to implement 370 virtual machines in cp67 (running on 360/67). 370 virtual memory hardware defintion didn't exactly match 360/67 ... and there were some new 370 instructions that didn't exist in 360.

370 virtual machine support was operational and running on regular basis a yr befor 370 hardware was operational.

a few recent posts mentioning cp67 l, h, and i "level" updates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#20 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#12 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#16 when was MMU virtualization first considered practical?

that effort also involved some amount of distributed development between endicott (where the hardware was being built) and cambridge science center ... with network link for exchanging files ... misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

the support for multiple level source update was also developed in that period ... supporting the different kernel source "levels". a few recent posts on cms multi-level source update
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#12 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#33 Even worse than UNIX

Buying a used desktop PC?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Buying a used desktop PC?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:32:59 -0600
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
Not necessarily. Some banks will ding the customer with significant late penalties and treble the interest rates on credit cards if the bill is one day late once. Any excuse.

a couple recent items

Fed Proposes Tighter Controls On Credit Card Rates; Congress Considers Bills to Curb Abusive Practices
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/05/fed_credit_cards.html
Are Consumers Kicking the Credit Card Habit?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/06/credit_hooked.html

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:21:06 -0600
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
Complete nonsense. The NT variety of NT has been SMT capable since it came out. Linux is SMP capable. SMP is "in there".

doing some consulting with sequent in the early/mid 90s ... they claimed nearly all the NT SMP kernel scale-up work had been done by them (fine-grain locks in kernel ... rather than spin-locks that blocked large portion of the kernel code, providing little or no incremental thruput above 2-4 processors). this was in-part because sequent had 16-way & 32-way intel smp platforms (supported by their dynix variety of unix).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems

however, at the time they were working on 256-way numa implemention (NUMA-Q, with intel processors) done with SCI

... we had been involved in some of the SCI stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Coherent_Interconnect

at the same time we were involved with some of the FCS ... and also working on ha/cmp scale-up ... old ha/cmp posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and some old email about ha/medusa scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

in the same time frame we were dealing with sequent, we also spent some amount of time talking to convex which were doing SCI-based 128-way exemplar using pa/risc chip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_Computer

somewhat as an aside, the wiki sequent article notes that after ibm bought sequent ... nearly all vestiges of sequent technology has disappeared, except for possibly some stuff contributed to linux.

past posts mentioning smp, tightly-coupled, and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

for other drift, ibm also bought informix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix

when we were doing ha/cmp ... we spent some amount of time with ingres, sybase, informix ... as well as oracle ... old post reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#15

and informix had been doing quite a bit of working tuning informix on (multiprocessor) sequent platforms (somewhat referenced in wiki article) ... in fact, most of the informix people we dealt with were in their portland location (near sequent's beaverton location)

for additional drift ... lots of posts about RDBMS and/or original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#5 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:16:36 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
This is getting really interesting. I'm beginning to understand why history has to repeat itself. People can't tolerate that the "new" thing isn't new. For some reason, they must think it will take away from their glory of "doing it first". This has got to be related to the psychological obsession about "the 10 best" of something.

a lot of multiprocessing/tightly-coupled operations had been kernel programming ... effectively managing a lot of independent operations.

multi-threading has tended to be associated w/application (or at least non-kernel) programming ... but most have tended to be relatively specialized implementions ... like DBMS ... not necessarily general applications (in the mainframe world, some of it was in subsystems that were doing their own multitasking implementations ... to compensate for the native operating system deficiencies ... from 60s ... stuff like CICS and apl\360).

while charlie had invented compare&swap at the science center as part of cp67 multiprocessing fine-grain locking support ... justifying the instruction for 370 required coming up with uses other than kernel multiprocessing support. the result was the description for its use by application (or at least non-kernel) multi-threaded operation. Previously, multi-threaded applications tended to require kernel calls to safely serialize/coordinate the different application threads. Compare&swap instruction allowed some of that to now be implemented "in-line" and avoid the overhead of the kernel calls ... and worked the same, whether the application multi-threading was executing in a non-multiprocessor environment or in a multiprocessor/tightly-coupled environment.

description was written up and appeared in the 370 principles of operation ... version in more recent principles of operation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/A.6?DT=20040504121320

reference in early post in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

lots of past posts mentioning multiprocessing, tighly-coupled, and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:04:54 -0600
oscarptyltd@ibm-main.lst (Clem Clarke) writes:
It's a shame, but unless IBM does do a big rethink on this, and allows small developers some sort of inexpensive or free access to the mainframes, they will die. Allowing a "hobbyist" license for Z/OS, VM and VSE on Hercules would be one way, and what does IBM really have to lose? And the gain would be that they could have many people working at no cost on these systems developing tools and applications to make them better and better.

some related thread drift from another n.g.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#3 nouns and adjectives

that in the 60s and much of the 70s ... lots of the innovation came out of customer installations & datacenters ... since it was the customers that understood the need and requirement ... things like cics, ims, etc. later they were transferred to "development" organizations for product support. in many cases, this is misnomer ... since those "development" organizations are responsible for product maintenance ... not the products "development" (maybe doing plus/minus five percent changes per annum). I've periodically made facetious comments referencing the "term" inflation in using the word "development" applied to organizations that are primarily product "maintenance".

something similar happened with the introduction of the ibm/pc ... large proportion of the "products" originated from end-users (that were faced with the actual problems and understood what kind of solution was needed). vendor product operations tend to have people like software engineers that understand issues about software maintenance ... but rarely have people with the necessary experience that they could see what solution was originally needed.

even before ibm/pc came out ... there were some that had jump shipped from vm/cms (that had been providing mainframe-based personal computing environment) and were implementing some number of CMS applications on other early personal computers. These weren't ports of CMS applications (because the implementation details tended to be totally different), but frequently the look&feel and the solution they provided were the same.

the "OCO-wars" were especially hard on the vm/cms community ... because not only was full source available ... but even maintenance, fixes, etc for customers were shipped as source updates ... based on CMS multi-level source maintenance facilities. Some studies from their period even claimed the number of system (source) updates done at customer datacenters (aka aggregate lines-of-code) was actually larger than the source lines-of-code in the base system.

the high-end of the market is where the (quarterly) revenue/profit ... but all the innovation tends to originate at the low-end & mid-range ... in part innovation requires quite a bit of experimentation, trial&error, etc ... and the high-end is rarely made available for such experimentation.

As a result, some of the other vendors found a need that could filled in the entry/low-end market segment (and long term ... it is frequently the entry/low-end that tends to feed the high-end with the applications that keep the high-end quarterly revenue sustained).

the pre-occupation with quarterly results has been a sporadic topic for at least the last 40 yrs. during periods when there was significant general economic growth ... the generational issues appeared to almost take care of themselves ... allowing the perception that executives could solely concentrate on the quarterly issues. however, this approach somewhat came to roost. i've mentioned before about being at a talk at MIT in the early 70s where Amdahl was asked how he was able to convince the money people to support his new clone computer company. His reply was that there was already something like $200b that customers had invested in 360 applications ... that even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360/370 ... which might be considered a veiled reference to the future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

... (just) that (existing) software application base could keep him in business thru the end of the century.

starting in the early 70s, i had been heavily involved with HONE deployment ... first its original objective to provied "hands-on" environment to branch office SEs with operating systems running in virtual machines ... and then the transition to being primarily an online, interactive environment deploying applications (mostly implemented in cms\apl) supporting sales & marketing worldwide.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

in the mid-70s, I got con'ed into helping with the virgil/tully microcode assists ... including spending time off & on over a period of a year running around the world with the product managers, meeting with business planning & forecasting groups positioning the processors in the market. One of the things that I saw was that the business positioning environment in world trade was somewhat the early stages of what was going to be happing in the domestic market a decade or so later (the HONE tools somewhat gave me perspective of what sales & marketing was doing world-wide ... from the mechanics bottom-up ... where-as all the virgil/tully forecasting was perspective of sales & marketing somewhat from top-down). lots of past posts talking about (both) 360 & 370 microcode:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mcode

Can individual TCP packets travel along different route or ... ?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Can individual TCP packets travel along different route or ... ?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:11:08 -0600
"robertwessel2@yahoo.com" <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> writes:
The abstraction that TCP provides to the applications at the endpoints is that of an undifferentiated stream of bytes. One application sends 1000 bytes, either with a single send() or 1000, and the other application receives those exact 1000 bytes, in the order sent, either with a single recv() or 1000, with no relationship between the sizes of the send()'s and recv()'s. Nor is any of the magic underneath visible or meaningful* to the application, hence the TCP stream looks like a virtual wire or circuit between the two endpoint applications.

reference old rfc discussing difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols (including reference to discussion about the problem/difficiency for TCP)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#28 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#29 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#67 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#72 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#73 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#74 Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols

some of the discussion found in rfc721 ... rfc721 summary from my RFC index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx2.htm#721

as usual ... clicking on the ".txt=nnnn" field (in the rfc summary) retrieves the actual RFC.

Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:17:14 -0600
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
I think the depression is responsible for far more of this than WWII. My mother went through the depression (she'll be 94 next month) and is *exactly* like this. Many friends' parents were a decade or so younger and didn't seem to be quite so, um..., "tight". My mother saved aluminum foil for several uses. My wife looked at me like I had I third eye when I put the aluminum foil away after cooking, at first.

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

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

Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:27:05 -0600
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#17 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

my (younger) brother recently sent me a scanned jpg of old photo when i was 8yrs old ... shows me in high rubber boots (younger cousin is next to me in picture)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lynnat8.jpg

8yrs old, in from the field

i had been out in the field moving irrigation sprinkler pipe ... 3in diameter aluminum ... each section something like 20ft long.

the house was on bank of small river which would nearly dry up by late summer ... but earlier in the yr could get enough water to irrigate around 10acres of alfalfa.

if the ground had just the right amount of moisture ... the mud would really clump ... getting possibly 10lbs on each boot ... at which time, i remember finding it easier to take off the boots and go barefoot.

Farming in the 1950s & 60s
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/water_03.html

from above:
In June 1976, Scientific American magazine called center pivot irrigation systems "perhaps the most significant mechanical innovation in agriculture since the replacement of draft animals by the tractor."

... snip ...

aka before that ... the irrigation pipes had to be manually moved and placed.

hard to find old pictures of the sprinklers and pipe ... did find this pdf file with b&w picture on page 3
http://www.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/uw21_06.pdf

tracks back to original here:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/WaterUse/Images/handline2.jpg

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:28:50 -0600
Greg Menke <gdmnews@toadmail.com> writes:
Please define "master/slave thinking".

lots of early 2-processor kernel (and sometimes even larger number) support only allowed the kernel running on a (specific) single processor ... with all the other processors purely being used for (usually independent) application workload. Sometimes referred to as as asymmetric multiprocessing.

it is a simplification of the common implementation in the 60s & 70s (and frequently well thru the 80s) of a single kernel "spin-lock" ... where the first thing that happened on entry into the kernel was to "spin" on a single lock ... until it was obtained (serializing all kernel operations, effectively kernel almost operated as if there was only a single processor, avoided having to resolve many of the concurrency issues).

for some vendors ... getting reasonably highly parallel operation and support was long difficult road ... and didn't come immediately and/or easily. if some of the highly experienced/skilled kernel developers could take decades to supporting highly parallel ... it might be understandable that it would take application developers a couple decades once they get around to it.

i.e. old email discussion/announcement of VMS symmetric multiprocessing support in 1988
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880324
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880329

in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#46 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?

i.e. VMS symmetric multiprocessing support was nearly two decades after charlie originally invented compare&swap instruction for fine-grain cp67 multiprocessing locking ... and the whole stuff put together how application programs could use it for multi-threaded operation (independent of whether it was running in single processor environment or multiprocessor environment).

past posts in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#5 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:45:05 -0600
R.Skorupka@ibm-main.lst (R.S.) writes:
Key-based solutions exist on mianframe as well as on other systems.

I think it is rather technical, not ethical or organisational issue: It is *easy* to have illegal software on PC, sometimes you are even unaware of it. I mean a lot of small but usefull tools like Windows Commander, archivizers, DVD-burning software etc. etc.

Even if you have some "tools" for z/OS it is simply not so easy to install it on the host - usually several persons are involed, usually someone could ask - "Did we buy it ? How did you get it ?".

From the other hand, people are interested in having some bells & whistles on *their* PC (even company owned), while mainframe is not *their*. It is not *personal*. It's "common".


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#15 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

slightly related recent posts about looking at software piracy (DRM) in the mainframe and PC market space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#59 Peter Gutmann Rips Windows Vista Content Protection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#9 Enterprise Right Management vs. Traditional Encryption Tools

old email about "new" apple lisa announcement and conjecture about the processor serial number being used for software licensing (and piracy countermeasure).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#email830213
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#email830213b
in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#56 old lisa info

part of the mainframe was being able to show in court that something out of the ordinary had to have been done to subvert the licensing provisions (value was worth taking to court). in the PC case, the value of individual copy makes it difficult to justify investigation and bringing to court every individual case.

TPM is the one of the latest in piracy countermeasure (as well as suppose to be countermeasure to software compromises). misc. past posts mentioning giving an assurance talk in trusted computing track at intel developers conference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn1 Assurance, e-commerce, and some x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#3 Is there any future for smartcards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#56 UK Detects Chip-And-PIN Security Flaw
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#23 Use of TPM chip for RNG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#52 Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#36 Maximum RAM and ROM for smartcards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#3 The Chinese MD5 attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#48 Device Authentication - The answer to attacks lauched using stolen passwords?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#37 What does a patent do that copyright does not?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#61 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#63 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based

Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:51:12 -0600
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
It's interesting, my parents were newlyweds and raised their kids (all but old boomer me) during the Depression, and I picked up a lot of cheap^Hfrugal habits from them. For example, I still put sugar instead of syrup on my french toast; I used to save bacon fat to fry my eggs until I was talked out of it a few years ago.

i still make my own syrup ... sugar:water 2-to-1, cup of sugar in 1/2 cup boiling water ... then some "mapleine" flavoring

old cresent/mapleine reference:
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2006

from above:
Mapleine was the company's signature product for much of the twentieth century. Cash-strapped housewives used it as a substitute for maple syrup during the Depression of the 1930s, and it remained popular with cooks and bakers for decades. It was also used as a flavoring agent in commercial cigarette manufacturing. Crescent promoted Mapleine and other products by publishing small cookbooks, with titles such as Mapleine Dainties: How to Make Them, A Guide to Spices: How to Buy Them, Store Them, Use Them, and Pickles and Relishes.

... snip ...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#17 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

slightly related previous thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#79 Working while young

other drift here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#51 Year-end computer bug could ground Shuttle

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:38:25 -0600
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
No. He in no way implied that one cpu had capabilities that the other did not (which defines master/slave). Typically this implies that I/O, for example, can only be done from one of the two CPU's (the master), or that a master schedules work on multiple slaves.

master/slave can be an artifact of the (kernel) software implementation ... aka it is obvious that asymmetric hardware configuration. "attached processor" 370s in the mid-70s ... were additional processors w/o i/o capability, ... however, there have been some number of purely software master/slave implementations (that weren't dictated by non-symmetric hardware).

as an aside, in the 370 attached processor scenario ... most of the kernel implementations was fully symmetrical kernel operation in all respects ... except when it came to actually initiating an operation ... and the kernel would check if the current processor had the specific attached channels ... and if necessary create a request item that was queued for the other processor.

this was actually a special case of the 370 multiprocessor operation. standard 360 and 370 multiprocessors didn't actually have shared "channels" ... but it was simulated by having device controllers with multiple channel connections ... configured at identical channel addresses on all processors. however, it was possible to have some devices w/o multiple channel coinnection ... in which case only one processor in the configuration might be able to perform i/o operation to the device. in which case, all the standard multiprocessor kernel operation required testing if the specific processor was able to perform an i/o operation to a specific device ... or it needed to be handed off to some other processor (that was capable of performing the operation). The "attached" processor scenario then becomes the case where all device i/o operations might have to be handed off to another processor.

360/67 multiprocessor hardware was the exception ... where all processors were capable of accessing all possible channels. this machine also had virtual memory support and was the platform that cp67 implemented virtual machine support. this was also the platform that charlie was working on at the science center when he invented compare&swap instruction when he was working on fine-grain multiprocessing locking (the mnemonic compare&swap was chosen because CAS are charlie's initials). misc. past posts mentioning multiprocessor, tightly-coupled, and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#5 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#19 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Bulkiest removable storage media?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Bulkiest removable storage media?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch.storage
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:54:09 -0600
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
per byte it must be some kind of flopy. Just think of a gigabyte worth of floppies would look like. OTOH don't. Probably punched paper tape, though.

maybe half gigabyte ....

another of the experimental ideas ... from the person responsible for 801
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

... in addition to the recent mention of the 16+2 track head (i.e. single head that simultaneously would read/write 16 data tracks while tracking two servo tracks) ... old email with 16+2 track/head reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?

some technology, sort of combination from 2321 datacell and old time disks with single arm moving between platters. it had several hundred floppies all rotating on a single (horizontal) shaft. r/w head moved back&forth along the spindle ... and when the r/w head got into position at the correct floppy ... shot of compressed air (2321 sort of had something similar as part of inserting strip back into its bin) would separate the floppies so the head could be inserted (had sort of leading thin blade that entered first). there was a problem (i don't believe was ever resolved) with the floppy material streching because of the constant spinning (this effort was in the mid-to-late 70s ... after floppies had been invented in san jose ... but before seeing use in PCs).

misc. past post mentioning this large number of floppies on single spinning spindle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#48 Competitors to SABRE?

old posts mentioning 2321
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#41 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#51 Competitors to SABRE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#78 HMC . . . does anyone out there like it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#63 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#16 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#22 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#84 Questions on IBM Model 1630
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#26 : Re: AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#40 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#3 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#9 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#36 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#39 DASD history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#22 1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#5 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#6 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#41 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#18 FW: Looking for Disk Calc program/Exec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#0 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#23 Volume Largest Free Space Problem... ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#32 Software for IBM 360/30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#50 non ECC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#6 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#46 Hercules 3.04 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#29 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#30 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#31 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#31 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#32 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#31 MB to Cyl Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#19 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#38 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#51 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#64 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#64 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#74 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#49 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?

Does socket represent an interface between ... ?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:56:26 -0600
"Albert Manfredi" <albert.e.manfredi@nospam.com> writes:
Just as an aside, I think the OP (original poster) was asking about typical UNIX sockets, and I think that the 7-layer ISO/OSI model is just as valid for IP as it was for ISO protocols. As a conceptual tool, it works well in both cases.

We have been over this topic in this usenet group before. I think that while the names might be a little different, and while OSI is a 7-layer model vs a 4-layer model used in early RFCs, there really is no big disconnect there. ISO protocols might have been abandoned, but the 7-layer OSI model is as good as any conceptual model for digital comms, IMO.


OSI model lacks any internetworking layer ... that was one of the problems with OSI ... aggravating the situation was that ISO had procedures that precluded working on any (networking) standards that failed to conform to OSI model ... which precluded anything that supported internetworking ... and for that matter for anything that supported LANs/MACs; aka LANs/MACs have an interface/api that sits somewhere in the middle of layer3/networking (above layer2/layer3 interface but below the layer3/layer4 interface) ... and the internetworking layer (ability to internetwork multiple networks) doesn't exist at all in OSI.

part of arpanet and OSI evolving thru the 60s and 70s was support of a homogeneous network (i.e. network of networking nodes). so some number of the IETF RFCs reflect the homogeneous arpanet/OSI type of approach. However, within the IETF community in the 70s ... it was realized that networking wasn't going to be sufficient and work started on internetworking. about the time that ISO finally passed the initial OSI standards in the early 80s ... IETF was converting from homogeneous kind of arpanet networking to internetworking (the big 1jan83 conversion to tcp/ip)

then thruout the 80s, OSI continued to hang on ... somewhat as the difference between networking and internetworking started to slowly permeate the conscience of wider community (even tho still in the 1990 time-frame there were still various gov. mandates to eliminate the internet and have it replaced with ISO/OSI).

possibly, part of the issue of looking at TCP/IP compared to OSI at a purely protocol level ... is that the complexities of internetworking are as much at the operational and business levels ... as the technical/protocol level (altough the finer nuances of internetworking technical/protocol have to be in place to enable the operational and business caracteristics).

misc. past posts mentioning OSI and/or attempt at high-speed protocol standardization effort in ISO ... which was precluded based on violating OSI model (aka support for both LAN/MAC as well as tcp/ip internetworking).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

a few recent posts discussing 1) tcp/ip being the technology basis for modern internet(working), 2) NSFNET backbone being the initial operational basis for modern internet(working) and 3) early CIX (commercial interchange) being the business basis for modern internet(working)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#43 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#38 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#69 How the Internet took over
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#70 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#37 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#67 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#68 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#69 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#1 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#7 nouns and adjectives

Does socket represent an interface between ... ?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:57:37 -0600
"Albert Manfredi" <albert.e.manfredi@nospam.com> writes:
You actually made that same comment last time around, IIRC, but it's not so. The OSI Network Layer, Layer 3, *is* what early RFCs such as RFCs 791 and 793 Figure 1 in both cases, call Internet Protocol layer. Also RFC 1112, Section 5. In each case, this Network Protocol ties together different local area networks, of any type.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#24 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?

Old email from long ago and far away. x3s3.3 was ANSI chartered ISO standards group responsible for "OSI" level 3&4 standards work.

Date: 27 Mar 89 21:41:07
From: wheeler

Quicky note on ansi x3s3.3 and hsp meetings last week. More information coming as time allows.

A "high speed networking & transport protocol" proposal was submitted at the x3s3.3 meeting. After various discussions it was decided to submit a "study proposal for high speed protocols" to the x3 committee ... the work product of which will be some number of protocol proposals.

Problems with the original protocol proposal were numerous. Many people objected to it violating the OSI reference model (and in fact it is not possible to submit a protocol proposal to X3 that violates the reference model ... although it is possible to approve an ANSI standard that does violate the reference model ... but that takes some fine work ... case in point are the LAN protocols ... especially with LAN/MAC coming up thru level 1 and 2 well into level 3).


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

i.e. it has been possible for ANSI (and/or IEEE) to pass a standard (like the 802 stuff) that violate OSI (just that they couldn't do work on such standardization violating OSI within ISO chartered group... it wasn't possible to have a standard work item accepted for standards work; interesting distinction). x3s3.3 had to object to the hsp work item on grounds that it violated OSI ... 1) supporting internetwork protocol, 2) going directly from transport to LAN/MAC, bypassing level 3/4 interface, and 3) supporting LAN/MAC interface.

other posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

and for past light hearted post (by somebody else) in this n.g. also long ago and far away ... but should also be in one of the online archives
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.protocols.iso
Date: 1 Apr 88 00:00:01 GMT
Posted: Fri Apr 1 00:00:01 1988

WASHINGTON -- In a simultaneous announcement that took the computer industry by surprise, OSI leaders today said that they were abandoning their effort to promote the OSI Protocol Suite in favor of the existing US Department of Defense (DoD) ARPANET Protocol Suite.

The official reason cited for the decison was a new report from the Office of Technology Assessment stating that the manpower required to fully implement and test even the few OSI protocols that are now defined would consume the entire output of American university computer science programs for the rest of the century, and that printing and distributing the necessary protocol specifications would consume the entire American and Canadian paper supplies for the next five years.

However, one high-placed source speaking on condition of anonymity said, ''The whole OSI thing was a practical joke one of the guys cooked up a few years ago. Nobody ever expected anybody to take it seriously. I mean, who would believe an organization supposedly dedicated to tearing down barriers to free and open communications between computers when it's run by a former director of the National Security Agency? I guess computer people are a lot more gullible than we thought. We kept dropping hints, making the whole thing more and more ridiculous. We hoped that people would eventually catch on, but it didn't work. Finally, our consciences got to us.''

In related news, officials at the Mitre Corporation in Bedford, Massachussetts reported that one of their employees, as yet publicly unidentified, froze ''as solid as stone'' when he heard the announcement. Medical experts have as yet been unable to communicate with the victim or get him to relax his facial muscles, which are reportedly locked into what was described as an ''enormous grin''.


... snip ...

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:45:12 -0600
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
The scheduler will very briefly acquire spinlocks on certain resources (typically the ready-to-run list) to ensure atomicity with respect to other processors executing the same instruction stream.

actually some of these won't use traditional "spinlocks" at all ... but typically the compare&swap instruction ... a purpose for which it was originally invented. when i did smp kernel support ... including the work on my (mainframe) resource manager (which included the scheduler and dispatcher) several decades ago ... i used compare&swap. misc. past posts mentioning smp, tightly-coupled, and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

here is post from last yr referencing a (mainframe) redbook (category of technical oriented publications) on effective "scale-up" for some typical workload enivronments as number of processors go from 1 to 64.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#41 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons

other posts in the same thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#30 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#43 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#47 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#5 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#19 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#22 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

nouns and adjectives

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:09:02 -0600
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
For even stricter authentication the bank host can request that the browser also produce a signed certificate (called client auth) as a credential and will drop the connection of the client certificate cannot be successfully validated or is not signed by a party that the bank host trusts. With this type of authentication, username and passwords are not necessary to access the bank host, the certificate (which will be protected by a password on the client system) is sufficient to authenticate the user. It's not done today for on-line banking because generating, signing and distributing certificates is not particularly easy nor straightforward.

recent posts effectively about credentials/certificates getting the issues related to identity, authentication, and authorization confused
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#22 A crazy thought?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#23 Identity resurges as a debate topic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#24 Why self describing data formats:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#26 A crazy thought?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#27 A crazy thought?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#32 SSL Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#79 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#9 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#64 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#70 nouns and adjectives

i.e. i was recently contacted by some of the identity players about beefing up our merged security taxonomy & glossary with a lot more related to identity.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

so when we were called in to consult with this small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions ... they had this technology called SSL ... but it was server to client authentication. For the thing called "payment gateway"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

... that actually handled the transactions between the commerce server and the financial infrastructure payment infrastructure ... we had mandated "mutual" authentication (something that hadn't been implemented at the time). this required both parties to present digital certificates.

it was in this exercise that we realized that the digital certificates were actually obsolete, redundant and superfluous ... because both parties already had recorded information about the other party ... including the other party's public key. the resulting use of the (redundant and superfluous) digital certificates was purely an artifact of leveraging the already existing SSL software libraries ... which had implicit, builtin need for digital certificates. misc. past posts about SSL and SSL digital certificates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

later we did some work in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement in the mid-90s to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. the result was the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

we had realized from the earlier work on payment transaction support with the small client/server startup that had this SSL technology ... that the relying party had all the necessary information and records about the clients ... and therefor digital certificates were redundant and superfluous ... and so promoted a certificate-less public key authentication infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless

something similar was done for the Kerberos pk-init draft standard ... just specify that a public key is recorded in lieu of a password ... which is sufficient to perform (certificate-less) digital signature authentication. It was later that heavy lobbying was done to have the pk-init draft include a certificate mode of operation (although one of the prime instigators responsible has subsequently contacted us and apologized for how wrong he was).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

something similar has been done for (certificate-less, public key) RADIUS (the other major internet authentication protocol in use across the world today)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius

part of the x9.59 standardization process ... also recognized that the payment transaction has in use by dozens of processes spanning numerous different business entities ... a purely "session" oriented protocol protecting transmission of data across the internet wasn't going to be sufficient ... since the transaction was exposed as a large number of different points. So the other aspect of x9.59 fianncial standard transaction, was the actual transaction was "armored" on an end-to-end basis (from origin all thru way thru the multitude of different business processes and entities that might touch the transaction). This eliminated the possible vulnerabilities that occur in purely session oriented operation. Lots of discussion about the difference in threats, exploits, and vulnerabilities between a session oriented paradigm and an armored transaction paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

the other part of the x9.59 financial standards work was the observation that a certificate-based transaction implementation added enormous payload and processing bloat to an existing payment transaction ... increasing the payload size and the processing overhead (for just the certificate part) by a factor of 100 times
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

as part of the x9.59 work in the 90s ... there was also work on the AADS chip strawman. Some other hardware token oriented work going on in the period were making claims that truely secure hardware tokens were too expensive ... and so they had to compromise with other kinds of chips. This led to implementations like the YES CARD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

we somewhat facetiously claimed that we were going to take a $500 mil-spec part and aggressively cost-reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude ... so the incremental cost of adding such a chip to an existing magstripe card distribution was significantly less than the fully loaded cost of personalizing and distributing magstripe cards.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

the key pair for the chip was generated in the fab as part of the standard power-on/testing done before the wafer was even sliced & diced. The result was that the institution that shipped the card registered the (card/chip) public key in the standard account record ... along with the other administrative information done as part of card personalization and ship (i.e. date the mailer went out and other gorp that goes on as part of the standard card distribution infrastructure).

As a result, there was the possibility of an extremely high integrity, fully functional public key authentication infrastructure at very close to zero incremental cost ... and the whole enormous complexity and cost of a PKI, digital certificate oriented operation is totally avoided.

One of the other issues that was done as part of x9.59 and AADS was looking at the issues from transitioning from an institution-centric hardware token infrastructure ... to a person-centric hardware token infrastructure ... i.e. that the same identical AADS hardware token would support public key oriented authentication for x9.59, radius, kerberos and a large variety other possible infrastructures ... w/o any special considerations and/or requirement to load different software and/or provide additional initialization for the token.

misc. recent postings mentioning the work on person-centric paradigm considerations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#12 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#13 special characters in passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#12 One Time Identification, a request for comments/testing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#9 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#43 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based

for additional topic drift, even with a public key hardware token at the highest integrity level ... there are other kinds of vulnerabilities and exploits that might occur in the environment where a digital signature originates. The EU has done the FINREAD (financial reader) standard for home/personal use that has countermeasures for some of these other kinds of vulnerabilities and countermeasures. Lots of past posts related to FINREAD standard and possible vulnerabilities and exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

OSI abandoned!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: OSI abandoned!
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:24:22 -0600
Albert Manfredi <bert22306@hotmail.com> writes:
That was an April Fools joke, but I remember when it actually happened. IIRC, it was 1996.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#24 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#25 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?

i pulled the copy out of my email archive ... ... as i mentioned in the previous post, should be able to find it in one of the online usenet archives. here is version ... posted Mar 31 1988, 7:00 pm
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.protocols.tcp-ip/browse_thread/thread/42eb18a6c94f6541/123b59f7f112234b?lnk=st&q=&rnum=3#123b59f7f112234b

so are you referring to a warmed over version of the above nearly a decade later? ... or when some specific party/organization ... taking nearly another decade to actually accept it.

for other topic drift ... various old email mentioning NSFNET backbone activity thru the 80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:09:18 -0600
Intel readies massive multicore processors
http://news.com.com/Intel+readies+massive+multicore+processors/2100-1008_3-6190856.html

from above:
Researchers at Intel are working on ways to mask the intricate functionality of massive multicore chips to make it easier for computer makers and software developers to adapt to them, said Jerry Bautista, co-director of Intel's Tera-scale Computing Research Program.

... snip ...

Bulkiest removable storage media?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Bulkiest removable storage media?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch.storage
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:14:20 -0600
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
I never heard of an IBM peripheral like that, but I know somebody made a multi-floppy pack with something similar for the early microcomputer world. It didn't stay very popular, but it was out there for a little while.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#23 Bulkiest removable storage media?

well before the start of steep decline in hard disk prices (and well before cdroms)

'80 Mbytes of storage for under $12k!' and other ad favorites through the years
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9023960

nouns and adjectives

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:15:18 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
we somewhat facetiously claimed that we were going to take a $500 mil-spec part and aggressively cost-reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude ... so the incremental cost of adding such a chip to an existing magstripe card distribution was significantly less than the fully loaded cost of personalizing and distributing magstripe cards.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#27 nouns and adjectives

part of the aggressive cost reduction was eliminating chip features (that didn't affect performance or integrity) as means of reducing chip area. manufacturing costs are basically per wafer (so as the number of chips per wafer goes up, the per chip cost comes down) and post manufacturing per chip processing (with person-centric operation and key generation export as part of existing power-on test, large number of post/per-chip manufacturing steps are eliminated).

one of the limiting factors here with super small chips (like aads chip strawman or some of the RFID chips) is when they become smaller than the size of the saw cut (used to slice and dice the wafers) ... loosing most of the wafer area to the saw. so there has been work on developing other techniques for slicing and dicing wafers.

recent news item:

Dicing tool
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/300270/Dicing+tool.htm

and somewhat related paper

Laser dicing of chip scale and silicon wafer scale packages
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/8681/27505/01225869.pdf

other recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#49 Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#1 Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#12 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#13 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based

Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:23:31 -0600
bblack@ibm-main.lst (Bruce Black) writes:
ASM2 was eventually acquired by CA and become CA-DISK, then Brightstore CA-DISK, and now CA Disk Backup and Restore. I think there was an intermediate acquisition that I have forgotten about.

for other folklore ... a couple people that worked on AIX system management left and formed a company called tivoli. eventually tivoli was bought up ... and when adstar was sold off ... some of the adstar software packages (as well as other software products) were moved over to tivoli ... for instance ADSM (adstar storage management) became TSM (tivoli storage management).

i had done the original backup/archive implementation in the late 70s which was deployed at some number of internal datacenters ... and went thru a number of versions with various other people helping with the work.

one of the people involved left ... and worked on a number of backup/archive implementations for other companies ... some of these other implementations may currently be sold by sterling(?).

my original backup/archive internal implementation first saw product release as workstation datasave facility which then morphed into ADSM (before being renamed TSM). some old email on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback
and numerous posts mentioning backup/archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

nouns and adjectives

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:27:27 -0600
Online Bank Security Worsens

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070614/tc_pcworld/132935

from above:
This year's Annual Security Report from NTA Monitor, a security testing firm, found that 20 percent more security vulnerabilities turned up in the infrastructures of banks,

... snip ...

misc. past posts in this thread (some totally unrelated):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#67 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#68 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#69 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#70 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#1 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#3 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#7 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#27 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#31 nouns and adjectives

IBM 8000 ???

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 8000 ???
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:55:39 -0600
hancock4 writes:
Yes, it's true. As the other poster mentioned, it's in the IBM history series books (Bashe, Pugh, et al).

Around 1960, IBM had to make an extremely difficult decision about compatibiltiy between its various computers. Up to that point IBM offered four families:

. Small business computers . Large business computers . Small science/eng computers Large science/eng computers

Small machines had a small address space. In a time when core memory ["RAM" to you kids] was still expensive, wasting bits on unneeded memory address space was very wasteful.

Business machines were character oriented for ease of moving data around, science/eng machines were word oriented for high speed binary arithmetic.

None of the families were compatible, that is, programming for one family couldn't be used in another. This meant IBM had to support four separate lines of peripherals, system software, applications, utilities, etc. It was getting to be quite expensive. Customers faced a massive upgrade if they wanted to grow from a small machine to a big one.

IBM had a special committee go out and work up a future plan. The report, "SPREAD", served as the basis for System/360 architecture, a universal machine for all sizes and business and science. (Today that is known as the "Z" series and is the same basic architecture.)

At the time, this was seen as a huge gamble. Within IBM, the machine families had powerful supporters. For example, those building the 1401 (small business machine, 6 bit character) felt their machine was great and wanted to continue it using newer components.

The other problem IBM faced was that the computer industry was rapidly growing at that time and IBM faced tough competition. A few years after introduction, IBM's principal machines, the 1401 and 7090 faced tough competition.


this is along the lines of what was related to me about testimony by one of the "bunch" at the anti-trust trial ... i.e. in the late 50s, all the computer vendors knew that the single most important requirement to succeed in the business was to have compatible line ... i.e. the economy and use of computers was undergoing dramatic growth. "one shot" computer install was enormous cost, having to repeat it every time, the requirements and business changed was enormous market inhibitor. addressing the issue of cost to business of long term change ... was more significant than any single specific (short term) cumputer technology issue. the comment in the testimony was that IBM was the only vendor that had strong enuf top executive direction to enforce the implementation strategy (i.e. trading-off various short-term tactical advantages again long term strategic objectives).

misc. past posts referencing the testimony at anti-trust trial
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#44 bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#231 Why couldn't others compete against IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#33 Big black helicopters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#71 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#0 IBM/Watson autobiography--thoughts on?

this theme is also related to Amdahl's comment in his talk at MIT (in the early 70s) when asked what justification did he use with the VC money people started his business ... aka that companies had already invested something like $200B in application software ... and even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360/370 ... possibly a veiled reference to future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

... that installed software base would keep him in business thru the end of the century.

the other view would be that businesses were more likely to sink that sort of investment into software development ... if they thot the investment had long term benefit to the company i.e. would be re-usable over many generations of the same machine line as well as different machine lines, as the business's computing requirements exploded (protecting the customer's "investment" has been a frequent re-occurring theme). In later generations, there were other avenues attempting to address the software investment ... things like portable software technologies as well as attempting to significantly reduce software costs (including COTS, commericial off the shelf ... instead of RYO, roll-your-own).

past posts referencing Amdahl's talk at MIT:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#23 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#20 MVS on Power (was Re: McKinley Cometh...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#36 mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#13 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#15 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#32 IBM system 370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#3 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#30 Not A Survey Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#22 System/360 40th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#20 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#51 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#53 4GHz is the glass ceiling?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#66 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#47 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#35 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#49 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#7 EREP , sense ... manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#18 Change in computers as a hobbiest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#61 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#77 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#57 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#46 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#15 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

Boyd, Metcalfe, and Amdahl all in one article

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Boyd, Metcalfe, and Amdahl all in one article
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:56:58 -0600
Boyd, Metcalfe, and Amdahl - Modelling Networked Warfighting Systems:

http://www.ausairpower.net/IWC5-Kopp-2004-Slides.pdf

from above:
Conclusions

• Amdahl's Law provides a valuable abstraction for modelling the impact of the Decision-Action phases of the OODA-loop on system capability gains.

• Amdahl's Law complements Metcalfe's Law by providing for a complete abstraction to model OODA-loop behaviour.

• Amdahl's Law presents a model which relates achievable numbers of engagements to time.

• Metcalfe's Law, conversely, presents capability gains indirectly, as it measures utility in terms of connectivity.

• Fusion of Boyd, Metcalfe and Amdahl provides an intellectual framework for understanding capability gains in networked warfighting systems.


... snip ...

lots of past posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and various URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd and/or OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

Future of System/360 architecture?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Future of System/360 architecture?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:21:11 -0600
hancock4 writes:
Likewise, I sense that major applications written in the 1970s and 1980s are getting old and it appears companies are retiring them in favor of newer technologies. Is this true?

there was a cycle of that, which went on in the 90s ... the problem was that some of the software projects that ran on the order of a billion had disastrous failures. somewhat the issue was that the new kids with the new technologies ... had never actually encountered the business critical requirements and scale-up that were required.

for instance, we had a one week "JAD" with taligent in the mid-90s that came to the conclusion that about 1/3rd (very specific) new code was needed and something like 1/3rd of the existing code had to be rewritten ... just to address the business critical requirements ... that doesn't get to the scale-up issues. misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#46 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#93 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#64 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#40 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#38 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration

two buzz words from these projects in the 90s, were overnight batch window and straight-through processing.

some of the monstrous software development disasters of the 90s were around major transaction operations (payments, trading, settlement, etc). these are operations that had "online" front-ends built during the 70s & 80s ... but final processing actually finished up in the overnight batch windows. as business grew ... the batch window was stressed ... and globalization further increased the workload stress on the batch window ... and also cut the amount of time for the window (since it wasn't necessarily "overnight" all around the world).

the "new" technology in the 90s was to re-engineer the infrastructure and do "real-time", straight-through processing ... i.e. each transaction went straight-through to final completion ... instead of final completion being queued for the overnight batch window (attempting to totally eliminate the overnight batch window)

the issue was that the new technology and "real-time" processing was less efficient than batch ... so, in theory, this would be made up with lots of parallelized COTS processing. the problem was that much of this new generation of software engineers didn't appear to know how to do back-of-the-envelope speeds&feeds calculations. This is something that was somewhat specialized at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

in the 60s & 70s ... performance tuning, workload profiling, and laying the whole ground work for stuff like capacity planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

so it frequently turned out that these great, new effort's "less efficiency" was on the order of two orders of magnitude (100 times). this is where quantitative really becomes qualitative ... and the project eventually goes down in flames possibly after several tens, hundreds, or thousands of million.

we were even called into the middle of one of these massive projects (before the realization that it couldn't succeed had started to permeate the organization) ... and the first thing we did was the back-of-the-envelope speeds&feeds calculations.

there was a recent article mentioning that nothing succeeds like failure ... it is possible that some of the large system integrators acquired a substantial appetite for failing projects in this period ... since if they were to succeed, then there wouldn't be the next (big, expensive) follow-on effort.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#59 On cleaning up the security mess: escaping the self-perpetuating trap of Fraud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#8 Leadership, the very definition of fraud, and the court of security ideas
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#29 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#62 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#29 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#48 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#55 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#46 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based

a lot of what is happening now ... isn't so much the re-engineering of the core (backroom, batch) applications ... but "webizing" the online parts.

say a customer call center (trouble center, catalogue order, etc) ... that has a lot of screens/menus to walk the person answering the phone thru what ever the customer has called about. Lay in a bunch of authentication, identification, authorization, etc in the middle ... and let the end-user directly walk thru the call-center screens (via web/browser) ... eliminating a lot of the 1-800 calls (aka "self-service").

we had done a lot of work in ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
for both commercial and numerical intensive scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

with both loosely-coupled (cluster) and tightly-coupled scale-up. Much of that got side-tracked into numerical intensive for national labs and high-energy physics.

some of that is starting to come back into the commercial sector ... but (at least initially) very much as new, numerical intensive applications ... like (securities) trading house using massive GRID doing near real-time trading decisions ... recent post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

we still periodically run into references where large commercial operations still have extensive IMS database operation ... with potentially the amount of data in IMS databases is still larger than the amount of data in RDBMS (which represents significant market inhibitor to backend/backroom conversions).

lots of past posts mentioning IMS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#35a Drive letters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#37 What is MVS/ESA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#40 Comparison Cluster vs SMP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#58 When did IBM go object only
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#71 High Availabilty on S/390
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#77 Are mainframes relevant ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#92 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#128 Examples of non-relational databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#13 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#45 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#47 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#12 Amdahl Exits Mainframe Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#54 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#31 database (or b-tree) page sizes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#69 Wheeler and Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#71 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#2 Block oriented I/O over IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#44 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#41 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#23 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#13 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#14 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#18 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#47 five-nines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#3 News IBM loses supercomputer crown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#47 Sysplex Info
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#1 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#54 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#68 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#50 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#48 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#73 Where did text file line ending characters begin?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#45 M$ SMP and old time IBM's LCMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#14 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#68 META: Newsgroup cliques?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#54 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#35 HASP:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#37 Calculating expected reliability for designed system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#40 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#15 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#56 The figures of merit that make mainframes worth the price
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#22 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#11 how long does (or did) it take to boot a timesharing system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#22 foundations of relational theory? - some references for the
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#29 Architect Mainframe system - books/guidenance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#40 AMD/Linux vs Intel/Microsoft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#49 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#21 PSW Sampling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#31 Moribund TSO/E
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#22 Pre-relational, post-relational, 1968 CODASYL "Survey of Data Base Systems"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#8 network history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#16 computer industry scenairo before the invention of the PC?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#46 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#16 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#28 Is Fast Path headed nowhere?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#5 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#67 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#49 History of C
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#23 1GB Tables as Classes, or Tables as Types, and all that
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#75 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#46 8086 memory space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#7 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#9 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general (was Re: Cell press release, redacted.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#21 He Who Thought He Knew Something About DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#60 Ancient history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#52 Cluster computing drawbacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#25 Data communications over telegraph circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#30 auto reIPL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#37 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#44 hasp, jes, rasp, aspen, gold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#10 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#12 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#49 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#23 Channel Distances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#37 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#0 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#32 UMA vs SMP? Clarification of terminology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#19 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#52 Need Help defining an AS400 with an IP address to the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#34 TOD clock discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#32 Old Hashing Routine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#8 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#26 garlic.com
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#30 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#55 What's a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#27 Generalised approach to storing address details
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#1 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#39 Just another example of mainframe costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#9 Mainframe vs. "Server" (Was Just another example of mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#48 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#42 Keep VM 24X7 365 days
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#24 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#1 Designing database tables for performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#14 Cycles per ASM instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#16 Attractive Alternatives to Mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#37 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#41 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#56 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#64 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#66 IBM System z9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#25 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#26 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#80 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#35 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#76 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#44 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#71 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#71 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#62 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:02:30 -0600
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
TSO is used by lots of people for timesharing. Does that make MVS a timesharing system?

or at least online, (almost) interactive computing.

OSI abandoned!

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OSI abandoned!
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:09:22 -0600
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#24 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#25 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#28 OSI abandoned!

note, something being wrong and/or incomplete doesn't preclude it from being a great education tool ... in fact, compare&contrast can be really useful as part of an educational activity.

and from random quotes department

Introduction to Routing
http://www.corecom.com/html/OSNconnexions.html

from above ...
... Ten years ago, however, a similarly simplistic argument destroyed the opportunity for OSI to standardize one of the best features of the TCP/IP internetwork architecture-the combination of a connectionless (datagram) internetwork protocol (which could be operated efficiently over any underlying network technology, whether based on datagrams or virtual circuits) with a connection-oriented end-to-end transport protocol. The OSI position at that time was that a connection-oriented service at the transport layer "naturally" mapped to a connection-oriented service at the network layer, as if this were something inherent in the very architecture of a layered model. The OSI community wasted years dealing with this red herring, which was intended to divert attention from the fact that a large segment of the OSI community believed that the service provided by the network layer was an end-to-end transport service. The TCP/IP community, unencumbered by such nonsense, happily expanded to fill the resulting vacuum.

... snip ...

as per previous email reference about x3s3.3 nearly needing multiple personalities to handle ISO ... i.e. (at least during the 80s), x3s3.3 couldn't work on protocols that violated OSI (like possibly involving internetworking and/or LANs) ... but X3 (and other ISO chartered standards bodies) could vote to approve such standards (that might violate OSI i.e. various IEEE 80x standards being case in point)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#email890327

and, of course, IETF never had such a short-coming ... and as above randomly selected quote also somewhat implies ... it would be possible to craft an RFC on how to handle some OSI feature within an internetworking environment. the difficulty of some of the ISO stuff within the IETF framework ... for something to progress in the standards process required multiple interoperable implementations (something that wasn't required for something to become an ISO standard).

as to having softcopy of various GOSIP (and various other) documents

misc. past posts with gosip references and/or partial extracts from some of the documents from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#70 When the Internet went private
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#15 Al Gore and the Internet

lots of past posts referencing OSI, X3S3.3 ISO standards work, and/or efforts behind HSP (high-speed protocol) in X3S3.3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

and pointers to RFC and IETF topics can be found in my RFC IETF index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

for lots of topic drift about IETF coming to grips with another aspect of progressing standards, hot off the press ... aka frequently RFC standard progressing had been held up until the corresponding normative reference(s) had also progressed.

4897 I Handling Normative References to Standards-Track Documents, Hartman S., Klensin J., 2007/06/13 (6pp) (.txt=13023) (BCP-97) (Updates 3967) (Refs 3967) (was draft-klensin-norm-ref-04.txt)

above is example of RFC summary in my IETF index.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx8.htm#4897

one of the things that I used to do for Postel (that would appear in the old format STD1, "section 6.10") was cross-check current RFC standards state consistency as reported (elsewhere) in STD1 ... and if there were various kinds of inconsistencies, highlight/list them.

My RFC summaries include Refs and Ref'ed By (what other RFCs are referenced as well as which RFCs reference them). I added this relatively recently ... I had planning on doing it, but never quite got around ... until I got email a couple yrs ago in real-time from the crypto rump session on MD5 attacks ... wanting to know if I would produce a list of all RFCs that referenced MD5 and/or MD5 RFCs ... which is now carried as:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcmd5.htm

but in the process of doing it, I expanded the Refs & Ref'ed by to all RFC summaries. Now, the clicking on any of the RFC numbers, takes you to the corresponding RFC summary (and clicking on the ".txt=" field in a summary, fetches the actual RFC). In light of RFC4897, the issue is whether I might color code the "Refs" and "Ref'ed by" RFC numbers ... as to whether they are STD, Draft, Proposed, Informative, historic, as well as normative. The last creates a logical consistency issue, since "normative" is a charateristic from the referring RFC ... as opposed to the referred to RFC.

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:36:56 -0600
John Ahlstrom <AhlstromJK@comcast.net> writes:
I am not familiar with the details of TSO/MVS interrelationships and interactions. But is (are?) TSO/MVS not a timesharing system?

Can we never get beyond definitional problems? Is a "timesharing" system 1. intended, well-designed, well-implemented to provide timesharing? 2. something that was never intended, designed, ... to provide timesharing but which many customers were able to kludge into doing timesharing on? 3. you try to define what you mean, please 4. Barb, you try also please


traditional mvt/mvs scenario for handling online, interactive wasn't in the "system" ... but some "subsystem". the operating system saw a "large" application ... the interactive and "timesharing" was done within the "subsystem" application.

this approach has also been periodically found in various DBMS implementations on a variety of different platforms ... with two-level dispatch/scheduling operations ... the base system tends to provide some preferred execution to the "subsystem" ... and the "subsystem" provides the actual "timesharing".

recent tangental reference to "cics" subsystem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

there have been a large variety of "subsystems" done over the yrs that provide various kinds of online, interactive support.

Bulkiest removable storage media?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Bulkiest removable storage media?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch.storage
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:42:55 -0600
"Byron Myers" <byron.myers@sbcglobal.net> writes:
You might check out NCR's CRAM. 512 3x14in cards had to be pretty bulky.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRAM


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#23 Bulkiest removable storage media?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#30 Bulkiest removable storage media?

the ibm photostore was somewhat comparable ... then the 2321 might be considered an intermediate version of this (but with magnetic) ... and the 3850 appeared to start out being a much larger follow-on ... except using tape cartridges ... before 3850 turned into a virtual 3330, hierarchical staging mechanism.

the large numbers of floppies spinning on single spindle was sort of between 2321 and the 3850 ... but with mechanism that was enormously simpler that either 2321 or 3850

recent discussion about "BB" in DASD addressing "BBCCHH" may have been anticipated to be used in a progression of devices from the photostore, to the 2321 datacell, and eventually the original 3850 design point (before it was converted to virtual 3330 disk drive paradigm, and applications no longer needed the "BB" field to directly address a 3850 cartridge).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#5 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#49 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?

Photo-digital storage system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1360
http://www.computerhistory.org/virtualvisiblestorage/artifact_frame.php?tax_id=02.07.01.00

2321 datacell
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/datacell.html
http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/engineer/comphist/c20-1684/fig043.jpg

3850 MSS reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3850
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/mss.html

misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

there is some early folklore about fatality related to the high acceleration and velocity of the 3850 robot mechanism ... leading to an interlock on the robot mechanism whenever the access door was open.

X.509 weakness?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: X.509 weakness?
Newsgroups: comp.security.ssh
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:08:51 -0600
bsd_mike <bsddorin@gmail.com> writes:
Am I missing something? Is it possible, by manipulating a DNS server for a bad guy to server up a good certificate and have it be undetected by a client?

SSL tends to have other sorts of (possibly process) weaknesses.

some old posts about being called into work with this small client/server startup that wanted to do payments on their server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

and they had this technology they called SSL ... and needed to work out and validate all the business processes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

the original design point was that the person typed in the URL ... and then the server provided a ssl domain name certificate that the browser compared the domain name in the certificate against the domain name in the typed in URL. This allowed that the server that the person thot they were talking to was the server that they were talking to ... aka the person knew the connection between the server they wanted to talk to and the server's URL ... the browser/SSL part provided the connection between the URL and the server.

However, relatively early, merchants found that SSL degraded their webserver thruput by something like 90% ... so SSL was quickly restricted to just the check-out/payment portion. Now, the user goes to a website (that isn't validated with SSL) and eventually clicks on a button that generates a URL for a payment website ... which is cross-checked against some SSL certificate. Since a potential attacker now may be providing both the URL and the certificates ... and the user has lost all association between the website they think they are talking and the corresponding URL ... the SSL check no longer means a whole lot (for just about all uses of SSL in the world today). This is the basis of a lot of phishing and other kinds of attacks ... providing a field for the user to click on ... that may claim one thing ... but the actual URL can be totally unrelated to what is being claimed. Then the SSL operation is only checking that the URL (possibly provided by an attacker) matches the certificate (also provided by the attacker).

So, at least part of the original motivation for SSL was countermeasure to some perceived weakenesses in the domain name infrastructure. However, most certification authorities (that issue SSL digital certificates) aren't the authoritative agency for the information they are certifying. The authoritative agency is the domain name infrastructure. A certification authority asks for a whole bunch of identification as part of the application. Then an attempt is made to do the expensive, error-prone, and time-consuming operation of matching the supplied identification information with the identification information on file with the domain name infrastructure (as to the owner of the domain name).

So, somewhat backed by the certification authority industry ... there are some activities to improve the integrity of the domain name infrastructure. However, this represents a catch-22 for the industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

improving the integrity of the domain name infrastructure weakens the original justification for having ssl domain name certificates.

Another catch-22 is some of the improvements in integrity involve domain name owners putting public keys on file with the domain name infrastructure ... then all future communication is digitally signed ... and then there is a (certificate-less) verification of the digital signature with the onfile public key
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless

The issue here is that the certification authorities then could also start requiring SSL digital certificate applications also be digitally signed. Then they could switch from an expensive, time-consuming, error-prone identification process to a much more reliable, simpler, and less-expensive authentication process ... by doing real-time retrieval of the onfile public key to do a (certificate-less) verification of the applicants digital signature.

The further catch-22 is that if the certification authorities could start doing real-time (certificate-less) public key operations ... then possibly the rest of the world would also start doing real-time certificate-less public key operations also (eliminating all requirement for having the redundant and superfluous ssl digital certificate).

One might even manage/imagine a super optimized, highly efficient variation, where the appropriate public key was piggy-backed on standard DNS response (in a single operation, possibly along with some crypto options). The client then generates a session key, encrypts the initial transmission, and then encrypts the session key with the servers public key. Then the stuff is sent in one transmission to the server. Only the correct server would be able to decrypt the session key. However, except for possibly small increase in payload size ... all the additional crypto-specific protocol chatter and transmission overhead has been eliminated.

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of  the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 08:27:44 -0600
knowledgefield writes:
The public history of the PC began in August 1981, when IBM first announced 'The IBM Personal Computer.' . This was The original PC. The time period for the development of this landmark, legacy product was approximately a year. It must be remembered that IBM was a centralized committee paper top down organization at the time. Everything went by snail mail and paper, communication was slow and lines of communication as well as the necessary and ...

trolling?

how 'bout the internal network ... world-wide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly mid-85
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

the great switch-over from arpanet (host-to-host with homogeneous IMP front-ends) to internetworking protocol was on 1jan83. arpanet was somewhere between 100-250 nodes at the time (depending on how things were counted). the internal network was far past that ... passing 1000 nodes that summer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

various old email on a variety of subjects from the 70s & 80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html

after the 23jun69 unbundling announced,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

there was an effort to deploy (360/67) cp67 machines in various datacenters to give branch office technical people an opportunity to practice with operating systems running in (the remote) cp67 virtual machines (logon from terminals in the branch office to cp67 machines at remote datacenters). this was called "HONE" (aka Hands-On Network Environment). however, it was soon taken over by applications (mostly written in APL) supporting the branch office sales/marketing people (and the use by SEs for operating system experience eventually was dropped). when EMEA hdqtrs moved from the US to Paris in the early 70s ... I was called in to help with their HONE installation. At that time, it still took a little ingenuity to read email back in the states.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

note that the "5150 computer" announced aug81 was predated by the "5100 computer" from the palo alto science center ... 5100 demo'ed 1973
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc/pc_1.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc/pc_2.html

also, note that the boca group doing the development was designated IBU ... independent business unit ... where some amount of corporate culture command&control was much more relaxed ... for instance the standard A&R (announce and review) product process requiring sign-off from possibly nearly 500 executives from around the corporation.

The birth of the IBM PC
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_birth.html

misc. old posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#69 APL on PalmOS ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#70 APL on PalmOS ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#15 APL version in IBM 5100 (Was: Resurrecting the IBM 1130)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#39 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#43 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#45 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#47 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#79 IBM 5100
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#82 IBM 5100
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#84 IBM 5100
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#0 IBM 5100
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#6 The IBM 5100 and John Titor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#8 The IBM 5100 and John Titor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#2 IBM 5100 luggable computer with APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#3 IBM 5100 luggable computer with APL

parts of thread from last yr that might have some interest:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#43 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#45 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#46 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#65 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#66 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#15 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#31 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#34 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#36 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#39 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#40 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#46 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#47 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#24 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"

Future of System/360 architecture?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Future of System/360 architecture?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:57:16 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there was a cycle of that went on in the 90s ... the problem was that some of the software projects that ran on the order of a billion had disastrous failures. somewhat the issue was that the new kids with the new technologies ... had never actually encountered the business critical requirements and scale-up that were required.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?

possibly slightly related:

Web Warning: Amateurs at Work
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/970574/web_warning_amateurs_at_work/index.html

above with comments on book ... which is on/about different application/aspect:

CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How today's internet is killing our culture By Andrew Keen

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of  the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:43:06 -0600
Philip Nasadowski <nasadowsk@usermale.com> writes:
Then again, I wonder if anyone in the early 80's would have thought, in 2007, that IBM wouldn't be making "IBMs", that Apple would be selling UNIX machines with Intel chips (and a Walkman-like music player), that Compaq would have bought DEC, and that HP would be out of the test equipment business?

Oh yeah, and that the lowly mainframe...would STILL be around, and thriving...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#42 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

tandem bought atalla, compaq bought tandem and dec, and hp bought compaq ... so what URL to you get when you do www.atalla.com ?

68k, not intel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX

i've some vague memories of getting to play with prerelease version.

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of  the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:22:15 -0600
Frank McCoy <mccoyf@millcomm.com> writes:
Yup ... As *would* have happened with the PC itself if they'd been that tight-assed with it. They just didn't *get* the fact that the open bus and configuration was what made the PC popular. IOW, it was the *competition* that made it such a huge success.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#42 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#44 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

as i've mentioned before ... the other market force was that the previous personal computers had been do-it-yourself and hobbiest market. individuals had to justify the cost of the box for their own personal interest ... that included a lot of the software ... not a lot of off-the-shelf stuff ... so individuals had to do that themselves also.

big break-out for ibm/pc was selling it into terminal emulation market at businesses. business that had justified buying a couple thousand or tens of thousand (3270) terminals ... for about the same amount of money that provided both local computing and terminal emulation in a single desktop footprint. instead of selling one at a time to a very limited market ... orders were being taken for thousands at a time. these (business) install base motivated a lot of the business users and software entrepreneurs to write software applications for the install base. having growing library of useful software tools for the market segment ... made it easier to justify spending the money to buy the machine. the combination of growing install base and growing available application creates snowball effect (positive feedback). misc. past posts mentioning various aspects of the terminal emulation theme
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

the business market potential significantly motivated the clone makers ... something that had been happening in the mainframe dataprocessing business market since at least the late 60s (and so wasn't that unique of a concept). misc. past posts mentioning (mainframe) plug compatible (clone)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

this was enormous synergistic effect ... that wouldn't happen in the purely home/hobbiest market ... since the purchase price for strictly individuals was still fairly significant with not a large number of "solutions" to attact a big following. possibly one of the biggest drivers of personal computers into the home/personal market was the internet ... the volumes from the business world were driving down the price point and the combination of the price-point and internet as a "personal" use (for the computers) ... then helped explode the sales into the home market (aka killer app/silver bullet for personal, personal computer use).

recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#11 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#71 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#68 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#37 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications

Rate Monotonic Scheduling (RMS) vs. OS Scheduling

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Rate Monotonic Scheduling (RMS) vs. OS Scheduling
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:34:36 -0600
"Eric P." <eric_pattison@sympaticoREMOVE.ca> writes:
Hmmmm.... except that is not what Rate Monotonic Scheduling is. RMS is a design technique that assigns static priorities to known amounts of work and shows you whether all tasks meet their deadlines. It requires you to you know the task frequency and duration and deadlines in advance. If a deadline is missed, the system has, by definition, failed.

If the tasks you are describing are not deadline based, then it is not really a real time scheduling issue.


unless the deadlines are purely advisery and is technique for aiding in maintaining the process computing rate of different independent processes

i used it for the dynamic adaptive scheduling changes i made to cp67 as an undergraduate in the 60s (which was picked up for the product) it was frequently referred to as the fair share scheduler ... since the default policy was fair share execution. the advisery deadline construct was used for managing rate-based operation ... and ahead/behind schedule issues helped adjust the dynamic adaptive policy decisions.

in the initial morph from cp67 to vm370, the implementation was dropped ... reverything to a much typical static priority implementation.

i was then given the opportunity to re-release the changes as part of the "resource manager" product.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

I also got selected to be the guinea pig for charging for kernel software. the unbundling anouncement of 23jun69 (prompted by various litigation) ... start the change over from free software to pricing for software. However, the argument was (successfully) used that charging should only be done for application software and that kernel software should still be free (and/or bundled)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

various other forces during the 70s (including mainframe clone processors) eventually contributed to the decisions to start charging (also) for kernel software. my re-introduction of the resource manager was selected to be the guinea pig for kernel software charging.

Capacity and Relational Database

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Capacity and Relational Database
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:45:11 -0600
ibmsysprog@ibm-main.lst (IBMsysProg) writes:
Memory. Over the years the first exploiters of architecture changes to allow more address spaces, more real memory, and more virtual memory have always been DBMS systems. At this time I would suggest allocating at least 2 gig of additional real memory to your future DBMS. DBMS system address spaces in general are intolerant of paging. This is because a page in results in a wait for the entire address space and to make things worse DBMS address spaces serve many concurrent users.

i've related before the discussion between IMS group and (original SQL/System/r group about pros & cons.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

IMS has/had direct pointers ... which significantly cut down processing overhead ... but significantly increased development, maintenance, and administrative costs. System/r abstracted away the direct pointers ... at the cost of implicit overhead of automatically maintained index. The "argument" back then was that the (RDBMS) automatically maintained index, doubled the physical disk space and significantly increased the number of disk i/os (as part of processing the index) ... offset by significantly reduced human resources & skills.

going into the 80s ... disk price/bit came down significantly (muting the disk price/bit argument) and (relative) significant increases in system "real" memory allowed much of the indexes to be cashed (eliminated lots of the increased index disk i/os). The index overhead then somewhat shifted from the amount of disk i/os ... to just CPU overhead. In any case, the price and availability of system resources changes that went on in the 80s ... changed the trade-off between the human skill/resources and system price-resources ... significantly enabling the wider use of RDBMS.

Virtual memory and high-end DBMS don't mesh very well. High-end DBMS tends to have lots of their own managed cache ... typically with some sort of LRU type algorithm.

I first noticed that running an LRU storage managed algorithm under an LRU storage managed algorithm could be a bad idea ... in the mid-70s with SVS/MVS running in virtual machine (virtual memory). It was possible to get in extremely pathelogical situation where MVS would select one of the pages (at a location it believed to be "its" real-memory) to be replaced ... at about the same time that the virtual machine hypervisor also decided that the corresponding virtual page should be replaced (since they were both looking at effectively the same usage patterns as basis for replacement decision). As a result, a LRU-based strategy ... running in a virtual memory, can start to look like an MRU strategy (the next most likely page to be used ... is the one that has been least recently used).

lots of past posts about page replacement algorithms ... including some difference of opinion of some of the "internally" implemented MVS strategies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

as well as some "old" email on various aspects of the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#globallru

In any case, when running high-end DBMS that have their own cache implementation ... in a virtual memory operating system environment ... there tends to be a lot of "tuning" options ... to minimize the conflict between the DBMS cache replacement strategy (typically some sort of LRU-based) and the operating sysetm virtual memory replacement strategy (typically also some sort of LRU-based).

There is also the possibility of things analogous to the old "VS1-handshaking", where VM370 would present a psuedo page fault interrupt to VS1 (running in a virtual machine) ... enabling VS1 to do a task switch (instead of blocking the whole VS1 whenever any page fault occurred for a virtual machine page).

note that one of the progression of large real storage has resulted in DBMS "memory" implementations ... rather than assuming that the DBMS natively resides on disk and there is a lot of processor overhead related to the assumed DBMS operation. The assumption is that nearly everything is memory resident and managed with memory pointers ... with periodic snap-shots to disk for commits/integrity. Given the same amount of large real storage ... there are claims that the switch to a RDBMS memory-based paradigm can run ten times faster than a RDBMS disk-based paradigm that was fully cached and otherwise doing little disk i/o (and both running nearly identical SQL-based applications).

misc. recent posts mentioning old "interactions" between IMS and System/r organizations regarding various pros and cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#1 Designing database tables for performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#14 Cycles per ASM instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#37 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#66 IBM System z9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#25 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#26 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins

and recent related DBMS posts with some topic drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#13 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#4 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#6 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#8 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#33 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#28 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#68 A tribute to Jim Gray

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:11:56 -0600
hancock4 writes:
As was traditional with IBM's computers, they offered the PC not only as a piece of hardware, but also with a suite of applications to run with it. Perhaps the early IBM applications (e.g. its "assistant series") weren't as good as independent offerings available on other machines, but they were together as a suite. The large sales volume of the IBM unit encouraged independent developers to create stuff and they did.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#42 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#44 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#45 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

the other way of looking at it was that the 3270 terminals tended to be more expensive than terminals in use by most other vendors ... but was an enormously larger market than the personal computer market at the time

3270 terminal clone offerings tended to be same function at lower price. The IBM/PC could be viewed as a 3270 terminal clone for approx the same price with potential for lot more function. For a business/customer that had already allocated the money to buy huge numbers of 3270 terminals ... is was a moderate no-brainer business decision (requiring very little incremental justification) to purchse IBM/PCs in place of (the already justified) 3270s.

The business didn't have to go thru a lengthy process for coming up with a separate financial justificiation for each IBM/PCs ... they just took something that was already financially justified and applied it to the IBM/PC .... which eliminated a significant market/business inhibitor ... how to get a business to fully financially justify a few tens of thousand IBM/PCs ... purely based on the extremely limited personal computing aspect that nearly nobody was familiar with.

Even with the IBM name behind it ... business people were still going to ask where is the return-on-investment. In effect, the machine could be bought based on the already justified terminal need ... and the personal computing aspect then becomes a no (incremental) cost experiment ... the price of the machine didn't have to be justified on any (totally unknown) possible personal computing benefit.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:29:35 -0600
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Compared to scheduling a NUMA cluster, a two-processor core with common cache is a very simple special case to schedule effectively.

If you do the scheduling of the first processor correctly, interrupts included, then the next one is pretty simple. And the next handful are not too bad. _then_ it becomes complicated beyond all reasonable measures.


one of the (simpler?) things that happened in the 3084 (four mainframe processor) time-frame, which also tended to show up in NUMA implementations ... was rework of kernel storage so that it was cache-line aligned and done in multiples of cache-lines. This change supposedly picked up something like 5-6 percent overall system thruput. The issue was that previously, two different kernel storage areas, in use by two different (kernel) processes, running in two different processors ... might overlap the same cache line ... potentially resulting in enormous amounts of cache-line thrashing between the two processors.

preserving processor cache locality & hit ratio (like attempting to re-dispatch task on same processor it was previously executing on) ... is analogous to earlier work in page thrashing ... rather than allowing all possible tasks to contend for all possible real storage ... atempt to limit the simultaneous contention for real storage.

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:49:52 -0600
Frank McCoy <mccoyf@millcomm.com> writes:
Like I said, there were other, far BETTER "Personal Computers" back then, that did more, and cost far less. They just didn't have the IBM logo on them. The IBM PC didn't even have the advantage of being made at IBM. All it *did* really have was the logo on the box as an advantage over the competition ... computer OR terminal-emulator.

But that sigil on the cardboard container was more than enough.

When compared with machines already on the market, like the Zenith-100, in price, performance, graphics ability, clarity, ease-of-use, ease of setup, ruggedness, MTBF, size, compatibility with existing software, or about any criteria you'd like to pick, frankly the IBM PC *stank*.

Its advantage was the NAME on the box. Period. No followup. But that was more than enough.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#42 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#44 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#45 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#48 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

so at one level ... the issue is trying to greatly expand the personal computing market ... and get people to justify a lot of money on relatively little understood characteristics of what benefit came from buying a personal computer .... or selling into the terminal emulation market ... which was significantly larger than the personal computing market, pretty well understood ... and large business segments believed they understood what they were paying for.

in the 3270 terminal emulation/clone market ... if the majority of the people had very little understanding about what personal computing represented ... any argument based purely on pros/cons of personal computing would have little impact/meaning .... lets say that 3270 terminal emulation/clone was 95% of the business decision ... and possibly less than 5% was in anyway related to personal computing attributes.

so another characteristic of the 3270 terminal market was actually having a commercial/business sales channel ... of course the name helped ... but having a sales/marketing force that was already dealing with the target market segment and they could pitch the ibm/pc as same price and value add to what you were already decided on spending on 3270 ... was a relatively easy sell. For a business person to make a decision about some other terminal emulator/clone ... they actually had to be aware that it existed.

I would contend that the name alone wouldn't have been sufficient w/o also having the commercial/business sales channel in that specific market segment. Some analogies of that exist today ... looking at business analysis stuff of where the sales channels are positioned for major brand name personal computing vendors ... and how they break out in commerical/business market segment vis-a-vis consumer market segment.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:53:35 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
When? I never considered IBM world and its batch environment timesharing. Timesharing does not do large data processing tasks well; and it's not supposed to.

there were somewhat distinct, different environments ... one was commercial dataprocessing and the other was interactive computing and timesharing.

the commercial, batch, production environment was oriented towards business dataprocessing ... it wasn't computing done on behalf of some specific person ... it was computing done on behalf of some business operation ... like the organizations payroll and printing checks. the requirement was that the business dataprocessing be done ... frequently on very determined scheduled ... independent of any specific person. over time, there was lots of batch technology evolved to guarantee that specific operations could be done reliably, predictably, and deterministicly independent of any human involvement.

much of the interactive and virtual machine paradigm evolved totally independently at the science center ... first with cp40/cms, morphing into cp67/cms, followed by vm370/cms (even tho during the 70s, the batch infrastructure and the timesharing infastructure shared a common 370 hardware platform):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

both multics (on the 5th flr) and science center (on the 4th flr) could trace common heritage back to ctss (and unix traces some heritage back to multics).

even tho there was a relatively large timesharing install base (in most cases larger than any other vendor's timesharing install base that might be more commonly associated with timesharing) ... in the period, it was dwarfed by the commerical batch install base. I've joked before that at one period, the installed commercial customer install base was much larger than the timesharing customer install base, and the timesharing customer install base was much larger than the timesharing internal install base, and the timesharing internal install base was much larger than the internal installations that I directly supported (built, distributed, fixed bugs, on highly customized/modified kernel and services). However, at one point the number of internal installations that I directly supported was as large as the total number of Multics installations that ever existed. lots of past posts mentioning the timesharing environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

much of that timesharing install base was cms personal computing ... while other was mixed-mode operation with cms personal computing and other kinds of operating systems in virtual machines ... aka the same timesharing infrastructure supporting both interactive cms personal computing as well as production (frequently batch) guest operating systems. this required a timesharing dispatching/scheduling policy infrastructure that could support a broad range of requirements. for a little topic drift, slightly related recent post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#46 Rate Monotonic scheduling (RMS) vs. OS Scheduling

also coming out of the science center in the period (besides virtual machines, a lot of timesharing and interactive/personal computer) ... somewhat reflecting the timesharing and personal computing orientation was much of the internal networking technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

as well as things like the invention of GML, precursor to SGML, HTML, XML, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

with the advent of PCs ... a lot of the cms personal computing migrated to PCs ... although the (mainframe) virtual machine operating system continues to survive ... and even had seen some resurgent in the early part of this decade supporting large numbers of virtual machines running linux ... somewhat in the "server consolidation" market segment

recently, "server consolidation" has become something of a more widely recognized buzzword ... pushing a combination of virtual machine capability migrated to PC hardware platforms possibly in combination with large BLADE form-factors farms ... where a business with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of servers are consolidating into much smaller space.

Microsoft Looks to Stop Internal Server Sprawl
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=296360

from above:
The profile of Microsoft Corp.'s in-house server farm is similar to those of many other companies: one application per server, with less than 20% peak server utilization on average. But Devin Murray, Microsoft's group manager of utility services, is working to change that. Murray's team manages about 17,000 servers that support 40,000 of Microsoft's end users worldwide.

... snip ...

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:11:35 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
with the advent of PCs ... a lot of the cms personal computing migrated to PCs ... although the (mainframe) virtual machine operating system continues to survive ... and even had seen some resurgent in the early part of this decade supporting large numbers of virtual machines running linux ... somewhat in the "server consolidation" market segment

recently, "server consolidation" has become something of a more widely recognized buzzword ... pushing a combination of virtual machine capability migrated to PC hardware platforms possibly in combination with large BLADE form-factors farms ... where a business with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of servers are consolidating into much smaller space.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#51 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

note that in the 80s, there started to be the possibility of two-level "timesharing" dispatch/scheduling when some amount of the virtual machine capability migrated into the mainframe "hardware", ... commingly referred to now as LPARS (logical partitions). The hardware had to schedule/dispatch timeshare the virtual machine LPARS ... and within an LPAR could be a virtual machine operating system, also having to schedule/dispatch timeshare its virtual machines.

something similar has to be going on the emerging PC-based genre of virtual machine implementations.

one of the interesting dispatch/schedule evolution starts with single processor virtual machines running on single processor hardware ... then moving to single processor virtual machines running on multiple processor hardware ... things can get more complex when having to run multiple processor virtual machines running on multiple processsor hardware ... and it may not be possible to independently dispatch/schedule the different virtual processors of a virtual machine ... having possibly needing to dispatch/schedule multiple virtual processors (of a virtual machine) concurrently on multiple real processors.

lots of past posts about multiprocessors, tightly-coupled, and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:59:18 -0600
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Well, unix is unix (or Linux). The problems come from the basic design; if you changed the design, it wouldn't be unix. The best you can do is mitigate the problems. This is the case with every OS - some fundamental decisions made during the initial design can't be changed without modifying the OS out of existence.

This is just like programming languages. You can add "improvements", but some initial design decisions are set in stone.


virtual machines has periodically been used over the past 40yrs to address various limitations in operating systems ... rather than trying to stress a particular operating system past its design point ... attempting to consolidate more and more applications on a single operating system platform ... go to a two (multi) level paradigm ... where you have a virtual machine environment, timesharing multiple virtual machines concurrently on common platform ... and then within each virtual machine ... allow it to do its own thing (i.e. a little peter principle ... not pushing an operating system to rise past its level of competence).

this is somewhat optimization at a more macro level ... while making some micro-level optimization sacrifices (i.e. the overhead of the virtual machine capability).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#51 Is Parallel Progrmaming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#52 Is Parallel Progrmaming Just Too Hard?

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:36:40 -0600
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
even tho there was a relatively large timesharing install base (in most cases larger than any other vendor's timesharing install base that might be more commonly associated with timesharing) ... in the period, it was dwarfed by the commerical batch install base.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#51 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#52 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#53 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

i've claimed in the past that the vm/43xx (timesharing) installs were larger than the vax/vms installs.

misc. past email mentioning 43xx machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

other posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#66 KI-10 vs. IBM at Rutgers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#29 HP Compaq merger, here we go again.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#5 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#30 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#43 Timesharing TOPS-10 vs. VAX/VMS "task based timesharing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#47 Timesharing TOPS-10 vs. VAX/VMS "task based timesharing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#54 Timesharing TOPS-10 vs. VAX/VMS "task based timesharing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#0 big buys was: Tubes in IBM 1620?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#45 Timesharing TOPS-10 vs. VAX/VMS "task based timesharing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#48 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#50 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#13 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#37 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#10 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#11 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#14 dbdebunk 'Quote of Week' comment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#26 IEH/IEB/... names?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#36 Filemode 7-9?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#47 "VAX" Tradename reused !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#31 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#17 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#24 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#37 Curiosity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#56 AT&T Labs vs. Google Labs - R&D History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#29 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#52 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source

Capacity and Relational Database

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Capacity and Relational Database
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computersD
ate: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:52:54 -0600
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#47 Capacity and Relational Database

for some additional past history ....

the university i was at was selected to be beta-test for original CICS ... it was an ONR, online library funded project. It also got a 2321, datacell as part of the project. One of my responsibilities got to be shooting bugs in this early CICS (before first official product ship). One specific bug I remember was that the customer installation that CICS had grown out of had been using a specific set of BDAM options. For whatever reason, the university library chose to use some other combination of BDAM options ... resulting in CICS failures. ... misc. past posts mentioning cics &/or bdam (and having to shoot CICS and BDAM bugs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam

one of the IMS things in the mid-70s was transition to virtual memory environment. The science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

had done much of the early stuff on virtual memory as part of both CP67 and VM370. Some of the work involved extensive performance monitoring, performance modeling, workload profiling and the early stuff leading to capacity planning.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

One of these efforts was instruction tracing and modeling virtual memory usage. This was used extensively in many applications moving from real storage environment to virtual memory operation. One of the earliest was in was significant benefit as part of rewriting the whole APL storage management when the science center did the port of apl\360 to cms\apl (and expanding APL workspaces from typical 16k-32k real memory to allow maximum virtual memory sizes) ... various past posts mentioning APL and/or one of its heaviest users ... the HONE system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

In the mid-70s, one of the major internal users of this tracing and modeling application (from the science center) was the IMS group ... tracing and monitoring both general IMS performance operation ... as well as optimization for virtual memory operation. The science center also added semi-automated program re-organization (optimizing for virtual memory requirements) to the application and the science center announced it as "VS/REPACK" product in 1976 (I had done some of the data collection and reduction software for part of vs/repack).

And here is old email reference about getting pushed as general consultant to the IMS development group in STL (mentions luncheon with the IMS deevelopment people)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016

this independent of the previous mention about working on some of system/r ... the original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

for other drift ... lots of past posts about doing lots of stuff for virtual memory optimization and replacement algorithms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

Now, when my wife was con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture ... she originated peer-coupled shared data architecture (and a lot of the mainframe distributed/global locking stuff)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

which saw very little uptake until sysplex ... except for IMS and especially IMS hot-standby effort

for somewhat other topic drift ... lots of past posts about being allowed to play disk engineer in bldg. 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

at one time there was joke about working four shift weeks, 1st shift in bldg28/sjr, 2nd shift in bldgs. 14&15 (disk engineering and disk product test), 3rd shift in bldg90/stl, and 4th shift (aka weekends) at HONE.

later when we were doing our HA/CMP product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

and scale-up for distributed databased operation ... along with scale-up for distributed lock manager (as well as massive distributed recovery) ... some email references here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

and minor reference in these posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15

the people in STL complained that if we were allowed to ship the support for the commercial DBMS stuff ... we would be at least five yrs ahead of where they were.

misc. past posts mentioning vs/repack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#4 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#5 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#10 Memory management - Page replacement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#31 database (or b-tree) page sizes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#20 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#49 Swapper was Re: History of Login Names
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#50 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#5 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#37 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#38 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#42 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#24 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#11 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#1 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones

Capacity and Relational Database

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Capacity and Relational Database
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:03:48 -0600
IBMsysProg wrote:
From a software architecture standpoint, Multi Regions, Independent locking (IRLM), Automated Recovery (DBRC), and DASD Logging became the foundations of IBMs second relational data base system and its first SQL based system called at its introduction DB2. IBMs first relational database system pre dated wide use of DASD and long historys could be written about it alone ... "Bill of Material" Program called at various times BOMP T-BOMP for TAPE BOMP and D-BOMP for DISK BOMP. BOMP was probably used more for applications like payroll than manufacturing.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#47 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#55 Capacity and Relational Database

lots of postings about sql/relational database system/r done at sjr/bldg.28
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

including mentioning doing work on system/r and handling technology transfer of system/r from sjr to endicott for sql/ds.

another source of a lot of old archeological references:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R

now system/r was all done in vm370 virtual machines ... technology out of the science center ... 4th flr, 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

on the 5th flr, 545 tech sq was multics ... which had done an even earlier relational implementation. recent posting (in comp.databases.theory)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#1 Designing database tables for performance?
with multics MRDS reference:
http://www.multicians.org/mgm.html#MRDS
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/mrds.html

now the seminal work on relational was done by Codd at SJR,

A relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks, ACM, v13n6, june 1970
http://www.acm.org/classics/nov95/toc.html

wiki reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd

minor pt in the above reference ... sjr was in bldg. 28 on the san jose plant site, the almaden facility wasn't built until the mid-80s.

now one of the people in the meeting referenced here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15

mentioned that he had handled a lot of technology transfer from sql/ds & endicott back to STL for DB2 (even tho bldg. 28 and bldg. 90 are only about ten miles apart ... i would even periodically do the commute on my bike).

for lots of topic drift ... two of the other people in that same meeting ... were later at a small client/server startup responsible for something called the commerce server and we were called in to consult on being able to do payment transactions on their server platfrom ... misc. collected postings mentioning putting together payment transaction infrastructure for what is now frequently referred to as electronic commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:02:55 -0600
Frank McCoy <mccoyf@millcomm.com> writes:
OK ... I'll grant you that a proper (and large) sales force had a lot of weight.

in the correct market place. in the past decade we had some dealing with a large manufacturing of consumer products that had developed a consumer device that is normally handled by transit operations. while they had extensive sales channels in the consumer market place ... they had no sales channels in industrial and commercial market segment ... and so signed an exclusive agreement for the product with a corporation that concentrates on product sales into the industry and commercial market segment.

I don't have direct information about the size of the us sales force at the time ... however ...

after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement, there was some datacenters put in place for HONE (Hands-On Network Environment) targeted at providing SEs (system engineers, aka technical field people) with remote-access, hands-on operating system experience running in cp67 virtual machines. Part of 23jun69 annoucement included charging for SE time at customers (previously groups at SEs at customer shops could help maintain their technical skills by working freely side-by-side with the customer technical people; after 23jun69, those opportunities were significantly reduced). misc. posts mentioning 23jun69 unbundling announcement (which also included starting to license/charge for application software)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

However, relatively early, HONE also started to offer software applications as sales/marketing AIDS (mostly implemented in cms\apl) ... and that online, interactive use began to dominate and take-over the HONE service. During the early 70s, clones of the US HONE datacenters started to crop up all over the world (i even got to handle some of the installations) providing online, interactive timesharing services to branch office sales and marketing. At some point in the early/mid 70s, a mainframe order couldn't even be submitted unless it had been first run through a "HONE" configurator.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

In the mid-70s all the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in silicon valley (by which time, HONE had also converted from cp67 timesharing to vm370 timesharing and from cms\apl to apl\cms) ... not too far from TYMSHARE ... a commerical VM370-based interactive timesharing service (although the HONE vm370 timesharing complex was possibly 5-10 times larger than the TYMSHARE vm370 timesharing complex).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

In any case, one of my hobbies was providing a lot of custom system development and support for the HONE timesharing systems. about the time of the ibm/pc announcement, there was close to 40k defined (US) HONE userids for the US branch office sales and marketing people (although typically there might be only a couple thousand logged on at any one time). I don't have any real idea about the possible aggregate number of HONE timesharing userids defined across all the HONE (clones) around the world.

recent reference to jokes about working 4shift weeks, 1st shift in bldg. 28 (research) , 2nd shift in bldgs. 14&15 (disk engineering and product test), 3rd shift in bldg90 (STL, dbms and language products), and 4th shift (weekends) at HONE.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#55 Capacity and Relational Database

recent posts in a similar PC thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#3 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#4 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#9 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#15 The Genealogy of the IBM PC

previous posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#42 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#44 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#45 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#48 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#50 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:01:58 -0600
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
A friend had sim jobs that consumed a day to a week of /85 CPU time. They would take the MVS programmer's VM systems down and IPL MVS for him on the weekends. If the job ran over what they'd agreed, they'd checkpoint it and rerun later. This was in the mid-'70s.

I've had FPGA place-n-route jobs take 48 hours on PCs, with far more horses than a /85, before they completed (often in failure). ;-/


old posts/email about burlington starting to look at having to move some fortran sim jobs off mvs to cms ... because the application was beginning to exceed the max possibly 7mbytes that MVS allowed applications (i.e. MVS kernel image took 8mbytes out of every application 16mbyte address space and CSA took a minimum of another mbyte).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email800310
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email800310
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email800310b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#59 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)

old email about LSG moving large logic design app to cms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email800903

heavy processor requirements was motivation for LSG doing LSM (los gatos state machine) ... which ran logic simulation something like 50,000 times faster than 3033.

the LSG VLSI tools group was active in lots of stuff ... languages (used TWS for a number of things) and developed 370 PASCAL compiler (which later shipped as vs/pascal on 370 and later rs/6000) ... which was used to implement quite a few design tools. LSG also had 2-3 GE/CALMAs.

a few past TWS references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#71 What terminology reflects the "first" computer language ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#0 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#14 Newbie question on table design

a few CALMA references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#24 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#6 Fast action games on System/360+?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#9 terminals was: Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#41 Tek 4010, info and prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#16 what's the difference between LF(Line Fee) and NL (New line) ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#70 Is computer history taught now?

misc. past posts mentioning LSM:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#26 LSM, YSE, & EVE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#31 asynchronous CPUs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#14 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#38 When nerds were nerds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#16 US fiscal policy (Was: Bob Bemer, Computer Pioneer,Father of ASCII,Invento
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#25 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#65 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#33 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#17 Ethernet, Aloha and CSMA/CD -
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#29 IBM microwave application--early data communications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#42 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#11 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#73 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#61 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#53 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:04:04 -0600
jmfbahciv writes:
But IBM's tradeoffs were always going to be their massive data processing farms. Haven't you been reading Lynn's posts? CAS instruction was only "accepted" when it was shown to be beneficial to data processing farms, NOT providing timesharing services.

part of the issue was that much of the multiprocessor kernels from the 60s & 70s implemented spin-locks on large code segments (in many cases for the whole kernel). test&set had been around on 360s ... and adequately supported that form of operation.

charlie's work on fine-grain lock for cp67 timesharing resulted in his invention of compare&swap instruction. the issue, from multiprocessing support standpoint ... many still were in the test&set mind-set ... possibly only one (or a very few) such instruction in the whole system. the challenge was to come up with use of compare&swap that wasn't limited to simple multiprocessor kernel spin-lock implementation. lots of past posts on multiprocessor, tightly-coupled and/or compare&swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

the result was the application multi-threaded scenarios that appear in principles of operation ... which tended to see a lot of uptake in DBMS. part of this harks back to the subject line ... being difficult, it has seen a lot more justification in high-end, high-value ticket items ... like multi-threaded database operations (low-value applications have a harder time justifying the resources/skills devoted for efficient multi-threaded operation).

There may then be something of cause&effect ... the challenge was to justify compare&swap on applications other than kernel multiprocessor support (where dominant mindset was bent around spin-locks serializing large code sections) ... which the multi-threaded scenarios satisfied. The issue then are what are the high-value operations that can justify the extra effort to do the ("too hard") parallel programming support.

It wasn't "IBMs" massive data processing farms, the enormous market in high-value data processing farms ... was that is what the commercial operations could justify spending large amounts of money on (they weren't IBMs farms ... they were the customers farms ... and IBM implemented what customers were paying loads of money for). Lots of other vendors nibbled around the edges, either in the lower value market segments ... and/or small niche markets (aka represents very little aggregate contribution to bottom line, either because of the much smaller profit margins and/or much smaller market size).

past posts in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#22 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#52 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:42:39 -0600
thvv <thvv64@gmail.com> writes:
I have mentioned before an academic paper, by a couple of PhD computer historians from a famous computer history institute, that was apparently based on access to internal IBM documents, possibly as a result of some court case. The historians build up an interesting story, taking every one of these documents as true. The problem is that IBM, like many big companies, had competing reality distortion fields, and there was more than one "truth." In particular, the paper claims that TSS/360 was widely used in the early 1970s, based on sales figures for the 360 model 67. Many of these machines may have received a copy of the TSS/360 software but in fact ran nothing but CP/CMS on their machines.

possibly one of the premier tss/360 accounts was general motors research ... that got in early into "one-level" store and 32bit applications.

in addition to cp67, there were the ones that were running MTS from Michigan or had slipped back to operating them purely as 360/65 using os/360

then there were others like boeing huntsville that had two-processor 360/67 smp or lockheed sunnyvale that had three-processor 360/67.

boeing huntsville cribbed in a little virtual memory support into the side of os/360 mvt13; it didn't actually "page" ... it was purely used to compensate for mvt's issue with requiring contiguous storage for program execution ... and the severe problem os/360 had with storage fragmentation, especially for long running applications (aka they had a number of 2250 graphic design long running applications).

in late-68/early-69, Boeing formed BCS ... in attempt to move dataprocessing from cost center to a P&L operation (i.e. independent operation that not only sold dataprocessing within the company ... but were also allowed to sell services outside the corporation). the brought in a single processor 360/67 for cp/67 and moved the boeing hunstville machine to seattle.

for quite awhile i had thot Boeing Renton was possibly one of the largest datacenters in the world at the time ... or at least until I had heard about Boyd's "spook base" and IBM's $2.5B "windfall", misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#22 Old Computers and Moisture don't mix - fairly OT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#23 Old Computers and Moisture don't mix - fairly OT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#24 Old Computers and Moisture don't mix - fairly OT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#1 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#2 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#5 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#37 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#38 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#49 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#51 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?

misc. past posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

note that part of the tss/360 vis-a-vis cp67/cms issue was that at one point there was something like 1200 people in the tss/360 organization and 12 people at the science center in the cp67/cms organization (two orders of magnitude difference in the number of people). it wasn't until the build out for morph from cp67 to vm370, turning out vm370 product ... that the virtual machine & cms operation would have a couple hundred in the organization.

lots of early ctss, project mac, cp67 lore in melinda's paper
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

lots of past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

misc. past posts mentioning being brought in early (while still undergraduate) into BCS to teach classes to BCS technical staff and do other dataprocessing related tasks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#8 "HAL's Legacy and the Vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#9 "HAL's Legacy and the Vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#23 Linux IA-64 interrupts [was Re: Itanium benchmarks ...]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#56 YKYBHTLW....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#55 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#30 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#22 Computer Terminal Design Over the Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#43 Killer Hard Drives - Shrapnel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#64 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#71 bps loader, was PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#72 bps loader, was PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#30 Computer History Exhibition, Grenoble France
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#30 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#34 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#37 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#32 SR 15,15 was: IEFBR14 Problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#23 Tools -vs- Utility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#53 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#46 Finites State Machine (OT?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#55 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#58 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#8 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#10 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#47 Gartner: Stop Outsourcing Now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#40 All Good Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#43 Sprint backs out of IBM outsourcing deal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#29 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#30 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#29 Mainframe Limericks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#11 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#13 The SEL 840 computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#49 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#54 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#19 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:12:18 -0600
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> writes:
Recently, I was in the logic sim (logic verification) group for the PowerPC (750 and 970) microprocessors. We ran on an AFS cell with hundreds of RS6000s. Thousands of jobs ran simultaneously for months at at time, before proclaiming a design "golden".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

one of the internal high-speed backbone operations we ran was between austin and los gatos lab.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and a significant part of the traffic was RIOS designs being sent to los gatos to run on LSM. later, the high-speed backbone connection and the LSM use was credited with helping bring in RIOS (original power, rs/6000) chip set a year early. rios chipset paperweight on my desk says 150 million ops, 60 million flops, 7 million transisters. lots of past posts mentioning 801, romp, rios, power, somerset, power/pc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

in the period, my wife also served stint as manager, (rs/6000) hardware engineering architecture before we started the ha/cmp project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and a lot of cluster (loosely-coupled) scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

we actually ran ha/cmp project reporting into hardware. the executive we started out reporting to with ha/cmp, later transferred over to head up somerset when it started (i.e. the ibm, motorola, apple, etc effort for power/pc).

nouns and adjectives

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:58:15 -0600
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
I'd be inclined to credit the PDP-10 in general, of course, not restricted to those sites running TOPS-10. I'm thinking of the large numbers of influential ITS alumni (where would we be today without RMS, to name just one?) and the many cohorts of Stanfordites turned loose on the Valley after having been raised on TOPS-20 and/or WAITS.

then there was the whole stanford wylbur/orvyl on os/360, some of which is still around in one form or another:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/support/wylorv/

and other stanford history
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/july9/mainframe-79.html

from above:
Meighan McWilliam, technology account manager and part of the mainframe retirement project team, now spends a majority of her workdays -- and some of her weekends -- helping departments close down the 6,000 or so accounts that still reside on the mainframe. At its peak, there were 30,000 accounts, including noncampus users, on the mainframe. Some of what McWilliam is doing requires real detective work, since many of the people who opened the accounts have long ago left Stanford or retired.

... snip ...

and
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/communications/history/mainframe/

from above:
For 30 years, the IBM mainframe was the computing workhorse for the Stanford community. As its processor power and storage capacity grew over the decades, the mainframe served as the central resource for campus administration and a valuable tool for academic and computing research. The wide array of resources that Forsythe has housed include accounting and human resources applications, student and donor records, email systems, centralized printing, and user files.

... snip ...

as mentioned in other postings there were a whole plethora of os/360 based online/interactive subsystems ... they were treated effectively like a long-running "batch" job by os/360 ... and then within their own environment provided all sorts of online & interactive support.

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:42:10 -0600
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Until the PC came out, most people equated "business pc" with "Apple ][". The other smaller boxes, the Commodores, TI's, etc were basically toys and had little business use. Comparing the PC with the Apple was a no-brainer.

I'm not sure when the Mac was first introduced, but we had one guy at work who had one of the original Macs, enhanced with an external hard disk. I remember thinking it was cute, but underpowered compared to the PC, and overpriced. If the Mac had come out sooner with more memory and a lower price, I think it would have captured the market.


my brother was apple regional marketing rep (something about having the largest "physical" region in continental US). i had the "terminal emulation" discussion at business dinners with some of the Mac developers (before mac was announced), when he came into town. The mac developers appeared to be strongly opposed to the mac being used for business purposes (i.e target was the home kitchen table).

there was also something about getting dialup access into corporate hdqtrs s/38 (later as/400) to check on shipping schedules.

the consumer market segment was still limited ... with price still being market inhibitor ... and the whole game culture was just getting going. one-at-a-time in business market segment is hard to generate volumes. the terminal emulation market could have orders of hundreds and thousands at a time (so it was much easier to reach install base of large millions).

for little drift, market share, total sales, etc
http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/total_share.html

and related article
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars

Operating systems are old and busted

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Operating systems are old and busted
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:16:35 -0600
Operating systems are old and busted
http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/20/usenix_07_opening_keynote/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/06/20/usenix_07_opening_keynote/

from above:
But Stanford professor Mendel Rosenblum believes virtualization may be the guillotine that cuts the OS reign down to size. Rosenblum, who is also a founder of VMware, called for heads to roll during his opening keynote at the USENIX conference in Santa Clara...Virtually roll, of course.

... snip ...

aka the new, 40yr old theme courtesy of the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

recent posts that might be considered related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#30 tab browsing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#53 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#55 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#56 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#57 How would a relational operating system look like?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#58 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#65 mainframe = superserver
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#47 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#51 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#55 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#56 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#60 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

nouns and adjectives

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: nouns and adjectives
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:38:11 -0600
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
Do you understand what kind of authentication goes on when I go to my bank's website, even *before* I log in? Do you understand what kind of security protocols are already in place by the time I've logged in? No, because you dismiss all that as "webbiting," and thus you miss the enormous sea change that has happened in the computing world since you left DEC.

some slightly related topic drift

Security study pokes holes in advanced authentication claims
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-sec.html

from above:
Although they've been touted by banks as a security improvement over simple password protection, there's study data to indicate that image authentication systems aren't as useful or effective as some think. These systems (my own bank refers to them as "Personal Security Images") present the end user with a previously chosen image, typically at the same time password input is required.

... snip ...

one more time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#28 man in the middle, SSL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#56 Threatwatch: MITB spotted: MITM over SSL from within the browser

New browsers fail to curb phishing
http://www.addict3d.org/news/141495/New%20browsers%20fail%20to%20curb%20phishing
New browsers fail to curb phishing
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2192406/grim-forecast-phish-fighters

and for even more topic drift:

Reliability of security systems
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/#Reliability

from above:
Protocols have been the stuff of high drama. Citibank asked the High Court to gag the disclsoure of certain crypto API vulnerabilities that affect a number of systems used in banking. I wrote to the judge opposing this; a gagging order was still imposed, although in slightly less severe terms than Citibank had requested.

.....

The vulnerabilities were discovered by Mike Bond and me while acting as the defence experts in a phantom withdrawal court case, and independently discovered by the other side's expert, Jolyon Clulow, who later joined us as a research student. They are of significant scientific interest, as well as being relevant to the rights of the growing number of people who suffer phantom withdrawals from their bank accounts worldwide. Undermining the fairness of trials and forbidding discussion of vulnerabilities isn't the way forward.


... snip ...

and ...

Card fraud 'is not investigated'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6224912.stm
Home Office slammed over credit card fraud
http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/0,,2107965,00.html
Banks in 'card fraud cover-up'
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/credit-and-loans/idfraud/article.html?in_article_id=421573&in_page_id=159
Card fraud 'being decriminalised'
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/business_money/card+fraud+being+decriminalised/568252
Card fraud 'being decriminalised'
http://www.louthleader.co.uk/latest-national-news?articleid=2970596 Brits don't trust banks
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=17078

Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Off Topic But Concept  should be Known To All
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:02:11 -0600
kbrick@ibm-main.lst (Ken Brick) writes:

http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/20/usenix_07_opening_keynote/


the new, 40yr old theme, courtesy of the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

related post here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and busted

a lot of technology evolved in that environment ...

GML, precursor to SGML, HTML, XML, aka the markup stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

the internal network ... which was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly sometime mid-85
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and as mentioned in this recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#47 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#55 Capacity and Relational Database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#56 Capacity and Relational Database

relational/sql was first created in that environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

a lot of virtual memory and dispatch/scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

among other things, it provides a fantastic incubator for R&D and new technology ... which has been somewhat alluded to in parts of a recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#15 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#20 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#32 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules

in fact, after the corporation had canceled the failed Future System project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

and realized that it had to throw resources back into the 370 product line ... POK was able to convince the corporation that the vm370 product had to be killed ... because they needed to transfer all the (relatively few) people in the burlington mall development group to POK to provide support getting the mvs/xa development effort on schedule. Eventually, Endicott was able to salvage some of the product mission.

Operating systems are old and busted

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating systems are old and busted
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:39:44 -0600
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#66 Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All

part of the new, old things are called virtual appliances ... but in the good old 60s & 70s ... they were called service virtual machines

some recent posts mentioning the virtual appliance genre
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#46 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#25 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#6 Multics on Vmware ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

cp67 had fairly early implemented fast, automated dump&reboot. That along with the change-over to using 2702 "prepare" command helped contribute to round-the-clock, 24x7 cp67/cms online, timesharing services.

The issue was that 360/67 were leased ... and charge for was based on system meter running ... and having the system up 3rd/4th shift might have the meter running ... but light load charges might not be able to cover the off-shift lease rate. The system "meter" would run, even when the operating system was in wait state, but there was I/O "active". The use of the 2702 "prepare" command for terminal I/O would effectively suspend "I/O" and the system "meter" would stop.

The other part as the fast, automated dump&reboot helped make practical to run cp67 3rd&4th shifts w/o any human (operator) present (aka "dark room") ... eliminating another expense that light-load offshift usage might not cover. The combination helped encourage both internal 7x24, around-the-clock online, timesharing cp67 operation ... as well as help make various commercial cp67 timesharing offerings more viable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

however, one of the short-comings with unattended, offshift operation was that the service virtual machines still required human intervention.

as part of lots of work on performance tuning, dynamic adaptive dispatch/scheduling, virtual memory optimization, workload profiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

and other stuff I was doing at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

I was having to do a lot of benchmarking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

and as part of the benchmarking, I worked on being able to automate the whole process. One of the issues was being able to generate a new/different kernel and automatically reboot ... and start the next sequence of benchmarks. cp67 had morphed into vm370 and inherited the automatic reboot operation. The issue then was how to get all the benchmarks kicked off. I created a "autolog" command that emulated the manual login process ... and added one such command late in the system bringup/boot process. The resulting process that was automatically logged on then could execute scripts with autolog commands for large number of other processes. I initially used it for implementing the benchmarking process. For instance, in the final sequence before release of the "resource manager" ... there was a sequence of something like 2000 (automated) benchmarks that took 3months elapsed time to run.

However, it was quickly realized that the autolog process (for benchmarking) ... would also extremely useful for automating the startup of service virtual machines ... as part of automated system reboot.

The burlington development group was one of the organizations that had been distracted by the future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

after FS was killed (and before burlington was put on notice that they were being shutdown and everybody being transferred to POK to support mvs/xa development) ... they had crash program to turn out items in vm370 release 3 ... and picked up a lot of stuff from the science center (including the autolog command) where we had continued to work on (360/370) virtual machine activity (while a lot of the rest of the company had been diverted by FS)

Operating systems are old and busted

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating systems are old and busted
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:55:59 -0600
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#66 Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted

part of the timesharing issue was whether the off-shift usage charges (or just plain usage) could justify the off-shift operational costs ... since usage tended to decline significantly offshift and weekends (although I finally got my home machine for dial-up access mar70 ... it was 2741 selectric, and have effectively had online access at home ever since). lots of past posts about timesharing services ... including commercial (cp67 & vm370) timesharing service bureaus in the 60s & 70s.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

in the 60s & thru some of the 70s, machines tended to be leased ... and there was system meter ... which would rackup charges as the machine was used ... even when the machine was in "wait" state ... but I/O was active. The 2702 "prepare" command was mechanism to leave the terminal lines "prepared" for any terminal operation ... w/o actually having an active I/O apparent to the system meter.

the incremental machine lease charges and costs having people/operators present ... was one of the inhibitors for justifying/providing around-the-clock, 7x24 timesharing operation (since offshift usage could be extremely spotty).

eliminating system meter running ... when the system wasn't actually doing anything (just available for doing something) ... and being able to run with dark-room, unattended operation ... would significantly lower the off-shift usage threashold that was necessary to justify leaving the system up, available and operational (significantly helped in transition for providing production around-the-clock, 7x24 operation).

Operating systems are old and busted

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating systems are old and busted
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:21:03 -0600
DASDBill2 writes:
This is fascinating history, Lynn. I remember using the Prepare command in channel programs for the 2701 that we used in the TUCC network ca. 1967 on.

Speaking of old, busted systems and ones that were killed (like FS), does anybody know anything about the new operating system that Amdahl was trying to build? I had a phone interview with an Amdahl person in SEP 1987 who mentioned this OS and I started salivating at the prospect of working on that project. The next thing I knew the project had been killed.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#66 Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#68 Operating systems are old and busted

Simpson (of HASP fame) ... misc. old posts mentioning hasp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

including observation that the much of the source for HASP/JES2 internal networking support (before being released as project) carried the letters "TUCC" in cols. 68-71. misc. past posts mentioning internal network (which was mostly vm370 based ... with a few mvs/jes2 around the perimeter)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

had left the HASP group and started an internal operating system project called RASP. It had some of the characteristics of TSS/360, being an extremely paged mapped oriented operating system ... shared some characteristics of FS, s/38, as/400 ... but purely 370 based.

Later, he left and became an Amdahl fellow in Dallas ... starting a similar project. There was some litigation as a result that included some code reviews (to see if any RASP code had leaked out). Some of this overlapped with the developed of Au/GOLD (aka UTS) ... and there was appeared to be some amount of anbivalence between the two groups. Knowing some of the people in both organizations ... I even tried to do some mediation (ignore for the moment that i didn't work for them and knew about unannounced, internal projects).

One of the examples I tried to use was the UNIX TSS370 (SSUP) effort that was being done for internal AT&T use. A lot of the 370 UNIX being done in the 80s was all being done under VM ... not so much because of the point in the original subject of this thread ... but because VM370 would provide for hardware EREP (if necessary) on behalf of operating system in virtual machine ... and an effort to fit UNIX with 370 EREP was several times larger than any of the efforts just porting UNIX to 370. The TSS370/SSUP strategy being done for AT&T ... had all the low-level TSS/370 kernel hardware support ... but with UNIX layered ontop (an alternative approach to giving unix environment a large amount of 370 EREP).

In any case, I suggested that the two groups might be able to form a marriage of convenience doing something similar. Didn't happen.

misc. past posts mentioning tss370/ssup, RASP, aspen, au/gold/uts, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#1 pathlengths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#11 S/360 operating systems geneaology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#2 IBM S/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#64 Old naked woman ASCII art
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#190 Merced Processor Support at it again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#191 Merced Processor Support at it again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#61 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#68 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#70 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#19 SIMTICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#20 VM-CMS emulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#22 Early AIX including AIX/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#23 MERT Operating System & Microkernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#47 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#7 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#8 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#9 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#11 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#17 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#18 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#20 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#23 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#42 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#21 Original K & R C Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#24 Original K & R C Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#32 why does wait state exist?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#31 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#53 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#54 Filesystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#65 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#24 UltraSPARC-IIIi
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#31 Lisp Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#52 Question about Unix "heritage"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#5 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#48 Who said DAT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#4 TSS/370 source archive now available
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#9 TSS/370 binary distribution now available
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#10 XDS Sigma vs IBM 370 was Re: I/O Selectric on eBay: How to use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#26 Moribund TSO/E
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#61 IBM 360 memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#21 REXX still going strong after 25 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#72 ibm mainframe or unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#4 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#16 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#39 spool
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#3 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#4 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#10 vm/370 smp support and shared segment protection hack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#37 A Glimpse into PC Development Philosophy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#13 Relocating application architecture and compiler support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#20 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#61 Virtual Machine Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#4 [newbie] Ancient version of Unix under vm/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#7 [newbie] Ancient version of Unix under vm/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#9 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#38 storage key question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#44 hasp, jes, rasp, aspen, gold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#26 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#27 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#38 IEH/IEB/... names?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#34 Power5 and Cell, new issue of IBM Journal of R&D
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#40 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#24 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#18 Change in computers as a hobbiest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#31 MCTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#33 MCTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#19 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#26 Old PCs--environmental hazard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#30 Old Hashing Routine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#22 Admired designs / designs to study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#26 Admired designs / designs to study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#32 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#17 old Gold/UTS reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#27 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#24 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#28 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#11 Multiple mappings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#38 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#3 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#14 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#23 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#52 CMS (PC Operating Systems)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#9 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#43 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:25:24 -0600
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
Sure there are. Start with WindRiver. Then progress to MCP/AS, z/OS, Exec/1100 and so forth. The whole world isn't microsoft, you know.

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

that did the technology that was used in the internetal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and part of the technology that was used by customers and in bitnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

... aka the base technology was extremely layered with effectively something akin to gateway like function ... it not only deployed peer-to-peer networking ... but easily provided emulators that could also talk to HASP/JES2 ... lots of posts mentioning hasp/jes2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

... a recent x-over reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#69 Operating systems are old and busted

so by the time of bitnet time-frame ... internal corporate politics was such that it was restricting shipping support for just the HASP/JES2 interfaces ... even tho the native peer-to-peer implementations were much more efficient (and still continued to be used internally for some time).

in any case, the implementation was one of those service virtual machines (virtual appliances) ... more x-over
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#66 Off Topic But Concept should be Known To All
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#68 Operating systems are old and busted

and included in the implementation was a very small & tightly coded multitasking monitor (for dispatch/scheduling).

now many yrs later, the person had opportunity to be involved in project that involved one of the major RTOS ... and he happened to be looking thru the C-source which seemed to be familiar. Eventually checking an old listing of the multitasking monitor ... it was apparent that they had done a nearly line-by-line translation of his 360 assembler code into C ... including preserving all the original comments.

What if there were two Internets?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if there were two Internets?
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if,alt.history.what-if,alt.folklore.computers,alt.fan.cecil-adams
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:56:51 -0600
mailbox writes:
In the 1980s, as the Internet was emerging from a collection of government and university networks, was it inevitable that commercial interests would gain access? What if they had been frozen out and had to develop their own network alongside the Internet? Would that effort have been led by the phone company -- when it was _the_ phone company? If so, would our access from home look and feel any different than it is? Would we be used to metered e-mail? Would our bandwidth usage, and perhaps its content, be subject to closer scrutiny by corporate nannies?

recent discussion about telco entities being involved in NSFNET backbone and speculation on possible reasons for the participation (including estimate that they were contributing possibly in excess of four times the resources that was actually funded).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#67 nouns and adjectives

also mentions that tcp/ip being the technology basis for modern internetworking (in the great network 1jan83 conversion), nsfnet backbone was the operational basis for the modern internetworking, and cix was the business basis for the modern internetworking. other recent posts with similar observations ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#5 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#43 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#67 SSL vs. SSL over tcp/ip
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#40 Best practices for software delivery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#70 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#14 Superconductors and computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#37 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#24 Does socket represent an interface between ... ?

lots of past posts mentioning the internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

some collected posts specifically related to NSFNET activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

as well as old archived email from the 80s regarding various NSFNET activities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

lots of past posts mentioning bitnet and earn (academic networks, also going on thru most of the 80s)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

which was an application of some of the same technology that was being used in the internal network ... which i've claimed was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-85
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

on of the issues involving the internal network ... which saw little play in the academic networks ... was internal network security requirements ... including all information leaving corporate site had to be encrypted. in some areas this wasn't terrible difficult issue ... but in some cases were corporate network trunks crossed national boundaries it became major issue. another relative comparison was the claim from the mid-80s that the internal network used over half of all link encryptors in the world.

The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:30:09 -0600
lists@AKPHS.COM (Phil Smith III) writes:
Which is the end of the story, boys and girls. For, while so many people focus on how the PC has damaged the mainframe, the mainframe still stands tall. What the PC was meant to destroy, it did destroy - the minis and superminis. DEC went from top of the heap (Queen Elizabeth in Boston harbor for DECWorld) to non-existence in less than 10 years. DG is no more. Wang is no more. The PC destroyed them all.

we were spending some time in SCI (as well as FCS and HIPPI) meetings.

both Sequent and DG would build an SCI machine with four (intel) processor boards ... for 256process numa machine (convex built an sci machine with two hp/risc processor board ... for 128processor numa machine). both DG and sequent are gone ... sequent being absorbed by ibm ... and some recent references that the only surviving sequent technology may be found in some contributions to linux. HP's superdome may or may not be considered to be the exemplar follow-on. a couple recent posts on sci/numa machines:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?

wang signed a deal with austin (and some of the austin people actually left and went to work for wang) to use rs/6000 as their hardware platform (getting out of the hardware business).

in some of the a.f.c. posts, i've frequently pointed out that the late 70s and early 80s saw a significant uptake of mid-range machines in the departmental server market segment ... both vm/43xx and vax/vms ... with vm/43xx actually having larger install base than vax/vms (in part because there were numerous large customer orders for multiple hundred 43xx machines at a time). by the mid-80s that market segment was starting to be taken over by workstations and large PCs (with corresponding drop-off in sales of 43xx and vax machines). Later the more powerful PCs would also take over much of the workstation market.

misc. old email mentioning various happenings around 43xx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

there had been anticipation that the introduction of the 4361/4381 would see comparable uptake to 4331/4341 ... but by then, the market was already starting to move to workstations and larger PCs.

a couple past posts given domestic and world-wide vax numbers, sliced & diced by model and yr (post 85, the numbers are primarily micro-vax):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#37 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#31 PDP-1

Operating systems are old and busted

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating systems are old and busted
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:07:01 -0600
chrismason@BELGACOM.NET (Chris Mason) writes:
... and thereby put the wait light out[1]. Having been brought up with DOS (the original DOS), and, generally, S/360 Model 30s, I was used to knowing how busy the machine was by observing the flickering of the wait light.

my first undergraduate programming job was to port MPIO from 1401 to 360/30. MPIO provided tape<->unitrecord/printer/punch front-end for university 709 running ibsys.

it was possible to operate the 360/30 in 1401 emulation mode ... so i conjecture that the exercise was purely to get familiarity with new 360 ... which would eventually replace both the 709 and the front-end machine with 360/67.

i got to design and implement my own monitor, device drivers, interrupt handlers, storage management, consol interface, etc ... and eventually had assembler program with approx. 2000 cards.

running os/360 pcp (r6) ... the "stand-alone" version assembled in about 20-25 minutes elapsed time. I had conditional assembly that would also generate program that would run under PCP and used open/close and DCB macros. There were five DCB macros and you could tell from the wait light pattern when the assembler was processing a DCB macro ... and each one took 5-6 minutes elapsed time ... the os/360 conditional assembly version took an extra 30minutes (making the assembly nearly an hr total).




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