List of Archived Posts

2009 Newsgroup Postings (07/16 - 08/08)

Timeline: The evolution of online communities
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Big Bonuses At Goldman Should Be Applauded, Not Criticized
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Is the end of the corporate desktop near?
Moving to the Net: Encrypted Execution for User Code on a Hosting Site
Timeline: The evolution of online communities
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Timeline: The evolution of online communities
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Timeline: The evolution of online communities
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Mainframe hacking (getting back on topic)
Mainframe hacking
Bulletproof
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Timeline: The evolution of online communities
If you don't have access to a mainframe
Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
Barclays online banking borked
Don't Take Fraud Out of Context
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Origins of EBCDIC
Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts
Oracle Database Abandons z/OS
Disksize history question
Disksize history question
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Trouble in PKI land
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API
Ingres claims massive database performance boost
Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
Mainframe Utility for EBCDIC to ASCII conversion
Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
Disksize history question
Disksize history question
Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Hercules; more information requested
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
The satate of software
Hercules; more information requested
Hercules; more information requested
COBOL: 50 not out
Disksize history question
Hercules; more information requested
The satate of software
Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Hercules; more information requested
The satate of software
PayPal hit by global outage
Java question
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Disksize history question
And, 40 years of IBM midrange
An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
Hercules Question
Client Certificate UI for Chrome?
And, 40 years of IBM midrange
Disksize history question
Disksize history question
And, 40 years of IBM midrange
Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Date: 16 July, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
a.f.c. posting also copied to (linkedin) greater ibm:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

Early in rexx timeframe (when it was still rex) ... there was some issue regarding rex being just another pretty scripting language ... along the lines of EXEC2 ... so I decided to demonstrate that it could be used for "real" applications. I took the IPCS problem determination & dump reader application (a few tens of thousands of assembler) as the example.

The objective was to do an IPCS implementation in rex, taking half-time over 3 months elapsed time which would have ten times the performance (as the assembler implementation) as well as ten times the function. A side-effect was that this was in the middle of the OCO-wars ... which (if it had been decided to ship it to customers) would have required shipping the source.

Eventually it came to be in use by all internal datacenters and nearly all PSRs ... but it was never decided to ship it to customers. Somewhat as a result, I put together a SHARE presentation ... describing how trivial it would be for customers to do a similar implementation (which then some did).

Some number of past posts mentioning the effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

Another application done by somebody originally at the IBM Peterlee science center ... but later at IBM Hursley, was VMSG (email client). An early prototype of VMSG source was picked up by the PROFs group and used as the basis for PROFs email. Later when it was suggested that the PROFs group upgrade to a more current version of VMSG ... they denied that they were using VMSG and attempted to have the VMSG author fired. The issue was partially defused when it was pointed out that all email sent by PROFs and all email sent by VMSG ... included the VMSG author's initials embedded in a header field that wasn't normally displayed.

After the above incident ... the VMSG author limited the VMSG source distribution to only two other people.

The VMSG author also did PARASITE and STORY which implemented a programmable 3270 terminal emulation and HLLAPI language for automating various kinds of 3270 terminal operations (well before ibm/pc announce). Old post with STORY language description and example scripts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35
"STORY" to retrieve updates/fixes from (online field engineeering) RETAIN:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#36

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:12:49 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
There is a difference between the width of the platen and what a terminal can handle as a line.

I had originally done tty/ascii support for cp67 as undergraduate at the univ. ... i set the max. line length and used one byte arithmetic (lines would be split by software as necessary ... including delay characters to get the printing head back to the left). recent posts in this thread, referenced that work then blossomed into doing clone controller:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#60 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#61 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

this has a story about somebody modifying the cp67 installed at the MIT Urban Systems Lab (across the tech sq coutyard in one of the other other tech sq bldgs):
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

What I remember was that somebody down at harvard had an ascii plotter and USL modified the max. line length to be 1200 bytes to support the device ... and the cp67 system crashed (and auto restarted) 27 times that day (not having caught that one byte values was being used).

science center where cp67 was created was on 4th flr 545 tech sq; misc. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and USL (which i remember being across the tech sq courtyard) had installed cp67 offering online, interactive, timesharing computing. (and multics was on 5th flr of 545 tech sq.)

The above "multicians" web page mentioning cp67 ... also has some items mentioning tss/360 & MTS ... other virtual memory systems for 360/67.

Mentioned in the above was tss/360 eventually had limited follow-on tss/370. What wasn't mentioned was a custom, stripped down tss/370 kernel was done for AT&T with modified UNIX layered ontop (using tss for a lot of kernel services).

For other drift ... I had some amount of activity the tss/370 group ... an old email referencing the tss/370 work for AT&T
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#email800327
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#17 old Gold/UTS reference

another old email reference work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#email800408
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#3 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Big Bonuses At Goldman Should Be Applauded, Not Criticized

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Big Bonuses At Goldman Should Be Applauded, Not Criticized
Date: 17 July, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
these a.f.c. posts were repeated in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#71
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#81

along with the additional comment regarding this referenced article:

Who caused the financial crisis - villains or jerks? - Money Features
http://moneyfeatures.blogs.money.cnn.com/2009/07/11/who-caused-the-financial-crisis-villains-or-jerks/

some references on the villains side:

12 Corrupt Deals Caused the Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Meltdown
http://beyondmoney.net/2009/03/15/239/
Wall Street's Best Investment
http://eatthestate.org/13-14/WallStreetsBest.htm
Wall Street's Best Investment II: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown
http://multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/index.php?/archives/107-Wall-Streets-Best-Investment-II-12-Deregulatory-Steps-to-Financial-Meltdown.html
Topic: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown
http://oldelmtree.com/discussion/index.php?topic=3436.0
How Wall Street Bought Washington
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/03/10/how-wall-street-bought-washington/

.. aka the business news shows earlier this week were making statements about the (taxpayer funded) AIG payouts to these institutions were larger than the declared profits (i.e. they would otherwise would have had losses). Of course ... as referenced in the article from Jan. ... institutions like Goldman don't really need the excuse of having a profit for big bonuses.

In the above "villain" related articles ... they mention repeal of Glass-Steagall at "number one" ... misc. past (archived) posts in Greater IBM discussions mentioning repeal of Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#34 Board Visibility Into The Business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#37 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#53 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#76 Undoing 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#1 IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#49 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#12 IBM identity manager goes big on role control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#21 The Big Takeover
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#36 Average Comp This Year At Top Firm Estimated At $700,000

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:08:04 -0400
Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
However, 64-bit versions of Unix already have much larger date fields. By 29 years from now, it shouldn't be a problem.

64bit clock was introduced for original 370 nearly 40yrs ago. the high (32bit) word is approx. a second (1024/1000). The size of the clock was expanded for 64bit Z (current generation of 370) ... recent post given the format for the (extended/current) 128-bit flavor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#39 My Vintage Dream PC

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Is the end of the corporate desktop near?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Is the end of the corporate desktop near?
Date: 17 July, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
Is the end of the corporate desktop near?
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/end-corporate-desktop-near/2009-07-17

from above:
Is the reign of the desktop PC in the enterprise nearing an end? Don Reisinger of eWeek thinks so, pointing to a recent study by research firm iSuppli. The study showed that desktop shipments are expected to slide by some 18.1 percent this year

..snip ...

I've periodically pontificated that one of the big early uptakes for the IBM/PC was the corporate desktop. Corporation already doing tens of thousands of 3270 terminal ... could get an IBM/PC for approx. the same price and in single desktop footprint have both 3270 terminal emulation as well as some local computing. As a result it was frequently no-brainer incremental business case to switch the 3270s terminal business justification to IBM/PC.

Later the terminal emulation install base represented an inhibitor to moving past terminal emulation into client/server and other modes of operation ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

During part of that later time-frame, we had come up with 3-tier architecture and were out pitching it to customer executives and taking barbs from the forces at communication division focused on preserving terminal emulation install base
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

One of the periodic themes is in the efforts to protect the terminal emulation install base ... it contributed significantly to the isolation of the datacenter mainframes and the migration of applications to other platforms.

There were studies in the late 80s and early 90s regarding the rate that data was leaking out of the datacenter mainframes because of the barriers that terminal emulation represented to having more complex applications operate on the data.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Moving to the Net: Encrypted Execution for User Code on a Hosting Site

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Moving to the Net: Encrypted Execution for User Code on a Hosting Site
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:37:16 -0400
Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:
I was talking yesterday to a friend who worked on a somewhat similar problem for IBM in the 1970s. He commented that you can't do this without physical security. That is, if the hosting service has physical access, they can use a variety of techniques to get the master keys, and perhaps even substitute hardware that appears to the users to be the same, but has holes to allow leaks. Overall, he said that you could provide security that would prevent an MIT grad student from breaking it, but not say a well funded and technologically sophisticated government agency.

I had done a lot of operating system stuff as undergraduate in the 60s and would get periodic requests from the vendor for enhancements ... however i didn't learn about these guys until much later
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

in retrospect ... some of the enhancement requests may have been of the type to have originated from that customer set.

later the company did all sorts of special security processes as part of the future system project; misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

where all the documentation would be kept in softcopy and viewed online under the strictest of of security controls. this was somewhat the result of some paper documentation of unannounced virtual memory feature for 370s ... being copied and leaking to somebody in the press (the result of that incident was that all copier machines got modified so that they left identification tags on all copies they made).

In any case, somebody made a comment that even if Lynn Wheeler was physically in the datacenter machine room alone ... he still wouldn't be able to gain access to the future system documentation. It is one of the few times I rose to the bait. It took five minutes ... because I first had to disable/turn-off all access to the machine from outside the machine room. I then flipped a bit in kernel storage so that authentication routine would take everything & anything as valid authentication. I commented that the only countermeasure would be to have everything encrypted ... so there was no way that my trick with the authentication routine would work.

Later about the time ibm/pc was announced ... there was an effort looking if anything could be added to the machine for the purposes of DRM (it wasn't called DRM back then ... it was copy protect against pirated software ... remember the days of 5.25in floppy disks that had special encoding for copy protect purposes?). It turned out that all the tamper resistant technology of the period was significantly more expensive than the ibm/pc itself.

last decade I did some work on aads chip strawman that included some tamper resistant features ... some stuff related to AADS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

and talked about it on Assurance panel in a TCPA track:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011109072807/http://www.intel94.com/idf/spr2001/sessiondescription.asp?id=stp%2bs13

the guy running TCPA was in the front row ... and I quipped that it was nice that over the previous year or two, TPM was getting lot simpler and starting to look more & more like AADS chip strawman ... so he quiped back that I didn't have the benefit of 200 person committee helping me with the design

we did do an exercise of looking at custom circuit design for all the AADS functions ... getting it down to 20,000 circuits that would fit easily in the corner of just about any existing chip.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:51:29 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Don't forget LISTSERVs, which served a similar function as usenet groups.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

as per above, this gives the history of original listserv (done originally on bitnet)
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp

effectively implementing the mailing list subset of the TOOLSRUN function that had been done earlier on the internal network ... TOOLSRUN implementation was somewhat the result of investigation that blamed me for computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s. TOOLSRUN also had a usenet kind of mode ... where a TOOLSRUN clone/demon could be set up on local machine ... with local people accessing directly a specific repository.

One of the things that had been done even earlier on the internal network was a distribution list function ... which handled optimized transmission of distributed information. This had somewhat been done ... at least in support of phone directory distributions (especially as it approached nearly every internal system wanting their own local copy of online phone directories). At one point before the distribution list function, it was claimed that phone directory distribution was accounting for 1/3rd of all bits transmitted on the internal network. After the distribution list function was deployed ... the aggregate bits for phone directory distribution dropped dramatically (i.e. only one copy had to be transmitted over each link ... regardless of the number of recipients)

TOOLSRUN would make use of the network distribution list functionality ... both for distribution to other TOOLSRUN operations as well as users that had registered for mailing list operation.

I don't remember whether the internal distribution list network support was ever made available to BITNET & EARN.

email from long ago and far away (predating TOOLSRUN by quite a bit)

Date: 03/27/80 10:30:13
From: wheeler

I also hear that xxxx has plans for a VNET line driver which will support sending a file to a distribution list eliminating transmission of duplicate files where possible.


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

and took more than two years:

Date: 11/12/82 09:07:17
From: wheeler

re: RSCS distribution list support; i've been following the project for awhile. We are currently negotiating to install RSCS here with distribution list support. Critical path involves integrating local SJR updates for specific function (generic nodeid for 6670 output, ordering file queue based on both time & size, etc.).


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

misc. other past posts mentioning TOOLSRUN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#5 what makes a cpu fast
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#33 LISTSERV(r) on mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#18 MVS 3.8
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#48 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#5 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#22 z/VM Listserv?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#9 It's official: "nuke" infected Windows PCs instead of fixing them
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#11 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#16 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#35 Top versus bottom posting was Re: IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#10 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#23 How to write a full-screen Rexx debugger?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#7 information utility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#31 IBMLink 2000 Finding ESO levels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#32 IBMLink 2000 Finding ESO levels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#55 IBMLink 2000 Finding ESO levels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#54 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#70 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#30 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#48 Anyone know of some good internet Listserv's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#46 Anyone still have access to VMTOOLS and TEXTTOOLS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#49 Discussions areas, private message silos, and how far we've come since 199x
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#61 Discussions areas, private message silos, and how far we've come since 199x
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#12 Discussions areas, private message silos, and how far we've come since 199x
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#13 "Telecommunications" from '85
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#37 BITNET & LISTSERV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#45 Usenet - Dead? Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#14 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:11:44 -0400
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
Yes, X11 was from MIT. And they had a *free* windowing system called Athena. Most commercial applications used the Motif windowing system or the OpenLook windowing system. Athena, Motif, and OpenLook were all built on top of the X11 primative libraries.

OpenLook was the choice of IBM. I worked on an Data General AViion worstations at a PPOE for several years. It ran a version of SVR4 Unix and had a Motif windowing system.


ibm & dec had jointly funded project athena to the tune of $25m each, athena brought you X11, Kerberos (authentication in many places included embedded in windows) and some number of other things. ibm funded andrew stuff to the tune of $50m ... brought you andrew toolkit, andrew file system, mach, camelot, etc. IBM then invested in the spin off of camelot as Transarc ... and then eventually bought Transarc outright (past reference to having paid for it three separate times).

when at&t & sun lined up ... "OSF" (open software foundation or oppose sun forever) lined up on the other side and worked on putting together stuff free of "at&t".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation

which collected and packaged some number of things ... OSF/1, Motif, DCE, etc.

openlook was on the other side having been done by SUN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEN_LOOK

athena (joint mit, dec, ibm project)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena
kerberos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%28protocol%29
X Window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

andrew: (joint cmu, ibm project):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Project
AFS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System
transarc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transarc

misc. recent posts mentioning some of the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#22 Does anyone know if there is a 'version' of CICS that IBM is planning to implement for AIX or something that does a similar function already?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#58 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#66 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#39 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#41 Storing MIT-Kerberos authentication data in an LDAP backend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#62 Solving password problems one at a time, Re: The password-reset paradox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#14 Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#18 Another one bites the dust

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:26:20 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

when Project Andrew started one of the people that I worked with at SJR (who happened to be a CMU graduate) transferred back to CMU to be the corporate rep (because of the ibm funding).

because of joint IBM & DEC funding for Athena, DEC & IBM each got an "assistant director" at Athena. For a time, the (IBM) assistant director at Athena was somebody I had worked with at the science center (and also happened to have invented the compare&swap instruction ... opcode "CAS" chosen because those are his initials). we got to do periodic project reviews at athena. one visit, got to sit thru the emerging design discussions for cross-domain kerberos.

for other drift ...

misc. past posts mentioning smp &/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

misc. past posts mentioning PKINIT for kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:56:43 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

the old 11/12/82 email regarding distribution list support (avoid sending multiple duplicate copies)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#email821112

predates the great cut-over of arpanet to internet on 1jan83. at the time arpanet was something on the order of 100 nodes (IMPs) and less than 255 host ... while the internal network was well on its way to 1000 nodes.

some reference in old a.f.c thread here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#0 Internet and/or ARPANET?

with old email regarding SJR gateway to CSNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#email821022

post regarding internal network exceeding 1000 nodes in 83
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22

other posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and old email with various internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet

a couple past posts with picture of 1000th node desk ornament
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#35 IBM THINK original equipment sign
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#18 Another one bites the dust

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:42:51 -0400
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
The compare and swap instruction is like a "test and set" instruction, right??? Test and set is used to check the value of a flag and set the flag value if it is *not* already set; it is done as an "atomic", uninterruptible instruction use to maintain a flag for locking a section of code.

Of course, it would be *horrible* if IBM had to call such an instruction by a name that someone else used. IBM has to have their *own* name for everything! :-)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#8 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

test&set were on 360/65 & 360/67 machine for smp support. it basically tested a byte and if it was zero, set it to not-zero ... the condition code from the instruction indicated whether the byte was originally zero (and the "lock" was obtained) or was not originally zero (and the lock wasn't obtained).

charlie invented compare&swap instruction when he was working on fine-grain locking for cp67 ... running on 360/67.

initial attempts to get it included in 370 architecture was rebuffed ... 370 architecture quoting the favorite son operating system group as test&set was more than sufficient for smp support. the challenge that the 370 architectgure group offered was to come up with a use for compare&swap that wasn't smp specific. lots of past posts mentioning smp and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

the resulting justification uses & descriptions can still be found in current principles of operation. simple case is application code updating counters or updating threaded lists ... or some number of other operations, can use compare&swap w/o having to make kernel call to achieve serialization (and avoid pre-emption). In the later 70s and 80s the instruction (or at least something with similar semantics) showed up in a large number of different machines and became widely used by large, multithreaded applications ... like database management systems (DBMS).

compare&swap instruction (both 32bit and 64bit)
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/7.5.28?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

compare double and swap instruction (both 32bit and 64bit)
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/7.5.29?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

the 32bit versions of both of the above instructions appeared in 370 (as part of coming up with multithreaded application code operation w/o requiring kernel call for serialization and/or locking).

test & set instruction (was available in original 360 for smp locking support)
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/7.5.139?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

the compare&swap exampl descripting are now in this appendix

a.6 multiprogramming and multiprocessing examples
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

"multiprogramming" is another name for multithreaded.

a.6.2 conditional swapping instructions
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.2?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

a.6.3 bypassing post and wait
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.3?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

a.6.4 lock/unlock
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.4?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

a.6.5 free-pool manipulation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.5?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

a new instruction has also since been introduced called perform locked operation ... to

perform compare, load, compare&swap, and store operations on two or more discontiguous locations that can be words or doublewords. The operations are performed as an atomic set of operations under the control of a lock that is held only for the duration of the execution of a single PERFORM LOCKED OPERATION instruction

... snip ...

a.6.6. perform locked operation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:49:50 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#8 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

also from somewhere long ago and far away ...

Date: Fri, 1 Apr 1988 11:36:35 CST
From: wheeler
...
Project Athena have developed serveral major subsystems for making the Athena platform possible. The best known is probably the X-Window system. Of immediate interest during this visit were the:

Athena Service Management System
Hesiod Name Server
Kerberos Authentication Service
Zephyr Notification Service

Currently Project Athena consists of

campus backbone LAN
30+ LAN gateways
30+ local LAN loops
600-700 workstations
65+ servers

Most of the workstations are micro-VAX and RTs with almost a "diskless" configuration. The have a single minimum harddisk use for local swap and a minimal "boot filesystem" that can be restored from a single floppy disk. The workstations almost totally lack any personality and the objective is that anybody can walk up to any workstation, gain access to their own files and establish their own personalized workstation.

The major items making this possible are:

UNIX
LANs
Distributed file system
Kerberos Authentication Service
Hesiod Name Service
Athena Service Management System


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

A major objective of whole athena was that the number of available workstations was smaller than the total number of students ... but typically sufficient number for workstations that needed to be used at any particular moment. the idea that anybody could walk up to any free workstation and it would be personalized for their use as long as they were using it ... some similarities to current cloud computing.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:16:14 -0400
lynn wrote:
I don't remember whether the internal distribution list network support was ever made available to BITNET & EARN.

re;
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#9 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

I managed to find an oblique reference to RSCS "*LIST" processing being made available in the product (for customers, presumably including BITNET & EARN) by at least 1988.

and from long ago and far way ... extract from writeup initially done after discussions earlier in 1980 ... i.e. reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#email800327
A Proposal for an Enhancement to RSCS to Provide a Distribution/Routing Facility

It is frequently necessary to send a single file to many recipients at different nodes on the network, including sometimes sending such a file to many recipients at a single node. This is done today by sending several copies of the file (one per ultimate recipient) over the entire route from the originator to each recipient, or in some cases (such as the VM/370 Newsletter) by sending a file and a distribution list to a number of remote users who cooperate by "re-distributing" the file to those users who are located nearby in the network.

....

These notes:
July, 1980

Updated:
September, 1982


... snip ...

part of the issue was that internal rscs/vnet work was with done using native rscs/vnet support. in part because of rscs/vnet's layered design/architecture ... it was easily possible to had drivers for other architectures. one such early effort was hasp/jes2 interfaces (part of favorite son operating system).

while the large majority of internal network nodes were rscs/vnet, there were some number of jes2 systems connecting into the environment ... however they were relegated to edge/perimeter nodes for a number of reasons.

One issue was that jes2 implementation would drop traffic where it didn't have local definition for either the originating node or the destination node (if it was acting as an intermediate node). jes2 networking originated with jes2's hasp predecessor. Part of that design was to defined network nodes in hasps unused psuedo-device table. The psuedo-device table had a max. of 255 entries and was used to defined psuedo spooling & unit record equipment. A modest jes2 system would possibly have 60-80 such entries used ... leaving something like 170-190 entries to define network nodes. It wasn't until well after the internal network passed 1000 nodes, that jes2 added support for defining a maximum of 999 nodes. In any case, in the early 80s, a JES2 system was only capable of defining a small subset of the internal network nodes (which met that if it was used as an intermediate node ... it would likely be throwing away the majority of the traffic coming through). misc. posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

The other problem was that hasp/jes2 networking architecture wasn't layered ... with all sorts of control fields jumbled together. jes2 was notorious for crashing and bringing down the whole operating system if it received a file that originated from another jes2 that was at a different version or release. As a result ... a whole library of vnet/rscs drivers evolved that translated traffic originating from a jes2 system into a cannonical form and then the vnet/rscs (nji/nje) driver talking directly to some other jes2 system, would be configured to convert header jes2 fields into format required by that jes2 system (internally, jes2 systems talking to each other were frequently dependent on having a intermediate vnet/rscs node). some number of posts discussing these and other hasp/jes2 issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

possibly to minimize contrast with how badly jes2 network support appeared to customers (with respect to native drivers) ... at some point, rscs/vnet product stopped shipping its own "native" drivers (which also had much better thruput and performance that jes2) and only shipped jes2 compatible drivers. this is what was used for (customer) bitnet/earn network

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

in any case there was some issues getting the internal *LIST processing adapted to what was being shipped as the standard rscs/vnet product.

slightly related discussion with regard to (full-duplex) dmtfdx vnet/rscs driver (which didn't ship to cusotmers)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:22:32 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I managed to find an oblique reference to RSCS "*LIST" processing being made available in the product (for customers, presumably including BITNET & EARN) by at least 1988.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#9 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

here is a RSCS *LIST (distribution list processing) reference from 1991
http://community.emailogy.com/scripts/wa-COMMUNITY.exe?A2=ind9107&L=lstsrv-l&P=35926

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:00:46 -0400
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
I see that Compare and Swap is a more complicated instruction. But it was created for the same use as Test and Set, no??? What other use was there for Compare and Swap???

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#8 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#10 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

compare&swap was invented by charlie when he was working on fine-grain multiprocessor locking for cp67 (on 370/67 smp hardware). he observed that many of the use of test&set lock were for relatively straight-forward operations. compare&swap was created so that the serialized operation (bracketed by atomic lock test&set instruction) could be done as a single atomic instruction (w/o requiring separate lock/unlock instruction bracketing some operations that needed to be serialized).

as mentioned the initial attempts to get it included in 370 architecture were rebuffed and we were presented with a challenge to show uses for compare&swap that weren't multiprocessor specific.

the previously explained uses for compare&swap for large, multithreaded applications took advantage of the atomic serialized operation (locking) and the specific operations (bracketing by lock/unlock) were done all in a single atomic instruction.

the issue for large, multithreaded applications was that they typically ran enabled for interrupts (compared to traditional test&set kernel code that typically ran disabled for interrupts). the issue in multithreaded application if they obtained a lock ... there could be an interrupt before they performed the operation bracketed by the lock/unlock sequence, and then have a different thread dispatched which could get into deadly embrace attempting to obtain the same lock.

as a result multithreaded applications tended to require kernel calls to achieve such operations (being able to be performed by code sequences disabled for interrupts).

being able to collapse the atomic lock/unlock operation as well as the operation that the lock/unlock was "protecting" ... into a single atomic insturction ... eliminated the possibility that the operation could be interrupting between obtaining a lock and releasing the lock (aka eliminated the need for separate lock/unlock instructions from the instruction(s) performing the actual operation.

see the supplied references for much more detailed descriptions regarind how things like (multithreaded) DBMS systems make use of atomic compare&swap ... and avoids requiring (disabled) kernel functions.

for the described operations ... for test&set semantics, lock/unlock sequence separate from the instructions that actually implement the operations ... the sequence has to be "disabled" for interrupts. compare&swap being a single atomic instruction can't be interrupted between the time it starts and the time it completes. for test&set semantics to achieve the equivalent ... the sequence has to be disabled for interrupts (as described in the detailed examples/references and mentioned in previous posts)

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe hacking (getting back on topic)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe hacking (getting back on topic)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:48:42 -0400
sebastian@WELTON.DE (Sebastian Welton) writes:
There is an article on the 2600 archives (and replicated elsewhere) on how to break into VM/370 systems but really requires you to know the maint password. I have (bows head in shame) 'hacked' into a system. This was open to the internet and was running an ADCD system and they had not changed the default passwords, including ibmuser. All I did was take a look around and then log out but, for me, that was a very large hole in their security (was not a commercial company but still....)

recent post mentioning once taking the bait and demonstrating an exploit/penetration ... they had supposedly added huge amount of security features to an internal system to protect highly classified corporate documents ... and then claimed even if i was in the machine room, i would *NOT* be able to get access
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#5

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe hacking

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Mainframe hacking
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 21 Jul 2009 14:58:34 -0700
Bruce.Richardson@ARCELORMITTAL.COM (Bruce Richardson) writes:
Getting back on target .... Doesn't anyone remember the Christmas Tree viral worm? As I recall, it was an e-mail with an attachment; the reader was instructed to save the attachment as a EXEC, and run it to see the Christmas greeting. While the greeting was displayed, the EXEC harvested the address book (in PROFS, and/or NAMES file) and resent the original e-mail to anyone it could find. In short order, systems were crashing due to full SPOOL, and the networks ground to a halt, shipping this note back and forth. I believe the programmer did some hard time. I don't remember what year it was, but is was when PROFS was big.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#15 Mainframe hacking (getting back on topic)

almost exactly a year before the morris worm on the internet

from a a.f.c post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87

vmshare refernce:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=CHRISTMA&ft=PROB
and risk digest reference
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.81.html#subj1

by comparison morris worm a year later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

for other topic drift ... a thread in a.f.c. & ibmconnect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#9 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#12 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#13 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Bulletproof

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Bulletproof
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 21 Jul 2009 15:14:21 -0700
eells@US.IBM.COM (John Eells) writes:
We prefer the phrase "bullet resistant." ;-) (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#16

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

we i 1st started playing they had all these "test cells" (engineering devices under development) ... that they had big switch which interconnected test cells and some number of mainframes. testing was "stand alone" with dedicated mainframe machine time scheduled. they had tried concurrent testing in mvs environment ... but even with a single connected "test cell", MVS mtbf was 15 minutes (crash or hang requiring reboot).

so for the heck of it, i undertook to rewrite i/o supervisor to make it bullet proof and never fail or hang ... allowing significant improvement in productivity by allowing concurrent, on-demand testing with any number of "test cells". i happened to mention the mvs 15min mtbf number in an internal report ... which seemed to bring down the wrath of the mvs organization on my head.

later when we were doing ha/cmp product ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

i was asked to write a section in the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... unforunately, both rochester and pok complained (that they couldn't then match the implementation) and my section got pulled.

i had also coined the terms disaster survivable and geographic survivable (to differentiate from disaster/recovery) when we were out marketing ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:26:51 -0400
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
Of course not. But the biggest Y2K problem was watching the bulk of the software development industry leave the US and go to India. THAT was bigger than any damn set of computer bugs!

i've often talked to people trying to hire y2k and they were in competition with the internet (bubble) offering either much higher salaries and/or stock (that appeared to have enormous value proposition).

the competition with internet (bubble) and y2k remediation appearing to be a shortterm project/effort resulted in organizations being forced to going overseas for resources.

it was after the internet bubble burst that a lot of places found/realized that the nuts&bolts business dataprocessing activity was working reasonably well overseas.

it wasn't just y2k projects that found themselves competing with all the resources being sucked up by internet (bubble), riches, fame and glory ... numerous other computer operations found loosing resources to internet (bubble).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: The evolution of online communities

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: The evolution of online communities
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:03:20 -0400
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
WAITS and CTSS don't really fit any narrative in common use. They *could*, but they don't. Therefore, nobody remembers them. Multics has been shoehorned into another system's narrative: It's the first villain in the 'Unix narrative', which is joined at the hip to the 'Hacker narrative' at this point. It will continue to be misunderstood until it breaks this mold.

some amount of ctss & multics show up in melinda's vm history document
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

some number of the people on ctss went to the science center on 4th flr 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and did the original virtual machine system cp40 ... which they morphed into cp67 ... when they replaced their hardware modified 360/40 (virtual memory support) with 360/67 which came standard with virtual memory hardware.

some number of the other ctss people went to multics on 5th flr, 545 tech sq. lots of stuff here:
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#80 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#9 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#12 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#13 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

If you don't have access to a mainframe

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: If you don't have access to a mainframe...
Date: 24 July, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
recent post on doing a problem analyzer in rexx ... way back when rexx was still rex and there were discussions about whether it was just another pretty scripting language (like EXEC2)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0

the standard product was several tens of thousands of assembler. the objective of the exercise was that in half time over three months, implement a replacement with ten times the functionality and ten times the performance. One of the things was that most of the printed documents were now in cms script files (bookmaster) ... so it took a little bit to find the softcopy of the printed files and provide a facility that automatically looked up & presented the text for an abend code.

a side objective was that the oco-wars had started and if the implementation shipped ... the code (rexx) would have to ship with it. it never did ship ... but eventually majority of internal datacenters and PSRs were using it.

misc. past posts on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

for other topic drift ... starting in '67, i would take the stage2 output of stage1 sysgen and carefully re-arrange all the stage2 cards to optimize os/360 datasets and pds members for optimized disk arm motion. For the university workload ... this increased the thruput by a factor of nearly three times (compared to vanilla, out-of-the-box sysgen). I got some number of SHARE presentations out of the activity (even tho i was still an undergraduate).

Then the univ. got an ONR grant for digital library catalogue ... and effort was also selected to be one of the beta-test sites for the original CICS product ... and i got tasked with supporting CICS. I remember having to fix some number of CICS bugs ... mostly because the univ. was using different BDAM options than the customer installation where CICS was originally developed. misc. past posts mentioning BDAM &/or CICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
Date: 25 July, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/072709-timeline-40-years-of.html

from above:
In a laboratory experiment, researchers found that between 55 percent and 100 percent of participants ignored certificate security warnings, depending on which browser they were using

... snip ...

We had been brought in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on server ... and they had invented this technology called SSL that they wanted to use. As part of the effort we had to look in detail at these things called SSL domain name digital certificates and what it was they were suppose to accomplish ... some number of past posts mentioning SSL domain name digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

misc. other.

Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135903/Security_certificate_warnings_don_t_work_researchers_say
Security Certificate Warnings Don't Work, Researchers Say
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090725/tc_pcworld/securitycertificatewarningsdontworkresearcherssay
Security Certificate Warnings Don't Work, Researchers Say
http://www.pcworld.com/article/169049/security_certificate_warnings_dont_work_researchers_say.html

x-over with network solutions breach and domain name security certificates. DNSSEC represents something of a catch-22 for the SSL domain name digital certificate manufacturers. Part of DNSSEC would have domain name owners registering a public key at the same time they register the domain. Then future communication with registrar would be digitally signed ... this would help as a countermeasure to domain name hijacking.

Normal SSL domain name digital certificate application has the applicant providing a bunch of identification information. Then the SSL digital certificate manufacturer (Certification Authority) must do the time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone process of matching the supplied information with the information on file with the domain name registrar to verify that the applicant really owns the domain name. Improving the integrity of the domain name registrar (with public key registration) also improves the integrity of the SSL digital certificates (reducing the possibility that the applicant isn't a domain name hijacker/impostor).

The SSL domain name Certification Authority might then require that the application be digitally signed ... and then do a real time retrieval of the registered public key to verify the digital signature; this would replace the time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone identification process with a much simpler, less expensive and more reliable authentication process.

The issue for the SSL domain name Certification Authorities is if they could start doing real-time retrieval of public keys from the registration authority ... then the whole rest of the world might also ... making the SSL domain name digital certificates redundant and superfluous. some past posts mentioning the catch-22 issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

if SSL were to retrieve (real-time) public keys from the domain name infrastructure (as part of verifying talking to the correct domain name owner) instead of from the much more convoluted (redundant and superfluous) domain name digital certificates ... then it would be somewhat more like PGP. For some additional topic drift ... some old email discussing PGP-like email implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email810506
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email810515

from this posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#12 more secure communication over the network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#49 certificate distribution

recent news references to network solutions data breach:

Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/25/network_solutions_ecommerce_breach/

from above:
A breach at Network Solutions has exposed details for more than 500,000 credit and debit cards after hackers penetrated a system it used to deliver e-commerce services and planted software that diverted

... snip ...

and:

Network Solutions: 573,928 possibly compromised in attack
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200930/4128/Network-Solutions-573-928-possibly-compromised-in-attack
Network Solutions Suffers Massive Data Breach
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/0259204/Network-Solutions-Suffers-Massive-Data-Breach
Network Solutions Hack Compromises 573,000 Credit, Debit Accounts
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/07/network_solutions_hack_comprom.html
Network Security - Network Solutions Suffers Large Data Breach
http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secure_channel/content/network_security/network_solutions_suffers_large_data_breach.html

wiki article ... network solutions has gone thru a number of owners, including verisign (2000-2003)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:27:53 -0400
Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/073009-more-holes-found-in-webs.html

from above:
1969

AT&T-owned Bell Laboratories withdraws from development of Multics, a pioneering but overly complicated time-sharing system. Some important principles in Multics were to be carried over into Unix.

Ken Thompson at Bell Labs writes the first version of an as-yet-unnamed operating system in assembly language for a DEC PDP-7 minicomputer


... snip ...

and a few recent posts mentioning multics:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#70 A New Role for Old Geeks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#11 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of ?patents ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#14 Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#32 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#34 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#39 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#19 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#72 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#19 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
Date: 27 July, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

One might claim that digital certificates are solutions as part of making the underlying internetworking function (better) ... sort of like spark plugs or carburetors or air bags in an automobile. For most of the population ... they don't care whether they exist or not (other than they are needed to make the car go).

One assertion is that "digital certificates" have been separately "featured" as part of creating independent value proposition. If all the public key gorp were to be merged into underlying infrastructure (as part of some flavor of DNSSEC) ... then the separate value proposition is eliminated (public key operations and security become part of the internetworking infrastructure).

If public keys were available as standard part of internet operations ... then the SSL domain name digital certificates become redundant and superfluous. There would be no need for separate warnings about digital certificates since public keys and security would be part of the underlying infrastructure (and the whole separate & complex digital certificate infrastructure is eliminated).

discussions of replacing (redundant and superfluous) SSL domain name digital certificates with public key operations integrated into underlying internetworking infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Barclays online banking borked

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Barclays online banking borked
Date: 27 July, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Barclays online banking borked
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/27/barclays_bank_problems/

from above:
New improved = service unavailable Barclays Bank customers have had to manage without online banking today after the institution unveiled its innovative "brand new look"

... snip ...

above article references this older (Barlays) news/discussion thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#71 Barclays ATMs hit by computer fault

somewhat related news/discussion thread with regard to online security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Don't Take Fraud Out of Context

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Don't Take Fraud Out of Context
Date: 27 July, 2009
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Don't Take Fraud Out of Context
http://www.mementosecurity.com/bankfraudforum/index.php/comments/putting_things_in_context/

We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... they had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they wanted to use. As part of the effort we had to look at various of the end-to-end business processes involved in providing an "SSL" environment.

Somewhat as a result of that activity, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in the X9A10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (*ALL* as in debit, credit, stored-value, ACH, point-of-sale, unattended, internet, wireless, transit turnstyle, etc ... aka *ALL*). As part of the effort we had to do detailed end-to-end threat & vulnerability analysis. The result was x9.59 financial transaction standard ... some references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

part of x9.59 financial transaction standard was to eliminate many of the existing threats & vulnerabilities in retail payments ... including slightly tweaking the process to eliminate skimming, evesdropping, data breaches, etc threats & vulnerabilities .... x9.59 didn't do anything to eliminate skimming, evesdropping, data breaches and many other forms of exploits ... it just eliminate the threat & vulnerability of crooks being able to use the information from such exploits to perform fraudulent transactions

Now the biggest use of SSL in the world today was the earlier effort we worked on ... frequently referred to as electronic commerce ... to hide details regarding financial transactions. X9.59 eliminates needing to hide that information and therefor eliminates that use of "SSL".

Slightly related news/discussion thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:43:32 -0400
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
Compare the price of EBCDIC terminals to their ASCII counterparts. Its the same thing when comparing PL/I compilers to C compilers. IBM owned EBCDIC. The world owns ASCII.

EBCDIC wasn't inherently bad other than the fact that IBM owned it. ASCII eventually had 8 bits with extended ASCII.


some search engine use ... and tripped across explanation why 360 became EBCDIC and not ASCII:

EBCDIC and the P-BIT (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

other historical references by the same author:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/HISTORY.HTM

some other ASCII related

HOW ASCII CAME ABOUT
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
HOW ASCII GOT ITS BACKSLASH
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/BACSLASH.HTM
SIGNIFICANT ARTICLES ON ASCII
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/INSIDE-A.HTM
ASCII and the Mark of the Beast
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/666.HTM
ORIGIN OF THE ISO REGISTER FOR ASCII-ALTERNATE SETS
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/REGISTRY.HTM

Another reference that discusses evolution of Hollerith (punch card) into BCD and then EBCD
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/codes/80col.html

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Binary_Coded_Decimal_Interchange_Code

026 key punch
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/026.html

029 key punch
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/029.html

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#22 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#37 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#39 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#52 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#54 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#59 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#60 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#61 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#63 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#64 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#66 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#72 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#3 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#8 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#10 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#11 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#14 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#18 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Origins of EBCDIC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Origins of EBCDIC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:44:28 -0400
Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> writes:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
and others, including Mackenzie's
"Coded Character Sets: History and Development"

The origins of EBCDIC are for SYSTEM/360


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#26 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

we apparently posted same reference nearly simultaneously

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts
Date: 27 July, 2009
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say

with respect to previous discussions implying the real definition of PCI-compliant is never having a breach

Network Solutions was PCI compliant before breach
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Network-Solutions-was-PCI-compliant-before-breach/article/140642/

a couple more news items:

Network Solutions Breached; eCommerce Customers Get Blame
http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secure_channel/content/identity_theft/network_solutions_breached_ecommerce_customers_get_blame.html
Network Solutions Breached For 574,000 E-Commerce Account Records - domain name services/Security
http://www.darkreading.com/database_security/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218600756
Network Solutions warns merchants after hack Security Central
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/network-solutions-warns-merchants-after-hack-738

a little x-over in this recent discussion:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#25 Don't Take Fraud Out of Context

misc. recent news/discussions mentioning PCI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#6 US credit card payment house breached by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#71 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of patents ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#72 Why Are CC Numbers Still So Easy To Find?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#45 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#3 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#16 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#36 PCI security rules may require reinforcements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#44 Chip and PIN for ID cards: Not such a sharp idea?; Hackers PINing after your details
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#57 Data masking/data disguise Primer 1) WHY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#10 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#25 New standard for encrypting card data in the works; backers include Heartland
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#63 New standard for encrypting card data in the works; backers include Heartland
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#24 IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#46 IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#53 Merchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI's Overseer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#64 Weak security enables credit card hacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#13 PCI SSC Seeks Input on Security Standards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#62 An Information Gap Sparks a Dust-Up over Remote Key Injection

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Oracle Database Abandons z/OS

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Oracle Database Abandons z/OS
Date: 27 July, 2009
Blog: Mainframe Experts Network
Oracle Database Abandons z/OS
http://www.longpelaexpertise.com.au/ezine/Oracle_zOS.html

old post referencing making Oracle available on 370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#40

initially only on vm/cms ... same platform used for the original relational/sql implementation ... misc. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

above post includes a copy of email from 29Mar1980:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#email800329

and references "ORACLE MEMO" on vmshare
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=ORACLE&ft=MEMO

Oracle wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_database
and this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#49 How did Oracle get started?

for other drift, this old post references Jan92 meeting discussing cluster scale-up work in conjunction with parallel Oracle and ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

two of the people in the above referenced meeting, later left and joined a small client/server startup responsible for something called commerce server. We were called as consultants because they wanted to do payment transactions on the server (and the startup had invented this technology called "SSL" that they wanted to use). the result is now frequently referred to as electronic commerce.

past email references to cluster scale-up work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

and past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:21:58 -0400
3330 disk storage (-1/100mbyte, announce june1970, -11/200mbyte, announce july1973)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3330.html

mountable packs (more packs than drives ... possibly 4-5 to 1) 3330-1, 100mbyte, announce june70, shipping aug71 3330-11, 200mbyte, announce/ship 73.

five 3330-11 200mbyte packs to gigabyte, 1000 gigabyte to terabyte or 5000 3330-11 packs (double that or 10,000 for 3330-1).

earlier 2314 packs were 29mbytes
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2314.html

1x10**12/29x10**6 = approx 35,000 packs

i would expect that there had been at least 35,000 2314 packs shipped by the end of the 60s. standard 2314 shipped with 9 drives, only 8 useable concurrently at any time, 8*29 = 233mbytes per unit; little less than 4300 2314, 8drive units would represent terabyte.

also there was 3850 MSS (announce oct1974) which simulated virtual 3330s using special tape and smaller number of real 3330s
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3850.html

from above:
There were eight models of the MSS, differing in storage capacity as well as in staging capability. The smallest model (Models A1 and B1) accommodated 706 tape cartridges or 35 billion bytes, and the largest held 472 billion bytes (Models A4 and B4).

... snip ...

in the 50s & 60s, storage was referred to as DASD ... or direct access storage device ... possibly in part because disk wasn't even the dominant form ... in the early days, "drums" were more prevalent.

this gives total 1770 terabytes of disk storage were shipped in 1988:
http://www.thic.org/pdf/April05/disktrend.jporter.050419.pdf

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:25:46 -0400
BobB <bob.birch@gmail.com> writes:
AMPEX had the first trillion bit anything:
http://www.tech-notes.tv/History&Trivia/Television%20Recording/Ampex/ampex.htm

1970 Ampex introduces TBM (TeraBit Memory), a 2-inch transverse tape-based online digital storage system for high-performance computing applications. 1972 The first TBM delivered reaches a never-before-achieved 3 trillion-bit capacity.

See Masstor Systems Corp:

In 1971, the CIA funded a project named "Oracle" to automate the needs of its huge offline tape library in a computer center consisting mostly of high-end IBM mainframes Ampex was the winning bidder of an RFP in 1972 with its TBM system; IBM was not able to bid its 3850 MSS because it was still under development. The Ampex TBM for Oracle at the CIA was unlike any of its "direct attached" predecessors because it employed "data staging"; The Oracle architecture employed techniques that were similar to what IBM would announce 2 years later with the 3850:


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#30 Disksize history question

for more topic drift ... recent post about early "Oracle"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#29 Oracle Database Abandons z/OS

above references this older post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#49 How did Oracle get started?

and presumably the systems they were attached to
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

were 360/67s running cp67 ... but I didn't hear about them until much later. In the 60s, as undergraduate, I was doing a lot of cp67 work which was being picked up and shipped by the vendor ... sometimes I even got requests for changes. In retrospect, the nature of some of the requested changes possibly originated from this customer set.

the installation was also active in SHARE ... some traces in VMSHARE archive (SHARE installation code CAD, having migrated from cp67 to vm370) ... search for agency name spelled out:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

and semi-related thread from last year:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#42 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#48 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:15:03 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Sometime in the early Macintosh days, there was a protocol named "Kermit" which was used to communicate with machines using 7 bit character codes. It had a picture of a frog for its icon.

still is kermit
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/

kermit wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_%28protocol%29

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Trouble in PKI land

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trouble in PKI land
Date: 28 July, 2009
Blog: Financial Cryptography
re:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001176.html

recent (PKI related) news article thread:

Security certificates warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23

as mentioned in the above ... ssl domain name digital certificates are redundant and superfluous ... frequently I've pontificated that most of the PKI-related hype has been to try and create the impression of a value proposition for the certificates.

original design point for digital certificates was the offline email days of the early 80s ... dial-up up electronic postoffice, exchange email, hang-up and then faced with authenticating first time communication with stranger. this is the electronic equivalent of the letters of credit/introduction from the sailing ship days (when relying party had no other alternative when faced with first time interaction with complete stranger).

we were called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on server ... and the startup had invented this technology called "SSL". As part of that effort, we had to do business and technology walk thrus of the process ... including these new business operations calling themselves Certification Authorities.

I've frequently pontificated before that in that time-frame IPSEC was having difficulty (because it required upgrading underlying TCP/IP stacks, upgrading installed software on hundreds of millions of machines, upgrading underlying infrastructure). In fall '94 IETF meeting, what came to be called VPN was introduced in gateway committee meeting. My impression was this upset the IPSEC forces ... who eventually started referring to VPN as light-weight IPSEC (and gave the VPN folks the opportunity to refer to IPSEC as heavy-weight IPSEC).

The uptake of both VPN and SSL (in same time-frame) was because they didn't require any hits to underlying infrastructure ... in SSL case, it was purely new webserver software and new browser software (pure addon, w/o changes to existing legacy infrastructure).

The eventual problem (at least for SSL) is it layers a whole bunch of (technology and business operation) kludge/gorp on top of the underlying infrastructure ... that is much better integrated (seamlessly) into the underlying infrastructure (eliminating huge expense and complexity of duplicated operations). As SSL becomes pervasive ... the trade-offs for changes regarding the (initial) simplicity of adding something on-top verses seamless integration into the underlying infrastructure (long-term lifecycle operation)

The SSL (PKI) security scenario is similar to lots of other security issues regarding the ease of adding something ontop (eventually creating huge complex patchwork) versus building security (seamlessly) into the basic design and implementation.

for a little other topic drift ... at '92 annual SIGMOD conference ... somebody raised the question about what was all this "x.5**" stuff about ... and somebody in the audience stated it was networking engineers attempting to reinvent 1960s database technology. some related posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#29 Oracle Database Abandons z/OS
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father of Financial Dataprocessing

lots of past posts mentioning SSL digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

and lots of past posts mentioning certificate-less public key operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless

somes posts/discussions related to "Father of Financial Dataprocessing":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#25 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#65 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#33 H5: Security Begins at the Application and Ends at the Mind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#6 ATMs At Risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#71 Barclays ATMs hit by computer fault

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:27:11 -0400
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
Now-a-days, since computer memory is almost *free* (compared to what a kilobyte cost in 1970), we do *not* care how much memory we waste. (Mathematically, let's say that the cost of memory is becoming vanishingly small.)

starting in the 70s ... I started pointing out that disks were getting slower than the rest of system components (and with increasing amount of electronic storage available on systems, caching was being used to compensate for the slowing disks). part of this was having background with dynamic adaptive resource management dating back to my undergraduate days in the 60s when I coined the term "scheduling to the bottleneck". slightly related recent post mentioning doing customized os/360 system builds (as undergraduate in 60s) to carefully place data on disk to optimize disk arm motion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#20 If you don't have access to a mainframe

in the early 80s, i was making the statement that the relative system thruput of disks had declined by a factor of ten times over a period of years (disks got 3-5 times faster, but processor got 40-50 times faster). old post with part of the analysis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door

some executives in the disk division took exception and assigned the performance group to refute my claims. after a few weeks, they came back and bascially said I had slightly understated the problem. their analysis basically turned into a SHARE (63) presentation (B874) ... making recommendations about how to optimize DASD configurations to improve system thruput ... past posts with bits of the presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)

I've also commented in the past about increasing amounts of electronic storage help improve the uptake of relational DBMS. There were small skirmishes between the IMS (60s database technology) group in STL and the original relational/sql research group in SJR ... some past posts mentioning System/R
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

The IMS group were making statements that System/R doubled the disk storage requirements (for the internal indexes) and significantly increased the disk I/O (to process the indexes) compared to IMS (indexes were used in place of directly exposed & managed record pointers). The relational response was that the internal indexes effectively eliminated the expensive and time-consuming administrative and management overhead dealing with exposed record pointers (of IMS).

In the early 80s, there was rapidly decreasing disk cost/bit (moderating the argument about indexes doubling physical disk space) and rapidly increasing system electronic storage was used to cache indexes ... significantly reducing physical disk i/os involved with indexes. At the same time, people time to deal with administrative and management of exposed record pointers was both an increasing cost problem as well as a scarce resource.

IMS does continues to be heavily used in large production legacy dataprocessing that have had little data structure evolution over the past couple decades ... but RDBMS have seen large uptake.

misc. recent posts mentioning IMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#1 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#27 Is the Relational Database Doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#34 Is the Relational Database Doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#4 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#44 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#45 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#46 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#61 "A foolish consistency" or "3390 cyl/track architecture"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#1 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#24 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#15 Confessions of a Cobol programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#27 Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#33 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#26 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#17 Any one using JDBC type 4 to access IMS DB??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#40 My "Green Screen" IBMLink is still working
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#64 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API
Date: 29 July, 2009
Blog: Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API
Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2273

from above:
The API offers three categories of payment: single payments, parallel payments, and chained payments

... snip ...

Micro-payments got a lot of press in the mid-90s as the next new thing ... which was going to take over the payment landscape. The efficiencies of who ever was successful doing micro-payment transactions ... would be able to move up the value chain and take-over the rest of the value infrastructure. There were several potential candidates from that period that have all evaporated.

Some number of them were "stored-value" platforms, some of which had started in Europe. We were asked to design the dataprocessing needed to introduce one such European platform in the US and scale. We did the design and costing for such a system ... and then started looking in some detail at the business value proposition ... which turned up that nearly the whole value proposition was the float on the "stored-value" going to the international licensing authority (with effectively nothing going to any of the other participants). At some point the European central banks had a press release that these "stored-value" implementation would be allowed to keep the float for the first couple years (as means of covering the startup costs), but after that they would have to start paying interest on the balance in the stored value infrastructure. After that nearly all interest in the schemes seemed to disappear.

Some of the telcos also got involved a decade or so ago ... looking at leveraging the efficiencies used in cellphone call-record processing (and statementing) to handle financial transactions (again there was lots of speculation that they would be able to take-over the payment business). There was even participation by telcos in various X9 financial standards groups. One day ... they to, seemed to have disappeared. Their explanation was that the telcos had fairly high default rates on cellphone service service statements. This had been tolerated as cost of doing business ... which effectively involved lost revenue on their service infrastructure. It was a whole different value proposition when the defaults also involved real money that the telcos had already settled to merchants as part of payment transaction infrastructure. There was very large difference in actual out-of-pocket loss between the two (use charges on their own infrastructure versus money actually settled to merchants as part of payment operation) which they weren't able to successfully reconcile.

there are two different expenses ... one is the actual cost of the dataprocessing overhead of doing each transaction. cellphone call-record processing has shown that they can profitably handle values of a few cents per transaction. the other expense is the monthly account balance overhead ... which is effectively amortized across all transactions done. one micro-payment per month wouldn't cover the cost. that is where some of the telco flat-rate plans come in ... where they are assured the infrastructure cost of carrying each account.

A cellphone account where the fixed infrastructure costs per account is already covered (and infrastructure efficiencies for call-record processing) gives telco huge competitive advantage ... if they can figure out how to handle the enormous difference in out-of-pocket expense when dealing with defaults (default on service charges versus default on payments already settled to merchants).

a few recent posts/discussions mentioning leveraging telco call-record processing for payment infrastructure:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#50 Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#37 The 20th Century of Central Banking is over
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#1 Is it possible to have an alternative payment system without riding on the Card Network platforms?

Wireless Carriers Are Poised to Seize Mobile P2P, Report Says
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2279

from above:
Banks face a new threat in electronic payments, according to a report just out from Javelin Strategy and Research: the ability of telecommunications companies to take the driver's seat in mobile person-to-person payments.

... snip ...

Ingres claims massive database performance boost
http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?newsID=119995&pagtype=allpagtype=all

from above:
Burkhardt also said that telcos were very interested in looking at the technology to solve some of the issues that they had to deal with reconciling customer accounts and payments with usage records.

.... snip ...

I've commented in the past about telcos being early adopters of "in-memory" relational databases that were claiming ten times performance improvement compared to traditional RDBMS ... even where all data was cached. and for a little drift, misc. past posts mentioning original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

For related database drift ... old posts mentioning financial transaction dataprocessing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing

part of comments from above:

I worked with Jim in the 70s; when he left for Tandem, he attempted to palm off his responsibilities on me ... and I started getting his calls from financial institutions. a couple recent posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#88 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#6 SECURITY and BUSINESS CONTINUITY

... snip ...

other recent paypal news items:

PayPal to Devs: $32 Trillion Opportunity
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3831506/PayPal+to+Devs+32+Trillion+Opportunity.htm
PayPal moves to embed self in everything
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/paypal_platform_x
PayPal opens door to developers
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/072409-security-certificate-warnings-dont-work.html
PayPal Opens Door to Developers
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168978/paypal_opens_door_to_developers.html
PayPal Opens Door to Developers
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090724/tc_pcworld/paypalopensdoortodevelopers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Ingres claims massive database performance boost

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Ingres claims massive database performance boost
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:49:03 -0400
Ingres claims massive database performance boost
http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?newsID=119995&pagtype=all

In the late 80s & early 90s, we worked with four RDBMS vendors as part of putting out HA/CMP ... misc. past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

ingres, sybase, oracle, and informix.

we started out doing a lot of work with ingres since at the time they had a standard commercial cluster RDBMS impelementation that ran on vax/cluster. we spent some amount of time working with them looking at what would be necessary to port to ha/cmp.

part of the work involved having distributed lock manager supporting similar vax/cluster DLM semantics. however, ingres had a list of ten or so issues with vax/cluster implementation that they felt needed to be addressed. we had a lot more latitude than vax/cluster since we were starting a new implementation from scratch and didn't have the legacy baggage that vax/cluster carried.

a couple recent posts on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#40 "Larrabee" GPU design question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#43 "Larrabee" GPU design question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#26 Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

Since then Ingres has gone thru quite a bit of changes ... finally emerging as an open source DBMS implementation.
http://www.ingres.com/

recent post mentioning some other RDBMS archeology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#29 Oracle Database Abandons z/OS

and for other drift ... recent posts about telcos and payment systems appetite for high-performance DBMS systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#35 Microsoft Is Among the First to Try out PayPal's New Payments API

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:51:50 -0400
hancock4 writes:
The associated CW article briefly mentions pre-divesture AT&T's problem of selling any non-telecom stuff for a profit. This was due to the 1956 consent decree which greatly restricted AT&T activities (something most Bell System critics are not aware of.) Unlike a normal company, any hot invention wasn't worth anything special to AT&T for that reason.

I seem to recall Unix was hard to obtain in its early days for that reason; perhaps only educational institutions or non-profits were allowed.

It was curious how they include the classic IBM mainframe operating system MVS (Z/OS) as part of the Unix family since it has AIX as part of it. I always thought of Unix and Unix users as the "anti-MVS". The ones I knew in my college days were certainly like that.

But then, using the mainframe for many research projects or sci/eng work was like using a tank to drive to the convenience store for a soda pop. Overkill. The things the mainframe, and the physical environment that supported it, were good for were of little interest or value to the researcher. (They were of critical value to the business office to ensure paychecks were accurate and got out on time.)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#22 Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

In the late 70s & early 80s ... the workstations and PCs didn't have the power they have today. To do lots of dataprocessing required various flavors of mainframe.

It was what drove Amdahl to put out UTS (unix on 370 compatible processor) ... normally running under vm370 for various reasons.

It was also what caused AT&T to come to IBM to do a special stripped down version of tss/370 ... that AT&T would layer unix subsystem on top (getting all of the 370 device drivers, error recovery, RAS, etc ... essentially for free ... which was significantly larger effort than straight-forward unix processor port).

IBM also had a number of other mainframe unix related projects.

There was a Palo Alto project that started out porting BSD to 370 mainframe ... but got retargeted to the 801 ROMP RISC machine PC/RT and eventually released as AOS.

One of the driving factors in the early/mid 80s was that various univ. had developed some number of chip design applications under unix. and the chip industry had a nearly unsatiable demand for computing power. One such chip company example ... besides having a large number of larger IBM mainframes ... had also ordered something like 1000 4341s (this was before the unix 370 products ... so wasn't unix)

The standard unix for PC/RT was called AIX V2 ... IBM Austin had contracted with the company that had done the AT&T UNIX port to PC for PC/IX to do one to the PC/RT. Austin then did 801 RIOS which came out as the RS/6000 with AIX V3.

Palo Alto also worked with UCLA on Locus UNIX-work-alike ... porting to both 370 and 386 for AIX/370 and AIX/386 products (completely different than the AT&T Unix "AIX" for 801 machines).

In the early 90s, IBM also did a "POSIX-compliant" feature for MVS ... allowing some kinds of unix applications to execute on machine running mvs.

for some more drift, recent post mentioning OSF and SUN/AT&T conflict
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

misc. past posts mentionin various mainframe unix flavors:
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#66 System/1 ?
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/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#8 IBM Linux
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#27 OCF, PC/SC and GOP
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/2001.html#44 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#49 Options for Delivering Mainframe Reports to Outside Organizat ions
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#36 Ancient computer humor - The Condemned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#21 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#5 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#8 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#19 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#50 What makes a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic: facts vs. FUD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#29 windows XP and HAL: The CP/M way still works in 2002
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#36 windows XP and HAL: The CP/M way still works in 2002
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#31 2 questions: diag 68 and calling convention
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#39 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#19 PowerPC Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#79 Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#81 McKinley Cometh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#21 Original K & R C Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#67 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#11 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#40 I found the Olsen Quote
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#42 VMFPLC2 tape format
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#8 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#54 Filesystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#35 UNIX on LINUX on VM/ESA or z/VM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#70 A few Z990 Gee-Wiz stats
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/2004c.html#6 If the x86 ISA could be redone
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#61 IBM 360 memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#72 ibm mainframe or unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#27 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#0 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#4 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#37 A Glimpse into PC Development Philosophy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#22 The Mac is like a modern day Betamax
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#20 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#63 Cranky old computers still being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#18 Is Supercomputing Possible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#28 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#26 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#7 [newbie] Ancient version of Unix under vm/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#14 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#26 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#49 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#34 Power5 and Cell, new issue of IBM Journal of R&D
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#8 Free to good home: IBM RT UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#24 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#11 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#31 MCTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#26 Old PCs--environmental hazard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#27 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/2006q.html#4 Another BIG Mainframe Bites the Dust
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/2006u.html#52 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#24 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#3 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#11 Multiple mappings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#32 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
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/2007d.html#16 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#9 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#2 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#43 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#7 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#69 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#87 Why is not AIX ported to z/Series?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#33 Google And IBM Take Aim At Shortage Of Distributed Computing Skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#65 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#54 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#1 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#16 handling the SPAM on this group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#21 Old XDS Sigma stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#69 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#62 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
Date: 30 July, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080409-ebays-paypal-goes-down-for.html

from above:
Security researchers have found some serious flaws in software that uses the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption protocol used to secure communications on the Internet.

... snip ...

recent posting of similar news items
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#33 Trouble in PKI land

and slightly older
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#25 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995

another view is that a lot of PKI and digital certificates are used to layer security on top of a fundamentally insecure infrastructure ... the patchwork layering will have continuing flaws until the underlying structural weaknesses have been corrected (which then can render the patchwork solutions redundant and superfluous)

for some other archeological topic drift, tcp/ip is the technology basis for the modern internet, nsfnet backbone was the operational basis for the modern internet ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet

other recent news reports

Researchers exploit SSL and domain flaws
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-326500.html
Wildcard certificate spoofs web authentication
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/30/universal_ssl_certificate/
Kaminsky reveals key flaws in X.509 SSL certificates at Black Hat
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1363108,00.html
More Holes Found in Web's SSL Security Protocol
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090730/tc_pcworld/moreholesfoundinwebssslsecurityprotocol
More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136074/More_holes_found_in_Web_s_SSL_security_protocol
More Holes Found in Web's SSL Security Protocol
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/169313/more_holes_found_in_webs_ssl_security_protocol.html
More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/more-holes-found-in-webs-ssl-security-protocol-644

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe Utility for EBCDIC to ASCII conversion

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Utility for EBCDIC to ASCII conversion
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:56:26 -0400
for the fun of it ... a recent post in a.f.c. ng
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#26 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

referencing this article about why 360s came out as EBCDIC machines rather than ASCII

EBCDIC and the P-BIT (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
Date: 30 July, 2009
Blog: Old Geek Registry
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#29 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#32 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#34 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#39 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#55 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#78 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind

or some topic drift ... lots of past posts mentioning the original relational/SQL implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

however, the first shipped RDBMS was on Multics. recent posts mentioning Multics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#29 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#22 Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

as mentioned some number of the CTSS people went to the science center on 4th flr 545 tech. sq ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and others went to Multics project on 5th flr of 545 tech sq.

The science center built the virtual machine cp40 system (making custom hardware modifications to 360/40 to support virtual memory), which morphed into cp67 (when 360/67 became available with standard virtual memory support). CP67 eventually morphed into virtual machine VM370.

And system/r development was done on vm370 370/145 at SJR.

There is folklore that after the Future System project was canceled (w/o being announced) ... some references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

that some number of the people retreated to Rochester to create s/38. S/38 morphed into AS/400. The original AS/400 processor was suppose to be an 801 (RISC) Iliad chip (part of the corporate plan to migrate loads of internal corporate microprocessors to common 801 risc chip base including AS/400, 370 4341 follow-on, the 4381 and loads of others). When Iliad floundered, there was rush to design custom CISC chips. Lots of past posts mentioning 801, Fort Knox, Iliad, ROMP, RIOS, PC/RT, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

As another aside, PICK was announced and shipped on the 801 ROMP PC/RT.

There are some claims that the original (easy-to-use) 4GL was NOMAD done on (virtual machine) cp67 spin-off commercial time-sharing service bureau ... some past posts mentioning NOMAD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#64 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#69 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#56 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#15 CA-RAMIS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#17 CA-RAMIS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#48 Who said DAT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#33 MAD Programming Language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#12 Dreaming About Redesigning SQL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#15 Dreaming About Redesigning SQL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#15 Pre-relational, post-relational, 1968 CODASYL "Survey of Data Base Systems"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#52 Losing colonies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#44 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#35 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#37 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#12 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#37 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#17 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#66 Computer History Museum

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:45:40 -0400
Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> writes:
I would say that sometime in the late 70's was when world production first broke a terabyte.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#30 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#31 Disksize history question

i had previously calculated that it would take approx. 4300 8-drive 2314 (at 29m/drive) to make a terabyte.

this reference:
http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/IBM-Chronology.htm

from above:
1966

IBM ships the first System/360 Model 75 in 1966. By end of 1966, world-wide production of all IBM System 360's numbered about 1,000 per month. IBM's gross sales for 1966 exceeded $4.2 billion, an increase over the previous year. By 1968, IBM had installed over 14,000 System/360 large-scale computer systems.


... snip ...

a "large-scale" system/360 would tend to have multiple 8-drive 2314 units ... for instance, the cambridge science center 360/67 had something like five 2314 strings (the customer engineer repainted the 2314 covers so each string was a different cover ... made it easier for operators to match a device address to a specific drive). see the "blue" control unit cover in this 2314 picture
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/museum/DASD/200426.htm

at science center, those covers were repainted a different color for each 2314 string. misc. past posts mentioning science center, 4th flr, 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

in any case, at average of two strings (string is 8 drives times 29mbyte or 233mbytes, two strings is 466mbytes) per large-scale S/360 ... that would be 28,000 strings or a little less than 14terabytes in 1968. At minimum of one string per large-scale S/360 ... that is still almost 7terabytes in 1968.

a lot of early 360s would have been installed with 2311s ... but the larger 360s would have relatively quickly upgraded to 2314s when they became available.

the above computer history article also:
1964
... Over 1,000 computers are ordered within the first 30 days.


... snip ...

the folklore when I was at Boeing ... was that a certain IBM salesman that went on to found EDS ... really made his reputation when Boeing walked in with an extremely large number of (large) S/360s on announcement day (before the salesman even knew what it was, Boeing supposedly had to explain to the salesman what it was that they ordering). When I was there, there were multiple 360/65s staged in the datacenter hallways ... because they were still arriving faster than they could be installed.

Slightly related folklore regarding 360 announcement was the reference to why 360s came out as BCD machines instead of ASCII machines

EBCDIC and the P-BIT (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#26 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

misc. recent posts mentioning getting to do time-sharing installation as part of early formation of BCS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#12 why stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#83 F111 related discussion x-over from Facebook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#13 Four decades of a flying giant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#15 System/360 Announcement (7Apr64)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5 mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#2 The computer did it
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#3 The computer did it

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:13:34 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in any case, at average of two strings (string is 8 drives times 29mbyte or 233mbytes, two strings is 466mbytes) per large-scale S/360 ... that would be 28,000 strings or a little less than 14terabytes in 1968. At minimum of one string per large-scale S/360 ... that is still almost 7terabytes in 1968.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#41 Disksize history question

oops, brain check, cut that in half. 28,000 strings at little less than quarter gigabyte ... is less than 7terabytes in 1968 ... at 2 strings per large-scale S/360 ... or over 3terabytes in 1968 ... at one string per large-scale S/360.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 30 Jul 2009 13:01:49 -0700
cfmpublic@NS.SYMPATICO.CA (Clark Morris) writes:
z/VM also supports FBA and SCSI devices. It would be great if z/OS could learn to do that for all FBA type data sets (VSAM, PDSE, HFS, zFS, linear and maybe a couple of others). They might have to sign a non-disclosure agreement but I think both groups eventually report to a common manager.

long ago and far away ... when I offered ... I was told that even if I gave them fully integrated and tested FBA support ... it would still cost $26m (education, documentation, etc). I needed to come up with a incremental additional business case on the order of $200m-$300m in additional sales in order to justify adding the support (and I wasn't allowed to use life-cycle savings). The claim at the time, was that customers would just shift from ordering equivalent FBA for CKD ... and so I would never be able to show necessary incremental business case justification.

misc. past posts mentioning CKD, FBA, and related subjects
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

and for little more topic drift, misc. past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 30 Jul 2009 19:48:26 -0700
rfochtman@YNC.NET (Rick Fochtman) writes:
I seem to recall support for both 3370 and 3375 on MVS. I can't remember exactly when. IIRC, one was a CKD device and the other was a FBA device. Don't ask me which was which.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#38 FBA rant

above has product code-names I've been working on, from tables:
Florence 3375 3370 supporting CKD

basically precursor to modern CKD ... all the gorp, complexity and overhead of simulating CKD on real fixed-block devices.

3375
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-ProdAnn/3375.pdf

IBM reference with "MVS does not support FBA DASD":
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zvm/v5r4/topic/com.ibm.zvm.v54.hcpa7/hcse7b3079.htm

also from (my code-name) table:


Piccolo      3310       FBA
NFP          3370       FBA

3090s did have FBAs as part of the service processors ... which were actaully a pair of 4361s running a highly modified version of vm370 release 6 ... and the service screens implemented in CMS IOS3270.

externally, 3370 & 3375 boxes looked similar:

3370
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-ProdAnn/3370.pdf

also
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3370.html

from above:


The IBM 3370 Models A2 and B2 are supported by:

• DOS/VSE Advanced Functions
    * VSE/System Product
• VSE/SIPO/E
    * VM/System Product

The IBM 3370 Models A12 and B12 are supported by the System/38 CPF

... snip ...

no mention of MVS.

misc. past posts mentioning CKD, FBA, and related subjects
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

and for little more topic drift, misc. past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

in some sense ECKD was trying to retrofit some of the benefits of FBA to CKD ... starting out with "speed-matching" capability ... allowing attachment of 3mbyte/sec 3380 drives to 370s that had channels that only went up to 1.5mbytes/sec.

old post mentioning FBA as well as difficulty getting ECKD & speed-matching (aka Calypso) working
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#40 FBA rant

above includes old email from the period discussing problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#email820907b

other posts in the "FBA rant" thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#35 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#39 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#42 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#43 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#46 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#51 FBA rant

more recent thread mentioning ECKD & speed-matching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#16 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#16 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#17 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#18 Flash memory arrays

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 30 Jul 2009 20:12:15 -0700
wkkelley@OPTONLINE.NET (W. Kevin Kelley) writes:
Nope, at least not the ones that MVS supported. I vaguely recall some 3345's that might have been FBA and we didn't support? That was a long time ago and my memory is getting fuzzy...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#44 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

3340s & 3350s were CKD

there was 3344 ... which was dasd controller microcode that simulated multiple 3340s on 3350 ... there was caveat about how alternate track was supported; this required changes to DASD RAS routines

3340 web page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3340.html

3350 web page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3350.html

misc. past posts mentioning CKD, FBA, and related subjects
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

and for little more topic drift, misc. past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

for the fun of it .. recent discussion in a.f.c. mentioning 3850 MSS (in thread about when did the aggregate world-wide disk capacity exceed a terabyte):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#30 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#31 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#41 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#42 Disksize history question

3850 was mass storage device with "virtual 3330s" simulated on small number of real 3330 drives and large automated/robotic tape library. 3850 web page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3850.html

later, 3850 wasn't getting a whole lot of enhancements ... so in order to to use (newer) 3350 drives ... controller microcode was implemented that simulated 3330 on 3350 drives.

columbia 3850 MSS web page mentions using four 3350 that were (microcode) emulating 3330s:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/mss.html

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
Date: 31 July, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#38 More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol

Black Hat: SSL is fragile
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/07/30/237120/black-hat-ssl-is-fragile.htm

from above:
Researchers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas have proved that the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol is fragile and could be broken at any time.

... snip ...

Note that we were brought in to consult with this small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and the startup had invented this technology called "SSL". As part of use for payment transactions, we had to do some end-to-end investigations of how the technology was being used and various business processes ... included some of this new operations calling themselves Certification Authorities. Part of the issue was that there were some specific requirements regarding how it was deployed ... which were almost immediately violated. That was one of the things that prompted us to coin the term "comfort certificates".

past posts mentioning SSL (including "comfort") certificates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:12:15 -0400
wdrisco@US.IBM.COM (Wayne Driscoll) writes:
I think a lot of people might be asumming that MVS had FBA support in the early to mid 80's because the 3090's used a 3375 device for storing the LIC and other microcode updates, unlike the 308x's and 438x's that used 8 inch floppies.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#44 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#45 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

aka ... the 3090 service processor was actually a pair of 4361s (with FBA devices) running a highly modified version of vm370 release 6 and used cms ios3270 for service screens

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:09:22 -0400
hancock4 writes:
It really depended on the specific project. For simple projects BASIC was easier and faster. Fortran had better file I/O, especially if one had a lot of data on punched cards to feed in. Sometimes researchers had a machine that automatically periodically punched out a card with of measurements. The cards would be collected and processed.

A recent (periodically repeated) thread regarding rexx project, dumprx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#0 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

early in rexx days (when it was still internal only and named rex), there were various discussions that rexx was just another pretty scripting language (ala EXEC2).

there was an problem determination/dump-reader application done in tens of thousands of assembler instructions. My objective was to demonstrate that half-time over 3 month period ... I could do a rexx implementation with ten times the function that ran ten times faster.

This was also in the early days of OCO-wars ... so a side objective ... was that if it ever shipped as a product ... the source would have to be shipped.

misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:57:14 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Wasn't that were able to? I attended a speech on quantum chemistry, where the man giving the speech said he resorted to special techniques like parallel processing with multiple network computers, if the problem he was trying to solve took more that 6 weeks. He then proceeded to give a lecture on using Linux with parallel processing with multiple network computers to solve difficult numerical problems. He would build special porpoise networks with different topologies depending on the problem.

a lot of people used the sjr 370/195 (running os/360 mvt) service ... palo alto science center had a one hr job on the 195 ... but there was something like a 3 month turn-around.

the science center did some tweaking of vm370 on their 370/145 ... so the program ran under cms in the background ... soaking up spare cycles ... mostly off-shift and on the weekends ... also some restart stuff. it took about a couple weeks elapsed time ... but that was better than the 195 turn around.

about the same time somebody at GPD was running a disk head air bearing simulation (design of new floating disk heads) ... which was getting "high priority" on the 195 ... but still was something like week or two turn around.

I was getting to play disk engineer over in bldgs 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

... which would get early engineering models of new processor for disk testing (bldg. 15 not only tested new disk models with existing processors but also had to test disks with the latest processors). at one point they got an early 3033 processor. 370/195 had 10mip peak thruput ... with codes optimized for 195 pipeline ... but most codes ran more like 5mips thruput (branch stalling & pipeline draing ... I've commented before about an emulated two-processor hyper-threading project, dual i-streams, dual registers ... but same pipeline and execution units ... to try and achieve 10mip sustained thruput on normal codes). The 370/195 didn't have virtual memory support and both the 195 & mvt was getting rather "old" by that time.

the 3033 had only around 4.5mip thruput ... i.e. 3033 was quick & dirty effort after the cancelation of future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

where 370/168 wiring diagram was mapped to newer chip technology that was only about 20% faster. the newer chip technology also had approx. 10 times as many circuits/chip as 168 technology ... but (initially) wasn't being used. Somewhere during the 3033 effort, critical sections were redesigned to take advantage of higher circuit density and more "on-chip" operations eventually achieved 50% faster (than 168).

bldgs. 14&15 had been running "stand-alone" dedicated machine time for each test. at one point they had attempted using MVS on the systems to see if they could support multiple things concurrently. However, even with only a single "disk" testcell, MVS MTBF (hang, crash, etc) was around 15mins. I took to rewrite a I/O supervisor rewrite to make it absolutely bullet-proof ... so that multiple concurrent tests could be done "on-demand" (significantly improving development productivity). some recent references where the effort brought down the wrath of the MVS group on me (because I did an internal report about all the benefits, which happened to have a passing references to MVS MTBF)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#68 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#17 Bulletproof

In any case, once this was all operation, the bldg. 14 & 15 processors were still only a couple percent processor busy (even with multiple concurrent disk tests running). As a result ... we attempted to open it up to some of our friends for critical processing ... like the disk head air-bearing simulation work ... the 3033 was only about 50% the peak thruput of 195 ... but the processing was nearly always available "on-demand" (not week or two turn-around).

there was also large sjr/research quantum chemisty simulation application (getting infrequent 195 turn-around) ... that we setup for execution on the 3033 (he not only needed lots of processing but also couple hundred mbyte of disk). from long ago and far away:

Date: 02/08/80 08:20:43
From: wheeler
To: somebody in bldg. 15
Subject: request from xxxxx for unlimited CPU time.

He has initially suggested that he needs a 20 cylinder mini-disk and a mountable 3330. I've said that there are no operator's at SNJTL1 to perform any MOUNTs and that everything must be purely automated (no manual intervention). are there a couple hundred 3330 cylinders available (or equivalent) or should he wait until after the 3370s are up????


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

for other drift:

Date: 12/11/79 17:10:51
To: wheeler

bbbbbb (8-000-0000) and jjjjjj (8-000-0000) called from Bethesda. The visitors from the AF Data Systems Center will be here at 9:00 am in the morning. There names are:

Colonel 11111
Major 2222
Major 33333
Mr. 44444

I asked xxxxx if he would talk with then. He will, but give him a call at home first and he will be in within 20 min.


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

At the moment, I don't remember why xxxxx was being asked to talk to AF Data Systems ... past reference to setting up this visit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers

for other topic drift ... old email mentioning major customers for scale-up (essentially commodity) cluster-in-a-box (with large number of boxes/racks) being national labs for lots of high-end simulation work that they do:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129
other old email mentioning cluster-in-a-box
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

misc. past posts mentioning the air-bearing simulation effort:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#18 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#43 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#46 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#64 Disc Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#77 Disk drive improvements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#60 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#9 Assembler Question

misc. past posts mentioning the 195 dual i-stream effort:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#38 IBM 370/195
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#73 The Chronology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#97 Power4 = 2 cpu's on die?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#15 360/370 instruction cycle time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#27 Pentium 4 SMT "Hyperthreading"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#63 Hyper-Threading Technology - Intel information.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#70 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#76 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#48 IBM Manuals from the 1940's and 1950's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#60 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#3 Hyperthreading vs. SMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#27 dual processors: not just for breakfast anymore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#1 A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#18 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#19 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#1 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#29 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#10 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#51 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#2 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#21 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#10 Beyond multicore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#20 Abend S0C0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#37 Intel memory latencies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#54 mainframe performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#5 registers vs cache

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:55:10 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for other topic drift ... old email mentioning major customers for scale-up (essentially commodity) cluster-in-a-box (with large number of boxes/racks) being national labs for lots of high-end simulation work that they do:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129
other old email mentioning cluster-in-a-box
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

but as the above mentions ... the effort was then tranferred and we were told that we couldn't work on (cluster) system with more than four processers. and then shortly after the transfer they then had press releases like:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#83
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#70

possibly, if we had restricted the activity to purely numerical intensive ... it might not have been taken over ... but we were also doing cluster scale-up for more commercial dataprocessing ... which would possibly posed a threat to mainstream, mainframe market ... periodically referenced old post mentioning meeting in jan92 discussing commercial scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some of the related details discussed in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#36 Ingres claims massive database performance boost

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:14:58 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there was also alarge sjr/research quantum chemisty simulation application (getting infrequent 195 turn-around) ... that we setup for execution on the 3033 (he not only needed lots of processing but also couple hundred mbyte of disk). from long ago and far away:

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#50 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

some random search engine use ... slight topic drift, turns up reference migrating such fortran applications to using 3090 vector
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=45938

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules; more information requested

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Hercules; more information requested.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 1 Aug 2009 14:10:17 -0700
PaulGBoulder@AIM.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
No, but it's hard to call z/OS "modern" while it's hobbling along with the equivalent of the model T engine. Too much legacy baggage. Retain RM=31 and RM=24 for code requiring it, but also provide RM=64 for newer code. I believe users are already feeling the below-the-bar storage constraint. One way to greatly relieve it would be to allow (part of) LPA and JPA to reside above-the-bar.

a big part was 1) pointer pass paradigm ... left over from the real storage (and real storage size constraint) days of os/360, 2) application space building ccw with address ... left over from the real storage (and real storage size contraint) days of os/360 when application space addressses were the same as the real addresses required for channel programs, 3) CKD architecture left over from the real storage constraint days of 360s.

1) initial transition from mvt to svs wasn't bad because basically it attempted to simulate a 16mbyte real machine (with single 16mbyte virtual address sapce. In transition from SVS to MVS ... the pointer passing paradigm somewhat dictated that an image of the MVS kernel appear in (8 mbytes) of every (16mbyte) virtual address space. however, some number of subsystems were moved to their own virtual address space ... but there was dependency that applications would still use pointer passing API ... and therefor subsystems had to be able to directly address the pointed to parameters. Thus was born "common segment" ... for many larger systems ... (168s & 3033s), installations were having to define 4-5mbyte "common segment" ... with the 8mbyte taken by the MVS kernel image ... there might only be 3-4mbyte of address space left for application use. systems developed for virtual address space operation ... have tended to have the system gorp outside of the application virtual address space ... and not rely on pointer-passing API ... which requires a bunch of system stuff to be co-resident in the application address space. this also shows up as below-the-bar storage constraint. Internally, in the late 70s, there was a major burlington, vt, fortran, MVS chip design application that started to exceed 7mbyte address space constraint (and needed to be converted to vm370/cms where it could get nearly the full 16mbytes). a couple recent posts mentioning common segment issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#55 Graphics on a Text-Only Display
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#33 My Vintage Dream PC

2) initial morph from MVT to SVS had minimum changes to define a single 16mbyte virtual address space ... and to handle page faults (and associated gorp). It also borrowed a copy of CCWTRANS from the (virtual machine) CP67 system. CCWTRANS handled creating of "shadow" channel program copies (with the "real" addresses) ... from channel programs that had been created in a virtual address space using virtual addresses (in mvt/svs/mvs case, added to EXCP processing). a couple recent posts about SVS started out using CP67's CCWTRANS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#72 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#73 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

3) CKD architecture can be viewed as trade-off between extremely constratined real storage sizes and abundant, excess channel capacity. It is to have disk storage structures kept on disk (rather in real storage) and build channel programs that would search the on-disk structures. by the mid-70s the trade-off starting to flip ... real storage was becoming abundant and I/O constrained (greater use of real storage for various kinds of caching to compensate for I/O resource constraint). In the late 70s, I was brought into large customer installations with severe thruput problems ... which frequently turned out to be excess CKD multi-track search bottleneck involving VTOCs and or PDSs. some of this shows up in recent discussion about FBA support:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#44 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#45 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#47 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

I had started making comments about the shifting from real storage constraint to i/o constraint ... part of this was because of background in work I had done as undergraduate in the 60s on dynamic adaptive resource management and something I called "scheduling to the bottleneck" (which includes, as it seems to imply, being able to dynamically determine the bottleneck). In the early 80s, I was making comments that over a period of time, disk relative system thruput had declined by a factor of ten times (systems had gotten 50 times faster, while disks only got 3-5 times faster) ... old post with comparison:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door

some executives in the disk division took exception and assigned the (division) performance group to refute my statements. after a few weeks, they came back and basically said I had slightly understated the problem. their analysis turned in a SHARE (63) presentation (B874) ... making recommendations about how to optimize DASD configurations to improve system thruput ... past posts with bits of the presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:45:24 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for other topic drift ... old email mentioning major customers for scale-up (essentially commodity) cluster-in-a-box (with large number of boxes/racks) being national labs for lots of high-end simulation work that they do:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129
other old email mentionion cluster-in-a-box
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

some other LLNL topic drift, after we left, besides doing some consulting for various financial operations ... including the small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server (the startup had also invented this technology they called "SSL", effort frequently now referred to as electronic commere), we were (also) doing some consulting for one of the people behind forming FSTC ... from long ago and far away:

Date: Wed, 7 Sep 94 17:30:36 -0700
From: lynn
To: <xxxx@llnl.gov>
Subject: FSTC

xxxx, we met with yyyy yesterday, and are going to be consulting for him in several areas; he had his director of technology there and they were both interested in the potential of the db technology; we will be going into it in more depth and discussing applications, one of which might very well tie in with your friends since there is an interest there and experience in reservation systems, and yyy also knew us when we were doing the airlines scheduling work. I think that would be a good one to follow up on. zzzzz is in the services business and interested in expansion potentially; yyyy does not want to get tied into FSTC for competitive reasons; suggest you and I talk about this in DC - there's more. I don't think I want to do the Citibank meeting now, but am still interested in Treasury. Haven't heard back from IBM on meeting with them yet.


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

FSTC (now merged with Financial Services Roundtable ... previously known as Bankers Roundtable)
http://www.fstc.org/

from the way back machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970415040625/http://fstc.org/

and some of the advisery members:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980420040917/fstc.org/advisers.html

and then there is
Compcon 95: Technologies for the Information Superhighway
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MC.1995.10059

extract from IEEE COMPCON 95 program announcement (Monday, March 6, Track 1):

Business on Networks, xxxx, LLNL and FSTC

1. Doing Business of the Information Highway: The nine steps to conduct business on the info. highway. xxxx, LLNL 2. CommerceNet: Spontaneous Electronic Commerce on the Internet Allan M. Schiffman and Jay M. Tenenbaum, EIT 3. Ordering, Distributing and Receipt: Order Processing & Management at IBM, Don Willenborg, IBM 4. Billing, Payment/Settlement, Accounting & Ancillary Services: Netaccount, Deepak Gupte, Nations Bank


... snip ...

and for other topic drift, a few recent posts mentioning SSL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#33 Trouble in PKI land
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#38 More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#46 More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The satate of software

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The satate of software
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:20:49 -0400
Andrew Reilly <andrew-newspost@areilly.bpc-users.org> writes:
Regarding identity theft and credit card fraud, I think that's much more a function of data retention and management policies, and organization- level security processes, by and large, than a "software crisis". As I said: security seems to be hard, and I certainly wasn't taught much about it, so I don't know the answer. I very much doubt that any of it has to do with "self congratulation" by me or anyone else. How is me being impressed by someone elses' impressive piece of software engineering self congratulation, anyway?

security can be hard, especially when it involves patch-work solutions ... possibly being applied in the wrong places and the wrong way (resulting in a never ending ongoing effort)... as opposed to being designed as part of the core infrastructure.

we were brought in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and they had invented this technology called SSL that they wanted to us; the result is now frequently called electronic commerce. as part of the electronic commerce we had to do some detailed look at assumptions about how SSL was being implemented and deployed as well as some of these new business operations calling themselves Certification Authorities. Almost immediately, secure SSL deployment assemptions were being violated. A few posts about recent SSL problem news items:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#21 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#23 Security certificate warnings don't work, researchers say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#24 Barclays online banking borked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#25 Don't Take Fraud Out of Context
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#28 Network Solutions breach exposed 500k card accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#38 More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#46 More holes found in Web's SSL security protocol

somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s we were asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standards working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (*ALL*, as in debit, credit, stored-value, gift-card, ACH, point-of-sale, unattended, internet, transit turnstyle, etc, i.e. *ALL*). the result was the x9.59 financial standard ... some references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

as part of the effort we had to do some detailed, end-to-end, threat and vulnerability assessments of the various environments. now x9.59 doesn't do anything about skimming, evesdropping, harvesting, data breaches (and/or the myriad other ways that information can leak out). what x9.59 did was slightly change the paradigm and make the information useless to attackers for the purpose of fraudulent financial transactions. X9.59 didn't do anything about preventing the leaking of the information to crooks ... it just eliminated the usefullness of that information to the crooks for fraudlent transactions (the major form of identity theft that usually has been making the press).

now the major use of SSL in the world today ... is this early stuff we worked on called electronic commerce ... used to hide transactions information as countermeasure to fraudulent financial transactions ... x9.59 prevents fraudulent transactions from any such information leakage and therefore eliminates the major use of SSL currently.

we've used a couple metaphors in attempt to characterize the current environment

dual-use vulnerability metaphor

account number is required in a large number of different business processes and is required to be readily available. at the same time the account number has to be kept strictly confidential and never divulged to anybody (not even those needing it for business processes, since insiders have repeatedly been shown to be the major source of identity theft). we've claimed that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, that it wouldn't be sufficient to prevent information leakage.

security proportional to risk metaphor

to the merchant, knowledge of the account number is worth some percent of the profit off the transaction (possibly a couple dollars, to the transaction processor it may only be a few cents); that same knowledge for the crook, is worth the account balance/credit-limit. as a result, the crook may be able to outspend by a factor of 100 times attacking the system (as the merchant or transaction processor can afford to spend protecting the system).

naked transaction metaphor

lots of archived blog activity & posts related to naked transaction metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

...

some number of recent posts mentioning the above metaphors:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#13 US credit card payment house breaches by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#62 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#36 PCI security rules may require reinforcements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#57 Data masking/data disguise Primer 1) WHY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#10 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#20 Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#11 Is anyone aware of a system that offers three layers of security and ID protection for online purchases or even over the counter POS purchases?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#13 PCI SSC Seeks Input on Security Standards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#41 How can we stop Credit card FRAUD?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules; more information requested

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hercules; more information requested.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:32:09 -0400
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Many people date UNIX's origins to Multics. Development of both Multics and MVT started in 1964, so they are contemporaries of one another by that reasonable measure.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested

some number of the CTSS people went to the science center on the 4th flr, 545 tech sq ... and some number of the CTSS people went to Multics on the 5th flr, 545 tech sq.

the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

originally did (virtual machine) cp40 system ... including building custom virtual memory hardware modifications for 360/40. cp40 morphed into cp67 when 360/67 became available with standard virtual memory support. late cp67 evolved into vm370 when virtual memory for 370s became available.

a couple recent posts in a.f.c. ng ... in a fairly active thread (thread even includes post by one of the people that originated unix)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#22 Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#37 Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#48 Timeline: 40 Years Of Unix

Melinda's vm370 history ... which can found here
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

goes into some of the history of CTSS, IBM's efforts trying to win the multics bid ... and some of the misc. internal IBM politics around interactive and virtual memory activity.

above includes comments about the science center originally attempting to get a 360/50 for the original virtual machine system, but had to settle for 360/40 (because all the spare 50s were going to FAA ATC effort).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules; more information requested

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hercules; more information requested.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:48:04 -0400
lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
a couple recent posts in a.f.c. ng ... in a fairly active thread (thread even includes post by one of the people that originated unix)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#55 Hercules; more information requested.

for slightly more topic drift ... another thread in a.f.c. ng that is getting a lot of play, started when I posted this article "A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing"
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/508-mainframe-computer-history.html

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#22 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

thread is not just limited to just IBM "mainframes"

other of my posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#37 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#39 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#52 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#54 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#59 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#60 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#61 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#63 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#64 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#66 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#72 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#3 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#8 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#10 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#11 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#14 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#18 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#26 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#32 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#34 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#50 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#51 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#53 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

COBOL: 50 not out

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: COBOL: 50 not out
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:53:00 -0400
COBOL: 50 not out
http://www.cbronline.com/news/cobol_50_not_out_030809

from above:
At a meeting at the Pentagon in May 1959, the Short Range Committee was formed and over the next few months it slowly gave birth to COBOL. Grace Hopper delivered the first specification of COBOL later that year and on September 18, 1959, the COmmon Business Oriented Language (COBOL) was officially named.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:45:00 -0400
BobB <bob.birch@gmail.com> writes:
I failed to mention the 3330's were dual ported with numerous, large IBM mainframes having the ability to access,via the 2nd 3330 port, all the data the TBM stored, PLUS access to the all data the IBM's stored. Trillions of whatever. Thus a user running a job on the mainframe having access to trillions of bits/bytes of data at HD speeds as his normal data set was mounted, from TBM to the 3330's, as he logged on. The old approach would have a tape operator mount the users data set on old 9 track drives, a long, long costly process. Thus as you stated, the user experienced a hundreds of milliseconds wait not tens of minutes or hours.

or physically mount the 3330 ... as mentioned in this old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#email800208

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

at the agency, quite a bit of the mainframes apparently were cp67 and then later vm370 ... since people from the agency were active on VMSHARE and at SHARE meetings ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#31 Disksize history question

strings of 3330s were controlled by controller ... but supported "string-switch" which met that they could be simultaneously accessed by two different 3830 controllers. 3830 controllers supported four channel interfaces ... allowing connection to up to four different channels on four different systems; possible to configure same 3330 drive with direct access by up to eight different systems.

3330 reference page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3330.html

i've claimed that possibly the largest such configuration ... for single system image in the late 70s ... was at consolidated HONE datacenter (including load-balancing and fall-over between systems). misc. past posts mentioning HONE system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

HYPERchannel A5xx later made the capability to non-IBM processors. NCAR did a system ... they tried to commercialize as Mesa Archival. small ibm mainframe running the tape mount & disk-staging software and some number "supercomputers" and big disk farm & robotic tape library.

HYPERchannel was used for both networking and for disk "channel access". Supercomputer software could send request to IBM mainframe (over HYPERchannel) ... which would stage the data from tape to disk ... (using tape robot and standard ibm channel). It would then load a mainframe channel program into the memory of the corresponding A5xx "remote device adapter" (i.e. it emulated ibm channel and could be connected to 3830 controller channel inteface). The IBM mainframe could then return to (A5xx) tag/location of the appropriate channel program to the supercomputer ... which then use HYPERchannel to execute the loaded channel program and read/write the data on disk.

misc. past posts ... some with mention of HYPERchannel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I was asked to have some discussions with NCAR in the mid-80s about (IBM mainframe) HYPERchannel support ... since I had done some in the early 80s. Then when IBM was providing some of the funding to Mesa Archival startup ... we were asked to visit and monitor them periodically.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules; more information requested

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Hercules; more information requested.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 3 Aug 2009 08:10:13 -0700
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Many people date UNIX's origins to Multics. Development of both Multics and MVT started in 1964, so they are contemporaries of one another by that reasonable measure.

But... does anybody really care? Seriously? :-)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#55 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#56 Hercules; more information requested

i periodically comment that UNIX and CP67 have common heritage back to CTSS. When I first got my hands on cp67 source as undergraduate in the late '60s ... I rewrote large portions of the kernel ... huge amount of pathlength work, dynamic adaptive resource management, page replacement algorithm, disk arm scheduling, bunch of other stuff.

I joke that nearly two decades later, I trip across very similar implementation in unix dispatch/scheduling (that I had replaced previously in cp67).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The satate of software

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The satate of software
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:06:28 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
we've used a couple metaphors in attempt to characterize the current environment

• dual-use vulnerability metaphor


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#54 The satate of software

i.e. majority of the current vulnerability is replay attack of static data ... that same static data is also required for lots of business processes ... setting up diametrically opposing requirements ... readily available for use by all the business processes .... and at the same time required to be kept totally confidential and never divulged for any reason.

the current security patch work efforts are attempting to hide the static data ... even tho it exists at billions of different locations around the world and is frequently being accessed for standard business processes. as previously stated this is doomed to failure (i.e. even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption there would still be information leakage).

the x9.59 approach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

was to slightly tweak the paradigm and eliminate being able to use the static data for replay attacks (totally ignoring whether the information leaked or not ... in fact, assumed the information would be guaranteed to leak and there was no way of stopping it).

as an aside, concurrently with the x9.59 activity ... there was some efforts to specify a payment protocol using more traditional PKI and digital certificates. Besides the fact that the traditional payment transactions invalidated the basic premises for the use of PKI and digital certificates there were several other significant issues.

shortly after one of these specifications was published, I did a business operations profile as well as a public-key ops profile for the specification. Then I got somebody that had taken the standard BSAFE (public key) library to do benchmarks of the public-key ops profile on a number of different platforms. I then reported the results back to some of the people authoring the specification. Their response was that my numbers were 100 times too slow ... however, in fact, the person doing the benchmarks had made improvements to BSAFE library making it run four times faster (so if they had ever done any public key work they should have wondered why the benchmarks were four times faster). Much later when there were pilot projects being deployed ... it turn out that the benchmark numbers were within a couple percent of pilot measure numbers (i.e. the BSAFE enhancements had been returned to the vendor).

Another issue was that typical PKI and digital certificates inflated the standard payment transaction payload by a factor of 100 times ... so, the straight-foward PKI approach not only added something like a two-orders of magnitude processing bloat to payment transaction processing ... but also added two-orders of magnitude payload size bloat. misc. past posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

Since the X9A10 financial standard working group had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity for ALL retail payments (including very high value, very low value, very lightweight, etc) ... the work on X9.59 had to pay a lot of attention to both processing and payload overheads as well as the security and integrity strength.

Part of it was that by the time we were through with applying SSL to payment transactions ... it was clearly evident that PKI and digital certificates were redundant and superfluous in that environment (as well as representing enormous processing and payload bloat).

In the X9 financial standards group there was other realization regarding the enormous PKI bloat/penalty in payment environment. There was one effort to produce "compressed" digital certificates ... as trying to partially mitigate the (rendundant and superfluous) PKI bloat/overhead. There was work on producing a *compressed* digital certificate by eliminating redundant fields (fields that would be the same in every digital certificate that the entity's payment institution ... as relying party, would otherwise have).

I took it a step further ... by proving that an entity's payment institution would already have every possible field normally carried by a digital certificate ... in which case, digital certificates could be compressed to zero bytes ... i.e. rather than claiming that it was possible to perform PKI operations w/o the need of having (redundant and superfluous) digital certificates ... I showed that it was possible to have PKI operations with mandatory (zero-byte) digital certificates appended to every transaction.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:21:17 -0400
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
steelep@TABCORP.COM.AU (Steele, Phil) writes:
Well no-one has answered, so I had better!

The 3345 was really a 3350 that was "re-partitioned" so that each 3350 spindle looked like four 3340-70MB spindles/disks. It was a cheaper way of getting (maybe?slower) 3340s if you could not handle the 3350 architecture yet. ( you got a faster transfer rate, but if you were not on a cache controller, you suffered from having only one 3350 actuator instead of four 3340 actuators. ( not mention the Fixed Head feature, but I won't).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#45 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

... all my documentation lists it as 3344 ... it was almost vanilla 3340 except for treatment of alternate tracks ... which required a change to RAS.

i tried to push thru change to 3350 to add "multi-exposures" (aka multiple device address, ala 2305 fixed-head device) ... so that I could do data transfers off 3350 fixed-head portion overlapped with arm-motion. It was targeted as "paging device".

I ran into internal politics with a product, code-named "VULCAN", being done in POK (which they planned as being targeted at paging and my multiple exposure was somehow competition) ... which shot done my 3350 multiple exposure change. Then "VULCAN" was killed w/o even being announced.

misc. other posts in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#44 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#47 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules; more information requested

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Hercules; more information requested.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 4 Aug 2009 08:02:46 -0700
shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
Except for TSO. Also, SVS dropped some features of OS/360 MVT, e.g., GJP, RJE, and reimplimented others, e.g., loading transient SVC routines.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested.

at various times, there were various decrees about killing off both cp67 and vm370 products. in the mad rush to get 370 products back into the pipeline ... after future system product was killed,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the mvs/xa group managed to convince corporate that vm370 should be killed, the burlington mall development location be shutdown and all the people moved to pok ... or otherwise mvx/xa wouldn't be able to meet its product schedule. endicott finally managed to convince corporate to transfer vm370 product, but they effectively had to reconstitute a development group from scratch.

in any case, possibly with the big upswing in vm370 4341s in the late 70s and early 80s ... the corporation was convinced to declare vm370/cms the strategic interactive solution.

then i got asked by some people in the tso group, if I would consider doing a dynamic adaptive resource manager for mvs ... as part of attempting to improve tso's human factors characteristics. old email reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email800310b
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#23 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?

obviously this before I brought down the wrath of the MVS group when including reference to MVS MTBF of 15 minutes in the disk engineering & product test "testcell" environments ... recent ref
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#17 Bulletproof

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The satate of software

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The satate of software
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:02:01 -0400
vandys writes:
I would say security is just one aspect of reliability. My experience is that reliability is really, really hard. Worthwhile, and hopefully the future of software. But hard. And I really can't point to anybody who's currently doing serious work on architecturally reliable systems (proofs by counterexample welcome!).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#54 The satate of software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#60 The satate of software

reference meeting regarding doing cluster scale-up for ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

now two of the people in the above meeting (jan92), later left and show up at a small client/server startup, responsible for something called "commerce server" and we were brought in to consult because the startup wanted to do payment transactions on their server (the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use).

(earlier) in the ha/cmp part ... we were looking at requirements of five nines or better ... and we viewed "security" as just one aspect of RAS (reliability, availability, service). An example of "S" aspect ... we went into one environment with 5-nines requirement, that had been using a system purely based on hardware fault tolerant implementation ... but required something like annual software upgrade. However, their outage for single annual software maint. blew nearly a century's outage budget.

some old email mentioning the cluster scale-up part of the project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

shortly after the jan92 meeting, the cluster scale-up part of the project was transferred, announced as a supercomputer, and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processor.

for slightly other drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing

mentions working with somebody that developed formal definition for transaction properties ... which then made a difference for financial auditors accepting computer based operations.

semi-related posts regarding the original sql/relational implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

PayPal hit by global outage

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: PayPal hit by global outage
Date: 4 Aug, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
PayPal hit by global outage
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=20336

from above:
PayPal users around the world were unable to make purchases for much of yesterday because of an internal network hardware failure.

... snip ...

As PayPal Returns to Normal, Outage Leaves Questions in Its Wake
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2283
As PayPal Returns to Normal, Outage Leaves Questions in Its Wake
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2283
EBay's PayPal goes down for over an hour
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080609-cyber-attackers-empty-business-accounts.html
What Happens When PayPal Breaks
http://www.pcworld.com/article/169578/what_happens_when_paypal_breaks.html
PayPal Experiences Global Outage
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1731731/paypal_experiences_global_outage/index.html
PayPal outage frustrates merchants, consumers
http://www.physorg.com/news168613437.html
PayPal outage frustrates merchants, consumers
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/23123/

we had been working on cluster scale-up for our ha/cmp product ... misc. posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

this post mentions jan92 meeting discussing High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

sometime after the above meeting, two of the people mentioned, left and joined a small client/server startup where they were responsible for something called the "commerce server" and we were brought in to consult because they wanted to do payment transactions on their server (the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use); the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

As part of creating support for payment transactions ... we deployed an "ha/cmp" payment gateway ... with lots of redundancy and failure mitigation characteristics. Misc. posts mentioning payment gateway
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

recent post mentioning design point for ha/cmp was five-nines or better availability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#63

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Java question

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Java question
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 4 Aug 2009 18:34:04 -0700
PaulGBoulder@AIM.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
But, I was envisioning that for performance and sharability it might be desirable to keep it in LPA. Sort of like a VM DisContiguous Shared Segment.

HONE was online vm370 based system that grew into (the internal IBM) world-wide sales & marketing support (with lots of HONE clones all over the world) ... largely APL-based applications ... which is also largely inteterpreted code. misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

I had done the pre-cursor of vm DCSS ... basically a cms page-mapped filesystem with lots of bells & whistles about how things were page-mapped ... including all kinds of sharing. misc. past posts mentioning paged-mapped filesystem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

this was heavily used by HONE ... starting for the APL interpreter ... i.e. the executable code. However, additional enhancements were done so that large portions of some APL workspaces (interpreted code) were also made "shareable".

some old email relating to migrating the changes from cp67 to vm370 ... and then doing my own internal product distribution to large number of internal datacenters (including HONE).

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212 in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#36

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102 in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#7

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430 in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#8

later, a small subset of some of the features/functions (what is called DCSS, as well as some number of cms applications reworked to execute in read-only shared environment) were picked up and released to customers.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:07:04 -0400
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around best use of CAS since that sounds mighty useful for multithreaded libraries.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#10 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

as mentioned, the initial attempt to get compare&swap included in the original 370 architecture was rebuffed ... with a "challenge" for uses that weren't multiprocessor specific.

some number of examples were created for multithreaded applications (like large DBMS sysetms) ... which were then included in the 370 principles of operation ... and have continued to survive over the decades and appear in current principles of operation. I cited specific URLs for the current document sections in the above referenced post.

Basically CS can atomically replace a single word based on existing value hasn't changed. One mechanism is management of push/pop lists involving things tasks queues or storage allocation. CDS atomically replaces a double word based on existing value hasn't changed. This can be used for management of double threaded lists. Much simpler uses are decrement and increment of values.

one of the things that showed up in original port of major DBMS systems (oracle, ingres, informix, sybase) to RS/6000 (RIOS chip) ... was that RIOS had no provision for multiprocessor operations nor an atomic compare&swap instruction (that was by then commoningly being used by large multithreaded applications).

As part of being able to port these large multithreaded applications (DBMS systems and others) to RS/6000 ... it was required to simulate an atomic compare&swap instruction. Since RIOS didn't support multiprocessor operation ... there was no problem in the simulation with locking out other processors ... just guaranteeing that the simulation sequence wasn't interrupted (and make it as fast as possible).

So compare&swap simulation was done in supervisor call interrupt routine (disabled for interrupts), a few number of instructions from the interrupt to the simulation, actual simulation, and then resume of the application.

in any case, compare&swap use (and/or something nearly identical) had become quite pervasive across the industry (at least for large commercial multithreaded applications, even decades ago on non-ibm platforms) ... for multithreaded operations.

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:39:46 -0400
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I never got any dual port SCSI drives but they would've been neat (so long as nothing did simultaneous modifications, easily rectified by not using the same partitions, or assuring only one had it read-write at any time).

you didn't need to have dual ported SCSI drives ... for some rs/6000 ha/cmp configurations (two decades ago now) ... we used SCSI string with two master/controllers on the same string ... with the controllers in different systems.

this is somewhat analogous to the 3330 string-switch ... which would connect to two different controllers (and each controller being able to connect to four channels ... allowing access for up to eight different systems accessing the same 3330 string). some discussion here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#58 Disksize history question

as part of distributed lock-manager and using (unix platform) "cluster" DBMS (in some cases original design/logic having originated from vax/cluster implementation) and "raw" disk support (i.e. raw devices were given to DBMS ownership) allowed multiple concurrent operations from multiple systems involving same set of disks (skirting issue of unix filesystem concurrent access from multiple different systems).

recent post about having done distributed lock manager for ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#36 Ingres claims massive database performance boost

misc. other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#30 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#31 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#41 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#42 Disksize history question

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

And, 40 years of IBM midrange

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: And, 40 years of IBM midrange
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:56:11 -0400
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I remember reading the IEEE article about the S/38's microcoded instructions and how the address space spanned RAM and hard drive instead of distinguishing them. Clever!

I tried to get involved with the client's migration from the System/3 to a /36 or /38 but some other consultant got that job. I remember hearing that a /32 was being recommended but I replied how they ought to outgrow the max storage within 3 years. Oh well.


one of the problems with s/38 (memory-mapped) filesystem was it treated all disks as one great big pool of records ... and effectively did scatter allocate across all available disks ... when there was a problem, recovery could take a day or two ... because all disks (single large filesystem) had to be restored as a single unit.

this was somewhat tss/360 and multics theme from the 60s ... "single level store" and attempted to be carried forward into the aborted future system project (killed before even being announced) ... misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the folklore is some of the future system people ... then retreated to rochester and where they did s/38.

i had done paged-mapped filesystem for cms ... attempting to avoid some of the "single level store" inefficiencies in the tss/360 implementation ... as well as avoid the enormously difficult recovery process of threating all available disks as single pool with arbitrary scatter allocation across all disks ... for large mainframe configuration with possible couple hundred disks ... such a (s/38) design might take weeks to perform a restore/recovery ... worse than the unix fsck recovery problem ... recent post/reference in ibm-main discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#65

the s/38 implementation significantly simplified some things ... but at enormous restore/recovery cost (somewhat bracketed by the relatively small number of disks in most s/38 installations) ... it definitly wasn't a five-nines solution. recent post mentioning five-nines in comp.arch discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#63

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:04:36 -0400
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I'm an Ex-Con (former Concurrent exployee), so see
http://www.excaliburs.com/ccur/ccur.html

to summarize: interdata -> Perkin Elmer -> Concurrent which merged with Masscomp and Harris Computer Systems


as undergraduate in the 60s, i did a lot of work on cp67 at the univ. one of the things was adding tty/ascii terminal support to cp67. part of this was trying to get the mainframe terminal controller to do something that it couldn't quite do. Somewhat as a result, the univ. started a clone controller project ... using a interdata/3 to create a clone controller, reverse engineering the channel interface and building a channel interface board for the interdata/3, programming the interdata/3 to emulate various functions, etc. four of us then got written up and blamed for clone controller business. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

the implementation then evolved into an interdata/4 ... managing the channel interface and cluster/multiple interdata/3 as line-scanners.

i've run into a later, very large version of this product at a major financial point-of-sale transaction processor in the late 90s. there have been comments that it appeared to still be using the same wire-wrap channel interface board design that had been done at the univ. in the 60s. other people i've talked to, said quite a few were sold to various gov. agencies like nasa.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:13:11 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
At Iowa State, the clone controller was built from DEC KA-11's.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#69 An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing

The interdata3 grew into cluster with interdata4 with one or more interdata3 ... and somehow became product offered by interdata (later perkin/elmer). misc. past posts mentioning clone controller business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

but there were other clone controllers, reference to project using DEC PDP8 for terminal controller at UofMich for MTS 360/67 system:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery7.html

past posts referencing the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#41 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#42 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#42 Why Didn't The Cent Sign or the Exclamation Mark Print?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#6 MTS *FS tape format?

tss/360 was the "official" operating system for 360/67. cambridge science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

did the virtual machine cp67 system for 360/67 (and I worked on cp67 as undergraduate in the 60s). UofMich did MTS for 360/67. other pictures and comments about 360/67 and MTS
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery8.html

for other topic drift ... reference to clone controller business being major motivation for future system effort:
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

from above:
IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead that the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such a high level of integration that it would be impossible for competitors to follow a compatible niche strategy. However, the project failed because the objectives were too ambitious for the available technology. Many of the ideas that were developed were nevertheless adapted for later generations. Once IBM had acknowledged this failure, it launched its 'box strategy', which called for competitiveness with all the different types of compatible sub-systems. But this proved to be difficult because of IBM's cost structure and its R&D spending, and the strategy only resulted in a partial narrowing of the price gap between IBM and its rivals.

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the failure of the future system project then had long term effect on IBM. This is old thread in this news group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33

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

... snip ...

As an aside ... in early 70s, there was activity at the science center to try and make peachtree (processor in S/1) basis for next generation of terminal controllers (instead the significantly more primitive processor selected for the 3705).

in the mid-80s, I got involved with one of the baby bells that had implemented 3705/NCP emulator on S/1 platform (that they had deployed thruout their organization) ... I had plan to turn it out as an interim product while porting the whole implementation to RIOS (the risc chipset used in rs/6000) for standard product. Part of presentation that I made at Fall86 SNA architecture review board meeting:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67

the group director responsible for SNA caught me after the presentation and wanted to know who had authorized me to speak to his people.

related post regarding NCP emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70

some old pictures ... including desk paperweight with original rios chipset
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Hercules Question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Hercules Question
Date: 6 Aug, 2009
Blog: Mainframe Experts
On 23jun69, IBM announced unbundling ... starting to charge for application software, maintenance, SE services, etc ... somewhat as the result of gov. legal actions. However, it manage to make the case that kernel software should still be free. misc. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

then (reputedly major motivation was clone controllers) the future system effort (to completely replace 360/370 ... as different from 360/370 as 360 had been from earlier machines) ... some discussion in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#70

However, future system effort was eventually killed w/o ever being announced; some posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the distraction of future system allowed the 370 product pipeline to somewhat dry-up ... which contributed to clone processors being able to get market foothold. In the wake of killing future system effort, there was mad rush to get products back in the 370 product pipeline. This contributed to deciding to release some of the 370 stuff I had been doing all during the future system period. some recent discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#65

Also the rise of the clone processors likely contributed to the business decision to start charging for kernel software. Included in some of my things for release was dynamic adaptive resource management ... and it was decided to release it as a separate kernel component and make it the guinea pig to start charging for kernel software. After that, there was increasing number of kernel components that were charged for, until the transition to charging for all kernel software. This is the what is (currently considered) available for running under Hercules and what is not.

A post (in ibm-main mailing list) mentioning dynamic adaptive resource management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#62 Hercules; more information requested

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Client Certificate UI for Chrome?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:35:46 -0400
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Client Certificate UI for Chrome?
MailingList: cryptograpy
On 08/06/09 07:33, James A. Donald wrote:
The fundamental problem with certificates is getting them.

digital certificate design point supposedly was the dial-up email of the early 80s; dial-up, exchange email, hang-up ... and then faced with how to deal with first time email from complete stranger. basically electronic analog to letters of credit/introduction from sailing ship days.

in the 90s, because of numerous privacy and liability issues ... there was some number of "relying-party only" certificates; individual registered their public key with the institution, institution then created a digital certificate with the public key, archived it, and returned a copy to the individual. the individual, in communication with the institution, would digitally sign the communication and then append the digital certificate. However, it was trivial to prove that the institution/relying-party already had a copy of the information ... and the appended digital certificate was redundant and superfluous. misc. past posts discussion relying-party only digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#rpo

furthermore, major foreys into this sector were by financial institutions for the purpose of payment transactions. a complicating factor ... besides the digital certificates being redundant and superfluous ... they added a 100 times payload size bloat to the typical payment transaction size. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

there was a financial standards effort that looked at possibly doing "compressed" digital certificates (trying to achieve only ten times bloat) ... eliminating redundant fields and information already in the possession of the individual's financial institution. we showed that the individual's financial institution already had superset of the information in the digital certificate ... so it was possible to compress digital certificates to zero bytes ... and then mandate that financial transactions would always have zero-byte certificates appended (as opposed to no appended digital certificate).

Something similar was demonstrated for RADIUS and Kerberos ... registering a public key in lieu of password ... some past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

and also something similar for registering public key with domain name registration with domain name infrastructure ... for use in lieu of SSL digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

that left institutions and relying parties with no-value business processes as digital certificate opportunities ... i.e. no-value transactions where the relying party couldn't justify the cost of their own entity repository and/or justify the cost of doing an online transactions to obtain such entity information ... and of course ... the original design point, the "offline email" scenario with first time communication with complete strangers.

One of the problems with no-value market segment is that it is hard for institutions and individuals to justify paying for things without any value ... and therefor it is hard to find entities looking at selling things for nothing.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

And, 40 years of IBM midrange

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: And, 40 years of IBM midrange
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:20:55 -0400
hancock4 writes:
I don't think it's 'folklore' but rather historical fact--I'm pretty sure the AS/400 and predecessors did make use of Future System components.

In my opinion, single level store was a bad idea. An overloaded AS/ 400 in service is not a pretty sight.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#68 And, 40 years of IBM midrange

yes, well ... as i've mentioned before, i had somewhat paned the effort ... drawing comparison with a cult film that had been playing down in central sq for the previous decade or so. i believed what i was doing in dynamic adaptive resource management ... was much more advanced than what they were specifying ... as well as what i was doing in page mapped filesystem being much more realistic (... and continuing to plug away with 370)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

it may have contributed to being periodically told that i had no career in the company (and much later in executive exit interview, being told that they could have forgiven me for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive me for being right)

i've also mentioned that my wife ... who had a position in the future system organization, has commented that it seemed like whole sections of the specifications lacked any detail at all ... likely contributing to the effort eventually being killed (sections with lots of blue sky statements of objectives ... but no substance about how to actually achieve them).

slightly related comments in post mentioning clone controller business, unbundling, future system, clone processors, charging for software, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#71 Hercules Question

misc past posts mentioning comparison between cult film and future system effort:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16 [OT] FS - IBM Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#8 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#1 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#19 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#32 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#39 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#16 Is a Hurricane about to hit IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#5 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#15 Hercules 3.04 announcement
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#33 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#44 Musings on a holiday weekend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#50 what's the difference between LF(Line Fee) and NL (New line) ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#30 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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/2007p.html#5 PL/S programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#74 System 360 EBCDIC vs. ASCII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#96 source for VAX programmers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#53 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#54 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#23 Memories of ACC, IBM Channels and Mainframe Internet Devices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#35 Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#66 Future System

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:45:40 -0400
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I recall an IBM ad for mainframe/server disks (probably 8in) - 2 independent head assemblies, on opposite sides of the disk - the disks were "on edge", not parallel to table/floor - extremely advanced bearing and lubricants for greater precision

I'm unsure if both heads could seek the full surface of the disk, or if one was the outer half, the other the inner half.


2303 "drum" (360 time-frame) was fixed-head device

2301 "drum" ... looked pretty much the same as 2303 but read/wrote four heads in parallel ... so transfer rate was four times higher. frequently found on 360/67s as paging device.

2305-2 was "fixed head" (head/track) disk (multiple platters instead of rotating drum) ... was found on 370s as paging device. had 1.5mbyte/sec transfer.

2305-1 was similar to 2305-2, but had half the capacity, twice the data transfer rate, and half the rotational delay. the characteristic would imply that they took 2305-2 ... off-set half the (same-number of) heads at 180 degrees so there were pairs of heads on each track with even/odd bytes were on opposite side of the tracks ... pairs would transfer bytes of data in parallel and the heads would switch from even/odd to odd/even depending on what came under the heads first. 2305-1 was extremely limited, since mainframe channels had lots of limitations handling 3mbyte/sec transfer rate.

this is different from later 3380 which had pairs of actuators on same rotating platters and was treated as two independent devices. 3380 was a 3mbyte/sec device ... but with "data streaming". for 360 & 370 ... prior to 3380, "channels" were spec'ed to operate at max. distance of 200ft and there was end-to-end hand-shake on every byte transferred. "data streaming" relaxed the handshake requirement so multiple bytes could be transferred per handshake, which also increased the maximum length per channel to 400ft.

the longer distance addressed the problem in large datacenters where processor was placed in the center of an area ... and 200ft channel "radius" was becoming limit on number of disks that could packed into the area. "data streaming" doubled the radius of the area that disks could be packed into.

I've had recent ongoing thread in ibm-main about various problems continuing to support CKD and major platform not adopting FBA support ... ECKD was sort of introduced as trying to retrofit some of the benefits of FBA to CKD ... initially supporting controller "speed-matching" buffer ... allowing attachment of 3mbyte/sec 3380s to 370/168 1.5mbyte/sec channels.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#44 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

other posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#43 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#45 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#47 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Disksize history question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disksize history question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:14:32 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#30 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#31 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#41 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#42 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#58 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#67 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#74 Disksize history question

they let me play disk engineer starting in the late 70s (bldgs. 14&15) ... this was in the time-frame of development of the 3880 disk controller and 3380 disks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

there were some significant issues with 3880 disk controller ... they were trying to pack a whole lot more function in the controller (compared to 3830 controller used with 3330s, 3350s, 3370s, 3375s).

3830 was fast horizontal microcode processor ... the 3880 was much slower vertical microcode jib-prime microprocessor (with special hardware for handling data transfer ... and the microprocessor now only having to handle control functions). the much slower 3880 resulted in some number of systemic performance issues ... only some of which were addressed by the time the box actually shipped to customers.

3350 had optional "fixed-head" area feature ... that added head/track on limited number of 3350 tracks ... recent post mentioning trying to get some additional enhancements to improve thruput associated with 3350 fixed-head feature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#61 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?

IBM "storage" web pages
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_profile.html

3380 from above:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3380.html

350 from above:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_350.html

355 from above:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_355.html

for the fun of it ... old email mentioning design of "wide" disk head that spanned 18 tracks (16 data r/w tracks plus servo track on each side, would read/write 16 tracks in parallel, slight analogy to previously mentioned 2301 drum that read/wrote four tracks in parallel):
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 ?
other email in the same post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122

16+2 head also mentioned in these posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#21 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#38 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#23 Bulkiest removable storage media?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#64 Toshiba Boosts Hard Drive Density By 50%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#66 Was there ever a 10in floppy?

san jose plant site web pages used to have a whole lot more ... but they almost disappeared after the plant was sold off ... however some live on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010810074343/www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/firsts/1950.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20010820082542/www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/firsts/1960.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20010810145013/www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/firsts/1970.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20010820083158/www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/firsts/1980.htm

above (1980s) mentions flying thin-film heads for 3380 ... recent post discussing "air-bearing" simulation for design of thin-film head:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

los gatos vlsi lab had designed the jib-prime microprocessor used in 3880 controller. they also had built special hardware "logic" simulator (being able to simulate chip design logic 50,000 faster than equivalent software application running on 370/168). one of the features that distinguished the LSM from later (hardware) logic simulators ... was that it included clock (later logic simulators assumed synchronous clock that ticked simultaneously across the whole chip). With clock capability, they were able to simulate chip designs with asynchronous clocks. they were also able to simulate digital circuits that included some amount of analog circuits ... i.e. like what you might have with a thin-film disk head.

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/2002g.html#77 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#82 Future architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#26 LSM, YSE, & EVE
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/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?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#61 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#22 What if phone company had developed Internet?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#67 1401 simulator for OS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#68 CA to IBM TCP Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#68 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

And, 40 years of IBM midrange

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: And, 40 years of IBM midrange
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:57:49 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Overshadowed, of course, by an event that happened but ten days earlier...

little more than month earlier, unbundling announcement, 23jun69; recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#71 Hercules Question

june 1969 history:
http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1969/june

july 1969 history:
http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1969/july

from above:
16th - Apollo 11, carrying 1st men to land on Moon, launched 18th - Joe Namath agrees to sell interest in Bachelors 3, to stay in NFL 19th - Apollo 11 goes into Moon orbit 20th - 1st men on Moon, Neil Armstrong & Edwin Aldrin, Apollo 11

I've mentioned before that my youngest had slight run-in with Buzz ... we were at launch of 41-D in the VIP stands ... and Buzz was there with a corporate sponsor. my youngest approached Buzz for autograph when he was in the middle of photo shoot with his corporate benefactors ... which resulted in a little irratation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin

nasa 41-d mission page
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/41-d/mission-41-d.html

sbs-4 went up on 41-d and HSDT project was going to have a transponder on the bird ... misc. past posts mentioning hsdt project:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

misc. past posts mentioning 41-D launch:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#27 Tysons Corner, Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#28 Western Union data communications?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#14 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#60 JES2 NJE setup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#21 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/2006k.html#55 5963 (computer grade dual triode) production dates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#31 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#61 Damn

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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
Date: 8 Aug, 2009
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/082409-the-art-of-creating-strong.html

from above:
They waited until school administrators were away on holiday, and then during a four-day period between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2, siphoned US$704,610.35 out of two of the school district's bank accounts.

... snip ...

We were tangentially involved in the cal. data breach notification legislation (since then various other states have enacted similar legislation). We had been brought in to help word-smith the cal. electronic signature act ... and several of the participating institutions were also involved in privacy issues. They had done in-depth surveys and found the number one privacy issue was identity theft. some past posts mentioning electronic signatures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

There are a number of kinds of identity theft ... but a very frequently occurring variety is referred to as account fraud. A major exploit in account fraud is being able to use information from previous transactions or operations for fraudulent transactions (a kind of replay attack). A major source of information used for (account fraud) fraudulent transactions is from data breaches. Since there seemed to be little or nothing being done about such exploits ... it seemed that they believed that adverse publicity that would result from data breach notification might motivate corrective action.

Note this account fraud variety of identity theft isn't limited to just consumers ... ir can occur with all account-based infrastructures (consumer, individual, commercial, business, non-profit, gov. aka *ALL*).

We had been brought in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and the startup had invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use; the result is now frequently referred to as electronic commerce. part of that effort included doing something called a payment gateway (handled communication between webservers on the internet and the payment networks) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

Somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in the X9A10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payment(i.e. ALL as in debit, credit, ACH, stored-value, point-of-sale, unattended, internet, online banking, transit turnstyle, low-value, high-value, etc aka ALL).

As part of the effort, there was detailed end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the various environments ... including identifying replay attacks (from lots of sources; data breaches, skimming, harvesting, evesdropping, etc) as major thread. Eventually X9A10 published the x9.59 financial transaction standard ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

Turns out that X9.59 does nothing to eliminate the harvesting techniques of information ... what it does is slightly tweak the paradigm and make the information useless to crooks for the purpose of fraudulent transactions (x9.59 standard prevents replay attacks, not by trying to hide the information, but by eliminating the usefulness of the information to crooks for fraudulent transactions).

Now the major use of SSL in the world today, is this earlier "electronic commerce" work we did ... using SSL to hide financial transaction details. The X9.59 standard eliminates the necessity of using SSL for that purpose, since it is no longer necessary to hide financial transaction details (as countermeasure to fraudulent transactions, account fraud, and identity theft).

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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970


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