List of Archived Posts

2010 Newsgroup Postings (01/24 - 02/11)

Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
"The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
Happy DEC-10 Day
PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
book machines
PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Mythical computers and magazine reviews
PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Mythical computers and magazine reviews
Extracting STDOUT data from USS
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
The origins of CICS
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
Processes' memory
watches
watches
Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
Cybercrime Checks Into The Hotel Industry
Engineer shows how to crack a 'secure' TPM chip
Happy DEC-10 Day
who pioneered the WEB
Happy DEC-10 Day
who pioneered the WEB
Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer
Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)
Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:10:07 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Now pay attention to the time allowed for Congress, and the public, to learn what is in the compromise. If it's days, then nobody will know what's really in the bill. It takes weeks and sometimes months before public discourse if finished.

there has been a lot about 1100(?) page health care bill and does anybody have time to read it ... for instance would the president have time to read it before deciding to sign it.

part of the concern is what happened with medicare part-d.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D

60 minutes had segment on a (very late) one sentence change.

gao had done cost estimate for the bill ... before the one line change ... and according to 60 minutes, after the change, gao did a new cost estimate showing the effect of the one line change ... but there were some critical members that stalled making the revised estimate available until after the vote.

the one line change eliminated being able to do competitive bids and increased the cost enormously (large part of the tens of trillions of dollars in the stories about unfunded mandates). 60 minutes compared cost of identical drugs under part-d and to VA ... which is able to do competitive bids ... and VA is paying 1/3rd what medicare is paying for identical drugs. also within several months after passing the bill ... something like 18(?) key congressmen & staffers had resigned their positions and were working for drug industry (at significantly larger salary).

misc. past posts referencing drug bill, 60 minutes segment, and/or related unfunded mandates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#30 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#7 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#1 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#46 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer

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

"The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:15:49 -0500
lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
also, customers were finding that a vm/4341 cluster was cheaper than 3033, higher aggregate mip rate, much larger aggregate storage, and higher aggregate i/o capacity. There is folklore, that because of the above ... at one point, POK directed Fishkill to cut the Endicott allocation in half for a critical component needed for 4341 manufacturing.

One of the things that was happening by the mid-70s ... as processing power was increasing ... disk thruput improvements weren't keeping pace with processor speed improvements. as a result, systems were having to rely more & more on larger & larger electronic storage ... to compensate for the growing disk i/o bottleneck. 370s were stuck with 24bit addressing and 16mbyte virtual and real storage ... which resulted in significant constrained operation for many 3033s.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#88 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#96 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

recent post also mentioning vm/4341 cluster support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#90 Happy DEC-10 Day

and various vm/4341 cluster-wide operations going from small subsecond elapsed time to 30secs (or more) when forced to migrate to SNA for customer release.

i had done dynamic adaptive resource management and something I called "scheduling to the bottleneck" as undergraduate in the 60s ... so was sensitized to being constantly on the lookout for changing bottleneck conditions. as a result, it wasn't unusual to find by the mid-70s, bottleneck was shifting to disk i/o ... and real storage was more and more being leveraged to compensate for the disk i/o bottleneck.

by the early 80s, I had made statements about relative system disk thruput had declined by order of magnitude over period of years ... old post with comparison from the early 80 period:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door

i.e. the growth in cms users from cp67 on 360/67 to vm370 on 3081 should have been from 80 to something like 4000 ... instead of typically 300 (the ratio of 80:300 is more like change in disk thruput).

disk division executives tasked their performance group to refute the statement ... but after a few weeks they came back and said that I had slightly understated the problem. the spin on the analysis was then changed to be recommendations on disk configuration to maximize system thruput ... and turned into share presentation (B874 @ SHARE 63, 8/18/84). some past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#46 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
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?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#5 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#9 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#7 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#34 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#67 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps

in the period between 3330/3350 and 3380 there was also software technologies about disk thruput ... basically analysing traces of disk record accesses ... and generating profiles for re-allocation for better arm balance and concurrent operation. One such application was then modified for specifying allocation for moving from 3330/3350 to 3380s. Sort of guideline was that 3380s had to be limited to 80% allocation in order to avoid degrading thruput compared to same data spread across 3330/3350 configuration (i.e. 3380 byte capacity increased by much larger factor then 3380 performance increase).

another disk activity "trace" technology was extremely lightweight, originally used as part of electronic cache modeling. one finding was that given fixed amount of electornic cache ... using it for a single large system cache was better than dividing/partitioning it into channel, controller, and/or disk specific caches. Some work was then done on the lightweight activity trace regarding incorporating into standard system allocation ... for choosing optimal distribution of data (of course lots of that has now all been moved to complex disk subsystems). misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#104 Fixed Head Drive (Was: Re:Power distribution (Was: Re: A primeval C compiler)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#19 Hard disks, one year ago today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#61 Disks size growing while disk count shrinking = bad performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#1 More newbie stop the war here!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#53 VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#50 crossreferenced program code listings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#7 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#8 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#76 Athlon cache question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#79 Athlon cache question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#4 Athlon cache question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#45 winscape?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#45 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#0 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#27 Really BIG disk platters?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#33 CRAM, DataCell, and 3850
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#12 Trying to design low level hard disk manipulation program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#5 Poster of computer hardware events?

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

PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:11:02 -0500
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
Cost, of course. They already had the Displaywriter, but it cost over $7000 and was too expensive to compete against Apples and other PCs. I gather the PC was originally planned around a Z-80, and the switch to the 8088 happened fairly late in the process after they realized they could keep most of the 8 bit design.

The 68008 wasn't available until 1982 so the 8088 was at the time the only credible option for a 16 bit processor with an 8 bit bus.


and the ROMP-based Displaywriter follow-on cost significantly more ... major reason it got canceled and the group then looking around for something else they could use the machine & people for ... eventually tripping over unix-based workstation market.

this required moving off of cp.r and pl.8 (although they did come up with abstract virtual machine implemented in pl.8 to keep all their programmers available; some presentation at the time was that they had over 200 pl.8 programmers working on the displaywriter follow-on that needed something to do) ... getting the company that had done the pc/ix product for the PC ... to do a port to the VRM. The unix programming paradigm at least required hardware protection domain (privileged/non-privileged) which didn't exist in basic 801/cp.r.

misc. past posts mentioning 801, iliad, romp, rios, power, power/pc somerset, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

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

Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:19:46 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
I am worried that this is the bill which will bankrupt the country.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#37 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#0 Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?

listening to former comptroller general description, part-d has already bankrupted the country in unfunded mandates ... larger than all the possible speculation and conjecture about amounts that may or may not be involved in current bill. Given the significant difference in the level of public furor between 2003 part-d and conjecture about what may or may not be in current bill ... raises question about what hidden agendas might be involved (or that there was significant more finesse used in 2003)

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

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:34:10 -0500
"Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <ag-news@patten-glew.net> writes:
I've used UNIX systems that swapped the entire process in/out to disk.

Less extreme, systems that supported address mapping, but not pagefaults.


in 60s, 360/65 was real addresses only ... 360/67 was basically 360/65 with hardware (associative array) added for doing virtual address translation. officially intended for tss/360 (which had lots of development and delivery problems). the science center did virtual machine cp67 for 360/67 ... and was installed on lots of the (supposedly tss/360) 360/67 machines (lots of univ. had bought 360/67 to run tss/360).

os/360 was standard operating system product for running on 360s (w/o virtual memory). Boeing Huntsville had installed multiprocessor 360/67 for running os/360 doing a lot of (long-running) 2250 graphics display (lots of cadam-like design apps). os/360 had big problem with 1) applications required contiguous addressing and 2) storage fragmentation with long-running applications. Boeing modified os/360 MVT13 to support virtual address mapping (no page faults, no paging) to fake contiguous addressing ... as work-around to os/360 storage fragmentation problem.

some of the things involved in the way tss/360 implemented its (virtual memory) "one-level-store" ... resulted in severe performance degradation ... and lack of customer uptake.

A lot of the one-level-store concepts from tss/360 ... were then involved in the failed future system effort ... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

folklore is that some number from future system retreated to rochester to do s/38 ... which as/400 is follow-on.

in the early 80s, I tried to get a project to re-implement CMS (from cp67 and then vm370) in portable (higher-level) programming language so that it could run on 801/risc Iliad chips ... in addition to 370.

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

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:47:24 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
some of the things involved in the way tss/360 implemented its "one-level-store" ... resulted in severe performance degradation ... and lack of customer uptake.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory

as undergraduate at the univ. in 60s, I got to worked on os/360, cp67, and little on tss/360. later when I did a paged-mapped filesystem for cms ... I used a lot about what not to do from what I had experienced with tss/360.

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

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:42:44 -0500
Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
I have a strong memory that IBM picked the 8088 because Motorola wouldn't commit to the quantities needed of 68000s. But when somebody challenged me on it, I couldn't find a shred of evidence from the time that they ever planned on anything but Intel.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#2 PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

some 1989 news item:


Chip Wars:

1972 Intel 8008      3,500 transistors;  8-bit
1978 Intel 8086
1979 Intel 8088     29,000 transistors; 16-bit
Motorola 68000 68,000 transistors
1981 IBM picks Intel 8088
Apple picks Motoroloa 68000
1982 Intel 80286  130,000 transistors
1983 Motorola 68010 (adopted by Sun, H-P, Apollo)
1984 Motorola 68020 195,000 transistors 32-bit
1985 Intel 80386  32-bit; IBM adopts it for PS/2 line
1987 Motorola 68030
1988 Intel 80486  (1-million transistor mark broken)
Motorola unexpectedly releases advance details of 68040

... snip ...

what I remember was 8088 was 16bit processor but with 8bit bus ... providing for some programming growth but cheaper adapter cards.

random other bits from long ago and far away (Motorola still had to commit to volumes for CRT controller).
Date: 09/14/81 08:23:47
To: wheeler

I got my hands on the Personal Computer last Friday.

The diskette controller card has a 37-pin D connector on the back for expansion.

The printer cable has a different connector on each end. On the Printer end, the cable has a male Centronics connector. On the CPU end, the cable has a 25-pin D connector (same connector as is normally used as an RS-232 interface). The net is that you might consider getting the IBM printer cable even if you intend to supply your own printer.

A few nice touches - when the printer isn't ready and you ask the Computer to print something, it tries for a while then issues a "device timeout" message. Most other personal computers just hang.

The diskette controller chip is an NEC upd765. The Color/Graphics and monochrome display adapter both use Motorola MC6845 CRT controller chips.

The communications adapter has a National Semiconductor S8250 Asynch Communications Element, no BSC capability. Only a serial RS-232 port, someone asked if a parallel port existed on that card, the answer is no.

Physically, the box has two diskettes on the right, the power supply is behind that. The entire remainder of the cabinet (left side) is the system board (motherboard). The adapter cards run front to back, with "multi-bus" like connectors near the rear left. Each adapter card has its external interface connector on the board, the end of the connector end extends thru the back. No extra cables running around from card to rear panel. (A very nice technique).

Our PC had the IBM DOS, BASIC, 64K, 2 diskette drives, color and monochrome adapter cards, the monochrome display, communications card, and the printer. The printer graphic set looks like the MX-80 with TRS-80 graphics (blocks).

No Pascal, Visicalc, Easywriter, or Peachtree stuff, so I can't comment on that.

Empty 40-pin DIP socket right next to 8088.

We're trying to figure out how to use the color card without pulling the monochrome out.

A lot of DIP switches to set to tell the software what hardware is installed.

Keyboard is buffered. When a DIR display was scrolling by, we entered DIR again, it buffered it all.

Excellent keyboard and display quality. It's as nice as we hoped it might be.......


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

for other drift ...

Date: 02/08/82 13:11:13
To: wheeler

Lynn,
Rumors, garbage, et cetera...
1- Anything to the rumor that AT&T is going to buy Amdahl?
2- Toyota is using voice recognition on a regular basis on the assembly line. Supposedly, it works very well.
3- Sony has shown a flat screen CRT which uses only electrostatic deflection (no more shrieking displays).
4- M.I.T. claims to have a VLSI design tool that can "do a comparable job (to designing a Motorola MC68000) in a few man-weeks." It is called the McPitts design system.


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

I remember some trip to far east in the mid-80s where they explained that they were looking at replacing large auto wiring harness bundles with dual-loop LAN ... because it significantly reduced maintenance, service, and diagnostic costs.

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

Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:06:21 -0500
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
I had a 286 and a Mac II back then.

fall '88, clones had huge number of 286 machines built for x-mas season when intel introduces 20mhz 386sx (cheap version of 386dx) and undercut their market ... and bottom dropped out of the 286 clone market ... with huge firesales on 286 machines. some wiki reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386

past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#61 IBM zSeries in HPC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#1 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#33 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#47 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#49 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#69 Crippleware: hardware examples

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

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:45:19 -0500
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
I was an IT professional with my ear close to the ground. I heard and saw a lot across the whole industry. At the rate that hardware prices were falling in the 80s and 90s, there was no way DEC was going to survive selling HW to the market that they were trying to sell to. IBM was caught up in this same trap but decided that someone, somewhere wanted really expensive computers, too. And they went there and survived.

they were already there ... as well as in the same mid-range market as vax/vms (as well as lots of other markets).

in '79 there was some contention between endicott with their mid-range products ... taking the lower-end of POK's high-end market ... this mentions POK's attempted reaction was to get hardware allocation for critical components needed for 4341s manufacture cut in half:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#99 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#1 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

The mid-range market moving to (low cost & commodity) workstations and large PCs ... and the high-end datacenters growth stalled with huge amount of data leaking out to the distributed environment; this is focus of disk division that communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division.

In any case, there was big push of other lines of businesses, software, consulting, services, hosting, etc; even doing things like buying consulting houses.

That round of applications & data leaking out of high-end datacenters somewhat stabilized for a period (a big part was the billions spent by financial institutions on failed efforts for straight through processing in the 90s). Last week there was article about recent big drop in high-end mainframe sales ... but one scenario explanation is that those customers are holding back waiting for pending announcement of the next generation of high-end mainframes.

Part of the issue is that even high-end mainframe costs have dropped ... and the risk involved in something going badly with new implementation of the those remaining (high-end mainframe) business critical applications is enormous (far larger than the cost of the hardware and the cost of new software replacements).

misc. past posts mentioning the straight-through processing forey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#10 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#5 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#44 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#61 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#31 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#55 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#56 Long running Batch programs keep IMS databases offline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#26 What is the biggest IT myth of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#30 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#35 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#7 If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#87 Cleaning Up Spaghetti Code vs. Getting Rid of It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#57 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#22 PCI SSC Seeks standard for End to End Encryption?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#81 A Faster Way to the Cloud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#81 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#77 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#16 How long for IBM System/360 architecture and its descendants?

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

Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:37:46 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
The Part-D problems remain hidden. When this insurance mandate passes, those same problems plus a lot of others will show up with the only Congressional solution to raise taxes and attach assets.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#0 Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#3 Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?

part of the issue is will the real health bill please standup? with 2003 part-d (that former comptroller general has as much worse financially than any of the scenarios with current legislation), there seemed to be very focused agenda ... and no publicity. this time it seems like waring factions are generating lots of conflicting publicity

1) original draft of bill supposedly done by the health industry ... to get them all on board (and alienating all those advocating lots of social programs and benefits for the disadvantage)

2) guaranteed health insurance for everybody ... including the 40(?) million uninsured

3) bill that will fix all the current unfunded mandates and put the country back on sound fiscal responsible footing.

4) ...

on the show the other night ... the former comptroller general had one liner about getting very vocal publicly after seeing what congress was doing after the fiscal responsibility bill expired in 2002.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day

I'm not familiar with legislation that he was referring to ... but could the expiring of fiscal responsibility legislation in 2002, be related to passing part-d in 2003 ... and characterized as badly bankrupting the country ... far worse than anything else.

other recent posts mentioning comptroller general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#37 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#39 Happy DEC-10 Day

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:27:58 -0500
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Well almost, there was a brief surge of cleverly overclocked 286 machines (peak clocks of up to 40MHz slowed down for memory access) that were cheaper and faster (by Norton SI rating anyway) than any of the 386 machines around - these were the last gasp of the 80286.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#7 Happy DEC-10 Day

but all those 286 machines that had been built for the '88 xmas season still got caught ... and unloaded at significant fire sale.

in 90 ... boca was still doing PS2 business cases based on some assumptions about large quantity business bulk sale prices. I started posting (on internal forums) prices from sunday sjmn for quantity one prices ... that were way lower than their assumptions about clone large quantity sales.

then the head of PS2 line of business contracted dataquest for in-depth study about where the PC market was going over the next five yrs; part of the study was to include video taped, multiple hr round table discussions with dozen silicon valley exports. I knew the dataquest people and they asked me if I would be one of the silicon valley exports (they said they would garble my introduction so boca wouldn't know there was a ringer on the tape) ... I did clear it with my line of management before agreeing

misc. past posts mentioning sunday SJMN postings and/or dataquest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#80 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#81 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#82 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#55 Moore law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#56 Moore law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#1 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#21 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#81 IBM to the PCM market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#0 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#69 Intel's Future is integrated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#62 How long before Microsoft goes the way of DEC (and in part, IBM)?

the 2001n.html#79 posting also has forrester "MAINFRAME R.I.P." summary from Jun90.

a little x-over in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#8 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

and some stall in moving off mainframe involved extremely business critical apps ... where new implementations/re-engineering floundered (including various fed. gov. "modernization" efforts) ... and failing applications represented a significantly larger risk to the business ... than any savings that could be gained by moving off the mainframes.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:54:36 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
The price of RAM and disk space is becoming "vanishingly small".

in early 80s, somebody quoted that chips in quantity tend to ten cents/chip. presumably per chip up-front design costs and even fixed per wafer costs ... start going to zero ... and it is all the per chip handling & administrative costs.

this was part of barrier for EPC RFID chips for some time ... aka the chips that were to replace barcodes on cereal boxes and other grocery store products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code
and
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/home

in the mid-90s, i semi-facetiously commented that I was going to take $500 milspec security chip ... aggresively cost reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude while improving the security. Circa 2000, it was getting very close to cost curve of EPC RFID chips ... and further improvements in volume cost reduction was dependent on increasing the number of chips per wafer (fixed manufacturing cost per wafer, part of reducing costs getting more chips/wafer). At that time, problem was that chip size reduction had reached a point that the area lost to cutting (i.e. individual chips had to be cut from larger wafer) was larger than total chip area. Any futher significant increase in number of chips per wafer was dependent on some new technology for cutting that significantly reduced cut size.

The other way of limiting wafer area lost to cutting ... is by keeping the number of chips (and chip size) relatively constant, packing more and more into each chip (as circuits get smaller) ... which keeps chips/wafer relative constant and somewhat fixes that part of per chip cost (convince everybody that they need gigabit memories not megabit memories).

The other approach being worked on for EPC RFID ... is coming up with mechanisms where circuits can be printed on material (similar to barcodes) ... bypassing all the wafer technology issues.

misc. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#18 A challenge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#6 x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#11 Payment Tokens
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#26 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#40 FraudWatch - Chip&Pin, a new tenner (USD10)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#23 Use of TPM chip for RNG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#52 Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#37 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#50 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#16 Dutch Transport Card Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#49 Price point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#18 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#26 RSA SecurID product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#32 AMD to leave x86 behind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#5 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#66 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#53 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#12 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#59 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#5 Public Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#70 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#33 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#44 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#61 Osama bin Laden gets a cosmetic makevover in his British Vanity Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#48 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#40 Signposts on the US Government's Trail of IT Failures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#11 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#46 Would you say high tech authentication gizmo's are a waste of time/money/effort?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#28 Online-Banking Authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#26 Return of the Smart Card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#21 ATMs At Risk
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/2009h.html#54 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#2 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#4 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#14 The Art of Creating Strong Passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#28 PCI Council Releases Recommendations For Preventing Card-Skimming Attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#48 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#7 Some companies are selling the idea that you can use just a (prox) physical access badge (single factor) for logical access as acceptable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#59 MasPar compiler and simulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#15 security and online banking

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:02:02 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
In a previous post, you had a chronology of processor use. It said that the PS/2 line used the 386. In reality, only the "top of the line" PS/2 used the 386. The overwhelming majority of the PS/2's used the 286. For the same price as some of the 286's, you could buy a COMPAQ clone with a 386.

i.e. copies 1989 news item
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#6 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Dyay

says 386 adopted for PS/2 line in 1985 ... later they also adopt 486 for ps2 line (besides also having 286) ... i'm sure the 1989 article didn't mean to imply that 386 was only processor in ps/2 line.

"The first 10 years"
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_tenyears.html

1987, model 30 8086, model 50 & model 60 286, model 80 386 1990 ... 486 ps2

wiki ps/2 page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_System/2

...

then here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#7 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#10 Happy DEC-10 Day

i refer to '88 summer/fall, (far east) clone builders built up big inventory of 286 clones for '88 xmas season ... but with introduction of 386sx that fall (also in clones) dropped the bottom out of the 286 (clone) market ... resulting in big firesale (big price drops on that big inventory of 286 clones).

and from long ago and far away ...
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1987 12:32:37 PST
From: wheeler

re: pctech 11/87;

Besides having a really slick new cover ... more like upscale yuppie Architecture than a techie periodical ... there is a review of two alternative bus architectures to family II. One comes from AST Research and the other from Compaq. In both cases, family I cards are accepted.

AST Premium/386 has an "AT-compatible" arbitrated multimaster design. To take advantage of the extension, AST will first be offering Bus Master Cache Disk Controller (ESDI) ... presumably high performance disk controller with onboard cache (i.e. shades of 3880-21). Conceivably it will support speed-matching buffering at the same time (i.e. support 20mbit/sec+ disk transfer rates).

Compaq Deskpro 386/20 offers bus compatible with 8Mhz AT bus. However it has a separate 32bit bus operating at 20mhz (40mbyte/sec) for the 386, 387 and cache memory (shades of rt). The two buses and the cache are managed by an Intel 82385.


AST Premium/386                  $5600
20mhz, 40MB disk
Deskpro 386/16                   $6500
PS/2 M80-041                     $7000
16mhz, 40MB disk
Deskpro 386/20                   $7500
   20mhz, 60MB disk
PS/2 M80-071                     $8500
   16mhz, 70MB disk
Deskpro 386/20                 $10,000
20mhz, 130MB disk
PS/2 M80-111                   $11,000
   20mhz, 115MB disk
Deskpro 386/20                 $13,700
   20mhz, 300MB disk

For Deskpro, the delta to go from 60MB to 130MB (+70MB) is $2500 or $35/MB. To go from 60 to 300 (+240) is $6200 or $26/MB. IBM offers the 314MB Fixed Disk Option for the 80-071 and 80-111 for $6,495 (less than $21/MB). Maxtor is offering a 160MB hard disk at $2,000 (less than $13/MB). The higher-density hard disks are driving the price to under $10/MB (as an aside, the magazine is almost totally devoid of hard disk advertisements).

From these numbers it is easy to see some of the driving force behind diskless workstations, especially for a UNIX system which can easily run 100MB. The first big advantage with diskless workstations is to have DASD storage at $26/MB (or less) rather than $35/MB (i.e. 100MB UNIX system is $2600 rather than $3500). The next advantage comes by storing the common system stuff once rather than multiple times (i.e. except for configuration files, the majority of the 100MB UNIX files are identical for all systems). At some point there becomes a performance bottleneck, at which time files/data may have to be replicated (mirrored) for performance (and availability) purposes.

10 copies of 100MB UNIX
  @$35                               $35,000
10 copies of 100MB UNIX
  @$26                               $26,000
1 copy of 100MB UNIX
  @$26                                $2,600
2 copies of 100MB UNIX
  @$10                                $2,000



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

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:02:03 -0500
Pat Farrell <pfarrell@pfarrell.com> writes:
You mean the 87 October Monday crash where the Dow dropped 500 points from a start of 1800?

With the inflated Dow, 500 points today is no big deal, in 87, it was huge.

IIRC, DEC was still making solid money off the zillions of Vaxens in 87/88.


1987 was dominanted by microvax-2

vax shipments 1978-1987 sliced&diced by model, year, US/non-US
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction

1987 from above:


VAX SHIPMENTS - WORLD-WIDE
--------------------------
SYSTEM         1987
--------   --------
11/725           0
11/730           0
11/750         370
11/780         370
11/782           0
11/785         200
MVI              0
MVII        29,000
82XX         2,795
83XX         1,000
85XX         1,380
86XX         1,200
8700           530
8800           420
---------
TOTAL       37,265

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:01:52 -0500
"Mike" <mike@mike.net> writes:
I have often wonder how modern systems would have evolved in an alternate universe where IBM did not fund MicroSoft and OS/2 but instead chose to implement Presentation Manager to provide a GUI on top of VM/CMS and compete in the micro and workstation arena with a 370 instruction set chip. In 1984 IBM had a PC/370 but decided it would eat mainframe revenue and limited software licenses to machines connected to mainframes thus killing their attraction.

Your suggestion of a portable version of CMS is an intriguing alternate especially if combined with a portable GUI. Just think, an industrial strength GUI on 370, 801, and S/38 and on PC's to compete with Windows 3.1.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory

PC/370 had severe useability ... design point of CMS had gotten somewhat bloated so real-storage required (minimum virtual pages) and disk intensive operations ... resulted in poor human factors.

original pc/370 was to ship with 384k of 370 memory ... i showed that with only 384k ... system exhibited severe page thrashing behavior. I then got blamed for six month slip in schedule while they retrofitted another 128k (for 512k) for 370 memory. CMS filesystem was emulated on DOS PC/XT harddisk ... which had 100ms access ... and became excruciatingly slow compared to what people were used to with mainframe disks.

CMS applications directly ported to DOS tried to be a lot more efficient with their use of storage and disk activity ... old email of somebody ported the CMS (script) document formating to TRS80:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1

other post/reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#74

CMS document formating had been done in mid-60s ... sort of port of ctss runoff command. then GML (precursor to SGML, HTML, XML, etc) was invented at the science center in '69 and CMS document formater was upgrade to support GML tag commands (in addition to original "dot" commands).

I had some work with my cms paged mapped file system for pc/370 to help offset the slowness of the disks (i.e. on mainframe 3380s disk ... I measured about a factor of three times improvement in moderately disk limited applications).

for other drift ... recent references to high-end mainframe organization (POK) trying to cut in half component allocation for mid-range 43xx production (to limit mid-range eating into high-end revenue)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#99 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#1 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
also old email reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#email790429

old reference (early '85) to proposal to pack a whole lot of processor chips into single rack ... arbitrary mix of 370 & 801 (although I'm not sure I had worked out all the heat issues):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor

so it was sort-of natural when medusa came along (801 only) ... lots of old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

project was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors ... and nearly immediately after the transfer ... announced; 2/17/92 reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
another
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

some conjecture that the ease of the transfer was partially because of the threat of RDBMS scale-up to mainframe ... implied here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some more discussed here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#71 Happy DEC-10 Day

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:18:44 -0500
"Peter Dickerson" <first.last@tiscali.invalid> writes:
I distinctly recall handling an IBM PC card which ran 370 code and OS. As I recall it was supposedly based on a modified 68K - don't know about two though. When I had it in the mid 80s, say 1986, it was considered scrap.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory

it did 370 really slow ... and problem-state only (no privileged state) instructions. ran cms with a highly modified version of vm370 ... i.e. virtual machine privileged instructions interrupted into vm370 kernel. vm370 kernel handled things like i/o and misc other stuff with transfers between "cp/88" running on the PC processor.

misc. past posts mentioning cp/88
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#28 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#19 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#24 HP Compaq merger, here we go again.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#43 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#7 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#6 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#10 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#56 DCSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#41 z/VM usability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#46 pc/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#2 Happy DEC-10 Day

later there was the a74 (7437) ... which was much more like a real 370 in small form factor (with several press/news articles from 1988):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home

some a74 changes I tried to get released (including paged mapped filesystem):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:29:14 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
I can name two, and they were not fools. They were raking in money on their pdp11s. They could have raked in more if DEC had listened.

One was Reuters, who ran their worldwide communications network on pdp11s. Those pdp11s were really containers for their proprietary communications boards, running about 50k terminals at $200/month in lease; and struggling to meet demand because DEC tried to cancel the pdp11 series.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#13 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

I remember visiting a datacenter around the turn of the century that had just moved in a bunch of pdp11s ... the company had acquired a business that processed business electronic state tax payments (that were processed on the pdp11s) ... I think it did both sales tax and income tax for various states.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:42:34 -0500
nmm1 writes:
If anyone had delivered a viable form of Unix at an affordable price, that would have eliminated Windows 3.1. They didn't, until far too late, and that was marketing and not technical. I doubt that IBM could have moved fast enough to convert CMS to such a very different style of use.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory

recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#12 Happy DEC-10 Day

with an old email discussion of "affordable unix" (and diskless workstations):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#email871115

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:58:22 -0500
nmm1 writes:
I was closely involved with that. It was a bigger job than you might think. A multi-user version was infesible, because even CMS couldn't handle the interrupt rate needed for a WIMP GUI (i.e. one of the sort produced by Xerox, Apple, X Windows and PM). It was a major problem (and still is) even with Unix and Windows 3 - and the latter got its performance (such as it was) by running everything in kernel mode!

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory

i was young and brash ... i had done lots of cp67 pathlength optimization as undergraduate in the 60s ... that is less than anything doing stuff like mouse and other stuff today.

the original cp67 group was focused on efficient operation of lightweight microkernel (for virtual machine emulation). I've periodically commented that growing bloat with vm370/cms was bringing in developers with much more traditional operating system backgrounds.

in the mid-70s, I did stripped down vm370 kernel that ran relatively well on 256kbytes 370/125 (it wasn't quite back to the efficiency of what I had done on cp67 ... but getting close) .... so nearly decade later vm370/cms was having significant problems working in 384kbytes ... and required 512kbytes. Part of the issue was that there had been growing reliance on leveraging real storage to somewhat offset disks thruput limitations ... but xt/370 had neither the real storage nor the disk thruput ... and many of the CMS applications were becoming increasingly bloated regarding both real storage (aka number of virtual pages needed resident in real storage) and disk i/o.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:32:52 -0500
nmm1 writes:
Yes, that's the point. With a line-level interaction model, you have two context switches per line, and need deliver only a 0.25 second response time. Character reflection can be offloaded or done in a really stripped down interrupt routine.

With curses-style interaction, you have two context switches per character, and need to deliver a 0.1 second response time.

With a modern WIMP GUI, you have between 12 and 80 context switches per character or mouse click, and still need to deliver a 0.1 second response time.

Once you bring in dragging, line drawing etc., you are talking many dozens or even hundreds of context switches a second, and need to deliver a 0.02 second response time.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory

its is little bit easier with faster processor than 360/67 ... this is recent post that given the change in processor speed and real memory sizes between 360/67 and 3081k ... that things should have gone from 80 users to 4000 users ... instead of typical 300 users found on 3081k in early 80s (i.e. 300/80 is about the ratio in change in disk performance).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#1 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

thread discussing being able to handle the routes lookup part for all airline reservations in the world ... changing both the implementation paradigm as well as moving off mainframe (at the same time) ... including if raw MIP rate was the only consideration ... that the whole process could now be run on a single TREO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#79 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#80 Happy DEC-10 Day

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:19:40 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in the mid-70s, I did stripped down vm370 kernel that ran relatively well on 256kbytes 370/125 (it wasn't quite back to the efficiency of what I had done on cp67 ... but getting close) .... so nearly decade later vm370/cms was having significant problems working in 384kbytes ... and required 512kbytes. Part of the issue was that there had been growing reliance on leveraging real storage to somewhat offset disks thruput limitations ... but xt/370 had neither the real storage nor the disk thruput ... and many of the CMS applications were becoming increasingly bloated regarding both real storage (aka number of virtual pages needed resident in real storage) and disk i/o.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory

boeblingen had done 115/125 370 ... it was nine-position shared memory bus ... but typically only had 4-5 microprocessors in configuration. 115 had all identical 800kip microprocessors ... microcode load would determine personality of each microprocessor ... and 370 microcode load was about 10:1 so 115 was about 80kip 370 (about the same as xt/370). 125 was nearly identical to 115, but had a 1000kip processor for 370 ... about 100kip 370. I spent some time doing 5-way SMP vm370 125 ... loading up the remaining (typically empty) four slots with 1000kip microprocessor running 370 microcode.

big difference nearly decade later for xt/370 was vm370, cms and the applications got a lot more bloated ... so needed more than twice the real storage ... and the 125 disks were a lot faster than the pc/xt disks.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
with regard to
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor

about the time of xt/370, boeblingen had 3 chipset 370 running about the speed of 168-3 (3mips) ... that I wanted to use in the above. For the 801, I would have liked to use blue iliad ... 1st 32bit 801 chip ... really big and really hot ... ran about 20mips ... and was never finished (next 32bit 801 chip was six chipset RIOS)

however at the time, real storage and disks for practical configurations were outside the price range of desktop market.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:44:57 -0500
"Mike" <mike@mike.net> writes:
Your suggestion of a portable version of CMS is an intriguing alternate especially if combined with a portable GUI. Just think, an industrial strength GUI on 370, 801, and S/38 and on PC's to compete with Windows 3.1.

the other scenario was that late 70s & early 80s ... there was the 801 Iliad chip scenario ... that was targeted at using 801s to replace the large number of different corporate microprocessors with 801s. The follow-on to 4341 was going to be an iliad-based 801 microprocessor; I contributed to white paper that killed that ... based on technology had gotten to the point that majority of 370 could be directly implemented in silicon (in part, demonstrated by the boeblingen 3chipset 370).

Originally the s/38 as/400 follow-on was also going to be a 801 microprocessor ... when that floundered there was crash effort to do a CISC for as/400 (although the next decade, as/400 did migrate to 801 power/pc).

misc. old email mentioning 801
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

past posts mentioning 801, risc, iliad, romp, rios, power, power/pc, somerset, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#19 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:49:35 -0500
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
Other than have an Intel 8088 chip and run MS-DOS. Can you cite me a system that had an 8088 in it that ran MS-DOS that was at least PC- compatible. Again, I'll buy into the concepts of "PC-compatible", true "PC-compatible" and "clone", where the latter two may be the same thing. And, I'll believe that the Rainbow was a PC-compatible, but I can't grasp a machine running MS-DOS on an 8088 as being none of the above without an example.

somewhat unrelated ... didn't radio shack try and do a msdos/pc-compatible with 186? i vaguely remember something about 186 being 8086 with a lot of support chip functions integrated into single chip (made for cost reduced manufacturing) ... but it was about the time 286 came out. old post with several fall82/old emails discussing 286 (and passing reference to 186):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#15 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"

this is old post with various intel chip wiki references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#45 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
including
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80186

from above:
The 80186 would have been a natural successor to the 8086 in personal computers. However, because its integrated hardware was incompatible with the hardware used in the original IBM PC, the 80286 was used as the successor instead in the IBM PC/AT.

Few personal computers used the 80186, with some notable exceptions: the Australian Dulmont Magnum laptop, on of the first laptops; the Wang Office Assistant, marketed as a PC-like stand-alone word processor; the Mindset; the Siemens PC-D (not 100% IBM PC-compatible but using MS-DOS 2.11 [1]); the Compis (a Swedish school computer); the RM Nimbus (a British school computer); the Unisys ICON (a Canadian school computer); ORB Computer by ABS; the HP 200lx; the Tandy 2000 desktop (a somewhat PC-compatible workstation with sharp graphics for its day); the Philips :YES. Acorn created a plug-in for the BBC Master range of computers containing a 80186-10 with 512 KB of RAM, the Master 512 system.


... snip ...

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:16:26 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
david walker (former comptroller general) was on last night's john stewart's daily show ... didn't see it last night ... but it was rebroadcast today a 7pm. walker was pitching his new book "comeback america".
https://www.amazon.com/Comeback-America-Turning-Restoring-Responsibility/dp/1400068606


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day

today, hearing testimony repeatedly was that the financial crisis nearly took down the whole country ... does that make those responsible, "economic terrorists" and "traitors"?

however, there seemed to be so much smoke being blown ... its a wonder that the TV cameras could pick up anything at all (theoretically should be zero visibility in that room).

Elizabeth Warren was just on last night's (11pm) Daily Show (seen tonight at 7pm)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren

chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel investigating TARP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_of_the_Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

she was really caustic about how the people at (too-big-to-fail and other) institutions knowingly manipulated the infrastructure resulting in the current financial mess. there was some praise for the house, but comments about the financial industry (FIRE) owns the senate (she gave scenario where it started in 1980 and continues up until now)

reference from year ago ...

Paulson Misled TARP Oversight Committee, Says Watchdog Warren
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/06/paulson-misled-tarp-overs_n_164589.html

also

Congressional Oversight Panel web page
http://cop.senate.gov/

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
 alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:53:48 -0500
"Mike" <mike@mike.net> writes:
If I recall, they had a PC/AT with an Intel cpu emulating a channel processor and a modified Motorola 68000 providing the /370 instruction set. It ran VM/CMS and could run essentially any mainframe application program and almost any system program. The announced price was about $5,400 but they would only license the software if it was attached to a mainframe with a VM/CMS license.

unrelated to pc/370 (originally xt/370 and then at/370):

there was a card emulating channel processing that was done originally by the 3800 printer group in Boulder ... for 3800 testing

there was a card done in ykt that attached to channel and emulated a controller. this was packaged in an rack-mount, industrial PC/AT and sold as "8232" for use with vm370 tcp/ip support. later the vm370 tcp/ip support was migrated to MVS ... by a hack that emulated some vm370 "diagnose" instructions (in MVS).

internal use of the ykt "controller card", initially was software emulation of terminal emulation ... but over LAN interface.

prior terminal emulation was via real 327x controller, real 327x coax cable, PC card that emulated 327x terminal ... file upload/download was emulated screen input/output ... and ran into various bottlenecks. There were two versions; ANR (original 3277) and DFT (newer 3274/3278). 3274/3278 moved a lot of electronics back into controller (compared to 3277) reducing terminal manufacturing costs ... but resulted in a lot more coax chatter. As a result DFT was significantly slower than ANR for all sorts of stuff. MYTE using LAN interface for terminal emulation was much faster than either ANR or DFT (for just about everything ... especially noticable in file upload/download speed). I would need to look up what the "M" stood for ... but YTE was "yorktown terminal emulation".

For TCP/IP, there wasn't a lot changed for "8232" ... basically a LAN bridge (rather than a router) ... as a result the host TCP/IP had to do all protocol translation between tcp/ip and LAN. As a result on vm370, tcp/ip 8232 thruput got around 44kbytes/sec sustained thruput using a 3090 processor.

I did the modifications to vm370 tcp/ip to support rfc1044 .... and in some testing at cray research between 4341 and cray ... got 1mbyte/sec sustrained (4341 channel media) using only modest amount of 4341 processor (around factor of 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed). misc. past posts mentioning 1044 support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

the trip to cray research was notable since the plane departed SFO 20 mins late ... but 5 mins before the earthquake hit.

there were internal efforts to try and package the 8232 hardware at about 1/10th the price (of the 8232), with significantly improved host pathlength support ... but that encountered huge internal political problems. attempt was oriented to positioning mainframe as major player in distributed processing with the mainframe as a major data/file server.

misc. past posts in this thread (mostly pc/370 stuff)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#19 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#21 Processes' memory

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:32:02 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there was a card done in ykt that attached to channel and emulated a controller. this was packaged in an rack-mount, industrial PC/AT and sold as "8343" for use with vm370 tcp/ip support. later the vm370 tcp/ip support was migrated to MVS ... by a hack that emulated some vm370 "diagnose" instructions (in MVS).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory

"8343"->"8232"

for some reason, ever since i worked on credit/debit payment card network ISO standards (8583) ... I tend to fat finger the 8232 number.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:56:18 -0500
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
This is in the 'your terrorist is my freedom fighter' area (Though I think that there is hard core terrorism, the people who killed the children in Russia are "terrorists")(as are the 9/11 people)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#23 Happy DEC-10 Day

it wasn't the part about financial innovation ... it was repeated comment in the hearing that they had to do what they did because they believed (that the financial mess had) the country on the verge of collapse ... once or twice it was stated slightly stronger, believed could have resulted in the collapse of the gov. (chaos and anarchy; as well as death and destruction, far greater than anything seen so far) ... much worse than crash of 1929.

then that evening (originally broadcast the night before), warren explain that the financial innovators knowingly did what they did.

most of the terrorists around the world have been loadly proclaiming that their objective is the same as what was being said (in the hearing) as what they believed nearly happened (justifying the actions they took to prevent it).

there was some joke from a year ago about looking for terriosts and seeing in the mirror themselves.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:22:55 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#23 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#26 Happy DEC-10 Day

aka morning hearing with picture of western civilization on the verge of collapse, things so fragile that anything could trigger the collapse; used to justify the actions taken as well as withholding information from the public.

that evening (but actually rebroadcast from night before), people responsible knew what they were doing (and possibly didn't care or saw the consequences as further opportunity).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:58:19 -0500
EricP <ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com> writes:
I can't say about it running System/370 but it was out of the lab, though perhaps not an "announced product", because IPSA had their APL up and running on PC/370 in the early 1980's. I wasn't involved so can't provide details of the port.

the ibm 5100 PC ... 1975 precursor to 5150 pc ... did 370 emulation for running port of apl\360.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100

above mentions 5100 pc use a simplified version of 370 apl.sv

the (cambridge) science center had originally ported apl\360 to (cp67/)cms for cms\apl. misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

part of the issue was that apl\360 swapped whole, very small (16kbytes, possibly 32kbytes). part of moving apl\360 to relatively large virtual memory environment ... was redoing apl\360 storage allocation & garbage collection (which tended to very quickly touch every possible address in the workspace, for small workspaces that were completely swapped in/out every time ... it wasn't an issue ... but resulted in severe page thrashing in much larger virtual memory workspaces).

cms\apl also introduced semantics to directly invoke all sorts of cms system services (file read/write, etc); this brought down the wrath of the apl language purists.

later the palo alto science center morphed this into (vm370/cms) apl\cms (and as per above PASC also responsible for the 5100) ... along with adding the 370/145 apl microcode performance assist (for some class of apl applications, they would run as fast on 145 with microcode assists as on 370/168 ... nearly factor of ten times speed up).

one of the largest users of cms\apl ... and then apl\cms, was across the back parking lot from the palo alto science center (building that is next door to current facebook offices ... but now has different occupant). misc. past posts mentioning the internal (virtual machine based, online, sales&marketing support) HONE system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

the various US HONE datacenters were consolidated there in the mid-70s ... however, clones of the US HONE system were sprouted up all over the rest of world ... in part motivated by eventual requirement that mainframe orders had to be (pre-)processed by various HONE(/APL) applications.

eventually apl/sv was produced to replace apl\cms (and also ran on MVS) that used "shared variable" paradigm for accessing system services (eliminating the "abominations" introduced in cms\apl).

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#19 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#21 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#25 Processes' memory

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:02:14 -0500
Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
Flamebait. The pdp10 is what the pdp10 should have been. The pdp10 instruction set architecture was written for humans programming in assembly language. MIPS architecture was written to be a target for compilers.

one of two people responsible for mainframe pascal at los gatos lab leaves and goes thru a couple startups ... before becoming mips vp of software when mips forms. mainframe pascal started out using metaware technology (lots of vlsi tools at los gatos lab starts out with metaware); the other person responsible for mainframe pascal eventually leaves and shows up at metaware. later mainframe pascal product also morphs into being ported to rs/6000. recent post mentioning porting large vlsi design tool (nearly 60k vs/pascal statements) to other platforms:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#74 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#76 Happy DEC-10 Day

sgi absorbs mips ... and mips vp of software then shows up as general manager of sun business unit responsible for java. recent post about executive that we reported to when we were doing our ha/cmp product, moves over to head up somerset ... and then is hired by sgi to be president of mips.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#93 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

recent post mentioning blue iliad ... a los gatos lab effort (first 32bit 801 vlsi chip):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory

folklore is the person that went on to work on HP pa/risc and major person behind wideword/Itanium ... that after he gave 2weeks notice (leaving to join HP) spent his last two weeks working on blue iliad; a few old references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#97 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#1 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#6 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#7 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#14 Some IBM 3033 information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#27 user level TCP implementation

first 64bit sparc done by HAL computers ... heavily funded by Fujitsu ... and eventually absorbed by Fujitsu. HAL is taken from "H-and-L". "H" is executive I directly reported to in the 80s ... and "L" originally came from SUN ... but backed away when SUN objected.

one of the 801 engineers also shows up at AMD working on AMD 29k.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:19:29 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
first 64bit sparc done by HAL computers ... heavily funded by Fujitsu ... and eventually absorbed by Fujitsu. HAL is taken from "H-and-L". "H" is executive I directly reported to in the 80s ... and "L" originally came from SUN ... but backed away when SUN objected.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#29 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

HAL wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Computer_Systems

there were a number of other 801 personas at HAL. .... also AA put in MD11 nonstop SJC/Narita flts ... a couple flts a week seemed to have permanent first class seat HAL reservations (they possibly got a price break doing bulk reservation) ... the direct flt wasn't just because of HAL ... I assume there were several other organizations involved with fujitsu (and other foreign companies) in silicon valley that were regularly on the flts.

sparc wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:42:57 -0500
ibmmain@INTERGATE.COM (Arthur T.) writes:
The problem is not with Google Groups. It appears that some posts are not making it to Usenet.

What's odd is that recently this happened in at least one other newsgroup (comp.risks). Some posts are not making it through the mirrors to Usenet. I doubt that there is anything odd in Ron's post; he's a victim, too.


initially I first thot it was the usenet service I was using ... i.e. after I double posted:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#99 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

then followup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#100 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

when I checked & found the posts were showing up in ibm-main archive
http://listserv.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:31:50 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
You have also carefully seen to it that you have access to lots of pounds to sell. Then suddenly you do so. Dump it, just when everyone else is selling, and the Bank of England frantically is buying; with fewer and fewer dollars to pay for it.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#23 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#26 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#27 Happy DEC-10 Day

so various govs. have added the scenario (applicable to crashing just about any market) to theoritical terrorist (or criminal organization) attack.

the hearing scenario was that they effectively painted a picture of financial mess putting western civilization on verge of imminent total collapse ... as excuse for their actions.

then later in the day ... somebody paints picture that those responsible for the financial mess (some of it tracing back to 1980) ... knew what they were doing.

somewhat corresponds with wharton business school analysis that approx. 1000 are responsible for 80percent of the financial mess.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:04:13 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#32 Happy DEC-10 Day

another similar operation with crashing the price ... is "illegal naked short sales". "Cramer" took some amount of heat when he claimed that traders practice illegal naked short sales on regular basis with impunity (since supposedly people at SEC haven't the faintest idea what they are doing and would never figure it out).

part of this is trades being so obscure ... i've mentioned more than decade ago being asked in to NSCC to do a secure trade protocol and effort got suspended fairly early because a side effect would have been transparency and visibility.

NSCC has since merged with DTC (for DTCC) ... and there was news that DTCC has some sort of disclosure suit to release trading transaction details (supposedly for being able to identity things like illegal naked short sales). for the fun of it ... another aspect of it here (from 2004):
http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000157.html

past references to Cramer's faux pas ("Cramer Reveals A Bit Too Much")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#4 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#31 SEC bans illegal activity then permits it
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#1 illegal naked short selling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#83 Chip-and-pin card reader supply-chain subversion 'has netted millions from British shoppers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#50 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#63 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#75 Whistleblowing and reporting fraud

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:24:17 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#32 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#33 Happy DEC-10 Day

then there is the article titled "The Man Who Beat The Shorts" ... that apparently, after pointing out (in 2003 annual report) that CDO/securization by unregulated loan originators (major cornerstone of the financial mess) was going to end badly ... was then hit hard by traders shorting the stock (but managed to survive, apparently it was punishment for publicly raising the CDO activity):
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html

misc. past posts referencing the article.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#68 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#69 if you are an powerful financial regulator , how would you have stopped the credit crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#36 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#64 Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#67 What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#9 Blind-sided, again. Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#18 What next? from where would the Banks be hit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#23 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#55 Is this the story behind the crunchy credit stuff?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
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/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#49 IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#35 what is mortgage-backed securities?

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
 alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:43:48 -0500
On 01/28/10 20:16, Andy "Krazy" Glew wrote:
Lynn: can you expand on this? "Shared Variable" sounds like it is relevant to parallelism or concurrency; system services sounds like syscalls. Abominations sounds bad, but makes me curious.

I assume "ape" = A Programming Language. Iverson? Vectors? +/array?


note ... i see the above in email and in google ... but it hasn't shown up at my usenet server ... there seems to be some connectivity problem with usenet "gateways" .... ibm-main mailing list usenet gateway recently has had several things go totally missing; ... in any case.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#28 Processes' memory

say little like peek/poke with shared memory ... but process could either be an asynchronous operation or a synchronous system services (apl masking kernel call behind shared variable).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_Shared_Variables

a discussion of shared variable here ... avoiding mentioning the cms\apl abomination
http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLDesign.htm

there was cambridge science center that did virtual machines, cms, cms\apl, gml, etc.

the phili science center had falkoff, iverson, and apl\360

the palo alto science center does 5100, apl\cms and the 370/145 apl microcode assist

....

cms\apl then shows up in large scale applications in the (initially cp67-based) internal HONE system.

a lot of apl was used for lots of things that are done in spreadsheets today

the cambridge science center did a little external time-sharing service ... for other internal locations ... as well as some number of non-employees ... students & others from various institutions of higher learning in the boston area.

a big early use of cms\apl on the cambridge science center cp67 system ... was the corporate hdqtrs business planning people who loaded the most sensitive and most valuable corporate resource on the cambridge system (all the customer information) and did cms\apl business modeling. Big innovation from cms\apl was large enuf workspace size and the ability to do file i/o involving large amounts of data ... for real world applications. the cambridge cp67 had to have sufficient security that the most valuable of corporate assets didn't leak out to unauthorized & non-employee users.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:48:14 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
later there was the a74 (7437) ... which was much more like a real 370 in small form factor (with several press/news articles from 1988):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home

some a74 changes I tried to get released (including paged mapped filesystem):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory

wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM-compatible_mainframes

mentions both 5100 and xt/370 ... and then jumps to p/370 ... skips over a74 all together (which was in expansion box with big thick cable to back of PC).

the xt/370 cards were offered for at/370 ... big difference was PC/AT hard disks were much faster ... which was big boost.

for version 2 of xt/370 rel.2 (9/84), cp88 "dos bypass" (i.e. pc/370 support software running on the 8088 side ... getting some pathlength boost by doing some stuff directly rather than everything going thru dos)

and my cms paged-mapped filesystem for cms (on the 370 side)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory

i shipped cms PAM (paged-mapped) filesystem internally and on xt/370 ... but it never got out in standard cms release ... misc. past posts mentioning paged mapped filesystem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

minor example of PAM versus non-PAM for constrained real storage ... was traditional filesystem had to load executable image from standard file with simulated i/o ... several executable images were larger than available real storage ... so it involved bringing in pieces from emulated cms area on xt dos disk into virtual pages in 370 memory ... and then paging those pages out to emulated paging area on (same) xt dos disk ... so additional parts of the executable images could be read (from xt disk) into additional virtual pages (also going back out to the xt disk). eventually when the whole process was complete ... it would start execution ... which tended to be in virtual pages now out in paging area (on xt disk) ... replacing virtual pages (having to be written out to paging area (on xt disk).

PAM just sets up page mapped tables to point directly at the executable and starts execution (w/o having to copy the executable image thru 370 memory from one area on the xt disk to another area on the same xt disk). It can actually do a little bit better than that ... rather than having to page fault each individual 4k page from the paging area on the xt disk ... it can concurrently start fetch of several pages from the filesystem while allowing execution (appropriately serializing execution by fiddling the page invalid bits).

In traditional CMS environment with much less real storage constraint ... whole images could still be page mapped at one time ... and a much higher level of multiple block asynchronous concurrent page transfers could go on (dynamically tuned to match the amount of available real storage).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:51:16 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
And, what if someone arranges a few financial tripwires, so this avalanche is started by some quite unsuspecting people? Like it seems the 1987 crash was.

It is, however, impossible to legally distiguish between such tripwires and normal hedging.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#32 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#33 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#34 Happy DEC-10 Day

another view might be with a lack of transparency and visibility along with apparently huge amount of tolerated illegal activity ... it is difficult to have controls that only deal with non-tolerated illegal activity.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:02:56 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
I am thinking about the tcp/ip part. At least large parts of that happened outside DEC, and was an import into the tops20 codebase.

search engine turns up quite a bit for tcp/ip and tops20

reference to tcp/ip code base on tenex/tops20 at bbn (bill Plummer and ray tomlinson) ... in 78-83 timeframe:
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_tcpip.htm

above also mentions interop '88 ... misc. past posts mentioning interop 88
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#interop88

another tops20 tcp/ip reference
http://ftp.arl.army.mil/ftp/tcp-ip-digest/tcp-ip-digest.v1n27.1

later, one of the most adopted tcp/ip source was bsd 4.3 (tahoe & reno) ... which they weren't suppose to do ... reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#15

CSRG being told by darpa that they couldn't to it and there was yes them to death ... verbally agreeing with darpa that they weren't doing tcp/ip ... while totally ignoring them. original article went 404 ... but there is always the way back machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050418032606/http://www.be.daemonnews.org/199909/usenix-kirk.html

from above:
He said (paraphrased) that every DARPA meeting ended up the same, with the Military coming in and giving CSRG (at UCB, the group that worked on BSD) a stern warning that they were to work on the Operating System, and that BBN will work on the networking. Every time, Bob Fabry, then the adviser of CSRG, would "Yes: them to death" and they'd go off and just continue the way they were going. Much to the frustration of the DARPA advisery board.

... snip ...

another ref:

TCP/IP for TOPS-20
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/misc/tcp_ip/8604.mm.www/0183.html

from above:
A neighboring university has got two DEC 2060s and would like to run TCP/IP on them. The problem is that Digital doesn't support TCP/IP in Europe and refuse to sell the product.

... snip ...

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

book machines

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: book machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:30:08 -0500
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
There was a thread recently her about book machines, computer +printer, etc, that would sit in a shop and print any book on demand. in rec.arts.sf.written, there is a thread started when someone saw such a book machine (I think in Harvard. )

brewster kahle has been pushing it for several years ... he was at Thinking Machines when he started wais (we went by wais inc a number of times, a house in menlo park, just over the line from palo alto). he then sold wais inc, to AOL ... and then started the wayback machine. he has showed up at conferences with a van specially fitted out to do on demand printing.

Before Google Books, we took on-demand publishing to the streets
http://news.silobreaker.com/brewster-kahle-11_4498533

from above:
Back in 2002, Brewster Kahle invented the Internet Archive Bookmobile. This was a low-tech affair. Starting with scans or plain-text of public domain works (The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland were favorites), the bookmobile could spit out bound

... snip ...

another reference to brewster kahl
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/lectures/kahle.html

another reference ...
http://www.theknowledgetrust.org/wordpress/?page_id=62

more recent article on books on demand
http://dltj.org/article/espresso-print-on-demand/

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:05:21 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
And if this 3090 clone was like the IBM 370/155 at my college... it would take *twenty* minutes just to IPL the darn thing!!! ISTR that we ran MVT instead of MVS...

story here about cp67 crashing 27 times at the MIT Urban Systems Lab (in another tech sq bldg., across the court yard from science center)
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

i had added tty terminal support as undergraduate in the 60s at the univ ... and was picked up and shipped in the product. I had done a gimick with 1byte values for calculate lengths. USL was supporting a new kind of TTY device (plotter? at harvard) ... and they changed the max. length field (for the device) to 1200(?) bytes ... but didn't catch the hack with one byte values. In any case, the result was that when an I/O for such device was done ... there would be a buffer overrun and crash cp67.

CP67 had a hack to automatically trap crashes ... take a core image dump to disk and simulate a reboot ... which took a couple minutes (auto restart was slightly longer than if operator pushed "IPL" button from cold start after power up). Anyway ... above tale is about crash & auto-restart happening 27 times in one day.

CP67 was done at science center on 4th flr of 545 tech sq ... and Multics was 5th flr of 545 tech sq. Above tale mentions that the fast "restart" for cp67 helped motivate Multics starting work on their "New Storage System" (Multics was crashing 4-5 times a day normally and salvaging the file system took an hour each time).

The above cp67 tale has recent 4apr09 update note from somebody that had worked on tss/370 ... mentioning that in '78, tss/370 could "pump our 125% to 150% more terminal-driven engineering work than MVS/TSO". This, of course, was actually quite trivial to do.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:28:16 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Heck, you couldn't run gcc in that. A port of gcc to the 370 architecture (16MB address space) ran into trouble. The Herculeans came up with a "380" architecture that lets *one* address space be (AFAIK) 32MB to get around that.

MVS had somewhat similar problem on 370 ... MVS inherited from its os/360 roots ... an environment that was heavily dependent on pointer passing APIs. So translation to virtual memory ... the MVS kernel was mapped into 8mbytes of every 16mbyte virtual address space.

However, os/360 roots also had a lot of system functions that resided outside the kernel ... that provided services to applications. For MVS these were mapped into their individual virtual address space ... but now had a logistic problems of being passed pointers to parameters residing in the (different) application virtual address space. The solution was something called the "COMMON SEGMENT" (or CSA, common segment area), initially one megabyte area that was mapped in common to every virtual address space (reducing area available to applications to 7mbytes). Part of library in application address space ... would place the parameters in the COMMON SEGMENT ... before invoking the subsystem API.

The problem was that the CSA was shared between all applications and all subsystems installed. Larger configuraitons tended to have more different subsystems and more concurrent application ... requiring an ever increasing CSA size. Large 168-3 operations, the CSA was pushing 5mbytes ... only leaving 3mbytes virtual address space for application use (and threating to increase to 6mbytes at some installations).

There is folklore about large fortran VLSI design application at the burlington vt. lab ... starting to push the 7mbyte limit (running on specially constructed MVS systems that limited CSA to one mbyte) ... and being faced with the prospect of having to convert to CMS (opening up nearly the full 16mbyte virtual address space to application). I've mentioned before one of the big things that added to the 43xx volumes compared to vax/vms volumes ... were the large corporate orders of multiple hundreds. A couple of these were major chip shops (nearly 1k machine orders each) for engineering applications and blanketing the corporation with vm/4341 systems. misc. old email mentioning 43xx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

There were two different ">16mbyte" hacks for 3033 (24bit addressing).

For the subsystem/CSA size constraint problem, there was "dual-address" space mode. A pointer could be passed to a subsystem, and semi-privileged subsystem would be entered with a home/primary address space value ... and a secondary address space value (for the calling application). Then there were instructions that would store/fetch in the secondary address space. This provided some CSA size relief as subsystems were rewritten to utilize secondary address space (instead of CSA for accessing application parameters/storage).

This was later generalized in subsequent 370 architecturess with access registers and program call/return; allowing multiple concurrent virtual address spaces ... and hardware instructions that would reference a kernel hardware table and do the switching between different address spaces (eliminating kernel interrupt to transition back&forth between applications and subsystem functions).

The other >16mbyte hack ... was that real storage was increasingly being used to compensate for disk thruput performance (not tracking CPU performance). As a result, lots of 3033 systems were becoming increasingly bottlenecked by not having more than 16mbytes of real storage. The hack was to allow (16mbyte) virtual page numbers to map to greater than 16mbyte real page numbers ... using two spare bits in the page table entry. Standard page table entry (for each virtual page) was halfword/16bits, 12bits for real page number, two defined bits, and two undefined bits. The two undefined bits were taken and used to prefix the real page number ... giving 14bits total ... or allowing up to 64mbytes of real storage.

misc. recent posts mentioning 3033 dual-address space &/or >16mbyte hack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#48 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#73 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#74 Best IEFACTRT (off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#58 Rudd bucks boost IBM mainframe business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#84 locate mode, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mythical computers and magazine reviews

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mythical computers and magazine reviews
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:00:02 -0500
Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> writes:
See eg
http://old.nabble.com/AT-370-td21063234.html, where there's a discussion of XT/370 and AT/370, including getting the AT/370 card and VM/PC working in genuine IBM PC/ATs and clones. Now, these folks could all be lying through their teeth, but that doesn't seem terribly likely.


I had done some early benchmarking for 384k xt/370 and showed that things had somewhat bloated (decade earlier I had done work for vm370 on 256k 370/125) ... and were page thrashing. I then got blamed for six month slip while they added another 128k (for 512kbyte 370 memory) before first customer ship.

misc. xt/370 & vm/pc posts from x-over thread in comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#36 Processes' memory

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:19:22 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The above cp67 tale has recent 4apr09 update note from somebody that had worked on tss/370 ... mentioning that in '78, tss/370 could "pump our 125% to 150% more terminal-driven engineering work than MVS/TSO". This, of course, was actually quite trivial to do.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#40 PC history, was search engine history was Happy DEC-10 Day

a little x-over from comp.arch thread mentioning boeblingen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#21 Processes' memory

there was joint bell/ibm effort to put higher-pieces of unix on top of a stripped down tss/370 kernel (ssup).

in the 80s, boeblingen was doing these processors and were looking for more market segments to appeal to ... and had big push to put tss/unix out as major product offering on their (increasingly powerful ... aka one of their 370 3chipset that ran about the same speed as 168-3) entry level 370s. some number of people from the (dallas, tx) tss/370 support group ... took assignments in boeblingen to work on turning out the product.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:46:36 -0500
glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
One interesting feature of the original S/370 was allowing for either 2K or 4K page size in a 64K segment. For 2K pages the page tables would require 13 bits. I presume one of those bits was used for page addressing in 2K page size systems.

With either 2K or 4K pages, memory protection was done on 2K boundaries until the 4K key (non-) feature was added.

Not so long ago I was running VM/370 and MVS3.8 on a P/370. The only complication is that one control register bit needs to be on to allow ISK and SSK to work. With MVS3.8 there is only one value that is loaded into control register 0 to change. With VM/370 there are about 10 different values used, all of which have to be changed.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#41 Happy DEC-10 Day

so the 64meg real storage hack ... only worked for 4k page mode.

the 2k/4k issue showed up with introduction transition from 168-1 to 168-3 ... a performance enhancement ... primarily going from 16kbyte processor cache to 32kbyte.

the 168-3 kept the same size cache lines but had twice as many ... and the set-associative address bits for twice as many cache lines ... was the 2k bit.

so if running in 4k page mode ... the 168-3 ran with the full cache ... but if running in 2k page mode, the 168-3 would drop back to running with only half the cache (basically acting like a 168-1).

so a vm370 customer running heavy virtual vs1 workload ... upgraded from 168-1 to 168-3 ... and saw a severe performance degradation (as opposed to just no performance increase). The problem was that vm370 would do a default load of cr0 to indicate 4k page mode ... but when it went to run vs1 ... it would dispatch it 2k page mode with virtual shadow tables that emulated the vs1 2k page mode.

The problem was that every time cr0 was flipped between 4k&2k page modes ... the 168-3 would stop and flush the cache before switching between half-cache and full-cache operation (since it used different mapping as to where things were located in the cache).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:05:09 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
But it depends on what you're doing with it. A VAX would be expected to support tens of users and a PC only one. If all you want to do is email, a system could be 100X faster and it wouldn't matter.

one of the big things for monthly fixed-rate ISP in the 90s were people that would only check their email once or twice a month. It was only a percent or two of their customers that ever used service on regularly daily basis (they basically could get by provisioning for a couple users but spreading the costs across hundreds/thousands/etc users).

when population starts using services constantly as part of normal life ... that it starts to put pressure on ISP provisioning costs (and what they may need to set monthly charges to recover those costs).

that is periodically when things about usage caps start to appear ... as the highly skewed heavy use (much less than one percent of total population) starts to spread out into larger/general population.

i recently tripped across old email from the 80s from one of the off-spring about his first CS class at the univ. and the VAX machines were so overloaded that his lab unix terminal logon slot was 10pm-midnight three days a week (and even then simple input response could be measured in minutes rather than seconds; 100x slower).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mythical computers and magazine reviews

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mythical computers and magazine reviews
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:16:59 -0500
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
I also found a citation of a related presentation at SHARE 58 in Los Angeles two years earlier by T. D. Rosato ("Micro CMS/370 (Cambridge nano-System)"), although I don't recall attending that session.

for a couple yrs before vm370 development group outgrew space at 545tech sq and moved out to Burlington Mall, Tom and I used to car pool (alternatiing weeks on who drove). When the vm370 development group was shutdown and everybody was suppose to move to POK, Tom wrangled one of the few exemptions and managed to return to the science center.
Date: 82/03/01 15:35:27
To: wheeler

howdy...
how r things? i need a favor....
please tell me again how to log onto vmshare from my home using a 3101?????

r u going to la-share 58? i'm presenting micro/cms on tuesday.

take care...


... snip ... top of post, old email index.
Date: 10 September 1982, 11:08:12 EST
To: wheeler

.... misc. snip ...

Meanwhile I am working on Tom Rosato's CnS project follow on here in Endicott.... We have one guy who put together a cp, and we are stealing CMS and putting the combination on the pc, with a couple of new boards. It is intreresting work, except that I feel ....


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

above was from one of the engineers that I worked with in Endicott on the vm370 microcode assist (ECPS) for 138/148; old posts mentioning ecps:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#27 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

old post with reference to corporate advanced technology conference I sponsored 4&5 Mar82
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

that included following theme:
High level system programming language
Software development tools

Distributed software development
Migration of CP functions to virtual address spaces
Migration to non-370 architectures
370 simulators
Dedicated, end-user system


... snip ...

Tom wasn't at the/my conference ... he was down in LA at SHARE. However, one of the other people from Cambridge attended, part of presentation on the TSS/370 UNIX work for Bell Labs.

Note that the CMS eventually used in xt/370 was relatively vanilla product version (my internal/current paged-mapped changes for cms filesystem adapted to xt/370 CMS w/o a lot of changes), it was in the vm370 kernel that saw majority of changes; reference to paged-mapped filesystem changes inclusion in xt/370 rel.2 (9/84)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#36 Processes' memory

misc. recent other posts mentioning xt/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#2 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#42 Mythical computers and magazine reviews

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Extracting STDOUT data from USS

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Extracting STDOUT data from USS
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:14:48 -0500
shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
Who R U? In CICS you're supposed to use CICS services for I/O, not to do your own in the main CICS task. One of those services is to run code in a separate subtask so that you are allowed to do things directly that would otherwise be prohibited.

one of the examples of not appearing to be multithreaded to the operating system ... was that CICS didn't utilize multiprocessors until less than ten years ago ... it appeared like one large task to the operating system ... and CICS provided all the subtask & thread management internally. Since CICS only appeared like one large application to the operating system ... there was no way of having concurrent pieces executing simultaneously on different processors. For a long time, to utilize additional processors required having multiple separate CICS regions executing concurrently (I was in datacenter less than decade ago with banner mentioning having over 120 CICS regions).

there was lots & lots in CICS attempting to isolate itself as much as possible from the high overhead of the underlying operating system ... using the operating system for bare scaffold to operate the machine ... but attempting to do as much of everything else itself.

I was undergraduate at univ. in the 60s and responsible for os/360 support. The univ. library got an ONR grant for online catalog ... part of the funds was used to purchase a 2321 datacell. The effort was also selected to be one of the betatest sites for the original/first CICS product release ... and I got tasked to also do CICS support (I didn't even get sent to any CICS classes ... just had to figure things out from code and dumps).

CICS would do all its file opens at start up and keep them open for the duration of CICS execution. One of the first bugs I had to shoot was CICS file open bug that resulting in abend ... problem turned out to be that the BDAM file options used by the original (customer) CICS implementation ... was different than the BDAM file options being used by the library (and there was buried stuff in the code specific to the particular BDAM options).

... as aside some of the posting problems seem to coincide with news about SSL DOS attack on CIA & PAYPAL (& others). Some number of usenet servers are utilized by SSL ... at least for entering userid/password as part of posting. I haven't seen any specific evidence ... but recent usenet posting issues seem to coincide with some of the recent reports of SSL DOS attacks.

these URLs have gone 404 ... but still around on wayback machine

The Evolution of CICS: CICS and Multi-region Operation (1980)
https://web.archive.org/web/20040705000349/http://www.yelavich.com/history/ev198001.htm

The Evolution of CICS: CICS and Multiprocessor Exploitation (2004)
https://web.archive.org/web/20041023110006/http://www.yelavich.com/history/ev200402.htm

from above:
CICS chose to provide for a multi-tasking environment under a single Task Control Block (TCB) using its own dispatcher (Task Control Program) rather than attempt to multi-task concurrent transaction processing using operating system subtasks. Not only was the overhead of operating system subtasking considered excessive, but having concurrently dispatched applications would have required programs to be reentrant and serialize their use of shared resources. That was felt to be too complicated at the time.

... snip ...

for a little multiprocessor topic drift ... charlie had invented compare&swap instruction when working on fine-grain multiprocessor support for cp67 (compare&swap chosen because CAS are charlie's initials). First foreys into POK to get compare&swap instruction included in 370 was rebuffed ... claim being that the POK favorite son operating system had decided that the TEST&SET instruction (from 360 multiprocessor) was more than adequate. The challenge was that in order to get compare&swap included in 370 ... it would be necessary to invent some non-multiprocessor, non-SMP uses for the instruction. Thus was born the examples for multithreaded/multitasking operation (whether or not running in multiprocessor environment).

the principles of operation programming notes for compare&swap have change little since the original version:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/A.6?DT=20040504121320

compare&swap became staple for use by highly multithreaded operation (especially scalable DBMS applications) and showed up on wide variety of platforms (or something with very similar semantics).

One of the early problems for rs/6000 starting to sell into DBMS market segment ... was not having a compare&swap instruction (DBMS were forced to use unix kernel calls to achieve multithreaded serialization ... putting rs/6000 DBMS operation at significant thruput disadvantage). Eventually AIX on rs/6000 offered a special supervisor call interrupt hack; special fast path in the supervisor call FLIH that would simulate the compare&swap semantics and immediately return to the caller (disabled for interrupts ... meets requirements for atomic operation in a non-multiprocessor environment).

misc. past posts mentioning smp:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

misc. past posts mentioning cics &/or bdam:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:44:24 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
then there is the article titled "The Man Who Beat The Shorts" ... that apparently, after pointing out (in 2003 annual report) that CDO/securization by unregulated loan originators (major cornerstone of the financial mess) was going to end badly ... was then hit hard by traders shorting the stock (but managed to survive, apparently it was punishment for publicly raising the CDO activity):
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#34 Happy DEC-10 Day

in theory the original TARP funds were appropriated to purchase toxic CDOs being carried off-book by the too-big-to-fail financial institutions. there was even a news item in the period that company which had purchased the "pricing service division" from one of the rating agencies in the early 70s ... was helping evaluate the assets. Then apparently, the gov discovered that the appropriated TARP funds were just a small drop in the bucket compared to the amount of toxic CDOs being carried off-book by just the top four too-big-to-fail institutions (and would represent little or no difference).

In any case:

Watchdog: Bailouts created more risk in system
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bailout_watchdog

from above:
The government's response to the financial meltdown has made it more likely the United States will face a deeper crisis in the future, an independent watchdog at the Treasury Department warned.

... snip ...

In the congressional hearings into the rating agencies ... a big issue was made that unregulated loan originators were packaging up toxic CDOs and paying the rating agencies to obtain triple-A ratings (even when both knew they weren't triple-A). The testimony was that the seeds for this were sown in the early 70s when the rating agencies changed from the buyers paying for the ratings, to the sellers paying for the ratings (opening things for conflict of interest).

In the 60s, at least two online commercial time-sharing service bureaus were formed based on cp/67 ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

in the early 70s, both of them were moving up the value stream and offering lots of detailed financial information. One was eventually purchased by D&B (and is part of D&B computer division). The other went through various owners, but continues to operate under its original name ... although now its online services are browser/internet based. In any case, it was this company that bought the "pricing services division" from one of the rating companies in the early 70s ... about the same time that the rating companies switched from buyers paying for the ratings to the sellers paying for the ratings. It was also this company that was mentioned as helping the gov. evaluate the toxic CDOs (during the apparently fleeting period when the gov. thot it was going to be using the TARP funds to by up all the toxic CDOs).

a few past posts mentioning the early 70s "pricing service division" purchase
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#21 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#31 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#32 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#38 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#30 Timeline: 40 years of OS milestones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#41 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#40 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#20 UK issues Turning apology (and about time, too)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#68 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#47 Is C close to the machine?

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:49:14 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Watchdog: Bailouts created more risk in system
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bailout_watchdog

from above:

The government's response to the financial meltdown has made it more likely the United States will face a deeper crisis in the future, an independent watchdog at the Treasury Department warned.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#48 Happy DEC-10 Day

baseline blog today with more background on too-big-to-fail
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/01/31/final-thoughts-on-volckerfest-2010/

also references this article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704193.html

and this article
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aYlWNEyLQzPk

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The origins of CICS

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The origins of CICS
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:22:36 -0500
web pages gone 404 ... but there is always the wayback machine

The Evolution of CICS: Myth and Matter (1968)
https://web.archive.org/web/20060325095552/http://www.yelavich.com/history/ev196803.htm

recent post with other references to wayback cics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#47 Extracting STDOUT data from USS

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

misc. past posts referencing yelavich CICS pages (updated to point to wayback machine)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#15 Amusing acronym
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#10 Cost: Teletype 33 vs. IBM Selectric Terminal (2741?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#44 TLAs - was summit else entirely
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#47 Article: The True Value of Mainframe Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#14 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#26 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#27 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#23 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#19 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#68 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of patents ?

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:05:13 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Watchdog: Bailouts created more risk in system
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bailout_watchdog

from above:
The government's response to the financial meltdown has made it more likely the United States will face a deeper crisis in the future, an independent watchdog at the Treasury Department warned.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#48 Happy DEC-10 Day

this morning business news show is doing quotes/comments about painting picture that western civilization was on verge of collapse ... recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#27 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#32 Happy DEC-10 Day

including belief even goldman sachs was about to fail ... aka stark picture being used to justify actions taken in last months of 2008 and early 2009. Then comments about goldman-sachs on verge of collapse have commentators wandering off into that would invalidate various other comments from goldman-sachs justifying their enormous compensation

significant agility being able to justify enormous compensation packages ...

Bailed-Out Banks Dole Out Bonuses; Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Others Mum on How They Are Using TARP Cash
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Business/story?id=6498680&page=1

from above:
Goldman Sachs, which accepted $10 billion in government money, and lost $2.1 billion last quarter, announced Tuesday that it handed out $10.93 billion in benefits, bonuses, and compensation for the year.

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning above article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#61 The vanishing CEO bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#32 How Should The Government Spend The $700 Billion?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#33 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#41 Executive pay: time for a trim?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#41 The subject is authoritarian tendencies in corporate management, and how they are related to political culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#45 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#57 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#59 As bonuses...why breed greed, when others are in dire need?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#17 Why is everyone talking about AIG bonuses of millions and keeping their mouth shut on billions sent to foreign banks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#36 Average Comp This Year At Top Firm Estimated At $700,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#81 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:23:25 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#51 Happy DEC-10 Day

interviews with Paulson's new book

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System

... other comments regarding the above ... mention lehman & bear-stern failures ... old article about playing long/short games has been known for centuries to take down institutions (following URL just shows generic page now):


http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/mmframe?prid=441535&attachid=850879

from above:
"In 1973, Wm. Mack Terry and his colleagues at the Bank of America in San Francisco introduced the world's first matched maturity transfer pricing system," added Dr. Donald R. van Deventer, Kamakura Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Over the last 35 years, the concept has been increasingly refined and modified to incorporate the best practice calculations embedded in KRM Version 7.0. Best practice transfer pricing calculations would have made it clear that neither Bear Stearns nor Lehman Brothers had more than a marginal chance of survival when funding 30 year sub-prime mortgage loans with thirty day borrowings. Board members can and should demand clarity of disclosure on the total risk of an institution and the contribution of each business unit and transaction to total risk. This capability is available now, and Kamakura has been gratified that so many institutions have reached out to Kamakura for best practice risk analytics during the current crisis."

... snip ...

a few past posts referencing the above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#14 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#27 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#46 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:40:10 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#51 Happy DEC-10 Day

interviews with Paulson's new book

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System


Hank Paulson blames FSA for Lehman failure; The former US Treasury Secretary's book reveals how he blames the FSA for not helping the stricken bank.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/7111156/Hank-Paulson-blames-FSA-for-Lehman-failure.html

from above:
But he was in uncharted waters. His original suggestion - a $700bn pool to buy up toxic assets named the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (TARP) - had to be modified to a pool of capital injected directly on to banks' balance sheets.

... snip ...

Playing long/short mismatch was root of Lehman (and Bear-Stearns) fialure; possibly he means that he blames FSA for not helping more with salvaging Lehman.

recent post about TARP & evaluating toxic CDOs for purchase (apparently discovering that $700bn barely made a dent in the amount of toxic CDOs being carried)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#48 Happy DEC-10 Day

2000 article by SF FRB on playing long/short mismatch & financial fragility
http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2000/september/short-term-international-borrowing-and-financial-fragility/

past posts referencing the SF FRB article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#51 Why are some banks failing, and others aren't?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#52 Why is sub-prime crisis of America called the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#62 Would anyone like to draw a diagram of effects or similar for the current "credit crisis"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#65 Can the financial meltdown be used to motivate sustainable development in order to achieve sustainable growth and desired sustainability?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#75 In light of the recent financial crisis, did Sarbanes-Oxley fail to work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#82 Greenspan testimony and securization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#70 Is there any technology that we are severely lacking in the Financial industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#19 Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#9 Blind-sided, again. Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#23 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#55 Is this the story behind the crunchy credit stuff?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#63 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#23 BarCampBank - informal finance rantathon in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#79 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#32 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#46 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
 alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:33:12 -0500
"Del Cecchi" <delcecchi@gmail.com> writes:
Played with it? heck, helped with design. They wanted to use blue iliad and got mad when we proposed a gate array alternative.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#28 Processes' memory

SCAMP at palo alto science center 1973, 5100 PALM was follow-on/evolution in 1975
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100

Palo Alto Science Center also did apl\cms on vm370 (follow-on to cms\apl that cambridge science center did for cp67/cms) and the apl\cms microcode assist for 370/145.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)

all, long before blue iliad (specific 32bit 801 risc chip design, large, hot, etc) old email about blue iliad going to mfg FEB82 for 1st pass parts (5100 was withdrawn Mar82):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email810422
in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#38 To RISC or not to RISC

other old email mentioning 801, Iliad, ROMP, Fort Knox, RIOS, risc, et
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

Originally, AS/400 planned on using a 801/risc Iliad chip.

i had a proposal for racks of large numbers of (arbitrary mix) 801 risc blue iliad (about 20mips) and boeblingen's 3chip 370 (about 3mips) ... a couple recent references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#21 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#43 PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#4 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#14 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#15 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#17 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#18 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#19 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#25 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#35 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#36 Processes' memory

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
 alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:40:28 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Palo Alto Science Center also did apl\cms on vm370 (follow-on to cms\apl that cambridge science center did for cp67/cms) and the apl\cms microcode assist for 370/145.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#54 Processes' memory

semi-related subject ... ECPS was vm370 microcode assist for 138/148 (follow-on to 135/145) where parts of the vm370 kernel were moved into microcode.

several traces of vm370 kernel activity was used to determine instruction "hot-spots" for candidates to be moved into microcode. one technology was extensive instrumentatation of the vm370 kernel with time-stamped traces. another was a special microcode load for 370/145 ... that periodically sampled kernel instruction address ... and had a table of counts for instruction lines that was updated ... and periodically dumped to software. The 370/145 microcode change was done by the same person that did the 370/145 apl\cms microcode enhancement.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#27 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Processes' memory

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Processes' memory
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer, comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc, comp.arch,
alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:33:10 -0500
"Del Cecchi" <delcecchi@gmail.com> writes:
Played with it? heck, helped with design. They wanted to use blue illiad and got mad when we proposed a gate array alternative.

there were other projects that were to use some iliad chip or another. there was major corporate initiative the end of 70s to migrate large variety of different corporate microprocessors to 801/risc architectures ... including the entry & mid-range (microprogrammed) 370s.

this included the 4331/4341 follow-ons; 4361 & 4381. I contributed to white paper that "killed" that for 4381. Entry & mid-range 370s had been implemented on wide-variety of different microprocessors ... that tended to "avg" 10 microprocessor instruction per 370 instruction; this was behind the previously mentioned "ECPS" vm370 microcode assist ... basically a one-for-one translation of vm370 kernel 370 instruction into microprocessor instruction ... achieving 10:1 improvements for those pathlengths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#55 Processes' memory

the whitepaper that killed the Iliad effort for 4381 pointed out that chip technology was getting to the point that nearly all of the 370 instructions could be implemented directly in silicon ... which would result in much more cost effective implementation than retaining the microcoded emulation paradigm using 801/risc Iliad.

it was the shutdown of various of those (early) 801/risc efforts that resulted in some number of the 801/risc engineers leaving and showing up at other vendors in the early 80s.

the technology trade-off arguments more recently shifted ... where the investment in chip thruput because of enormous volumes ... outweighs what could be invested in much smaller 370 chip volume (if there was still entry/mid-range market for 370s).

there was some comment recently in ibm-main mailing list estimating that there might be as few as 4000 high-end 370 installations (and the several tens of thousands of entry & mid-range 370s have all disappeared) ... and there are been some software 370 emulation (effectively quite similar to the oldtime microcoded implementation) getting relatively decent thruput.

misc. past posts mentioning 360/370 m'code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mcode

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

watches

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: watches
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:46:39 -0500
glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
I am not so sure about GPS, but TV satellites (the ones used by broadcasters with the big dishes) transmit 7W per channel and cover the whole US with that. The signal is barely above the thermal noise level.

one of the hsdt 4.5meter dish (tdma, transmit and receive) Ku band
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_band

going into the east coast had some problems with local citizens protesting to local country planning commissioners ... claiming that they would be getting radition from the dish.

it was nominal 7w (with uplink power control during rain fade) ... in the planning hearings ... calculations were shown that the shape of the dish transmits majority of the power straight up ... and if a resident was hoisted by a crane directly above the dish ... they would still be receiving less radition than they were currently receiving in their homes from a nearby 50,000 watt FM radio station.

network used a transponder on SBS4 (SBSD)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Business_Systems

that flew on 41-D
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-41D.html

... had vip passes for the launch ... one of the people that had walked on the moon, was a few seats over with another group.

misc. past posts mentioning hsdt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the SBS wiki site mentions the original SBS earth station design being done by IBM using highly modified IBM 8100 ... none of which HSDT used.

Did a brand new design and had brand new hardware built to spec. by outside vendors (one of vendors later mentioned that they had been approached by a large telco who asked if the vendor would build them a duplicate set of earth stations to our specification; little industrial espionage).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

watches

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: watches
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:27:19 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the SBS wiki site mentions the original SBS earth station design being done by IBM using highly modified IBM 8100 ... none of which HSDT used.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#5 watches

... or at least for HSDT earth station. SBS did C-band network for internal ibm ... with 10meter dishes. before hsdt had earth stations with transponder on SBS4 ... did have T1 data link tail circuit to the san jose earth station up to satellite and then down to the kingston earth station ... with tail circuit to the kingston engineering & scientific lab ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#71 Happy DEC-10 Day

one of the hsdt earth station dishes went into back parking lot of the los gatos lab ... and another went into field near yorktown research lab. The T1 connection to IBM Kingston then moved to the HSDT satellite link ... with a tail circuit from Yorktown to IBM Kingston.

hsdt had two complete different sets of tdma digital earth stations built to spec. by two different vendors. picture of one of the tdma modems (basement of los gatos lab)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#44 IBM-MAIN longevity

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 Feb, 2010
Subject: Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1380406/Customers-risk-online-banking-fraud-by-reusing-bank-credentials

from above:
Study shows many use their Internet banking password and ID to login to other websites, opening the door to potential online banking fraud, according to online security vendor Trusteer

... snip ...

also

France sounds death-knell for online passwords; Looking at password alternatives
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/france-sounds-death-knell-for-online-passwords-667847 ?

for some topic drift ... misc. past posts mentioning secret-based authentication paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets
and related posts mentioning harvesting of various kinds of secret-based authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#harvest

and posts discussing 3-factor authentication model
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

something you have (aka hardware token) • something you know (aka pin, passwords, shared-secrets, etc) • something you are (biometrics, fingerprint, etc)

there are various kinds of interactions ... in some scenarios, fingerprint can degenerate to shared-secret ... aka fingerprint is reduced to electronic pattern and recorded; subsequent authentication is fuzzy matching of electronic pattern. W/o trusted fingerprint "sensors" (i.e. under 24hr armed guard supervision), fingerprint authentication can be reduced to shared-secret if an attacker is able to replay a recorded fingerprint electronic pattern.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Cybercrime Checks Into The Hotel Industry

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 Feb, 2010
Subject: Cybercrime Checks Into The Hotel Industry
Blog: Information Security Network
Cybercrime Checks Into The Hotel Industry
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/01/cybersecurity-breaches-trustwave-technology-security-hotels.html

from above:
Hackers are increasingly targeting hotels and resorts, raiding more than the minibar

... snip ...

In the early 80s, when the corporation was looking at opening up to external, dial-up access ... there was some security studies that identified hotel phone systems as major vulnerability.

The corporation had requirement that internal network links had to be encrypted ... in the mid-80s, there was some observation that the internal network had more than half of all link encryptors in the world (i.e. the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly early '86).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

In any case, the corporation developed a custom encrypting modem for external dial-up access ... as countermeasure to things like compromised hotel telephone systems.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Engineer shows how to crack a 'secure' TPM chip

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 Feb, 2010
Subject: Engineer shows how to crack a 'secure' TPM chip
Blog: Computer Security and Forensics
Engineer shows how to crack a 'secure' TPM chip
http://gcn.com/articles/2010/02/02/black-hat-chip-crack-020210.aspx

from above:
A security engineer shared at the Black Hat Federal Briefings how he cracked the Infineon chip family that includes the supposedly secure TPM chips.

... snip ...

also

Researcher hacks 'secure' Xbox 360 processor
http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/hardware/processors/news/?newsid=18652
Xbox 360 chip can be hacked, claims researcher; Questions security of TPM processor used to protect smartcards, computers
http://news.techworld.com/networking/3211829/xbox-360-chip-can-be-hacked-claims-researcher/

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:38:59 -0500
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
IBM was offering certain new employees an IBM PC as sort of a signing bonus. That was in the summer of 1981. I knew a guy who left CSC, where we worked, to go to IBM to get a PC!

there is the opposite ... i ordered pc at employee discount ... but (early) delivery schedules were so long ... that the day i went to pick it up (provisioning done by computerland), the full-list, non-discounted price was lowered to what I had paid with the employee discount.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

who pioneered the WEB

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: who pioneered the WEB
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:02:35 -0500
who pioneered the WEB
http://slashdot.org/submission/1165728/who-pioneered-the-WEB

from above

... Well according to the BBC it was Tim Berners-Lee, (0:39) "the man who Invented the web" and Bill Gates.

... snip ...

At the '96 MSDC at Moscone ... all the banners were "preserving your investment". the story apparently was that there were all these visual basic programmers who had been writing automated scripting additions to office applications for private, closed, business network environmets. "preserving your investment" ... apparently was how all of these automated scripting applications & visual basic investment for private, closed business networks ... was going to be extended to the internet.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:30:18 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Was that (high overhead) due to memory management? Or are you talking about a different overhead?

"human rating" ... at FAA, NASA, etc ... software applications that may involve human life ... can easily have ten times the cost of otherwise identical application that doesn't involve human life. reference here to NASA and enormous costs for changing the way a timer work (in an old y2k discussion thread from 1984)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#email841207

"secure" (not necessarily human life) software development can also be ten times the cost of otherwise identical "commodity" application; done for military things (like 2167A) ... but also spread out into various other environments ... some areas of financial infrastructure.

software.org use to have this spaghetti diagram (Framework quagmire) that has gone 404 ... but there is always the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20001018151708/http://www.software.org/quagmire/frampapr/frampapr.html

misc. past posts mentionin 2167A &/or framework quagmire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#48 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#50 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#55 Computer security: The Future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#59 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#69 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#70 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#16 Dealing with complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#1 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#46 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#52 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#17 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#37 The new High Assurance SSL Certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#13 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#40 Was FORTRAN buggy?

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

who pioneered the WEB

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: who pioneered the WEB
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:25:27 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#63 who pioneered the WEB

nearly all of the 90s, the majority of internet exploits were all the result of "overflows" related to characteristics of C language programming ... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

i've pointed out before that original mainframe tcp/ip product was done in pascal ... and didn't have any of the "overflow" exploits that were characteristic of C language programming (it wasn't impossible in pascal ... but it was about as hard to have such problems in pascal as it was hard to *NOT* have such problems in C).

by the early part of this century ... the overflow exploits were no longer the majority (although the number hadn't decreased) ... the number of "internet" exploits from automated script execution by these business applications (that grew up from small, private, closed business networks) had increased to equal the overflow exploits.

misc. past posts mentioning significantly increasing thruput of (pascal-based) mainframe tcp/ip
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:38:25 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#64 Happy DEC-10 Day

in the 90s, we sponsored some meetings looking at where the costs were in 2167A ... and could various technologies be leveraged to reduce the factor of 10 overhead to only 3-4. the issue then wasn't so much gold-plated DOD ... but the gold-plated beltway bandits.

it somewhat complimented some things we were looking at for reducing the costs of business critical applicated applicates.

i've mentioned before that we had been brought in to consule with small client/server startup that wanted to do payments on their server ... the small client/server startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use. Part of the deployment was something called a "payment gateway" ... that acted as gateway between webservers on the internet and financial network(s):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

they had done an application that took the message formats from an SSL session ... dumped it into the financial network and then returned the results. a very early deployment test had a "call" to the "trouble desk" ... which after three hrs of investigation was closed as NTF (no-trouble-found). The "standard" at the time (involving high-volume merchant leased lines) was 5min first level problem determination.

we defined a matrix of possible failures and possible states ... and then had to show that each case had automatic recovery (preferrable) and/or at least simple first level problem determination. This involved a lot of compensating procedures in various pieces of software that was designed to handle a number of things we viewed as sort-comings in tcp/ip & the internet (trivial scenario was translating financial messages that had an implicit circuit-based environment to the wild anarchy of the internet packet-based enviornment).

we then made some number of observations that it typically takes 4-10 times the effort to turn a well-tested, well-designed application into a business-critical service. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#37 How the Classical Scholars dropped security from the canon of Computer Science
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#48 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#cfppki10 CFP: PKI research workshop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#75 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#4 Smart Card vs. Magnetic Strip Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#91 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#93 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#59 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#11 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#62 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#15 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#52 Call-gate-like mechanism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#37 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#8 Mars Rover Not Responding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#48 Automating secure transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#20 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#49 "Perfect" or "Provable" security both crypto and non-crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#51 stop worrying about it offshoring - it's doing fine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#23 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#63 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#64 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#40 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#26 Data communications over telegraph circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#20 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#37 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#51 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#10 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#76 PSI MIPS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#77 PSI MIPS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#23 Outsourcing loosing steam?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#54 Industry Standard Time To Analyze A Line Of Code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#53 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#41 IBM announced z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#53 Why Is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#33 Mainframe Project management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#48 How much knowledge should a software architect have regarding software security?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#0 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#26 comp.arch has made itself a sitting duck for spam

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:18:43 -0500
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
It started happening before the IBM PC. IMO S-100 systems lost their supremacy because the single board computers were far less expensive and far more ready to just sit down and use. People who bought them just wanted something to run spreadsheets on, or to write on. The O-1 came out four months before the IBM PC, and (if you credit the list price of the software bundle) cost half the price. For the corporate market, maybe price didn't matter, but for individuals and small businesses/nonprofits, price was an enormous issue. Those markets didn't take to PCs until cheap clones started to appear.

part of the corporate market was that they already had 3270 terminal ... some corporations having tens of thousands of such terminals. ibm/pc came in about the cost of 3270 terminal, single desktop footprint, provide 3270 terminal emulation ... along with some amount of local computing. as a result ... it was a brain dead business case justification to switch an order from thousands of 3270 terminals to thousands of IBM/PCs (since the money had already been allocated for the 3270 terminals) ... aka there was no financial business justification needed for the PC ... since the money had already been appropriated for terminals (it wasn't that money wasn't an issue, it was that the money had already been justified).

one of the things that attracted the clones ... was that there was enough mark-up in the corporate market ... that they could come in with clone, charge less and still have profit. then the whole snowball thing took over ... volumes drove more applications, more applications drove volumes, volumes also resulted in manufacturing scale that cut costs, cutting costs further drove volumes.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:07:07 -0500
Jim Stewart <jstewart@jkmicro.com> writes:
I have heard of an IBM line printer, circa early 1970's, that had an motor driven cover. The motor fuses were inside the cover and were regularly blown by operators placing boxes of paper on top of the cover and hitting the open button.

1403N1 ... the traditional story is the cover would open automatically when ran out of paper ... dumping all the coffee cups and misc. other stuff that might be on top. never heard of operators placing boxes of paper on top of the thing ... it was relatively high, full box of paper was fairly heavy and new boxes of paper were placed inside at floor level (the open cover was needed to thread the paper thru the paper path).

picture of m7 with manual cover ... new paper is at the floor in the front ... feed up and over and collects on the floor at the back.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/supplies/supplies_5404PH09.html

N1 made more noise (printing faster) and the whole thing was enclosed in frame with sound absorbent material ... which also increased the weight of the cover.

picture of rear of 1403N1
http://www.gilbertostrapazon.hpg.ig.com.br/galeria/ibm1403highspeedlineprinter.jpg

other picutres
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1401.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1401/printer.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_line_printer_1403.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vcf7-ibm_1403_printer-x768.jpg

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:50:26 -0500
Larry__Weiss <lfw@airmail.net> writes:
"... ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them."

2741 had multiple typefaces ... by switching the typeball ... but 1403 printers and 2741 terminals didn't have proportional fonts. CMS script document formating did games with adding spaces in order to get left and right edges to be even/aligned

1976, 3800 was "laser printer" ... non-impact ... and had multiple font libraries and ... this references simplified version of proportional fonts:
http://archive.outputlinks.com/html/Columnists/Cooper/news-03510.shtml

the above makes reference to its use with os360 & JCL.

3277 & 3278 display terminals were purely monofont ... but 3279 color display was possible to download different fonts for display (3279 was notorious for random screen "flashes" when new font was being downloaded).

A History of Scientific Text Processing at CERN
http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/tp_history/Pr/

above mentions using Waterloo's clone of CMS SCRIPT command and getting first laser printer (3800) in 1979. Above also describes evolution from script/GML/SGML to Web & HTML. the evolution from script/GML/SGML to WEB/HTML also described here
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

and first webserver outside cern is slac/vm system
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:02:12 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
A friend's daughter went to Vassar from about 1994 to 1998. At that time, students at Vassar could get an account on a Vax simply by applying for it, *no* specific class enrollment required. I have *no* idea what their system looked like, but my friend's daughter *never* applied for that account IIRC.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#45 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

early to mid 80s ... in this period, there was big explosion in CS enrollments at numerous institutions.

cal. univ. system was trying to spread people declaring CS major across the various campuses.

a former co-worker at the science center was on MIT committee looking at placing quota on CS ... worries that the institution might become one large CS department.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.arch.fpga
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:15:55 -0500
James Dow Allen <jdallen2000@yahoo.com> writes:
It's the answer to a different question of course, but a National Semiconducter subsidiary once tried to emulate an IBM 3033 at full speed using Fairchild 100k parts. ... the reason for failure is interesting ...

in the early 80s los gatos did custom hardware for chip logic simulation (LSM ... "losgatos state machine" ... then "logic simulation machine" for publication) ... dozen plus rack boxes ... ran 50,000 times faster faster than logic simulation in software on 3033

this mentions putting 4.5 meter dish in back parking lot of los gatos lab (and on east coast in field near yorkton research).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#57 watches

a dish also went into austin ... and austin credits the link and access to hardware logic simulation (relatively high bandwidth for the period ... for transmission of chip design files) with helping bring in the RIOS chipset 12 months early ... recent reference to six chipset RIOS (aka POWER, used in rs/6000).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#20 Processes' memory

later hardware logic simulators assumed synchronous clock ... but the LSM had clock support ... allowed simulation of digital chips with analog circuits ... (the then) new generation of thin-film disk heads and chips with non-globally synchronous circuit.

however, the 3033 in bldg. 15 (disk product test lab) was used for air bearing software simulation (shape for floating disk heads) ... misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#75 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#63 What happened to computer architecture (and comp.arch?)

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Feb, 2010
Subject: Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
Blog: Information Security Network
Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9147138/Users_still_make_hacking_easy_with_weak_passwords?taxonomyId=17

from above:
In a report likely to make IT administrators tear out their hair, most users still rely on easy passwords, some as simple as

... snip ...

also ...

Study: Hacking Passwords Easy As 123456
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/021110-tech-debate-credit-card.html

... not however that this is overlooking the issue that something you know authentication ... from three-factor authentication model, lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

doesn't scale ... everybody knows it. 40 years ago, an individual had one or very few such pin/passwords ... impossible to remember/guess. However, as something you know authentication ramps up to scores (or hundreds) per individual, humans can't handle it ... however, articles like this are written as if it is still forty years ago and individuals only have a single "impossible to guess/remember" password to deal with.

another item

Credit card verification system not secure, says researcher
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/credit-card-verification-system-not-secure-says-researcher/2010-01-29

from above:
Don't expect the situation to change anytime soon, though. As noted by one of the researchers, Steven J. Murdoch, "Most banks have chosen to go for passwords than anything better...Passwords are really cheap."

... snip ...

there have been numerous news items about the cited presentation ... but many of the issues have been previously mentioned going back to early part of this century.

and then somewhat related recent item from today:

Benevolent hackers poke holes in e-banking
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527455.400

note that in the mid-90s ... there were conferences that had presentations by the (earlier generation) dial-up online banking operations. Consumer dial-up online banking operations were saying that they were moving to the internet because of the high cost of consumer support for (proprietary) dial-up operations (effectively offload the support to internet service providers ... who could amortize the cost across a much bigger set of applications).

at the same time, the commercial/business, cash-management dial-up online banking operations claimed they would not move to the internet because of a long litany of security issues (as has frequently been demonstrated over the past 15 yrs).

might consider this a form of privilege escalation ... a bank website might have background checks on employees with access ... as countermeasure to insider id-theft. the whole scenario for something you know authentication requires a unique pin/password for every security domain as countermeasure to x-domain attacks ... aka employees (or others) at much less secure website doing (potentially insider) id-theft (of passwords) ... and then attempting to use them at other websites.

Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1380406/Customers-risk-online-banking-fraud-by-reusing-bank-credentials

France sounds death-knell for online passwords; Looking at password alternatives
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/france-sounds-death-knell-for-online-passwords-667847 ?

for some topic drift ... misc. past posts mentioning secret-based authentication paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

and related posts mentioning harvesting of various kinds of secret-based authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#harvest

3-factor authentication model

something you have (aka hardware token) • something you know (aka pin, passwords, shared-secrets, etc) • something you are (biometrics, fingerprint, etc)

there are various kinds of interactions ... in some scenarios, fingerprint can degenerate to shared-secret ... aka fingerprint is reduced to electronic pattern and recorded; subsequent authentication is fuzzy matching of electronic pattern. W/o trusted fingerprint "sensors" (i.e. under 24hr armed guard supervision), fingerprint authentication can be reduced to shared-secret if an attacker is able to replay a recorded fingerprint electronic pattern.

there are somewhat two orthogonal issues with shared-secret something you know authentication

1) hard to guess or hard to brute force shared-secret something you know

2) unique shared-secret for every unique security domain as countermeasure against x-domain attacks.

shared-secret in low-security environment may be compromised by insiders ... (or poor security) ... and then used to attack an higher security environment.

the intersection of the proliferation of environments using shared-secret something you know authentication ... has led to needing to keep track of scores or hundreds of unique shared-secrets ... each one required to be unique and hard-to-guess

static, shared-secret, something you know authentication are also vulnerable to skimming and/or other evesdropping technologies.

furthermore, multi-factor authentication is supposedly more secure based on assumption that the different factors have independent vulnerabilities. however, when all factors involve static values (or relatively static in the case of biometric) ... compromised end-points have been able to skim/record all factors (a common vulnerability) and then replay them (invalidating assumption that multi-factor is more secure with independent vulnerabilities).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:10:21 -0500
hancock4 writes:
The IBM 1403 line printer would open automatically when the paper ran out. This often toppled cups of coffee that had been placed atop it.

In thinking about it, I'm not sure why someone would put a paper carton on top of the printer. The cartons were heavy and placed in the printer at ground level. Lifting it up that high was unnecessary work.

One day while IPLing our 360-40 I did something to the 2314 and somehow blew a key circuit breaker. The machine was totally dead and required a C/E visit to reset it. I'm not exactly sure what I did since normally the power-up was done automatically.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#68 OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?

how about place where they would load more and more weight on the top trying to find out how much it took to break it.

my first student programming job was porting 1401 MPIO (unit record<->tape front end for 709) to 360/30 (aka rewriting in 360 assembler, i got to design & implement my own monitor, interrupt handlers, device drivers, storage manager, console interface, etc). they shut the datacenter down from 8am sat. until 8am monday ... so I could have it for the whole weekend (could make monday classes a drag after not having slept since friday night).

normally when I showed up ... I would have to do normal operator start of shift stuff ... take apart the 2540 read/punch ... cleaning the brushes and punch ... clean all the tape drives, etc. also sometimes when I had showed sat. at 8am ... the 3rd shift operator would have already finished everything ... powered everything off ... & left; it would be lights out. I would need to power everything back up.

power up button on front of 360/30 ... would sequentially power-up cycle each component. sometimes something would catch ... and the whole thing would abort. I then would have to hit the power-off button, go around to each individual component/controller ... and put each component/controller in "CE-mode" ... and then go back and power-on the 360/30 (which would only have the computer to power on).

I would then go back to each individual component/controller and manually power-on in "CE-mode" ... sometimes repeat cycle a couple times. That was usually sufficient to get everything powered up and running ... then go around and switch things out of "CE-mode"

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:18:17 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
1976, 3800 was "laser printer" ... non-impact ... and had multiple font libraries and ... this references simplified version of proportional fonts:

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#69 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.

old email mentioning APA6670 (aka SHERPA)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#email820304
in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#44 Material and graft

6670 started out (ibm) copier3 with computer interface; SHERPA was enhanced support for "all-points-addressable". The author of the above email (copy sent to me), later left and went to work for Adobe.

above post was in response to Brian Inglis post that included the following:
1971 Xerox PARC EARS (Ethernet, Alto, Research character generator, Scanned laser output terminal) laser printer 1976 IBM 3800 mainframe datacentre (@ Woolworth) 1977 Xerox 9700 mainframe datacentre 1979 IBM 6670 departmental office (copier sized) 1982 Canon LBP-10 (desktop) 1984 HP LaserJet 1985 Apple LaserWriter

... snip ...

misc. other posts mentioning SHERPA/APA6670:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#48 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#49 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#1 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#27 The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#72 Parse/Template Function
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#51 It has been a long time since Ihave seen a printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#68 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#69 Blinkenlights

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:07:24 -0500
shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
There are no group owners. Usenet is a distributed network implemented by autonomous peers; the admin of each news server runs it in accordance with his local policy. See RFC 3977 and 5537.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#31 Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups

as mentioned in this post ... there seems to have been several usenet problems about the time of reports of wierd SSL attacks:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#47 Extracting STDOUT data from USS

Besides missing posts on usenet ... during the period, I was also getting sporadic wierd characteristic attempting to (SSL) connect to my usenet server (time-outs, connection drops, long outages when couldn't connect, reading email connected fine ... but unable to post, things appearing to post ... and then not showing up, etc).

Usenet started out based on UUCP protocol. these were a lot of sporadically dialup connections ... which would transfer accumulated email and other stuff ... like usenet news ... some refs:
http://www.uucp.org/history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_UsenetOverviewHistoryandStandards-3.htm

while the internal network ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86. One of the major contributors to internet exceeding size of internal network at that time ... was appearance of workstations & PCs as network nodes ... while on the internal network ... these machines were restricted to terminal emulation ... misc. past posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

a listing of approx. nodes sometime 1985 (aka "VNET" was internal network)
BITNET 435 ARPAnet 1155 CSnet 104 (excluding ARPAnet overlap) VNET 1650 EasyNet 4200 UUCP 6000 USENET 1150 (excluding UUCP nodes)

... snip ...

I had gotten blamed for computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s. There was then an "official" facility deployed on the internal network called "TOOLSRUN" ... that could operate either in USENET mode or mailing list mode.

Later, there was something similar deployed on BITNET supporting just mailing list mode ... historical reference:
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp

BITNET used somewhat similar technology as was used on the internal network (and ibm-main mailing list originated on BITNET) ... misc. past posts mentioning BITNET (and/or EARN ... bitnet outside US)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

USENET also was distributed over other media. For a time there was special modem that received USENET over unused part of broadcast TV signal. There was also service that broadcast USENET over satellite. In 1993, I did device driver for a number of platforms (dos/windows, a couple different unixes) for such a service ... along with article in boardwatch (BBS industry mag) ... and got free dish/modem/service ... old posts (with picture of me in backyard with R/O satellite dish):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#20 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#19 Another one bites the dust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#21 Disksize history question

during the 90s, majority of USENET moved off of other distribution media to tcp/ip and the internet. from my rfc index:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

click on Term (term->RFC#) in the RFCs listed by section, then click on "NNTP" in the Acronym fastpath section:

network news transfer protocol (NNTP )
4644 4643 4642 3977 2980 977


then there is:
1036 -
Standard for interchange of USENET messages, Adams R., Horton M., 1987/12/01 (19pp) (.txt=45825) (Obsoleted by 5536) (Obsoletes 850) (Ref'ed By 1468, 1554, 1580, 1630, 1700, 1738, 1842, 1922, 1945, 2068, 2076, 2110, 2557, 2616, 2924, 2980, 3864, 3977, 4707, 5064, 5536, 5537)


...

also, some number of the BITNET mailing lists created distribution gateway to USENET (usually just one direction, i.e. outbound traffic only) ... distributed email simulating USENET post in the usenet bit.listserv hiearchy. GOOGLE supports two-way gateway between USENET and google groups ... aka (old bitnet) mailing list gatewayed to USENET bit.listserv hierarchy then gatewayed to google groups.

As mentioned ... during the wierd SSL attack period ... I was seeing strange operation connecting to USENET server ... so I suspect that the various gateways also might have had problems also.

misc. past posts mentioning TOOLSRUN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#5 what makes a cpu fast
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#70 Using rexx to send an email
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?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#79 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/2009m.html#55 Tell me something about how you use signature files!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#38 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#52 Mainframe Hacking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#4 Arpanet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#17 toolsrun
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#12 user group meetings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#7 CAPS Fantasia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.arch.fpga
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:51:24 -0500
glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
I remember when I first started working with computers I had a book from our library about ECAP, IBM's Electronic Circuit Analysis Program. I never saw or used the actual program, and haven't heard about it since. I wonder where it went...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#71 using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer

no direct knowledge and web search is rather sparse ... a couple IEEE citations:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F23%2F4335780%2F04335910.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4335910&authDecision=-203
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F6%2F5218140%2F05218152.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5218152&authDecision=-203

in the aftermath of the troubles of the early 90s ... there was push to move to industry standard tools ... part of which involved transfer of internal tools to chip tool vendors (and some number of the internal chip tools people spending a lot of time with these vendors ... and then some number leaving and joining external vendor).

I've mentioned recently porting nearly 60k statement pascal program (that did circuit layout) to other platforms, as part of such a tool transfer.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#74 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#29 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

in the mid-80s ... internally, there was big push to expand a lot of mainframe manufacturing capacity anticipating the market would double in size by the early 90s. Not particularly "career enhancing" ... I made some observation that computer hardware was becoming increasingly commoditized ... resulting in thinner margins & profits ... which would at least require significantly cutting the number of related employees to stay out of the red. misc. past posts mentioning various (non) "career enhancing":
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/2007r.html#6 The history of Structure capabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#23 Memories of ACC, IBM Channels and Mainframe Internet Devices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#54 THE runs in DOS box?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#49 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#50 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#4 While watching Biography about Bill Gates on CNBC last Night

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:02:57 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
In the 80s, it was fashionable to get an MBA masters degree.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#70 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

also get a technical degree, out in the workforce for a while ... and then go back and get a MBA ... folklore was that it was highly prized combination when looking for VC money.

the other folklore was that it was all those MBAs that was destroying US business and the economy (at least before the current financial mess; although MBAs contributed significantly to this also).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:50:41 -0500
ps2os2@YAHOO.COM (Ed Gould) writes:
I do not remember the power requirements of the computers back then but they had to have been huge so I do not think that a home computer was even remotely possible. Maybe some of the real old timers that remember what they were and how much it cost. Even in the 1950's electricity was expensive. WHich sort of brings up the side issue if it was for a submarine where were they going to get the power?

not just electricity but power and water for cooling.

at the univ. in the 60s, it still had (20,000? tube) 709.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_709

i vaguely remember something about datacenter having a cooling unit rated at 20tons ... quicky web search for 20ton air condition; 480v, 36kW (possibly units from 50s/60s were less efficient):
http://www.portablerentalsolutions.com/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=0&idproduct=66

this reference has a 709 datacenter at 94.8kW for 709 & 26.5 ton cooling unit (318,750 BTU/hr)
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-ibm0709.html

above has USN OTS China Lake, 70kW for the computer and 87kW for the air conditioner. Above article has several other configurations ... somewhat in the 100kW to 300kW range.

when univ. 709 was replaced with 360/67 ... there were some issues with recalibrating things for significantly lower heat output.

later in the early 70s at the science center ... the 360/67 machine room had cooling units that dumped water from six inch pipe straight into eight inch sewer pipe; some building code that there was "air gap" between the two. In the mid-70s there was starting to be something about city wanting to change building codes that there would be no more straight through water for cooling ... and would need to start to require recirculating water. This would require water towers on the roof and there was big issues that the office buildings had not been built to handle the weight of water towers on the roof.

in stories about pacific northwest ... and all the hydroelectric plants ... that bonneville power authority had enough excess electricity that aluminum smelting plants were being built to consume the excess (at discount).

the area is more recently seeing a new generation with "mega" datacenters ... also using huge amounts of electricity and water. a couple old refs:
http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showGallery.jhtml?galleryID=62
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/cloudware_pr.html

in the 90s, the head of boca had large contract with Dataquest (since bought by gartner) to investigate what future "PC" computers were to look like ... which included a several hr video taped round-table with dozen silicon valley experts. I knew the Dataquest people and they asked me to be one of the experts ... they said that they would garble the introductions so Boca wouldn't realize it had a ringer (I did clear it with my line-of-business executives first).

I had been hassling boca business people in internal forums ... because their projections on future volume pricing for PCs didn't even correspond with volume one, local sunday newspaper advertisements (aka their projections for volume pricing was significantly higher than volume one, off-the-shelf prices).

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Feb, 2010
Subject: Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#59 Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials

related thread in Information Security Network

Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
http://www.linkedin.com/newsArticle?viewDiscussion=&articleID=104734837&gid=80784

Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9147138/Users_still_make_hacking_easy_with_weak_passwords?taxonomyId=17

pieces of long-winded post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#72 Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords

In the early part of this decade there were a couple token efforts deployed in the US. One was rather large pilot chipcard involving point-of-sale ... but involved yes card vulnerability ... that pilot then seemed to totally evaporate. Reference to yes card presentation at cartes2002, mentioning trivial to clone the chipcard:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

another effort in the early part of the century was chipcard that could be used for home use (home banking, home purchases) ... packaged as part of point-of-sale payment plastic. There was free give-away of card acceptor devices ... but was a "serial-port" device ... and the resulting significant customer support problems resulted ib that effort appearing to evaporate and rapidly spreading opinion in the financial industry that chipcards weren't practical in the consumer market. As a result ... several projects in progress were suspended and canceled ... including the EU FINREAD standard effort. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

The problem wasn't with the chipcards ... but the "serial-port" card readers that were part of specific program. In the mid-90s, the dial-up consumer online banking was making presentations about moving to the internet ... a major motivation was the consumer support problems related to serial-port ... which would be offloaded to ISP (however, commercial/cash-management dial-up online banking was also making presentations that they would never move to internet). In any case, the ephemeral (financial industry) institutional knowledge about serial-port consumer support appeared to evaporate between the mid-90s and the end of the 90s.

Note that serial-port issues was also major motivation for creation of USB.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:40:22 -0500
Eric Chomko <pne.chomko@comcast.net> writes:
I recall working with 3270 terminals running CICS once. It was so strange, the environment seemed so sterile and surreal, I literally got nauseous. I was always enthusiastic about computers, but that day, I knew I never wanted to do that sort of computing. I quickly forgot all the COBOL I knew and ran back to doing BASIC on an IBM 5100, which really wasn't much better! But that is another story...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#67 Happy DEC-10 Day

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#69 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.

references this CERN article

A History of Scientific Text Processing at CERN
http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/tp_history/Pr/

and this about evolution from (cms) gml/sgml to html at cern
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

there are references to web browser was very much return to 3270 terminal paradigm.

... also this reference to first webserver outside cern was slac/vm system
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit

for a little other topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#78 SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)

for other topic drift ... followup post in iPad thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#74 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.

so cloud computing is somewhat return to early days of terminal emulation period ... use of PC is mostly as browser ("remote terminal") to applications running on some central server ... with a little bit of use for local computing. misc. past posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:11:43 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
In the 80s, it was fashionable to get an MBA masters degree.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#45 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#70 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#77 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

MBAs also became the poster child for the 90-day business horizon ... purely focused on the quarterly results ... w/o regard for the long term effects.

during the internet bubble, they also played major roles in the investment banking IPO machine; a few tens of millions on the front-end, and then a billion or so out two years later in the IPO (a subsequent failure was even advantagious since it kept the landscape open for the next IPO).

a couple past posts mentioning the 2yr IPO formula
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#25 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#26 Happy DEC-10 Day

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:02:24 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
All of that had to do with how salary/performance reviews were done in personnel. If you were a wage class 2 (paid by the hour), there was a salary ceiling. If you had worked long enough, you would hit that ceiling and could not get a raise for the year. The only way to get a raise was to become a supervisor. This was disasterous for those people who had found their technical niche, were very productive, but needed the raise. Transferring into management to become a supervisor required a completely different set of skills and left no time for the person to do the work they did best.

old posts about HR telling me (in writing) that after a review of my complete professional work history (over decade with them and nearly five years before that), that I was making exactly what I should. I had written a (hard copy) letter raising my salary issue (purely technical position) with some generalized supporting information.

I then responded (in writing) that I found out that they were offering starting salaries for new hires (that I was interviewing to work under my direction) 1/3rd more than I was making.

I almost immediately got a 1/3rd raise (putting me level with the new hire starting salaries) ... but no written response.

I then was feed all sorts stuff how such a situation might have happened ... misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#75 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#83 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#94 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#9 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#74 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#57 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#50 "Portable" data centers

when I had first joined ... the company was still going thru its huge expansion period ... and after six months or so, almost everybody was being pressured into becoming manager. I responded by asking to read the corporate manager's manual (couple hundred pages in 3ring binder). after reading the manual ... I pointed out that I had worked various labor and construction in high school and first year in college ... and my background regarding managing people was incompatible with their white collar professional image. I would also periodically make snide remarks about management career was for those that had become (or were) technically incompetent.

then there were various things over the years that weren't particularly carreer enhancing (like drawing comparisons between the future system effort and a cult film playing down in central sq):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#30 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#72 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#6 The history of Structure capabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#23 Memories of ACC, IBM Channels and Mainframe Internet Devices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#53 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#54 THE runs in DOS box?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#36 U.S. students behind in math, science, analysis says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#52 Revisiting CHARACTER and BUSINESS ETHICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#57 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#49 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#50 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#4 While watching Biography about Bill Gates on CNBC last Night
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#38 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#76 using an FPGA to emulate a vintage computer

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Happy DEC-10 Day

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:38:03 -0500
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Somebody has to mention the IBM PC Junior here. Not only a chicklet keyboard, but also impossible to upgrade to usefulness. One person I know bought it for her kids because it allowed them to run games the other

old reference to "hotshot" upgrade
Date: 11/14/86 09:58:02
From: wheeler

re: hotshot; hotshot has 150 ns chips ... at the same time I put in hotshot, I also replaced 8088 with 8mhs v20. The hotshot comes with a couple of DOS device drivers that a) allocates the first 128k of memory so dos runs in the 150ns memory which really makes things fly. The first 128k can either go unused or be allocated for a electronic disk (variable size with it potentially spilling over into fast memory).

following from pcjr home forum:

..... PCJRHOME FORUM modified at 18:02:16 on 86/09/29 GMT

Subject: Clock/2nd Diskette Drive Adapter/512K Memory

Let me replace my original append of 86/09/24 to include all that I currently know on the jrHOTSHOT(tm). Be sure your 8088 card is socketed before you place your order -- unless you are willing to unsolder it.
WHO:                          WHAT:
ES Quality Products           -- Clock            =  $ 35
5311 Mango Blossom            -- Drive Adapter    =  $ 45
San Jose, CA 95123            -- 512K Memory      =  $179
(408) 224-5574                --                     ----
                              -- TOTAL            =  $259
Ed Straus is the              -- Sidecar trade-in = -$ 89
the owner (?).                -- Net Total        =  $170
You can buy each feature separately -- no need to buy the entire package. The trade-in was because he needed it -- not sure he will continue to need a sidecar, even so you could probably sell on the open market.

Installation was VERY EASY. The physical part of the job was done in less then an hour and I had never had the covers off my PCjr.
INVENTORY:
1) One jrHOTSHOT(tm) board
2) One flat cable for two diskette drives
3) A set of instructions

INSTALLATION:
1) Remove the top cover
2) Remove/set aside the diskette drive
3) Remove 8088 chip and reinstall on the jrHOTSHOT board
4) Insert the board into the 8088 socket
5) Put diskette back in place
6) Install flat cable for two diskette drives
7) Reinstall top cover
8) Setup DOS and go
The instructions were clear. There is a two year warranty which includes fixing the product and giving you technical support. In addition, they will give you your money back within 60 days if you are not satisfied.

One more item is that the memory is "designed as fast memory which produces a 80-130% performance increase over a standard PCjr". I'm not sure exactly what that means, but there is a performance bench mark check in the package -- I have not done any checking yet.

Now for the disclaimer -- I am very satisfied, but I have not checked everything out. The warranty is only as good as the company -- I'm impressed with the company, but I have not done a Dun & Bradstreet check on the their status. You are really on your own. .

Good luck to all of us -- MIKEY LIKES IT!!


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

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:20:13 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#82 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

not very long after my interchange with HR ... I sponsored Boyd's briefing at IBM for the first time ,,, more recently, I found this reference to Boyd's To Be Or To Do on the web:
"There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow. One path leads to promotions, titles, and positions of distinction.... The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will quite often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion. You can't go down both paths, you have to choose. Do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force? To be or to do, that is the question." Colonel John R. Boyd, USAF 1927-1997

From the dedication of Boyd Hall, United States Air Force Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. 17 September 1999


... snip ...

he is credited with the battle plan for the Iraqi conflict in the early 90s, and there have been comments that biggest problem in the current conflict, was that Boyd had died during the interim.

misc. past posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd1
misc. URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:14:21 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
1971 Xerox PARC EARS (Ethernet, Alto, Research character generator, Scanned laser output terminal) laser printer 1976 IBM 3800 mainframe datacentre (@ Woolworth) 1977 Xerox 9700 mainframe datacentre 1979 IBM 6670 departmental office (copier sized) 1982 Canon LBP-10 (desktop) 1984 HP LaserJet 1985 Apple LaserWriter

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#69 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#74 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore

misc. other stuff from long ago and far away ("xxxx in LA" had done a re-implementation of CMS script ... document formater ... for trs80)
Date: 07/03/80 08:56:19
From: wheeler

I was down in LA yesterday and xxxx showed some output from an $800 printer he has attached to trs80. It is as good or better than 3800. The printer looks like it could also be attached to 3101s and/or just driven from a 370 directly. Amoung other things the printer has support for proportional spacing between letters (i.e. will adjust white spaces between letters so that right and left margins come out even) rather than what script has to do by adding extra blanks. Small problem is that it only runs at 30 cps and only prints in one direction. Supposedly cutting one jumper cable and transmitting every other line in reverse allows it to print bi-directional. Hopefully newer model will have full bi-directional printing support.


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

Date: 08/06/80 08:45:31
From: wheeler
To: xxxx in LA

just got some specs. on centronics 737-1 parallel printer. It is listed at $995, 80cps in proportional spaced mode, 50cps in monospaced modee, 3-way paper handling system, etc. What it doesn't say is can it be attached off an RS232 interface, say in the place of the 3202 printer on a 3101 or does it require a specialy programmed mini to drive it ???? (i.e. we've been able to hang TI & CDI terminals off the 3101 interface and use them as printers instead of the 3102 -- it is a standard interface).


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

TYMSHARE started offering their (vm370/cms-based) online computer conferencing to (IBM user group) SHARE in Aug76 as "VMSHARE". This was expanded to "PCSHARE" (after the IBM/PC) was announced. VMSHARE archive is here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

Date: 22 December 1983, 00:37:08 PST
To: distribution

This week's interesting tidbit from PCSHARE:

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

Lucky me, I got my hands on an illicit copy of an advertising brochure for the new Apple MacIntosh! It is a blow by blow, screen by screen comparison (somewhat unfair) between the IBM PC and the Mac. They even show side by side pictures of the 8088 and 68000 chips. The Mac's is bigger therefor its better?? Anyway, there is lots of interesting technical stuff. No prices tho. Of course, if they are comparing it to the PC, its obviously around $2500. Here's the dope:

MC6800DL8 CPU with 128K RAM and 64K ROM (probably 5 MHZ to support the graphics.)

Doesn't look like you can add more RAM. 9 inch 512 x 342 pixel bit-mapped monochrome display. The basic box is 10.9in deep by 9.7in wide by 13.5in high (very small). Comes with carrying handle -- supposed to be lighter than most portables. It looks like a baby 3278 with built-in diskette drive. Built-in 3.5in floppy diskette drive using 400K Sony-style diskettes. Optical track ball mouse with a single button (So it's extremely difficult to press the wrong button). No fan -- clever venting. Calendar/clock Connectors in the back: mouse; external disk drive (second diskette drive); RS232 and RS422 DB9 connectors; polyphonic sound port (it talks!). Keyboard is detached with telephone type jack. I count 58 keys. Not as extensive as IBM's. Supposedly you can generate 217 characters, including accented letters and math symbols. Also described are the Apple Imagewriter printer (Epson-like) and a modem.

Software includes:


- Standard LISA pull-down menus and icons (there's the little trash can!)
- MacWrite word processor (multiple fonts, proportional spacing, etc.)
- MacPaint for making pictures
- MacProject for critical path charting
- MacTerminal VT100, 3278 emulation, VT52, or TTY.
- MacIntosh BASIC and MacIntosh Pascal
- MacDraw (whatever that is)
- Also, 3rd party offerings including: Lotus 1-2-3, PFS, MultiPlan, and
Microsoft Chart, File, and Word.

All software is integrated with windows, icons, pull-down menus, and mouse control. There is also support for Apple's local area network, AppleBus.

The basic unit comes with: computer, display, built-in disk drive, and firmware, a detached keyboard, the mouse, a system disk (Finder and Desk Accessories {eg. calculator, etc.}), a tutorial diskette and audio diskette ("A Guided Tour of Macintosh"), and "one -- count it -- one manual."

I guess I will have to try to find room in my home computer room for yet ANOTHER goodie!


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

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010
Subject: NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=2182

as an aside ... a week or so ago ... one of the tv business news shows had recommendation that businesses buy an extra PC and use it only for online banking ... and never use it for anything else.

This somewhat corresponds to the online banking presentations in the mid-90s. The consumer dial-up online banking were making presentations about moving to the internet ... in large part motivated by the significant consumer support costs related to their proprietary dial-up operations (especially the large library of proprietary serial-port modem drivers required to be supported ... mentions of easily 60+ different drivers).

However, at the same time, the business/commercial/cash-management dial-up online banking operations were making presentations that they would never move to the internet (because of the huge number of security, threat, and vulnerability related issues)

past posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#35 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#32 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#61 German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#9 Homebanking authentication methods: what's being used by your bank?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#18 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#28 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#31 FC5 Special Workshop CFP: Emerging trends in Online Banking and Electronic Payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#64 Do you feel secure with your bank's online banking service?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#65 Barbless
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#26 Return of the Smart Card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#7 An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#2 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#61 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#9 Cyber crooks increasingly target small business accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#12 Need new 3270 emulator: SSH, inexpensive, reliable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#49 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#68 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#70 Client Certificate UI for Chrome?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#73 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#3 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#44 Nearly 500 People Fall Victim to ATM Skimming Scam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#56 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#59 EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#18 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#21 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#72 Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#79 Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:01:23 -0500
Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
There have been a couple of cycles like that in the time I've been around -- one in 1980s, one in the 1990s. The surprise was that as the economy recovered in the mid-2000s, we didn't see an enrollment increase.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#70 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#77 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#81 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#82 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#84 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

there have been numerous articles about overall general decline in STEM (science, technoloyg, engineering, match) and/or science & engineering. overall decline has been tied to declining position of the country in the world ... and programs to improve position tied to increasing enrollment and graduates. nsf stats on enrollment
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/

a few past posts referencing the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#38 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#5 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#69 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

this is also related to reports that the country's education is ranking at or near the bottom of industrial nations (while tied for 1st place for amount spent per student).
http://www.oecd.org/redirect/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html

there have been periodic recent stories that math & CS majors played significant role (having taken jobs in the financial industry) in current economic mess. the counter has been that the business people just directed them to produce the results they wanted (as part of obfuscation about what was really going on) ... aka How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/

misc. past posts mentioning the above article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#49 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#52 Technology and the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#65 Whether, in our financial crisis, the prize for being the biggest liar is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#69 Another quiet week in finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#72 Why was Sarbanes-Oxley not good enough to sent alarms to the regulators about the situation arising today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#78 Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#80 Why did Sox not prevent this financal crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#82 Fraud in financial institution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#15 Financial Crisis - the result of uncontrolled Innovation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#18 Once the dust settles, do you think Milton Friedman's economic theories will be laid to rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#19 What's your view of current global financial / economical situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#26 SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), is this really followed and worthful considering current Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#28 Does anyone get the idea that those responsible for containing this finanical crisis are doing too much?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#34 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#75 In light of the recent financial crisis, did Sarbanes-Oxley fail to work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#82 Greenspan testimony and securization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#83 Chip-and-pin card reader supply-chain subversion 'has netted millions from British shoppers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#70 Is there any technology that we are severely lacking in the Financial industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#49 Have not the following principles been practically disproven, once and for all, by the current global financial meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#50 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#58 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#64 Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#8 Top financial firms of US are eyeing on bailout. It implies to me that their "Risk Management Department's" assessment was way below expectations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#9 Blind-sided, again. Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#23 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#29 Let IT run the company!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#55 Is this the story behind the crunchy credit stuff?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#62 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#63 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#4 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#28 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#16 The Formula That Killed Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#18 HSBC is expected to announce a profit, which is good, what did they do differently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#30 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#36 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#40 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#1 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#38 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#49 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#21 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:35:31 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Sigh! Managers are important. They do the work that real programmers don't want to do (and would do it badly). A well-trained manager holds the umbrella which keeps the bullshit from falling into the keyboard and bollixing up the day's work.

*GOOD* managers are important ... otherwise they may be spending all their time doing stuff for themselves ... and directing others to do even more stuff than they would have to do otherwise (and/or making a bad situation worse); then you are not only doing your job ... and their job ... but also having to compensate for the stuff that they are doing badly.

there are all the old stories about mid-level managers pre-empting all sorts of stuff as status symbols ... 486/ps2 deliveries justified for some real development work being redirected to their desks to spend the day idle with the PROFS menu being burned into the screen (when they bother to actually logon ... otherwise it is the VM370 logon logo being burned into the screen). The status symbol redirection was because the 486/ps2 came with the larger 8514 display ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#41 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC

8514 wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_8514

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:58:16 -0500
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> writes:
Even Boeing had to sell time on its Cray to justify it, and the important thing about a Cray at the time was that it always had potential customers, unlike the one-off machines of today. Then, as now, only the government could make silly purchases and not go out of business.

I was undergraduate and responsible for IT stuff at the univ.

about the time Boeing Computer Services was being formed ... the univ. datacenter had just gone thru a phase with the state legislature being made an independent entity ... the legislature than had to allocate univ. dept. budgets for different places to "buy" services from the univ. datacenter. the univ. datacenter then was also allowed to sell dataprocessing services to other state agencies and gov. operations.

It looked like Boeing was attempting to do something similar with BCS ... turning dataprocessing from a purely overhead expense item into something that looked like P&L (even tho much of it was internal funny money) ... but also allowed to sell dataprocessing services to operations outside of Boeing.

I was con'ed into spending spring vacation teaching 40hr class to the BCS technical staff (was only about half dozen people at the time) ... and then was con'ed into becoming a full-time BCS employee for the summer (I got some sort of upper level designation that allowed me to park in one of the nearer lots at boeing field, I was still within first two dozen bcs employees ... possibly even within first dozen bcs employees).

BCS was being scaffoled off of corporate hdqtrs administrative dataprocessing ... which had a 360/30 primarily for doing payroll. In theory BCS was going to take over control of the other major dataprocessing ... big datacenter operation down in renton field ... and the new one that went in up at Everett. That summer on visits to renton datacenter ... there were constantly pieces of 360/65s sitting in the hallways outside the datacenter ... 360/65s were arriving faster than they could be installed (possibly eventually 20-30? 360/65s ... between renton and everett). There were all sorts of political discussions about getting head of renton (with dozens of high-end 360s and other computers) to report to corporate hdqtrs guy responsible for 360/30.

That summer, they also installed (single processor) 360/67 for running cp67/cms online timesharing in the corporate hdqtrs 360/30 computer room. That summer they also moved the duplex 360/67 from boeing huntsville to seattle boeing aerospace.

renton also had at least one 360/75 (did some amount of classified work ... had black cloth that was pulled over the 360/75 front panel lights when running classified work ... also the view windows on the 1403 printers were covered, perimeter of the 360/75 area was also roped off) and i believe (one or more) cdc6600 in the renton datacenter.

renton was pegged at having something like $300M in ibm 360s. there was study about business continuity ... something about renton datacenter being in the mudslide path from MT. Rainier. This was used to have a complete replicated operation in Everett ... supposedly if the dataprocessing provided by the renton center was unavailable for a week ... it would cost Boeing more than the complete cost of the datacenter.

At the end-of-the-summer ... they did the paper work to have me take employee educational leave of abscence to go back to school. When I finally graduated ... I went with the science center in boston ... rather than returning to boeing.

Current Boeing website claims that BCS wasn't officially formed until the following year.
http://www.boeing.com/history/narrative/n071boe.html

from above:
Boeing Computer Services (BCS), an independent subsidiary of the company. Within three years, BCS had six sales offices to market five commercial computer products -- including BCS/Mainstream, a time-sharing computer service used by 148 government and commercial customers.

... snip ...

BCS did get some federal contracts. I remember visiting the BCS office (in 70s) in washington (DC) area ... and being shown how they had used cms\apl to do the financial modeling for justifying 1st class postage stamp price increase (contract with usps).

misc. past posts mentioning BCS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#8 "HAL's Legacy and the Vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#9 "HAL's Legacy and the Vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#23 Linux IA-64 interrupts [was Re: Itanium benchmarks ...]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#56 YKYBHTLW....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#55 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#30 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#22 Computer Terminal Design Over the Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#43 Killer Hard Drives - Shrapnel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#64 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#71 bps loader, was PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#72 bps loader, was PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#30 Computer History Exhibition, Grenoble France
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#30 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#34 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#37 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#32 SR 15,15 was: IEFBR14 Problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#23 Tools -vs- Utility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#53 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#46 Finites State Machine (OT?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#55 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#58 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#8 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#10 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#47 Gartner: Stop Outsourcing Now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#40 All Good Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#43 Sprint backs out of IBM outsourcing deal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#29 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#30 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#29 Mainframe Limericks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#11 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#13 The SEL 840 computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#49 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#54 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#19 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#60 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#26 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#36 What do YOU call the # sign?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#60 Costing for IT Services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#74 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#15 Mainframe Hall of Fame: Three New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#37 Young Developers Get Old Mainframers' Jobs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#33 Survey Revives Depate Over Mainframe's Future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#43 Boeings New Dreamliner Ready For Maiden Voyage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#44 Boeings New Dreamliner Ready For Maiden Voyage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#49 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#61 Source code for s/360 [PUBLIC]

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:34:57 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#89 Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

also from the BCS history page (not being officially formed until the following year):
In 1970, 13 different computing organizations in Boeing, each supporting different operations within the company, were combined as Boeing Computer Services (BCS), an independent subsidiary of the company. Within three years, BCS had six sales offices to market five commercial computer products -- including BCS/Mainstream, a time-sharing computer service used by 148 government and commercial customers.

... snip ...

also in the reference boeing history page ... click "next narrative" and gets
http://www.boeing.com/history/narrative/n072boe.html

from above:
During the 1980s, Boeing Computer Services headquarters were on a 90-acre site in Bellevue, Wash. The organization also served the federal government from a large facility in Vienna, Va.

BCS designed, installed and operated a nationwide telecommunications network for NASA and provided voice, data, facsimile and full-motion video across the network using the CRAY X-MP supercomputer.


... snip ...

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:12:06 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
That summer, they also installed (single processor) 360/67 for running cp67/cms online timesharing in the corporate hdqtrs 360/30 computer room. That summer they also moved the duplex 360/67 from boeing huntsville to seattle boeing aerospace.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#89 Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#90 Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

360/67 was basically 360/65 with virtual memory hardware ... official support was suppose to be tss/360 ... lots of people bought them for that ... but tss/360 ran into lots of problems and many customers dropped back to use them in purely 360/65 (real memory mode) ... others ran (virtual machine) cp67.

boeing huntsville had two processor smp 360/67 ... but dropped back to use them in 360/65 mode. they had gotten machine to use with bunch of 2250 (large vector graphic) displays for computer design kind of work. the problem was that os/360 had severe storage fragmentation problems with long running applications (like the 2250 graphic design work). so boeing did special hack to os/360 to use the 360/67 virtual memory hardware ... didn't actually do any paging ... just used address relocation to create the appearance of contiguous storage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

2250 was pretty expensive device ... a 2250m1 (attached directly to 360 channel) was about the same price as 2250m4 (2250/1130 computer combination)
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/2250.html

this mentions 2250 attached to 360 at npg, it doesn't say but that should be 360/67 cp67 system at npg.
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0711009

they eventually came out with follow-on replacement called 3250 (which was outsourced, i think sanders? in NH) ... which was also pretty expensive.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=849&dat=19771128&id=pZkmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a1QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6107,3530676

there was a less expensive flavor called 3277GA .... which was large tektronics display with special attachment that hooked into the side of 3277 terminal. some number of 3277ga were used internally by vlsi chip design operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270

more expensive displays used by internal vlsi chip design were CALMAs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calma

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Notes on two presentations by Gordon Bell ca. 1998
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:46:01 -0500
Rick Jones <rick.jones2@hp.com> writes:
Does it even have to be a "supercomputer" to look like a big multi-tiered switch?

So, a system near to my paycheck - HP Superdome - a "cell based" (no, not *that* cell thank you very much :) system - two processors on an FSB with an agent chip that speaks to an interconnect fabric. I suspect it would be considered a "real" computer produced by "real" architects and developers. (those feeling snarky are encouraged to send your snarks in direct email)


we would drop by periodically and talk to the guy brought in to do superdome (had come by way of cray, kingston, & austin) ... HP had acquired convex ... and one of the supposedly objectives of superdome was less expensive flavor of exemplar (& more cost effective than SCI). on the table for awhile was a proposal that superdome be done by a subsidiary where the participants got equity in the operation.

old news blurb from 1997:
HP/Convex has won a hard-fought competition to provide a 256-CPU, 184 GFLOPS Exemplar for a multi-year collaboration with CalTech and JPL. Steve Wallach says plans include a Merced-equipped 256 CPU Exemplar and, around 2000/2001, a Merced-powered TFLOPS system.

... snip ...

there was still some internal competition going on.

--
42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970




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