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System/360--50 years--the future?
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hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 2, 2012, 11:51:45 PM10/2/12
to
Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture that
remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series). Despite
predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its 50th
anniversary. Pretty amazing.
But how long after that?
Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
Also, weren't printers sold off?)
(The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies, using
rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to find a
"system summary" publication like they used to publish for S/360 and S/
370 listing the boxes, their speeds, and peripherals.)
remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series). Despite
predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its 50th
anniversary. Pretty amazing.
But how long after that?
Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
Also, weren't printers sold off?)
(The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies, using
rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to find a
"system summary" publication like they used to publish for S/360 and S/
370 listing the boxes, their speeds, and peripherals.)
John Levine
Oct 3, 2012, 12:45:11 AM10/3/12
to
>Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
>everything over to 'client server'?
Well, you know, it's all client server now, with the mainframe being
>everything over to 'client server'?
the server. The question is more likely whether they'll switch over to
big racks of cheap PCs. Probably not.
A few years ago I was talking to people from ITA software and Orbitz
about the guts of their reservation systems. Until then, airline
reservations had all been on mainframes, more or less the same design
as the original SABER in the early 1960s. ITA's system does very fast
searches with racks of cheap PCs searching in parallel, and then
combining the results. (You can see why Google bought them.)
But actually making reservations and selling tickets can't be done in
parallel, because a ticket is either sold or it isn't, which requires
a database with locking, and that needs a system with a small number
of fast and reliable processors. So their rez and sales system uses
Oracle running on Suns or something like that. If Suns aren't fast
enough, you need a mainframe. Big databases are only getting bigger,
so airlines and banks and other high performance database systems are
going to need mainframes for a long time.
The other thing about mainframes is that their reliabity is
phenomenal. I read about a TPF system that was up continuously for
ten years, through multiple hardware and software upgrades. The crash
after ten years was just bad luck, a hardware failure while the part
of the system that normally would have taken over the load was offline
for scheduled maintenance, and even then it was back up in less than a
minute.
R's,
John
--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Rod Speed
Oct 3, 2012, 1:37:20 AM10/3/12
to
<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
> But how long after that?
> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
Yes, to Hitachi and they have now sold them off to Western Digital.
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
Yep, to Lexmark.
> (The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies,
> using rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to
> find a "system summary" publication like they used to publish for
> S/360 and S/370 listing the boxes, their speeds, and peripherals.)
> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
> But how long after that?
> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
> (The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies,
> using rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to
> find a "system summary" publication like they used to publish for
Bob Martin
Oct 3, 2012, 1:34:13 AM10/3/12
to
in 579691 20121003 063720 "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
><hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
>
>> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
>> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
>> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
>> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
>
>> But how long after that?
>
>> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
>> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
>> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
>> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
>
>> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
>> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
>> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
>
>Yes, to Hitachi and they have now sold them off to Western Digital.
>
>> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>
>Yep, to Lexmark.
It was IBM Lexington which became Lexmark.
><hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
>
>> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
>> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
>> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
>> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
>
>> But how long after that?
>
>> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
>> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
>> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
>> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
>
>> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
>> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
>> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
>
>Yes, to Hitachi and they have now sold them off to Western Digital.
>
>> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>
>Yep, to Lexmark.
Rod Speed
Oct 3, 2012, 3:43:46 AM10/3/12
to
Bob Martin <bob.m...@excite.com> wrote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark#History
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>><hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
>>> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
>>> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
>>> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
>>> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
>>> But how long after that?
>>> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
>>> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
>>> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
>>> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
>>> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
>>> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
>>> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
>>Yes, to Hitachi and they have now sold them off to Western Digital.
>>> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>> Yep, to Lexmark.
> It was IBM Lexington which became Lexmark.
Its much more complicated than that ownership wise.
>><hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
>>> Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture
>>> that remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series).
>>> Despite predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its
>>> 50th anniversary. Pretty amazing.
>>> But how long after that?
>>> Will the IBM mainframe continue, or will customers finally switch
>>> everything over to 'client server'? IBM has made many enhancements
>>> over the last 50 years, and today's system includes support for Linux,
>>> encryption, and other features not even dreamed of 50 years ago.
>>> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
>>> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
>>> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
>>Yes, to Hitachi and they have now sold them off to Western Digital.
>>> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>> Yep, to Lexmark.
> It was IBM Lexington which became Lexmark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark#History
Peter Flass
Oct 3, 2012, 8:00:32 AM10/3/12
to
On 10/2/2012 11:51 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
Yes, and yes to the last two. I think. IBM still does chips.
>
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>
> (The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies, using
> rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to find a
> "system summary" publication like they used to publish for S/360 and S/
> 370 listing the boxes, their speeds, and peripherals.)
>
manuals somewhere on their website it's almost impossible to find them,
and you'd certainly never stumble on them by accident.
--
Pete
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 3, 2012, 10:12:48 AM10/3/12
to
out z196 goes for $28M ... the $5B sales would be equivalent of
approx. 180 maxed. out z196 machines. It notes that is approx. 4% of
total sales ... but total mainframe revenue (including software,
services and storage) accounts for 25% of revenue (and 40% of profit)
... that then is ratio of 25/4 for total mainframe revenue compared to
mainframe computer revenue ... or customer with maxed out z196 (at $28M)
would be paying more like $175M. maxed out z196 is rated at aggregate of
50BIPs ... or $175M/50 = $3.5M/BIPS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#31 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#67 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
for comparison, IBM has base price of $1815 for e5-2600 blade which have
ratings of 527BIPS or $3.44/BIPS (IBM is taken in a million times per
processor cycle for mainframe than e5-2600)
max. out z196 mainframe peaks out at 2M IOPS with 104 (FICON) channels
and 14 storage subsystems. The 14 system assist processors are capable
of 2.2M SSCH/sec at 100% busy ... but recommendation is to operate the
system assist processors at no more than 70% cpu busy or 1.5M SSCH/sec
this is with ibm FICON channels ... which is layer built on top of fibre
channel standard ... which drastically reduces throughput and efficiency
of the underlying fibre channel standard. By comparison emulex says it
has a fibre channel for e5-2600 capable of over million IOPS on a single
fibre channel. recent references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#4 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#5 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#13 Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#9 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
LLNL had some serial technology and around 1988 they started effort to
standardize as fibre channel standard. I had been involved with LLNL
off&on since late 70s ... including doing some benchmarks for LLNL
looking at possibly getting large number of 4341s for computational
work ... some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341
and got dragged into various parts of the fibre channel standard ...
have a bunch of archive from fibre channel standard mailing list
... including some amount of discored when POK channel engineers got
involved doing the work to layer FICON on top of underlying fibre
channel standard (significantly cutting throughput and efficiency).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Scott Lurndal
Oct 3, 2012, 10:15:15 AM10/3/12
to
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture that
>remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series). Despite
>predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its 50th
>anniversary. Pretty amazing.
This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>Nearly fifty years ago IBM announced a new mainframe architecture that
>remains in widespread service to this day (as the Z series). Despite
>predictions it was dead, it will still be in service on its 50th
>anniversary. Pretty amazing.
Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
>
>(The IBM website is somewhat cryptic on current technologies, using
>rather esoteric descriptions for its "solutions". It's hard to find a
>"system summary" publication like they used to publish for S/360 and S/
>370 listing the boxes, their speeds, and peripherals.)
currently embargoed (for participants only), but will be released to
the public in december).
The Z12 presentation has good detail on the processor. The range of
peripherals compared to 30 years ago has been considerably reduced
(tiered storage and networking interfaces for the most part).
scott
Scott Lurndal
Oct 3, 2012, 10:18:17 AM10/3/12
to
John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> writes:
>
>The other thing about mainframes is that their reliabity is
>phenomenal. I read about a TPF system that was up continuously for
>ten years, through multiple hardware and software upgrades.
A recent article on El Reg pointed out that this has not necessarily
>
>The other thing about mainframes is that their reliabity is
>phenomenal. I read about a TPF system that was up continuously for
>ten years, through multiple hardware and software upgrades.
been the case for the last few years - over 10% of Z sites had unscheduled
downtime.
s
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 3, 2012, 10:29:08 AM10/3/12
to
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
> Look around for the hot-chips 2012 presentations (the 2012 proceedings are
> currently embargoed (for participants only), but will be released to
> the public in december).
>
> The Z12 presentation has good detail on the processor. The range of
> peripherals compared to 30 years ago has been considerably reduced
> (tiered storage and networking interfaces for the most part).
re:
> Look around for the hot-chips 2012 presentations (the 2012 proceedings are
> currently embargoed (for participants only), but will be released to
> the public in december).
>
> The Z12 presentation has good detail on the processor. The range of
> peripherals compared to 30 years ago has been considerably reduced
> (tiered storage and networking interfaces for the most part).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 Systeme/360--50 years--the future?
max z10 has 64 processors and rated at 30BIPS or 469MIPS/processor
max z196 has 80 processors and rated at 50BIPS or 625MIPS/processor
claim is possibly half of per processor increase between z10 & z196
is introduction of out-of-order instruction execution
max ec12 claims 101 processor and rating of 75BIPS or 743MIPS/processor
part of the improvement from z196 to latest ec12 is further enhancements
in out-of-order instruction execution.
recent posts mentioning ec12:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#39 The IBM zEnterprise EC12 announcment
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#41 The IBM zEnterprise EC12 announcment
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#56 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#67 Strings (hijacked from: The IBM zEnterprise EC12 announcment)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#71 Strings (hijacked from: The IBM zEnterprise EC12 announcment)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#72 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#74 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#77 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#79 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#81 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#82 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#90 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#99 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#100 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#0 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#13 Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#9 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
by comparison e5-2600 blade has rating of 527BIPS with two 8-core chips,
or 33BIPS/processor. there is some guestimate that e5-4600 blade will
have rating of over 1000BIPS with four 8-core chips (but I haven't seen
any published numbers yet). recent posts mentioning e5-2600:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#3 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#4 Memory versus processor speed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#105 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#0 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#4 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#7 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#36 Should IBM allow the use of Hercules as z system emulator?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#38 Should IBM allow the use of Hercules as z system emulator?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#4 Think You Know The Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#20 Mainframes Warming Up to the Cloud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#35 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#52 How will mainframers retiring be different from Y2K?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#62 What are your experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#11 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#16 Think You Know The Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#84 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#88 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#1 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#34 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#46 Word Length
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#66 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#95 printer history Languages influenced by PL/1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#96 The older Hardware school
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#41 Cloud Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#20 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#27 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#28 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#30 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#34 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#42 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#51 Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#56 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#81 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#87 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#88 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#90 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#100 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#3 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#4 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#5 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#13 Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#5 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#13 Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#31 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#67 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#67 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#9 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
Charles Richmond
Oct 3, 2012, 2:13:40 PM10/3/12
to
<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message
news:e2f972b4-7e90-4875...@o7g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>
> [snip...] [snip...]
> [snip...]
*mega*byte Winchester drive. The drive was manufactured by IBM in Thailand
and was encased in a hard black nylon case. The drive is now used in my
Linux box (with an AMD chip) and is used exclusively as swap space.
One point is... what is an IBM drive doing in a Mac??? Another point...
manufactured by IBM can mean many things. In this case, it meant made in
Thailand.
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
news:e2f972b4-7e90-4875...@o7g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>
> [snip...] [snip...]
> [snip...]
>
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>
In 1995, I bought an Apple Macintosh 635 computer. It came with a 350
> Also, how much of IBM, if any, will continue in manufacturing? Does
> IBM still make its own circuit cards and chips? Does it make any
> peripherals? (Weren't disk drives, which IBM invented, sold off?
> Also, weren't printers sold off?)
>
*mega*byte Winchester drive. The drive was manufactured by IBM in Thailand
and was encased in a hard black nylon case. The drive is now used in my
Linux box (with an AMD chip) and is used exclusively as swap space.
One point is... what is an IBM drive doing in a Mac??? Another point...
manufactured by IBM can mean many things. In this case, it meant made in
Thailand.
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 3, 2012, 2:25:33 PM10/3/12
to
"Charles Richmond" <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
> In 1995, I bought an Apple Macintosh 635 computer. It came with a 350
> *mega*byte Winchester drive. The drive was manufactured by IBM in
> Thailand and was encased in a hard black nylon case. The drive is now
> used in my Linux box (with an AMD chip) and is used exclusively as
> swap space.
>
> One point is... what is an IBM drive doing in a Mac??? Another
> point... manufactured by IBM can mean many things. In this case, it
> meant made in Thailand.
re:
> In 1995, I bought an Apple Macintosh 635 computer. It came with a 350
> *mega*byte Winchester drive. The drive was manufactured by IBM in
> Thailand and was encased in a hard black nylon case. The drive is now
> used in my Linux box (with an AMD chip) and is used exclusively as
> swap space.
>
> One point is... what is an IBM drive doing in a Mac??? Another
> point... manufactured by IBM can mean many things. In this case, it
> meant made in Thailand.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
also remember that apple became part of AIM (apple, ibm, motorola)
... aka somerset ... moving to power/pc. the folklore is that apple then
moved off power/pc to intel ... when it looked like power/pc would just
be concentrating on producing server chips and not targeting the laptop
(later tablet) market.
misc. past posts mentioning 801, romp, rios, iliad, power, power/pc,
somerset, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
a few years later the disk divsion gets sold off to hitachi which later
it is sold off by hitachi
late 80s, a senior disk engineer gets a talk scheduled at the annual,
internal, world-wide communication group conference and opens the talk
with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible
for the demise of the disk division. recent posts repeated the story:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#73 Reject gmail
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#92 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#8 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#32 New IBM mainframe instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#40 Where are all the old tech workers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#61 "25 Years of IBM's OS/2"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#32 IBM bans Siri: Privacy risk, or corporate paranoia at its best?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#34 Co-existance of z/OS and z/VM on same DASD farm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#72 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#12 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#57 How will mainframers retiring be different from Y2K?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#28 Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#23 How to Stuff a Wild Duck
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#46 Slackware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#70 END OF FILE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#78 END OF FILE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#31 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
Quadibloc
Oct 3, 2012, 2:33:42 PM10/3/12
to
The IBM System/360 had a beautiful and elegant architecture. Thus, I
would wish it a long future.
But the demise of the 680x0 shows that beautiful doesn't necessarily
win out over ugly (x86) - what counts is the software base.
And how is IBM handling the 360 architecture? Basically, it sells
zSystem iron at inflated prices, thanks to the value of the legacy
software only available for it. That is a profitable strategy, but
it's also a dead-end strategy.
IBM didn't succeed with OS/2, and I can't seriously entertain the
thought that IBM could succeed in an effort to make the 360
architecture the new standard on desktop PCs or smartphones, blowing
the x86 and ARM out of the water. Thus, despite the fact that getting
a mass market and getting economies of scale are the keys to the long-
term survival of an architecture, replacing IBM's current strategy by
one I would regard as... virtuous... is not a real option.
Still, I think the 360 architecture will likely be around for another
30 years - and by that time, advances in chipmaking may do in the
whole von Neumann paradigm - rendering moot the issue of whether or
not the System/360 would predecease the x86.
John Savard
would wish it a long future.
But the demise of the 680x0 shows that beautiful doesn't necessarily
win out over ugly (x86) - what counts is the software base.
And how is IBM handling the 360 architecture? Basically, it sells
zSystem iron at inflated prices, thanks to the value of the legacy
software only available for it. That is a profitable strategy, but
it's also a dead-end strategy.
IBM didn't succeed with OS/2, and I can't seriously entertain the
thought that IBM could succeed in an effort to make the 360
architecture the new standard on desktop PCs or smartphones, blowing
the x86 and ARM out of the water. Thus, despite the fact that getting
a mass market and getting economies of scale are the keys to the long-
term survival of an architecture, replacing IBM's current strategy by
one I would regard as... virtuous... is not a real option.
Still, I think the 360 architecture will likely be around for another
30 years - and by that time, advances in chipmaking may do in the
whole von Neumann paradigm - rendering moot the issue of whether or
not the System/360 would predecease the x86.
John Savard
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 3, 2012, 3:47:33 PM10/3/12
to
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
well over half of airline reservation system processing is route & fare
lookup ... much of which can be done in parallel.
TPF has been function limited system to get its thruput ... airlines had
been doing infrastructure & data maintenance on more traditional systems
... and then periodically rebuilding TPF data from scratch (scheduled
downtime). 20yrs ago, one of the offspring worked for air freight
forwarder where he had access to major airline res systems ... not for
seats ... but for space in the belly of the plane. rebuild was typically
sunday night a couple times a month ... but sometimes it overan its
allocated window impacting scheduling on monday morning.
past posts mentioning rewritting/redoing routes for airline res system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#17 Old Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#26 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#69 Block oriented I/O over IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#45 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#3 News IBM loses supercomputer crown
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#83 HONE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#67 Tweaking old computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#48 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#30 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#67 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#44 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#58 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#14 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#6 Xah Lee's Unixism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#23 Demo: Things in Hierarchies (w/o RM/SQL)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#29 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#26 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#85 The TransRelational Model: Performance Concerns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#22 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#41 something like a CTC on a PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#47 Using the Cache to Change the Width of Memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#44 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#5 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#4 How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#18 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#52 US Air computers delay psgrs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#22 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#41 US Airways badmouths legacy system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#41 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#72 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#8 nouns and adjectives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#19 American Airlines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#32 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#41 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technologies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#33 IBM touts encryption innovation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#55 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#66 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#59 "Portable" data centers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#73 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#74 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#80 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#19 Processes' memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#52 Article says mainframe most cost-efficient platform
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#42 IBM 3883 Manuals
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#16 Sabre Talk Information?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#81 Hashing for DISTINCT or GROUP BY in SQL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#17 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#42 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#14 Sabre; The First Online Reservation System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#43 Sabre; The First Online Reservation System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#8 Multiple Virtual Memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#77 program coding pads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#35 Last Word on Dennis Ritchie
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#92 Innovation and iconoclasm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#8 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#7 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#23 How to Stuff a Wild Duck
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#50 1132 printer history
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 3, 2012, 7:27:16 PM10/3/12
to
On Oct 3, 2:33 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> And how is IBM handling the 360 architecture? Basically, it sells
> zSystem iron at inflated prices, thanks to the value of the legacy
> software only available for it. That is a profitable strategy, but
> it's also a dead-end strategy.
[snip]
> And how is IBM handling the 360 architecture? Basically, it sells
> zSystem iron at inflated prices, thanks to the value of the legacy
> software only available for it. That is a profitable strategy, but
> it's also a dead-end strategy.
What kind of strategy would you recommend for S/360?
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 3, 2012, 7:36:05 PM10/3/12
to
On Oct 3, 10:12 am, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
> recent thread that IBM earns around $5B on mainframe sales ... a maxed
> out z196 goes for $28M ... the $5B sales would be equivalent of
> approx. 180 maxed. out z196 machines.
I'm a bit confused--are you saying that there are roughly only 180
> recent thread that IBM earns around $5B on mainframe sales ... a maxed
> out z196 goes for $28M ... the $5B sales would be equivalent of
> approx. 180 maxed. out z196 machines.
mainframes out there today? Even considering that a mainframe box
today might represent five older machines, that still leaves the
equivalent of only 1,000 machines. Back in 1401 days they sold 10,000
of those, and I think they sold more S/360-30's.
>It notes that is approx. 4% of
> total sales ... but total mainframe revenue (including software,
> services and storage) accounts for 25% of revenue (and 40% of profit) . . .
major sellers. I guess the rental for various utilities and compilers
is quite steep today.
I understand CA (Computer Associates) bought up many once independent
software firms (like Easytrieve, ADR and such) and charges steep
prices, even if the product is essentially stabilized.
>Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue
Dan Espen
Oct 3, 2012, 7:49:30 PM10/3/12
to
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> On Oct 3, 10:12 am, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
>
>
>> recent thread that IBM earns around $5B on mainframe sales ... a maxed
>> out z196 goes for $28M ... the $5B sales would be equivalent of
>> approx. 180 maxed. out z196 machines.
>
> I'm a bit confused--are you saying that there are roughly only 180
> mainframes out there today? Even considering that a mainframe box
> today might represent five older machines, that still leaves the
> equivalent of only 1,000 machines. Back in 1401 days they sold 10,000
> of those, and I think they sold more S/360-30's.
I think Lynn is giving us annual sales.
> On Oct 3, 10:12 am, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
>
>
>> recent thread that IBM earns around $5B on mainframe sales ... a maxed
>> out z196 goes for $28M ... the $5B sales would be equivalent of
>> approx. 180 maxed. out z196 machines.
>
> I'm a bit confused--are you saying that there are roughly only 180
> mainframes out there today? Even considering that a mainframe box
> today might represent five older machines, that still leaves the
> equivalent of only 1,000 machines. Back in 1401 days they sold 10,000
> of those, and I think they sold more S/360-30's.
That would be 180 sold per year.
But the number would be higher because not everyone buys a maxed out machine.
I'm not sure anyone buys a maxed out machine.
--
Dan Espen
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 3, 2012, 8:17:03 PM10/3/12
to
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> I'm a bit confused--are you saying that there are roughly only 180
> mainframes out there today? Even considering that a mainframe box
> today might represent five older machines, that still leaves the
> equivalent of only 1,000 machines. Back in 1401 days they sold 10,000
> of those, and I think they sold more S/360-30's.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#16 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
there is estimate of 10,000 mainframe systems in the world today ... no
breakdown as avg. age of those systems, what kind, etc.
what i referred to was a max. z196 goes for $28M .... and $5B/year in
mainframe sales ... which is the equivalent of 180 max z196
machines/year. there is no statement about the breakdown/distribution
for the actual machines sold for that $5B ... probably a larger number
of smaller (less expensive) mainframe configurations.
Message has been deleted
Peter Flass
Oct 4, 2012, 7:45:15 AM10/4/12
to
On 10/3/2012 8:17 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
...
always want to have some wiggle roon for upgrades before you have to
replace the system.
--
Pete
...
>
> what i referred to was a max. z196 goes for $28M .... and $5B/year in
> mainframe sales ... which is the equivalent of 180 max z196
> machines/year. there is no statement about the breakdown/distribution
> for the actual machines sold for that $5B ... probably a larger number
> of smaller (less expensive) mainframe configurations.
>
I would assume most customers would *not* buy a maxed-out machine. You
> what i referred to was a max. z196 goes for $28M .... and $5B/year in
> mainframe sales ... which is the equivalent of 180 max z196
> machines/year. there is no statement about the breakdown/distribution
> for the actual machines sold for that $5B ... probably a larger number
> of smaller (less expensive) mainframe configurations.
>
always want to have some wiggle roon for upgrades before you have to
replace the system.
--
Pete
Peter Flass
Oct 4, 2012, 7:56:42 AM10/4/12
to
On 10/4/2012 3:41 AM, Morten Reistad wrote:
>
> It remains IBM policy never to leave a succeeding customer high
> and dry if they are willing to spend the money. As long as there
> are a core of such zSystem customers the 360 line will still be
> supported.
>
I'm not sure how true that is anymore. I recall trying to upgrade the
OS on a Power system so I could run some particular piece of software
that required that version. Turns out newer releases of AIX no longer
supported micro-channel hardware, so we would have needed a new box.
The project was essentially a pilot, and might have resulted in a sale
if we could have got it to the testing stage, but as it is they went
with some windoze POS.
--
Pete
>
> It remains IBM policy never to leave a succeeding customer high
> and dry if they are willing to spend the money. As long as there
> are a core of such zSystem customers the 360 line will still be
> supported.
>
I'm not sure how true that is anymore. I recall trying to upgrade the
OS on a Power system so I could run some particular piece of software
that required that version. Turns out newer releases of AIX no longer
supported micro-channel hardware, so we would have needed a new box.
The project was essentially a pilot, and might have resulted in a sale
if we could have got it to the testing stage, but as it is they went
with some windoze POS.
--
Pete
Shmuel Metz
Oct 3, 2012, 6:05:12 PM10/3/12
to
In <TLXas.12564$M61....@fed14.iad>, on 10/03/2012
were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
dead.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org
at 02:15 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
Are you sure? AFAIK the only Unisys processors running legacy software
>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
dead.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 4, 2012, 10:06:17 AM10/4/12
to
Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> writes:
> I would assume most customers would *not* buy a maxed-out machine.
> You always want to have some wiggle roon for upgrades before you have
> to replace the system.
> I would assume most customers would *not* buy a maxed-out machine.
> You always want to have some wiggle roon for upgrades before you have
> to replace the system.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#16 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#17 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#16 System/360--50 years--the future?
part is left-over calculation about upper bound on total mainframe mips
in the world ... aggregate being less than the aggregate of processing
power in any of the major cloud megadatacenters. if you assume every one
of the estimataed 10,000 mainframes was maxed out z196 @50BIPS, that
places upper limit of 500TIPS ... but the avg. is probably closer to
1-2BIPS ... placing total aggregate mainframe processing in the world
today around 1-2TIPS. 500TIPS would possibly be approx same order of
magnitude as some of the individual major cloud megadatacenters.
note that long-time loyal customer of mainframes are big financial
institutions that frequently have large number of maximum configured
mainframes in single datacenters (frequently sized to complete work in
overnight batch window). they could be considered driving factor behind
increasing max. number of processors in single configuration ... going
from 64 processors with z10 to 80 processors with z196 to 101 processors
for ec12.
I've pontificated periodically that many these institutions spent
billions in the 90s on failed re-engineering mainframe overnight batch
applications for straight-through processing on large number of parallel
killer micors
old posts about doing working on performance optimization for major
mainframe customer a little over a decade ago. They had 40+ maxed out
mainframes (of the period, max age of their mainframes was 18m) at
around $30M (well over $1B). The size/number of mainframes were
dedicated by large 500k statement cobol application that ran in
overnight batch window and needed to complete in the overnight window
(some other financial institutions considered this a "small" operation)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#47 Is computer history taught now?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#48 Is computer history taught now?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#81 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#76 Architectural Diversity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#9 Union Pacific Railroad ditches its mainframe for SOA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#77 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#41 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#35 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#41 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#63 Collection of APL documents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#60 Spontaneous conduction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#50 Can any one tell about what is APL language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#25 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
Scott Lurndal
Oct 4, 2012, 10:31:14 AM10/4/12
to
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>In <TLXas.12564$M61....@fed14.iad>, on 10/03/2012
> at 02:15 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
>
>Are you sure? AFAIK the only Unisys processors running legacy software
>were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
>dead.
>
Last summer I went down to City Of Santa Ana who was replacing a V380
>In <TLXas.12564$M61....@fed14.iad>, on 10/03/2012
> at 02:15 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
>
>Are you sure? AFAIK the only Unisys processors running legacy software
>were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
>dead.
>
with a bunch of windows boxes. The V380 was 25 years old at the time,
and it will run all B2500 software natively.
Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 -> B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
The B2500 included software to run B300 programs. From the B2500 on, a B2500 binary would execute
on every member of the family with no recompile required.
The last design was the V500 in the mid-80s (multiprocessor system).
I believe there are still a couple V400 and V300 systems running after the V380 at Santa Ana was
decommissioned. I think FiServ in milwaukee shut down their V500's a few years ago; they
were the largest user and had been buying used systems for spare parts for many years.
Scott Lurndal
Oct 4, 2012, 10:33:31 AM10/4/12
to
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>In <TLXas.12564$M61....@fed14.iad>, on 10/03/2012
> at 02:15 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
>
>Are you sure? AFAIK the only Unisys processors running legacy software
>were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
>dead.
And of course, the B2500 line lives on in the V-series simulator.
> at 02:15 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>>This is of course also true for the Sperry Univac and Burroughs Large
>>Systems (even the medium systems were used from 1963 through 2011).
>
>Are you sure? AFAIK the only Unisys processors running legacy software
>were descendents of the B6500 and U1108; the U490 and B2500 lines were
>dead.
Screenshots:
http://vseries.lurndal.org/doku.php?id=simulator:installation
scott
Quadibloc
Oct 4, 2012, 3:02:54 PM10/4/12
to
As I pointed out, the other strategy would be to aggressively push the
S/360 architecture as the "new standard" - instead of, say, the
PowerPC architecture. That would, however, require OS/2 for
zArchitecture, say, to wrest control of the desktop from Microsoft
Windows.
Since that is clearly a vain hope, I can't recommend that strategy.
Hence, what IBM is doing probably is the most profitable way to
exploit the asset. That doesn't change the fact, though, that it is
ultimately a dead-end strategy, which will eventually see the S/360
fade to oblivion.
Perhaps after the cash cow has shrunk, dropping prices in an attempt
to increase volumes will be rational, but right now it isn't.
John Savard
Shmuel Metz
Oct 4, 2012, 4:57:46 PM10/4/12
to
In <S4hbs.1272$Kp4...@fe16.iad>, on 10/04/2012
>The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
A simulator. That's not the same as having a followon machine.
at 02:31 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
The B2500 was a new architecture.
> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
>The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
Scott Lurndal
Oct 4, 2012, 5:39:03 PM10/4/12
to
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>In <S4hbs.1272$Kp4...@fe16.iad>, on 10/04/2012
> at 02:31 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
>
>The B2500 was a new architecture.
A signifcant portion of it derived from the B300.
> at 02:31 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>
>> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
>
>The B2500 was a new architecture.
>
>>The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
B300 systems.
>
>A simulator. That's not the same as having a followon machine.
scott
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 5, 2012, 12:46:54 AM10/5/12
to
On Oct 3, 8:17 pm, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
> what i referred to was a max. z196 goes for $28M .... and $5B/year in
> mainframe sales ... which is the equivalent of 180 max z196
> machines/year. there is no statement about the breakdown/distribution
> for the actual machines sold for that $5B ... probably a larger number
> of smaller (less expensive) mainframe configurations.
I noticed in a store today IBM "point of sale terminals" (nee cash
> what i referred to was a max. z196 goes for $28M .... and $5B/year in
> mainframe sales ... which is the equivalent of 180 max z196
> machines/year. there is no statement about the breakdown/distribution
> for the actual machines sold for that $5B ... probably a larger number
> of smaller (less expensive) mainframe configurations.
registers). This is ironic given Watson's origins at NCR.
One of these days I've got to get up to Endicott. Of course, given
today's paranoia, I'll probably get arrested after walking around and
asking questions on the sidewalk.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 5, 2012, 12:51:48 AM10/5/12
to
On Oct 4, 3:02 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> Since that is clearly a vain hope, I can't recommend that strategy.
> Hence, what IBM is doing probably is the most profitable way to
> exploit the asset. That doesn't change the fact, though, that it is
> ultimately a dead-end strategy, which will eventually see the S/360
> fade to oblivion.
>
> Perhaps after the cash cow has shrunk, dropping prices in an attempt
> to increase volumes will be rational, but right now it isn't.
I suspect at some future point the installed base will become so small
> Since that is clearly a vain hope, I can't recommend that strategy.
> Hence, what IBM is doing probably is the most profitable way to
> exploit the asset. That doesn't change the fact, though, that it is
> ultimately a dead-end strategy, which will eventually see the S/360
> fade to oblivion.
>
> Perhaps after the cash cow has shrunk, dropping prices in an attempt
> to increase volumes will be rational, but right now it isn't.
that they'll just sell off the product line to someone else or someone
will develop server emulators or simulators. There will be pressure
on remaining users to convert as the system won't be supported
anymore, so major enterprise systems will be converted. Perhaps some
modest reporting systems will be run under emulation.
It's been a while since I checked, but there's a company (Pottstown,
PA, I think) that offers punched card equipment if needed. I'm sure
there are companies that can process 1600 or 6250 bpi reel tapes or
old Teletype ASCII paper tapes.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 5, 2012, 12:55:39 AM10/5/12
to
On Oct 4, 4:58 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
is adequate.
When IBM introduced S/360, it realized software simulators would be
too slow, especially for big machines like the 7090, so they developed
hardware emulation, making good use of the microcode.
There were some 1401 users running Autocoder into the 1990s. I guess
Y2K needs forced the remaining few to convert, but I wonder "who
turned out the lights" for 1401 and 7090 processing--or if people are
still using it today.
<spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> >The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
>
> A simulator. That's not the same as having a followon machine.
I guess modern machines are powerful enough that a software simulator
> >The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
>
> A simulator. That's not the same as having a followon machine.
is adequate.
When IBM introduced S/360, it realized software simulators would be
too slow, especially for big machines like the 7090, so they developed
hardware emulation, making good use of the microcode.
There were some 1401 users running Autocoder into the 1990s. I guess
Y2K needs forced the remaining few to convert, but I wonder "who
turned out the lights" for 1401 and 7090 processing--or if people are
still using it today.
Walter Bushell
Oct 5, 2012, 8:25:59 AM10/5/12
to
In article <m3k3v6e...@garlic.com>,
imagine much more of the profits are from these.
--
This space unintentionally left blank.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
> I've pontificated periodically that many these institutions spent
> billions in the 90s on failed re-engineering mainframe overnight batch
> applications for straight-through processing on large number of parallel
> killer micors
And I've read that 4% of IBMs revenues come from these. I would
> I've pontificated periodically that many these institutions spent
> billions in the 90s on failed re-engineering mainframe overnight batch
> applications for straight-through processing on large number of parallel
> killer micors
imagine much more of the profits are from these.
--
This space unintentionally left blank.
Scott Lurndal
Oct 5, 2012, 10:08:36 AM10/5/12
to
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>>In <S4hbs.1272$Kp4...@fe16.iad>, on 10/04/2012
>> at 02:31 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>>
>>> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>>>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
>>
>>The B2500 was a new architecture.
>
>A signifcant portion of it derived from the B300.
>
>>
>>>The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
>
>Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for
>B300 systems.
Moreover the instruction set for the B2500 was a direct extention of the
>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>>In <S4hbs.1272$Kp4...@fe16.iad>, on 10/04/2012
>> at 02:31 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>>
>>> Electrodata 205 -> Burroughs B300 -> B[23]500 -> B[34]700 ->
>>>B[234]800 -> B[234]900 -> V3[48]0 -> V4X0 -> V5X0
>>
>>The B2500 was a new architecture.
>
>A signifcant portion of it derived from the B300.
>
>>
>>>The B2500 included software to run B300 programs.
>
>Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for
>B300 systems.
instruction set for the B300 (3 operand instructions with field lengths). The
field lengths grew by one digit (from 1 to 2 digits), and the operands grew
from 3 digits to 6 digits. Additional instructions were added. And a
simple translater was made available to translate B300 binaries to B2500 binaries
(and another translator handled 1401 binaries).
scott
Scott Lurndal
Oct 5, 2012, 10:11:17 AM10/5/12
to
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>On Oct 4, 3:02=A0pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> Since that is clearly a vain hope, I can't recommend that strategy.
>> Hence, what IBM is doing probably is the most profitable way to
>> exploit the asset. That doesn't change the fact, though, that it is
>> ultimately a dead-end strategy, which will eventually see the S/360
>> fade to oblivion.
>>
>> Perhaps after the cash cow has shrunk, dropping prices in an attempt
>> to increase volumes will be rational, but right now it isn't.
>
>I suspect at some future point the installed base will become so small
>that they'll just sell off the product line to someone else or someone
>will develop server emulators or simulators.
http://www.hercules-390.org/
>
>> Since that is clearly a vain hope, I can't recommend that strategy.
>> Hence, what IBM is doing probably is the most profitable way to
>> exploit the asset. That doesn't change the fact, though, that it is
>> ultimately a dead-end strategy, which will eventually see the S/360
>> fade to oblivion.
>>
>> Perhaps after the cash cow has shrunk, dropping prices in an attempt
>> to increase volumes will be rational, but right now it isn't.
>
>I suspect at some future point the installed base will become so small
>that they'll just sell off the product line to someone else or someone
>will develop server emulators or simulators.
Al Kossow
Oct 5, 2012, 11:15:16 AM10/5/12
to
On 10/4/12 9:51 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> It's been a while since I checked, but there's a company (Pottstown,
> PA, I think) that offers punched card equipment if needed.
Cardmation, recently out of business as the owner passed away.
> It's been a while since I checked, but there's a company (Pottstown,
> PA, I think) that offers punched card equipment if needed.
http://www.cityfos.com/CARDAMATION-COMPANY-INC-221786.profile.htm
The cardmation.com web site is gone.
Scott Lurndal
Oct 5, 2012, 12:49:38 PM10/5/12
to
For example, here's the price list for 80-column readers:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080723205608/http://www.cardamation.com/prices.html
scott
Message has been deleted
Shmuel Metz
Oct 5, 2012, 4:53:32 PM10/5/12
to
In <Xlnbs.51$5R7...@fe08.iad>, on 10/04/2012
7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
followon.
at 09:39 PM, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) said:
>Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>systems.
Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
>Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>systems.
7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
followon.
Quadibloc
Oct 6, 2012, 12:06:35 PM10/6/12
to
On Oct 4, 10:55 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> I guess modern machines are powerful enough that a software simulator
> is adequate.
There is more to it than that. New techniques of "just-in-time"
> I guess modern machines are powerful enough that a software simulator
> is adequate.
translation allow software simulations of other computers, provided
things like the floating-point types are the same, to be quite
efficient these days.
Instead of 1% efficiency, 90% efficiency is possible. Even the jump
from, say, 10% to 50% is a major gain, in cases where the contrast is
not as great.
John Savard
Quadibloc
Oct 6, 2012, 12:08:43 PM10/6/12
to
On Oct 4, 10:46 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Oct 3, 8:17 pm, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
> I noticed in a store today IBM "point of sale terminals" (nee cash
> registers). This is ironic given Watson's origins at NCR.
Not really - not for IBM, at least. He did want to beat NCR at the
> On Oct 3, 8:17 pm, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
> I noticed in a store today IBM "point of sale terminals" (nee cash
> registers). This is ironic given Watson's origins at NCR.
cash register game.
John Savard
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 7, 2012, 9:11:12 AM10/7/12
to
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> writes:
> I've pontificated periodically that many these institutions spent
> billions in the 90s on failed re-engineering mainframe overnight batch
> applications for straight-through processing on large number of parallel
> killer micors
re:
> I've pontificated periodically that many these institutions spent
> billions in the 90s on failed re-engineering mainframe overnight batch
> applications for straight-through processing on large number of parallel
> killer micors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#18 System/360--50 years--the future?
the nearly 500k cobol statement overnight batch application throughput
was primary thing dictated the 40+ maxed out mainframes @$30M ... comes
to over $1.2B ... and with no system over 18m ... amounted to over
$800m/yr (in just hardware sales, with multiplier of six, cames out to
mainframe revenue of over $3.2B).
the application had a very large performance group helping with the
application's care&feeding for a number of decades ... so they were
somewhat surprised when I identified 14% improvement (represented well
over $100M/yr in just hardware) ... this was little over decade ago.
there were other financial industry operations with even larger number
of max'ed out mainframes ... half-dozen such operations easily accounts
for over half of mainframe revenue. in much the same way that big cloud
megadatacenters are driving many characteristics of server evolution
... the big financial industry mainframe operations help drive evolution
of maxed configuration mainframes.
this would also help explain that it was somebody from the financial
industry that was brought in for the resurrection of IBM. misc. recent
posts mentioning resurrection of IBM.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#92 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#103 Google works on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY standardization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#104 Can a business be democratic? Tom Watson Sr. thought so
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#12 Sun Tzu, Boyd, strategy and extensions of same
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#41 Are rotating register files still a bad idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#59 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#74 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#23 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#35 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#4 Hard drives: A bit of progress
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#34 Co-existance of z/OS and z/VM on same DASD farm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#58 Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#72 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#74 Why So Many Formerly Successful Companies Are Failing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#82 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#87 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#4 Think You Know The Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#16 Hierarchy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#35 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#45 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#54 How will mainframers retiring be different from Y2K?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#55 The Invention of Email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#25 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#69 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#19 SnOODAn: Boyd, Snowden, and Resilience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#21 Is there a connection between your strategic and tactical assertions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#31 History--punched card transmission over telegraph lines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#34 History--punched card transmission over telegraph lines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#49 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#70 END OF FILE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#12 First Battle: Operation Starlite and the Beginning of the Blood Debt in Vietnam
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#20 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#63 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#69 Cultural attitudes towards failure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#8 General Mills computer
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 7, 2012, 9:25:02 AM10/7/12
to
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> writes:
> And I've read that 4% of IBMs revenues come from these. I would
> imagine much more of the profits are from these.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#24 System/360--50 years--the future?
> And I've read that 4% of IBMs revenues come from these. I would
> imagine much more of the profits are from these.
this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#31 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
is in this linkedin Enterprise discussion
http://lnkd.in/mjYX6H
which points out that the total mainframe is 25% of company revenue (as
well as 40% of the company profit) ... i.e. company reaps $6.25 (aka
25/4) in total revenue from each dollar of mainframe computer sales (and
nearly half its profit).
other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#16 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#17 System/360--50 years--the future?
other posts mentioning the 6.25 multiplier
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#14 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#15 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#16 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#17 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#52 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#56 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#81 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#67 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#9 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 7, 2012, 6:02:24 PM10/7/12
to
On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
new SLT chips should be used to build a 'super' 1401 line. A
prototype was even built in the lab.
It's hard for us today to think in terms of small memory, but back
then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
instructions.)
Compatibility became a serious concern when they realized a plain
software simulator would be inadequate to run programs from older
machines, and competitors were offering some attractive options.
Hardware emulation using microcode saved the day.
<spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> >Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
> >systems.
>
> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
> followon.
There were those in IBM, such as John Haanstra, who strongly felt the
> >Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
> >systems.
>
> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
> followon.
new SLT chips should be used to build a 'super' 1401 line. A
prototype was even built in the lab.
It's hard for us today to think in terms of small memory, but back
then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
instructions.)
Compatibility became a serious concern when they realized a plain
software simulator would be inadequate to run programs from older
machines, and competitors were offering some attractive options.
Hardware emulation using microcode saved the day.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 7, 2012, 6:13:17 PM10/7/12
to
recent years when they developed a line of POS terminals. Also,
Watson sold off the grocery scale business pretty early on.
As an aside, until last year a local restaurant still had an NCR cash
register, I think it dated from the 1970s (it was blue with more
modern numbers).
Those old registers were a marvel of electro-mechanical engineering.
Some units calculated change, and in a some places this was connected
to a dispenser unit to released the proper coins for change.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 7, 2012, 6:25:19 PM10/7/12
to
On Oct 7, 9:11 am, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
> the application had a very large performance group helping with the
> application's care&feeding for a number of decades ... so they were
> somewhat surprised when I identified 14% improvement (represented well
> over $100M/yr in just hardware) ... this was little over decade ago.
A lot of mainframe programmers weren't aware of some ways to improve
> the application had a very large performance group helping with the
> application's care&feeding for a number of decades ... so they were
> somewhat surprised when I identified 14% improvement (represented well
> over $100M/yr in just hardware) ... this was little over decade ago.
batch performance. While not significant when processing relatively
small files, large and complex processes would benefit. Heck, even I
could suggest inprovements. These included proper use of COMP-3,
COMP, and INDEXED in COBOL programs, use of certain coding techniques
as recommended in the COBOL Programmers Guide*; use of a compiled
COBOL program instead of a 4th generation program like Easytrieve,
proper block size and record length, use of SYNCSORT to select off
desired records before processing, for very records, reformat to a
smaller length early in the process when practical. In certain
situations an assembler subroutine was faster for certain binary
efforts. For data base access, working with knowledgeable DBAs about
the best way to access and update records is helpful. There are also
systems programming issues, such as avoiding channel and head
contention in files and ensuring adequate real core for buffers and
programs.
* Almost all programmers utilized the COBOL Language Reference. But
there was a second book, the programmers GUIDE, which was more of a
narrative and explained JCL and coding techniques. Not as many people
were familiar with this, but it contains a wealth of useful
information. I believe PL/I and Fortran also had such guides.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 7, 2012, 7:49:56 PM10/7/12
to
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> A lot of mainframe programmers weren't aware of some ways to improve
> batch performance. While not significant when processing relatively
> small files, large and complex processes would benefit. Heck, even I
> could suggest inprovements. These included proper use of COMP-3,
> COMP, and INDEXED in COBOL programs, use of certain coding techniques
> as recommended in the COBOL Programmers Guide*; use of a compiled
> COBOL program instead of a 4th generation program like Easytrieve,
> proper block size and record length, use of SYNCSORT to select off
> desired records before processing, for very records, reformat to a
> smaller length early in the process when practical. In certain
> situations an assembler subroutine was faster for certain binary
> efforts. For data base access, working with knowledgeable DBAs about
> the best way to access and update records is helpful. There are also
> systems programming issues, such as avoiding channel and head
> contention in files and ensuring adequate real core for buffers and
> programs.
re:
> A lot of mainframe programmers weren't aware of some ways to improve
> batch performance. While not significant when processing relatively
> small files, large and complex processes would benefit. Heck, even I
> could suggest inprovements. These included proper use of COMP-3,
> COMP, and INDEXED in COBOL programs, use of certain coding techniques
> as recommended in the COBOL Programmers Guide*; use of a compiled
> COBOL program instead of a 4th generation program like Easytrieve,
> proper block size and record length, use of SYNCSORT to select off
> desired records before processing, for very records, reformat to a
> smaller length early in the process when practical. In certain
> situations an assembler subroutine was faster for certain binary
> efforts. For data base access, working with knowledgeable DBAs about
> the best way to access and update records is helpful. There are also
> systems programming issues, such as avoiding channel and head
> contention in files and ensuring adequate real core for buffers and
> programs.
the pretty much did all that stuff ... also frequently ran instruction
address sampling looking for code "hot-spots" ... which would get
extensive review for additional code rewrite/optimization.
not long before I got involved, they had also contracted with a
consultant that had a sophisticated system model ... that had been
fairly succesful identifying performance issues at a number of other
large mainframe shops. I've told this story periodically before, the
system modeling had been acquired from IBM in the early 90s ...
implemented in APL ... and run thru an APL to C-language converter.
This was a many times descendent of the "performance predictor" that had
originated at the science center and made available on HONE system (in
mid-70s) for marketing people to use for "what-if" scenarios ... input
detailed customer configuration and workload and ask what-if effects if
configuration and/or workload changed (i.e. sell customer an extra
megabyte or two of memory, add more disk arms, etc). misc. past posts
mentioning hone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
In the 60s and 70s, science center had done lots of system monitoring
and performance work ... instruction hot-spot monitoring (both detailed
traces and sampling), workload profiling, detailed system simualtion,
analytic (APL) system modeling ... some of the stuff eventually evolves
into capacity planning. There was also a lot of work with multiple
regression analysis using huge amounts of system monitor data (decade of
science center monitored data ... plus a few yrs from large number of
different internal systems). misc. past posts mentioning science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
example of instrumenting vm370 kernel for instruction sequence
hot-spot ... but was also augmented with instruction address
sampling
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
i leveraged a variation of the "performance predictor" doing my
resource manager benchmarking ... misc. past refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark
in any case, i suggested i might be able to find something at the
macro-level with multiple regression analysis ... that they were not
seeing at the micro-level with all the coding techniques, hot-spot
monitoring and system modeling.
what i found was a large application feature/function that multiple
regression analysis showed was accounting for 21% of total application
useage ... which nobody could explain or account for. The function was
complex operation which invoked a large number of different application
features ... each one of the individual application features had been
extensively optimized. The eventual explanation was that the function
was repeatedly executed three times for each operation ... when it
should have only been invoked once. Elimination of the extra,
unnecessary two iterations represented 14% savings.
misc. past posts mentioning multiple regression analysis
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#62 Itanium2 performance data from SGI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#9 Need to understand difference between EBCDIC and EDCDIC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#31 capacity planning: art, science or magic?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#17 More on garbage collection
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#18 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#4 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#23 Strobe equivalents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#28 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#71 PAAppViewer3 (AppViewer3)?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#81 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#17 How to reduce the overall monthly cost on a System z environment?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#81 Percentage of code executed that is user written was Re: Delete all members of a PDS that is allocated
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#60 Spontaneous conduction
ArarghMai...@not.at.arargh.com
Oct 7, 2012, 10:52:05 PM10/7/12
to
On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 15:02:24 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
wrote:
>On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
><spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
<snip>
<snip>
--
ArarghMail208 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com
BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html
To reply by email, remove the extra stuff from the reply address.
wrote:
>On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
><spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>It's hard for us today to think in terms of small memory, but back
>then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
>bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
>word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
>instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
>instructions.)
8 with the parity bit.
>then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
>bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
>word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
>instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
>instructions.)
<snip>
--
ArarghMail208 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com
BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html
To reply by email, remove the extra stuff from the reply address.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 8, 2012, 1:15:16 AM10/8/12
to
On Oct 7, 10:52 pm, ArarghMail208NOS...@NOT.AT.Arargh.com wrote:
> >It's hard for us today to think in terms of small memory, but back
> >then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
> >bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
> >word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
> >instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
> >instructions.)
>
> 8 with the parity bit.
Yes, but almost all machines had a parity bit, and that wasn't counted
> >It's hard for us today to think in terms of small memory, but back
> >then memory was so expensive that using 6 bits for character vs. 8
> >bits was hotly debated. (Actually the 1401 was 7 bits including the
> >word mark, but it was still an issue. Also, 1401 addressing and
> >instructions were much simpler and took up less room than S/360
> >instructions.)
>
> 8 with the parity bit.
in determining the user accessible size of memory or the size of a
character.
In those days (early 1960s), an eight bit machine would cost more than
a six bit machine--more pieces of core, more wiring and drivers in the
core plains, and all circuits had to handle more bits. The extra cost
was enough that the value of having eight bits instead of six was
carefully considered and debated.
As to the 1401, there were people in the 1970s who felt it was a very
adequate machine and would've continued using them if IBM kept making
them. 1401 emulation continued well into the 1990s. (Don't know
about 7090).
Peter Flass
Oct 8, 2012, 7:59:52 AM10/8/12
to
On 10/7/2012 6:02 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> <spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>>> systems.
>>
>> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
>> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
>> followon.
Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
> On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> <spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>>> systems.
>>
>> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
>> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
>> followon.
--
Pete
Peter Flass
Oct 8, 2012, 8:02:29 AM10/8/12
to
On 10/7/2012 6:13 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Oct 6, 12:08 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Oct 4, 10:46 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>>> On Oct 3, 8:17 pm, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
>>> I noticed in a store today IBM "point of sale terminals" (nee cash
>>> registers). This is ironic given Watson's origins at NCR.
>>
>> Not really - not for IBM, at least. He did want to beat NCR at the
>> cash register game.
>
> But I don't think IBM ever sold plain cash registers until relatively
> recent years when they developed a line of POS terminals. Also,
> Watson sold off the grocery scale business pretty early on.
FSVO "recent." I guess in a.f.c land it is recent, but back at least to
> On Oct 6, 12:08 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Oct 4, 10:46 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>>> On Oct 3, 8:17 pm, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <l...@garlic.com> wrote:
>>> I noticed in a store today IBM "point of sale terminals" (nee cash
>>> registers). This is ironic given Watson's origins at NCR.
>>
>> Not really - not for IBM, at least. He did want to beat NCR at the
>> cash register game.
>
> But I don't think IBM ever sold plain cash registers until relatively
> recent years when they developed a line of POS terminals. Also,
> Watson sold off the grocery scale business pretty early on.
the 70s IBM signed a big deal with Sears - then still a major retailer -
for IBM POS terminals in all Sears stores. They may be still using them.
--
Pete
Walter Bushell
Oct 8, 2012, 8:32:48 AM10/8/12
to
In article
<fcedded3-31e8-4341...@a11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
I think probably nearly all the programs from the 7090 went over to
the 360 or specifically scientifically oriented processors.
<fcedded3-31e8-4341...@a11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
the 360 or specifically scientifically oriented processors.
jmfbahciv
Oct 8, 2012, 9:21:27 AM10/8/12
to
successor of the PDP-11.
/BAH
Patrick Scheible
Oct 8, 2012, 12:14:23 PM10/8/12
to
DEC^wDigital may have wished their PDP-10 customers would go out and buy
three or four Vaxes to replace every PDP-10, but the Vax was in no sense
a successor. It wasn't more powerful. Software for the -10 was neither
binary nor source-code compatible with the Vax. There was little to
nothing in the way of conversion tools to help -10 sites convert. The
PDP-10 customers were in fact orphaned; only real successors were third
party machines from Foonly and XKL and Ken Harrenstien's emulator, and
they weren't available until many years after the -10 was discontinued.
The Vax was more reasonably called the successor of the PDP-11, but
that's a whole different line of computers.
-- Patrick
Patrick Scheible
Oct 8, 2012, 12:02:22 PM10/8/12
to
correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
-- Patrick
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 8, 2012, 7:14:11 PM10/8/12
to
On Oct 8, 8:32 am, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > As to the 1401, there were people in the 1970s who felt it was a very
> > adequate machine and would've continued using them if IBM kept making
> > them. 1401 emulation continued well into the 1990s. (Don't know
> > about 7090).
>
> I think probably nearly all the programs from the 7090 went over to
> the 360 or specifically scientifically oriented processors.
I was wondering how long such users retained 7090 emulation. I don't
> > As to the 1401, there were people in the 1970s who felt it was a very
> > adequate machine and would've continued using them if IBM kept making
> > them. 1401 emulation continued well into the 1990s. (Don't know
> > about 7090).
>
> I think probably nearly all the programs from the 7090 went over to
> the 360 or specifically scientifically oriented processors.
personally know of any shops that formerly had a 7090. Heck, even the
large shops I know of today started out small. It was only after the
S/370 era began that they deeloped complex online applications.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 8, 2012, 7:18:42 PM10/8/12
to
On Oct 8, 12:17 pm, Patrick Scheible <k...@zipcon.net> wrote:
> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense the
> correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
At my local supermarket, debit/credit cards are handled very quickly--
> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense the
> correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
the customer swipes, enters the PIN, and the approval comes fast.
Cash is in the middle, and checks are the slowest, even though the
register fills out the check.
Some retailers have 'touch' terminals where one merely touches their
credit card and the transaction is instantly approved. Very fast.
NJ Transit upgraded its ticket machines so that now credit/debit card
transactions are fast.
Dan Espen
Oct 8, 2012, 7:31:53 PM10/8/12
to
I worked on a 2260/BTAM Order Entry application sometime in the late 60s
on a 360/30.
Another project on a 360/50.
--
Dan Espen
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 8, 2012, 7:32:29 PM10/8/12
to
On Oct 8, 7:56 am, Peter Flass <Peter_Fl...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
> FSVO "recent." I guess in a.f.c land it is recent, but back at least to
> the 70s IBM signed a big deal with Sears - then still a major retailer -
> for IBM POS terminals in all Sears stores. They may be still using them.
I probably should've used a better qualifier than 'relatively' <g>.
> FSVO "recent." I guess in a.f.c land it is recent, but back at least to
> the 70s IBM signed a big deal with Sears - then still a major retailer -
> for IBM POS terminals in all Sears stores. They may be still using them.
But I don't recall POS terminals anywhere until the 1980s. I think in
the 1970s the cost of electronics were simply too high for the
benefits gained at that time*. Remember, department stores generally
didn't start scanning price tags unless much later than supermarkets.
Their earliest POS terminals were mostly to expedite credit card
transaction approval and skip the separate step of the Addressograph.
Also, I don't think magstrips on cards didn't become really common
until the 1980s, not before.
I believe POS terminals in stores have gone through several
generations. The earliest ones were crappy.
*In the early 1980s it was still more cost effective in some
situations to continue with basic punched card tabulator machines
rather than an electronic computer. I specifically remember a friend
showing me a major department store's new electronic registers and it
had to be after 1984.
The world of electronic technology was radically different from 1980
to 1990. I'd say in that specific decade we had a computer revolution
because the cost of electronics fell enough so that decent personal
computers become affordable, as well as many other electronic devices
(such as POS) became affordable, too. I remember in my job at that
time we evolved from shared terminals in "terminal alley" (as had many
shops) to a terminal for each person. Remaining punched card I/O and
tab machines were scrapped in that decade. Horsepower of mainframes
and peripherals grew significantly--in 1980 our mainframe was
saturated and getting test time in the daytime was difficult, but in
1990 not a problem.
Peter Flass
Oct 9, 2012, 7:53:05 AM10/9/12
to
--
Pete
Peter Flass
Oct 9, 2012, 7:59:49 AM10/9/12
to
online 2260 applications and a homegrown TP monitor on a 360. We were
converting everything to CICS and 3270s, still 360, IIRC.
--
Pete
Walter Bushell
Oct 9, 2012, 8:03:10 AM10/9/12
to
In article
<5f3dd9b0-3bb0-4608...@w3g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
<5f3dd9b0-3bb0-4608...@w3g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> I believe POS terminals in stores have gone through several
> generations. The earliest ones were crappy.
Ah, the POS were POSs?
> I believe POS terminals in stores have gone through several
> generations. The earliest ones were crappy.
Dave Pitts
Oct 9, 2012, 8:56:29 AM10/9/12
to
didn't want less floating point precision than the 360 had.
--
Dave Pitts PULLMAN: Travel and sleep in safety and comfort.
dpi...@cozx.com
jmfbahciv
Oct 9, 2012, 9:56:08 AM10/9/12
to
Patrick Scheible wrote:
> Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 10/7/2012 6:02 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>> On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
>>> <spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>>>>> systems.
>>>>
>>>> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
>>>> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
>>>> followon.
>>
>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
> No. No way. HELL NO!
>
> DEC^wDigital may have wished their PDP-10 customers would go out and buy
> three or four Vaxes to replace every PDP-10,
Nitpick. It took 3 or 4 TOPS-20s to replace a TOPS-10. I would have taken
> Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 10/7/2012 6:02 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>> On Oct 5, 4:56 pm, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
>>> <spamt...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Note above. The B2500 was the designated replacement for B300
>>>>> systems.
>>>>
>>>> Just as the IBM S/360 was the designated successor for the 1400 and
>>>> 7000 series, but it was still a new, incompatible architecture, not a
>>>> followon.
>>
>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
> No. No way. HELL NO!
>
> DEC^wDigital may have wished their PDP-10 customers would go out and buy
> three or four Vaxes to replace every PDP-10,
dozens of VAXes to replace one -20.
> but the Vax was in no sense
> a successor. It wasn't more powerful. Software for the -10 was neither
> binary nor source-code compatible with the Vax. There was little to
> nothing in the way of conversion tools to help -10 sites convert. The
> PDP-10 customers were in fact orphaned; only real successors were third
> party machines from Foonly and XKL and Ken Harrenstien's emulator, and
> they weren't available until many years after the -10 was discontinued.
>
> The Vax was more reasonably called the successor of the PDP-11, but
> that's a whole different line of computers.
Patrick Scheible
Oct 9, 2012, 10:39:48 AM10/9/12
to
-- Patrick
Stan Barr
Oct 9, 2012, 11:22:24 AM10/9/12
to
On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 16:18:42 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Oct 8, 12:17 pm, Patrick Scheible <k...@zipcon.net> wrote:
>
>> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense the
>> correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
>> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
>> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
>
> At my local supermarket, debit/credit cards are handled very quickly--
> the customer swipes, enters the PIN, and the approval comes fast.
> Cash is in the middle, and checks are the slowest, even though the
> register fills out the check.
>
> Some retailers have 'touch' terminals where one merely touches their
> credit card and the transaction is instantly approved. Very fast.
Same in the UK except almost no-one takes checks. It is planned to
<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Oct 8, 12:17 pm, Patrick Scheible <k...@zipcon.net> wrote:
>
>> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense the
>> correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
>> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
>> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
>
> At my local supermarket, debit/credit cards are handled very quickly--
> the customer swipes, enters the PIN, and the approval comes fast.
> Cash is in the middle, and checks are the slowest, even though the
> register fills out the check.
>
> Some retailers have 'touch' terminals where one merely touches their
> credit card and the transaction is instantly approved. Very fast.
phase out checks here altogether by 2017.
I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr plan.b .at. dsl .dot. pipex .dot. com
The future was never like this!
Walter Bushell
Oct 9, 2012, 1:03:40 PM10/9/12
to
In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
What could go wrong?
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
Rod Speed
Oct 9, 2012, 2:28:28 PM10/9/12
to
Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote
> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
> It is planned to phase out checks here altogether by 2017.
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
Can't see that being viable when most have more than one card.
Can't see too many of the customers being happy with that either.
> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote
>> Patrick Scheible <k...@zipcon.net> wrote
>>> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense
>>> the correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
>>> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
>>> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
>> At my local supermarket, debit/credit cards are handled very quickly--
>> the customer swipes, enters the PIN, and the approval comes fast.
>> Cash is in the middle, and checks are the slowest, even though the
>> register fills out the check.
>> Some retailers have 'touch' terminals where one merely touches their
>> credit card and the transaction is instantly approved. Very fast.
> Same in the UK except almost no-one takes checks.
Yeah, that’s one area where the US is surprisingly dinosaury.
>>> The grocery store chain Safeway has cash registers that dispense
>>> the correct coins. Very efficient. Unfortunately, the dialog that the
>>> customer uses for debit or credit card payment is slow and inefficient,
>>> and that's what most customers are using to pay with now.
>> At my local supermarket, debit/credit cards are handled very quickly--
>> the customer swipes, enters the PIN, and the approval comes fast.
>> Cash is in the middle, and checks are the slowest, even though the
>> register fills out the check.
>> Some retailers have 'touch' terminals where one merely touches their
>> credit card and the transaction is instantly approved. Very fast.
> Same in the UK except almost no-one takes checks.
> It is planned to phase out checks here altogether by 2017.
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
Can't see too many of the customers being happy with that either.
Dave Garland
Oct 9, 2012, 9:57:21 PM10/9/12
to
conductive layer to provide shielding. They're already around, but
the ones I've seen are rather clunky. My bet is on flexible shielding
laminated between layers of "normal" wallet materials, leather or
fabric. For handbags, too.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 9, 2012, 11:59:59 PM10/9/12
to
Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> writes:
> Get in on the ground floor. Big market coming for wallets that have a
> conductive layer to provide shielding. They're already around, but
> the ones I've seen are rather clunky. My bet is on flexible shielding
> laminated between layers of "normal" wallet materials, leather or
> fabric. For handbags, too.
UPC barcode ... carrying unique EPC product code .... every aisle had
receiver that could go down and back and record all the items on the
shelves. could also be scanned at check-out.
form of plastic payment cards were developed that basically used the
same kind of chip ... but instead of carrying an EPC product code ...
it carried the information that is found on debit/credit magnetic
stripe.
skimming of magnetic stripe information to make counterfeit cards has
been around for decades .... however the characteristic of the class of
RFID chips developed for EPC/inventory ... when applied to payment cards
... also greatly increasing the skimming exposure.
misc. past posts mentioning RFID EPC:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#16 Gen 2 EPC Protocol Approved as ISO 18000-6C
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#17 Gen 2 EPC Protocol Approved as ISO 18000-6C
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#20 Gen 2 EPC Protocol Approved as ISO 18000-6C
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#17 Greatest Software Ever Written?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#61 Could you please name sources of information you trust on RFID and/or other Wireless technologies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#61 Osama bin Laden gets a cosmetic makevover in his British Vanity Passport
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#48 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#14 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#19 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#46 Would you say high tech authentication gizmo's are a waste of time/money/effort?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#55 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#72 Double authentification for internet payment
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#35 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
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#61 Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#56 Why use RFID in personal documents & cards at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#21 ATMs At Risk
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#53 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#54 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#58 Price Tag for End-to-End Encryption: $4.8 Billion, Mercator Says
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#2 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#4 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#10 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#14 The Art of Creating Strong Passwords
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#20 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#24 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#28 PCI Council Releases Recommendations For Preventing Card-Skimming Attacks
http://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
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#66 Need for speedy cryptography
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#11 PC history, was search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#66 z9 / z10 instruction speed(s)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#26 Should the USA Implement EMV?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#21 Should the USA Implement EMV?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#49 The Credit Card Criminals Are Getting Crafty
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#11 Credit cards with a proximity wifi chip can be as safe as walking around with your credit card number on a poster
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#24 The first personal computer (PC)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#71 Password shortcomings
Shmuel Metz
Oct 10, 2012, 1:05:42 AM10/10/12
to
In <ick3v01...@home.home>, on 10/08/2012
at 07:31 PM, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> said:
>hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>> I was wondering how long such users retained 7090 emulation. I don't
>> personally know of any shops that formerly had a 7090. Heck, even the
>> large shops I know of today started out small. It was only after the
>> S/370 era began that they deeloped complex online applications.
AFAIK the 370/168 was the last processor to offer the 7090
compatability feature. The 7090 and 7094 were fairly popular, so I
would expect that a lot of 360/65, 360/85, 370/165 and 370/168 shops
ran the 7090 emulator, although I can't name any[1].
>Online applications started slowly.
1960's, e.g., ATS, SABRE. The military may have had some before that.
[1] I can name a shop with 7080 emulation, which was a lot less
common.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org
at 07:31 PM, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> said:
>hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>> I was wondering how long such users retained 7090 emulation. I don't
>> personally know of any shops that formerly had a 7090. Heck, even the
>> large shops I know of today started out small. It was only after the
>> S/370 era began that they deeloped complex online applications.
compatability feature. The 7090 and 7094 were fairly popular, so I
would expect that a lot of 360/65, 360/85, 370/165 and 370/168 shops
ran the 7090 emulator, although I can't name any[1].
>Online applications started slowly.
1960's, e.g., ATS, SABRE. The military may have had some before that.
[1] I can name a shop with 7080 emulation, which was a lot less
common.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spam...@library.lspace.org
Shmuel Metz
Oct 10, 2012, 1:03:37 AM10/10/12
to
In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
[1] In the sense that DEC said to migrate, not in the sense of
there being a reasonable migration path.
at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
[1] In the sense that DEC said to migrate, not in the sense of
there being a reasonable migration path.
Andrew Swallow
Oct 10, 2012, 12:44:50 AM10/10/12
to
On 09/10/2012 18:03, Walter Bushell wrote:
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
McDonalds actually bought the devices so check your bill for hamburgers.
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
Andrew Swallow
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 10, 2012, 12:59:21 AM10/10/12
to
On Oct 9, 8:56 am, Dave Pitts <dpi...@cozx.com> wrote:
> I think that many 7090/7094 shops went to CDC. Most all ran Fortran programs and
> didn't want less floating point precision than the 360 had.
While the 7090 was a word oriented machine, evolved from a sci/eng
> I think that many 7090/7094 shops went to CDC. Most all ran Fortran programs and
> didn't want less floating point precision than the 360 had.
family, it was IBM's only large sized transistorized computer. The
1401 was a nice little machine, but not anywhere near enough to handle
big applications. Thus, I suspect a number of busienss users had a
709x.
Also, SABRE used two 7090s. I wonder if they had to rewrite
everything when they upgraded to S/360. If so, must have been a huge
job.
Stan Barr
Oct 10, 2012, 3:26:44 AM10/10/12
to
On Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:03:40 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
Presumably persons of evil intent could read enough info to clone
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
the card. That was the suggestion.
I don't know how easy it would be though.
Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Oct 10, 2012, 3:10:20 AM10/10/12
to
On 9 Oct 2012 15:22:24 GMT
distance of a few metres, inside a metal box which is moving at more than
100 kph. Toll road operators are sure to want it.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
I imagine someone somewhere is working on reading them from a
> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
distance of a few metres, inside a metal box which is moving at more than
100 kph. Toll road operators are sure to want it.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Stan Barr
Oct 10, 2012, 5:04:45 AM10/10/12
to
mesh - looked like silver silk. Bit expensive at around $50 so I'll
pass :-)
US passports have a similar mesh laminated into the cover, as you
suggest. Shielded passport covers are avalable for people in other
countries.
Peter Flass
Oct 10, 2012, 7:48:44 AM10/10/12
to
comes with a radio frequency shielding sleeve that they tell you to keep
it in. I wonder what's on the card.
--
Pete
jmfbahciv
Oct 10, 2012, 7:59:50 AM10/10/12
to
Walter Bushell wrote:
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
Pickpockets could go virtual.
> In article <slrnk77lhi...@ID-309335.user.uni-berlin.de>,
> Stan Barr <pla...@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand someone has devloped a device to read the contactless,
>> ie wireless, cards even while they're still in your wallet.
>
> What could go wrong?
>
/BAH
Joe keane
Oct 10, 2012, 1:05:45 PM10/10/12
to
In article <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>,
But as far as DEC making something that is more for the PDP-10 than the
PDP-11, no they didn't so, i guess VAX is it.
And they wanted everyone to run VMS.
Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
Sperry 2200
>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
But as far as DEC making something that is more for the PDP-10 than the
PDP-11, no they didn't so, i guess VAX is it.
And they wanted everyone to run VMS.
John Levine
Oct 10, 2012, 3:47:04 PM10/10/12
to
>>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
>Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
If you had useful applications that ran on TOPS-10, everything that
>
>Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
came afterwards was much worse. You could get an amazing amount of
work out of a system about as powerful as a modern digital wristwatch.
It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
consistently snappy response time.
--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Rich Alderson
Oct 10, 2012, 6:46:56 PM10/10/12
to
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
Ignoring the clouds of emotional smoke in the entire argument, I ask that you
> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
expound upon your argument. I have had 35 years to think on this and compare,
so I canot see how you come to that conclusion.
--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...
Joe Morris
Oct 10, 2012, 7:37:12 PM10/10/12
to
"John Levine" <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
> consistently snappy response time.
It may have had lots of Good Things, but one critical characteristic was
> It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
> consistently snappy response time.
missing from the GE product line: competent salesdroids.
At a PPOE in the 1960s we put out an RFP for a modern midrange-to-better
system and got viable responses from GE, IBM, Univac, and CDC. Benchmarks
would have a significant influence on the award.
This was a batch shop so one of the primary criteria for selection was the
time required to run a mixture of typical batch jobs, calculated from first
card in to last line out. I don't recall the numbers so I'll make them up,
but conceptually:
IBM: 7'35"
CDC: 9'02"
Univac: 12'42"
GE: 23 hours
We had explicitly called for the benchmark to be run as batch, but the GE
salesdroids ran it on a TTY 33ASR. Their explanation: "If you want GE you
want time sharing".
IBM got the contract with a 360/65.
Side note: I left that job about three decades ago, but one of my ex-cow
orkers there emailed me last month to say that the last of the mainframes
had just been powered down.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Joe
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
Oct 10, 2012, 9:17:58 PM10/10/12
to
On Oct 10, 7:37 pm, "Joe Morris" <j.c.mor...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Side note: I left that job about three decades ago, but one of my ex-cow
> orkers there emailed me last month to say that the last of the mainframes
> had just been powered down.
Was that because the business itself moved elsewhere, or was the
> Side note: I left that job about three decades ago, but one of my ex-cow
> orkers there emailed me last month to say that the last of the mainframes
> had just been powered down.
mainframe replaced by other technology to run the applications?
Walter Bushell
Oct 11, 2012, 8:43:24 AM10/11/12
to
In article <507501aa$19$fuzhry+tra$mr2...@news.patriot.net>,
> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>
> >Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
> [1] In the sense that DEC said to migrate, not in the sense of
> there being a reasonable migration path.
Users migrated but not to the VAX, as DEC should have foreseen. At
that point there was no advantage to staying with DEC versus going to
another vendor and why stay with a vendor who abandons you?
Going from a $4.50 system to a $4.00 system was a difficult situation.
(2 bits-> 1 quarter)
2 bits
4 bits
6 bit a buck!
All for {college name} lie down and . . .
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid>
wrote:
> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>
> >Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
> [1] In the sense that DEC said to migrate, not in the sense of
> there being a reasonable migration path.
that point there was no advantage to staying with DEC versus going to
another vendor and why stay with a vendor who abandons you?
Going from a $4.50 system to a $4.00 system was a difficult situation.
(2 bits-> 1 quarter)
2 bits
4 bits
6 bit a buck!
All for {college name} lie down and . . .
Walter Bushell
Oct 11, 2012, 8:51:16 AM10/11/12
to
In article <50750226$22$fuzhry+tra$mr2...@news.patriot.net>,
going to double precision. I don't remember if the FORMAT statements
had to be changed.
Still it was far cheaper to run in double precision on the 360s.
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid>
wrote:
wrote:
> In <ick3v01...@home.home>, on 10/08/2012
> at 07:31 PM, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> said:
>
> >hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>
> >> I was wondering how long such users retained 7090 emulation. I don't
> >> personally know of any shops that formerly had a 7090. Heck, even the
> >> large shops I know of today started out small. It was only after the
> >> S/370 era began that they deeloped complex online applications.
>
> AFAIK the 370/168 was the last processor to offer the 7090
> compatability feature. The 7090 and 7094 were fairly popular, so I
> would expect that a lot of 360/65, 360/85, 370/165 and 370/168 shops
> ran the 7090 emulator, although I can't name any[1].
>
> >Online applications started slowly.
>
> 1960's, e.g., ATS, SABRE. The military may have had some before that.
>
> [1] I can name a shop with 7080 emulation, which was a lot less
> common.
I know a whole bunch of 7090 NASA Fortran programs were converted by
> at 07:31 PM, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> said:
>
> >hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
>
> >> I was wondering how long such users retained 7090 emulation. I don't
> >> personally know of any shops that formerly had a 7090. Heck, even the
> >> large shops I know of today started out small. It was only after the
> >> S/370 era began that they deeloped complex online applications.
>
> AFAIK the 370/168 was the last processor to offer the 7090
> compatability feature. The 7090 and 7094 were fairly popular, so I
> would expect that a lot of 360/65, 360/85, 370/165 and 370/168 shops
> ran the 7090 emulator, although I can't name any[1].
>
> >Online applications started slowly.
>
> 1960's, e.g., ATS, SABRE. The military may have had some before that.
>
> [1] I can name a shop with 7080 emulation, which was a lot less
> common.
going to double precision. I don't remember if the FORMAT statements
had to be changed.
Still it was far cheaper to run in double precision on the 360s.
jmfbahciv
Oct 11, 2012, 9:34:40 AM10/11/12
to
John Levine wrote:
>>>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>>
>>Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>>would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
>>>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>>
>>Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>>would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
> If you had useful applications that ran on TOPS-10, everything that
> came afterwards was much worse. You could get an amazing amount of
> work out of a system about as powerful as a modern digital wristwatch.
>
> came afterwards was much worse. You could get an amazing amount of
> work out of a system about as powerful as a modern digital wristwatch.
>
> It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
> consistently snappy response time.
>
It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
> consistently snappy response time.
>
system would make the perceived response time for the users a
higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
everything.
/BAH
jmfbahciv
Oct 11, 2012, 9:34:42 AM10/11/12
to
> Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
>>Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
> Sperry 2200
>
> But as far as DEC making something that is more for the PDP-10 than the
> PDP-11, no they didn't so, i guess VAX is it.
>
> And they wanted everyone to run VMS.
And, more importantly, DECnet (which also sucked).
>
> But as far as DEC making something that is more for the PDP-10 than the
> PDP-11, no they didn't so, i guess VAX is it.
>
> And they wanted everyone to run VMS.
/BAH
Charles Richmond
Oct 11, 2012, 10:04:03 AM10/11/12
to
"Joe Morris" <j.c.m...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:k550r...@news3.newsguy.com...
right... ;-)
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
news:k550r...@news3.newsguy.com...
> "John Levine" <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
>
>> It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
>> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
>> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
>> consistently snappy response time.
>
> It may have had lots of Good Things, but one critical characteristic was
> missing from the GE product line: competent salesdroids.
>
> At a PPOE in the 1960s we put out an RFP for a modern midrange-to-better
> system and got viable responses from GE, IBM, Univac, and CDC. Benchmarks
> would have a significant influence on the award.
>
> This was a batch shop so one of the primary criteria for selection was the
> time required to run a mixture of typical batch jobs, calculated from
> first card in to last line out. I don't recall the numbers so I'll make
> them up, but conceptually:
>
> IBM: 7'35"
> CDC: 9'02"
> Univac: 12'42"
> GE: 23 hours
>
Based on studies in which I made up numbers until some sounded about
>
>> It may have been something about those 1960s 36-bit designs. On
>> a GE 635, a computer similar to a KA-10, Dartmouth ran 100 users
>> on a real, surprisingly sophisticated time-sharing system, with
>> consistently snappy response time.
>
> It may have had lots of Good Things, but one critical characteristic was
> missing from the GE product line: competent salesdroids.
>
> At a PPOE in the 1960s we put out an RFP for a modern midrange-to-better
> system and got viable responses from GE, IBM, Univac, and CDC. Benchmarks
> would have a significant influence on the award.
>
> This was a batch shop so one of the primary criteria for selection was the
> time required to run a mixture of typical batch jobs, calculated from
> first card in to last line out. I don't recall the numbers so I'll make
> them up, but conceptually:
>
> IBM: 7'35"
> CDC: 9'02"
> Univac: 12'42"
> GE: 23 hours
>
right... ;-)
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 11, 2012, 10:06:30 AM10/11/12
to
jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:
> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
> everything.
one of the things that early cp67 did was make any terminal i/o
> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
> everything.
(regardless of read or write) indication of human response event and
"high priority". this led to all sorts of anomolous activity
... including users discovering that if they performed gratuitous
terminal writes during long running compute bound operation, it got
better throughput (CMS "blip" had built-in terminal i/o that would
"wiggle" the 2741 typeball every two-seconds of cpu use, part of gaming
the system was to cut the interval for "blip").
when I rewrote resource management ... terminal i/o allowed smaller
bursts at more frequent intervals ... but aggregate use didn't increase.
using much less than "fair share" ... also allowed a few more frequent
use bursts. the combination tended to give extremely good interactive
response for "trivial" activity ... but response would drop off (in
system with lots of contention) as resource use increased.
this recent post discusses sub-second and .2 second response for vm370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#37 Why File transfer through TSO IND$FILE is slower than TCP/IP
channel attached 3272/3277 controller/terminal had .086 "hardware
terminal" response ... in order to provide .2 second "human" respose
... required system response to be .114 or less.
this old post with old hardware measures shows that the newer 3274/3278
terminals could never meet .2sec ... because terminal hardware tended to
be 1/3rdsec to 1/2sec.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
one of the main east coast internal datacenters had published report
that included claims that they had the best vm370 online service in the
company with quarter second avg trivial system response. I complained
pointing out that I ran several (similar, hardware configuration &
workload) systems that had .11sec 90th percentile trivial system
response (achieving .2 second human response with channel attached
3272/3277 terminals). response I got back was that particular datacenter
could claim anything they wanted to in their reports.
from ibmjargon (by author of rexx):
bad response - n. A delay in the response time to a trivial request of
a computer that is longer than two tenths of one second. In the 1970s,
IBM 3277 display terminals attached to quite small System/360 machines
could service up to 19 interruptions every second from a user I
measured it myself. Today, this kind of response time is considered
impossible or unachievable, even though work by Doherty, Thadhani, and
others has shown that human productivity and satisfaction are almost
linearly inversely proportional to computer response time. It is hoped
(but not expected) that the definition of Bad Response will drop below
one tenth of a second by 1990.
... snip ...
other recent posts mentioning sub-second, .2second &/or "bad response"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#2 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#30 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#38 Invention of Email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#87 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#98 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#74 HELP WITH PCOM - PASTE OPTION NOT WORKING CORRECTLY
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#3 printer history Languages influenced by PL/1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#15 cp67, vm370, etc
Charles Richmond
Oct 11, 2012, 10:08:05 AM10/11/12
to
"Rich Alderson" <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote in message
news:mddtxu2ue...@panix5.panix.com...
news:mddtxu2ue...@panix5.panix.com...
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
>
>> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
>> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>
>>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
>> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
> Ignoring the clouds of emotional smoke in the entire argument, I ask that
> you
> expound upon your argument. I have had 35 years to think on this and
> compare,
> so I canot see how you come to that conclusion.
>
IOW, Rich... you are livid and incensed... just like most of us here... ;-)
>
>> In <k4uerv$6ji$2...@dont-email.me>, on 10/08/2012
>> at 07:59 AM, Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> said:
>
>>> Wasn't the VAX the designated successor of the PDP-10?
>
>> Yes[1], which generated cries of anguish from the PDP-10 users. I
>> would argue that the VAX was superior, but it was very different.
>
> Ignoring the clouds of emotional smoke in the entire argument, I ask that
> you
> expound upon your argument. I have had 35 years to think on this and
> compare,
> so I canot see how you come to that conclusion.
>
Charles Richmond
Oct 11, 2012, 10:37:43 AM10/11/12
to
"Anne & Lynn Wheeler" <ly...@garlic.com> wrote in message
news:m38vbdq...@garlic.com...
news:m38vbdq...@garlic.com...
>
>
>
> bad response - n. A delay in the response time to a trivial request of
> a computer that is longer than two tenths of one second. In the 1970s,
> IBM 3277 display terminals attached to quite small System/360 machines
> could service up to 19 interruptions every second from a user I
> measured it myself. Today, this kind of response time is considered
> impossible or unachievable, even though work by Doherty, Thadhani, and
> others has shown that human productivity and satisfaction are almost
> linearly inversely proportional to computer response time. It is hoped
> (but not expected) that the definition of Bad Response will drop below
> one tenth of a second by 1990.
>
"With computers, anything less than instantaneous is too slow..."
>
>
> bad response - n. A delay in the response time to a trivial request of
> a computer that is longer than two tenths of one second. In the 1970s,
> IBM 3277 display terminals attached to quite small System/360 machines
> could service up to 19 interruptions every second from a user I
> measured it myself. Today, this kind of response time is considered
> impossible or unachievable, even though work by Doherty, Thadhani, and
> others has shown that human productivity and satisfaction are almost
> linearly inversely proportional to computer response time. It is hoped
> (but not expected) that the definition of Bad Response will drop below
> one tenth of a second by 1990.
>
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Oct 11, 2012, 11:06:49 AM10/11/12
to
"Charles Richmond" <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
> "With computers, anything less than instantaneous is too slow..."
re:
> "With computers, anything less than instantaneous is too slow..."
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
there was human factors study regarding human perception threshold ...
when they could differentiate between instantaneous and something
slightly longer. there was difference between individuals in the study
that varied between about .09 seconds and .2seconds. there was some
conjecture that the variability was accounted for difference between
different humans in the time signals propogate in the brain (individuals
in the study were all employees of high-end research facility).
another human factors study related to productivity was that human
attention started to wander when response wasn't within their threshold
... and then when the response came ... the time it took to refocus was
about the same duration as attention spent wandering ... i.e. "loss of
productivity" was twice the elapsed time delay between the expected
response and the actual response.
lots of browser web stuff now tends to be much longer than threshold.
i've mentioned periodically that help drive me to using browser
background tabs (going on nearly decade now) ... where I queue up a
couple hundred web pages in browser background tabs. Time to switch
browser tabs is now purely local issue.
misc. past posts mentioning tab use
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#44 graceful recovery when runs out of paging?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#54 Is there a way to configure your web browser to use multiple
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#25 Why are programs so large?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#48 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#49 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#50 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#55 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#60 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#66 Mozilla v Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#8 big endian vs. little endian, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#15 1.8b2 / 1.7.11 tab performance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#41 Moz 1.8 performance dramatically improved
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#42 Moz 1.8 performance dramatically improved
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#13 RFC 2616 change proposal to increase speed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#39 PDP-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#51 Intel abandons USEnet news
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#30 tab browsing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#74 What do YOU call the # sign?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#32 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#35 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#24 Javascript disabled in Firefox
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#10 What would be a future of technical blogs ? I am wondering what kind of services readers except to get from a technical blog in next 10 years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#71 Mainframe programming vs the Web
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#85 Mainframe programming vs the Web
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#85 Which of the latest browsers do you prefer and why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#37 squirrels
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#29 How were you using the internet 10 years ago and how does that differ from how you use it today?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#54 Windowed Interfaces 1981-2009
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#66 What happened to computer architecture (and comp.arch?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#48 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#22 OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#39 Unix systems and Serialization mechanism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#73 IBM and the Computer Revolution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#73 History--Early Bell System teletypes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#29 DG Fountainhead vs IBM Future Systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#61 Agents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#15 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#90 Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
lawr...@gandi.cluon.com
Oct 11, 2012, 2:58:07 PM10/11/12
to
There is at least *something* I agree with BAH on ... DECnet was the
epitome of "NIH"ism at Digital - while the rest of the world was having
a good old hipie love-in with TCP/IP (and NCP before that), Digital was
shouting "No, No, NO! Our thing is even better! Please somebody
license it from us, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?"
Curiously - I did find, in the scrap-tape-bin at a junque shop, the
"DECNet support for SunOS 4" tape, and installed it ... it was kinda
cool (in the way that bouncing an X-10 command around the world to turn
on your stereo is cool [Big Bang Theory, S1E9]) to type SET HOST GAKVAX
at the Decnet prompt on the Sun and connect to the microvax running
VMS)
Of course, I had CMU-TEK TCP/IP on the VAX, so you could connect via
DECNet from the Sun to the VAX and then telnet into the Sun ... or you
could telnet into the VAX and SET HOST SUN and Decnet back into the Sun
(yes, the decnet support did both halves of the DN remote-host protocol
(whose exact name escapes me, but I swear at the time I knew it))
--NK1G
epitome of "NIH"ism at Digital - while the rest of the world was having
a good old hipie love-in with TCP/IP (and NCP before that), Digital was
shouting "No, No, NO! Our thing is even better! Please somebody
license it from us, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?"
Curiously - I did find, in the scrap-tape-bin at a junque shop, the
"DECNet support for SunOS 4" tape, and installed it ... it was kinda
cool (in the way that bouncing an X-10 command around the world to turn
on your stereo is cool [Big Bang Theory, S1E9]) to type SET HOST GAKVAX
at the Decnet prompt on the Sun and connect to the microvax running
VMS)
Of course, I had CMU-TEK TCP/IP on the VAX, so you could connect via
DECNet from the Sun to the VAX and then telnet into the Sun ... or you
could telnet into the VAX and SET HOST SUN and Decnet back into the Sun
(yes, the decnet support did both halves of the DN remote-host protocol
(whose exact name escapes me, but I swear at the time I knew it))
--NK1G
Michael Kraemer
Oct 11, 2012, 4:13:50 PM10/11/12
to
lawr...@gandi.cluon.com schrieb:
> Curiously - I did find, in the scrap-tape-bin at a junque shop, the
> "DECNet support for SunOS 4" tape,
do you still have it?
> Curiously - I did find, in the scrap-tape-bin at a junque shop, the
> "DECNet support for SunOS 4" tape,
Shmuel Metz
Oct 10, 2012, 10:40:17 PM10/10/12
to
In <k550r...@news3.newsguy.com>, on 10/10/2012
begin, but I'll only comment that he obviously did not know his own
product line.
at 07:37 PM, "Joe Morris" <j.c.m...@verizon.net> said:
>We had explicitly called for the benchmark to be run as batch, but
>the GE salesdroids ran it on a TTY 33ASR. Their explanation: "If
>you want GE you want time sharing".
Wow! That was wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to
>We had explicitly called for the benchmark to be run as batch, but
>the GE salesdroids ran it on a TTY 33ASR. Their explanation: "If
>you want GE you want time sharing".
begin, but I'll only comment that he obviously did not know his own
product line.
Shmuel Metz
Oct 10, 2012, 10:36:38 PM10/10/12
to
In <mddtxu2ue...@panix5.panix.com>, on 10/10/2012
at 06:46 PM, Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> said:
>Ignoring the clouds of emotional smoke in the entire argument, I ask
>that you expound upon your argument. I have had 35 years to think on
>this and compare, so I canot see how you come to that conclusion.
Character handling, larger address size.
>Ignoring the clouds of emotional smoke in the entire argument, I ask
>that you expound upon your argument. I have had 35 years to think on
>this and compare, so I canot see how you come to that conclusion.
lawr...@gandi.cluon.com
Oct 11, 2012, 6:12:55 PM10/11/12
to
ago.
Peter Flass
Oct 11, 2012, 7:36:11 PM10/11/12
to
On 10/11/2012 9:34 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:
>>
> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
> everything.
>
Ah, I've seen you use "task-based" before, I wondered what you meant by
>>
> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
> everything.
>
it. It's sort of like OS/2 v windoze - once 'doze start something it's
nearly impossible to get it to quit.
--
Pete
Peter Flass
Oct 11, 2012, 7:40:49 PM10/11/12
to
On 10/11/2012 10:06 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:
>> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
>> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
>> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
>> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
>> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
>> everything.
>
> one of the things that early cp67 did was make any terminal i/o
> (regardless of read or write) indication of human response event and
> "high priority". this led to all sorts of anomolous activity
> ... including users discovering that if they performed gratuitous
> terminal writes during long running compute bound operation, it got
> better throughput (CMS "blip" had built-in terminal i/o that would
> "wiggle" the 2741 typeball every two-seconds of cpu use, part of gaming
> the system was to cut the interval for "blip").
TSO did this too, I used to press "ATTN" (or something, I don't recall
> jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> writes:
>> It had to do with the philosophy of the OS. A real timesharing
>> system would make the perceived response time for the users a
>> higher priority (term not to be confused withe hard/software
>> priority implementations) than the background bookkeeping processing.
>> A task-based OS philosophy places finishing the current task above
>> everything.
>
> one of the things that early cp67 did was make any terminal i/o
> (regardless of read or write) indication of human response event and
> "high priority". this led to all sorts of anomolous activity
> ... including users discovering that if they performed gratuitous
> terminal writes during long running compute bound operation, it got
> better throughput (CMS "blip" had built-in terminal i/o that would
> "wiggle" the 2741 typeball every two-seconds of cpu use, part of gaming
> the system was to cut the interval for "blip").
now) every minute or so to get a priority bump.
--
Pete
Peter Flass
Oct 11, 2012, 7:49:01 PM10/11/12
to
On 10/11/2012 11:06 AM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> "Charles Richmond" <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>> "With computers, anything less than instantaneous is too slow..."
>
> re:
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
>
> there was human factors study regarding human perception threshold ...
> when they could differentiate between instantaneous and something
> slightly longer. there was difference between individuals in the study
> that varied between about .09 seconds and .2seconds. there was some
> conjecture that the variability was accounted for difference between
> different humans in the time signals propogate in the brain (individuals
> in the study were all employees of high-end research facility).
>
> another human factors study related to productivity was that human
> attention started to wander when response wasn't within their threshold
> ... and then when the response came ... the time it took to refocus was
> about the same duration as attention spent wandering ... i.e. "loss of
> productivity" was twice the elapsed time delay between the expected
> response and the actual response.
I believe there were also studies that *consistent* response times were
> "Charles Richmond" <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>> "With computers, anything less than instantaneous is too slow..."
>
> re:
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
>
> there was human factors study regarding human perception threshold ...
> when they could differentiate between instantaneous and something
> slightly longer. there was difference between individuals in the study
> that varied between about .09 seconds and .2seconds. there was some
> conjecture that the variability was accounted for difference between
> different humans in the time signals propogate in the brain (individuals
> in the study were all employees of high-end research facility).
>
> another human factors study related to productivity was that human
> attention started to wander when response wasn't within their threshold
> ... and then when the response came ... the time it took to refocus was
> about the same duration as attention spent wandering ... i.e. "loss of
> productivity" was twice the elapsed time delay between the expected
> response and the actual response.
important. People can adjust to whatever happens, including using the
wait for a response to take a sip of coffee, but if it;s wildly
inconsistent they can't adjust.
People also develop a model of how long something takes. They soon
learn that running a compile takes longer (or should) than changing a
line in an editor.
>
> lots of browser web stuff now tends to be much longer than threshold.
> i've mentioned periodically that help drive me to using browser
> background tabs (going on nearly decade now) ... where I queue up a
> couple hundred web pages in browser background tabs. Time to switch
> browser tabs is now purely local issue.
activity in one tab usually impacts response in another,
--
Pete
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