Fujitsu Mainframe Vs IBM mainframe

[Peter]

Hi

This question is just out of curiosity.

How different is Fujitsu operating system compared with z/OS ?

Just heard about Fujitsu Mainframe so was little curious about its
architecture.

Regards
Peter

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to list...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

[Edward Finnell]

The rumor back in the 80's was that they had reverse engineered the FACOM's
from SYS1.MACLIB. I know they made it to XA 'cause several 3rd party
vendors were routed thru SFO on their way over. Think Bruce Black(FDR) and
others mentioned they got most of it right with the exception of a few interrupt
stacks.

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/corporate/history/1980-1991/

When Dr. Merrill wakes up he can probably shed more light. There's several
Fujitsus member in MXG.


In a message dated 2/23/2017 1:31:41 A.M. Central Standard Time,

dbaja...@GMAIL.COM writes:

How different is Fujitsu operating system compared with z/OS ?

Just heard about Fujitsu Mainframe so was little curious about its
architecture.

[Vernooij, Kees - KLM , ITOPT1]

I remember from the time we still received the source of DMS (CA-DISK) there were checks every now and then to see if it was running on a Fijutsi or a Hitachi (they also had one) MVS. So this means it was very similar to MVS, but of course hardly comparable to z/OS with its 30 years of subsequent development.

Kees.

********************************************************
For information, services and offers, please visit our web site: http://www.klm.com. This e-mail and any attachment may contain confidential and privileged material intended for the addressee only. If you are not the addressee, you are notified that no part of the e-mail or any attachment may be disclosed, copied or distributed, and that any other action related to this e-mail or attachment is strictly prohibited, and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail by error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, and delete this message.

Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV (KLM), its subsidiaries and/or its employees shall not be liable for the incorrect or incomplete transmission of this e-mail or any attachments, nor responsible for any delay in receipt.
Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (also known as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines) is registered in Amstelveen, The Netherlands, with registered number 33014286
********************************************************

[Mike Cairns]

The first ten years of my mainframe career I never saw a true IBM installation. First I worked with a Fujistu and MSP, then I moved to a shop that had Amdahl kit, and after that a shop that was Hitachi. At least for the Amdahl and Hitachi the OS was really MVS, OS/390 etc.

The Fujitsu environment worked almost exactly the same as the MVS system from the perspective of an applications programmer. The sysprogs probably knew more about the differences than I did at the time. We ran Adabas/Natural, lots of PL/1, SAS, and probably many more besides that I didn't know about (this was my first shop, I was quite young and completely inexperienced of course).

Interesting things I remember about the Fujitsu OS:

MVS was called MSP - Multiple Systems Product if I recall correctly. But apparently you could see the IBM copyright in the load modules in some places...
TSO was called TSS - Time Sharing System
RACF was still called RACF - and worked exactly the same
Though JCL was the same, we had something called JOL - Job Oriented Language. This was a set of ISPF panels that walked you through creation of each jobstep and built (awful) dynamically allocated JCL.
ISPF was called SPF - Systems Productivity Facility
We had something called GEM - I forget the acronym, this was a source/version control system if I recall correctly.
Used to have to use the TSO SUBMIT and OUTPUT commands a lot - but I guess this was no different from MVSes of the same era (early 80's).
We didn't have SDSF.

Mike

[Robin Atwood]

Back when I too worked on Amdahls in the 80s, the SEs told me the Fujitsus had 31 bit I/O architecture! Don't know the truth of that, though.

Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Mike Cairns
Sent: 23 February 2017 17:08
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Fujitsu Mainframe Vs IBM mainframe

[Edward Gould]

> On Feb 23, 2017, at 4:07 AM, Mike Cairns <mi...@MIKECAIRNS.COM> wrote:
>
> The first ten years of my mainframe career I never saw a true IBM installation. First I worked with a Fujistu and MSP, then I moved to a shop that had Amdahl kit, and after that a shop that was Hitachi. At least for the Amdahl and Hitachi the OS was really MVS, OS/390 etc.
>
> The Fujitsu environment worked almost exactly the same as the MVS system from the perspective of an applications programmer. The sysprogs probably knew more about the differences than I did at the time. We ran Adabas/Natural, lots of PL/1, SAS, and probably many more besides that I didn't know about (this was my first shop, I was quite young and completely inexperienced of course).
>
> Interesting things I remember about the Fujitsu OS:
>
> MVS was called MSP - Multiple Systems Product if I recall correctly. But apparently you could see the IBM copyright in the load modules in some places...
> TSO was called TSS - Time Sharing System
> RACF was still called RACF - and worked exactly the same
> Though JCL was the same, we had something called JOL - Job Oriented Language. This was a set of ISPF panels that walked you through creation of each jobstep and built (awful) dynamically allocated JCL.
> ISPF was called SPF - Systems Productivity Facility

ISPF was originally called (and IMO named incorrectly System Programmer Facility)

> We had something called GEM - I forget the acronym, this was a source/version control system if I recall correctly.
> Used to have to use the TSO SUBMIT and OUTPUT commands a lot - but I guess this was no different from MVSes of the same era (early 80's).

OUTPUT command has been there day 1 with TSO.

> We didn't have SDSF.

SDSF came in the late 80’s ?? I think I remember the white page(s) sheet but its lost in the great bit bucket. I am reasonably sure that it was a FDP (field developed program but wouldn’t bet lunch on it).

[Mike Cairns]

One of the funniest things I recall was attempting to understand the documentation. I wish I had kept some of the old manuals just for a laugh. Apparently they had been translated from the IBM documentation into Japanese, and then translated back into English. They were both awful, difficult to read and understand, and sometimes very funny in the poorly translated phrases that appeared regularly.

I also recall that there was a serious dispute between my then employer and IBM, which led to the buying of Fujistu at the time. IBM tried to get the decision reversed. The story I heard was that the local head of IBM took the government minister responsible for the organisation out for a round of golf together... This may have been just be a rumour though, the people involved are long ago retired.

[R.S.]

My €0.02:
There are (were) both: hardware and OS software.

Software: IBM OS/390, Fujitsu MSP, Hitachi VOS and AFAIK Siemens (don't
remeber the name)
The clones were very similar, but not the same.

Hardware: you could run IBM OS/390 on Hitachi or Amdahl machine, it was
both feasible, and legal (allowed by IBM).
(in the older days the number of HW clones was higher: ITEL, Olivetti,
Comparex, etc.)

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland






--
Treść tej wiadomości może zawierać informacje prawnie chronione Banku przeznaczone wyłącznie do użytku służbowego adresata. Odbiorcą może być jedynie jej adresat z wyłączeniem dostępu osób trzecich. Jeżeli nie jesteś adresatem niniejszej wiadomości lub pracownikiem upoważnionym do jej przekazania adresatowi, informujemy, że jej rozpowszechnianie, kopiowanie, rozprowadzanie lub inne działanie o podobnym charakterze jest prawnie zabronione i może być karalne. Jeżeli otrzymałeś tę wiadomość omyłkowo, prosimy niezwłocznie zawiadomić nadawcę wysyłając odpowiedź oraz trwale usunąć tę wiadomość włączając w to wszelkie jej kopie wydrukowane lub zapisane na dysku.

This e-mail may contain legally privileged information of the Bank and is intended solely for business use of the addressee. This e-mail may only be received by the addressee and may not be disclosed to any third parties. If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail or the employee authorized to forward it to the addressee, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution or any other similar activity is legally prohibited and may be punishable. If you received this e-mail by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software and delete permanently this e-mail including any copies of it either printed or saved to hard drive.

mBank S.A. z siedzibą w Warszawie, ul. Senatorska 18, 00-950 Warszawa, www.mBank.pl, e-mail: kon...@mBank.pl
Sąd Rejonowy dla m. st. Warszawy XII Wydział Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sądowego, nr rejestru przedsiębiorców KRS 0000025237, NIP: 526-021-50-88. Według stanu na dzień 01.01.2016 r. kapitał zakładowy mBanku S.A. (w całości wpłacony) wynosi 168.955.696 złotych.

[Mike Beer]

If I remember correctly - the Siemens (later Fujitsu Siemens) offering
was "BS2000".

Mike

[Michel Castelein]

No. It was "BS3000".

Michel Castelein

[Hardee, Chuck]

There may have been several versions but, when I was involved in getting IDMS to run on Fujitsu, Hitachi, Siemens and others, it was BS2000.


Charles (Chuck) Hardee
Senior Systems Engineer/Database Administration
EAS Information Technology

Thermo Fisher Scientific
300 Industry Drive | Pittsburgh, PA 15275
Phone +1 (724) 517-2633 | Mobile +1 (412) 877-2809 | FAX: +1 (412) 490-9230
Chuck....@ThermoFisher.com | www.thermofisher.com

WORLDWIDE CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: Dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient, or an employee or agent of a system responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please inform the sender and delete all copies.

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Michel Castelein
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2017 11:36 AM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Fujitsu Mainframe Vs IBM mainframe

[Andy Wood]

>My €0.02:

>There are (were) both: hardware and OS software.
>
>Software: IBM OS/390, Fujitsu MSP, Hitachi VOS and AFAIK Siemens (don't
>remeber the name)
>The clones were very similar, but not the same.
>
>Hardware: you could run IBM OS/390 on Hitachi or Amdahl machine, it was
>both feasible, and legal (allowed by IBM).
>(in the older days the number of HW clones was higher: ITEL, Olivetti,
>Comparex, etc.)
>
>--
>Radoslaw Skorupka
>Lodz, Poland

> ...

I believe Siemens at one time sold a system derived from the RCA Spectra.

I encountered the RCA Spectra in the guise of an ICL (English Electric) System 4. I wrote assembly code for that which from my point of view was identical to S/360 assembly.

The operating system, about which I knew very little (and now recall even less), must have been quite different because the machines had several interrupt states each with its own set of GP registers. No chance of running an IBM operating system on one of those.

[zMan]

I can't decide whether this thread is fascinating or stultifying. I guess
that means it's fascinating!

--
zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it"

[Bill Woodger]

Also note that if you see a current job-ad for Fujitsu Mainframe skills in the UK, it will be for an ICL Mainframe, running VME, and being distinctly different from... anything from IBM. The COBOL is to the 1974 Standard (with Extensions, including COMP-5 which allows the definition of "bits").

Various parts of "the government" have huge projects at the moment converting their old ICL systems to Microfocus COBOL on "servers".

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

I’m pretty sure it's Friday somewhere. I once visited a mainframe shop where the only visible IBM-branded gear on the floor was a 37x5. I remember

-- Magnuson CPU (that would be a relic to come across)
-- StorageTek disk and tape
-- Raytheon terminals
-- Some kind of Brand-X printers.

They ran probably MVS/SP and clearly could not support upgrade to next OS version. This was a still-today highly respected company that was sliding along on the cheap. No idea if they're still mainframe.

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robi...@sce.com

[William Donzelli]

I suppose I should chime in an modify my occasional plea for vintage
manuals, documentation, and software.

This stuff for the Japanese machines is very thin on the ground. The
computer museums in Japan (check out the IPSJ website, by the way,
when you have time) really do not have much at all, nor does bitsavers
or the Computer History Museum. If you have any you no longer need,
please consider having bitsavers archive it. I can funnel it towards
Al.

And personally, I need *anything* for the Hitachi M180 aka National AS/6.

--
Will

[Mike Myers]

Mike:

Interesting that you bring that up. I was working at the IBM
Poughkeepsie lab at the time and was charged with comparing Fujitsu
documentation with the IBM equivalent manuals. I don't recall which
specific manuals those were, but I do remember that the English version
seemed to be written by a non-English speaking person (at least for a
first language), but that the contents of the paragraphs appeared in the
same order as our (IBM) manuals. Looked like a really poor example of
plagiarism. As you say, there were a lot of good laughs and I wish I too
had saved some of those manuals. I don't recall what came from the
results of our study (probably some ineffective lawsuits), as I soon got
reassigned to something more interesting, like the design of Data In
Virtual.

Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation

On 02/23/2017 09:43 AM, Mike Cairns wrote:One of the funniest things I

[zMan]

Well, that's one way to avoid a plagiarism charge -- translate to gibberish
and back!

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 6:51 PM, Mike Myers <mi...@mentor-services.com>
wrote:

--
zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it"

[Bruce Hewson]

Hi Peter

Fujitsu, or FACOM ( which I understood to be Fujitsu Australia Company), had similar enough software that I was able to get cross-domain SNA, or was it SNI, connections between MVS/VTAM running on a 3084 to MSP/VTAMG runing on a FACOM machine.

Regards
Bruce

On Thu, 23 Feb 2017 13:01:30 +0530, Peter <dbaja...@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Hi
>
>This question is just out of curiosity.
>

>How different is Fujitsu operating system compared with z/OS ?
>
>Just heard about Fujitsu Mainframe so was little curious about its
>architecture.
>

>Regards
>Peter

[Tom Marchant]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2017 03:04:27 -0600, Bruce Hewson wrote:

>FACOM ( which I understood to be Fujitsu Australia Company)

I remember it the same, or at least similar.

Fujitsu owned nearly 50% of Amdahl, having invested in the development
of the first Amdahl machines. And FACOM distributed Amdahl machines in
Australia, and perhaps other places.

My understanding was that Fujitsu had a nearly identical machine as well.

And an Australian colleague who I met at Amdahl headquarters in Sunnyvale
told me how they pronounced FACOM. In the US, we pronounced it FAY-com.
He pronounced it quite differently.

Fujitsu America is now headquartered at the old Amdahl headquarters at
1250 E. Arques in Sunnyvale, CA.

And I found this interesting article from 1981:
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/30/business/compuetrs-here-comes-fujitsu.html

--
Tom Marchant

[R.S.]

W dniu 2017-02-23 o 20:09, Bill Woodger pisze:

> Also note that if you see a current job-ad for Fujitsu Mainframe skills in the UK, it will be for an ICL Mainframe, running VME, and being distinctly different from... anything from IBM. The COBOL is to the 1974 Standard (with Extensions, including COMP-5 which allows the definition of "bits").
>
> Various parts of "the government" have huge projects at the moment converting their old ICL systems to Microfocus COBOL on "servers".

It was very popular in Poland, because our government bought a license
for ICL machines and OS. Indeed, it wasn't even similar to IBM family.
The system name was GEORGE (GEORGE3), polish name of the machine was
ODRA (this is name of second largest polish river, which crosesse
Wrocław - a city where ODRA were built).
I think the last ODRA's were in use approx. 10 years ago in a railways.

Some years later there were also ODRA emulator working under VM on IBM
hardware. I met it approx 18-20 years ago. People claimed the emulator
was over 10 times faster than real machine. The emulator ran on 6 MIPS 4381.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

--
Treść tej wiadomości może zawierać informacje prawnie chronione Banku przeznaczone wyłącznie do użytku służbowego adresata. Odbiorcą może być jedynie jej adresat z wyłączeniem dostępu osób trzecich. Jeżeli nie jesteś adresatem niniejszej wiadomości lub pracownikiem upoważnionym do jej przekazania adresatowi, informujemy, że jej rozpowszechnianie, kopiowanie, rozprowadzanie lub inne działanie o podobnym charakterze jest prawnie zabronione i może być karalne. Jeżeli otrzymałeś tę wiadomość omyłkowo, prosimy niezwłocznie zawiadomić nadawcę wysyłając odpowiedź oraz trwale usunąć tę wiadomość włączając w to wszelkie jej kopie wydrukowane lub zapisane na dysku.

This e-mail may contain legally privileged information of the Bank and is intended solely for business use of the addressee. This e-mail may only be received by the addressee and may not be disclosed to any third parties. If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail or the employee authorized to forward it to the addressee, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution or any other similar activity is legally prohibited and may be punishable. If you received this e-mail by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software and delete permanently this e-mail including any copies of it either printed or saved to hard drive.

mBank S.A. z siedzibą w Warszawie, ul. Senatorska 18, 00-950 Warszawa, www.mBank.pl, e-mail: kon...@mBank.pl
Sąd Rejonowy dla m. st. Warszawy XII Wydział Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sądowego, nr rejestru przedsiębiorców KRS 0000025237, NIP: 526-021-50-88. Według stanu na dzień 01.01.2016 r. kapitał zakładowy mBanku S.A. (w całości wpłacony) wynosi 168.955.696 złotych.

[Bernd Oppolzer]

Am 24.02.2017 um 14:37 schrieb R.S.:
> W dniu 2017-02-23 o 20:09, Bill Woodger pisze:
>> Also note that if you see a current job-ad for Fujitsu Mainframe
>> skills in the UK, it will be for an ICL Mainframe, running VME, and
>> being distinctly different from... anything from IBM. The COBOL is to
>> the 1974 Standard (with Extensions, including COMP-5 which allows the
>> definition of "bits").
>>
>> Various parts of "the government" have huge projects at the moment
>> converting their old ICL systems to Microfocus COBOL on "servers".
>
> It was very popular in Poland, because our government bought a license
> for ICL machines and OS. Indeed, it wasn't even similar to IBM family.
> The system name was GEORGE (GEORGE3), polish name of the machine was
> ODRA (this is name of second largest polish river, which crosesse
> Wrocław - a city where ODRA were built).
> I think the last ODRA's were in use approx. 10 years ago in a railways.
>
> Some years later there were also ODRA emulator working under VM on IBM
> hardware. I met it approx 18-20 years ago. People claimed the emulator
> was over 10 times faster than real machine. The emulator ran on 6 MIPS
> 4381.
>

There was a report generator on ODRA called TABU,
somehow similar to RPG, but more elegant IMO.

I wrote a Pascal program for MPK Lodz (in 1991) to convert their
TABU reports to COBOL programs, because they replaced their
ODRA machine with a 4381 VM machine; but because they
had so much TABU reports, there had to be a solution for this.

I also heard that the ODRA simulator was very successful;
MPK also sold computer time on ODRA to third parties, and
they charged for ODRA time, but in fact they ran the batch programs
on the VM based ODRA simulator, so they got more money in less time.

There were also stories that they managed to build an interface for
a very large old Russian tape device and attach it to the 4381 somehow.

BTW: the Odra river marks the frontier to Germany, too,
the German name is "Oder".

Kind regards

Bernd

[R.S.]

W dniu 2017-02-24 o 15:14, Bernd Oppolzer pisze:

Bernd,
MPK is the installation I mentioned.
(BTW: MPK is public transportation company, trams and buses)
They replaced 4381 with P/390.

And yes, Odra (Oder) is border river, upper part of it is also Czech.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

---

Treść tej wiadomości może zawierać informacje prawnie chronione Banku przeznaczone wyłącznie do użytku służbowego adresata. Odbiorcą może być jedynie jej adresat z wyłączeniem dostępu osób trzecich. Jeżeli nie jesteś adresatem niniejszej wiadomości lub pracownikiem upoważnionym do jej przekazania adresatowi, informujemy, że jej rozpowszechnianie, kopiowanie, rozprowadzanie lub inne działanie o podobnym charakterze jest prawnie zabronione i może być karalne. Jeżeli otrzymałeś tę wiadomość omyłkowo, prosimy niezwłocznie zawiadomić nadawcę wysyłając odpowiedź oraz trwale usunąć tę wiadomość włączając w to wszelkie jej kopie wydrukowane lub zapisane na dysku.

This e-mail may contain legally privileged information of the Bank and is intended solely for business use of the addressee. This e-mail may only be received by the addressee and may not be disclosed to any third parties. If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail or the employee authorized to forward it to the addressee, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution or any other similar activity is legally prohibited and may be punishable. If you received this e-mail by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software and delete permanently this e-mail including any copies of it either printed or saved to hard drive.

mBank S.A. z siedzibą w Warszawie, ul. Senatorska 18, 00-950 Warszawa, www.mBank.pl, e-mail: kon...@mBank.pl
Sąd Rejonowy dla m. st. Warszawy XII Wydział Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sądowego, nr rejestru przedsiębiorców KRS 0000025237, NIP: 526-021-50-88. Według stanu na dzień 01.01.2016 r. kapitał zakładowy mBanku S.A. (w całości wpłacony) wynosi 168.955.696 złotych.

[Vince Coen]

Small correct for the info below :

The operating System George (1, 2, 3 & 4) run on ICL 1900 series, 2903 &
4 ( as George 2 & 3).
G1 was the original and was replaced with G2 - just as well as a bit of
a dog but better than in native mode.

George 4 was for very big installations and was rarely used (compared to
installs with G3) in my experience but acted like G3.

George 3 runs under emulation on Series 3900 (and the prior 2900 series)
using DME only not VME which is a native O/S which was at least in the
early days, written in Algol68R and yes I was just one of many
programmers writing it !.
Later versions that fixed bugs and more importantly speeded it up
written in S3 while the compiler was improved.

Algol68R - think a cross between C++ and C but more C.

As far as I remember (so might be wrong) Poland used ICL 1900 series
built under license as the 2900 series was being build and sold in the
UK along with the small systems 2903/4. There was other small system
that I was not involved with directly.

The 2903/4 was a microcoded system that ran G2 mostly but I know I did
run OS360 Dos type o/s's on it by changing the microcode in the evenings
and W/E's when I had a need but mostly for my own requirements (I was
the DP Manger) although cannot remember why.
It took but minutes to change the microcode via mass storage device
drive (dasd) or tape - can't remember which.

This all in the mid 70's.

Now the 30+ system still in use in the UK (other than the original
painted Orange 2944 at Bletchley Park Computer Museum which is run at
weekends) actually run under emulation over Linux based Server/blade
system or systems not sure which.

Yes I still have a complete manual set on CD (no engineering manuals)
for the 3900 range that was up to date - ish 7 years ago but software
has not been updated since other than at best some bug fixes but knowing
Fujitsu a little, that is unlikely.

At least they save on electricity as only use singe phase supply so can
run one at home.
Would like to get one if going free - - -


Vince

- IMPORTANT –

This email and the information in it may be confidential, legally privileged
and/or protected by law.
It is intended solely for the use of the person to whom it is addressed.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately
and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose,
or store or copy the information in any medium.

Please also delete all copies of this email & any attachments from your system.

If this is an encrypted email it is your responsibility to maintain the 1024
byte key system even for one-use keys. Once mail has been sent the sending key
is not kept and therefore a replacement mail cannot be resent.

We cannot guarantee the security or confidentiality of non encrypted email
communications.
We do not accept any liability for losses or damages that you may suffer as a
result of your receipt of this email including but not limited to computer
service or system failure, access delays or interruption, data non-delivery
or mis-delivery, computer viruses or other harmful components.

Copyright in this email and any attachments belongs to Applewood Computers.
Should you communicate with anyone at Applewood Computers by email,
you consent to us monitoring and reading any such correspondence.

Nothing in this email shall be taken or read as suggesting, proposing or
relating to any agreement concerted practice or other practice that could
infringe UK or EC competition legislation (unless it is against Security
requirements).

This Email and its attachments (if any) are scanned for virii using Clamd
and ClamAV 0.99.2 or later (Linux x64).

Dykegrove Limited T/A Applewood Computers is a company registered in England
(no. 01681349) whose registered office is at Applewood House,
17 Stag Green Avenue, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL9 5EB, UK.

[Longabaugh, Robert E]

We still have some customers on the MSP version of CA Disk. I'm not sure about VOS3. I remember the customer base being mostly in Japan and Asia, with some in Australia and one site in Spain.

Bob Longabaugh
CA Technologies
Storage Management

[Wayne Bickerdike]

SPF was Structured Programming Facility. The Structured bit came from the
*amazing* ability to indent code using the > margin commands. :)

IBM later renamed it ISPF (Iteractive System Productivity Facility).

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 12:29 AM, Edward Gould <edgou...@comcast.net>
wrote:

--
Wayne V. Bickerdike

[Randy Hudson]

In article <5584103860217389.WA....@listserv.ua.edu>,

Andy Wood wrote:

> I believe Siemens at one time sold a system derived from the RCA Spectra.

Univac bought RCA's IBM-compatible mainframe business after RCA's then-record
losses. The Univac machines were dubbed the 90/60, 90/70, and 90/80. I
don't know what relationship Siemens might have had to the business.

> I encountered the RCA Spectra in the guise of an ICL (English Electric)
> System 4. I wrote assembly code for that which from my point of view was
> identical to S/360 assembly.

The native I/O macros were different, though our shop also had IBM DOS
macros that built the native I/O control blocks and performed simulated IBM
DOS I/O, minimizing changes to working IBM DOS Assembler programs before
recompiling them. A few of the syetm service macros were also different.

The problem-mode assembler language machine instructions were nearly
identical, though the 90/70 and 90/80 machines also implemented an AI (Add
Immediate) instruction, an RS instruction similar to MVI that added a 1-byte
signed constant to a halfword.

There were a few quirks; at release, the 90/70 microcode performed an MVC a
fullword at a time plus byte moves at the finish, with stalls and restarts
for overlapped source and destination. That made it very, very slow
processing the COBOL idiom "MOVE SPACES TO output-field-1" because that
compiled into
MVI outfld1,C' '
MVC outfld1+1(L'outfld1-1),outfld1
which was of course overlapped. A field engineering change added
special-case microcode to solve that problem.

> The operating system, about which I knew very little (and now recall even
> less), must have been quite different because the machines had several
> interrupt states each with its own set of GP registers. No chance of
> running an IBM operating system on one of those.

I recall the operating system on the Univac machines as VS/9.

Our CE, who had been with RCA before Univac bought their mainfram business,
claimed that Univac bought it for the maintenance contract revenue. If so,
they pioneered the business model that Computer Associates would later
follow in software.

[Edward Finnell]

There was a rumor that RCA made a $10 M mistake in their accounting
package. Think Sarnoff even quoted it in his bio but can't give an op cit.


In a message dated 2/25/2017 8:16:00 P.M. Central Standard Time,

i...@PANIX.COM writes:

Univac bought RCA's IBM-compatible mainframe business after RCA's
then-record
losses. The Univac machines were dubbed the 90/60, 90/70, and 90/80. I
don't know what relationship Siemens might have had to the business.