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Retro computing and gaming, sci-fi books, tv and movies and other geeky stuff.Re: The IBM System/360 Revolution
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420916&th=115454#msg_420916
> IBM always were primarily about selling services (design,
> support ...) the hardware and software were just the means to an end.
Of course that made a lot of sense in the early days, where computers
were something newfangled, and companies that could benefit from
automating their accounting wouldn't necessarily find it easy to get
adequate in-house computer expertise.
John Savard]]>Quadibloc2023-09-16T12:19:32-00:00Re: The IBM System/360 Revolution
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420915&th=115454#msg_420915
D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2023 12:05:58 -1000, Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Amdahl guote about design of 360 (from facebook group)
>>
>> He said they identified at all the companies that had the recourses to
>> pay them lots of money. Then they went to these companies and asked
>> them what products/programs they would pay big money for. They
Wow! Now that's commercialism at its purest.
>> designed these programs and identified common services they all relied
>> upon and designed those services. Then they designed an OS that would
>> well support those services and programs. Then they designed a
>> customer support system. Then they designed the hardware to support
>> the OS, services, programs, and customer support.
They used the old system analyst's rulebook - clever!
1: Work out what the business needs to do
2: Decide what software can be used to support it
3: Pick hardware and OS to support that software
> Aha ! Lock those customers into software and hardware they need.
IBM always were primarily about selling services (design,
support ...) the hardware and software were just the means to an end.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency]]>Ahem A Rivet's Shot2023-09-15T16:39:34-00:00Re: The IBM System/360 Revolution
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420914&th=115454#msg_420914
lynn@garlic.com>
wrote:
>
> Amdahl guote about design of 360 (from facebook group)
>
> He said they identified at all the companies that had the recourses to
> pay them lots of money. Then they went to these companies and asked
> them what products/programs they would pay big money for. They
> designed these programs and identified common services they all relied
> upon and designed those services. Then they designed an OS that would
> well support those services and programs. Then they designed a
> customer support system. Then they designed the hardware to support
> the OS, services, programs, and customer support.
I've mentiioned various times asked to tract down decision to add
virtual memory to all 370s. Found staff to executive making
decision. Basically MVT storage management was so bad that region sizes
frequently had to be specified four times larger than used. As a result
typical 1mbyte 370/165 only ran four regions concurrently, insufficient
to keep processor busy and justified. Moving MVT to 16mbyte virtual
memory (similar to running MVT in CP67 16mbyte virtual machine) allowed
number of concurrently running regions to be increased by factor of four
with little or no paging. Archived 2011 afc post with pieces of email
exchange http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73
Science center had joint project with Endicott to enhance CP67 virtual
machine support to support 370 virtual memory architecture ... and then
modify CP67 to run with 370 virtual memory (instead of 360/67 virtual
memory). My CP67L ran on the real 360/67, CP67H ran in virtual 360/67
(supporting 370 virtual machines), CP67I ran in virtual 370 (extra layer
not running CP67H on real hardware was because Cambridge system also had
professors, staff and students using the system, and wanted extra
security layer preventing unannounced virtual memory from leaking). This
was in regular use a year before before the 370 hardware (engineering
370/145) was operational with virtual memory support (and CP67I was used
for testing real hardware). Then three people from San Jose added 3330
and 2305 device support for "CP67SJ" (sometimes cp370) ... which was in
production use on internal 370 machines long before (and after) VM/370
operational.
In the morph from CP67->VM370, lots of CP67 features were dropped and/or
simplified. I then spent parts of 1974, adding CP67 (initially) into
VM/370 for CSC/VM (aka after joining IBM one of my hobbies was
production operating systems for internal datacenters). I would sometime
needle the MULTICS people on the 5th flr that at some point, I was
supporting more CSC/VM production internal systems than the total number
of MULTICS systems that ever existed (aka some of the MIT CTSS/7094
people went to 5th flr to do MULTICS, others went to the science center
on 4th flr and did internal network, virtual machine, invented)
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970]]>Anne & Lynn Wheel2023-09-14T01:56:51-00:00Re: The IBM System/360 Revolution
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420910&th=115454#msg_420910
He said they identified at all the companies that had the recourses to
pay them lots of money. Then they went to these companies and asked
them what products/programs they would pay big money for. They
designed these programs and identified common services they all relied
upon and designed those services. Then they designed an OS that would
well support those services and programs. Then they designed a
customer support system. Then they designed the hardware to support
the OS, services, programs, and customer support.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970]]>Anne & Lynn Wheel2023-09-13T22:05:58-00:00The IBM System/360 Revolution
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420909&th=115454#msg_420909
The IBM System/360 Revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0_Lzb1CJw
[Recorded April 7, 2004]
Computer pioneers and National Medal of Technology awardees Erich
Bloch, Fred Brooks, Jr. and Bob Evans with current IBM technology
chief Nick Donofrio discuss the extraordinary IBM System/360 project.
IBM launched the System/360 on April 7, 1964. Many consider it the
biggest business gamble of all time. At the height of IBM's success,
Thomas J. Watson, Jr. bet the company's future on a new compatible
family of computer systems that would help revolutionize modern
organizations. This lecture presents a behind-the-scenes view of the
tough decisions made by some of the people who made them, and
discusses how the System/360 helped transform the government, science
and commercial landscape.
linkedin year old post about IBM "downfall", starting with Learson
trying(& fails) to block bureaucrats, careerists, MBAs from destroying
Watson Legacy https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/john-boyd-ibm-wild-ducks-lynn -wheeler/
a couple decades later, IBM has one of the largest losses in US company
history and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in
preparation for breaking up the company.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970]]>Anne & Lynn Wheel2023-09-13T18:35:33-00:00Re: compatibility, and ISA
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420908&th=115432#msg_420908
tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
>> S/360 was well defined, Vax was eventually pretty well defined, other
>> DEC architectures were only defined by their implementation, which as
>> you noted led to a lot of pain down the road.
>
> Wasn't there an unholy mess about POLY on the VAX?
>
How the VAX Lost Its POLY (and EMOD and ACB_floating too)
--
Pete]]>Peter Flass2023-09-13T02:52:26-00:00Next FCUG meeting - Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420905&th=115451#msg_420905
The Fresno Commodore User Group has its next meeting from 11 a.m. to 2:30+ p.m., Sunday, Sept. 17, at
Panera Bread Restaurant
3590 W. Shaw Ave. (corner of W. Shaw Ave. and Marty Ave.)
Fresno, CA 93711
(559) 271-0104 http://www.dickestel.com/met_loc.htm
For discussion, we will talk about the October 12-15 Amiwest Show in Sacramento, the October 14-15 and 21-22 Bay Area Maker Faire in Mare Island, and next April’s Commodore Los Angeles Super Show in Burbank.
It is GEOS time at our meeting! The Mega65 computer returns, and we will run GEOS 65 (which was converted from GEOS 128). The Commodore PC20-III returns, and we will run Geoworks Pro (a.k.a. PC GEOS a.k.a. Geoworks Ensemble).
Not all is GEOS. We will have some fun with the Commodore PC running Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Non-Medical Pain Relief (!), and ABC-Talk (ooo, that digital speech is very rough when going through the PC speaker). On the club C128 (in 64 mode), we’ll run the latest games and previews reported on Indie Retro News. On the Amiga 600, we run some of the latest demos/games courtesy of our sister club, The Other Group of Amigoids.
If we have any time left over (yeah… right…), we’ll have a preliminary look at the C64 educational packages from Hayden Software, Light Lab and Temperature Lab.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm]]>RobertB2023-09-12T14:46:41-00:00Re: compatibility, and ISA
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420903&th=115432#msg_420903
Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
> S/360 was well defined, Vax was eventually pretty well defined, other
> DEC architectures were only defined by their implementation, which as
> you noted led to a lot of pain down the road.
Wasn't there an unholy mess about POLY on the VAX?]]>2023-09-12T05:26:33-00:00Re: ISA
https://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=rview&goto=420902&th=115432#msg_420902
news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
> Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>
>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>>> I wasn't aware of the incompatibilities among various PDP-11 models, but the
>>> -10s seemed to have areas of incompatibility also. I believe IBM was the
>>> first to define an "architectureв" independent of any particular
>>> implementation, and then make sure (nearly) all S/360 models conformed to
>>> it.
>
>> Other than the addition of extended addressing to the KL-10 and KS-10, what
>> did you have in mind for the PDP-10 systems? Asking for a friend... ;->
>
> I clearly didn't have enough coffee before checking in to a.f.c.
>
> In the PDP-6, KA-10, KI-10, and KL-10, there is a class of instructions devoted
> to input-output operations. (All I/O controllers are designed to operate the
> same way.)
>
> In the KS-10, I/O instructions are much more broadly defined, to interoperate
> with Unibus peripherals (using a slightly extended Unibus which handles 18 bit
> data rather than 16 bit).
>
> As it happens, because the XKL Toad-1 uses a completely different bus structure
> than any DEC product, the KS-10 model (individually defined I/O instructions)
> was used in the Toad, although of course the particular assignments are very
> different.
>
> Macro-10/Macro-20 (the DEC standard assembler) has the following code in the
> initialization sequence; note that this particular version includes a test for
> the XKL Toad-1, a PDP-10 clone:
Ah, the trouble that can be avoided by a small ROM.
>
> ; ;HERE TO TEST FOR CPU AND SET VALUE IN .CPU.
> ;PDP-6 = 1
> ;KA-10 = 2
> ;KI-10 = 3
> ;KL-10 = 4
> ;XKL = 5
> MOVEI V,1 ;START WITH PDP-6
>
> JFCL 1,.+1 ;CLEAR PC CHANGE FLAG
> JRST .+1 ;THEN CHANGE PC
> JFCL 1,.PDP6. ;IF FLAG ON, ITS A PDP6
>
> HRLOI 1,-2 ;CHECK FOR KA-10
> AOBJP 1,.KA10. ;CHECK CARRY BETWEEN HALVES
>
> SETZ 1, ;CLEAR AC
> BLT 1,0 ;AND TRY BLT, KI WILL BE 0 AND
> JUMPE 1,.KI10. ;KL WILL HAVE 1,,1
>
> MOVSI 1,400000 ;Largest negative number
> ADJBP 1,[430100,,0] ;Check if this changes
> CAMN 1,[430100,,0] ;If it doesn't we have a KL10
> JRST .KL10.
>
> MOVSI 1,450000 ;A one-word global byte pointer
> IBP 1 ;The KS doesn't have OWGBPs
> CAMN 1,[450000,,0]
> JRST .KS10. ;So the KS won't change it
>
> ; JRST .XKL1. ;but the Toad will
>
> .XKL1.: AOS V
> .KS10.: AOS V
> .KL10.: AOS V
> .KI10.: AOS V
> .KA10.: AOS V
> .PDP6.: MOVEM V,CPUV ;[775] SAVE IT FOR CORE SIZE TYPEOUT
>