VM/SP

From: Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk <(Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk)>
Date: Wed Jul 8 14:09:02 1998

> This started as a joke, but turned into something interesting.
> Someone posted on alt.os.multics about setting a UNIX to pop up the VM/SP
> logo from /etc/issue. I did one better and crocked up a way to make UNIX
> actually act like VM/SP at the logon (Mutilated copy of telnetd and a new
> login program).

Fun! Now you need to write cmsh.

> The question is, what was VM/SP? I know it was IBMs, and it ran on large
> mainframes. Where can I find information about it?

Virtual Machine System Product. I'll have a look thro' my IBM junk at
home this evening, but I don't think I've got much on it.

IBM draw boundaries in different places, but under VM operating system
(CP, Control Program) usually ran CMS Conversational Monitor System - a
bit like a shell, hence my pun above...

The first scripting language for VM/CMS was CMS EXEC. I never used it
but I understand it was awful. Later came EXEC2 - lots of & characters
(I think - or were they % characters?) to identify names, or reserved
words, or something. This was still the official scripting language
when I encountered VM, but I, like everyone else, used REXX.

This has exhausted my memory - I'm off home.

Philip.
Received on Wed Jul 08 1998 - 14:09:02 BST