Arrrgh! Micro$h*t again....

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Mon Mar 16 17:01:39 1998

> The IBM midrange and mainframe stuff I've worked on (S/36, AS/400, MVS,
> etc.) has always been _very_ proprietary. It's taken me three years just to
> learn the name of the IBM manual that describes the inwards of the file
> system on the System/36.
>
> Is it this dearth of technical information that accounts for the lack of
> interest in collecting old IBM?

Yes. That and the general unhackability of the minis. And that most people
hate them. And that most universities had DECs and such in their CS
departments. And the weird parts.

But wait...

Their is documentation for the older systems out there - it just needs to
be discovered or released. I think that RCS/RIs S/34 has a full set,
including useful things like scope diagrams and schematics. The only thing
that is a real problem is that you really can not copy and redistribute
the information - it is still IBMs. It only takes one discovered copy to
get the information potentially out, but that last bit is no fun.

I think also that many people really think that the old IBMs are junk.
They really are not. I just purchased (finally found, really) a copy of
*IBM's System/360 and Early 370 Computers*, and a casual quick read
revealed that the S/360 really were very advanced machines, many of
inovations are commonplace today. Other systems, like some of the minis,
have bizarre architectures that, once inside, are fascinating. A lack of
decent development tools, however, is a real crutch. C for the S/3x line
(even Small-C) would be great.

As for weird parts...well, they are still weird parts. Because of them, I
try to purchase any non-PC board that has IBM chips that I see. I do think
that one could piggyback a small SMT board on top of the older SLTs
without a problem.

Anyway, send me your old IBMs, size it not a problem (while I gaze at the
photo of the multiprocessing S/370 installation).

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
 
Received on Mon Mar 16 1998 - 17:01:39 GMT