At 06:01 PM 3/16/98 -0500, you wrote:
[snip]
>> 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...
>
[snip]
>
>I think also that many people really think that the old IBMs are junk.
>They really are not.
Amen. You just need manuals, lots and lots of them.
>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.
I think a lot of people fail to consider that the IBM midrange and
mainframes were designed to run businesses without down time--the
philosophy of the engineers has always been to keep those pesky hackers out
of the system. By hackers, I mean real programmers. Of course the 360 was
supposed to be an "all around machine," but from what I've seen, business
rules at IBM.
>Anyway, send me your old IBMs, size it not a problem (while I gaze at the
>photo of the multiprocessing S/370 installation).
I would if I could afford the freight. ;) I'd still like to get a 5360 to
run Displaywrite/36 folder extractions on, but I have to get the 'Vette out
of the garage and install air conditioning in the there before I can even
think about it.
>
>William Donzelli
>william_at_ans.net
>
>
>
--
David Wollmann
dwollmann_at_ibmhelp.com
Received on Mon Mar 16 1998 - 18:07:58 GMT