jim stephens <jwstephens_at_msm.umr.edu> wrote:
>Also, the os's for old AS/400's would run for 30 or 60 days, then bomb, and
>you could reload them indefinitely. sort of the same as XP, but less painful.
There was no "time bomb" in the code, if that's what you meant. I think
you're remembering virtual address space exhaustion. Remember when I said
that everything (programs and data) were conceptually in main memory at all
times? Well, if you deleted or changed an object, its address space was
never re-used - a new address was assigned. (This was part of the security
architecture.) Eventually, you ran out of addresses in one region or another
(memory was somewhat partitioned, so for example you couldn't hard crash the
machine by trying to use up all addresses in the OS region). You had to
re-IPL occasionally so that "garbage collection" could occur.
>Don, do you have any referenced on this? I know some years ago Pick Systems
>was porting to the AS/400, but that was bootlegged, and eventually given up.
As someone else has pointed out, Novel also tried. As far as I know, no-one
actually got to market. I think Pick would have been a good port - it was
essentially a database OS, and the AS/400 was essentially a database engine.
--
Don Hills (dmhills at attglobaldotnet) Wellington, New Zealand
It's ironic that people who are too smart to engage in politics
are governed by people who are not as smart.
Received on Wed Sep 29 2004 - 06:14:11 BST