2003 Newsgroup postings (02/02 - 02/16) Lynn Wheeler

2003 Newsgroup Postings (02/02 - 02/16)

Wanted: Weird Programming Language
Wanted: Weird Programming Language
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
what is the difference between ALU & FPU
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Unused address bits
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
Early attempts at console humor?
difference between itanium and alpha
Early attempts at console humor?
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Crypto Standards Organizations
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
Will Apple ever offer a newsreader?
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
Early attempts at console humor?
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
"average" DASD Blocksize
"average" DASD Blocksize
"average" DASD Blocksize
DOD 5200.28-STD capable OS?
"average" DASD Blocksize
How much overhead is "running another MVS LPAR" ?
difference between itanium and alpha
Early attempts at console humor?
Easiest possible PASV experiment
Early attempts at console humor?
difference between itanium and alpha
difference between itanium and alpha
"average" DASD Blocksize
Filesystems
Filesystems
HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
difference between itanium and alpha
HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
"average" DASD Blocksize
HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
Easiest possible PASV experiment
Easiest possible PASV experiment
"average" DASD Blocksize
When/why did "programming" become "software development?"
"average" DASD Blocksize
RFC 3092
Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Surprising discovery
Dijkstra on "The End of Computing Science"
FBA suggestion was Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Tubes in IBM 1620?
Eliza
OT: One for the historians - 360/91
COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
Tubes in IBM 1620?
OT: One for the historians - 360/91
iso 8583
OT: One for the historians - 360/91
The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?
COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the inudstry standard?
COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

Wanted: Weird Programming Language

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Wanted: Weird Programming Language
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:06:13 GMT

space_cadet@gmx.de (Sebastian) writes:
Forgive my ignorance - I'm still young - but who is Jean Sammet?

somebody that worked on 3rd floor 545 tech sq for something called the boston programming center ... until it was absorbed by the break-away vm development group from the 4th floor cambridge science center. when the vm development outgrew the 3rd floor and moved out to the old sbc building in burlington mall (as part of some legal thing another sbc being sold to cdc) ... nat rochester and a couple others were absorved into the science center.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

sometimes when i would come in on weekends, I would bring the kids in and they could do stuff like play spacewar on the 1130/2250 ... but they also had a tendency to chase each other up and down the hall. when that happened, jean would come around to complain.

some past jean sammet refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#37 S/360 development burnout?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#47 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#59 history of CMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#17 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#76 (old) list of (old) books
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#78 Newsgroup cliques?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Wanted: Weird Programming Language

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Wanted: Weird Programming Language
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:51:43 GMT

space_cadet@gmx.de (Sebastian) writes:
Forgive my ignorance - I'm still young - but who is Jean Sammet?

or try a search engine on jean sammet ... a few
http://perpugilliam.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/office/books/68028110__.html
http://www.acm.org/awards/fellows_citations_n-z/sammet.html
http://www.awc-hq.org/lovelace/1989.htm
http://laika.ed.csuohio.edu/fall98/edb567/Women_in_computers/JeanESammet.htm
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/022500/techconference.html
http://tap.mills.edu/pioneers/
http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~hernandg/comp1900/inflangs.html
http://www.heuse.com/programming-c.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 13:00:11 GMT

Emil Naepflein writes:
Turn ipforwarding in your host off. Most OS have a way to control this.

ipforwarding off was somewhat the result of Interop '88 sunday night meltdown, crash & burn ... with most hosts being connecting to two or more of the four floor nets ... and everybody forwarding everything.

ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcstd.htm#ietfstd

ipforwarding off default in rfc1122/std3 (pg 28 & 29):
Any host that forwards datagrams generated by another host is acting as a gateway and MUST also meet the specifications laid out in the gateway requirements RFC [INTRO:2]. An Internet host that includes embedded gateway code MUST have a configuration switch to disable the gateway function, and this switch MUST default to the non-gateway mode. In this mode, a datagram arriving through one interface will not be forwarded to another host or gateway (unless it is source-routed), regardless of whether the host is single-homed or multihomed. The host software MUST NOT automatically move into gateway mode if the host has more than one interface, as the operator of the machine may neither want to provide that service nor be competent to do so.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 22:37:40 GMT

vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:
That is mistaken. There were many other instances of problems from misconfigured routers before and after. Contrary to the sales brochures from Dan Lynch &co, the InterOp trade shows were never very influental in technical circles (as opposed to marketing) and did not do much real testing. Most of the testing was of political gamesmanship, such as fighting over which vendor should be thrown off which demo net for which real or pretend sin. (I participated in more than one or two InterOp "interoperability tests" and "technology demos," I think including one at InterOp '88.) The first InterOp in Monterey and perhaps the second were different and not mere network trade shows.

it wasn't misconfigured routers .... it was (nearly?) every client/host (not the routers) that were constantly forwarding. the point wasn't to do interoperability testing. the point was getting the show up and running at all. it was crashing and burning until something like 3-4 am monday morning ... when they started going around and turning off ip-forwarding. interop '88 was the second interop .... and it was held in san jose. there were four floor nets inconnected with routers by a couple vendors. the four floor nets were crashing and burning ... until they started going around and turning off ip forwarding in all the booths.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 23:00:53 GMT

vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:
Moreover, my vague recollections of the problems that night was that they were not simply (or rather falsely) due to hosts that were acting as routers, but hosts acting as routers with the wrong net mask and a very serious bug involving confusing MAC and IP broadcasts as IP unicasts.

misconfiguring was possibly what gave rise to the last couple words of the sentence that i quoted from 1122 ... aka
The host software MUST NOT automatically move into gateway mode if the host has more than one interface, as the operator of the machine may neither want to provide that service nor be competent to do so.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 22:56:23 GMT

i believe the comment was that it was possibly the first time that a large number of workstations/pcs had been simulataneously connected on two or more independent lans. there were possibly 100(?) booths ... and each booth possibly had two or more workstations of some sort ... and large percentage of these workstations/pcs were connected to two or more different nets. the forwarding problem wasn't at the routers ... the forwarding problem was in all the workstations and pcs. the forwarding would start a packet storm would build up and the nets die. this started sometime sunday afternoon and lasted to the wee hours of monday am. some people were getting concerned about whether the problem would be found and identified before the show opened monday morning.

other random stuff from the era ... long ago and far away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#12 nsfnet rfp announce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#10 nsfnet award

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 23:26:47 GMT

other tidbits from that show ....

there was a number of OSI, x.400, etc stuff in various booths.

snmp still hadn't won ... and was even looked at askance by some number of people.

case was officially in the booth kiddie corner from where I had a couple of workstations ... one with a megapel display. got case to come over and install snmp ... so could demo it on megapel display.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

what is the difference between ALU & FPU

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: what is the difference between ALU & FPU
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 01:57:14 GMT

"del cecchi" writes:
I worked with some guys that had been part of IBM's first imaginary processor (no, not the 360/91) FS. Later I got to work on a whole imaginary system with an imaginary operating system. Fort Knox w/Bach and Beethoven

So there.

del cecchi

but one could claim that the current as/400 is fort knox re-incarnated and s/38 was FS re-incarnated.

so you might be able to claim that you got to work on both the imaginary versions and the real(?) versions.

random fs comments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 07:48:53 GMT

basically something acting as a gateway (indicated by ipforwarding on) will answer to ARPs for any ip addresses on one network interface that it has another network interface for.

i.e. a gateway has network interfaces a: 10.1.1.1/255.0.0.0 b: 168.1.1.1/255.255.0.0

any ARP request arriving on interface "b" for anything on 10-net, the host will respond to with interface-b MAC address. then when it starts to get incoming packets (on interface "b") for any address on 10-net (with its interface-b MAC address), it will ARP on the 10-net interface for those ip-addresses ... attempting to act as a gateway to forward the packets.

similarly any ARP request arriving on interface "a" for anything on the 168.1-net, the host will respond to with the interface-a MAC address. when it starts to get incoming packets (on interface "a") for any address on 168.1-net (with its interface-a MAC address), it will ARP on the 168.1-net interface for those ip-address ... attempting to act as a gateway to forward the packets.

if the gateway has ip-forwarding on and default route 0.0.0.0 to the 168.1.1.1 interface and any ARP request comes in on interface-a for either its 10.1.1.1 ip-address or any non-10-net address (not just 168.1-net addresses), it will respond with its interface-a MAC address.

it would be a malformed environment if the only way a multihomed host can receive packets for one of its ip-addresses is to turn ipforwarding one so that it will answer to ARP requests for that ip-address on all of its other network interface(s).

so what are some of the possible faulty configurations and/or implementations leading to a multihomed host having to turn on ipforwarding.

One possible situation is

1) DNS is set-up with multiple A-records for each of the ip-addresses for the host, 2) each of the multihomed network interfaces are on different physical LANs, 3) there is no gateway installed that is configured for routing packets between the different LANs, and 4) there are client applications that fail to implement multiple A-record support

A client application w/o multiple A-record support that is configured on one LAN/subnet and the first DNS A-record lists an ip-address on a different LAN/subnet will attempt to ARP for the first ip-address and not get a response. It will then give up w/o checking any of the other A-record ip addresses.

There are actually two parts of gateway support:

1) answering to ARPs on a network interface for ip-addresses different than what is assigned to that network interface

2) forwarding packets

Ideally, if there actually are lots of situations involving brain dead client implementations (lacking multi-A-record support) in multihomed server environments, then it would be preferrable to have a multihomed option w/o having to turn on ipforwarding. Such a case would activate a multihomed host to respond to all ARP requests for any of its ip-addresses regardless of the interface they arrive on (w/o it answering to ARP requests for ip-addresses not defined on the host, also the ARP response would have to correspond to the network interface that the ARP arrived on).

note such an option might be considered to violate network architecture, but it is possibly preferrable (if there are a large number of brain dead client applications in multihomed environments) to turning on full ipforwarding.

draft from long ago and far away that never made it to RFC


COMMENTS SHOULD BE SENT TO: lekash@orville.nas.nasa.gov

Date:    26-Apr-88
Title:   Multi-Homed Hosts in an IP Network
Authors: J. Lekashman (NASA Ames GE)

Host Behavior Working Group (retired)                       NASA Ames GE
IETF                                                        April 1988

Multi-Homed Hosts in an IP network

Status of This Memo

This is a request for commentary and ideas on how to handle multiple
interfaces in a networked environment.  Several problems are raised,
and some solutions are presented.  This is a draft.  It is presented
in order to generate discussion and suggestions for improvement.

... snip ...

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 07:56:45 GMT

vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:
I doubt that was true except in InterOp Inc.'s sales brochures. The amazing parts about the InterOP networks were never their size or complications. It was that each network was built from scratch (less so in later years) within a week and that as far as those who paid for tickets could tell, it worked.

i don't remember any interop sales brochures ... i just remember sunday before interop '88 being very hectic and a lot of people on monday ... lets say ... quite disgruntled ... about how well many of the workstations/pc handled multiple network interfaces ... and just because they had multiple network interfaces didn't mean that they should be doing ip forwarding.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 08:30:18 GMT

vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:
As I recall, the show net stablized before the network I was concerned with.

i don't know if it makes any difference ... but there were four floor nets for the interop '88 show ... and that the multihomed workstation/pc configurations were causing lots of havoc sunday thru early monday morning. i believe everybody putting up booths and getting stuff working on the show floor were doing it sunday (and into the wee hours of monday morning).

this was different than the interoperability testing ... which i vaguely remember being in a 2nd floor room of the conference center towards the back ... where there is a connection to the parking garage.

i don't remember anybody starting to do booth/network setup on the show floor that weren't there on sunday and were potentially part of the network meltdowns. however the interoperability testing upstairs went on all week.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Networks separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 08:40:09 GMT

also ... one of the largest booths that year ... was the ibm booth, done mostly by the person that obtained the 9-net for ibm. it was on the other side of the show floor from the booth where i had some workstations. i believe that year ibm also provided the network connectivity between the show floor and the nsfnet backbone. which then brings in the previous refs:
other random stuff from the era ... long ago and far away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#12 nsfnet rfp announce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#10 nsfnet award

interop '88 was almost a year after the above mentioned nsfnet backbone award.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 13:22:43 GMT

arielgont@softhome.net (Fernando Gont) writes:
Why wouldn't it send an ARP request for the IP address of the router it has been configured to "use"?

the description wasn't sending an ARP request for the IP address of the router it had been configured to use.

the scenario was DNS with multiple A-records for a multihomed "server" and a client that didn't support multiple A-records.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#8 Network separation using host ..

An email was sent yesterday describing a situation where clients weren't working unless a multihome host/server had ipforwarding turned on ... and that it was convenient when multihome implementations turned ipforwarding on automatically (in violation of rfc 1122).

A multihomed host/server has network interfaces on disjoint LANs, there is no router configured interconnecting the disjoint LANs, there are A-records for each of the multihomed host/server network interfaces, there are clients on one or more of the disjoint network interfaces running applications w/o multiple A-record support.

A client (w/o multiple A-record support) gets the DNS response and does an ARP for the ip-address in the first A-record. If the ip address is for the server's interface on a different LAN, the server (w/o ipforwarding turned on) doesn't answer the ARP request. When there is no answer to the ARP request, the client applications "punts" ... since it doesn't have support to try the ip-addresses in the additional A-records.

By turning on ipforwarding in the multihomed server .... the multihomed server will then act as a gateway and answer to ARP requests for additional networks that it is connected to. In this particular scenario, the multihome server will answer to an ARP request for one of its own network interfaces on a different LAN. The client gets back an ARP response and starts sending packets to the "gateway" interface. However, the multihomed host/server doesn't actually forward the packets since they are addressed to itself under a different ip-address.

The scenario is one where (because of lack of multiple A-record support in client applications) it was desirable to have multihomed host/servers to answer to all ARP requests for any of its ip-addresses regardless of the network interface the ARP request arrived on. There was no real desire to have the multihomed host/server to actually act as a router forwarding packets ... but it was necessary to turn on ipforwarding just to get the multihome host/server network support to do the multi-interface ARP response operation.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Unused address bits

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Unused address bits
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 13:35:10 GMT

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:
There are actually dozens of successful changes, most recently with the 32- to 64-bit Unix systems as done by SGI, Sun, IBM and HP. But it was standard practice even earlier.

Where the IBM 370 range was unusual was that it supported mixed addressing modes within the same 'executable' (though the concepts were different). A lot of work was put in to make that transparent to users!

and then if you really wanted to get complicated there was dual address space mode ... that in part tried to address the issue of running out of addressable space (pre 31-bit) and in part to address the issue of allowing system services in disjoint address spaces to (directly) access parameters passed by pointer (w/o requiring kernel to move data). With XA-mode and 31-bit mode addressing, came access registers and program call expanding the cross address space addressability.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 03:02:00 GMT

Robert Myers writes:
We agree that DEC made critical management errors when it was at the height of its power in the eighties. We agree that avoiding those errors would not have required super-human insight. I think we agree that DEC needed a VAX replacement before it managed to get one on the market and we agree that competitors were chopping away at DEC's franchise with less expensive products. What is it that we disagree about, except that I know that even the lowliest order taker has to have some sales skills?

the mid-range was starting to be killed by workstations and the growing power of PCs. any company with majority of the products in the mid-range adapting to such a situation would become a totally different company than what it had been (i.e. all the people start all over again ... either under a different company name or under the facade of the current company name).

past related discussions/threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic: facts vs. FUD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#2 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#7 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#34 ...killer PC's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#66 vm marketing (cross post)

including vax domestic and world wide shipments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
& refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#1 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#5 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#80 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#84 Questions on IBM Model 1630
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#30 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#3 Vector display systems

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 03:13:34 GMT

Robert Myers writes:
'Twas obvious to me by 1985 what was coming, because at that point I had a 32016 card plugged into the expansion bus of a PC running programs that until then had been grinding away on a Cray. And, yes, that's right, it means that DEC didn't close on their hot lead, and neither did Prime or Perkin-Elmer. I was running Concurrent DOS and would have just plugged in another card if I had needed more compute power (although some projects still required a Cray). I moved on to another job before I found such a step necessary, and that company moved from a micro-VAX to an Alliant in the late eighties, there being no high-end DEC product even to consider.

i've had certain foundness for perkin-elmer ... and before they bought it interdata. i saw a perkin-elmer box operating as ibm mainframe telecom bcontrollerb in heavy production use as recently as 1997.

in the '60s as an undergraduate ... i was one of four people involved in building a ibm telecommunication compatible controller starting with interdata/3 ... and reverse engineering the ibm channel interface ... and getting some blame for originating the ibm pcm (plug compatible manufactur) controller market. random refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

i didn't get to look underneath the covers of the most recent sighting ... but have been told by people that sold perkin-elmer boxes in the 80s ... that the channel board was still wire-wrap and possibly the original design that we had done from the '60s.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Early attempts at console humor?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early attempts at console humor?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 03:43:31 GMT

"GerardS" writes:
THe IBM system was VM/CMS. Under CMS (which ran under VM) would (as a default on a 1050 or 2741 terminal) raise and lower the printing/typing mechanism to signify that 2 CPU seconds (of processing time) had elapsed. This was to give the user a type of warning that their program was consuming CPU time. On other types of terminals, a "blip" message was displayed (this could be modified/set by the CMS user). _______Gerard S.

originated on cp/67 .... and we (cambridge science center) ported apl\360 to cp/67 cms ... and released it as cms/apl. palo alto science center redid some of the stuff a couple years later .. they also did the apl m'code assist for the 370/145 and released as apl/cms (many apl applications on 145 w/apl-mcode assist had thruput comparable to running on 370/168-3 w/o assist)

earlier post in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#71 Early attempts at console humor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#72 Early attempts at console humor

lots of apl posts (intermixed with hone posts):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:10:06 GMT

"del cecchi" writes:
I hate to dispute your theory, but the fact is that business oriented machines in the midrange did quite well for IBM well into the era in question, and even today, even with marketing that is no better than DEC's was. Remember the "magic box" commercials? Or as we called them "tragic box"?

The Rochester boxes of the era, the S/36 and S/38 which morphed into AS400 and then into i-series made lots of money for IBM, and still do. And do it without much marketing. Don't confuse the fact that no one who had an alternative would buy a Low End 370 like 4321 or racetrack with the idea that there was no midrange market.

i agree that the business market that the rochester products sold into were much more resistent to the workstation & pc onslaught than many of the other mid-range & mini markets. however i believe that the sales/volume explosion of 4341s (370s) and vaxs (that occurred in the late 70s and early 80s) had significantly slowed by the mid-80s ... which the referenced world wide ship numbers for vaxs thru 1988 would tend to support:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction

in the late 70s and very early 80s there were a number of situations were customers went in and ordered 4341s in the hundreds similar to the usaf reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers

one of the first was in the late '70s by a large chip firm that placed a single order for 800 4341s in support of chip design process. inside the corporation there was a similar phase .... STL went thru a period where it converted one conference room on every floor in every tower to a 4341 room. the marketing organization first got 4341s/148s in every region ... which then trickled out to every large branch installing its own machine.

by the mid-80s there was some expectations that those 4341s would be upgraded to later models like the 4381s and it never really materialized. starting in the mid-80s .... workload was instead showing up on workstations and pcs ... and eventually the 4341s were just discontinued ... rather than being upgraded. The vax numbers seem to indicate possibly a similar fate in the market.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Early attempts at console humor?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early attempts at console humor?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:19:15 GMT

"GerardS" writes:
THe IBM system was VM/CMS. Under CMS (which ran under VM) would (as a default on a 1050 or 2741 terminal) raise and lower the printing/typing mechanism to signify that 2 CPU seconds (of processing time) had elapsed. This was to give the user a type of warning that their program was consuming CPU time. On other types of terminals, a "blip" message was displayed (this could be modified/set by the CMS user). _______Gerard S.

also note that by the time of apl\cms on vm/370 (instead of cms\apl on cp/67) ... a large percentage of apl\cms would have been 3277 with the apl characterset and keyboard ... instead of the cp "set apl on" switching the terminal translate table to apl ... it would have change to fullscreen 3270 apl operation. random apl translate table ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#6 History of ASCII (was Re: Why Not! Why not???)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:30:42 GMT

... aka not only didn't the sales explosion for the 4341/vax market segment machines (from the late 70s & early 80s) not continue into the mid & late 80s ... but even upgrade/replacement of existing installed machines was being siphoned off into workstation & pc sales.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:41:55 GMT

Robert Myers writes:
Ummm, as I recall, IBM, which had introduced the PC to the world, was just as uncomprehending of its implications as was DEC. I may be mistaken, but I think that IBM also suffered some reverses of fortune, although they are still in business.

When I talked to an IBM salesman about the possibility of networking a couple of PC's, he suggested that I really should buy a mini-computer. End of discussion with IBM.

IBM was in a lot broader set of markets. as mentioned, the rochester product line has been much more resistent to the workstation/pc onslaught ... as has the higher end mainframes.

however, the mid-range 370 ... frequently selling head-to-head into the same market as vax machines ... and saw even a larger explosion in sales during the period ... went thru similar experience as vax.

as in the past ... i've claimed that the whole SAA strategy of the late 80s and early 90s was something of an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle. saa/genie refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#34 VSE (Was: Re: Refusal to change was Re: LE and COBOL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#40 ibm time machine in new york times?

whole set of 3tier, middle layer, and saa posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 13:36:00 GMT

Emil Naepflein writes:
I once had such a situation where someone connected a new cluster with a local cluster interconnect and a global cluster interconnect the wrong way and the consequence was that 40 high availability clusters stopped communication because of an updated ARP entry.

yes ... my wife and i started looking at a lot of that in late '80s when we started the ha/cmp project ... which eventually started shipping products in the early '90s.

trivia from the period. another issue was ip-address take-over in a high availability cluster. there was a bug in the reno/tahoe 4.3 code that a large number of platforms were running. in theory, the ARP cache has a time-out ... so that you would generally expect clients to recognize a new MAC in a ip-address take-over scenario. However, the 4.3 code (instantiated all over the place) had a single hip-pocket MAC in the ip code that called the ARP processing. If the IP-address was the same as the ip-address in the last packet processed, it used a saved MAC address (and didn't bother calling ARP routine). This value never timed-out ... the only way it went away was when the client had to communicate with a different IP-address. in a ha/cmp configuration with a strongly oriented client/server activity ... this might possibly be hours (or forever).

a work around was to have a sever (after an ip-address take-over in a ha/cmp scenario) try and ping every client that it possibly knew about.

random ha/cmp refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 13:39:48 GMT

Jan C. Vorbr�ggen writes:
Just so. And at the time, one could even in academia still have made up somewhat of a price difference because of DEC's much superior software, both OS and networking. But the actual price - and, later, performance - differential was so large that one immediately lost the argument. Not - as in "not at all" - supporting TCP/IP was another important nail in the coffin.

and possible some distraction with OSI ... some past decnet/osi threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#32 Blame it all on Microsoft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#34 Blame it all on Microsoft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#25 Unpacking my 15-year old office boxes generates memory refreshes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#27 Unpacking my 15-year old office boxes generates memory refreshes

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:59:30 GMT

ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#17 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#19 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#20 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#22 difference between itanium and alpha

the other is that it seems that the most vulnerable of these departmental mega-installs were online/terminal related environments (aka the large population of installations were for supporting people sitting at keyboards).

as the workstations, PCs, and networks evolved ... they frequently started to address the requirements of people at keyboards better than the host/terminal configurations (resulting in the bleeding off of the applications from the host/terminal environment, leaving the hosts somewhat stagnant and contributing to not seeing a lot of these installations upgrading to next generation hosts ... aka 4341->4381s).

rochester wasn't totally immune. i believe that some of the early pc business software (like peachtree) was competing in the same market as many of the rochester s/3? whatever machines ... and started to make some impact by the 386 timeframe. somewhat the difference was that it was much easier for the interactive/online terminal use of shared host bleed off into dedicated pc&workstation boxes .... and/or higher-end workstations acting in place of shared interactive/online host. it was somewhat longer cycle to see (frequently batch) business processes show up on this class machines competing in major market segment addressed by rochester products (and of course the current talk is of really moving up the value chain into full fledged glass house data processing).

then, of course, there is the whole dasd/disk farm issue.

PCs gained many of their early mega-sales in the business community by offering a combination of host terminal emulation and local processing (spreadsheet, games, etc) in a single keyboard format ... which was both a desk-space issue as well as a cost issue (new PCs were frequently priced less then the <original> price of aging 3270s that they replaced).

In the middle '80s one of the high level technical people in the dasd division gave a presentation at an internal world wide conference making the claim that the executive in charge of the communication divison was going to be responsible for the death of the dasd division.

while terminal emulation provided a fast uptake market penetration for PCs .... within a couple years it began to represent a bottleneck to evolving mainframe host & their disk farms into vital role in the emerging client/server (and later 3tier) environments. The bottleneck of the terminal emulation paradigm contributed significantly to wholesale migration of critical business data off mainframes to local PC disk storage (and various horror stories about business continuity issues with lack of backup).

The point of the dasd division claims were that numerous, innovative, high-thruput, high-value SAN-like use of mainframes starting in the mid-80s were torpedod by executives in charge of the communication division (motivated by the adverse impact to the huge install base of communication division hardware supporting the terminal emulation paradigm).

In large respect, SAA was an attempt to restructure client/server paradigm so that it inhibited major migration of business critical data off of the mainframe disk farms ... w/o having to change the terminal emulation paradigm (preserving the big install base of communication division boxes, aka the communication division was willing to sacrifice the whole corporate disk business as part of minimizing any impact to the installed communication division boxes).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:49:32 GMT

arielgont@softhome.net (Fernando Gont) writes:
I don't understand why it was needed. If multiple A records are returned, and all hosts listed in the A records are up and you cannot get to the first one, regardless of the "broken" client, you have a routing problem.

so i interpret your question as what kind of conjecture is there about a installation having:
• two or more physical LANs
• clients distributed across the physical LANs
• each client has a unique ip-address
• single multihomed server with physical LAN adpaters for each of the distinct physical LANs.
• each server LAN adapter has a unique ip-address
• the server provides one or more services for client use
• the clients all run the identical client software loaded with the identical server host name
• the client software is crippled in that it lacks multi-A record support
• because there is no need for inter-client communication and/or any communication between the clients with anything other than the single server; there is no need for router function across the multiple LANs
• the server provide DNS function for all LANs from a single DNS file
• the single DNS file defines the server with a single host name (that is installed in all copies of the client software)
• the single DNS file defines a unique A-record with a unique ip-address for each of the server's LAN interfaces

so why would somebody do such a thing? ... I don't know.

On the surface it seems not unreasonable for a small to medium business to have deployed something of this nature. pure conjecture is some business oriented company that has two or more 8-port e-net hubs on each corridor ... with 6-7 offices/clients hung off each hub and each hub having one port connected to the server.

So what kind of conjectures are why they might want to do this as a peering operation rather than configuring the hubs hierarchical (so everybody has LAN connectivity to everybody else). First might be why not? Another might be they might have compartmentalized security requirements. Maybe the hubs they have don't support hierarchical configuration. I don't claim to know. It seems like a perfectly valid configuration, at least until you get into some of the more peculiar/wierd characteristics of (at least some) ip implementations.

... now in DNS one of the A-records has to be first ... and it will be first regardless of the client requesting host->ip-address resolution. If the clients asking for host->ip-address resolution are on the same LAN as the LAN adapter with the ip-address in the first record ... the ARP works.

So finally, we get to the situation described in previous postings ... if the clients asking for host->ip-address resolution are on a LAN different than the one indicated by the first A-record/ip-address then it may not work ... as per previous discussion.

Possibly somebody can declare the described simple multi-LAN environment as a violation of the ip architecture and tell customers that they aren't allowed to create such enet configurations. Maybe while they are at it they can declare client implementations w/o multiple A-record support as illegal ip implementations.

We do know how to make it not work.

We can force the server to only answer ARP requests for the ip-address that corresponds to the LAN adapter interface that the ARP request arrived on.

And we know how to make it work.

We can allow the server to answer ARP requests for ip-addresses other than the interface that the ARP request arrived on.

We could also declare that customers have to customize the client applications based on which physical LAN they are connected to, so that they utilize a LAN specific server host name.

Maybe somebody has a specialized DNS server ... that can serve out of a different file based on the LAN interface the DNS request arrived from? This possibly has a down-side of explaining to people why they need a different DNS for each of their LANs.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Network separation using host w/multiple network interfaces
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 03:28:10 GMT

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#24

one of the solutions given to the multihome type of configuration in the previous post from the 26apr88 multihome draft mentioned in:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#8

was to have a unique ip-address for each LAN interface and a "host" generic ip-address. Incoming ARPs would be answered for the ip-address of the LAN interface that they arrived on ... and any ARP for the generic host ip-address would be answered regardless of the LAN interface it arrived.

the current ip architecture has an issue with regard to whether an address is a network specific item (aka a LAN interface) ... while there are paradigms that are just looking for a host address w/o the complexity of worrying about network specific address issues. the work around to achieving a generic host address is trying to hide behind the facade of listing every possible network address (multiple a-records) ... and pushing the problem out to the client application code to try every possible network address as a way of discovering some workable host address.

this dichotomy of only having network address support when some large percentage of applications only want to deal with host/server address is one of the issues with regard to multihome operation (as can be seen with some number of client applications failing to implement multiple A-record support).

the configuration problem described in the previous post can be discounted as a routing problem ... aka the installation of router magically eliminates the problem ... even tho there is direct LAN connectivity between client and server ... the introduction of a router "solves" the problem by making the traffic flow from one LAN to another LAN in order to have communication between the client and the server.

however one has got to suspect that any ip solution that requires that packets must be routed across two different LANs in order to have client/server communication (bypassing a direct physical LAN connection between the client and the server) somehow is an indication of a mismatch between the networking abstraction and the real world.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Crypto Standards Organizations

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Crypto Standards Organizations
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 11:43:54 GMT

note that in the past, if NIST was picking up some standard from some other body ... it typically rewrote it from scratch for FIPS. A couple years ago, NIST said that in some cases they would start adopting other organizations standards as is. One of those has been from X9 (actually X9F, crypto & security). You see that today with FIPS186-2 for digital signature standard ... the ecdsa part references X9.62 from X9F.

Moving up to ISO ... X9 is the sitting chair for TC68

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 12:33:07 GMT

Terje Mathisen writes:
At the same time Novell's NCP stack ran 2X to 10X faster, with 3X to 10X less memory footprint.

minor historical note regarding beginnings of a pc server company in provo ... also some reference to early beginnings of company called sun.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#40 No more innovation? Get serious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#42 IBM was/is: Imitation...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#24 Alpha vs. Itanic: facts vs. FUD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#79 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#33 Over-the-shoulder effect

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:07:56 GMT

"Charlie Gibbs" writes:
This changed later on, though. By the time 386 systems were becoming common, Compaq had achieved the ironic state of being more IBM-compatible [1] than IBM themselves. (Of course, IBM shooting themselves in the foot by trying to use Micro Channel to close up the architectural Pandora's box they had opened didn't help much.)

ibm had gone thru the (plug) compatible (manufactures ... PCM) issue in the late '60s and early '70s. it is a business that i got blamed for helping originate when i was undergraduate ... aka pcm ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

in the late '60s, we had taken a interdata/3 (later to bought by perkin/elmer) and reverse engineered the ibm mainframe channel interface and built our own channel interface board ... programming the interdata/3 to support terminals and emulate ibm mainframe telecommunication controller.

there was some folklore what we did then motivated the whole SNA architecture and the complexity of the pu4/pu5 interface (some reference that this also in the wake of FS being killed ... which was a much grander attempt to provide even higher level of integration). misc. fs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

and of course ... the SAA was an attempt at a higher level to address the wholesale leakage of mainframe activities out thru the terminal emulation interface into distributed computing environment:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

about 20 years later (in the mid-80s) ... i was involved in trying to get an PU4 simulator (that had been running in s/1 boxes and was mapped to high-performance packet network) ported to risk platform and made standard offering ... misc. past ref to presentation I made to the SNA architecture review board:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#53 APPC vs TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#31 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#42 Beginning of the end for SNA?

ref to part of the actual presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#17
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#21 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#21 OT: almost lost LBJ tapes; Dictabelt

imagine treaking a lion in its den ... an audience of approx. 60 people and half were openly hostile. if the communication division was unhappy with strategies to migrate away from terminal emulation for PC infrastructures ... i.e. previous post in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#23 difference between itanium and alpha

they were also extremely hostile about the idea of eliminating most of their straight bread&butter boxes.

also part of the referenced configuration leveraged HYPERchannel link adapters for high-speed backbone. I had also done the mainframe rfc1044 support and was getting something like 50 times thruput/performance as the base (non-rfc1044) support. misc rfc 1044 refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#14 mainframe tcp/ip
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15 tcp/ip
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17 middle layer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#59 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#45 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#31 general networking is: DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#27 Beyond 8+3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#67 3745 & NCP Withdrawl?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Will Apple ever offer a newsreader?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Will Apple ever offer a newsreader?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:23:40 GMT

Toby Thain writes:
Brewster Kahle,
http://www.kahle.org/Brewster/

via
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=brewster+kahle

i saw brewster in nov. ...he was running around in his book-on-demand van ... with a satellite dish on top.

first time i actually met brewster was at the wais, inc "house" ... for their offices ... they bought what seemed to be old 3-story house ... just east of el camino in menlo park ... near the palo alto line. of course ... this was all before aol bought him out.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:34:02 GMT

bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
Actually, this is only true with DECnet Phase-V, because it was based on OSI; it wasn't released until the late 1980s (or early 1990s?). The previous version of DECnet only supported 63 areas and 1023 nodes per area, giving the world a total of 64449 unique system addresses. So, during the 1980s, TCP/IP had a significant advantage in terms of its address space, scalability, portability, and cost. By the time DEC realized and remedied their technical deficiences, TCP/IP had already won the battle.

note ... an earlier post in this thread had several references to much earlier threads that contained extracts from troubles that decnet was having with the whole osi support stuff.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#22 difference between itanium and alpha

sna had a similar 64k addressing limit .... they then invented cross-domain in the mid-80s to support some of the customer configurations running several hundred thousand "terminals" (for instance some of the airline res systems ... or even several millions, some cable system set-top boxes infrastructures).

the previously posted ref.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#28 difference between itanium and alpha

about the sna simulation on a high-performance peer-to-peer packet implementation ... leveraged the cross-domain support by telling the the mainframe pu5/vtam that everything was cross-domain (and then managing the configuration in a replicated, distributed manner .... avoiding several of the single-point-of-failure issues in the native implementation).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:37:34 GMT

oh, slight acorn topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#79 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Early attempts at console humor?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early attempts at console humor?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 17:25:57 GMT

bdc@world.std.com (Brian 'Jarai' Chase) writes:
Well... this isn't console or mainframe humor, but NEXTSTEP binaries use some interesting values for their magic numbers. For the m68k based hardware, the first two bytes of a binary spell out "feedface" in hex. The fat binaries they distributed used the magic number of "cafebabe" and I think there might have been a third variation for one the ports to either SPARC, PA-RISC, or Intel.

It's also worth noting that Apple's current OS X, which is based on NEXTSTEP, recycles this bit of humor.

and nextstep was based on mach

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 17:35:27 GMT

desk top real estate is still issue .... recent ref:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983783.html?tag=fd_top

part of the original issue was being able to collapse a terminal and a desk top pc into a single box, single display, single keyboard (with terminal emulation in the pc) ... i had arguments about this with some of the apple people before the mac was released.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 19:01:29 GMT

Dan.Pop@cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes:
With vi in command mode, each key is an "exceptional key". To have it working satisfactorily, from the user's point of view, the fallback timeout would have to be so short as to render the whole scheme ineffective (each character is sent alone in a packet). And the local echo would be rather annoying to the user, who expects something completely different as output.

when the 3101 came out ... the guy responsible for PVM ... did special version for the internal home terminal program .... using the 3101 in block mode and doing 3270 terminal emulation ... did a bunch of stuff to preserve as much data in the local 3101 buffer ... attempting to re-arrange data already on the screen w/o having to retransmit it (analogous to mpeg compression ... don't transmit data already in the previous frame, if necessary just location move orders).

this was significantly enhanced for pc's home terminal emulator ... where both the pc & the host side kept track of serveral screens worth of data ... and if data was in each other's buffer .... just transmit pointer & length to data already in buffer (in a sense analogous to huffman dictionary compression).

things were still at 2400 baud.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 19:39:54 GMT

oh & some past 3101 posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#69 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#17 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#12 Now early Arpanet security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#13 Now early Arpanet security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#32 Wanted: pictures of green-screen text
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#1 ASR33/35 Controls
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#54 Author seeks help - net in 1981

slightly related terminal i/o topic drift posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#57 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

Somewhere in the vm/370 time-frame ... there was some code that went into the 3270 simulation of virtual "line-mode" 1052/3215 .... to collect the one line write at a time ... and package them into a single 3270 screen refresh write. This reduced some aspects of the real i/o overhead that is touched on in the above reference.

Earlier, I had done a hack on the cms 1052/3215 i/o write routine (DMSCIT) that instead of doing a separate i/o for each line written, to do multiple line i/o writes. My cms change had the added benefit of reducing the frequency of crossing back & forth between cms and the cp kernel (as well as various scheduling overhead issues) ... and in addition it had the benefit of helping not just 3270 (real) terminals ... but all terminals.

Date: 3/29/79 17:07:00
From: wheeler
Subject: changes to DMSCIT to chain write stacked data with one SIO.

I have just completed modifications to DMSCIT which will attempt to write all queued write request with one SIO. The number of lines chained together is dependent on the size of the lines (CONSTACK is large enuf to hold 320 bytes of data). This can have a significant performance impact on the system since the virtual machine is not being waked up after each output line to add another to the write queue. Initial tests running on a lightly loaded system (i.e. no flushing of pages while idle, no queue delay, no page i/os) for a LISTF command of 109 files showed a reduction of virtual/total time from .11/.87 to .07/.44 seconds. Only filename/filetype/filemode list was requested so each line 21 bytes and CIT was blocking up to 12 lines per sio. With longer lines the blocking (and savings would be somewhat less). On heavily loaded systems the savings would be much greater since the number of queue drops/adds and page flush/brings would be reduced by a factor of 12 (even with 80 character lines the drops/adds are reduced by a factor of 4, and the corresponding paging activity to page in and out is reduced by 75%).

Corresponding changes for CP have not yet been done. Even tho the write CCWs have been chained together, it appears that VCN is calling QCN with 1 line at a time. This is not significant on a line terminal, but there can be significant savings driving full screen devices if CP would also block the output.

.. Lynn W., K03/281, San Jose Res., 408-256-1783 (8-276)

... snip ... top of post, old email index

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 19:54:30 GMT

norbert.friemel@KIVBF.DE (Friemel, Norbert) writes:

http://www.sdisw.com/dasd_capacity.html

note that 2301 & 2303 drums are missing.

trivia question ... why did 2305-1 only have half the capacity and cylinders as the 2305-2 (hint it also had half the avg. rotational delay).

also, could anybody help with the product code names in the table listed in the following post?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill

2301, 2303, 2311, 2314, 2321, 3340, 3344, 3830, 3880-23, 3390

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 21:17:16 GMT

Matthew.Stitt@ABCDISTRIBUTING.COM (Matthew Stitt) writes:
The box behind the lady looks like a 2302 Fixed Disk drive; that honker in the background looks like a 360 of some flavor. Doesn't look like any of the 360's I've worked with. Might be a 91 or a 195.

elsewhere on the site the list it as a 2301 drum ... with close-ups

the 2305s where fixed-head disks ... but the 2301 & 2303 were fixed head drums. the 2301 was essentially a 2303 that read/wrote four heads in parallel (and therefor had 4 times the transfer rate).

somewhat related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#70 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#6 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#9 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#10 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#18 Card Columns

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 21:19:54 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ISHAM-RESEARCH.COM (Phil Payne) writes:
The reason, of course, was that the 3370 worked (as long as you didn't switch it off over the weekend) and IBM knew the 3380 didn't. It was nine months before IBM could produce 3380s in volume.

can you spell stiction?

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

DOD 5200.28-STD capable OS?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: DOD 5200.28-STD capable OS?
Newsgroups: comp.security.unix,comp.security.misc,comp.security
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 21:39:29 GMT

Daniel Faigin writes:
The main reason you are not seeing "B2 and above" is that the evaluation methodology has not been defined for EAL5 and above. Thus, there is no mutually accepted way to evaluate these things. However, even with that, I'm aware of efforts by Getronics (nee Wang Federal nee HFSI nee Honeywell) to evaluate a high-assurance XTS-400 OS, which would have a Linux-compatible interface.

i'm actually in the process of getting an eal4 +/high for something. there is evaluation methodology for higher than eal4 ... but there isn't any multinational concensus agreement on it (aka you can get an eal5-high in europe ... but a certificate in the US would be "donwgradded" to eal4-high).

I've somewhat made off-the-cuff comments that common criteria is orange book with a lot of protection profiles tailored to specialized conditions ... a common method for creating protection profiles ... but somewhat difficult to equate between different protection profiles (aka in some sense protection profiles contain deviations from what would have been orange book .... based on unique circumstances of the thing being evaluated).

Recently there was a presentation that of the sixty common criteria evaluated products ... all but four had gotten special case exemptions. So if in some sense common criteria protection profiles represent special case exemptions from the orange book .... it turns out then that there are additional special case exemptions from the protection profiles (which sort of are special case exemptions to begin with).

and for some topic drift ... i've merged glossaries/taxonomies from several of these sources:

aka:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote
Security
Terms merged from: AFSEC, AJP, CC1, CC2, CC21 (CC site), CIAO, FCv1, FIPS140, IATF V3 (IATF site), IEEE610, ITSEC, Intel, JTC1/SC27 (sc27 site), KeyAll, MSC, NIST 800-37, NCSC/TG004, NIAP, NSA Intrusion, NSTISSC/CNSS, online security study, RFC1983, RFC2504, RFC2647, RFC2828, TCSEC, TDI, TNI, and misc. Updated 20021108 with terms from CIAO. Updated 20021205 with terms from 800-37 glossary.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 16:28:16 GMT

markan@US.IBM.COM (Mark Nelson) writes:
It looks an awful lot like a 75. See
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/attic/attic_054.html

for a quick history and photo. My first computing job (late 70s) was working as a weekend operator for a company that ran a large commercial time sharing system on a pair of model 75s. I can still remember how to toggle in the "clear storage" instructions.

http://www.ibm.com/news/ls/1999/07/articles/sidebar_16.phtml

has an article on the role of the Model 75 in the US Apollo space program.

Mark Nelson, RACF Design and Development, IBM Poughkeepsie

when dick bayles (et al) came out from cambridge science center to the university to install cp/67 in jan. '68 ... i was impressed with his ability to "play" the toggles on the front of the 360/67. there was a certain rhythm to setting the toggles ... and then clearing them in a sweeping motion of the finger under the row of toggles. took a bit of practice to duplicate his ability on the toggles.

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

How much overhead is "running another MVS LPAR" ?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How much overhead is "running another MVS LPAR" ?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 16:36:00 GMT

Anton_Mvs@DOUGLAWSONANDMIDDLEOFTHEROAD.COM (Anton Britz) writes:
The question is "Has anybody calculated how much of your machine do you lose by running another MVS " ?

Years a'go, in a computing centre environment , where we had to charge out as much as possible of the MIPS as per the IBM sales brochure, we found that the overhead, the part you can not charge out, comes to about 28% of the allocated MIPS.

Has anybody done a recent survey ?

there was a joke about how much of the machine do you loose just by running mvs ... period.

it was part of the point that a lot of the attention on cp/67 "overhead" (and significant efforts to performance optimize cp/67) was because it was possible to run some number of applications with and w/o cp/67 ... and measure the difference. because most of the other operating systems lacked the ability to measure with & w/o the operating systems .... there was much less attention paid to critical performance issues.

however, while it wasn't directly possible to run with & w/o mvs to really get a feal for how much of total system resources were being consumed by mvs. some simple studies compared running the same exact workload under MVT and under MVS .... and getting how much additional processor was lost to MVS. Also, for at least some workloads, doing something similar with running the same workload under CMS ... and measuring how much of the processor was lost to MVS.

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Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 20:04:54 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
I know TCP/IP routes around transient and permanent network problems; ARPAnet may have had some such capability too.

IMPs handled that ... as well as trying to do things like traffic load balancing .... also out-of-order packet arrival (because of different paths).

i have vaque recollections from late '70s of somebody commenting that a significant percentage of the 56kbit link bandwidth was starting to be inter-imp chatter exchanging information in support of routing strategies.

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Early attempts at console humor?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early attempts at console humor?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 20:33:20 GMT

somewhat related mainframe humor .... pithy sayings printed on the 6670 "separater" page
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
other refs to the same:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#7 disk write caching (was: ibm icecube -- return of
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#24 IBM Selectric as printer

misc. refs to ibm jargon file:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#45 REXX and its designer (was: IBM 7090 instruction set)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#7 disk write caching (was: ibm icecube -- return of
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#39 Vnet : Unbelievable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#19 Card Columns

fake corporate directive on password rules ... printed with 6670 on corporate letterhead and posted on corporate bulletin boards ... (and some people took quite a while to realize it was joke). Resulting investigation led to placing all blank corporate letterhead paper under lock & key (and it wasn't me that put it up on corporate bulletin boards):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#51 OT Re: A beautiful morning in AFM.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52 OT Re: A beautiful morning in AFM.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#62 OT Re: A beautiful morning in AFM.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Easiest possible PASV experiment

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Easiest possible PASV experiment
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 20:47:01 GMT

"Don Kelloway" writes:
We are getting way of topic. <grin>

The book is obviously not technical when compared to the others we read. In fact the one paragraph cited represented the entire section discussing FTP.

The intent was nothing more than to offer validation that FTP is the preferred method of transferring files as opposed to using HTTP. This of itself being off topic from the subject of whether FTP (at the Application Layer) uses compression when transferring data.

it may be purely gut feel .... but it seems to be that (some?) ftp implementations leverage TCP windowing (aka latency compensation) much better than http implementations.

misc. recent discussion:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#55 Cluster and I/O Interconnect: Infiniband, PCI-Express, Gibat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#59 Cluster and I/O Interconnect: Infiniband, PCI-Express, Gibat

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Early attempts at console humor?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Early attempts at console humor?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 00:29:14 GMT

... next press release oct '88. note that nextstep (as opposed to next) was made available on a number of other platforms.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#32 Early attempts at console humor

...snip...
Software as Part of the System NeXT includes an unparalled amount of software in the price of every NeXT Computer System. The software starts with Mach, an advanced multitasking operating system compatible with 4.3BSD UNIX, which is the standard operating system in higher education communities. In addition, the NeXT Computer System includes NextStep, a complete software environment consisting of four components: the Window Server, the Workspace Manager, the Application Kit and the Interface Builder. The object-oriented environment was developed with the Objective-C programming language, from the Stepstone Corp. NextStep solves the two major problems with UNIX-based systems: They are too complex and difficult for most non-programmers to use, and they require developers to spend an inordinate amount of time and expertise creating graphical, end-user applications. For users, NextStep makes the power of UNIX available by substituting a window-based, graphical and intuitive interface for the traditional UNIX comand-line interface. For developers, NextStep includes the Application Kit, a set of interacting software "objects" for constructing applications. Also included in NextStep is Interface Builder, a completely new kind of software development tool. Interface Builder works graphically, letting the developer construct an application by choosing from a palette of available objects and using the mouse and keyboard to modify the objects as needed, define the layout and establish connections between objects. This process permits the rapid construction of graphical user interfaces and makes application development accessible to a much larger community. NextStep uses the Display PostScript system to ensure true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) between the screen and the printer. The Display PostScript system includes a high-performance implementation of the PostScript language, the de facto imaging standard for printing. It simplifies the programming of graphical applications that support high-quality printing.

...snip...

posted to comp.os.mach 18aug89

...snip...
Information on Mach licensing and distribution and technical reports can be obtained by writing to:

Mach Project c/o Rick Rashid School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 or mach@cs.cmu.edu

Current commercial products I am aware of are from NeXT, Encore, Evans&Sutherland and BBN.

Mt Xinu has announced that it will be distributing commercial versions of Mach on several architectures beginning early next year (in much the way it has distributed BSD Unix).

CMU distributes Mach for the VAX, Sun 3 and IBM RT architectures. Information on specific models, etc. can be obtained with the general Mach information packet. The current release is referred to as Mach Release 2. We are about to begin general distribution of Mach Release 2.5 (a number of Universities and companies already have early releases of 2.5). There is a license for Mach from CMU and you will need a Berkeley license to get a tape from us. There is no distribution or license fee paid to CMU, however.

At CMU Mach runs on VAXen (uni and multiprocessors), DEC 3100s, Multimaxes, Sun 3s, Sun 4s, 386s, IBM RTs, IBM 370s and Macintosh IIs. Ports have also been done to a number of other machines by groups outside CMU. CMU has limited capacity to distribute software so we don't distribute Mach for all systems. We are, however, willing to provide Mach free to any manufacturer who is interested in distributing it for their own machines. If you want Mach for a machine for which there is a port but no current distributor, you should talk to your salesman or corporate representative.

...snip...

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 00:42:45 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:
When the IMPs went away there was no hardware move to build proper routers, even though the design of the Internet was screaming for them. IBM built some RS6000(?) based boxes that were serious kludges for the NSF bid, and Cisco hit the market with their GS series of routers. This was also a serious kludge.

ibm pc/rts with 440kbit adapter boards .... with idnx multiplexors handling mapping into the telco/mci T1 (1.5mbit) links. the backbone locations had room with several racks of pc/rts. misc. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#146 Dispute about Internet's origins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#49 IBM RT PC (was Re: What does AT stand for ?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#78 Free RT monitors/keyboards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#4 Sv: First video terminal?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#76 Stoopidest Hardware Repair Call?

at the time of netnet1 bid, my wife & I were operating T1 backbone with NSC boxes, and were sort of red-team on both nsfnet1 (T1) and nsfnet2 (T3) although we weren't allowed to bid (although nsf audit of what we had running was that it was five years ahead of all bid proposals to build something new). random ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#0 Internet and/or ARPANET

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 14:34:43 GMT

Patrick Scheible writes:
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure the routing was already done in software under NCP. Much has been made about 1/1/83 being the "birth of the internet", but it didn't seem like such a big deal at the time, the same things got done in pretty much the same way from the user's point of view. E-mail, file transfers, etc. were well-established years before. Routing didn't work as well for several years after the switchover as it did before, chances for failure at more points, and slower propagation of information about new hosts.

in part because a majority of the bandwidth wasn't being consumed with inter-imp chatter.

the other issue was that internet got the ip layer and real gateways which removed one of the significant inhibitors to the growth in the size of the internet. i've asserted that one of the reasons that the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet up thru sometime in the 1985 time-frame was that the internal network effectively had gateway-like function from the beginning. the other growth factor in the internet with the advent of ip (and conversion from the IMPs) was the availability of the support on workstations and PCs .... greatly increasing the potential nodes. with the big increase in the number of nodes ... the dedicated 56kbit links of the IMPs wouldn't have been sufficient to carry the inter-imp chatter.

1983 internal network:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 00:52:46 GMT

SEYMOUR.J.METZ@CUSTOMS.TREAS.GOV (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
You address data on an FBA device by block, but the disks are still physically organized by cylinder and track. And I still don't understand why IBM is unwilling to do FBA support for MVS :-(

response i got from stl (long ago and far away) ... was that if i gave it to them fully tested and integrated ... it would still cost $26m for release

part of the discussion was the whole multi-track search rework ... which changes the design point from memory constrained to i/o constrained.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Filesystems

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Filesystems
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm,comp.sys.apple2,rec.games.video.classic,comp.os.cpm,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 01:08:46 GMT

Peter Flass writes:
[not topposted due to user request] AIX has had a "journaled file system" (JFS) for years, and I'd have to assume they weren't the first. It has recently been ported to OS/2.

i believe it may have been the first unix product filesystem. it was originally done using the rios (aka power/6000) database memory .... basically segment that had fine-grain modification turned on. the filesystem metadata was mapped into the segment. at checkpoints ... could go around and find all the areas that had been modified and log them (note that logs tends to be cyclical and overwrites after things have been commuted, journals tend to be long term archives of changes).

as part of being able to have it run on other hardware, palo alto did a more conventional version where explicit calls were made to log as change happened. it turned out that the explicit calls were less overhead than running around afterwards and finding all the modified data. this was all before the AIXV3 with JFS actually shipped. Note that palo alto had also done AOS (bsd) for the PC/RT as an alternative to the AIXV2 (at&t) shipped from austin.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Filesystems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Filesystems
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm,comp.sys.apple2,rec.games.video.classic,comp.os.cpm,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:05:28 GMT

Christopher Browne writes:
Ah, but the merit of journalling filesystems is that they "play well" even if you have a power outage or other 'forcible crash.'

Journalling provides little value if the system /doesn't/ crash.

when my wife and i started ha/cmp ... we were dependent on JFS for fast take-over .... regardless of the failure-mode or outage.

one of the failure-modes was design for 1-800 number system. out the back of the ss7 to the 1-800 number lookup was two T1s. They had been going to a fault tolerant system running the database. The 1-800 number system had design point of something like five-nines ... about 5 minutes of outage per year. while the hardware was fault tolerant, the system had to come down for software maint. .... which was on the order of 30 mins or more (single maint. operation per year blew a minimum of six years outage budget).

Now, it turns out that the ss7 was already fault tolerant and was prepared to redrive the request down the alternate T1 in case it didn't get an answer back on the initial query. We claimed that the SS7 fault tolerant management could mask all sorts of outages and a non-fault-tolerant ha/cmp backend was actually superior to the fault-tolernat implementation ... since either backend could be out for whatever reason and everything would still work ... aka an ha/cmp configuration easily met the outage budget relying on the fault-tolerant redrive logic in the SS7 to mask outages.

Of course it would have been possible to also replicate the fault-tolerant boxes ... at significantly increased cost ... and then both the ha/cmp implementation and the fault-tolerant implementation would have met the outage budget.

random ha/cmp ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

lots more ha/cmp refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:38:09 GMT

dba@DUDA.COM (David Andrews) writes:
I vaguely recall (MVT 21.7 days) that my university experimented with an initiator replacement named "Executor". It may have been associated with WVU.

Our computer center management forced its use for certain student job classes. They liked it because it was faster for exactly those code-and-go ("cafeteria") jobs that Phil refers to above. But it wasn't all that stable; it had bugs and didn't support all JCL constructs. I don't think it would allocate permanent datasets, for example. In fact, it may not have driven DADSM at all.

Anybody else remember this beastie?

the (IBM) advisery SE assigned to our university started writing one and was testing it ... leaving it in a tray in one of the card cabinets inside the machine room. they used to give me the machine room from 8am sat. to 8am monday ... when they would take it back and i would have to go to class (whats 60 hrs or so w/o sleep on regular basis). i caused a little uproar when i ran across it ... duplicated it and rewrote/fixed a number of things (i.e. ibm requested a meeting with the head of the datacenter to discuss my actions).

it was targeted at the student fortran workload, the thruput of which had dropped by about ten to sixty times on the 360/67 that replaced the 709 (when hasp was installed it was still something like ten times slower ... w/o hasp ... the 67 workload was measured in minutes per student job rather than couple seconds per student job on the 709).

it was abandoned when watfor was installed.

note that previous to that i had gotten about a three times thruput increase for a three-step fortgclg of a return/end program by carefully re-ordering a large number of the iebcopy/iehmove statements in stage2 sysgen. of course normal PTF maint. of over a six month period would undo a lot of the careful member ordering in linklib and svclib and degrade performance to something like only twice a "out-of-the-box" stage2 sysgen.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

difference between itanium and alpha

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: difference between itanium and alpha
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:45:45 GMT

Paul Wallich writes:
You mean a communication network that could continue in operation even if a significant number of nodes "experienced temperatures of several thousand degrees centigrade"? That was what sold the original funding, but the multiply-connected grid that went along with the claim was abandoned almost instantly.

it took quite a bit of time for some. the northeast had something like nine independent links ... all carefully going out physical diverse routes. over an extended period of time (20 years?) the telco consolidated all of the trunks carrying the links ... eventually into a single underground fiber. a backhoe hit that fiber (I think someplace in conn) and took out the whole northeast connection to the rest of the internet.

misc. diverse routing, backhoes, and/or institutional memory:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#34 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#85 Mainframe power failure (somehow morphed from Re: write rings)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#3 Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#6 Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#32 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#44 Calculating a Gigalapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#5 Dumb Question - Hardend Site ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#48 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#12 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#53 Microsoft worm affecting Automatic Teller Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#54 Microsoft worm affecting Automatic Teller Machines

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 16:23:27 GMT

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#51 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?

& some topic drift(s).

one of the reasons that i got led down the path of doing these custom sysgens (with specific member ordering in pds libraries by re-ordering the statements for move/copy the members into the library) was specific experience at the university. it was one of the locations that got sold a 360/67 to run tss/360. while they were trying to get tss/360 to work, the university ran os/360 on it. the configuration started out with 512kbyte 360/67, 2311s and a 2301 drum. for os/360 .... the 2301 was used for svclib and jobqueue.

at some point the university made a decision to abandon tss/360 and discontinued the 2301. this was late afternoon mid-week ... and i got the task for rebuilding the system 3rd shift to run w/o the 2301. there was significant job scheduler thruput difference with and w/o the 2301.

note that when the university got a copy of cp/67 to play with, the avg interactive response for four users on tss/360 ... was worse than for 15 cms users on cp/67 doing similar fortran edit & execution workload ... while running os/360 guest batch in the background.

note this was the jan68 cp/67 out-of-the-box thruput ... before i started in on it, redoing a lot of the pathlengths, inventing fastpaths, new dispatch/scheduling, new page replacement, etc. (also limited-availability tss/370 much later was vastly improved when it was used for AT&T SSS kernel for unix on 370s).

much later, circa '74 ... cern did the mvs-tso/cms bake-off and presented the report at share. the company immediately classified copies of the report as confidential, restricted .... aka inside the company, the report was available only on a need to know basis (unless you got it directly from somebody at share).

cp/67, cms, a bunch of interactive computing, the internal network, script/gml, compare&swap paradigm all came out of the cambridge science center. i've asserted that one of the reasons that html came out of cern was it had a long history with cms (& having script/gml) going back to the mid-70s). random csc refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 16:55:21 GMT

Julian Thomas writes:
2314 was Merlin. Don't remember any of the others....

most of this from crusty ol gpd engineer ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities.

merlin was 3330-1 and iceberg was 3330-11

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:39:50 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ISHAM-RESEARCH.COM (Phil Payne) writes:
It would be interesting (!) to see how MVT performs with SYSJOBQE on a ramdisk. I know it _flies_ with it on a 2305 or a drum.

around '82 a 1655 came out from some chip manufactur .... which was 48mbytes of electronic storage and could be configured to emulate four 2305-2. there was some folklore that it was populated with dram chips that had failed normal QA.

random past 1655 postings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#17 database (or b-tree) page sizes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#53 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#31 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#17 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#40 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#15 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#17 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Easiest possible PASV experiment

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Easiest possible PASV experiment
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 23:02:57 GMT

Barry Margolin writes:
And it takes programming time to do that. With limited resources, you can only do so much, so you select your priorities depending on your expected market's needs.

and there is always
... in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice ... but in practice there is ...

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Easiest possible PASV experiment

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Easiest possible PASV experiment
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 04:45:53 GMT

Kyler Laird writes:
Have you ever watched Open Source projects? Amazing things happen within hours of the right person developing an itch.

the problem is, in fact, getting the right person.

long ago and far away we spent some time trying to get multiple A-record support into servers (as part of the original commerce server and payment gateway) and into clients. we had some sign-off authority regarding the server implementation ... however the people working on the client were almost exclusive oriented towards graphics display and claimed that multiple a-record support was too advanced and complicated. spent over a year trying (including meetings with 30 or so of the client developers presenting examples from reno client code) before giving up.
... in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice ... but in practice there is ...

there is nothing precluding any http implementation from being as traffic thruput oriented ... with maximum tuning to take advantage of tcp latency compensation ... as any ftp implementation. it is just that with http clients there frequently are a hundred or so higher priority feature/functions needing doing.

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmore.htm#dctriv
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

note that back in the '60s ... almost everything used to be open source. while an undergraduate, i was able to get significant amount of infrastructure rewrite into standard distributed products. the university used to give me the whole machine room from 8am sat. until 8am monday... and then i would have to go off to class (who says that people can't go w/o sleep for 60hrs at a time on a regular basis):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 05:52:39 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#3 Disk drives as commodities.

oops, and then should have been a 7 instead of a 3 ... aka
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

When/why did "programming" become "software development?"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: When/why did "programming" become "software development?"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 14:41:01 GMT

Pete Fenelon writes:
I was amused by a former place of employment where over a spell of six years the Personnel Officer became Personnel Manager, Personnel Director and then Director of Human Resources. His competence did not increase with his job titles.

past posts on title inflation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#22 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#28 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#29 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#30 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#31 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#34 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#50 Title Inflation

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

"average" DASD Blocksize

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 14:51:18 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ISHAM-RESEARCH.COM (Phil Payne) writes:
IBM kept on pestering us to buy two. We kept saying the 1052 was too high, so they offered us an RPQ to lower it. The engineers wanted us to have a spare 1052 because of the reliability issues with the things. 2,300 moving parts?

FE at CSC just kept a spare 1052 in the backroom. they were known to be subject to fist-in-keyboard syndrome and have to be swapped.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

RFC 3092

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFC 3092
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:15:23 GMT

JMckown@UICIINSCTR.COM (McKown, John) writes:
Just what everybody needed for the definitive answer to this burning question. Sorry, it's not Friday yet, but this was interesting / amusing. I found it while looking for the RFC on ftp.

sounds like you are interested in the april first RFCs ... a hallowed ietf trandation.

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

and under RFCs listed by click on Term (term->RFC#)

and then scroll down to April1 ... aka
April1
3252 3251 3093 3092 3091 2795 2551 2550 2549 2325 2324 2323 2322 2321 2100 1927 1926 1925 1924 1776 1607 1606 1605 1437 1313 1217 1149 1097 852 748

clicking on any of the RFC numbers will bring up the RFC summary in the lower frame. clicking on the ".txt=" field in a RFC summary will retrieve that actual RFC.

note in the following reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#43 Early attempts at console humor

the april 1st (which was on sunday) "corporate" directive found in the corporate bulletin boards on monday morning were not placed there by me. the corporate directive:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52 OT Re: A beautiful morning in AFM

however, if you are looking for FTP related RFCs.

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

and under RFCs listed by click on Term (term->RFC#)

and then click on "FTP" in the Acronym fastpath.

i.e.
file transfer protocol (FTP )
see also file transfer
2640 2585 2577 2428 2389 2228 2204 1986 1639 1635 1579 1545 1415 959 949 913 775 765 751 743 737 697 691 640 630 624 614 607 593 571 551 542 532 520 506 480 479 478 475 468 463 458 454 448 438 430 414 412 385 354 310 294 281 265 238 172 141 114

and
file transfer
2840 2839 2773 2640 2585 2577 2513 2512 2428 2415 2389 2349 2348 2347 2228 2204 2090 1986 1785 1784 1783 1782 1639 1635 1579 1545 1440 1415 1350 1068 1030 998 969 959 949 913 906 783 775 765 751 743 737 697 691 662 640 630 624 614 607 593 573 571 551 542 532 520 506 505 501 487 480 479 478 475 468 463 458 454 448 438 430 418 414 412 385 354 327 310 309 294 281 269 265 250 238 172 141 133 114

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:38:31 GMT

SEYMOUR.J.METZ@CUSTOMS.TREAS.GOV (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
No. The speeds were almost the same. The granddaddy of ESTOR was LCS, at 8 microseconds.

all the LCS boxes that I ran into were the 8mbyte, 8msec variety from ampex.

misc past posts on lcs/ampex memory:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#7 "OEM"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#2 Ridiculous
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#3 Ridiculous
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#51 Logo (was Re: 5-player Spacewar?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#15 Parity - why even or odd (was Re: Load Locked (was: IA64 running out of steam))

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Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 23:04:03 GMT

and I have vague recollections of (at least some) estore design issues.

one estore issue was supposedly it was standard memory ... but physical constraints located at a greater distance .... increasing the access latency. Somewhat guessing is that the 360/91 example of the similar but different access timing might also be a physical distance constrant for different memory banks. so estore, instead of going with the different timings ... they went with a different access paradigm ... a much wider bus and a fast synchronous copy instruction (that operated like I/O with respect to the cpu cache).

LCS was used both for data ... copying to/from lower faster standard storage and/or direct execution. Some number of mod. 50 installations were more likely to directly execute (since there was less difference between standard 2mic memory and the 8mic LCS memory). I think mod. 75 installations tended to copy (possibly in part because of the larger difference between the 750ns standard memory and the 8mic LCS memory).

I have some recollection of possibly Cornell giving Share presentation on MVT/HASP configuration with mod. 75 and 8mbyte ampex LCS.

So the estore copy operation was created as a paging paradigm with the wide/fast copy instruction being done in 4k chunks. The claim was something along the line that the synchronous copy instruction was significantly less than the processor pathlength needed to support an asynchronous wait/post I/O operation.

In the 3090 time-frame the estore wide-bus also provided a method of implementing hippi. the standard 800mbit hippi transfer rate exceeded anything the standard 3090 i/o facility was capable of. hippi was crafted into estore because the estore bus was capable of supporting the transfer rate. however because the only way that the processor was capable of accessing estore was via copy instructions ... hippi i/o programming was sort of was like PC "poke" paradigm ... except a "poke" was a 4k copy into fixed estore location (which then was interpreted by the hippi attachment as i/o control operation).

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Surprising discovery

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Surprising discovery
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 23:28:14 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:
I remember another discussion on a.f.c. where someone mentioned that a PC might have 3 errors per week, and that if an IBM mainframe had that many in a year they replaced the memory system.

at least one discussion ... was that there were suppose to be only 3-5 errors for the year across every installed ibm mainframe of that particular model (not 3-5 errors per year per machine ... but 3-5 errors per year total for all the machines).

i was sort of the cause of some real worry because i had done this HYPERchannel remote device support and chosen a particular type of error indication to simulate when it was necessary to retry certain operations. For those installations running that support .... they would record more errors of the type than actually occurred.

there is this industry service that collects customer error logs and publishes regular summary reports (sort of like consumer reports for mainframes). because of the remote device support .... the reported number of total errors for the whole year across all models of this particular machine was significantly larger than the 3-5 total projected.

one of the original points was that just the existance of such an industry reporting service represented a significantly different cultural orientation ... aka it wasn't just that some people cared about it ... but there was an actual institutional infrastructure in existance reporting it.

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Dijkstra on "The End of Computing Science"

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dijkstra on "The End of Computing Science"
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 16:24:02 GMT

hfbonney writes:
Well, in Silicon Valley most programmers over 40 are dog meat in most organizations. The generational, and sometimes ethnic warfare seems deadlier here than back east. My theory for the bitter generational warfare is that California got the 60%+ divorce rates sooner and the results are now in their twenties. Also companies here are in the forefront in aggressively shipping jobs offshore which has left many young degreed people, even good ones, very angry and with little future in the field. Over-40's with a specialty like kernel hacking or RF system work are doing well enough. Working for the same organization for a long time may work. And, of course, not being in the very high cost Silicon Valley area at all would help.

Possibly one reason why mathematicians might do their best work earlier in life than programmers is that their activity is solitary but most programming is not at present. A lot of programming work requires generalist knowledge that accumulates over time also, eg now even small micros have caches and their programming design/coding becomes an exercise in caching (who said that?). In past generations mathematicians seemed to do their most creative work in their 20's, philosophers much later. Painters worked until they couldn't see the canvas any more. Where does non-routine programming fit?

i've asserted that many people interact with life on an experiential basis ... tending to repeat doing pretty much what they had already been doing. they are much more malleable in their youth because they haven't established patterns of activity. I believe i've observed this thruout the computer business ... both engineering and programming. Several of the people that were responsible for doing very innovative things in the '60s were still doing the same thing in the early '90s. Of course one of the facets is that different endeavors can have significantly different relationship between productivity and innovation.

There was some stabiilty & status quo, in (at least some parts of) the computing industry thru the 70s and 80s. As a result there was much less requirement for innovation. One aspect, the whole FS thing ... which was massive effort, possibly larger than the combined, total efforts of several other computer companies was totally written off and never (directly) saw the light of day.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

There was starting to be paradigm change in the early '90s ... as big shift from big mainframes and datacenters started to shift to things like the internet. There was also a business paradigm change going on with increasing effects of globalization.

One of Boyd's observations ... aka
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

was that a large percentage of emerging CEOs during the '70s had received their training in large organization management as young army officers in europe during ww-II. The basic premise going into the war was that there were huge amounts of men with no experience and very little training and so there had to be a very rigid, top-down command and control structure in order to minimize the adverse effects of the enormous inexperience and maximize the use of the few resources that had experience. The thesis was that during the '70s and '80s, this organizational style was carried into industry ... huge, rigid bureaucratic (command&control) infrastructures with the implied assumption that it was necessary to manage huge collections of inexperienced workers. At least in one large company ... it was in part justified by the significant side-track that the technical community took the company with the failed FS effort.

I would assert that some amount of the discord that had started in the early '90s because of globalization and downsizing ... was only temporarily suspended with the dot.com bubble. It is possible that the ability for adaptive, agile, and change will become the norm and that the somewhat employment security of the 70s and 80s turns out to have been a temporary anomaly. Of course that also is somewhat a Boyd thesis with OODA-loop.

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FBA suggestion was Re: "average" DASD Blocksize

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: FBA suggestion was Re: "average" DASD Blocksize
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 17:45:38 GMT

nospam@nowhere.com (Steve Myers) writes:
IBM is not going to do FBA support in MVS for one simple reason: the combination of RAID and caching has completely obviated the need. Caching eliminates actual searches on key searche, search ID equal, and similar commands. Or, at least it eliminates the idle channel busy time while skipping past data. I grant it may be dumb to transfer the argument for each record, but the killer is the skip past the data. Caching also meant - though it took a long time for both IBM and its customers to realize this - that the need for expansive, extremely fast, and extremely reliable disk drive heqd combinations. RAID finished 'em off. With a RAID array, a cheap PC hard drive goes away, field engineering removes it from the array, inserts another cheap PC hard drive, and tosses the dead drive in the furnace, just to make sure the data cannot be stolen.

I grant when the 3370 first came out I was hoping and hoping IBM would do FBA in MVS. Now - well, it ain't gonna happen.

the transfer of the argument per record aggravates the latency issue regarding the distance that the controller/device is located from the processor memory. pushing the distance & therefor the latency on per record basis .... typically requires some sort of trick for latency masking .... like downloading the argument and pretending you didn't. maintaining the pretense of ckd creates lots of little chinks and holes .... all requiring various kinds of work-arounds ... all of which go away and things become much more KISS.

example was the trick in the A515 remote device adapter ... for effectively original SAN. random past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#24 CP spooling & programming technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#27 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#65 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#68 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#21 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#46 What goes into a 3090?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#60 Mainframes and "mini-computers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#61 GE 625/635 Reference + Smart Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives

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Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Tubes in IBM 1620?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Tubes in IBM 1620?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:57:11 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
What's wrong with a nice coloured text simulation of a 3279C startup screen going thru the IMPL load and power on sequence (maybe with simulated background flickering lights, pop up text art renditions of the boxes coming online, and a few audio files of relay clicks, fans, and drives coming up to speed), and the console time prompt? Can't remember many of the details, as we only did this about once a year for: major device additions; building power maintenance; or some years, if a nasty thunderstorm blacked out the grid a few times in a short while, and the power died during autorestart, to avoid tempting fate further.

then there is when the power-on sequence was not completing ... and going around and putting each one of the controllers in ce-mode ... and restarting the sequence ... and doing the power-on at each controller manually ... and then putting the controllers back in normal mode.

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
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Eliza

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Eliza
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:29:55 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
Symbolics LISP Machine, see:
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Lisp+Machine

wasn't it OSF that moved into the symbolics building?

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OT: One for the historians - 360/91

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:56:43 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ISHAM-RESEARCH.COM (Phil Payne) writes:
Modern applications are more complex, but sub-second response time is nothing to be proud of. Processing transactions online into a custom database on 2311 using a 24KB 360/25 within the clutch cycle time of a 2540 is, though.

one of the battles with the 3278/3274 introduction was it significantly affected the ability to achieve subsecond response for a number of transactions. of course the mvs/tso crowd said that subsecond response wasn't an issue ... people weren't met to have sebsecond response.

3272/3274 comparison thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol

and then there was the cern/share tso/cms bake-off report that was classified confidential, restricted internally (available on need-to-know basis only):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#28 Drive letters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#61 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#11 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#67 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#14 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#64 vm marketing (cross post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#73 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#54 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#53 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?

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Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:28:10 GMT

"George R. Gonzalez" writes:
Waay back in the 1970's we had a huge barn-like building near here with "COMTEN" written on it in rather bold and unstylish letters. Apparently they did very well for several years making IBM mainframe compatible networking boxes. A friend of mine worked there and programmed those boxes. He said it was a neat computer to program on, as they'd built-in many hardware features to help debug programs. IIRC one of them was a 20-deep list of the most recent calls and jumps, so if your program did a wild jump, you'd at least know from whence it came. Also plenty of hardware breakpoints on various conditions.

Then around 1980 they built a new headquarters building, not a barn, very nice. Not much later they were bought by NCR, then a while later by ATT&T, which couldnt figure out how to compete with Cisco, and they folded soon afterwards.

Anybody else have some COMTEN stories to relate?

not comten ... comten was pcm (plug-compatible manufactur) telecommunications controller. earliest was one that i worked on as undergraduate ... and we've been blamed for originating the pcm controller business. we reverse engineered the ibm channel interface and built a pcm box initially out of an interdata3 ... later combination of interdata3s (dedicated line-scanners) and an interdata4. this was later bought and marketed by perkin-elmer. I ran into one of these boxes in large datacenter a couple years ago ... still carrying major portion of the traffic.

the genesis of this was i had added tty support to cp/67 and was playing some fancy games with programming the 2702 (the ibm telecommunications controller) for dynamic terminal type identification .... using the sad command to re-associate which line-scanner was associated with which line. I was able to demonstrate tty, 2741, and 1052 ... sort-of being arbritrarily connected &/or dialing any port. Then one of the IBM field engineer support people informed us that it really shouldn't work because while it was possible to dynamically re-associate the type of line-scanner with each line with the sad commands .... the 2702 implementation took a short-cut and hardwired the baud rate specific oscillator to each port/line.

so a major point of the pcm effort was not only be able to dynamically identify the terminal type ... but also be able to dynamically identify the baud rate (frequent sampling signal raise/lower on initial signal).

misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

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Tubes in IBM 1620?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Tubes in IBM 1620?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 16:48:23 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:
These are normal wherever some military outfit wants to process classified data. I had the "privilige" of visiting a couple of these during my navy service. IBM seemed to have a whole set of hardware tailored for this type of application. The standard setup in 1984 was a 4341 in pretty standalone config; but with a controller and a single 327?; a set of disks and tapes, and numerous other output devices.

it seemed like lots of places bought 4341s in lots of hundreds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#17 difference between itanium and alpha

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Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

OT: One for the historians - 360/91

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 14:56:45 GMT

Dave Daniels writes:
Many years ago I saw a real time version of Space Invaders that ran on a 3270 screen. It was written by two people, a VM systems programmer and a second programmer who went on to make a name for himself in the UK computer game industry during the 1980s. (Before then he worked as a Cobol programmer. He once complained to me in a rather heart-felt way of the difficulties of writing games in Cobol.) Space Invaders only worked on locally- attached 3270s and kinda maxed out the channel. I think it was more proof that real time games were possible on a 3270 than something for the rest of the world to play.

part of the problem was that 327x controllers were really dog with regard to channel busy overhead ... not just (relatively) slow data transfer ... but also high busy for command processing. several hundred 327x terminals (and their local channel controllers) were "remoted" at the end of a hyperchannel network. their wasn't any observable degradation in terminal response but overall system thruput went up 10-15% because the 327x (mostly 3274s) were no longer actually sitting on real channel. A222s were handling the direct real channel interface at significantly higher efficiency than the 3274s did. recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives

the person that wrote rex(x) wrote a multiple-player, real-time (effectively client/server) spacewar game that run on 3270s/cms .... using inter-vm interface that ran both between virtual machines .... on the same real machines as well as across the internal network to other real machines.

the client protocol was fairly straight-forward .... so some people wrote automated player programs that they turned loose against other players. to somewhat level the playing field, a change was made so that energy consumption went up non-linearly as the interval between commands decreased (especially as inter-command interval dropped well below second).

past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#10 5-player spacewar?

a couple past rex(s) refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#30 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#31 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#32 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#33 20th March 2000

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iso 8583

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: iso 8583
Newsgroups: alt.technology.smartcards
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 15:20:43 GMT

"Rohit" writes:
Where can i get more information about the working of "iso 8583"

search engine.

there is a little bit at
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

in the mapping of x9.59 to iso 8583 (actually variations by some of the credit processors)

note that 8583 is fairly closely followed by most of the debit networks. the credit terminal/processor interface (at least in the US) was some variation of x9.15; however the latest 5-year review of 8583 has effectively absorbed x9.15 ... and the credit processors (that have had significant standard deviations) have made some commitment to converge to a standard 8583.

since it is a iso standard ... the actual specification can be bought at he iso standards store.

iso8583:1993
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=15871

iso8583-2:1998
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=23632

iso8583-3:1998
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=23633

and the current five year review/rework for iso85838:2003 is still in progress.

the secretariat in iso is x9
http://www.x9.org/

the responsible iso committee is tc68
http://www.tc68.org/
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/stdsdevelopment/tclist/TechnicalCommitteeDetailPage.TechnicalCommitteeDetail?TC=68

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Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

OT: One for the historians - 360/91

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT: One for the historians - 360/91
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 21:06:47 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
Was that person Mike C, or did someone else do the programming for his language design? Was the interface IUCV? Tended to be on the only or one of the few VM (and Canadian) nodes in an MVS network.

yes ...see refs from previous post

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The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 22:29:48 GMT

"David Cressey" writes:
My recollection was that is was to compete with IBM. DB2 used SQL, and it was easier to sell Rdb if the people who already knew SQL didn't have to learn something else. This is the way most "de facto" standards come into being.

there was significant resistance from STL to system/r. some of the arguments were hierarchical vis-a-vis relational .... but probably as vociferous was arguments regarding physical pointers vis-a-vis indexes (i.e. that the indexes doubled the physical space).

so the technical transfer went from sjr to endicott ... aka from system/r to sql/ds (i was responsible for some from sjr to end). it was later that there was technology transfer from endicott back to STL ... aka sql/ds to db2. one of the people in the following meeting handled much of the endicott->stl transfer:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

general reference:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Contents.html

multics first commercial rdbms:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/mrds.html

teradata, ingres, relational tech, britton-lee, sybase, m'soft
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Teradata.html

sql/ds
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-SQL_DS.html

shoot-out at the ok corral
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Shoot-ou.html

.... note: quibble in the shoot-out tale mentioned above with regard to compare&swap instruction and locking. compare&swap instruction was the work of person in cambridge science center who's initials are CAS ... and the choice of the instruction mnemonic ... so then needed to come up with instruction name that matched his initials.

misc. qbe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#44 SQL wildcard origins?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#70 Pismronunciation

vs/query (qmf)
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-VS_QUERY.html

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 12:12:21 GMT

Dave Daniels writes:
Comten's only product was their FEP. Unlike Amdahl's, which was plug-compatible with IBM's boxes and ran IBM software, Comten developed the hardware and software that ran on it. Internally, the box was an IBM 360-type processor with a few extra instructions such as 'ZIC': zeroise and insert character. It ran under an operating system called COS and NCP was an application that ran under COS. Comten wrote their own version of NCP, but they also had a number of 'value add' features, for example, the box could function as an X25 switch. Some of their value adds were

i have no idea as to the answer ... as previously posted in this thread, we used interdata for the original pcm telecommunication controller ... which had 360-type instruction set. it would be interesting to know if comten also grew out of that effort.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#70 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

as to some other points. when I made presentation to sna architecture review board in the fall of '86 about taking a NCP re-implementation (done originally at one of the babybells) on a S/1 and beefing it up and porting to a rios (6000) platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67 System/1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70 Series/1 as NCP

somebody in the SNA/ARB audience asked

how could they have done that with less than a couple dozen people when we now have over (I believe I remember the correct number) a thousand people working on NCP.

my answer was

1) S/1 (peachtree) is much more capable processor than the uc.5 microprocess used in the 3705. in fact, i was part of a collection of people in the early 70s that were strongly advocating that cpd use peachtree instead of the uc.5 for 3705.

2) S/1 platform provided much more operating system function. the ncp kernel was only 6000 lines of code. applications built on top of that ncp kernel had to implement lots of their own feature/function that would normally be part of an operating system (aka lots of duplicate implementation across the ncp infrastructure)

3) they didn't bother with support for a lot of old legacy terminals

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 12:14:04 GMT

Dave Daniels writes:
Everything was different. I am not sure which came first. Comten's IP stack appeared around 1990, so they had probably been working on it for a year or two by then. I saw the IBM TCP/IP around the same time on VM but I do not know what it supported or how it did it. There was a hack to make the IBM TCP/IP software talk to the Comten IP stack using X25 but I do not know the details.

the original IBM TCP/IP support was written in vs/pascal (ran in its own service virtual machine) and supported the 8232 (basically a rackmount pc/at with a mainframe channel attach card and one or more lan adapters) and rfc1044 A22x.

I did the RFC1044 support. The base support consumed a 3090 processor getting about 44kbytes (about 440kbits) per sec aggregate max thruput w/8232. I did some tuning at cray research on the rfc1044 support and was getting a mbyte/sec from a 4341-clone .... using a moderate amount of the 4341 processor (about 20 times the data thruput with maybe 1/10th the processor utilization).

Later ... the CPD group in palo alto square hired a consultant to do TCP/IP support in vtam.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL  become the industry standard?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 12:21:25 GMT

archeological reference reposted from comp.databases.theory

general reference:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Contents.html

multics first commercial rdbms:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/mrds.html

teradata, ingres, relational tech, britton-lee, sybase, m'soft
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Teradata.html

sql/ds
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-SQL_DS.html

shoot-out at the ok corral
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Shoot-ou.html

misc. qbe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#44 SQL wildcard origins?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#70 Pismronunciation

vs/query (qmf)
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-VS_QUERY.html

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:07:44 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
getting about 44kbytes (about 440mbits) per sec aggregate max thruput

finger slip, that is about 440kbits ... not 440mbits per sec

original post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#77 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes

the 4341-clone rfc1044 to the cray was limited to 1mbyte/sec by the 4341's hardware channel interface (and one reason it used so little of the 4341 processor).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

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