2003 Newsgroup postings (07/12 - 08/17) Lynn Wheeler

2003 Newsgroup Postings (07/12 - 08/17)

VSPC
Dealing with complexity
Rexx vs. Batch
Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?
What is timesharing, anyway?
Security models
What is timesharing, anyway?
z VM 4.3
What is timesharing, anyway?
What is timesharing, anyway?
humor in source code
humor in source code
What is timesharing, anyway?
Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RFC # for DCC protocol?
Dealing with complexity
Dealing with complexity
How do I know currently used RFC?
Dealing with complexity
What is timesharing, anyway?
smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?
What is timesharing, anyway?
virtual machines for security
Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
virtual machines for security
Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead
IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing"
Where the Good Jobs are Going
What is timesharing, anyway?
The Vintage Computer Forum
RFC2557?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved
What is timesharing, anyway?
Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA
Differnce between LF and NL
Share lunch/dinner?
An Understanding Database Theory
text character based diagrams in technical documentation
text character based diagrams in technical documentation
text character based diagrams in technical documentation
text character based diagrams in technical documentation
Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Who said DAT?
S/360 IPL from 7 track tape
Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Linux gets sensitive government use approval
dissassembled code
Getting old
dissassembled code
S/360 IPL from 7 track tape
Obsolete mainframes
Window field in TCP header goes small
What is timesharing, anyway?
One big box vs. many little boxes
Confessions of a first-time SHARE attendee
The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces
The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces
SPXTAPE status from REXX
C & reliability: Was "The Incredible Shrinking Legacy"
Share lunch/dinner?
Digital signature and Digital Certificate
What is timesharing, anyway?

VSPC

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: VSPC
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 16:25:00 GMT

terry.sambrooks@BTCLICK.COM (terry sambrooks) writes:
"Did anyone work at a shop which ran CALL/OS or VSPC? I'd love to compare notes."

I worked with a VSPC system circa 1983/84 in our "little ol' capital". I did a two month stint writing an online work request system to replace a fax based system. The object was to replace paper with request into the scheduling system. It took about three days to become familiar with the dialogue structure, a couple of weeks to map and code the system, and the rest of the time was testing and documenting the end result.

It was all very interesting, but a one off other than similar exercises in ISPF at other installations.

there was the interactive pli from the (ibm) boston programming center ... that also included special RPQ ROS for 360/50. in the early '70s, the boston programming center was on 3rd floor, 545 tech. sq ... and was absorbed by the rapidly growing vm/370 group ... before it outgrew tech sq. and moved out to a vacated sbc (which had been sold off to cdc) in burlington mall.

in the early to mid '70s ... the PCO (personal computing option) group (later renamed vs/pc when they discovered some TLA conflict with organization in france) ... had a couple people that built a pco simulated model. They would run benchmarks in the pco model ... and then the vm/370 group was asked to compete with real benchmarks against the pco benchmark model. For an extended period of time ... a significant portion of the whole vm/370 development group was absorbed in doing internal benchmarks matching the pco modeled/simulated benchmarks.

Frequently the PCO simulated benchmarks demonstrated better thruput/performance than the actual vm/370 equivalent benchmarks .. until the vm/370 group had time to do various optimizations and then frequently showed effectively equivalent real benchmark thruput.

The real eye-opener was when PCO finally became operational and they were able to measure real PCO benchmark thruput that was something like 1/10th of the thruput of what was being predicted by the model. However, it did have the side effect of side-tracking and tieing up huge number of person months out of the vm/370 group ... supposedly justifying their existance ... to show that PCO wasn't twice as good as vm/370 .... when the model was actually shading the truth and the actual PCO thruput was less than 1/5th that of vm/370 (or worse).

misc. 545 tech sq. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

random past pco / vspc posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#1 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#51 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#26 LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?

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

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.sys.super
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:04:05 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:
errmm...No. There weren't any others back then. In those days, computers were just starting to go from batch ala cards to interactive systems. Computer _systems_ (as opposed to dedicated hardware) were not a production item (I'm thinking about mainframes here). Computer systems were built (almost from the ground up) on a _per customer_ basis. I'm not sure about IBM, but I think they built the big systems for each customer, too; Lynn can talk about this.

Nobody went to a retail store or web page and ordered a system that was delivered the next day. Whenever we sold a KA system, the whole system was put together in the Mill, all software installed, and checked out (this last one took a long time). Then the system was dismantled, crated (boxes were too small), put on a semi truck or two and driven to the site. (hmmm...I don't know how we shipped overseas.) The hardware and software people were not crated but they were also shipped to the site. Then the hardware was uncrated, put back together and nursed back to bootable health. This took months.

stretch may have been like that ... but 360 had the pieces manufactured in different places; processors in POK, Endicott, and various places outside of the United States, disk drives in San Jose and overseas, other parts in a number of places. Shipments arrived at customer location .... which might have half dozen to couple dozen outside people helping with the installation. On-site, ongoing support staff (system and field engineers) could be a half dozen to couple dozen people for the larger installations. system engineers did large percentage of the software installatation and maintenance.

That significantly started to change with unbundling 6/23/69 ... with not only pricing of software ... but also the pricing of the system engineer time.

sometimes there was more work done on manufacturing engineering than there was on technology/product engineering (aka the engineering of the manufacturing of the product ... as opposed to the engineering of the technology of the product).

The disk product test lab (bldg. 15 in san jose) would tend to get low single digit serial number processors ... six months or more before processors were available to customers ... for extensive testing of new processors with disks ... and new disks with processors. because of finagling with support of disk engineering and product test labs in the late '70s ... i sometimes had better access to new processor for various kinds of benchmarking ... than some of the engineers back in the processor labs. misc disk engineering/product test lab:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

Rexx vs. Batch

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Rexx vs. Batch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:49:02 GMT

tjpo@AIRBORNE.COM (Patrick O'Keefe) writes:
Another opportunity to climb onto my poor, abused soap box.

Having "... scrolling and the plethora of other mundane interactions ..." on the PC implies that the data is also on the PC. One of the advantages to the 3270 interface into TSO is that the 3270 datastream is a very light-weight, and the datastream for an individual screen images is very small (by today's standards). That makes the 3270 datastream ideal for slow and/or dirty communication connections. And, unfortunately, such communication links still exist.

Any interface taking advantage of the PC's strengths needs to be able to a light-weight datastream mode (3270 or not is immaterial) when conditions require it

Pat O'Keefe.

discussion of it within the context of cp/67 and vm/370:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#57 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

the issue was that VM/370 was translating the 3270 events into virtual 1052 ... and then assuming all operations to a virtual 1052 were of "long" duration. The change discussed in the above reference was originally to cp/67 ... which kept a count of outstanding i/o based on real "high-speed" device type. (i/o that would be of short duration as opposed to i/o that would be of long duration).

the translation to vm/370 maintained summary flags of outstanding "high-speed" i/o based on virtual device type. As a result ... vm/370 was constantly dropping from queue and swapping the cms virtual machines. The other feature dropped in the cp/67 to vm/370 translation was a record of how long was the previous queue drop.

There was an official fix in vm/370 ... which left the virtual structure as is (i.e. the real "bug" was that the high-speed/low-speed determination was based on virtual device type ... which wouldn't necessarily indicate the speed characteristic of the real device type), but added a fixed 300ms delay to every queue drop operation .... to catch all the cases where the system thot the address space should be dropped from queue and pages swapped out ... but was constantly getting it wrong (as in using the 3270 hardware sequence to have all the queue drop/add chatter based on real 3270 being mapped to a virtual 1052).

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

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ping:  Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:03:04 GMT

skowen@ufl.edu (UF Scott) writes:
I have seen a couple of your posts in an archive mentioning the IBM "Los Gatos Lab" (bldg. 29). My grandfather used to work in that lab, and still lives about 100 feet behind where it stood. I remember hiking around the hill where the radio dish was when I was a kid. Do you have any other stories or anecdotes about that facility? Thanks,

i only had a wing of offices (no more than or 6-7). There is the T3 collins digital radio (microwave) repeater tower that was on the hill above the san jose dump (between bldg 29/lsg and bldg 12 at the san jose plant site) ... same as the tower currently above the ridge between bldg 12 and bldg 90 (stl) along santa teresa blvd.

there was also the 4.5 meter satellite dish that HSDT put in the back parking lot. zoning wasn't too bad in lsg ... it was much worse in Yorktown ... putting in a 4.5 meter satellite dish behind the tj watson research bldg. the local towns people were absolutely certain that the radiation would do bad things to them.

it was difficult to describe to them it was only 25 watts ... max. ... typically half that in clear weather ... and only boosted to 25 watts during heavy rain fade (ku band ... similar effects that you see in microwave ovens with h2o absorbing radiation). They were even shown that they got significantly more radition from the local 50,000 watt radio transmission tower than they would get from a 4.5 meter dish that focused approx. 13 watts straight up. It was even caculated that if they were suspended straight above the dish in the path of the focused beam ... they would still be getting more radition from the FM transmission tower. other hsdt posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

sorry ... strayed from lsg/bldg. 29.

they tore it down and turned the whole area into a housing development.

misc. folklore stories i've heard in the past:

the cafeteria had an outside courtyard in the back ... that was currended by an 18inch high wire mesh fence. some executive tried to have it removed because he didn't consider that it look asthetically pleasing. It was patiently explained to him that it was a rattlesnake fence ... the bldg had been built on a migration(?) path of rattlenakes between the hill in the back and the creek out front. the executive quickly changed their mind about having the fence removed.

there was one year when wild boars spent some time tearing up the grass outside the window of my office. not many people argue with wild boar.

the first (ibm) ATM (automatic teller machine) was developed there. They had vault installed in the basement where they kept $50k in US 20 and equivalent number of bills from dozens of other countries for testing.

some airline reservation terminals were developed there. one of the design issues was that the top of the terminal has heat vents ... and directly underneath the heat vents is a tray that has the capacity designed to hold a quart bottle of coke.

LSM simulation machine was used to do digital chip design in some cases involving some analog circuits ... aka as in disk read/write heads.

technique of using a scanning electron microscope for examing operation of running chip was developed there.

misc. references to the los gatos simulation machine/engine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#77 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#82 Future architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#26 LSM, YSE, & EVE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#23 Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#31 asynchronous CPUs

misc. refs to LSG work on blue iliad first 32bit 801/risc chip design:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#16 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#39 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#27 End of Moore's law and how it can influence job market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#3 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#69 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#25 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?

misc. other bldg. 29 mentions:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#57 South San Jose (was Tysons Corner, Virginia)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#3 Chip Emulators - was How does a chip get designed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#45 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing

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

1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom.tech,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:10:16 GMT

Lon Stowell writes:
In 1983, in the AT&T datacenter at 444 Hoes Lane, there were several mainframes running VM, all attached to front end processors from [defunct] Computer Communications for dial in users using big modem banks. Plus a few Votrax units.

About '75, a highly modified VM kernel was made available to AT&T longlines (NJ) by cambridge science center. It was possibly 50k locs of custom code.

around 1983 ... the ibm national marketing rep for AT&T tracked me down ... because the custom kernel had proliferated around AT&T and was being carried onto new processors as they were introduced by IBM. The problem was that it was not trivial to adopt the kernel to the next generation of IBM mainframes ... and IBM was looking for whatever help they could find to assist AT&T in migrating to a current, standard VM product.

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 01:09:44 GMT

Peter Flass writes:
A timesharing OS is designed to service large numbers of interactive users who are primarily doing light-duty computing work. Many unix servers don't qualify by this definition, and most unix desktops are single-user. In the old days a computer at a college computer center (remember them?) running unix would qualify, since it would be running a lot of small edits and compiles. TSO doesn't qualify because it's basically a bag added onto the side of a batch OS. I'd have to include VM/CMS, which is one of the best dmn timesharing systems I've ever seen, though it's really designed to be something else entirely. I'd also include my favorite UTS for Xerox Sigma systems, though it also did batch well. If your sticking to IBM systems think MTS (TS), DOS/VSE (non-TS, despite ICCF)...

actually cp/67/cms was designed to be a follow-on to CTSS ... running on 360/67 ... but a carefully chosen API ... effectively separating the microkernel from the user domain ... the API happening to be the 360 principles of operation. It turned out that the microkernel could concentrate on resource management of address spaces ... w/o the confusion of user services type issues. then the CTSS user interface then was developed in CMS (cambridge monitoring system) ... impleemented to the 360 POP API. it was somewhat side issue that the original was done on a 360/40 with custom relocation hardware and that CMS could be developed and tested on the bare hardware in parallel with the development of cp/40 (pending the availability of 360/67 and porting cp/40 to cp/67).

it also, just happened that it was also possible to partition the machine and run other guest operating systems for batch activity in parallel with the cms interactive workload ... all using the same API to the microkernel.

cp/67 then became vm/370 in the transition from 360/67 hardware to 370 hardware .... and the cambridge monitor system become the conversational monitor system (and a couple lines of code was removed crippling its ability to run on the "bare" hardware).

misc. about resource management algorithms on cp/67 and vm/370:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

the API also provided a fairly definable abstraction for security isolation .... which has been investigated a number of times since the original.

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

Security models

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Security models
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:28:16 GMT

ramup@tech.globalesecure.com (Ramu Ponugupati) writes:
Bottom line is that in both RSA and DH based signature schemes, there exists multiple private signing keys corresponding to one single public verification key. Does it not defeat non-repudiation? How to take care of these possibilites in security proofs? Is there any mechanism known in literature to develop computational models (Turing machines) to prove security?

actually norepudiation requires a whole lot more than just showing that the signature could only have originated in one and only one place.

part of the problem seems to be confusing authentication and intention ... as well as some semantic confusion because the term "digital signature" includes the word "signature".

in general, non-repudiation implies that the person agrees with the contents or meaning of the message ... and that their signature is a indicator of that agreement. however, "digital signature" is basically a mechanism that authenticates the integrity of the message and the originator of the message .... but w/o a whole lot more infrastructure carries with it no sense that the person agrees with the contents of the message.

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 12:31:31 GMT

adam@fsf.net (Adam Thornton) writes:
Removed? I thought the issue was that CMS I/O moved to fast path DIAG, rather than an actual SIO, so that the interface between CP and CMS was not the PoO anymore (cf. Varian p.25). Of course, I also thought you implemented that, so I may well be confused.

Speaking of which, sort of: Jay, do you offhand know whether Hercules implements the DIAGs necessary to run CMS (to keep things simple, whichever version it is you get with VM/370r6) on the iron, without the intervention of CP? I sort-of remember that this was something Roger was looking at in the 1.6x or so days.

I originally implemented the (cp/67) CMS fast I/O as a special CCW op-code (while undergraduate). Bob Adair insisted that all "violations" of the POP be thru diagnose op-code ... so the implementation was changed to use diagnose. (cp/67) CMS at boot would determine if it was running virtual machine or on bare hardware and appropriately use diagnose operations or bare machine oeprations. For VM/370, CMS had the test and the option to use bare machine implementation eliminated.

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

z VM 4.3

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:21:18 -0600
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Subject: z VM 4.3

At Sat, 12 Jul 2003 08:46:07 -0400, Mauricio E Gleizer wrote:
Hello all,

My name is Mauricio and I am a student in Campo Grande-MS-Brazil. I am preparing a survey for z/VM R4.3. I founded (and used) biggest amount of material in IBM sites. But I need (if possible, of course) place real experiences and screenshots of this system in action. Anybody here work with this system, and can help me?

Mauricio E Gleizer

I originally implemented the fair share advisery deadline while an undergraduate on cp/67 (precursor of vm/370 precursor of vm/esa, precursor of z/vm) in the late '60s.

In cp/67, it didn't use a real timer-value .... but a software implemented number that was constantly incremented based on elapsed time. the 360/67 had the location 50 interval timer ... but the TOD timer didn't appear until 370.

the original point of calculating the current time plus detla for advisery deadline in the future ... was to include in the delta calculation a multitude of factors. first it was proportional to the size of the time-slice. The original cp/67 scheduler had fixed priorities for both interactive/q1 and background/q2 ... giving Q1 tasks absolute priority over Q2 background tasks. The "fairshare" scheduler that I did as an undergraduate was shipped by IBM in the CP/67 product. In the conversion to VM/370 the fairshare scheduler was dropped and things initially reverted to a fixed priority scheduler (somewhat similar to early cp/67).

The fair share scheduler was then re-introduced in VM/370 with the Resource Manager (which also had the distinction of being the first priced/charged-for SCP code).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

The other factors in the original cp/67 implementation was not only to make the delta value proportional to the size of the time-slice ... but also proportional to weighted recent resource consumption and shift the weight of the resource consumption calculation based on system resource bottleneck. It also could take into account calculation based on non-fairshare. The use of fairshare was the default administrative policy if nothing else was specified ... but it was also possible to administratively specify non-fairshare as basis for the delta value calculation.

Introduced in the VM/370 resource manager was Q3 in addition to Q1 and Q2.

other posts regarding the scheduler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

somewhat related is also invention clock page replacement algorithm that I also did as an undergraduate ... which latter appeared in various platforms and is the subject of Carr's stanford phd thesis approx. 15 years later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

general collection of technology related posts ... including other early cp/67 and vm/370 work:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#technology

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 13:04:53 GMT

Peter Flass writes:
It's a matter of definition, as someone talked about "time-sharing" a computer running batch jobs. I imagine the terminology has been all thought out already, but I would classify OS's thusly (in no particular order): 1. Real-time (multiple tasks but only one "job") - like S/1 EDX, RSX?. 2. Batch, though it might include interactive components, VSE with ICCF, MVS with TSO. 3. Transaction processing. ACP, CICS (though CICS is a submonitor) 4. Time-sharing (TOPS-10, CTSS, MTS, and many others) 5. General-purpose (that is, does nothing well) - maybe some would say VMS (or MVS). 6. Hypervisors? VM/370. VMWare, etc.

Any others? Arguments? Classifications? Where does a "server" fit?

as an aside, slightly related thread in vm group:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#8 z VM 4.3

as previously mentioned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#5 What is timesharing, anyway?

cp/40, cp/67 (et al) was time-sharing microkernel that evolved from CTSS work ... which happened to have the 360 POP as the micokernel API ... allowing support of interactive user environment ... aka CMS (cambridge monitor system) as well as allowing partitioning for guest (batch and other) operator systems. Later evoluation was the zVM software kenel and return to almost a cp/40 microkernel implemented in the hardware microcode of the mainframes and referred to as LPARS or logical partitions.

because of its choice of kernel API ... it was usable as both hypervisor (aka partitioning and guest operating systems) as well as large scale, interactive time-sharing computing.

360/67 had the 1) official TSS/360 effort, 2) cp/67 from the cambridge science center and 3) MTS(/360) from university of michigan

... referenced zVM post ..
I originally implemented the fair share advisery deadline while an undergraduate on cp/67 (precursor of vm/370 precursor of vm/esa, precursor of z/vm) in the late '60s.

In cp/67, it didn't use a real timer-value .... but a software implemented number that was constantly incremented based on elapsed time. the 360/67 had the location 50 interval timer ... but the TOD timer didn't appear until 370.

the original point of calculating the current time plus detla for advisery deadline in the future ... was to include in the delta calculation a multitude of factors. first it was proportional to the size of the time-slice. The original cp/67 scheduler had fixed priorities for both interactive/q1 and background/q2 ... giving Q1 tasks absolute priority over Q2 background tasks. The "fairshare" scheduler that I did as an undergraduate was shipped by IBM in the CP/67 product. In the conversion to VM/370 the fairshare scheduler was dropped and things initially reverted to a fixed priority scheduler (somewhat similar to early cp/67).

The fair share scheduler was then re-introduced in VM/370 with the Resource Manager (which also had the distinction of being the first priced/charged-for SCP code) ... may' 1976
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

The other factors in the original cp/67 implementation was not only to make the delta value proportional to the size of the time-slice ... but also proportional to weighted recent resource consumption and shift the weight of the resource consumption calculation based on system resource bottleneck. It also could take into account calculation based on non-fairshare. The use of fairshare was the default administrative policy if nothing else was specified ... but it was also possible to administratively specify non-fairshare as basis for the delta value calculation.

Introduced in the VM/370 resource manager was Q3 in addition to Q1 and Q2.

other posts regarding the scheduler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

somewhat related is also invention clock page replacement algorithm that I also did as an undergraduate ... which latter appeared in various platforms and is the subject of Carr's stanford phd thesis approx. 15 years later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

general collection of technology related posts ... including other early cp/67 and vm/370 work:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#technology

....

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:46:30 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
because of its choice of kernel API ... it was usable as both hypervisor (aka partitioning and guest operating systems) as well as large scale, interactive time-sharing computing.

cp/67 and vm/370 follow-on was used for internal online time-sharing HONE system for all the world-wide field, sales, marketing and customer support people. The HONE system in northen cal. supporting US field, sales, et. al. circa 1980 had something like 40,000 defined users. misc. ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
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Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

humor in source code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: humor in source code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 12:45:47 GMT

lawrence@c896388-c.attbi.com (Lawrence Statton N1GAK/XE2) writes:
Sometimes routines that we thought were going to be buried deep in the bowels of the system came poking to the surface -- which leads to things like a major subsystem named "PINK_FLOYD" (because we were listening to Dark Side of the Moon when we wrote it).

ibm convention for module names were three letter component name followed by three letter module name. VM/370 was DMK, CMS was DMS. For the resource manager ... recent ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#8 z VM 4.3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#9 What is timesharing, anyway?

the module in the resource manager that implemented all the dynamic adaptive, fairshare, nonfairshare, feedback & feedfoward control, etc was

DMKSTP

after the product that had tv advertisement

The Racer's Edge

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

humor in source code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: humor in source code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:55:53 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
DMKSTP

after the product that had tv advertisement

The Racer's Edge

also related
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#12 OSes commerical, history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#51 OT: Ever hear of RFC 1149? A geek silliness taken wing

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 18:56:06 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
I'd never heard anyone claim that MVS/TSO wasn't a timesharing system before. I'm curious as to what the basis of that claim is.

lots of people have claimeed that tso wasn't timesharing ... in part because using it was so horrible and seemingly hardly better than many of the various crje offerings (tso representing name inflation for crje).

tso was so horrible that the cern tso/cms bake-off/comparison done circa 1974 and distributed at share ... internally within ibm, was immediately classified as confidential-restricted ... available on a need-to-know basis only.

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

Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 22:32:59 GMT

Julian Thomas writes:
I don't remember a lot of trouble with the Poughkeepsie dish (on a tower behind the 703 bldg, IIRC).

It was referred to as B's erection (B being the first line engineering manager for the project).

and the kite flying from top of 705 bldg?, minor ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#60 South San Jose (was Tysons Corner, Virginia)

SBS was 1/3rd owned by IBM (with Aetna and comsat). ibm internal phone network for awhile ran over T3, c-band network ... big dishes ... i think there was possibly some 20-odd dishes at various ibm locations (san jose, kingston, endicott, pok, etc). Operation included the data aggravator ... T3 DES-encryptor.

HSDT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

designed, built, and deployed data-only tdma, ku-band system using transponder on sbs-4, bird which flew on 41-d:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-41D.html

minor ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving?

one of the hsdt dishes was out back of bldg. 29. another was in austin. some amount of the rios chip design flowed over the link ... sometimes at least daily (utilizing LSM and/or EVE). previous post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

The microwave repeater above the san jose dump between bldg. 29 and bldg. 12 once had a security incident; after which the sensors on the perimeter, and other security facilities etc. were upgraded. Somebody got past the security and climbed the tower .... leaving behind a large inflatable doll flying from the top.

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

RFC # for DCC protocol?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFC # for DCC protocol?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 22:58:49 GMT

arielgont@softhome.net (Fernando Gont) writes:
Go to http://www.rfc-editor.org and search for 1459 . If this RFC is obsolete (or has been updated), you will find which RFC has obsoleted (or updated) it.

also ... rfc-editor.org points to
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

getting to 1459
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx4.htm#1459

brings up hyperlinks to updated &/or obsoleted.

clicking on the "(.txt=xxxx)" field retrieves the actual rfc.

clicking on the RFC number brings up the list of keywords it is associated with.

clicking on a keyword, brings up the list of RFCs associated with that keyword.

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

Dealing with complexity

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.sys.super
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:49:38 GMT

Andrew Reilly writes:
Dunno about that, myself, either. I noticed on HPCWire recently that Sun and IBM both appear to be getting some US government money to investigate "programmer productivity" environments. Beyond faster compilers and more graphical debuggers, I'm not sure what that's about. Anyone know?

slightly related from the software productivity consoritum:
http://www.software.org/quagmire/

home page:
http://www.software.org/
members:
http://www.software.org/pub/memberaffiliate.asp
architecture page:
http://www.software.org/pub/architecture/
architecture quagmire:
http://www.software.org/pub/architecture/quagmire.asp

random other stuff:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html
http://www.bmpcoe.org/guideline/books/498/0001c70a.html
http://chacs.nrl.navy.mil/main_fra.html
http://www.disa.mil/coe/

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

Dealing with complexity

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:56:27 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:
The state of an executing task in most multi-tasking systems can be captured. Therefore the state of the task can be transferred to another processor, or even one of these trendy virtual machine doohickies.

at least one of the cp67/vm370 service bureaus did that in the early 70s. it wasn't so much for load-balancing .... but it was part of 7x24 operation and the machines periodically had downtime for maintenance. the relatively straight-forward was to migrate in the same data-center complex with interconnected disk and high-speed channel-to-channel I/O. It was somewhat a logical extention of real storage optimization for idle users .... page out all of their virtual memory ... and then page out everything else (including various kernel data structures) associated with the process operation. Migration then became paging the process "back-in" on some other complex that had access to the same disk.

They said that they were also able to do it over a 56kbit link between the waltham datacenter and the sanfran datacenter.

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

How do I know currently used RFC?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How do I know currently used RFC?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:08:57 GMT

grinder9@freechal.com (J W Lee) writes:
I am looking for site or something like that to know currently used RFC. Aren't there any web site that I can know currently used RFC? Need your help.

std1 lists current standards, draft standards, proposed standards, etc. the current std1 is rfc3300 ... which has gotten a little out of date (oct2002). I try and keep my web site updated with the rfc-editor announcements:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

which includes a separate list of standards activity since the published std1.

there is a file on the rfc editor site: rfcxx00.txt

which is sort of what the contents of an up-to-date std1 would approximately look like.

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

Dealing with complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dealing with complexity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:40:26 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" writes:
I've often wondered if folks did that kind of thing, makes sense if all the hardware is shared... However I keep thinking about how the I/O subsystem state would survive that kind of transfer because it is frequently wall-clock time related.

say an idle process (like edit of a file waiting for keystrokes) is 10 to 40 or 50 4k pages. kernel data structures are maybe another 5-6 4k pages. paged out approximately contiguously ... there is maybe 3-4 physical disk i/os. the additional time to pull the kernel data structures back in is lost in the other paging noise (if done correctly) .... and the overall system thruput because of reduced fixed kernel requirements (and therefor additional real storage for process virtual pages) more than compensates for the overhead rebuilding of the kernel data structures (i.e. the interactive user sees better thruput .... because there is net overall more real storage for their virtual pages when they do run).

aka ... the kernel structures are only selected removal if the process is so idle that it is already loosing all of its other virtual pages from real storage. the incremental paging activity of also paging the related kernel data structures is lost in the overall paging activity noise.

resource manager had support for paging a subset of those kernel data structures (although a significant percentage)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:11:57 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
My mainframe had no problem filling my 3279C every 1/10s.

problem with 3274s (compared to 3272s circa late 70s):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol

the "response" time was from keyboard enter to re-display which included both system and hardware processing time for locally connected controllers.

I was at internal corporate technical exchange circa 1970 in DC. Harlen Mills was one of the presentors. There was also presentation by human factors group from YKT about people perception of response time. There was variation in the population studied (mostly univ. graduates) regarding the minimum perception threshold varying between .10 and .20 seconds across the population (with no explanation for the variability).

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

smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: smp 2.4.20-19.9 tcp/scp problem?
Newsgroups: redhat.kernel.general
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:15:02 GMT

poweredge with dual 1ghz processors and 100mbit ethernet.

frequent process that uses scp/ssh to copy several hundred mbytes into the machine with kernel/18.9 goes into permanent stall starting with kernel/19.9. also stalls copying several hundred mbytes out of the machine.

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 13:16:09 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:
That was one kind of "response" time. Another kind was how long it took to get back to monitor mode or into program mode.

If the user typed

R PIP

and it took five seconds to display the user prompt . The user judged that the response time was slow.

channel connected 327x controllers ran at 640mbytes/sec.

the referenced "enter" had system processing & controller processing before response to trivial command (say locate some text in moderate sized edit session) before display. A moderate loaded system included paging in the address space's cms plus editor plus file image (which might require paging out other stuff) and doing the operation.

Typical measurement for 90th percentile system response for such activity could be .11 seconds. The referenced table was that the original 3272 controller added another .086 seconds of processing time (total .196 seconds elapsed) for end-to-end as perceived by user at 3270 terminal. The newer 3274 controller (late 70s) increased that processing time for typical operations to .530 seconds (.64 seconds elapsed with .11 second system response).

Typical CMS environments had moderate to heavily loaded 90th precentile system trivial interactive response in the .11 to .25 seconds (depending on hardware configuration and severity of load ... and sometimes whether they had my latest system enhancements). Corresponding TSO avg. response (similar configurations and loading) was a second or more. Note that frequently CMS measured that 90 percent of all trivial transactions were .11 second or less ... while TSO measured average response (90th percentile would tend to be much longer than average).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#17 3270 protocol

above were figures for local, channel attached controllers. if these were remote 3270 controllers at the end of (say 9600 baud) telco link, response could be significantly longer (fullscreen redisplay of 24x80=1920 @960 could add more than another two seconds).

the "remoting" of 300 some odd IMS support progremmers at STL to bldg. five miles away (circa 1981) using traditional products would have had them using a lot of (shared) 9600 baud lines. Instead, a single T1 was used with HYPERchannel channel extenders ... which actually improved overall system response.

the issue was that while 3274 channel attached controllers nominally operated 640mbytes/sec, they actually had some significant command processing overhead which leaked out into total channel busy. When the channels were also shared with other controllers (like disk controllers) the 3274 controller channel busy could have a significant degradation on total system thruput. The HYPERchannel channel extender boxes actually had significantly lower channel busy per byte transferred compared to 3274 controllers. In the STL case, moving the 3274 controllers to the end of HYPERchannel channel extenders lowered the channel busy overhead and improved overall system thruput by 10 to 15 percent (with no noticable degradation in trivial response).

After that exercise, there was some official presentations by various product groups at user group meetings about never placing 3274 controllers on same (shared) channels with disk controllers (as had been common practice up until that time).

misc. hsdt:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the other activity that was going on about the same time was the stuff about the relative disk system thruput had declined by nearly a factor of ten over a ten to 15 year period (processor and memory had gotten fifty times faster, disks had only gotten five times faster). There was some initial effort to refute the assertion ... but then that morphed into user group presentations regarding how to better utilize the disks features.

average record access had gotten around 3-4 times faster but transfer rate had gotten ten times faster. however, the amount of data under an arm had increased by 20 times ... so that installations tended to have fewer physical disks ... increasing overall average access because of increased service delays.

so taking a page out of boyd's performance envelopes ... you try and shift your operational environment to where the newer disks had more advantage vis-a-vis the older disks; aka go for larger block transfers (which eventually also led to things like parallel transfers). misc. boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

some of the discussions about changing system environment:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8 3330 Disk Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#6 3330 Disk Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#22 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching

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

virtual machines for security

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: virtual machines for security
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 01:31:19 GMT

the more things change ... the more they stay the same .... going back at least 35 years ... I started as an undergradudate at the univ. in last week in jan, 1968.

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,83465,00.html?SKC=home83465

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

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 13:05:28 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:
IBM did not use a microkernel on their mainframes.

one can claim that both cp/40 and cp/67 (precursors to vm/370) were microkernels ... both in the division of features provided and the size. slightly related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#86 Virtual Machines for Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#23 virtual machines for security

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

virtual machines for security

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: virtual machines for security
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:30:43 GMT

Charles Richmond writes:
And of course, Mi$uck is just the company that we want writing the critical software and insures our homeland security...yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense...not!!!

I hope Communist China and our other "enemies" are stealing a lot of the Mi$uck ware...in this way, the Mi$uck programs might help our national security in the U.S.

while this particular article mentions m'soft ... i've also heard that similar kind of virtual machine activity is going on with nsa's secure linux
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

random other ref:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/734111

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

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 16:22:06 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:
One would be wrong. CP provided services like spooling that were well beyond what belongs in a microkernel.

but that was about it .... compared to even many other microkernel APIs, the interface to CP and features supported was extremely sparse. furthermore, even the spool stuff was done as an extremely sparse adjunct to the paging system.

somewhat later, I tried to get even that little bit out of the kernel by demonstrating an implementation that ran faster (shorter pathlength and higher aggregate thruput) than the kernel-based implementation ... SFS ... or spool file system (not the product's SFS for shared file system) ... the other demonstration was that it was almost totally implemented in vs/pascal (compared to the assembler kernel implementation), used red-black tree structures to get the pathlength reduction (compared to the linear lists in the kernel implementation), and leveraged some of the features I had done in the paged-mapped filesystem stuff to get the higher aggregate thruput. The thruput issue was in part motivated by HSDT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the sparse kernel-based implementation was synchronous to the application ... while it was faster than a real printer or card-reader ... it basically bottlenecked at one 4k disk operation queued at a time per address space. This resulted in long suspended periods for the address space whenever a 4k disk spool operation was kicked off; with any other contention for a spool drive ... the queueing and service time could elongate until address space (even high performance networking) was limited to four to five 4k blocks/sec.

In hsdt, we were driving multiple HYPERchannel CTCA links (to local processors on the same floor) as well as multiple T1 links. HYPERchannel links were rated at 1mbyte/sec ... or 256 4k blocks/sec (in slightly related venue, I had done the RFC1044 support for tcp/ip product and in tests at cray research was getting 1mbyte/sec sustained between 4341-clone and cray ... using only modest 4341 cycles ... compared to standard 8232 support that would saturate a 3090 cpu at 44kbytes/sec). The T1 links were full duplex ... or peak at twice 1.5mbits/sec or about 75 4k blocks/sec per link.

The standard, extremely sparse kernel-based implementation with synchronous API at 4 to 5 4k blocks per second couldn't even come close to dealing with a configuration rated easily at upwards of 400 to 500 4k blocks per second (two orders of magnitude higher) ...

The advanced (non-kernel) implementation also supported contiguous allocation for large (asynchronous) block writes and large (asynchronous) block reads (while the sparse kernel-based implementation was purely block at a time scatter allocation)

misc. past refs to sfs/spool file system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#33 dasd full cylinder transfer (long post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#46 internal network drift (was filesystem structure)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#27 SYSPROF and the 190 disk

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

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
 the Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 18:45:36 GMT

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" writes:
Now. While the channel subsytem certainly does a lot more than the channels on the S/360, the device drivers are still in the CPU. If you think about it, you'll realize that it has to be that way; you don't want to require a channel upgrade every time your customer adds a new type of device. Google for UIM and MVS.

cp/67 had real device drviers for disk (4k paging/spooling/etc), some terminals, and some unit record. It had virtual emulation for stuff like virtual 1052 to 2741/tty/etc.

however, majority of the stuff was done by emulating the channel architecture ... w/o actually having to know a lot about device level semantics. virtual guests & cms had all sorts of channel command word (ccw) programs that were device specific (real device drivers) ... that were then passed thru CP/67's CCWTRANS (renamed to DMKCCW for vm/370) to do the virtual to real address translation and pin the related virtual pages for the duration of the i/o.

Somewhat side-note, the original translation of MVT to VS2/SVS involved hacking CP/67's CCWTRANS into MVT (we were down in pok 705(706?) machine room doing some 3rd shift testing along with Ludlow(?) doing the MVT to VS2/SVS hack.

misc. other from 4th floor, 545 tech. sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

(multics group was in the same bldg.).

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

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
the  Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:30:39 GMT

Eric Sosman writes:
Does the SCSI command set have anything like TIC ("Transfer In Channel," i.e., a goto)? There were even what amounted to conditional gotos, used for things like searching a disk track for a record with a given key, all without involving the CPU.

while TICs didn't directly requiring CPU instruction cycles ... there were defined as being in the memory of the CPU and the CPU could change the TIC instruction on the fly. In fact, the sematnics allowed that any CCW could be changed on the fly by the CPU ... and/or any arguments of CCW could be changed on the fly by the CPU (for instance the argument that the search CCW was using to match a disk record on) or even previous/concurrent I/O transfers.

such semantics required that each CCW execution (and any associated arguments) be explicitly fetched each time. the implementation fall-out was that a dedicated I/O path was needed between the device, controller, channel, channel subsystem and CPU memory (as well as imposing various command processing latencies on that I/O path).

The OS/360 genre of systems made extensive use of the (almost) outboard search feature in conjunction with vtocs, directories, libraries, etc. ... effectively on 360s ... it traded off I/O bandwidth against real storage requirements (relative cost of memory on 360 was much more expensive than i/o bandwidth).

However, by the late '70s the trade-off had swung in the complete opposite direction .... I/O bandwidth & access was a significantly more scarce resource than processor memory.

A case in point was the san jose research installation for a time that had a 168-3 MVS system with disk infrastructure interconnected with that of a 158-3 vm/370 system. Anytime, even a single MVS volume was placed on a string/controller that was nominally reserved for VM/370 there was a perceived horrendous performance degradation .... because of the extrreme performance penalty in controller busy cause by MVS multi-track search operations (compared to normal VM/370 I/O string optimizations).

The interesting side-note was that the TSO users running on the MVS system .... where ALL the disks were subject to multi-track search penalty, didn't notice the extremely horrible performance penalty; they were so accustomed to (by cms standards) the horrible performance ... they didn't realize that it was horrible performance.

There was an absolute dictate that the controller interconnect was for backup purposes and that mounting a nominal MVS disk on a disk string nominal dedicated to vm/370 operations was absolutely forbidden because of the extremely horrible performance penalty that MVS multi-track searches imposed on normal operation.

There wasn't much you could do to eliminate the horrible performance contamination that MVS disks had on MVS system operation ... but you could at least trying and prevent the horrible performance penalty caused by MVS disks from severely contaminating VM/370 system performance.

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

Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,comp.ai.games,comp.lang.lisp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:42:40 GMT

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/view.html?pg=3
Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead ... Marvin Minsky

Scott Menchin

In his role as agent provocateur, Marvin Minsky, cofounder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, recently told a surprised Boston University audience that the field of AI has lost its way. Researchers are making little progress developing computers with any knack for reasoning. He took a break from dictating the final chapters of an upcoming book into his G4 using ViaVoice software to give us his thoughts on gray goo, bartender bots, and the importance of plain ol' common sense.

.. snip ...

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

IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM channels, was Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing".
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:15:04 GMT

"Alan J. Flavell" writes:
[1] Back then, I had actually fabricated a set of IBM channel connectors with take-off points for the logic analyzer, for trouble-shooting our Data General NOVA kit which connected to the /360 channel. My colleague knew more about the circuitry and logic of that beastie than DG themselves!

way back when .... after trying to make the 2702 telecommunications controller do something that I thot it should be able to do ... and turned out couldn't ... four of us at the university did a channel controller interface using it in an interdata/3 for emulating the controller function .... so could automatically recognize terminal type AND baud rate. we subsequently got blamed for originating the PCM (plug compatible mamnufactor) ibm controller business (late '60s). 5-6 years ago, ran across descendent of that box still being heavily used in a large financial transaction process datacenter.

random past musings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

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

Where the Good Jobs are Going

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Where the Good Jobs are Going
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:37:51 GMT

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030804-471198,00.html

Where the Good Jobs are Going

Forget sweatshops, US companies are now shifting high-wage work overseas.

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:42:09 GMT

jchausler writes:
question, "What's a telegraph?" I wonder when the phrase "core memory" will cause such a response or maybe it already does... I wonder what other "popular" computer terms have "gone out of style" and are being forgotten. IBM had their own words for a number of things such as DASD and "storage" instead of memory which I haven't heard in a long time either, although I haven't been in an "IBM shop" (another one) in some time.

DASD came from direct access storage device .... from a period when it wasn't clear that the round & brown "disks" would actually come to dominate the market.

I believe "storage" came into vogue with the 370 announcement of relocation hardware and the various virtualized products ... dos/vs, vs1, and vs2. I have vague recollection that somebody may have perceived that the term "virtual memory" was some how encumbered.

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

The Vintage Computer Forum

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Vintage Computer Forum
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:15:49 GMT

Thomas Dzubin writes:
Let's see now... this newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers web=RFC 1945 NNTP=RFC 977 and in this newsgroup, older is better... therefore: yes to NNTP! ...AND... you can use the same client for both... TELNET! :-)

Another forum, by the way is: www.classiccmp.org and even better you can get it by email (RFC 821)

listserv on bitnet in the early '80s for computer conferencing ... and several versions were ported to smtp base ... (and some number of the bit.listserv. lists have been gatewayed to usenet).

usenet was original uucp ... and then later gatewayed to tcp/ip

the bitnet listserv was predated by some internal corporate listserv stuff (the internal corporate network was larger than the internet/arpanet until about mid-86) ... and is from approx. same era as usenet.

UUCP rfc ... relatively late in UUCP lifetime:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx3.htm#976

976
UUCP mail interchange format standard, Horton M., 1986/02/01 (12pp) (.txt=26130) (Updated by 1137)

if you go to the above URL and click on the ".txt" field, it retrieves the actual RFC.

remember the telebit trailblazers that had uucp optimized mode? misc. telebit/uucp posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#19 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#62 Modem "mating calls"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#6 Oldest system to run a web browser?

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

RFC2557?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFC2557?
Newsgroups: opera.general
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 04:42:04 GMT

Fig writes:
I tried, it didn't work. When I went there it just said "blah, blah, waffle, waffle"

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

in the section RFCs listed by click on Term (term->RFC#)

and then click on "MIME" in the Acronym fastpath ... which brings up all the "MIME" related RFCs. In that section you can click on "2557" which brings up RFC summary in lower frame. clicking on the ".txt=nnnn" field (from the summary) retrieves the actual RFC.

2557 PS
MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML), Hopmann A., Palme J., Shelness N., 1999/03/31 (28pp) (.txt=61854) (Obsoletes 2110) (MHTML)

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

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Artificial intelligence (AI) has been solved
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,comp.ai.games,comp.lang.lisp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:25:59 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:
My hypothesis is that group intelligence is always at the level of the stupidest element. The more something gets "organized", the less intelligent it can be. Now look at computers systems getting organized by a network. I haven't spent much time applying this to gear; it certainly is true w.r.t. humans.

the joke about committees ... rather than being sum(IQ1, IQ2, ...,, IQn) or even something like max(IQ1, IQ2, ...,, IQn) sum(IQ1, IQ2, ..., IQn)/n it is more like min(IQ1, IQ2, ...., IQn) or even min(IQ1, IQ2, ...., IQn)/n

where committee intelligence approaches zero

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:04:21 GMT

Lon Stowell writes:
I don't know who first had that monstrous abortion but IBM, CDC, and RCA all had versions. I could swear that some of the addressing for random access I/O came from that monstrosity, in the form of Bin, Cylinder, Head.

bbccchhr ... the bb came from the 2321, noodle picker, data cell, etc. web site on 2321:
http://members.optushome.com.au/intaretro/2321DCD.htm

there was more information posted on large optical system in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#33 "Mass Storage System"
there may have also been something previously posted in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#84 Questions on IBM Model 1630

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

Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
the   Contemporary Computing World
Newsgroups: alt.os.multics,comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:55:20 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
That was what he was referring to! Only used for native VTOCs and only in MVS nowadays AFAIK, unless they finally got rid of it in zOS, and replaced it by caching the VTOCs in memory. Bit of a channel hog IIRC, and should have been discarded some time in the 1970s, around the same time that VSAM replaced ISAM.

multi-track search was used for VTOCs and PDS directories. In the late '70s, i got to shoot an extremely serious performance degradation occurring at a large national retailer that had multi-CEC installation .... basically a processor complex for each region ... all having shared disk support and at least one application program library that was accessed by all machines in the complex that was on a dedicated disk.

after a lot of other people were called in, i asked to visit the customer. they brought me into a classroom that had about a dozen or so student tables (table about 6' long ... enuf for three chairs easily) ... all surfaces buried about a foot deep with performance data on standard greenbar fanfold paper. So I spent an hour or so thumbing thru the papar ... asking questions about when the severe performance degradation across the whole complex was observed. For some reason, I pick out a pattern on one of the disks ... that in normal conditions would have 20-30 i/os per second aggregate activity. However, under severe performance conditions ... the aggregate i/os per second for this particular disk was consistently around 6.5 I/Os per second.

so this turns out this was a disk dedicated to a shared application program library. it turns out that the PDS had a three cylinder directory. A program member name search was consistently averaging over one cylinder. These were all 3330 disks. There are 19 tracks per 3330 cylinder and the drive spins at 3600RPM ... or 60rps. A single multi-track search of a full cylinder was taking 19/60 = ,32 seconds; during which time the disk was busy, the associated disk controller was busy (which also blocked access to the 15 or so other disks handled by the same controller) ... and the associated channel for that particular processor was busy. The maximum possibly number of such operations per second was three. It not only seriously bottlenecked all access to program loading from that PDS application program library .... but contributed to degrading utilization of other disks under control of the same controller (for all processors). For the specific processor, during the operation at any specific moment, any other devices where that processor needed to access with the busy channel was also blocked for the duration of the operation.

the trick was recognizing a disk that appeared to have a consistent activity value highly correlated with periods of extreme performance degradation ... and not have any preconceived notions about what a specific disk drive technology saturated I/O rate might be. going into the exercise with any such preconceived assumptions would have resulted in automatically ignoring disks that had peak 6.5 i/o operations per second (since everybody absolutely knew that saturation of such disks didn't occur until between 40-80 disk i/os pe second).

recent multi-track posting in this same thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#28 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

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

Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Code Sizing for Digital Signature Verification - DSS/DSA
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 03:04:22 GMT

for ecdsa, fips186-2 .... have a look at
http://ecdsainterface.sourceforge.net/

while it specifically references signature authentication for a specific hardware token .... the signature that the hardare token is performing is ecdsa/fips186-2.

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

Differnce between LF and NL

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Differnce between LF and NL
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 14:26:28 GMT

"John Mycroft" writes:
I could be wrong (I was once before) but I think that LF will merely skip to the next line down the page and stay at the current column whereas NL will go to the start of the next line down. That's why you need Carriage Return & Line Feed to go to the start of a new line. And if you're old enough to remember 1052 printers, you had to insert a load of IDLE characters to stop the stupid thing printing as the print head returned to the start of the next line.

IDLEs were required for all the mechanical terminals out there. I had rewritten the 1052/2741 console support in cp/67 to add TTY/ascii support. you could optimize ... by knowing how far out the carriage was (i.e. character position) and sending idles proportional to the carriage return speed. from somewhere in long unexercised brain cells ... i have vague recollection that for 2741 it was one idle for every seven character positions ... if you had just written a full 80 character line ... and the carriage was at position 80 ... then you needed 12 idles to make sure that the carriage was back to square one.

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

Share lunch/dinner?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Share lunch/dinner?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 19:24:24 GMT

jchase@USSCO.COM (Chase, John) writes:
The "Chair" for the Tuesday night SCP Project dinner is Lynette Pope (EDS - Bellsouth), according to the Scheduler application. Meet at 1930 (7:30PM) in the lobby of the Marriott Wardman Park hotel.

too bad can't have the dinner at the zoo? X9F (financial security standards) had a really great dinner last week which was held in the omaha zoo's aquariam ... the tables were setup in the plexiglass tunnel that snakes its way thru the bottom of the shark tank.

has anybody noticed that marriott seems to be buying up several of the more boutique hotels (at least in the DC area).

the first time i stayed at any marriott was in 1970 when the se symposium was held in DC at the marriott ... harlen milss was one of the speakers.

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

An Understanding Database Theory

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: An Understanding Database Theory
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 20:02:51 GMT

"Dave Ulmer" writes:
Sorry, this is too long. Anyway, I have never met another person on this planet that has ever studied any of the stuff that I am studying.

Can you link me to anyone who has?

long ago and far away ... we coined the term business science. only very slightly related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskaads

the original basel II from 2001 had section called qualitative risk .... as part of risk adjusted capital accords. some
http://www.bis.org/

and straying even further
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

the relational genre is from:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and the xml inherits back to 4th floor, 545 tech sq. ... aka xml, html, sgml, gml circa 1970
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

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: text character based diagrams in technical documentation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 15:27:18 GMT

arargh307NOSPAM writes:
If I can find it, I do have a sample of one. IIRC, the chart was of a program called 'TEXT360'.

a map of the internal network was produced in a similar manner (until it got too cumbersome). it wasn't geographic representative ... just each node and connections. I have hardcopy of one dated april 15, 1977.

I fied search engine on HIPO and flowcharts .... but the references I ran across were done with graphics. all the autoflow references seem to be current. searching autoflow and 1403 (mainframe printer used to produce the charts) didn't come up with example.

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

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: text character based diagrams in technical documentation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 15:41:19 GMT

stanislav shalunov writes:
Are you talking about something like the diagrams in the RFC series? (A fairly complicated---and important--example is Figure 6 on page 23 of RFC 793, <URL:http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793.txt>.) RFCs are still produced, and much used by Internet protocol implementors, today.

not text ... all html ... my rfc cross-index page ... also pointed to by the rfc-editor's resources page
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

produced by a knowledge based application that has things recorded in patterns .... including patterns representing the stnadards process. STD1 used to include the following in section 6.10:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietf.htm#obsol

... aka RFCs that were still listed as standards but had been obsoleted.

RFC summary example:

3576 I
Dynamic Authorization Extensions to Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS), Aboba B., Chiba M., Dommety G., Eklund M., Mitton D., 2003/07/30 (30pp) (.txt=70027) (was draft-chiba-radius-dynamic-authorization-21.txt)

clicking on the ".txt" field retrieves that actualy RFC. clicking on the RFC number brings up the keywords for that RFC. Clicking on any of the keywords, brigns up a "keyword->RFC#" list for that keyword.

An example of text-based diagram extracted from ien-166 and used in posting for thread "Difference between NCP and TCP/IP protocols":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#27
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#72

the technology is similar to what I used for managing the merged glossar & taxonomy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glossary

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

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: text character based diagrams in technical documentation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 15:51:30 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
produced by a knowledge based application that has things recorded in patterns .... including patterns representing the stnadards process. STD1 used to include the following in section 6.10:
rfcietf.html#obsol

oops, thots strayed for a minute and clicked the wrong thing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietf.htm#obsol

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

text character based diagrams in technical documentation

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: text character based diagrams in technical documentation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 17:08:07 GMT

"Geoffrey G. Rochat" writes:
I've got the Rhode Island Computer Museum's collection of IBM Series/1 documentation in my dining room where I'm sorting through it, and it's full of that stuff. Even schematics - printed by a chain printer so nothing quite lines up. It's not on line yet, but I will eventually be making copies of all of it to send off to Al Kossow (Why, thank you Al! <grin>) so that he can put it up on his site.

the early 360 principles of operation manual was printed using standard processes and the instruction syntax diagrams had solid lines in the boxes.

architecture moved the "red book" into script (on cp/67/cms ... initially supported run-off-like "dot" commands but circa 1970 or so, gml was added to script ... aka precursor to sgml, html, xml, etc). The "red book" came from it being distributed in red 3-ring binders ... and standard cms script was used to print it on 1403 printers where the use of standard ("TN") characters no longer resulted in solid lines for boxes, etc.

The red book had all the really interesting engineering, background, compatibility and justification details .... interspersed with the principles of operation "text". specification on the script command would either print the full red book .... or just the pinciple of operations subset ... for publication.

as more and more documentation was converted to the cms script-based infrastructure, there were more manuals and publications that lost the solid connected lines in boxes and other diagrams.

this continued pretty much up until the introduction of the 3800 printer where script got the ability to specify characters that would produce solid connected lines for boxes. in some respects, script/gml font specification feature originated for support of 2741/selectric typeballs (i.e. possible to switch typeballs on 2741 terminal to get different character sets .... like apl (I actually still have 2741 apl typeball in top drawer of my desk).

cp/67, cms, script, gml, internal network, virtual machines, lots of text editoring, compare&swap instruction, port of apl\360 to cms and support for virtual memory, etc ... all originally the product of the cambridge scient center, 4th floor, 545 tech sq. misc. 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

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 19:19:26 GMT

theodp@aol.com (theodp) writes:
theodp writes "After exchanging e-mail with mainframe software pioneer Mario Morino, Tim O'Reilly writes 'It's important for the open source community to look more at the software heritage of the mainframe era.' O'Reilly might want to take a look at how Marino's own MICS software has been used since the 80's to automatically charge IBM mainframe users for printed material that could be ordered from PC clients with a single action by using billing and shipping information that was previously stored on a Mainframe server. The whole process might seem oddly familiar."

just about all (ibm mainframe) software was open source prior to unbundling june 23rd, 1969 .... when started down the path for charging. I was undergraduate that time ... but later had the distinction of producing the first priced/charged-for SCP (kernel, operating system) product. That privilege met that i got to spend six months with the business pricing people. Following that was the introduction of OCO ... object code only ... where software source started disappearing.

VM/370 had inherited from cp/67 the standard convention as part of all distributions and maintenance, included was all the machine readable source for rebuilding the system from original source files. The CP/67 source maintenance system was infrastructure for cascading updates being applied as part of the standard source->executable translation. It was common practice at many installations during the 70s to always build their systems from the original source files ... including the application of lots of local source updates.

misc. past source maint. discussions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#57 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#26 Open Architectures ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#58 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#75 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#77 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#14 A Dark Day

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

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:07:11 GMT

"David Wade" writes:
At the time this was the only way to do things. There aren't any user exists in VM/370 R6, so you have to mod the source code. I also note that there are some modules that we (the users) have never had the source for such as VMFPLC2 and the starter system...

but it would be trivial to reverse engineer vmfplc2 from the function definition and the tape format. vmfplc2 (was) basically a (not all that large) source update to the cms tape command.

I did take the vmfplc2 source and do some mods to it ... i was trying to significantly reduce the inter block gaps on 6250 tapes. I combined the 60-some byte header record with the first data record to cut the inter-block gaps in half for small files ... and went to a much larger maximum data block size.

I was doing a incremental file backup and achive system ... initially for HONE and San Jose research. That was picked up by some other internal sites during version one and two of the internal release. A group at SJR was then assigned to be responsible for doing futher development ... which begat internal version 3 and then workstation datasave facility. WDSF then became ADSM (adstar storage manager) and then turned over to Tivoli and renamed TSM (tivoli storage manager).

misc. past hone refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

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

Who said DAT?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Who said DAT?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:38:25 GMT

Rick.Fochtman@CLEARINGCORP.COM (Rick Fochtman) writes:
-------------------------------------<snip>---------------------
Is "Dynamic Address Translation" perhaps an IBM trademark? Are these people infringing it:

http://nomadix.com/products/hsg25.asp ...?

I'm involved in a thread on a list far, far, away about an organization that seems to be using a Nomadix box to provide a "free" wireless hot spot which appears to be "free" only in a very Orwellian sense.
-------------------------------------<unsnip>----------------------
I don't think it's actually 'trademarked' by IBM but this outfit will have a hard time trademarking it since they can't claim first use. The term, and acronym, have been in use for at least 35 years!

cambridge address translation (CAT) was special hardware done on 360/40 for the cambridge science center ... and was used to build the cp/40 virtual machine system ... before availability of the 360/67 as the official ibm time-sharing machine with virtual memory.

cambridge then got a 360/67 and ported cp/40 to it and renamed virtual machine system to cp/67. cp/67 was announced at the spring 1968 share meeting in houston. the "official" system for the 360/67 was tss/360.

360/67 was basically a 360/65 with a dynamic address translation box or DAT box ... that was a fully associative array (current generation of boxes are TLBs ... or table look aside box). I still have a 360/67 "blue" reference card. The 360/67 is older than 35 years.

360/67 also had some advanced multiprocessor features that disappeared in to 370 generation ... and didn't start to really re-appear until 3081; in fact the compare&swap instruction (that did appear in 370) was done by person at cambridge science center who's initials are CAS (i.e. the objective was to come up with an instruction name that matched his initials).

for lots of stuff about 360/67, tss/360, ctss, and various other historical happenings around cambridge science center ... see melinda's "vm history" paper at:
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

misc. cambridge science center 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

S/360 IPL from 7 track tape

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: S/360 IPL from 7 track tape.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 23:34:18 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:
Not exactly. There were some operating systems, DOS/360 IIRC, that took the first device that presented an "attention" interrupt to be a 1052 console typewriter. Some other devices presented such an interrupt, but didn't otherwise understand 1052 command codes. The console op was supposed to hit the 1052 Request key right after IPLing, but if someone caused an interrupt before that (like a terminal user), that device would become the "official" console. DOS was a simple-enough system that it didn't require an I/O SYSGEN to tell it what the device addresses were, but that strategy backfired occasionally.

... and if it wasn't DOS I'm thinking of, it was probably some diagnostic program or other, such as the standalone diagnostics for tape drives. In fact, I wrote a program once myself that used this trick to find the console.

For IPL, all of the 360 CPU's used three hexadecimal dial-switches to select the device address. Dial up "180" to IPL from a tape drive, "190" to IPL from a 2311, "00C" from a 2540 card-reader, etc. Anyway, it wasn't interrupt-driven.

as part of 7x24, unattended operations .... CP/67 started various automated startup processes .... being able to (re)boot and be fully operational w/o any attending operator. This allowed cambridge to run four shift operation (3rd shift weekdays and weekend as 4th shift) with little or no people present offshift.

cp/67 did allow for defining some number of 2741s as being physically secure (in the machine room) ... that could be used as alternative "console" ... primarily required as backup for hardcopy log for what was going on in the system.

I developed the autolog command and the automatic execution of the command at kernel boot with a reserved userid name (autolog). This was originally done for various automated benchmarking processes (dedicated machine time .... that automatically rebooted the machine autologed a process running a script of benchmarks, which in turn autologged a bunch of processes that simulated various workload profiles). The command eventually shipped in the official product in vm/370 release 3 (as well as some number of other enhancements from cambridge) .... which enabled a whole slew of boot/ipl startup activities to be initiated automagically.

I then used it extensively for getting the resource manager out ... since over 2000 benchmarks were run as part of calibrating and verifying the resource manager prior to product ship (taking three months elapsed time). misc. past benchmarking posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bench

the other thing helping enable 7x24 offshift operation was the change to support the prepare command on the 2702 telecommunication controller. Most machines were on some kind of lease ... being charged on the basis of the time clocked on the processor meter. The meter ran whenever the processor was executing instructions and/or whenever there was active I/O (even if the processor wasn't executing instructions). Lots of things were looked at to allow the meter to stop ... when nothing was going on. W/O the prepare command ... if terminals were enabled to transfer i/o at all ... then the meter ran. The "prepare" command in each ccw string for every terminal .... (in effect) allowed the 2702 to be setup to receive signals from terminals ... w/o the processor meter running when there wasn't anything going on.

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

Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 13:13:53 GMT

"David Wade" writes:
I think if you want to get a flavour of the sort of modification folks did I can e-mail you the contents list from one of the VM Modications tapes from about 1982/3 (not sure which I don't have time to IPL VM to check) There are 134 modifications listed on the tape, ranging from some execs (com mand files) to speed rebuilding the system, through to modifications to the paging algorithms. Some of these modification found their way into the real product, but most fell by the wayside when OCO came about

somewhere along the way ... there was some analysis that there was as approx. the same number lines of code on the waterloo "share" tape for vm ... as there was on the internal corporate "common" vm modifications tape (vague memory puts it around 300klocs); aka internal corporate data centers was as active in modifying vm as customers were. majority of the corporation operated on vm ... the internal network was larger than arpanet/internet until approx. mid-85, and majority of nodes were vm ... for a whole slew of reasons (in large part because there were more vm systems inside the company than any other kind).

tymshare (one of the major online vm-based timesharing services) started hosting the online vmshare computer conferencing in the 70s .... where there was lots of discussion of vm related things ... including some amount of customer source code changes. The archives from tymshare:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

example of posting in vmshare ... "IBM MAINFRAME HISTORY TREE" from 12/4/85 computerworld article:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=IBMHIST&ft=NOTE&args=4341

in the late '70s i started getting monthly tape copies of all the vmshare files from tymshare ... and maintained shadow copy of the conference files on a number of internal corporate nodes ... including the internal HONE systems supporting all branch office and customer support people world-wide (early 80s, the US HONE system had something on the order of 40k userids defined):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

in the mid-80s, M/D bought tymshare ... spun of some of the assets to various places ... tymnet to b/t; gnosis as startup became keykos (I still have hardcopy of gnosis document laying around from due diligence done on gnosis for M/D prior to the spin-off):
http://cap-lore.com/CapTheory/upenn/Gnosis/Gnosis.html
http://cap-lore.com/CapTheory/upenn/ and slightly related as outgrowth of keykos
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~eros/

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

Linux gets sensitive government use approval

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux gets sensitive government use approval
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.security
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 13:29:09 GMT

slightly related discussion of eal4 evaluation:
http://eros.cs.jhu.edu/~shap/NT-EAL4.html

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

dissassembled code

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dissassembled code.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 14:19:53 GMT

"Sven Pran" writes:
PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION (this is "the bible"!) ASSEMBLER LANGUAGE REFERENCE ASSEMBLER PROGRAMMING GUIDE LINKAGE EDITOR or LINKAGE EDITOR AND LOADER SUPERVISOR SERVICES AND MACRO SERVICES

the "bible" has been the "red book" (although not available to customers), which the principles of operation is a subset. the term "red book" came from it being distributed in a red 3-ring binder.

starting around 1970 or so the red book was entered into cms (cambridge monitor system) script file. all the interesting engineering notes, instruction justification, model dependent considerations, etc. are in the "red book" sections, with the principles of operation sections interspersed. depending on invokation of cms script command, either the full red book would be printed or just the principles of operation subset. You could somewhat tell the transition in the principles of operation and other documents by whether the boxes had connected lines or not. During that period, script documents were most frequently printed on 1403/3211 printers and the box diagrams wouldn't have solid, connected lines ... which reappeared with 3800 printers. The earliest "font" support by the variously named cms script processors (gml, bookie, bookmaster, etc) somewhat grew out of the script support for different 2741 selectric typeballs (aka could manually switch selectric typeballs on the 2741 to get different character sets/fonts).

1970 was about the time that "G", "M", and "L" (all at the cambridge scientic center), invented "gml" (note their initials) and the syntax support was added to cms script. The original script syntax is runoff-like "dot" commands. during the '70s it was common to find lots of cms script files that had "gml" and "dot" syntax intermixed in the same document. of course, gml begat sgml, html, xml, etc. In the port from 360/67 to 370, cp/67 was renamed vm/370 and cambridge monitor system (cms) was renamed conversational monitor system (cms).

misc. cambrdige science center:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

now, i have vaque memories of somebody talking about a custom chain for 1403n1 ... that did have the characters that would produce solid lines for boxes and other diagrams .... reportedly used for engineering logic diagrams. however, some number of ibm publications went thru the period where they were princted with boxes and diagrams that didn't have solid, connected lines.

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

Getting old

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Getting old.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 15:15:20 GMT

"Nico de Jong" writes:
Back in 88 or 90 or so, we were in the German Democratic Replublic, visiting a Technical museum in Dresden. We were given a grand tour, but when we came to the punched card equipment, his knowledge became a bit "dented". I had to show him how to sort a dec of cards, and I had to explain why you had to sort least-significant-digit first, etc. He learned a lot, and I had a great time.

was in dresden last summer .... doing walk thru of a relatively new chip fab they have out towards airport. stayed downtown ... off the large square where they had fenced off what looked like attempt trying to sort out all the pieces from old destroyed (bombed out) church. weekend, one of the bridges across the river had some sort of town fair(?) ... with large numbers of old shoes spread across the bridge.

they had large flood not too long afterwards ... and haven't been back to see how it affected downtown.

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

dissassembled code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dissassembled code.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 15:44:13 GMT

bhagavad_guitar@yahoo.com (bhagavad_guitar) writes:
A large part of the listing looks like data. Assuming I could figure out the code, I was wondering if I could just copy the whole executable over to unix or something and use some way of extracting out the data so I jut have the whole data section(s) in a big block in a file. Problem is, maybe some of it is alligned differently and representation of long, and so on is different ? Worse, I don't even know what all the data types might be in the data.

As for the code, I figure it might be easier to get a general idea of what this program does, but to replicate it into a C program that does the exact same thing flawlessly without making even one or a few minor mistakes seems much more daunting.

long ago and far away ... I decided to write a dump reader in rex(x) as demonstration that rex(x) wasn't just another pretty shell language. one of the things was a storage analyser and formater (at one point it was in use by large percentage of PSRs and internal locations).

so one relatively straight processes is to sequentially list the two-byte aligned halfwords ... and then have table of instruction op-codes and list the possible instruction for each half word, also list possible character string reprsentation for each half word (aka start with three columns, two byte hex, possible instruction, possible character; absolutely no idea at the sart regarding data characteristics).

look for markers that are obviously not instructions ... and then work both directions ... aggregating obvious half-word collections of data vis-a-vis half-word collections of instructions. a little smarts about instruction flow and instruction lengths ... can start to clump half-word units into possible instructions.

past dump reader posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

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

S/360 IPL from 7 track tape

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: S/360 IPL from 7 track tape.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:28:53 GMT

Julian Thomas writes:
People complained about lengthy IPL times ("On a clear day you can IPL forever") with OS/360. I reminded them that IPL was finished when the load light went out.

tale of somebody modifying cp/67 tty/ascii support code (which I had done as an undergraduate) ... causing cp/67 to crash 27 times in a single day (?at the MIT urban planning lab, i think in one of the bldgs. across the tech sq. courtyard from 545) ... and cp/67 automatically re=ipl/boot and be back & operational in a few minutes:
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/tvv-home.html#stories
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

the above mentions that at the time, multics was taking an hour to recover ... and the comparison was possibly one of the reasons that prompted the multics new storage system:
https://www.multicians.org/nss.html

some other stuff about tech square:
https://www.multicians.org/tech-square.html

cambridge science center was on the 4th floor with its machine room on the 2nd floor. The (IBM) boston programming center was on the 3rd floor. The boston programming center had produced something called cps (conversational programming system) that supported a conversational/incremental PLI environment and had optional support for microcode accelerator RPQ available on 360/50. Noteable names at boston programming center were jean sammet and nat rochester.

As the CP/67 "development" group split off from the science center and morphed into the vm/370 development group ... it took over 3rd floor and absorbed the boston programming center (and the cps developers). As the vm/370 development group activity increased, it outgrew the 3rd floor and moved out to the old SBC (service bureau corporation which had been sold off to cdc) bldg. in burlington mall.

misc. other from above pages:
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/tvvgallery.html

& tom's home page:
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/

misc. past postings regarding 545 tech sq.
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

Obsolete mainframes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Obsolete mainframes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 21:53:18 GMT

jchausler writes:
I was unable to get some DG NOVA 1200's I had installed at a customer site 30 years ago because they were considered "hazardous waste" and I didn't have a hazardous waste disposal license or whatever. For another customer I was going to get a table top card reader but "management" stepped in and insisted it all be put up for bid as a single lot. Most of what was in the lot had nothing to do with computers and it was quite large as well so the card reader as well as the rest of it went to a scrapper.

using handy search engine ... came up with
http://www.simulogics.com/

with lots of dg stuff ... including following product map:
http://www.simulogics.com/nostalgia/DGmachines.htm

i didn't encounter much dg ... until having to spend some time at the santa clara campus after the rolm purchase:
http://www.simulogics.com/nostalgia/Rolm/rolm.htm

couple other hits that came up in the same search:
http://www.trailingedge.org/wishlist.htm
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/links.html
http://www.wildharecomputers.com/
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/dg-nova.html
http://www.dg.com/

and this one which has some topic drift opportunity:
http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/computergaminghistory/index4.shtml
ot this site:
http://www.classicgaming.com/

which includes some game work in 1974 on nova 800.

another hit was collection of old computer documents
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/mktrsrch.htm

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

Window field in TCP header goes small

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Window field in TCP header goes small
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 22:19:21 GMT

Detlef.Bosau@tesionmail.de (Detlef Bosau) writes:
The first concern is the choice of an appropriate _rate_ at the sender, as you have stated above. In the fundamental paper by Van Jacobson and Michael Karels this is refered to as "conservation principle". In the original work "conservation principle" means that new packets must not be sent to the network as long as former packets have not been received and acknowledged. Practically, this principle is maintaind when data is sent to the network with the same rate as data is received and removed from the path.

i think that the same time that the slow-start paper was published, acm sigcomm also had a paper showing that slow-start & windows was not stable in large real world networks.

the fundamental paradigm issue is that windows are orthogonal to rate control (needed for directly addressing congestion). The problem is that in real world networks that transmitted packets and returning ACKs can be subject to totally different traffic conditions ... and in any large network can have almost totally independent rate constraits.

the trivial example given in the '88 paper, was that returning ACKs frequently tend to bunch/clump ... so that several frames are opened up simultaneously at the transmitting node ... resulting in multiple back-to-back transmissions. the multiple back-to-back packets result in packet loss ... aka congestion ... resulting in the slow-start algorithm dropping way back. then slow starts begins opening up the window ... until the next bunched/clumped series of ACKs. in the worst case, single frame window can significantly avoid congestion ... but also significantly decreases thruput on high latency infrastructures.

in the fundamental paradigm, congestion control might be viewed as avoiding multiple back-to-back packet arrivals at any place along the way. windows provide a control mechanism that tends to be only loosely correlated to congestion issues.

the claim is that congestion has a much higher correlation with inter-packet transmission intervals than it does with window size. Large window size w/o inter-packet transmission interval control is subject to bursty packet behavior and small/ACK packet bunch/clumping, leading to multiple, back-to-back packet transmissions (and non-stable congestion control).

If the problem most directly correlates with inter-packet transmission interval ... then the claim is that directly controlling the inter-packet transmission interval can manage congestion ... even if the window size (outstanding frames/packets) is otherwise totally ignored.

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 02:51:40 GMT

Lon Stowell writes:
Yeah, somewhere I still have the full set of SVR4 books for the AT&T reference.

i call and raise you a full set of AT&T tuxedo references

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

One big box vs. many little boxes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: One big box vs. many little boxes
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 03:48:10 GMT

Paul Wallich writes:
The solution space for 5000 boxes chock full of kludge is a different one from the space for 5000 boxes actually capable of working together. Both are crucially important, but you have to decide which question you're asking.

marginally related from comp.protocols.tcp-ip ng
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#57 Window field in TCP header goes small

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

Confessions of a first-time SHARE attendee

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Confessions of a first-time SHARE attendee
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 14:24:50 GMT

Chris_Craddock@BMC.COM (Craddock, Chris) writes:
I was very warmly snubbed by my old friends Steve Samson and Cheryl Watson this morning and Tom Conley lowered himself to help me configure my wifi so I could "share" these experiences with y'all. Gotta tell ya folks, I have been snubbed by some of the greats today. Can't wait for tonight!!!!

sunday night ... i thot it was very impolite when there was mention of some old, retired person that had just left .... and they were sort of the generation after me at share.

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

The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:05:22 GMT

somewhat appropriately from the halls of share
http://www.share.org/

...
http://www.banktech.com/story/enews/BNK20030812S0002
The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces Brian Koma, AFCOM, for Optimize Aug 12, 2003

Just as three weather systems collided to devastating effect in Sebastian Junger's book, "The Perfect Storm," enterprise IT organizations are threatened by the collision of three ominous trends: the continued reliance on mainframe systems, an aging Baby Boomer population, and the limited skills base of younger IT workers. If these factors aren't addressed within the next five to seven years, we'll all be facing an IT skills shortage that could prove devastating to businesses that depend on technology expertise.

.. snip ...

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

The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 13:25:37 GMT

last night at SCIDS it was pointed at that there were more than ten times as many people at last week's linux world (at moscone) as were at share this week.

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

SPXTAPE status from REXX

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2003 09:50:18 -0600
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Subject: re: SPXTAPE status from REXX

As an aside ... long ago and far away ... I did a demo implementation of moving nearly all of the spool function out of the kernel into a virtual machine.

It was all writtein in vs/pascal and used slightly enhanced spool file diagnose interfaces (aka effectively what RSCS uses for moving spool files between systems)

As part of the demo ... there was a SPTAPE command that could also run on a vanilla system using vanilla diagnose interface (and was relatively flexible in the format of the tapes it could load .... as well as dump/create) ... aka dumping and loading of spool files did not have to be a kernel function (being able to process spool files in much the same way that RSCS moves spool files between systems).

One of the original purposes (besides demonstrating the ability to remove major function from the kernel into a virtual address space) was to significantly enhance the performance (reduce the cpu overhead) and the thruput (optional asynchronous interface, contiguous allocations, multiple block writes and multiple block reads. An issue was that HSDT had several full-duplex T1 links requiring RSCS to simultanuously handled full 150kbytes in and out (300kbytes/sec aggregate) thruput on each link ... aka 75 4k block transfers per second per link. random hsdt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

the other technology representation was the ability to both add and delete spool file areas during system operation (and all spool drives not necessarily being available as part of kernel boot). spool file areas on the same drive were self-consistent .... even for cases where a logical spool file had to span multiple physical drives.

The full blown implementation (as opposed to just the sptape function which could run on vanilla systems) relied heavily on the memory-mapped I/O functions that I had originally implemented on cp/67 for CMS and then ported to vm/370 (memory mapped paradigm frequently achieved better than three times the efficiency of the same CMS file operations not using the memory mapped interface). misc. memory mapped
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

One of the mistakes that TSS/360 had originally done in their memory-mapped implementation was that they assumed everything could be one-level store .... effectively do total file mapping ... and then strictly rely on page faults. Single 4k, synchronous page fault represented horrible degradation compared to buffered and multi-block asynchronous operation The CP/67 mem-mapped API had semantics for advisery hints about multiple block and asynchronous operation (similar to what some of the later high thruput Unix mem-mapped implementations provided)

misc. past SFS (spool file system) posts.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#26 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For

C & reliability: Was "The Incredible Shrinking Legacy"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: C & reliability: Was "The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 18:46:13 GMT

"Bob Billing (AKA Uncle Bob)" writes:
In part this is because C is derived from BCPL. I remeber a note on BCPL written by Martin Richards (in the days when I was young and fortunate enough to attend his lectures) that commented on BCPL "not protecting you from yourself." It was intended to be small, and for that reason left out such sophistications as bounds checking.

there are other languages that leave out bound checking and let you shoot yourself in the foot .... but the semantics of c string handling appear to increase the buffer overflow tendency by one or two orders of magnitude .... it not only doesn't protect you from yourself ... but appears to have significantly contributed to enormous increase in length related mistakes.

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

Share lunch/dinner?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Share lunch/dinner?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 14:23:23 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
too bad can't have the dinner at the zoo? X9F (financial security standards) had a really great dinner last week which was held in the omaha zoo's aquariam ... the tables were setup in the plexiglass tunnel that snakes its way thru the bottom of the shark tank.

the entrance to the washington/national zoo is about 3 blocks from the hotel. they have several "misters" (for the people) .... however I don't think I could tell much of a difference after walking around for two hours in the mid-day heat (& humidity).

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

Digital signature and Digital Certificate

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Digital signature and Digital Certificate
Newsgroups: comp.security.firewalls
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:16:30 GMT

andyoz77@yahoo.com (Andy) writes:
Could anybody tell me what is the relationship between a digital signature and its corresponding digital certificate?

typically digital signature is the private key "encryption" of a message/document hash. the corresponding public key had be used to verify the origin of the signature and whether or not the document has been modified (if the signature doesn't verify, it either originated somewhere else and/or the message/document has been tampered with since the signature was created).

public/privite (asymmetric) cryptography helps address an issue of key distribution (in secret key scenarios). The public key can be freely distributed, w/o compromising the private key. public key can be used to authenticate communication originating from the private key owner .... and messages encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the corresponding private key. In this sense the "public" and "private" key attributes are a business process convention of asymmetric cryptography (choosing which key to make public and which key never to divulge).

digital certificates were originally targeted for things like offline email from the early '80s .... you dialed up the email post office, exchanged email with the post office, and hung up. You are now sitting in an offline environment and there was requirement to authenticate email from entities that you had never communicated with before (you had a table of public keys for all your known friends and entities that you had prior communication with).

digital certificates is a business process convention that some entity that you trust will attest to some attributes (like identity) for other public keys. the digital certificate is a form of document that contains some other entities public key, some of their attributes, and digital signed by some entity that you trust. You have the trusted entity's public key in a table you maintain.

An annonymous/unknown entity sends you a digitally signed message, with an appended digital certificate. You validate the signature on the certificate with some trusted public key (you keep in local table), you then take the public key from the certificate and validate the signature on the signed message. You now have some confidence that the signed message originated from some entity with the attributes outlined in the certificate.

X.509 Identity digital certificates were somewhat formalized (international standard) in the late '80s and early '90s ... and places like financial institutions attempted to make use of them. They looked at providing x.509 identity certificates to the customers.

The identity certificates created a lot of ambivalence; on one side there was trying to aggregate all the identity information in a single certificate that might be useful for a bank client when communicating with some, unknown, future entity and on the other side having large numbers of messages flowing around the world ... all having appended certificates containing huge amounts of identity information.

The financial infrastructure in the mid-90s sort of retrenched to relying-party-only certificates .... containing only some form of an account number and the client's public key. This eliminated the severe privacy issues associated with large amounts of identity information blanketing the world with every message in existance. However, with relying-party-only certificates, it was then just a short step to showing that they were redundant and superfluous:

1) they were used in conjunction with messages/documents between the client and the financial institution.

2) the base, signed message/document already contained the account identifier

3) the financial institution and the client already had a prior relationship (negating basic certificate requirement assumption) so the client's public key was already on file with the bank

4) for financial transactions, even a trivial relying-party-only certificate could be one to two orders larger in size than the basic message; adding an extremely large payload bloat to the underlying infrastructure.

In the transition of a ubiquituous, online world .... it is becoming harder and harder to find conditions that met the original design and requirement assumptions for stale, static certificates satisfying a need where the relying-party wouldn't have 1) prior relationship (and therefor not already have the entity's public key previously recorded) and 2) no connectivity to the trusted entity signing the certificate (aka a certificate is basically a stale, static copy of some information that the entity signing the certificate has recorded).

The certificate analogy is the plastic payment cards that people carried in their wallets and were used in offline transactions prior to the existing online infrastructure. The merchants (relying-parties) took the existance of the plastic as evidence from the individual's bank that there would likely be payment.

In the transition to the online environment, the certificate paradigm was skipped. While the plastic still looks the same ... the magnetic stripe on the back is used to communicate to the consumer's financial institution. The relying-party (aka merchant) now relies on the realtime, online message back from the certifying authority ... rather than any stale, static "certificate".

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

What is timesharing, anyway?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is timesharing, anyway?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:29:26 GMT

I was looking for reference on EDI and ran across this "history" of DTSS evolving into GEIS ... which is currently a EDI/VAN service:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/febcm/english/gecos_to_gcos8_part_1.htm
from above:
Mark-III and General Electric Information System

In 1964, GE had helped the Dartmouth College NH to develop an interactive system for teaching programming. The hardware was a GE-200 front-ended by a communication processor developed initially for store and forward communication messages the GE Datanet-30. The terminals were AT&T Teletype 33 ASCII typewriters connected through 300 bauds Bell modems.

The Dartmouth College, perhaps inspired from MIT CTSS, had developed a special purpose operating-system including an interpretive processor of the BASIC (Beginner's All Symbolic Instruction Code) language also created for this system, christened GE-265.

General Electric started to market the BASIC service, through a special division that took over the maintenance of the Dartmouth College software. As the hardware perspective of the GE-200 was limited, the Dartmouth College accepted the GE offer of porting the DTSS (Dartmouth Time-Sharing System) to the GE-600. GE started to replace its GE-265 by GE-635 as Mark-III systems.

The hardware of Mark-III system was originally completely standard, but the software was developed and maintained independently from Phoenix. General Electric Computer Division and its affiliates (e.g., Bull General-Electric) were not entitled to license their customers with Mark-III software.

Mark-III systems main center was concentrated in Cleveland OH, but expanded with a center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The customers of the timesharing service were connected transparently to the computer centers.

With Mark-III, the applications were expanded to email and batch applications. Eventually, GE added to the base systems several IBM 370 computers to provide batch services without recompiling applications to the peculiarities of GE-600 code (differences in scientific operations precision in particular.

GE ISD was later instrumental in the evolution of Honeywell Large Systems by pushing Phoenix to use IBM and IBM compatible peripheral subsystems on the DPS-8 product line. GEISD had developed since the early 70s their own versions of peripheral subsystems shared between Honeywell and IBM computers and pressured Honeywell to introduce a standard facility.

After acquisition of the GE computer business by Honeywell in 1970, General Electric kept the timesharing business in an Information Services Division that is still alive. The ISD European Operation was momentarily kept inside Honeywell-Bull, but was retroceded to GE circa 1975

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

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