1973 Holmdel IBM 370's

[David Lesher]

...talks about IBM 370-165, and 370-155, as well as some 360's.
The video and the text talks about Unix. But while it hints
that the 370's run Unix, it does not say that directly.

What's the reality?

[Quadibloc]

Post by David Lesher
http://youtu.be/HMYiktO0D64
...talks about IBM 370-165, and 370-155, as well as some 360's.
The video and the text talks about Unix. But while it hints
that the 370's run Unix, it does not say that directly.
What's the reality?

The second part of the video,

notes that what is referred to as the "Program Library", although it
is not a library of programs, but a library of documentation, provides
information for programmers on several languages (and facilities),
and included in the list are OS/370 and TSO, which would suggest
that, no, the machines are running IBM operating systems.

This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can
run Linux - and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but
back in the seventies, Unix may not yet have been ported.

John Savard

[J. Clarke]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 23:20:03 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc

Post by Quadibloc

Post by David Lesher
http://youtu.be/HMYiktO0D64
...talks about IBM 370-165, and 370-155, as well as some 360's.
The video and the text talks about Unix. But while it hints
that the 370's run Unix, it does not say that directly.
What's the reality?

The second part of the video,
http://youtu.be/V9aVOIuKVUc
notes that what is referred to as the "Program Library", although it
is not a library of programs, but a library of documentation, provides
information for programmers on several languages (and facilities),
and included in the list are OS/370 and TSO, which would suggest
that, no, the machines are running IBM operating systems.
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can
run Linux - and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but
back in the seventies, Unix may not yet have been ported.

Z/OS is a certified Unix. Select option OMVS off the ISPF menu and
you're at a shell prompt.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 03:43:51 -0500

Post by J. Clarke
On Sun, 28 Nov 2021 23:20:03 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc

Post by Quadibloc

Post by David Lesher
http://youtu.be/HMYiktO0D64
...talks about IBM 370-165, and 370-155, as well as some 360's.
The video and the text talks about Unix. But while it hints
that the 370's run Unix, it does not say that directly.
What's the reality?

The second part of the video,
http://youtu.be/V9aVOIuKVUc
notes that what is referred to as the "Program Library", although it
is not a library of programs, but a library of documentation,
provides information for programmers on several languages (and
facilities), and included in the list are OS/370 and TSO, which
would suggest that, no, the machines are running IBM operating
systems.
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can
run Linux - and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but
back in the seventies, Unix may not yet have been ported.

Z/OS is a certified Unix. Select option OMVS off the ISPF menu and
you're at a shell prompt.

In 1973? I think not.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

early 90s, the IBM GPD/Adstar software VP funded work to add posix
support to MVS

early 80s, tried to get IBM to make an offer to graduated student that
had ported UNIX to IBM ... they wouldn't ... Amdahl hired him, did
"gold" (i.e. Au for Amdahl Unix), aka Amdahl UTS

IBM Palo Alto had 80s project to port BSD (berkeley unix work alike) to
370 ... but then got redirected to port to PC/RT workstation ("AOS" for
univ. market).

IBM Palo Alto also was working with UCLA's unix alike "LOCUS" ... which
eventually ships as AIX/370 and AIX/386.

TSS/370 group had project with AT&T to layer unix user environment
on top of stripped down TSS/370 kernel (SSUP).

Amdahl UTS and various IBM Unixes ran under VM/370 ... the issue was
field support/maint wouldn't support 370 systems unless they had type-1
"EREP" ... and the effort to add type-1 EREP to Unix was several times
larger than a straight-forward port. Running in VM/370 virtual machine
took advantage of VM/370 providing type-1 EREP. In the (tss/370) SSUP
case, it would have been SSUP providing the type-1 EREP.

none of it in the 70s.

topic drift: one of my hobbies after joining IBM was enhanced production
operating systems for internal datacenters (first CP67 then later
VM370). Note in the morph of CP67->VM370, there was lots of stuff that
were dropped and/or greatly simplified. When I first started move from
CP67 to VM370, I also used by stress testing benchmarks which were
guaranteed to crash an unmodified VM370 ... so one of the first things
needing porting was the CP67 kernel serialization mechanism (took care of
huge number of vm370 kernel crashes as well as hung/zombie users).

For some reason IBM cut deal with AT&T (longlines) for a copy of one of
my early production VM370 systems (lots of feature and performance work
added ... but before hardware multiprocessor support). In the early 80s
I'm tracked down by the IBM AT&T national marketing rep. It turns out
this (originally long lines) early VM370 got propogated around AT&T
along with numerous of AT&T local modifications. The problem was that
the latest IBM mainframe was 3081 ... which originally was
multiprocessor only ... and which that old VM370 version wouldn't run
on. IBM was afraid that AT&T would replace all those IBM 370s
installations with the latest Amdahl clone 370 (had new single processor
machine that was about the performance of the IBM two processor 3081
... and its two processor machine was about twice 3081). Anyway, I
was asked if I could help with moving to VM370 with multiprocessor
support.

other trivia: ACP/TPF (ibm's system for things like airline res systems)
370 also had a similar issue of not having multiprocessor support and
IBM was also concerned that the whole ACP/TPF market would move to
Amdahl.

more trivia: The GPD/ADstar (disk divsion) issue was that it was seeing
drop in disk sales with customers moving to more client/server and
distributed computing friendly platforms. They had come up with several
solutions to address the problem, but they were constantly being veto'ed
by the communication group. The communication group had a strangle-hold
on IBM datacenters with its strategic ownership of everything that cross
the datacenter walls and were fiercely fighting off client/server and
distributed computing. As a result GPD/ADstar was trying all sorts of
things to get around the communication road block. Posix on MVS didn't
directly involve anything crossing the datacenter walls. They other
thing they were doing was invested in client/server and distributed
computing startups that would use IBM disks & mainframes (communication
group couldn't veto GPD/ADstat investments and/or non-IBM company
products).

Another place that communication group stangle-hold shows up is their
severely knee-capping PS2 card performance for the workstation
division. For PC/RT (with AT-bus), the workstation division had done
some of their own cards, including a 4mbit token-ring card. For
RS/6000 with microchannel, AWD was mandated that they had to
(only) use PS2 cards and could use their own. It turns out
that the microchannel PS2 16mbit token-ring card had lower
throughput than the PC/RT 4mbit token-ring card (i.e. a
RS/6000 fileserver with 16mbit token-ring would have lower
throughput than PC/RT with 4mbit token-ring card)

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
early 90s, the IBM GPD/Adstar software VP funded work to add posix
support to MVS
early 80s, tried to get IBM to make an offer to graduated student that
had ported UNIX to IBM ... they wouldn't ... Amdahl hired him, did
"gold" (i.e. Au for Amdahl Unix), aka Amdahl UTS
IBM Palo Alto had 80s project to port BSD (berkeley unix work alike) to
370 ... but then got redirected to port to PC/RT workstation ("AOS" for
univ. market).
IBM Palo Alto also was working with UCLA's unix alike "LOCUS" ... which
eventually ships as AIX/370 and AIX/386.
TSS/370 group had project with AT&T to layer unix user environment
on top of stripped down TSS/370 kernel (SSUP).
Amdahl UTS and various IBM Unixes ran under VM/370 ... the issue was
field support/maint wouldn't support 370 systems unless they had type-1
"EREP" ... and the effort to add type-1 EREP to Unix was several times
larger than a straight-forward port. Running in VM/370 virtual machine
took advantage of VM/370 providing type-1 EREP. In the (tss/370) SSUP
case, it would have been SSUP providing the type-1 EREP.

note ROMP 801/risc chip (in the PC/RT) was originally intended for
displaywriter followon. When that got canceled they retargeted to the
unix workstation market and got the company that had done PC/IX (AT&T
unix) port for the IBM/PC ... to do one for the PC/RT (& formed "AWD",
advanced workstation division). RIOS chipset was followon to ROMP for
the RS/6000, and its AIXV3.1 was enhanced from the PC/RT AT&T unix port
with some BSD'isms added.

The IBM Palo Alto unixes were BSD based and LOCUS based ... and their
AIX unixes had nothing to do with IBM AWD (AT&T) unixes.

[John Levine]

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
TSS/370 group had project with AT&T to layer unix user environment
on top of stripped down TSS/370 kernel (SSUP).

That's probably what it was. TSS/360 was a dog (I used it) but after
IBM formally abandoned it, a small group worked on it and pruned a lot
of the crud Apparently TSS/370 worked pretty well.

AT&T had a Unix environment on top of it that was the development
environment for the software for the 5ESS phone switch, so it was very
important to AT&T that it really worked.

The Wikipedia article for the 5ESS mentions "The development systems
were Unix-based mainframe systems. There were around 15 of these
systems active at the peak. There were development machines, simulator
machines, and build machines, etc. " but there's no reference.

[Peter Flass]

Post by John Levine

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
TSS/370 group had project with AT&T to layer unix user environment
on top of stripped down TSS/370 kernel (SSUP).

That's probably what it was. TSS/360 was a dog (I used it) but after
IBM formally abandoned it, a small group worked on it and pruned a lot
of the crud Apparently TSS/370 worked pretty well.
AT&T had a Unix environment on top of it that was the development
environment for the software for the 5ESS phone switch, so it was very
important to AT&T that it really worked.
The Wikipedia article for the 5ESS mentions "The development systems
were Unix-based mainframe systems. There were around 15 of these
systems active at the peak. There were development machines, simulator
machines, and build machines, etc. " but there's no reference.

I played a (very) little with TSS/370 on Hercules. It seems there are still
reliability problems, although that may just be the distribution that’s
available. I’d be more interested if the PL/I compiler was included. I wish
I had more time to play with this stuff.

[Bob Eager]

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run Linux -
and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back in the seventies,
Unix may not yet have been ported.

As far as I know, by the end of the 1970s UNIX was only on:

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750), and the
Interdata 32.

[Christian Brunschen]

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run Linux -
and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back in the seventies,
Unix may not yet have been ported.

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750), and the
Interdata 32.

Per "Portability of C Programs and the UNIX System*" by
S. C. JOHNSON and D. M. RITCHIE, available at
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/portpap.pdf ,

"Two portability projects besides those referred to above are
particularly interesting. In the period 1976-1977, T. L. Lyon
and his associates at Princeton adapted the UNIX kernel to run
in a virtual machine partition under VM/370 on an IBM System/370 [14]"

where [14] is listed as

14. T. L. Lyon, private communication

// Christian Brunschen

[J. Clarke]

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run Linux -
and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back in the seventies,
Unix may not yet have been ported.

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750), and the
Interdata 32.

For some smaller computer context, I had heard of Unix around the
early 1980s in Byte and other computer magazines I read then.
I didn't see unix in use until the later 1980s on a 386x desktop
computer. A few of us, including the university professor who owned
the computer, read newsgroups there in 1988. This setup was used by
about 5 to 10 of us, when the University IT people said 'newsgroups
are impossible at this time'.
They weren't happy, but we didn't care. I used my bitnet address back
then, and read daily digests from this newsgroup.
In 1992, I got an actual Internet account and read here and other
newsgroups on my Amiga A1000 computer.

I remember the IT people at UCONN said that there wasn't any way to
transfer data from the mainframe to the VAX (which was running Unix)
in the same timeframe. There was psychology major who really wanted
to transfer her data so she figured out a way to do it.

[D.J.]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:11:16 -0500, J. Clarke

Post by J. Clarke

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run Linux -
and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back in the seventies,
Unix may not yet have been ported.

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750), and the
Interdata 32.

For some smaller computer context, I had heard of Unix around the
early 1980s in Byte and other computer magazines I read then.
I didn't see unix in use until the later 1980s on a 386x desktop
computer. A few of us, including the university professor who owned
the computer, read newsgroups there in 1988. This setup was used by
about 5 to 10 of us, when the University IT people said 'newsgroups
are impossible at this time'.
They weren't happy, but we didn't care. I used my bitnet address back
then, and read daily digests from this newsgroup.
In 1992, I got an actual Internet account and read here and other
newsgroups on my Amiga A1000 computer.

I remember the IT people at UCONN said that there wasn't any way to
transfer data from the mainframe to the VAX (which was running Unix)
in the same timeframe. There was psychology major who really wanted
to transfer her data so she figured out a way to do it.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Old proverb from somewhere I
heard long ago.
--
Jim

[Peter Flass]

To: J. Clarke
-=> J. Clarke wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-
JC> I remember the IT people at UCONN said that there wasn't any way to
JC> transfer data from the mainframe to the VAX (which was running Unix)
JC> in the same timeframe. There was psychology major who really wanted
JC> to transfer her data so she figured out a way to do it.
That "way" is probably spelled K-E-R-M-I-T. :)

I can’t recall when OP said this was. I don’t think there was a mainframe
Kermit that didn’t require a PC with a coax connection. I don’t know why
tape wouldn’t have worked, it was pretty much the universal data
interchange medium.

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

I don’t know why tape wouldn’t have worked, it was pretty much the
universal data interchange medium.

Interesting, when he said "VAX", I immediately thought, "VMS had
excellent mag-tape support, including character-set coding and labelling
for IBM gear".

Then I noticed "Unix".

It could be done -- dd has been part of Unix since 'forever' (since
Version 5), and had code-conversion. I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain, but I do think it would be the path of least
resistance.

echo '***@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by Lawrence Statton (NK1G)

I don’t know why tape wouldn’t have worked, it was pretty much the
universal data interchange medium.

Interesting, when he said "VAX", I immediately thought, "VMS had
excellent mag-tape support, including character-set coding and labelling
for IBM gear".
Then I noticed "Unix".
It could be done -- dd has been part of Unix since 'forever' (since
Version 5), and had code-conversion. I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain, but I do think it would be the path of least
resistance.

I wrote a C program on unix (the WE 32-bit non-paging VAX version) to read and
write ANSI labeled (and standard labeled) tapes back in 1980.

[Lawrence Statton (NK1G)]

Post by Scott Lurndal

Post by Lawrence Statton (NK1G)

I don’t know why tape wouldn’t have worked, it was pretty much the
universal data interchange medium.

Interesting, when he said "VAX", I immediately thought, "VMS had
excellent mag-tape support, including character-set coding and labelling
for IBM gear".
Then I noticed "Unix".
It could be done -- dd has been part of Unix since 'forever' (since
Version 5), and had code-conversion. I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain, but I do think it would be the path of least
resistance.

I wrote a C program on unix (the WE 32-bit non-paging VAX version) to read and
write ANSI labeled (and standard labeled) tapes back in 1980.

I wrote one for SunOS 4.1 in the mid-90s.

I was a fairly well-paid programmer at the time, not a psychology
student.

echo '***@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g

[J. Clarke]

Post by Lawrence Statton (NK1G)

I don’t know why tape wouldn’t have worked, it was pretty much the
universal data interchange medium.

Interesting, when he said "VAX", I immediately thought, "VMS had
excellent mag-tape support, including character-set coding and labelling
for IBM gear".
Then I noticed "Unix".
It could be done -- dd has been part of Unix since 'forever' (since
Version 5), and had code-conversion. I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain, but I do think it would be the path of least
resistance.

She managed to do it somehow through TCP/IP--I never learned the
details. I'm pretty sure it wasn't kermit. And thinking about it I
believe the Unix on the VAX was BSD--that was a long time ago.

[J. Clarke]

Post by J. Clarke
She managed to do it somehow through TCP/IP--I never learned the
details. I'm pretty sure it wasn't kermit. And thinking about it I
believe the Unix on the VAX was BSD--that was a long time ago.

And here I was thinking that 9-track tape or punched cards were involved,
since you could use both of them with both IBM mainframes and Digital's
larger computers, like the VAX.
Heck, you could hook up a 9-track tape drive and a punched card reader to
a PDP-8.
John Savard

Email would be another possibility.

Was email with attachments available on IBM mainframes in the mid
'80s?

[John Levine]

[ get info from an IBM mainframe to a Vax ]

Email would be another possibility.

Was email with attachments available on IBM mainframes in the mid '80s?

On VM/370, networking including email used a subsystem called RSCS that worked
using virtual card chutes. You could connect the virtual card punch on one
machine to the virtual reader on another and send a virtual deck of cards through it.
RSCS was a background system that sort of extended the card chutes over a network
to other systems. At some point they added SMTP gateways, dunno when.

There were no attachments that I'm aware of, but if your data was text, you could
(and can) put it in the body of the message. That's what we did with uuencode until
MIME came along in the 1990s.

I still like the Kermit plan, though.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Post by John Levine
On VM/370, networking including email used a subsystem called RSCS that worked
using virtual card chutes. You could connect the virtual card punch on one
machine to the virtual reader on another and send a virtual deck of cards through it.
RSCS was a background system that sort of extended the card chutes over a network
to other systems. At some point they added SMTP gateways, dunno when.

San Jose Research put in CSNET PhoneNet gateway fall 1982 (before
internet) ... from long ago and far away.

Date: 10/22/82 14:25:57
To: CSNET mailing list
Subject: CSNET PhoneNet connection functional

The IBM San Jose Research Lab is the first IBM site to be registered on
CSNET (node-id is IBM-SJ), and our link to the PhoneNet relay at
University of Delaware has just become operational! For initial testing
of the link, I would like to have traffic from people who normally use
the ARPANET, and who would be understanding about delays, etc. If you
are such a person, please send me your userid (and nodeid if not on
SJRLVM1), and I'll send instructions on how to use the connection.
People outside the department or without prior usage of of ARPANET may
also register at this time if there is a pressing need, such as being on
a conference program committee, etc. CSNET (Computer Science NETwork)
is funded by NSF, and is an attempt to connect all computer science
research institutions in the U.S. It does not have a physical network of
its own, but rather is a set of common protocols used on top of the
ARPANET (Department of Defense), TeleNet (GTE), and PhoneNet (the
regular phone system). The lowest-cost entry is through PhoneNet, which
only requires the addition of a modem to an existing computer system.
PhoneNet offers only message transfer (off-line, queued, files).
TeleNet and ARPANET in allow higher-speed connections and on-line
network capabilities such as remote file lookup and transfer on-line,
and remote login.

... snip ...

First IBM mainframe tcp/ip product (VM/370) was after mid-80s (including
SMTP support ... internally specific locations had it before) ... in
part before for growing number of unix workstations. I did a REXX exec
("REMAIL") that sat in my mainframe user (w/o terminal) waiting for
incoming email and reformated for SMTP and forwarded to SMTP daemon for
my unix workstation (REMAIL had support for handling a wide variety of
of mainframe email formats, the TCP product SMTP daemon didn't have
support for converting between SMTP and non-SMTP formats). REMAIL was
later picked up and integrated into system function.

NSF funded CSNET (later merges with BITNET)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSNET
co-worker at science center was responsible for the internal network
technology also used for the corporate sponsored university BITNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

trivia: communication group fought hard to prevent mainframe TCP/IP
product from shipping (part of their battles against client/server and
distributed computing trying to preserver their dumb terminal
paradigm). When they lost, they changed their tactic and said that since
they had corporate "ownership" of everything that crossed datacenter
walls, tcp/ip product had to be shipped by them. What shipped got
44kbyte/sec aggregate using nearly whole 3090 processor. I then did the
enhancements for RFC1044 and in some tuning test at Cray Research
between Cray and (IBM 370) 4341 got sustained 4341 channel speed
transfers using only modest amount of 4341 processor (something like 500
times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed).

other trivia: 1/1/1983 great conversion to internetworking protocol,
there were approx. 100 IMP network nodes and 255 connected hosts ...
at the time the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from
just about beginning until sometime mid/late 80s) was rapidly
approaching 1000. Old post with a list of world wide corporate
locations that added one or more nodes during 1983.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

one of the corporate issues was all links leaving IBM bldgs had to be
encrypted ... lots of battles w/governments, especially when links
crossed national boundaries. circa 1985, major link encryptor vendor
claimed that the corporate internal network had at least half
the link ecnryptors in the world.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Wed, 01 Dec 2021 12:44:21 -0600

Post by Lawrence Statton (NK1G)
I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain,

Having written code to process tapes with and without labels and
allowing for observed and documented oddities - I agree that would not be
fun until afterwards.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On Wed, 01 Dec 2021 12:44:21 -0600

Post by Lawrence Statton (NK1G)
I feel to the bottom of my heart
for some poor psych student trying to generate a valid ANSI tape label
using that toolchain,

Having written code to process tapes with and without labels and
allowing for observed and documented oddities - I agree that would not be
fun until afterwards.

I just used physical IOCS and skipped to the first tape mark,
bypassing the labels entirely. I never had to write an ANSI
tape label, but I'm sure I could have come up with some
boilerplate that did the job.

[a***@math.uni.wroc.pl]

Post by J. Clarke

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run Linux -
and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back in the seventies,
Unix may not yet have been ported.

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750), and the
Interdata 32.

For some smaller computer context, I had heard of Unix around the
early 1980s in Byte and other computer magazines I read then.
I didn't see unix in use until the later 1980s on a 386x desktop
computer. A few of us, including the university professor who owned
the computer, read newsgroups there in 1988. This setup was used by
about 5 to 10 of us, when the University IT people said 'newsgroups
are impossible at this time'.
They weren't happy, but we didn't care. I used my bitnet address back
then, and read daily digests from this newsgroup.
In 1992, I got an actual Internet account and read here and other
newsgroups on my Amiga A1000 computer.

I remember the IT people at UCONN said that there wasn't any way to
transfer data from the mainframe to the VAX (which was running Unix)
in the same timeframe. There was psychology major who really wanted
to transfer her data so she figured out a way to do it.

Around 1993 my e-mail was via IBM mainframe running CP/CMS.
IIRC it was possible to transfer files using Kermit between
mainframe and PC working as terminal emulator. This PC
was hooked in a hacky way (I do not know details but it
was not IBM-approved way). However, clearly there was software
support and the only problem was to connect VAX to act as
teminal for mainframe. IIUC terminals were frequently
connected via termial concentrators and some terminal
concentrators allowed also TCP/IP connection.

BTW: At one place I visited they had all central IT on mainframe,
while users had PC-s acting as terminal emulators (or doing
other duties as standalone machines). IIRC the PC-s were
ordinary (as opposed to version with 3270 emulation).

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2021 02:06:58 +0000 (UTC)

Post by a***@math.uni.wroc.pl

Post by J. Clarke

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Quadibloc
This makes sense, because the first systems on which Unix was
implemented were the DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11. I know you can run
Linux - and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays, but back
in the seventies, Unix may not yet have been ported.

PDP-11 (all models), VAX (only 780 at that time, perhaps 750),
and the Interdata 32.

For some smaller computer context, I had heard of Unix around the
early 1980s in Byte and other computer magazines I read then.
I didn't see unix in use until the later 1980s on a 386x desktop
computer. A few of us, including the university professor who owned
the computer, read newsgroups there in 1988. This setup was used by
about 5 to 10 of us, when the University IT people said 'newsgroups
are impossible at this time'.
They weren't happy, but we didn't care. I used my bitnet address
back then, and read daily digests from this newsgroup.
In 1992, I got an actual Internet account and read here and other
newsgroups on my Amiga A1000 computer.

I remember the IT people at UCONN said that there wasn't any way to
transfer data from the mainframe to the VAX (which was running Unix)
in the same timeframe. There was psychology major who really wanted
to transfer her data so she figured out a way to do it.

Around 1993 my e-mail was via IBM mainframe running CP/CMS.
IIRC it was possible to transfer files using Kermit between
mainframe and PC working as terminal emulator. This PC
was hooked in a hacky way (I do not know details but it
was not IBM-approved way). However, clearly there was software
support and the only problem was to connect VAX to act as
teminal for mainframe. IIUC terminals were frequently
connected via termial concentrators and some terminal
concentrators allowed also TCP/IP connection.
BTW: At one place I visited they had all central IT on mainframe,
while users had PC-s acting as terminal emulators (or doing
other duties as standalone machines). IIRC the PC-s were
ordinary (as opposed to version with 3270 emulation).

You'd pshurely need some means of connectivity: IRMA or
https://picclick.ca/IBM-PC-3270-Emulation-Program-Version-300-284478474917.html?refresh=1

[Grant Taylor]

I know you can run Linux - and AIX - on IBM System/z hardware nowadays

I disagree.

AIX has not run on anything other than RS/6000s & POWER systems for a
very long time.

There is evidence that AIX /used/ /to/ run on System/370s back in the
AIX 1.x time frame. But that has been gone for a LONG time. What's
worse is that purportedly IBM went to great lengths to eradicate any and
all copies of AIX/370.

AIX /does/ run on contemporary /POWER/ systems, a.k.a. pSeries. But AIX
has not run on mainframe, a.k.a. zSeries, in a very long time.

I would love to see evidence to the contrary. But I've not seen any and
I've been looking for the better part of a decade.

Note: AIX is decidedly different and not the same thing as OpenMVS
(OMVS) a.k.a. Unix System Services (USS). OMVS /is/ a registered and
recognized commercial Unix. But OMVS is /not/ AIX. So the Unix /from/
IBM that runs on zSeries is not AIX.

[Quadibloc]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by David Lesher
http://youtu.be/HMYiktO0D64
...talks about IBM 370-165, and 370-155, as well as some 360's.
The video and the text talks about Unix. But while it hints
that the 370's run Unix, it does not say that directly.
What's the reality?

The second part of the video,
http://youtu.be/V9aVOIuKVUc
notes that what is referred to as the "Program Library", although it
is not a library of programs, but a library of documentation, provides
information for programmers on several languages (and facilities),
and included in the list are OS/370 and TSO, which would suggest
that, no, the machines are running IBM operating systems.

As well, the languages for which informatiion is available are:

Fortran, PL/I, Snobol, Spitbol, Assembly language, APL... but not C.

John Savard

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 11:29:57 -0800 (PST)

Post by Quadibloc
Fortran, PL/I, Snobol, Spitbol, Assembly language, APL... but not C.

I found the "IBM C/370 COMPILER AND LIBRARY VERSION 2" announcement
dated 1991 - I've not found the version 1 announcement but presumably it
wasn't very much earlier.