someone smarter than Dave Cutler
in [Device Drivers]
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From: Joe Pfeiffer on 1 Apr 2010 18:43 Charles Richmond <frizzle(a)tx.rr.com> writes: > Joe Pfeiffer wrote: >> >> To the best of my recollection, I never saw an IBM computer when I was >> an undergrad. DEC-10, VAX, PDP-11, DG Nova, CDC, Harris... yes. IBM, >> no. It would be easy to forget how big IBM was, if I were to go from my >> own university recollections. > > How can a university with a business school *not* have an IBM 370 or > clone back in the 1970's??? That is the computer that the COBOL > programmers would be *most* likely to use out in the business > world. The biggest part of computing at my university was done on an > IBM 370. That included the business dept., math dept., engineering > dept., physics dept., and chemistry dept. I wasn't in Business. They did have an HP 3000 running a BASIC interpreter (my Data Structures professor got us accounts on it, so we could be forced to implement a stack by hand to simulate recursion); they may well have had an IBM, but I didn't hear about it. -- As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)
From: Morten Reistad on 1 Apr 2010 19:56 In article <jfudndz3ZJOCTinWnZ2dnUVZ8uKdnZ2d(a)eclipse.net.uk>, Dave <g8mqw(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >"Patrick Scheible" <kkt(a)zipcon.net> wrote in message >news:w9zfx3fktul.fsf(a)zipcon.net... >> IBMs were leased. Would IBM continue to support a computer that had >> some academics' experimental hardware hooked up to it? Could new and >> experimental device drivers be added to IBM's OS? These might be as >> important as the machine's architecture. > >Well post anti-trust they had too. And I know certainly in the UK, we had >lots of weird kit hooked into various University mainframes using a wide >variety of interfaces. The oldest I remember NUNET/NUMAC (I think) used >PDP/11s acting as IBM2708/3708 concentrators. There were "Browns Boxes" for >X.25 and some how Cambridge Ring got connected in at Leeds but I think that >was actually an Amdahl at that time... This was how mainframe networks were built. A cobbled-together mess of protocols, none from IBM. Philips had some gear that was very popular in banking/insurance networks in the mid 1970's, using datex (circuit switched 1200 bps) to access a remote network, and local end stations with local intelligence and some spooling. Similar stuff was used for travel agencies; but they used multidrop bisync; but still with some local intelligence. And the transaction screens became a nightmare of cryptical commands to get it all into one transaction. None of this had a chance to scale beyond the corporate "network" it was deployed in. I saw a merger between two banks up close, where they really tried to integrate. No such luck. They had to replace so they only had one network. Stats from internet exchange points still notice the encapsulated bisync, x25, frame relay etc. in the protocol fields. These legacy bits used 3% of the ix bandwidth as late as 2005. -- mrr
From: Mark Crispin on 1 Apr 2010 20:10 On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Scott Lurndal posted: > No. I visited a large number of schools in the 70's in the midwest > and none of them had PDP-10's. OK, so Uncle Bob's Pig Farm and College of Swineology couldn't afford anything else after the lease payments for a 360/25 to RJE to some 360/90 in a real school. That in no way changes the fact that PDP-10s dominated computing at real colleges and universities in the 1970s. -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
From: Mark Crispin on 1 Apr 2010 20:12 On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Scott Lurndal posted: >>> And on the other hand, IBM has a long history of putting its boxes in >>> universities - so this really comes down to a question of which >>> university you attended. The Watson Lab at Columbia was established in >>> the '40s, I think, and they had a 360 back in 1968. >> Columbia was also a big DEC-20 shop starting in the mid 1970s. >> Clearly the IBM gear did not address all their computing needs. > The second doesn't follow from the first. Only to the witless. If the pre-existing IBM gear addressed their computing needs, then they wouldn't have subsequently needed to buy (multiple) DEC-20 systems. -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
From: Charles Richmond on 1 Apr 2010 20:18
Mark Crispin wrote: > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Scott Lurndal posted: >> >> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...] >> >> And the idea that Academe was "dominated" by PDP-10/20 (your words) >> also is silly. While a few high-profile universities had PDP-10/20 >> gear, the majority by far didn't (mine had IBM and PCM gear, later >> supplemented with PDP-11's and VAXen). > > I see. You went to the one school that didn't have one, and generalized. > > Or perhaps you were just not allowed to use a PDP-10. > > That was the case at Stanford until 1976; ordinary undergraduates were > forced to use Wylbur on IBM gear. PDP-10 access was a dainty of > faculty, grad students, and the few undergrads who managed to land a job > at one of the three facilities. That situation is what finally led to a > student march on the computer center and subsequent agreement to buy a > PDP-10 that students could use. > > Similar situations existed elsewhere; undergraduates in the early 1970s > weren't considered worthy of being allowed anything more than punch cards. > Hey!!! The DEC-20 at the college I attended *had* a card reader!!! No one used it, but the -20 *had* one. ;-) It also had a drum line printer (150 lpm IIRC), but it was in the computer center and few sent their printouts there. If one *really* had to have a printout, you could transfer the listing to the IBM 370 and print it on a nearby printer. -- +----------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond | | | | plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com | +----------------------------------------+ |