steve smithers wrote:
Regardless of what you may believe, FreePascal is not the first compiler to be
implemented on 370 architecture. Should I tell tell their developers that 370
architecture is too much like a dinosaur to write a 32 bit compiler. IBM had 32
bit compilers available in the 1960's. Should I tell them that the architecture
is "broken". It's been around for 50 years and there are hundreds of compilers
available for it. From FORTRAN to GCC, from COBOL to ADA or from PASCAL/VS to
APL. All of these were (for the ones that were available from the late
60's) 32 bit compilers.
I feel I have to respond to this after a couple of things I've read over
the last day or so. I for one have never attempted to belittle "big
iron", since it has always seemed clear to me that that type of kit has
its uses: if nothing else then to do things like running the name and
certificate servers that keep distributed systems going. It's also worth
noting that IBM and Burroughs did engage in controlled decentralisation
quite early, putting a significant amount of "smarts" in their terminals
well in advance of anything done by their "trendier" competitors such as
DEC.
In the current case I was relying on the precedent set by the GCC
porters and the Linux maintainers to say "OK, we need to have some
policy to determine what vintage of hardware is supported". However
noting the availability of old IBM operating systems and the interest
people have in running them, and in particular noting the amount of work
being put into the OS/380 project, I'm fairly rapidly coming to the
conclusion that the S/370 is worth supporting, even if we brush the
S/360 under the carpet.
However I'm disturbed by comments like this from the mainflame brigade:
"...strong suggestions that IBM should provide their own EBCDIC-based
operating system and integrated-circuit microprocessor chip for use in
the IBM Personal Computer as a CICS intelligent terminal (instead of the
incompatible ASCII-based Intel chip, and immature Microsoft 1980 DOS)."
and
"Also, the standard character set on the 360/370/Z-System is EBCDIC,
while the Pentium uses ASCII."
If the community can't get its head around the idea that character
encoding is much more an operating system than a hardware issue, that
the Intel/AMD range of processors could happily run an EBCDIC-based
operating system, and that IBM gleefully supports ASCII-based Linux and
ASCII-based Internet services then it's going to be damn difficult to
get this (sub)project off the ground.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
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