Robert Wessel <[email protected]> writes:
> The managed to reintroduce type-ahead on 3174s with the "Entry
> Assists" feature.  A major change in the 3174s was a much faster CPU
> than in the 3274s, and a vast increase in memory, so there was room to
> add those features.  The terminal itself, nor the protocol on the
> wire, were not really the problem, mainly that the 3274 was
> underpowered for handling much of that work the dumber 3278 push back
> to the controller.

but by the time of the 3174 ... 3270s were moving to dumb terminal
emulation and type-ahead was being handled in emulators. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270

Note that by the time of the 3277 emulation card upload/download being
3times throughput of 3278 emulation card upload/download ... were on same
3274 controllers (i.e. datacenters were upgrading all controllers to 3274
... but some configured to handle 3277 protocol). ... 3277 attached to
3274 ... section 7-37, 7-38
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/3270/GA27-2749-10_3270_Information_Display_System_Component_Description_Feb80.pdf

the 3174 faster processor would have helped ... but didn't eliminate the
difference in 3277 coax protocol chatter versus 3278 coax protocol
chatter.

a senior disk engineer managed to get a talk scheduled at the annual,
internal communication group conference ... supposedly on the subject of
3174 performance ... but opened the talk with the statement that the
communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the
disk division.

the issue was the communication group was desperately trying to fight
off client/server and distributed computing and protect their dumb
(emulated) terminal install base. the disk division was seeing a drop in
disk sales with data fleeing the datacenters to more distributed
computing friendly platforms. the disk division had come up with a
number of solutions to address the opportunities ... but they were
constantly being vetoed by the communication group ... which had
corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the
datacenter walls

note that 2-3yrs earlier, the top executives had predicted that the
company revenue was going to double ... mostly based on mainframes ...
and instituted massive building program to double mainframe
manufacturing capacity (even tho indicators were already that it was
starting to head in the opposite direction) ... company going into the
red in the early 90s and big decline in mainframe business.

also note these kind of battles with communication group go back even
further.  my wife had been con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of
mainframe loosely-coupled architecture ... where she did "peer-coupled
shared data" architecture ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

... which saw little uptake until sysplex ... except for IMS
hot-standby. The lack of uptake contributed to her not staying long ...
however also there were the re-occuring battles with the communication
group trying to force her into using SNA for loosely-coupled operation.
There would be periodic termporary truces where they said she could use
anything she wanted within the datacenter, but the communication group
owned everything that crossed the datacenter walls ... but they would
then resume their efforts to try and force her to use SNA.

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to