On Nov 30, 2015, at 5:54 PM, Charles Mills wrote:
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With the advent of facility and function indications in
z/Architecture, the technique of trial execution should
be avoided - particularly if a workload may be relocated
to another system in which a facility's instructions
may not be present. In such an environment,
STORE FACILITY LIST EXTENDED (STFLE) or an
instruction's query or test function may provide a
more accurate indication of facilities and functions
that are available on all systems in the computing
environment.
Charles:
While that may have been a "backdoor" way of doing things, I believe
IBM introduced the concept of the SU Bit String which I believe was
meant to be a "programming interface" now if my memory is correct was
for figuring out which FMID (selectable unit) was installed. The
interface was specifically for software that was installed. During
that time frame the only "hardware" that was really installable was
the vector facility (if memory serves me, I could be wrong) and I
think there was a SU for that even. We never had it so I have no
first hand knowledge. IBM did drop that somewhere in the early 1980's
(approximately). I know we were semi celebratory because we were
tired of assembling the nuc for some trivial function like DEMF.
So in the past there was at least one other interface to figure out
the hardware that was installed.
Ed
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