Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Seymour J Metz]

Are there surviving CROS and TROS for 360/25 through 360/67 and 360/85?


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3


From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of 
Pew, Curtis G [curtis@austin.utexas.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 10:47 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: S/360-50 emulator

https://secure-web.cisco.com/119fBR92TKcheNwdeQKTP8tM2gtMmc2_wB4cDycM_zWHOjT6GmNFWhkM8YEX6XTg3W8jgLjH68CDFhiQp4ty9_oI-nq1_ajTOScUHfCKO0XMmNsO5cUCMpGlhYlOa3A8fmqLa0DMGy7NNUol_2wyIIE4EkjqVEq-x2FGujamIrM-v_dZTB12fMNuzxhCKiS1WPy0Hmaz9gAdByrY9a-WRFG1P-QqCl4NMVbo0oMfIUq0rWTLD6M98q1_YWqMdEE-kos7-hBTuGdUR8-HRWCdYCccDgkUy45oJORRQNFj0xhyOMUvb6_yWkCvhGFczj6k6bCa5XRyI3gpkhBrpNp4blIsujNoDOtF9tgzHb5cugeKxiOH_4I21KQUrPdwdmZzr7ZFfGkIPjeTYd-Rb2jiIygM9pC8pe3YeOPwLX_XA8inuFd8mEh_Qr2Jz7pYcz4B-t9tZavHa0i5C3-TWNeWH6w/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.com%2F2022%2F01%2F27%2Fibm_s360_simulation%2F
 “Hardware boffin is building a simulation of an entire IBM S/360 Model 50 
mainframe—With microcode intact so it can work with an original operator's 
console”


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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Charles Mills]

Yeah, I am over my depth talking about specific consoles.

The main point is that CP67/VM provides a virtual machine with regard to
instructions, not hardware. You can run pretty much run any program in a
guest, but you cannot hook real hardware up to it. It would be relatively
useless for training a hardware repairman (CE) other than perhaps basic
training on some software tools. 

IOW the guest appears to be a real machine to a program running in it. It
does not appear to be a real machine in the physical world.

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Seymour J Metz
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 10:44 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: S/360-50 emulator

My understanding is that both CMS and CP-67 supported the 1052-7 as a
console, although you would normally be using a 2741 and CMS would normally
be running CMS under CP with a virtual 1052.

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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Seymour J Metz]

My understanding is that both CMS and CP-67 supported the 1052-7 as a console, 
although you would normally be using a 2741 and CMS would normally be running 
CMS under CP with a virtual 1052.


From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  on behalf of 
Charles Mills 
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 1:19 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: S/360-50 emulator

I worked with CP67 (later called VM) around 1969 and it was more or less like 
VM today in this regard. The "console" for the guest machines was 
software-implemented in CP67. You could not have hooked up a real 1052 console 
(although the 360/67 would have had one of its own).

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Lloyd Fuller
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 9:42 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: S/360-50 emulator

Did they ever hear of the original VM/360?  According to what I understood from 
people who worked at Lincoln Labs, that was exactly what it was supposed to do. 
 It was developed to train 360 CEs.
Regards.
Lloyd


Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail for iPad


On Thursday, January 27, 2022, 12:13 PM, Pew, Curtis G 
 wrote:

On Jan 27, 2022, at 10:23 AM, rahimazizarab 
<03f036d88eeb-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>
> Did they ever hear of Hercules.

Yes. Hercules emulates the System/360 and descendent architectures. This will 
be emulating the underlying S/360 model 50 implementation, so they can run the 
original microcode and manage it with the original hardware console.


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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Charles Mills]

I worked with CP67 (later called VM) around 1969 and it was more or less like 
VM today in this regard. The "console" for the guest machines was 
software-implemented in CP67. You could not have hooked up a real 1052 console 
(although the 360/67 would have had one of its own).

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Lloyd Fuller
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2022 9:42 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: S/360-50 emulator

Did they ever hear of the original VM/360?  According to what I understood from 
people who worked at Lincoln Labs, that was exactly what it was supposed to do. 
 It was developed to train 360 CEs.
Regards.
Lloyd


Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail for iPad


On Thursday, January 27, 2022, 12:13 PM, Pew, Curtis G 
 wrote:

On Jan 27, 2022, at 10:23 AM, rahimazizarab 
<03f036d88eeb-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
> 
> Did they ever hear of Hercules.

Yes. Hercules emulates the System/360 and descendent architectures. This will 
be emulating the underlying S/360 model 50 implementation, so they can run the 
original microcode and manage it with the original hardware console.


-- 
Pew, Curtis G
curtis@austin.utexas.edu

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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Lloyd Fuller]

Did they ever hear of the original VM/360?  According to what I understood from 
people who worked at Lincoln Labs, that was exactly what it was supposed to do. 
 It was developed to train 360 CEs.
Regards.
Lloyd


Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail for iPad


On Thursday, January 27, 2022, 12:13 PM, Pew, Curtis G 
 wrote:

On Jan 27, 2022, at 10:23 AM, rahimazizarab 
<03f036d88eeb-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
> 
> Did they ever hear of Hercules.

Yes. Hercules emulates the System/360 and descendent architectures. This will 
be emulating the underlying S/360 model 50 implementation, so they can run the 
original microcode and manage it with the original hardware console.


-- 
Pew, Curtis G
curtis@austin.utexas.edu

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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Pew, Curtis G]

On Jan 27, 2022, at 10:23 AM, rahimazizarab 
<03f036d88eeb-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
> 
> Did they ever hear of Hercules.

Yes. Hercules emulates the System/360 and descendent architectures. This will 
be emulating the underlying S/360 model 50 implementation, so they can run the 
original microcode and manage it with the original hardware console.


-- 
Pew, Curtis G
curtis@austin.utexas.edu

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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[Raphaël Jacquot]

Le 27/01/2022 à 17:23, rahimazizarab a écrit :
Did they ever hear of Hercules.  


yes, they have.
however, this is different, as it emulates the actual hardware.

Raphaël

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Re: S/360-50 emulator

[rahimazizarab]

Did they ever hear of Hercules.  Http://www.hercules-390.euRahimSent from my 
Galaxy
 Original message From: "Pew, Curtis G" 
 Date: 1/27/22  9:47 AM  (GMT-06:00) To: 
IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: S/360-50 emulator 
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/ibm_s360_simulation/ “Hardware boffin is 
building a simulation of an entire IBM S/360 Model 50 mainframe—With microcode 
intact so it can work with an original operator's console”-- Pew, Curtis 
gcurtis@austin.utexas.edu--For
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S/360-50 emulator

[Pew, Curtis G]

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/ibm_s360_simulation/ “Hardware boffin is 
building a simulation of an entire IBM S/360 Model 50 mainframe—With microcode 
intact so it can work with an original operator's console”


-- 
Pew, Curtis G
curtis@austin.utexas.edu






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Re: S/360

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

t...@tombrennansoftware.com (Tom Brennan) writes:
> This reminds me of my first (junk pile) floppy disk drive back in the
> 1970's for my home-made computer.  I had little money so I made my own
> controller out of a dozen chips and wrote some 8080 code to handle the
> I/O.  So the format of the disk was totally up to me, and not
> compatible with anything else.  I did just what you said and settled
> on about 3K per track.  But that was with no separate records or
> sectors - you had to read the entire track if you wanted any data,
> which I found out later (when I took my first computer class) wasn't
> too smart.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019b.html#52 S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019b.html#53 S/360

recent (facebook ibm retirees) post ... with 3390/3990, iceberg,
seastar, etc:

IBM Adstar tried to counter (STK Iceberg) with seastar (software was
seahorse) ... current web search for references just turn up my old
usenet posts I've archived at garlic.com ... which have old online
references that have gone 404 ... although some of them still live at
the wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20080608164743/http://www.informationweek.com/565/65mtrob.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20060328034324/http://www.stkhi.com/nearline.htm

Besides working with LLNL on technical cluster scaleup "supercomputers"
... we were also working with LLNL on porting their high-performance
filesystem LINCS they had originally done on Cray ... including HA/CMP
version (Unitree). As I've periodically mentioned before ... a week or
two later we had meeting in ellison's conference on commercial cluster
scaleup, reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
then a couple weeks after that meeting, cluster scaleup was transferred,
announced as IBM supercomputer (for technical/scientifc "ONLY") and we
were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors
(we leave IBM a few months later)

Date:  Mon, 30 Dec 91 15:07:32 -0800
To: wheeler
Subject: Unitree log structured filesystem

Lynn, this could be useful for the high-end for a non-obvious reason.

We recently removed the only future CKD 5.25" DASD from the plan. The
next high-end DASD, Cortez, will do CKD emulation.  Emulation is the
right way to do CKD, but unfortunately Cortez is forced to emulate
behind a 3990.  This is badness because the DDC interface behind a 3990
is gap-synchronous.  This means there is a Read-Modify-Write cycle to do
a write.  This is inherent to a 3990.

The only way to do CKD Emulation correctly is to get rid of
3990. Seastar plans to do this, but not until 2Q95.  In the interim, we
need a high performance high-end CKD subsystem.  We would like array
support if possible, and compression.

What has this to do with HA/Unitree LFS you ask?  If we added some ESCON
cards to an HA/950, and we did CKD Emulation SW and Compression HW here
at ARC, we could quickly build a cached/arrayed/CKD subystem.  We could
stripe data across Harrier drawers 3+P.  We could compress because we
have LSFS (update in place precludes compression).  We could cache in
Unitree memory.  Would this work ?  It would be really keen.

... snip ...

In late 70s and first part of 80s, I got to spend some time playing disk
engineer in bldgs 14&15 ... but later 80s, I was spending more time on
risc & turning out HA/CMP product. Above email references HA/950
... which is HA/CMP running on RS6000/950 (product started out HA/6000,
but I fairly quickly renamed HA/CMP when started on cluster scaleup)
... high-end rack mounted system. I've previous mentioned that ESCON was
announced in 1990 with ES/9000 when it was already obsolete. In 1988, I
was (also) asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff that they
had been playing with which quickly becomes fibre channel standard
(including some stuff that I had done in 1980), initially 100mbyte/sec
concurrent in both direction, compared to ESCON 17mbyte/sec half-duplex.

The post about Jan1992 Ellison commercial cluster scaleup (128-way
ye1992) meeting, and the above email mentions Harrier(/9333) which we
were using in some HA/CMP configurations. It was high-speed fixed-block
disks using packetized SCSI protocol running over 80mbit/sec full-duplex
serial copper. I mention that I had hoped that it evolves into 1/8th
speed interoperable fibre-channel standard ... but instead it evolves
into IBM proprietary SSA (after we leave):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Storage_Architecture The above wiki
mentions that SSA was "overtaken" by FCS, but I had been asked to help
with standardizing what becomes FCS in 1988 ... and I wanted
Harrier/9333 to evolve into FCS interoperable instead of IBM proprietary

... end of ibm retiree post ...

aka, real CKD DASD hasn't been made for decades ... but POK's favorite
son operating system has not been able to ween itself off it.

as mentioned previously, somewhere along

Re: S/360

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

wmhbl...@comcast.net (WILLIAM H BLAIR) writes:
> Donald Ludlow WAS indeed the principal author
> of OS/360 IOS. In fact, he wrote ALL of the
> code that actually survived and was shipped.
> There was another gentleman who CLAIMED to be
> the "author" of IOS (whom I knew personally), 
> but everything he did had to be redone by Don 
> (or mostly, in fact, simply thrown away).
>
> Mr. Ludlow moved to Raleigh, NC and worked on
> SPF (as it was then called), incorporating the
> SUPERC FDP into ISPF/PDF as what we know today 
> as options 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14 (a "recent" 
> enhancement adds 3.15).
>
> He wrote some of the slickest, tightest S/360
> Assembler code I've ever seen or had to modify
> learning a lot about device channel programming
> from it (and from him).

this is reference to getting request to find people that had been
involved in the decision to convert all 370s to virtual memory (i.e. MVT
storage management was so bad, that region sizes typically had to be
four times larger than actually used, as result typical 1mbyte 370/165
only ran four regions, going to virtual memory, could get four times as
many regions with little or no paging)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73

Ludlow was doing initial implementation of MVT for VS2/SVS ... work done
on 360/67. Basically not that different of running MVT in a 16mbyte
cp/67 virtual machine. Build table for single 16mbyte virtual address
space at startup and a little bit of page I/O (not hihgly optimized
because anticipating little or no actual paging). Biggest amount of code
was same as CP/67 ... (EXCP/SV0) got channel programs built with virtual
addresses ... and so had to make a channel program copy replacing the
virtual addresses with real addresses ... and basically borrowed the
code from CP/67 and hacked into EXCP.

Slight topic drift, in my previous post in this thread, I mentioned
doing bullet proof input/output supervisor for doing bldg14 disk
engineering testing and bldg15 product test
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2019h.html#52 S/360

They had previously tried MVS, but in that environment MVS had 15min
MTBF requiring manual re-ipl. This is later email just before 3380
customer ship ... FE had regression test of 57 simulated errors that
were expected to occur in normal operations. MVS was still failing in
all 57 error (requiring manual re-ipl) with no indication of what cause
the failure in 2/3rds of the case ... old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015

I did an internal report of all the changes/fixes needed to support any
amount of on-demand concurrent dasd development testing (previously they
were running 7x24 pre-scheduled stand-alone testing) ... and
(unfortunately) happened to mention the MVS 15min MTBF ... which brought
down the wrath of the MVS group on my head (I was told initially they
tried to have me separated from the IBM company).

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Re: S/360

[WILLIAM H BLAIR]

On April 11, 2019 at 4:29 PM Mike Myers wrote:
| an experience I had sometime back around 1967. 
| Nearby at another system was Don Ludlow, who 
| was reputed to be the primary designer of IOS 
| for OS/360. 

Donald Ludlow WAS indeed the principal author
of OS/360 IOS. In fact, he wrote ALL of the
code that actually survived and was shipped.
There was another gentleman who CLAIMED to be
the "author" of IOS (whom I knew personally), 
but everything he did had to be redone by Don 
(or mostly, in fact, simply thrown away).

Mr. Ludlow moved to Raleigh, NC and worked on
SPF (as it was then called), incorporating the
SUPERC FDP into ISPF/PDF as what we know today 
as options 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14 (a "recent" 
enhancement adds 3.15).

He wrote some of the slickest, tightest S/360
Assembler code I've ever seen or had to modify
learning a lot about device channel programming
from it (and from him).

William Blair
Houston, TX

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Re: S/360

[Mike Myers]

George:

Your comment reminded me of an experience I had sometime back around 
1967. I was working for IBM in Poughkeepsie at the time and had some 
hands-on time on a 360/40. Nearby at another system was Don Ludlow, who 
was reputed to be the primary designer of IOS for OS/360. He was going 
through the switches changing code and single stepping while watching a 
tape drive to see if it was reacting as desired. It was an obvious 
exercise in doing things directly in machine language, which was pretty 
impressive to a new assembler programmer like myself at the time.


Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
Goldsboro, NC 27530

On 4/11/19 1:42 PM, George Rodriguez wrote:

A ways back, even I can't remember, I attended a Guide (it merged with
Share) meeting and after the conference was over, Jack (a friend I met at
Guide) and I went to the Boston Computer Museum. Once we got in, at a
distance I saw a sign S/360! I tell Jack "let's go see!" When we got there,
there were 3 S/360 on display, the model 20, 30 and 40. Those were the
first computer systems that I worked on in a place called IDPC
(International Data Processing Corp.) on Canal Street in New York. It was a
service bureau but it's main customer was Grove Press (a publishing
company). The 360/20 was used only to print large reports. Tape input
printer output. The 360/30 was used for all production runs and the 360/40
was used for testing. I remember a smart aleck programmer stopping the CPU,
raising and lowering the toggle switches on the model 40 just to impress
his buddies!

The link you included in this post brought me back to that time! I was
hired as an operator, but after they lost the Grove Press as a client, I
got to do programming, and systems work. That first job taught me so much!
After moving to south Florida for a job as an Operator, I finally got into
the career that I liked best! I became a Systems Programmer, first in DOS,
then VSE, then VSE/AF and then I finally joined the big boys and z/OS.

Thanks for bringing back old memories!

*George Rodriguez*

*Specialist II - IT Security*
*PX - 47652*
*(561) 357-7652 (office)*
*(954) 415-7586 (mobile)*
*School District of Palm Beach County*
*3348 Forest Hill Blvd.*
*Room B-332*
*West Palm Beach, FL. 33406-5869*
*Florida's Only A-Rated Urban District*


On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 10:43 AM Dave Jones  wrote:


is now 55 years old, as of yesterday, April 7th. An interesting story
about it:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm
DJ

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Re: S/360

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

li...@akphs.com (Phil Smith III) writes:
> And I'm 99.9% sure that DASD capacity was determined by building the
> geometry and then trying various densities until error rates became
> unacceptable, then backing off slightly. Which would explain the
> weird, random sizes with each generation (until 3390, after which it
> went to arrays and became standardized-on what future generations will
> consider a weird size).

error detecting/correcting started moving to fixed block sizes ... aka,
FBA ... even 3380 had fixed cell size for error correcting ... however
POK's favorite son operating system has had difficulty weening off
CKD. There hasn't been real CKD made for decades, all being simulated on
industry standard fixed block disks.

the recent move from 512byte to 4096byte fixed blocks is largely
motivated by error correct.
fixed-block
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-block_architecture
FBA 512->4096 migration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

original "raid" patent was by IBMer in the 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

first use was IBM S/38 ... because common single disk failure took out
everything. part of S/38 organization simplification was scatter
allocation across all disks (treated as single filesystem) ... and
therefor any single disk failure took out the whole system ... all disks
had to be backed up as single unit/pool (because of scatter allocation)
... and any recovery required complete system restore.

Note originally 3380 had 20 track spacings between each data-track ...
flying lower met adjacent tracks had less interferance and cut the data
track spacing in half (double-density with twice the number of
tracks/cylinders), then spacing cut again for triple-density (three
times the number of tracks/cylinders).

trivia: I got dragged into idea the IBM "father of risc" had for
"wide-head" 16 adjacent datatracks with servo tracks on either side
... read/write all 16 simultaneously (while tracking servo tracks on
both sides of the data tracks). This was in 3090 and 3380 triple-density
time-frame. The problem was that the IBM mainframe data transfer is
16*3mbytes/sec or 48mbytes/sec. Even when ESCON is announced in 1990
(with ES/9000, when ESCON is alread obsolete) it is only 17mbytes/sec.

little more trivia: 70s, engineer was running "air bearing" (floating
heads) simulation (part of reducing head flying height enabling greater
densities) on research 370/195 ... but only getting a couple turn
arounds a month (even with priority designation). I had done enhanced
bullet proof, never fail operating system for bldg 14&15 allowing them
moving from stand-alone testing to doing concurrent development testing
under operating system. Turns out even concurrent testing only used
percent or two of processor ... so we set up private online service
using the machines. Bldg15 had 2ndor3rd engineering 3033 from POK, and
we get the air bearing simulation moved over to the 3033, where he can
get several turn-arounds a day (even tho 3033 has little less than 1/2
processing of 370/195).

more trivia: I had done channel-extender support in 1980 for STL that
was moving 300 people from IMS group to offsite bldg ... but the POK
people playing with what becomes ESCON ... blocks it release to
customer. In 1988, I'm asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff
they are playing with which quickly becomes fiber-channel standard,
including some stuff that I had one in 1980 (FCS, originally
100mbyte/sec concurrent in both directions).

Then some POK engineers get involved in FCS and define a protocol
that radically cuts the native throughput ... which is eventually
released as FICON. Most recent published FICON numbers I've seen
is peak I/O z196 test that used 104 FICON (running over 104 FCS)
getting 2M IOPS. About the same time there was FCS announced
for E5-2600 blade claiming over million IOPS (two such FCS,
getting more throughput than 104 FICON running over 104 FCS).

-- 
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Re: S/360

[George Rodriguez]

A ways back, even I can't remember, I attended a Guide (it merged with
Share) meeting and after the conference was over, Jack (a friend I met at
Guide) and I went to the Boston Computer Museum. Once we got in, at a
distance I saw a sign S/360! I tell Jack "let's go see!" When we got there,
there were 3 S/360 on display, the model 20, 30 and 40. Those were the
first computer systems that I worked on in a place called IDPC
(International Data Processing Corp.) on Canal Street in New York. It was a
service bureau but it's main customer was Grove Press (a publishing
company). The 360/20 was used only to print large reports. Tape input
printer output. The 360/30 was used for all production runs and the 360/40
was used for testing. I remember a smart aleck programmer stopping the CPU,
raising and lowering the toggle switches on the model 40 just to impress
his buddies!

The link you included in this post brought me back to that time! I was
hired as an operator, but after they lost the Grove Press as a client, I
got to do programming, and systems work. That first job taught me so much!
After moving to south Florida for a job as an Operator, I finally got into
the career that I liked best! I became a Systems Programmer, first in DOS,
then VSE, then VSE/AF and then I finally joined the big boys and z/OS.

Thanks for bringing back old memories!

*George Rodriguez*

*Specialist II - IT Security*
*PX - 47652*
*(561) 357-7652 (office)*
*(954) 415-7586 (mobile)*
*School District of Palm Beach County*
*3348 Forest Hill Blvd.*
*Room B-332*
*West Palm Beach, FL. 33406-5869*
*Florida's Only A-Rated Urban District*


On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 10:43 AM Dave Jones  wrote:

> is now 55 years old, as of yesterday, April 7th. An interesting story
> about it:
>
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm
> DJ
>
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Re: S/360

[Tom Brennan]

On 4/11/2019 8:40 AM, Phil Smith III wrote:

And I'm 99.9% sure that DASD capacity was determined by building the geometry 
and then trying various densities until error rates became unacceptable, then 
backing off slightly. Which would explain the weird, random sizes with each 
generation (until 3390, after which it went to arrays and became 
standardized-on what future generations will consider a weird size).


This reminds me of my first (junk pile) floppy disk drive back in the 
1970's for my home-made computer.  I had little money so I made my own 
controller out of a dozen chips and wrote some 8080 code to handle the 
I/O.  So the format of the disk was totally up to me, and not compatible 
with anything else.  I did just what you said and settled on about 3K 
per track.  But that was with no separate records or sectors - you had 
to read the entire track if you wanted any data, which I found out later 
(when I took my first computer class) wasn't too smart.


But yeah, I remember looking at my dad's oscilloscope and adjusting the 
timing and size until the end of a track didn't overlay the start of the 
same track :)


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Re: S/360

[Phil Smith III]

Alan Altmark wrote:

>The 3350 is from an era (not so long ago!) when there were no disk "arrays".  
>No striping.  The "location" information in the I/O architecture was physical. 
>If you took the media out of its housing, you could generally point to where 
>the data was located.  Want protection from drive errors?  Write it to another 
>drive.  The good news was that a drive failure was an isolated event.  The 
>drive "next door" wasn't affected.

 

>Today, the I/O architecture remains, but the mapping of logical to physical 
>location is an exercise left to the storage unit itself.  You can't really 
>point to where your data is except to point to the storage unit and say, 
>"Somewhere in there."  My experience is that when something dies, you lose 
>lots of host drives.  But physical drive failures have minimal impact due to 
>striping (RAID).

 

And I'm 99.9% sure that DASD capacity was determined by building the geometry 
and then trying various densities until error rates became unacceptable, then 
backing off slightly. Which would explain the weird, random sizes with each 
generation (until 3390, after which it went to arrays and became 
standardized-on what future generations will consider a weird size).


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Re: S/360

[Knutson, Samuel]

Ken Shirriff wrote a fun article which he tweeted about copied below 
https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1114925987043536896

The revolutionary IBM System/360 computers were announced 55 years ago today. 
These mainframes ruled the computing industry for years. Their iconic consoles, 
covered with lights and switches, showed internal state. I explain these 
consoles in my article:  
http://www.righto.com/2019/04/iconic-consoles-of-ibm-system360.html

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Dave Jones
Sent: Monday, April 8, 2019 10:43 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: S/360

is now 55 years old, as of yesterday, April 7th. An interesting story about it:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm
DJ
The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It 
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S/360

[Dave Jones]

is now 55 years old, as of yesterday, April 7th. An interesting story about it:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm
DJ

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mike Schwab]

I hadn't researched the meaning of pidgin.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

So it looks like the first mixing of 2+ languages is a Pidgin, the
resulting language among those born after it is spoken is then a
creole language.

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 6:10 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson
 wrote:
> (It must be Friday somewhere.) I'm fascinated by the characterization of 
> English as 'pidgin'. I don't see that word in any of the articles cited, but 
> it's an intriguing idea. I think where the term falls short is not the 
> mish-mash mongrel origin of English but the ideas of 'compromise' and 
> 'simplification'. It seems that English has taken every opportunity to 
> increase in complexity, not decrease, at least in regard to vocabulary. 
> Still, despite having university degrees in English and in Linguistics, I 
> feel better educated for this exercise.
>
> .
> .
> J.O.Skip Robinson
> Southern California Edison Company
> Electric Dragon Team Paddler
> SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
> 323-715-0595 Mobile
> 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
> robin...@sce.com
>
> -Original Message-
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of Mike Schwab
> Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 4:59 PM
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
> English is a pidgin language, combined from the three Celtic languages on the 
> British Isles and 4 norther European languages from northern Europe.
>
> http://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/how-english-evolved-into-a-modern-language/1575959.html
> https://www.englishclub.com/history-of-english/
> http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 5:08 PM, Mike Myers  wrote:
>> All:
>>
>> Many years ago, I aided Karl Finkemeyer, an IBMer on assignment in NY
>> at the time from Germany, and a great friend of mine to immigrate to
>> the US. He eventually became a citizen, and a director at Fidelity
>> Investments. During the immigration process, his daughter, who by that
>> time, spoke fluent English and German, showed me a paper which made
>> fun of pronunciation of words in English. Unfortunately, I did not
>> obtain a copy, but this discussion made me go and look on-line, hoping to 
>> find it.
>>
>> Although this is not Friday, for those of you that like language
>> (especially English), Google "English pronunciation poem" or "English
>> is a crazy language". Lots of good chuckles for language fans. My favorites 
>> were:
>>
>> https://archive.org/stream/EnglishCrazyLanguageEssay/English%20Crazy%2
>> 0Language%20Essay_djvu.txt
>> http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
>> the one above as a poem: http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
>>
>> Mike Myers
>> Mentor Services Corporation
>> Goldsboro, NC 27530
>> (919) 341-5210 - office
>>
>>
>>  On 03/13/2017 05:28 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:
>>>
>>> "English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own
>>> way, some more so than others. If English were rational and simple,
>>> everybody would be using it. ;-)
>>>
>>> .
>>> .
>>> J.O.Skip Robinson
>>> Southern California Edison Company
>>> Electric Dragon Team Paddler
>>> SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
>>> 323-715-0595 Mobile
>>> 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
>>> robin...@sce.com
>>>
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
>>> On Behalf Of John McKown
>>> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
>>> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>>> Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin <
>>> 000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
>>>>  https://xkcd.com/1179/
>>>>
>>>> And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an
>>>> astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
>>>> "Nine fourteen." (orally)
>>>>
>>>> September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
>>>> meant, "September, 2014."
>>>>
>>>> In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some ce

English (was: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".)

[Phil Smith]

Skip Robinson wrote:
>(It must be Friday somewhere.) I'm fascinated by the characterization of 
>English as 'pidgin'. I don't see that word in any of the articles cited, but 
>it's an intriguing idea. I think where the term falls short is not the 
>mish-mash mongrel origin of English but the ideas of 'compromise' and 
>'simplification'. It seems that English has taken every opportunity to 
>increase in complexity, not decrease, at least in regard to vocabulary. Still, 
>despite having university degrees in English and in Linguistics, I feel better 
>educated for this exercise.

I like your point very much! I think people like to say English is a pidgin 
because of several perceptions (I had written “factors”, but that implies that 
they’re necessarily correct; I’m not convinced any of these is accurate/unique 
to English):

1) They think of it as not having evolved as the native language of a 
people (wrong, of course—just not the case in this country)

2) It has strong history to both Greek and Latin, as opposed to many other 
languages, which tend to have simpler/more direct forbears

3) It has borrowed VERY freely from other languages (of course  pretty well 
all languages borrow from other languages, but English (perhaps) more freely 
than others)

4) There’s no Academie Anglaise as there is in France; indeed, English 
words often evolve very rapidly (my favorite example: “chad” going from a mass 
noun to a count noun overnight, with the 2000 election, simply because the 
media misused it and most people had never heard it until then, so the 
instantly most-common usage was as a count noun)

In any case, if you look up the meaning of “pidgin”, it most definitely isn’t 
“a grammatically simplified form of a language, used for communication between 
people not sharing a common language”, so I think we can agree that it might be 
a creole, a mongrel, or some other variant, but “pidgin” it ain’t!

As James Nicoll famously wrote,
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English 
is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, 
English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and 
riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

I’d argue that borrowing a perfectly good word from another language is 
probably better than creating a new one from whole cloth; at least then there’s 
some chance of being able to divine its meaning for some people! ObAnecdote: 
when she was maybe 8, my daughter challenged my dad (a linguist) with the word 
“napiform”. He said, “Well, I’ve never heard it, but I would imagine it means 
‘turnip-shaped’.” And he was of course correct, basing his analysis of “nap” + 
“form” and knowing Latin.

BTW, here are a few interesting pages:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/142968/is-english-actually-a-pidgin-or-creole
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypothesis
https://www.quora.com/Is-English-a-pidgin

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussions of z Systems hardware 
and software.

…phsiii (son of a linguist and admitted pedant)

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

(It must be Friday somewhere.) I'm fascinated by the characterization of 
English as 'pidgin'. I don't see that word in any of the articles cited, but 
it's an intriguing idea. I think where the term falls short is not the 
mish-mash mongrel origin of English but the ideas of 'compromise' and 
'simplification'. It seems that English has taken every opportunity to increase 
in complexity, not decrease, at least in regard to vocabulary. Still, despite 
having university degrees in English and in Linguistics, I feel better educated 
for this exercise. 

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Mike Schwab
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 4:59 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

English is a pidgin language, combined from the three Celtic languages on the 
British Isles and 4 norther European languages from northern Europe.

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/how-english-evolved-into-a-modern-language/1575959.html
https://www.englishclub.com/history-of-english/
http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/


On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 5:08 PM, Mike Myers  wrote:
> All:
>
> Many years ago, I aided Karl Finkemeyer, an IBMer on assignment in NY 
> at the time from Germany, and a great friend of mine to immigrate to 
> the US. He eventually became a citizen, and a director at Fidelity 
> Investments. During the immigration process, his daughter, who by that 
> time, spoke fluent English and German, showed me a paper which made 
> fun of pronunciation of words in English. Unfortunately, I did not 
> obtain a copy, but this discussion made me go and look on-line, hoping to 
> find it.
>
> Although this is not Friday, for those of you that like language 
> (especially English), Google "English pronunciation poem" or "English 
> is a crazy language". Lots of good chuckles for language fans. My favorites 
> were:
>
> https://archive.org/stream/EnglishCrazyLanguageEssay/English%20Crazy%2
> 0Language%20Essay_djvu.txt 
> http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
> the one above as a poem: http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
>
> Mike Myers
> Mentor Services Corporation
> Goldsboro, NC 27530
> (919) 341-5210 - office
>
>
>  On 03/13/2017 05:28 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:
>>
>> "English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own 
>> way, some more so than others. If English were rational and simple, 
>> everybody would be using it. ;-)
>>
>> .
>> .
>> J.O.Skip Robinson
>> Southern California Edison Company
>> Electric Dragon Team Paddler
>> SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
>> 323-715-0595 Mobile
>> 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
>> robin...@sce.com
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] 
>> On Behalf Of John McKown
>> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
>> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>> Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin < 
>> 000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
>>>
>>> It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
>>>  https://xkcd.com/1179/
>>>
>>> And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an 
>>> astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
>>> "Nine fourteen." (orally)
>>>
>>> September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she 
>>> meant, "September, 2014."
>>>
>>> In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers 
>>> were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged 
>>> phone numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were, 
>>> if not insignificant, inconsequential.
>>>
>>> Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of memory,"
>>> pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory", pointing to the 
>>> ceiling.
>>>
>> Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from 
>> top to bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest 
>> last, at the bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them 
>> "ascending" memory addresses while writing them in a descending 
>> pattern. English is a _stupid_ language.
>>
>>
>>
>>> -- gil
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is 
>> ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
>>
>> Maranatha! <><
>> John McKown


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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Phil Smith]

Thanks, Mohammad! Now we can all see how it’s done. Fascinating. Love the fact 
that they’re *read* small-to-large and (it seems) physically written thus when 
writing by hand. And of course in English it’s ambiguous: “written left to 
right” – really “appear the same way as in languages that write left to right, 
but are physically written in the opposite order, except (allegedly?) by some 
machines”. Bet there were some long and heated discussions about this in the 
early days of terminals!

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mohammad Khan]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2017 11:36:46 -0400, Farley, Peter x23353 
 wrote:

>Although Arabic word writing is right to left, numbers are written left to 
>right.

It appears so but that not the case, since the numbers are read in unit - tens 
- hundreds order the writing follows the same order.

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mohammad Khan]

>Mohammad, I’m confused. You said: 
>>In Arabic while writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that 
>>order and it's read "five forty three hundred". 
>I’m trying to understand. Given the number 345. You’re writing a series of 
>letters, starting with A (yes, of course it’s not an >A, but I can’t do the 
>Arabic!). So if the “word” you’re writing is A through F, you’d write what 
>would appear on the page as: 
> 
>FEDCBA 
> 
>Now we’re going to insert 345 between the D and the C (“after” the C). So 
>would that look like: 
> 
>FED345CBA 
>or 
>FED543CBA 
> 
>? I’m sure what you wrote was clear to everyone but me! 
 
It will appear on paper as "FED345CBA" for the number that is three hundred 
forty five in English. This is what I meant by "exactly in that order". I don't 
remember how the word processors handle it as I have not used one in ages.
Cheers

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mike Schwab]

English is a pidgin language, combined from the three Celtic languages
on the British Isles and 4 norther European languages from northern
Europe.

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/how-english-evolved-into-a-modern-language/1575959.html
https://www.englishclub.com/history-of-english/
http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/


On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 5:08 PM, Mike Myers  wrote:
> All:
>
> Many years ago, I aided Karl Finkemeyer, an IBMer on assignment in NY at the
> time from Germany, and a great friend of mine to immigrate to the US. He
> eventually became a citizen, and a director at Fidelity Investments. During
> the immigration process, his daughter, who by that time, spoke fluent
> English and German, showed me a paper which made fun of pronunciation of
> words in English. Unfortunately, I did not obtain a copy, but this
> discussion made me go and look on-line, hoping to find it.
>
> Although this is not Friday, for those of you that like language (especially
> English), Google "English pronunciation poem" or "English is a crazy
> language". Lots of good chuckles for language fans. My favorites were:
>
> https://archive.org/stream/EnglishCrazyLanguageEssay/English%20Crazy%20Language%20Essay_djvu.txt
> http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
> the one above as a poem: http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
>
> Mike Myers
> Mentor Services Corporation
> Goldsboro, NC 27530
> (919) 341-5210 - office
>
>
>  On 03/13/2017 05:28 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:
>>
>> "English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own way,
>> some more so than others. If English were rational and simple, everybody
>> would be using it. ;-)
>>
>> .
>> .
>> J.O.Skip Robinson
>> Southern California Edison Company
>> Electric Dragon Team Paddler
>> SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
>> 323-715-0595 Mobile
>> 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
>> robin...@sce.com
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
>> Behalf Of John McKown
>> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
>> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>> Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin <
>> 000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
>>>
>>> It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
>>>  https://xkcd.com/1179/
>>>
>>> And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an
>>> astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
>>> "Nine fourteen." (orally)
>>>
>>> September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
>>> meant, "September, 2014."
>>>
>>> In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers
>>> were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged phone
>>> numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were, if not
>>> insignificant, inconsequential.
>>>
>>> Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of memory,"
>>> pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory", pointing to the
>>> ceiling.
>>>
>> Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to
>> bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the
>> bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory
>> addresses while writing them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
>> language.
>>
>>
>>
>>> -- gil
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
>> ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
>>
>> Maranatha! <><
>> John McKown
>>
>> --
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>> to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
>>
>>
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>> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
>
>
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-- 
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 2017-03-13, at 15:46, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:

> I've had the scroll up-or-down conversation many times over the years since I 
> learned that my colleagues actually disagreed over which usage is 'correct'. 
> I'm convinced that it's a matter of mental perception embodied in language, 
> not merely a linguistic quirk adopted willy-nilly. 
> 
> Some people truly perceive scrolling on a 3270 screen as a rectangular window 
> moving up or down over a fixed body of text nailed to the background. Others 
> perceive the text itself as moving up or down--like a rolled scroll--behind a 
> rectangular window nailed in front. People will argue their view, and their 
> terminology, quite emphatically.
> 
> The scroll bar on a web screen introduces another wrinkle. You move the bar 
> down to see the bottom of the data, up to see the top. Case closed? I think 
> not. 
>  
Of course not closed.  Earliest full-screen editors followed the
paradigm of moving the window with the file as substrate.  Scroll
bars were consistent with this.

Smartphones and tablets did away with scroll bars, so the natural
paradigm is to drag the subject (file or image) behind the widow.

Recent MacOS releases have switched from move-the-window to
move-the-subject as default, consistent with iOS, but left it
a Preferences option.

Text arrows are yet another wrinkle.  Uniformly (except on brain-dead
block mode terminals), when the cursor collides with the window frame,
the display scrolls to keep the cursor visible.  Scrolling in the
opposite direction is the only thing that would be even dumber than
the common toroidal 2-space in which the cursor moves to the opposite
edge of the screen.

MacOS Preview has dithered.  Early versions were drag-the subject.  Then
it switched to drag-the window.  I think latest versions are back to
drag-the-subject (but I don't have one yet).

-- gil

> .
> .
> J.O.Skip Robinson
> Southern California Edison Company
> Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
> SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
> 323-715-0595 Mobile
> 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
> robin...@sce.com
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 4:26 PM
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
> 
> john.archie.mck...@gmail.com (John McKown) writes:
>> ​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from 
>> top to bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest 
>> last, at the bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them 
>> "ascending" memory addresses while writing them in a descending 
>> pattern. English is a _stupid_ language.
> 
> in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were starting to appear, there was big 
> editor culture wars over up & down.
> 
> prior to that, line-editing was from perspective of the user ...  "up"
> moving towards the "top" (beginning) of the file and "down" was moving 
> towards the "bottom" (end) of the file.
> 
> The side that had enhanced previous line editors to support 3270 fullscreen 
> and preserved the up/down orientation (meaning).
> 
> A couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from scratch, insisted on 
> "up" was from the orientation of the program (not the user), the program 
> would move the file up ... towards the bottom of the file or move the file 
> "down" ... towards the top of the file (difference was` whether up/down was 
> from the human perspective or the program/software perspective).
> 
> --
> virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
> 
> 
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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mike Myers]

All:

Many years ago, I aided Karl Finkemeyer, an IBMer on assignment in NY at 
the time from Germany, and a great friend of mine to immigrate to the 
US. He eventually became a citizen, and a director at Fidelity 
Investments. During the immigration process, his daughter, who by that 
time, spoke fluent English and German, showed me a paper which made fun 
of pronunciation of words in English. Unfortunately, I did not obtain a 
copy, but this discussion made me go and look on-line, hoping to find it.


Although this is not Friday, for those of you that like language 
(especially English), Google "English pronunciation poem" or "English is 
a crazy language". Lots of good chuckles for language fans. My favorites 
were:


https://archive.org/stream/EnglishCrazyLanguageEssay/English%20Crazy%20Language%20Essay_djvu.txt
http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
the one above as a poem: http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
Goldsboro, NC 27530
(919) 341-5210 - office

 On 03/13/2017 05:28 PM, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:

"English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own way, some 
more so than others. If English were rational and simple, everybody would be using it. ;-)

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of John McKown
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin < 
000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:


On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:

It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
 https://xkcd.com/1179/

And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an
astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
"Nine fourteen." (orally)

September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
meant, "September, 2014."

In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers
were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged phone
numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were, if not
insignificant, inconsequential.

Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of memory,"
pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory", pointing to the
ceiling.


​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to bottom. We 
write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the bottom. And then we 
confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory addresses while writing 
them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_ language.




-- gil



--
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's 
called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

I've had the scroll up-or-down conversation many times over the years since I 
learned that my colleagues actually disagreed over which usage is 'correct'. 
I'm convinced that it's a matter of mental perception embodied in language, not 
merely a linguistic quirk adopted willy-nilly. 

Some people truly perceive scrolling on a 3270 screen as a rectangular window 
moving up or down over a fixed body of text nailed to the background. Others 
perceive the text itself as moving up or down--like a rolled scroll--behind a 
rectangular window nailed in front. People will argue their view, and their 
terminology, quite emphatically.

The scroll bar on a web screen introduces another wrinkle. You move the bar 
down to see the bottom of the data, up to see the top. Case closed? I think 
not. 

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 4:26 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

john.archie.mck...@gmail.com (John McKown) writes:
> ​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from 
> top to bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest 
> last, at the bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them 
> "ascending" memory addresses while writing them in a descending 
> pattern. English is a _stupid_ language.

in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were starting to appear, there was big 
editor culture wars over up & down.

prior to that, line-editing was from perspective of the user ...  "up"
moving towards the "top" (beginning) of the file and "down" was moving towards 
the "bottom" (end) of the file.

The side that had enhanced previous line editors to support 3270 fullscreen and 
preserved the up/down orientation (meaning).

A couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from scratch, insisted on "up" 
was from the orientation of the program (not the user), the program would move 
the file up ... towards the bottom of the file or move the file "down" ... 
towards the top of the file (difference was` whether up/down was from the human 
perspective or the program/software perspective).

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


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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

"English is a _stupid_ language." Every language is stupid in its own way, some 
more so than others. If English were rational and simple, everybody would be 
using it. ;-)

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of John McKown
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:56 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin < 
000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
>
> It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
> https://xkcd.com/1179/
>
> And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an 
> astronomer, "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
> "Nine fourteen." (orally)
>
> September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she 
> meant, "September, 2014."
>
> In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers 
> were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged phone 
> numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were, if not 
> insignificant, inconsequential.
>
> Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of memory," 
> pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory", pointing to the 
> ceiling.
>

​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to 
bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the 
bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory 
addresses while writing them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_ 
language.



>
> -- gil
>
>

--
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. 
It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John McKown]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 11:14 AM, Parwez Hamid 
wrote:

> Even though the writing is from right to left, you will find that numbers
> written in Arabic are the same 'format' as in 'west'
>
> e.g 345 will also be 345 in Arabic and not 543, dates are 12/12/1234
> rather than 4321/21/21 or 1234/12/12, page numbers are 123 and not 321
>

​Actually, the Arabic order makes perfect sense to me. The write the
"units" first, then then "tens of units", and so on. I wish we in the
"west" had ​not slavish copied the order from Arabic. I think it is more
logical to write the "units" first. It would definitely make converting
from binary to decimal simpler, if we didn't have the hardware to do it
(CVD instruction).



>
> Happy to be corrected.
>
>

-- 
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Parwez Hamid]

Even though the writing is from right to left, you will find that numbers 
written in Arabic are the same 'format' as in 'west' 

e.g 345 will also be 345 in Arabic and not 543, dates are 12/12/1234 rather 
than 4321/21/21 or 1234/12/12, page numbers are 123 and not 321

Happy to be corrected.

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Farley, Peter x23353]

I don't know which Arabic code page they used for that terminal implementation 
(this was early-to-mid-1980's time frame).  I didn't even know what a code page 
was in those days, because I never had to deal with them at all.

We were mainly a VM/VSE/SP shop with an OS/VS1 system available for testing.  
No ISPF at all.

Peter

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 11:46 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

On 2017-03-13, at 09:36, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

> From a software company I worked for many distant moons ago that also 
> invented a 3270-like "terminal" for sale to an Arabic company (actually it 
> was an 8-bit micro-processor device with two 8-inch floppy drives) I can 
> actually answer that question:
> 
> FED345CBA
>  
What code page?

> Although Arabic word writing is right to left, numbers are written left to 
> right.  Most disconcerting on a 3270-type device when typing out words and 
> numbers, the cursor suddenly stops moving as the numbers are pushed out in 
> the opposite direction from the text.
>  
ISPF Edit/View now do a pretty good job of supporting Unicode; UTF-8; subject 
to teminal capability.  (Buggy, but support works at it.) I wonder whether the 
terminals have kept up?

> As I remember, the terminal implementation team's leader told me that the 
> trickiest part of that terminal emulation was getting the Arabic 
> letter-connector glyphs correct.  Letter glyphs would literally change shape 
> as subsequent letters were typed, and change back again if you back-spaced 
> over a letter.

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 2017-03-13, at 09:36, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

> From a software company I worked for many distant moons ago that also 
> invented a 3270-like "terminal" for sale to an Arabic company (actually it 
> was an 8-bit micro-processor device with two 8-inch floppy drives) I can 
> actually answer that question:
> 
> FED345CBA
>  
What code page?

> Although Arabic word writing is right to left, numbers are written left to 
> right.  Most disconcerting on a 3270-type device when typing out words and 
> numbers, the cursor suddenly stops moving as the numbers are pushed out in 
> the opposite direction from the text.
>  
ISPF Edit/View now do a pretty good job of supporting Unicode; UTF-8;
subject to teminal capability.  (Buggy, but support works at it.)
I wonder whether the terminals have kept up?

> As I remember, the terminal implementation team's leader told me that the 
> trickiest part of that terminal emulation was getting the Arabic 
> letter-connector glyphs correct.  Letter glyphs would literally change shape 
> as subsequent letters were typed, and change back again if you back-spaced 
> over a letter.

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Farley, Peter x23353]

From a software company I worked for many distant moons ago that also invented 
a 3270-like "terminal" for sale to an Arabic company (actually it was an 8-bit 
micro-processor device with two 8-inch floppy drives) I can actually answer 
that question:

FED345CBA

Although Arabic word writing is right to left, numbers are written left to 
right.  Most disconcerting on a 3270-type device when typing out words and 
numbers, the cursor suddenly stops moving as the numbers are pushed out in the 
opposite direction from the text.

As I remember, the terminal implementation team's leader told me that the 
trickiest part of that terminal emulation was getting the Arabic 
letter-connector glyphs correct.  Letter glyphs would literally change shape as 
subsequent letters were typed, and change back again if you back-spaced over a 
letter.

Thanks for the memories!

Peter

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Phil Smith
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 11:12 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

Mohammad, I’m confused. You said:
>In Arabic while writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that 
>order and it's read "five forty three hundred".
I’m trying to understand. Given the number 345. You’re writing a series of 
letters, starting with A (yes, of course it’s not an A, but I can’t do the 
Arabic!). So if the “word” you’re writing is A through F, you’d write what 
would appear on the page as:

FEDCBA

Now we’re going to insert 345 between the D and the C (“after” the C). So would 
that look like:

FED345CBA
or
FED543CBA

? I’m sure what you wrote was clear to everyone but me!

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Phil Smith]

Mohammad, I’m confused. You said:
>In Arabic while writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that 
>order and it's read "five forty three hundred".
I’m trying to understand. Given the number 345. You’re writing a series of 
letters, starting with A (yes, of course it’s not an A, but I can’t do the 
Arabic!). So if the “word” you’re writing is A through F, you’d write what 
would appear on the page as:

FEDCBA

Now we’re going to insert 345 between the D and the C (“after” the C). So would 
that look like:

FED345CBA
or
FED543CBA

? I’m sure what you wrote was clear to everyone but me!

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mohammad Khan]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 16:04:49 -0600, Paul Gilmartin  wrote:

>
>How would you enter that number in a bilingual editor/word processor?  Which
>digit would you press first?
>
>I once had Google translate a short sentence to Arabic.  I was puzzled
>to see the period on the right.  But, ah, that's a Latin period, so it belongs
>on the right in bilingual text.  Can't reproduce the behavior today.
>
>--gil
>

I have rarely worked with a word processor for a right to left language so I 
don't remember which digit is entered first. But the numbers do come out to be 
in the same order and yes the decimal point does appear on the right. 
Interestingly the same order is used in some other languages, for example Urdu, 
 that use adapted Arabic script although numbers are read from most significant 
side i.e. three hundred forty five.

MKK

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John Abell]

Hi,

Toronto and right in the immediate west part of the city, High Park area if you 
know Toronto, where I have a 20 minute walk to and from the office no matter 
the weather.

Cheers,
John T. Abell
Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
President
International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
Fax:800-295-7609

International:  1-416-593-5579


International Software Products
www.ispinfo.com

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-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of scott Ford
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 4:44 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

John,

No problemo, I live in PA about  an hour from Philly.
What part of Canada are you in?

Scott


On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 3:34 PM John Abell < 
john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> Thanks for the plug for Canada.  Where are you located?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> John T. Abell
>
> Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> President
>
> International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> Fax:800-295-7609
>
>
>
> International:  1-416-593-5579
>
>
>
>
>
> International Software Products
>
> www.ispinfo.com
>
>
>
> This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the
> sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention,
> distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you
> are not the intended
>
> recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient),
> please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this
> message. Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
>
> tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and
> receive emails on the basis that we are not liable for any such
> corruption, interception, tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence 
> thereof.
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
>
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
> On Behalf Of scott Ford
>
> Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 10:52 AM
>
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
>
>
> John,
>
>
>
> My career is similar , unit record equip then 360/40 DOS/VS/POWER, the
>
> 360/40 had MFCM and I learned Assembler on a 360/20, of course I
> wasn't in your wonderful country, I always liked Canada.
>
>
>
> Scott
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 7:23 AM John Abell <
> john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I started at IBM in Toronto in August 1964.  1401's, a 1440, a 1460,
> > a
>
> > 7044, an 1130 and all the unit record equipment you could want
> > except
>
> > 403s and 407s,  We also had Tape-to-Tape data flow over a phone line
>
> > in the evenings between Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and
> > Toronto
>
> > using 200BPI horizontal vacuum column tape drives. Soon thereafter,
> > we
>
> > had a
>
> > 360/20 with an MFCM.  I will leave the multiple interpretations of
>
> > MFCM to those from that era.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Anyone else out there remember learning and using Autocoder and FARGO?
>
> > I will forego panel wiring for the time being as this was an
>
> > interesting programming method learned first.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Cheers,
>
> >
>
> > John T. Abell
>
> >
>
> > Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> >
>
> > President
>
> >
>
> > International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> >
>
> > E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> >
>
> > Fax:800-295-7609
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > International:  1-416-593-5579
>
> >
>
> >
>
>

Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[scott Ford]

John,

No problemo, I live in PA about  an hour from Philly.
What part of Canada are you in?

Scott


On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 3:34 PM John Abell <
john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> Thanks for the plug for Canada.  Where are you located?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> John T. Abell
>
> Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> President
>
> International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> Fax:800-295-7609
>
>
>
> International:  1-416-593-5579
>
>
>
>
>
> International Software Products
>
> www.ispinfo.com
>
>
>
> This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole
> use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention, distribution
> or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended
>
> recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient),
> please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this
> message. Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
>
> tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and receive
> emails on the basis that we are not liable for any such corruption,
> interception, tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence thereof.
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
>
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of scott Ford
>
> Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 10:52 AM
>
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
>
>
> John,
>
>
>
> My career is similar , unit record equip then 360/40 DOS/VS/POWER, the
>
> 360/40 had MFCM and I learned Assembler on a 360/20, of course I wasn't in
> your wonderful country, I always liked Canada.
>
>
>
> Scott
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 7:23 AM John Abell <
> john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I started at IBM in Toronto in August 1964.  1401's, a 1440, a 1460, a
>
> > 7044, an 1130 and all the unit record equipment you could want except
>
> > 403s and 407s,  We also had Tape-to-Tape data flow over a phone line
>
> > in the evenings between Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and Toronto
>
> > using 200BPI horizontal vacuum column tape drives. Soon thereafter, we
>
> > had a
>
> > 360/20 with an MFCM.  I will leave the multiple interpretations of
>
> > MFCM to those from that era.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Anyone else out there remember learning and using Autocoder and FARGO?
>
> > I will forego panel wiring for the time being as this was an
>
> > interesting programming method learned first.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Cheers,
>
> >
>
> > John T. Abell
>
> >
>
> > Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> >
>
> > President
>
> >
>
> > International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> >
>
> > E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> >
>
> > Fax:800-295-7609
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > International:  1-416-593-5579
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > International Software Products
>
> >
>
> > www.ispinfo.com
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the
>
> > sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention,
>
> > distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you
>
> > are not the intended
>
> >
>
> > recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient),
>
> > please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this
>
> > message. Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
>
> >
>
> > tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and
>
> > receive emails on the basis that we are not liable for any such
>
> > corruption, interception, tampering, amendment or viruses or any
> consequence thereof.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > -Original Message-
>
> >
>
> > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
>
> > On Behalf Of Mike Myers
>
> >
>
> > Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 8:08 PM
>
> >
>
> > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> >

Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John Abell]

Hi,

Thanks for the plug for Canada.  Where are you located?

Cheers,
John T. Abell
Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
President
International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
Fax:800-295-7609

International:  1-416-593-5579


International Software Products
www.ispinfo.com

This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of 
the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention, distribution or 
disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient), please 
contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message. 
Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and receive emails 
on the basis that we are not liable for any such corruption, interception, 
tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence thereof.


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of scott Ford
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 10:52 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

John,

My career is similar , unit record equip then 360/40 DOS/VS/POWER, the
360/40 had MFCM and I learned Assembler on a 360/20, of course I wasn't in your 
wonderful country, I always liked Canada.

Scott

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 7:23 AM John Abell < 
john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:

> I started at IBM in Toronto in August 1964.  1401's, a 1440, a 1460, a
> 7044, an 1130 and all the unit record equipment you could want except
> 403s and 407s,  We also had Tape-to-Tape data flow over a phone line
> in the evenings between Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and Toronto
> using 200BPI horizontal vacuum column tape drives. Soon thereafter, we
> had a
> 360/20 with an MFCM.  I will leave the multiple interpretations of
> MFCM to those from that era.
>
>
>
> Anyone else out there remember learning and using Autocoder and FARGO?
> I will forego panel wiring for the time being as this was an
> interesting programming method learned first.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> John T. Abell
>
> Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> President
>
> International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> Fax:800-295-7609
>
>
>
> International:  1-416-593-5579
>
>
>
>
>
> International Software Products
>
> www.ispinfo.com
>
>
>
> This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the
> sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention,
> distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you
> are not the intended
>
> recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient),
> please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this
> message. Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
>
> tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and
> receive emails on the basis that we are not liable for any such
> corruption, interception, tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence 
> thereof.
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
>
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
> On Behalf Of Mike Myers
>
> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 8:08 PM
>
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
>
>
> Warren:
>
>
>
> My God, you've been around even longer than me. I only joined IBM on Nov.
> 9, 1964 and started programming school the day before OS/360 went GA.
> How many other old f***s (friends) have we out here on this forum?
>
>
>
> Mike Myers
>
> Mentor Services Corporation
>
> (919) 341-5210
>
>
>
> On 03/09/2017 07:39 PM, Warren Brown wrote:
>
> >   I thought it was me . .joined IBM the same day as the 360 was
>
> > announced
>
> > 
>
> > On Thu, 3/9/17, Anne & Lynn Wheeler  wrote:
>
> >
>
> >   Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
> >   To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> >   Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7:26 PM
>
> >
>
> >   john.archie.mck...@gmail.com
>
> >   (John McKown) writes:
>
> >   > ​Same in other
>
> >   books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top
>
> >   to
>
> >   > bottom. We write the lowest first,
>
> >   at the top, and the highest last, at the
>
> >   

Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[scott Ford]

John,

My career is similar , unit record equip then 360/40 DOS/VS/POWER, the
360/40 had MFCM and I learned Assembler on a
360/20, of course I wasn't in your wonderful country, I always liked Canada.

Scott

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 7:23 AM John Abell <
john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com> wrote:

> I started at IBM in Toronto in August 1964.  1401's, a 1440, a 1460, a
> 7044, an 1130 and all the unit record equipment you could want except 403s
> and 407s,  We also had Tape-to-Tape data flow over a phone line in the
> evenings between Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and Toronto using
> 200BPI horizontal vacuum column tape drives. Soon thereafter, we had a
> 360/20 with an MFCM.  I will leave the multiple interpretations of MFCM to
> those from that era.
>
>
>
> Anyone else out there remember learning and using Autocoder and FARGO?  I
> will forego panel wiring for the time being as this was an interesting
> programming method learned first.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> John T. Abell
>
> Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
>
> President
>
> International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
>
> E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
>
> Fax:800-295-7609
>
>
>
> International:  1-416-593-5579
>
>
>
>
>
> International Software Products
>
> www.ispinfo.com
>
>
>
> This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole
> use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention, distribution
> or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended
>
> recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient),
> please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this
> message. Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
>
> tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and receive
> emails on the basis that we are not liable for any such corruption,
> interception, tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence thereof.
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
>
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Mike Myers
>
> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 8:08 PM
>
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
>
>
> Warren:
>
>
>
> My God, you've been around even longer than me. I only joined IBM on Nov.
> 9, 1964 and started programming school the day before OS/360 went GA. How
> many other old f***s (friends) have we out here on this forum?
>
>
>
> Mike Myers
>
> Mentor Services Corporation
>
> (919) 341-5210
>
>
>
> On 03/09/2017 07:39 PM, Warren Brown wrote:
>
> >   I thought it was me . .joined IBM the same day as the 360 was
>
> > announced
>
> > 
>
> > On Thu, 3/9/17, Anne & Lynn Wheeler  wrote:
>
> >
>
> >   Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
> >   To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>
> >   Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7:26 PM
>
> >
>
> >   john.archie.mck...@gmail.com
>
> >   (John McKown) writes:
>
> >   > ​Same in other
>
> >   books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top
>
> >   to
>
> >   > bottom. We write the lowest first,
>
> >   at the top, and the highest last, at the
>
> >   > bottom. And then we confuse everybody by
>
> >   calling them "ascending" memory
>
> >   > addresses while writing them in a
>
> >   descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
>
> >   > language.
>
> >
>
> >   in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were
>
> >   starting to appear, there
>
> >   was big editor
>
> >   culture wars over up & down.
>
> >
>
> >   prior to that, line-editing was from
>
> >   perspective of the user ...  "up"
>
> >   moving towards the "top" (beginning)
>
> >   of the file and "down" was moving
>
> >   towards the "bottom" (end) of the
>
> >   file.
>
> >
>
> >   The side that had
>
> >   enhanced previous line editors to support 3270
>
> >   fullscreen and preserved the up/down
>
> >   orientation (meaning).
>
> >
>
> >   A
>
> >   couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from
>
> >   scratch, insisted
>
> >   on "up" was from
>
> >   the orientation of the program (not the user), the
>

Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John Abell]

I started at IBM in Toronto in August 1964.  1401's, a 1440, a 1460, a 7044, an 
1130 and all the unit record equipment you could want except 403s and 407s,  We 
also had Tape-to-Tape data flow over a phone line in the evenings between 
Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and Toronto using 200BPI horizontal vacuum 
column tape drives. Soon thereafter, we had a 360/20 with an MFCM.  I will 
leave the multiple interpretations of MFCM to those from that era.

Anyone else out there remember learning and using Autocoder and FARGO?  I will 
forego panel wiring for the time being as this was an interesting programming 
method learned first.

Cheers,
John T. Abell
Tel:800-295-7608Option 4
President
International:  1-416-593-5578  Option 4
E-mail:  john.ab...@intnlsoftwareproducts.com
Fax:800-295-7609

International:  1-416-593-5579


International Software Products
www.ispinfo.com

This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of 
the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, retention, distribution or 
disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient (or authorized to receive on behalf of the named recipient), please 
contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message. 
Also,email is susceptible to data corruption, interception,
tampering, unauthorized amendment and viruses. We only send and receive emails 
on the basis that we are not liable for any such corruption, interception, 
tampering, amendment or viruses or any consequence thereof.


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Mike Myers
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 8:08 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

Warren:

My God, you've been around even longer than me. I only joined IBM on Nov. 9, 
1964 and started programming school the day before OS/360 went GA. How many 
other old f***s (friends) have we out here on this forum?

Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
(919) 341-5210

On 03/09/2017 07:39 PM, Warren Brown wrote:
>   I thought it was me . .joined IBM the same day as the 360 was
> announced
> 
> On Thu, 3/9/17, Anne & Lynn Wheeler  wrote:
>
>   Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>   To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>   Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7:26 PM
>
>   john.archie.mck...@gmail.com
>   (John McKown) writes:
>   > ​Same in other
>   books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top
>   to
>   > bottom. We write the lowest first,
>   at the top, and the highest last, at the
>   > bottom. And then we confuse everybody by
>   calling them "ascending" memory
>   > addresses while writing them in a
>   descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
>   > language.
>
>   in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were
>   starting to appear, there
>   was big editor
>   culture wars over up & down.
>
>   prior to that, line-editing was from
>   perspective of the user ...  "up"
>   moving towards the "top" (beginning)
>   of the file and "down" was moving
>   towards the "bottom" (end) of the
>   file.
>
>   The side that had
>   enhanced previous line editors to support 3270
>   fullscreen and preserved the up/down
>   orientation (meaning).
>
>   A
>   couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from
>   scratch, insisted
>   on "up" was from
>   the orientation of the program (not the user), the
>   program would move the file up ... towards the
>   bottom of the file or
>   move the file
>   "down" ... towards the top of the file (difference
>   was`
>   whether up/down was from the human
>   perspective or the program/software
>   perspective).
>
>   --
>   virtualization experience
>   starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
>
>   --
>   For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive
>   access instructions,
>   send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu
>   with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
>
> --
> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send
> email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
>

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Dave Wade]

>This is more a Friday type topic. But I'm curious about why the original
>designers of the S/360 went with "big endian" instead of "small endian"?
>The _only_ reason that I can think of is because our arithmetic "system" is
>"big endian". The more I think about it, the more Intel's "little endian"
>architecture makes more sense. I also wish the same were true of our
>writing (e.g. one hundred would be written 001, not 100). This latter would
>actually make outputting formatted numbers easier to program.

Firstly, I think its more apposite ask "why did Intel make the 80XX family 
little endian." when every thing before, around that time and what came after 
has been big endian?

I believe that the answer is that these are essentially 8-bit architectures and 
process a byte at a time.   
I believe that the little endian architecture saves space in the Microcode, as 
16-bit loads are merely the 8-bit loads continued.

On a 32-bit word based machine, with word aligned operands, which is what the 
S/360 was it makes no sense whatsoever.


>Oh, well, feel free to ignore this musing of mine.
>
>-- 
>"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
>ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
>
>Maranatha! <><
>John McKown

Dave Wade

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mike Myers]

Warren:

My God, you've been around even longer than me. I only joined IBM on 
Nov. 9, 1964 and started programming school the day before OS/360 went 
GA. How many other old f***s (friends) have we out here on this forum?


Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
(919) 341-5210

On 03/09/2017 07:39 PM, Warren Brown wrote:

  I thought it was me . .joined IBM the same day as the 360 was announced

On Thu, 3/9/17, Anne & Lynn Wheeler  wrote:

  Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7:26 PM
  
  john.archie.mck...@gmail.com

  (John McKown) writes:
  > ​Same in other
  books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top
  to
  > bottom. We write the lowest first,
  at the top, and the highest last, at the
  > bottom. And then we confuse everybody by
  calling them "ascending" memory
  > addresses while writing them in a
  descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
  > language.
  
  in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were

  starting to appear, there
  was big editor
  culture wars over up & down.
  
  prior to that, line-editing was from

  perspective of the user ...  "up"
  moving towards the "top" (beginning)
  of the file and "down" was moving
  towards the "bottom" (end) of the
  file.
  
  The side that had

  enhanced previous line editors to support 3270
  fullscreen and preserved the up/down
  orientation (meaning).
  
  A

  couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from
  scratch, insisted
  on "up" was from
  the orientation of the program (not the user), the
  program would move the file up ... towards the
  bottom of the file or
  move the file
  "down" ... towards the top of the file (difference
  was`
  whether up/down was from the human
  perspective or the program/software
  perspective).
  
  --

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

  For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive
  access instructions,
  send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu
  with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Tom Brennan]

I believe there is at least one web program for panning images where you 
move the mouse left and the bits on the screen image move to the right. 
 I get so confused!  When moving the mouse to the left I expect the 
bits to drag along with it to the left.  The wars continue :)


Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were starting to appear, there
was big editor culture wars over up & down.


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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Warren Brown]

 I thought it was me . .joined IBM the same day as the 360 was announced

On Thu, 3/9/17, Anne & Lynn Wheeler  wrote:

 Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017, 7:26 PM
 
 john.archie.mck...@gmail.com
 (John McKown) writes:
 > ​Same in other
 books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top
 to
 > bottom. We write the lowest first,
 at the top, and the highest last, at the
 > bottom. And then we confuse everybody by
 calling them "ascending" memory
 > addresses while writing them in a
 descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
 > language.
 
 in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were
 starting to appear, there
 was big editor
 culture wars over up & down.
 
 prior to that, line-editing was from
 perspective of the user ...  "up"
 moving towards the "top" (beginning)
 of the file and "down" was moving
 towards the "bottom" (end) of the
 file.
 
 The side that had
 enhanced previous line editors to support 3270
 fullscreen and preserved the up/down
 orientation (meaning).
 
 A
 couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from
 scratch, insisted
 on "up" was from
 the orientation of the program (not the user), the
 program would move the file up ... towards the
 bottom of the file or
 move the file
 "down" ... towards the top of the file (difference
 was`
 whether up/down was from the human
 perspective or the program/software
 perspective).
 
 -- 
 virtualization experience
 starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
 
 --
 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive
 access instructions,
 send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu
 with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

john.archie.mck...@gmail.com (John McKown) writes:
> ​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to
> bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the
> bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory
> addresses while writing them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
> language.

in the 70s as fullscreen 3270s editors were starting to appear, there
was big editor culture wars over up & down.

prior to that, line-editing was from perspective of the user ...  "up"
moving towards the "top" (beginning) of the file and "down" was moving
towards the "bottom" (end) of the file.

The side that had enhanced previous line editors to support 3270
fullscreen and preserved the up/down orientation (meaning).

A couple of "new" 3270 fullscreen editors, done from scratch, insisted
on "up" was from the orientation of the program (not the user), the
program would move the file up ... towards the bottom of the file or
move the file "down" ... towards the top of the file (difference was`
whether up/down was from the human perspective or the program/software
perspective).

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

--
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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 17:16:09 -0600, Bill Woodger wrote:

>Four-and-twenty is not poetic, it is archaic, with continuing regional use in 
>the UK. Although probably originally more thorough, I've only heard it used 
>with 20. I grew up with five-and-20-past and five-and-20-to for the time. I 
>didn't pick it up myself. Also for non-time things, but only with 20.
>
>What's the French for 83? Four-twenties-three. What if the 360 had been 
>developed in Toulon, or Lincolnshire (the real one)?
> 
Google says, for:
eighty-three
three hundred sixty

quatre vingt trois
Trois cent soixante
Capitalization?

and KJV:
his [the beast's] number is Six hundred threescore and six
Capitalization?

And a long cwt is eight stone.

Other powerful arguments for metrication:

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/08/error-shows-colorado-drivers-licenses-taller/
("Sir, please do *not* step out of the vehicle!")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#Refueling

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[J R]

Originally archaic, of course.  But these days it's also poetic.  "Twenty-four 
blackbirds" would not maintain the meter/metre.  ;-) 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 9, 2017, at 18:16, Bill Woodger  wrote:
> 
> Four-and-twenty is not poetic, it is archaic, with continuing regional use in 
> the UK. Although probably originally more thorough, I've only heard it used 
> with 20. I grew up with five-and-20-past and five-and-20-to for the time. I 
> didn't pick it up myself. Also for non-time things, but only with 20.
> 
> What's the French for 83? Four-twenties-three. What if the 360 had been 
> developed in Toulon, or Lincolnshire (the real one)?
> 
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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Bill Woodger]

Four-and-twenty is not poetic, it is archaic, with continuing regional use in 
the UK. Although probably originally more thorough, I've only heard it used 
with 20. I grew up with five-and-20-past and five-and-20-to for the time. I 
didn't pick it up myself. Also for non-time things, but only with 20.

What's the French for 83? Four-twenties-three. What if the 360 had been 
developed in Toulon, or Lincolnshire (the real one)?

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[J R]

"Four-and-twenty blackbirds ..."?

When poetic licence kicks in, all bets are off!

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 9, 2017, at 17:05, Paul Gilmartin 
<000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu<mailto:000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu>>
 wrote:

On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:27:58 -0600, Mohammad Khan wrote:

No idea why S/360 folks did it this way but among the natural languages there 
is at least one, likely more, where they do like you desire. In Arabic while 
writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that order and it's read 
"five forty three hundred".

"Four-and-twenty blackbirds ..."?

How would you enter that number in a bilingual editor/word processor?  Which
digit would you press first?

I once had Google translate a short sentence to Arabic.  I was puzzled
to see the period on the right.  But, ah, that's a Latin period, so it belongs
on the right in bilingual text.  Can't reproduce the behavior today.

--gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:27:58 -0600, Mohammad Khan wrote:
>
>No idea why S/360 folks did it this way but among the natural languages there 
>is at least one, likely more, where they do like you desire. In Arabic while 
>writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that order and it's read 
>"five forty three hundred".
> 
"Four-and-twenty blackbirds ..."?

How would you enter that number in a bilingual editor/word processor?  Which
digit would you press first?

I once had Google translate a short sentence to Arabic.  I was puzzled
to see the period on the right.  But, ah, that's a Latin period, so it belongs
on the right in bilingual text.  Can't reproduce the behavior today.

--gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John McKown]

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Paul Gilmartin <
000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:
>
> It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
> https://xkcd.com/1179/
>
> And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an astronomer,
> "When is the equinox on Saturn?"
> "Nine fourteen." (orally)
>
> September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
> meant, "September, 2014."
>
> In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers
> were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged
> phone numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were,
> if not insignificant, inconsequential.
>
> Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of
> memory," pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory",
> pointing to the ceiling.
>

​Same in other books I've seen. Why? Probably because we write from top to
bottom. We write the lowest first, at the top, and the highest last, at the
bottom. And then we confuse everybody by calling them "ascending" memory
addresses while writing them in a descending pattern. English is a _stupid_
language.



>
> -- gil
>
>

-- 
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:18:03 -0600, Joel C. Ewing wrote:

>I think it's much more fundamental than that.  At least in Western
>civilizations our methods of numeric notation are essentially
>"big-endian":  we write numbers from left to right, most significant
>digits first, and if one were asked to count the number of symbols
>written down, most would instinctively count from left to right as well,
>like the standard orientation of the positive x direction in Cartesian
>coordinates.  That corresponds to the concept of regarding higher memory
>addresses as proceeding to the right.
> 
It's cultural.  Consider how Europeans write dates.
https://xkcd.com/1179/

And significance is subjective.  About 10 years ago, I asked an astronomer,
"When is the equinox on Saturn?"
"Nine fourteen." (orally)

September 14th seemed too soon until I pondered and realized she
meant, "September, 2014."

In Boulder, CO, in the '60s (some century), all local phone numbers
were (303)442-xxx or (303)443-.  People routinely exchanged
phone numbers (orally) by only the last 5 digits.  The first 5 were,
if not insignificant, inconsequential.

Computer science professor W.M. Waite used to say, "Top of
memory," pointing to the floor, and "Bottom of memory",
pointing to the ceiling.

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Mohammad Khan]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 10:11:44 -0600, John McKown  
wrote:

>This is more a Friday type topic. But I'm curious about why the original
>designers of the S/360 went with "big endian" instead of "small endian"?
>The _only_ reason that I can think of is because our arithmetic "system" is
>"big endian". The more I think about it, the more Intel's "little endian"
>architecture makes more sense. I also wish the same were true of our
>writing (e.g. one hundred would be written 001, not 100). This latter would
>actually make outputting formatted numbers easier to program.
>

No idea why S/360 folks did it this way but among the natural languages there 
is at least one, likely more, where they do like you desire. In Arabic while 
writing from right to left 345 is written exactly in that order and it's read 
"five forty three hundred".

>Oh, well, feel free to ignore this musing of mine.
>
>--
>"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
>ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
>
>Maranatha! <><
>John McKown
>

MKK

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Joel C. Ewing]

I think it's much more fundamental than that.  At least in Western
civilizations our methods of numeric notation are essentially
"big-endian":  we write numbers from left to right, most significant
digits first, and if one were asked to count the number of symbols
written down, most would instinctively count from left to right as well,
like the standard orientation of the positive x direction in Cartesian
coordinates.  That corresponds to the concept of regarding higher memory
addresses as proceeding to the right.

Conventions on punched cards simply followed the same convention as
manual notation, as did hardware registers on early mainframes and the
ordering of characters and digits when mapped to memory in mainframes.

I don't think little-endian usage got popularized until it became
practical to design inexpensive mini-computers and eventually
microprocessors, and there were no doubt some design simplifications
which made using little-endian ordering a cheaper solution at the time. 
An overriding design requirement in those days was to keep things simple
at the hardware level, even if it made things more difficult or
unnatural for humans that had to deal with programming and debugging.

Computers whose evolution can be traced back to early mainframes tend to
be big-endian.  Computers that evolved from mini-computer,
microprocessor roots tend to use little-endian conventions.
 Joel C. Ewing

On 03/08/2017 04:16 PM, Charles Mills wrote:
> Two words: punched cards. 
>
> Numbers on punched cards were "big-endian." IBM was the dominant power in 
> tabulating machines and never wanted to let that advantage slip away. 
>
> Charles
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of John McKown
> Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 12:32 PM
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".
>
> On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Tom Marchant < 
> 000a2a8c2020-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 11:33:31 -0700, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
>>
>>> It probably save hardware to decrement as well as increment in 
>>> accessing storage.  Consider that CLC goes left-to-right but AP goes 
>>> right-to-left.
>> AP goes right to left because it would otherwise have to do more work 
>> to propagate carry.
>>
> ​Right. But it could go to the left if the nybbles in the packed decimal 
> number were in reverse order, with the sign nybble being the first
> (leftmost) nybble in the data stream. I.e. instead of 01234F be F43210 .
> But that was likely not acceptable because one reason that programmers love 
> packed rather than binary is that they can read it directly in the hex dump. 
> Said dump being far more prevalent tool for debugging in the far past. Some 
> decisions are not really hardware dictated. They're cultural.
>
>
>> CLC goes left to right because it can stop as soon as it finds a 
>> mismatch and recognize which is greater. If all you wanted to check 
>> for was that the two are equal, you could go either way, but that's not as 
>> useful.
>>
>> --
>> Tom Marchant
>>
>>
> ...


-- 
Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR   jcew...@acm.org 

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Charles Mills]

Two words: punched cards. 

Numbers on punched cards were "big-endian." IBM was the dominant power in 
tabulating machines and never wanted to let that advantage slip away. 

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of John McKown
Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 12:32 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Tom Marchant < 
000a2a8c2020-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 11:33:31 -0700, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
>
> >It probably save hardware to decrement as well as increment in 
> >accessing storage.  Consider that CLC goes left-to-right but AP goes 
> >right-to-left.
>
> AP goes right to left because it would otherwise have to do more work 
> to propagate carry.
>

​Right. But it could go to the left if the nybbles in the packed decimal number 
were in reverse order, with the sign nybble being the first
(leftmost) nybble in the data stream. I.e. instead of 01234F be F43210 .
But that was likely not acceptable because one reason that programmers love 
packed rather than binary is that they can read it directly in the hex dump. 
Said dump being far more prevalent tool for debugging in the far past. Some 
decisions are not really hardware dictated. They're cultural.


> CLC goes left to right because it can stop as soon as it finds a 
> mismatch and recognize which is greater. If all you wanted to check 
> for was that the two are equal, you could go either way, but that's not as 
> useful.
>
> --
> Tom Marchant
>
>
--
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. 
It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Tom Marchant]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 15:13:59 -0600, Paul Gilmartin wrote:

>On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 14:32:10 -0600, John McKown wrote:
>>
>>one reason that programmers love
>>packed rather than binary is that they can read it directly in the hex
>>dump. Said dump being far more prevalent tool for debugging in the far
>>past. Some decisions are not really hardware dictated. They're cultural.
>> 
>DFP must have been a great disappointment to programmers who expected
>it would facilitate reading floating point numbers in dumps.
>
>And appearance of dumps is the only reason I can imagine that packed
>decimal is sign-magnitude rather than 10's complement.

That was not the reason. Architecture of the System/360 by Amdahl, 
Blaauw, and Brooks describes many of the design decisions that were 
made, including this one.

http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC272/S2005/Papers/IBM360-Amdahl_april64.pdf

One of the reasons for using decimal arithmetic for commercial programs 
is that binary cannot precisely represent 1/10, just as decimal cannot 
accurately represent 1/3. If you divide 1 by x'0A' you get, IIRC, 
X'0.199'.

-- 
Tom Marchant

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 14:32:10 -0600, John McKown wrote:
>>
>> AP goes right to left because it would otherwise have to do more work to
>> propagate carry.
>
>​Right. But it could go to the left if the nybbles in the packed decimal
>number were in reverse order, with the sign nybble being the first
>(leftmost) nybble in the data stream. I.e. instead of 01234F be F43210 .
>But that was likely not acceptable because one reason that programmers love
>packed rather than binary is that they can read it directly in the hex
>dump. Said dump being far more prevalent tool for debugging in the far
>past. Some decisions are not really hardware dictated. They're cultural.
> 
DFP must have been a great disappointment to programmers who expected
it would facilitate reading floating point numbers in dumps.

And appearance of dumps is the only reason I can imagine that packed
decimal is sign-magnitude rather than 10's complement.

o 10's complement would allow a greater range in the same storage.  E.g.
  -5000 to +4999 rather than -999 to +999 in two bytes.

o 10's complement would obviate the need for a recomplement pass half
  the time when adding numbers with unlike signs.

Once I saw a VAX dump.  The ASCII read left-to-right.  The hex had the
higher addresses on the left, so it read as if big-endian.  I.e. where the
ASCII showed ABCD; the hex showed 44434241.

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John McKown]

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Tom Marchant <
000a2a8c2020-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 11:33:31 -0700, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
>
> >It probably save hardware to decrement as well as increment in
> >accessing storage.  Consider that CLC goes left-to-right but
> >AP goes right-to-left.
>
> AP goes right to left because it would otherwise have to do more work to
> propagate carry.
>

​Right. But it could go to the left if the nybbles in the packed decimal
number were in reverse order, with the sign nybble being the first
(leftmost) nybble in the data stream. I.e. instead of 01234F be F43210 .
But that was likely not acceptable because one reason that programmers love
packed rather than binary is that they can read it directly in the hex
dump. Said dump being far more prevalent tool for debugging in the far
past. Some decisions are not really hardware dictated. They're cultural.


> CLC goes left to right because it can stop as soon as it finds a mismatch
> and recognize which is greater. If all you wanted to check for was that the
> two are equal, you could go either way, but that's not as useful.
>
> --
> Tom Marchant
>
>
-- 
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ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Tom Marchant]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 11:33:31 -0700, Paul Gilmartin wrote:

>It probably save hardware to decrement as well as increment in
>accessing storage.  Consider that CLC goes left-to-right but
>AP goes right-to-left.

AP goes right to left because it would otherwise have to do more work to 
propagate carry.

CLC goes left to right because it can stop as soon as it finds a mismatch and 
recognize which is greater. If all you wanted to check for was that the two are 
equal, you could go either way, but that's not as useful.

-- 
Tom Marchant

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Phil Smith]

Paul Gilmartin wrote:
>Um. No.  Not unless the top halves and bottom halves are identical.

I said it wrong. What I meant is, if you expect a halfword and I pass a 
fullword, you’ll see zero for values up to 65K. Then you’ll start seeing values 
mod(65K). So you’ll *notice* right away. Similarly, if you expect a fullword 
and I pass a halfword, you’ll also notice right away, ‘cause you’ll see 
values+65K. Either way, basic testing will reveal the problem.

With little-endian, as Charles noted, it’ll work fine up until 65K+1. So 
testing that doesn’t cover this case won’t notice the bug.

Better?

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 2017-03-08, at 11:08, Tom Marchant wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 09:31:53 -0800, Charles Mills wrote:
> 
>> an 8-bit processor could do 32-bit arithmetic by nibbling off one byte of it 
>> at a time.
> 
> ITYM "had to" rather than "could".
>  
It probably save hardware to decrement as well as increment in
accessing storage.  Consider that CLC goes left-to-right but
AP goes right-to-left.

But it was mostly software in those days, anyway.

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 2017-03-08, at 09:41, Phil Smith wrote:

> Charles Mills wrote:
>> One thing about little-endian I have observed of relevance to software 
>> writers: if I expect you to pass me a halfword and instead you pass me a 
>> fullword, then the code will probably work most of the time. Whether that is 
>> a benefit or a liability depends upon one's point of view.
> I come down strongly on the “Liability” side: “It works until you enter a 
> really big number” sounds like just asking for obscure failures. Obviously 
> with big-endian, the opposite is also true: if I expect a fullword and you 
> pass a halfword, it’ll sort of work with big numbers,
>  
Um. No.  Not unless the top halves and bottom halves are identical.

> fail with smaller. But that’s an easier to detect failure (“I passed 10 
> and it said I passed 34 thousand and change”), plus testing will start with 
> small values and thus it’ll show up immediately; the little-endian case will 
> work fine until the numbers get big and it doesn’t.
>  
A colleague perferred to test with big-endian in order to detect
operand type errors early.

I was exposed to a dreadful ISV compiler which promoted char, short, and int
formal parameters to long, as is the convention in absence of a function
prototype.  (Ah, the bad old days!)  But then the "&" (pointer to) operator
pointed to the high end of the long in a big-endian system.

-- gil

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Tom Marchant]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 09:31:53 -0800, Charles Mills wrote:

>an 8-bit processor could do 32-bit arithmetic by nibbling off one byte of it 
>at a time.

ITYM "had to" rather than "could".

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Charles Mills]

Yeah, I have to agree with "liability" except in the cases where valid values 
above 32K or 64K are impossible. (The length of a command entered on a single 
"punched card" for example.)

And no, @Gil, that is not your cue for a rant on long LRECL SYSIN datasets! 

> allow per-page choice of endianness

Sure, CPU silicon is so cheap and trivial now. Back when Intel did 
little-endian (despite surely being aware of the S/360 big-endian precedent) I 
suspect it was to save silicon: an 8-bit processor could do 32-bit arithmetic 
by nibbling off one byte of it at a time.

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Phil Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 8:42 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

Charles Mills wrote:
>One thing about little-endian I have observed of relevance to software 
>writers: if I expect you to pass me a halfword and instead you pass me a 
>fullword, then the code will probably work most of the time. Whether that is a 
>benefit or a liability depends upon one's point of view.
I come down strongly on the “Liability” side: “It works until you enter a 
really big number” sounds like just asking for obscure failures. Obviously with 
big-endian, the opposite is also true: if I expect a fullword and you pass a 
halfword, it’ll sort of work with big numbers, fail with smaller. But that’s an 
easier to detect failure passed 10 and it said I passed 34 thousand and 
change”), plus testing will start with small values and thus it’ll show up 
immediately; the little-endian case will work fine until the numbers get big 
and it doesn’t.

But, like you, I grew up with big-endian, wasn’t even aware of little-endian 
until well into my career. Reading the Wikipedia page makes my head hurt:
Some CPUs, such as many PowerPC processors intended for embedded use and almost 
all SPARC processors, allow per-page choice of endianness.

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Phil Smith]

Charles Mills wrote:
>One thing about little-endian I have observed of relevance to software 
>writers: if I expect you to pass me a halfword and instead you pass me a 
>fullword, then the code will probably work most of the time. Whether that is a 
>benefit or a liability depends upon one's point of view.
I come down strongly on the “Liability” side: “It works until you enter a 
really big number” sounds like just asking for obscure failures. Obviously with 
big-endian, the opposite is also true: if I expect a fullword and you pass a 
halfword, it’ll sort of work with big numbers, fail with smaller. But that’s an 
easier to detect failure (“I passed 10 and it said I passed 34 thousand and 
change”), plus testing will start with small values and thus it’ll show up 
immediately; the little-endian case will work fine until the numbers get big 
and it doesn’t.

But, like you, I grew up with big-endian, wasn’t even aware of little-endian 
until well into my career. Reading the Wikipedia page makes my head hurt:
Some CPUs, such as many PowerPC processors intended for embedded use and almost 
all SPARC processors, allow per-page choice of endianness.

Wow. That’s…fun. FSVO “fun”.

…phsiii

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Re: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[Charles Mills]

Our civil notation is big-endian but of course mental arithmetic is 
little-endian: to compute 456 + 789 the mental exercise is 6 + 9 = 15, write 
down the 5, 1 + 5 + 8 = 14, ...

I don't know the answer to your question. The S/360 was the first computer I 
learned at the hardware level, so big-endian just seemed like the natural way 
to do things. After I worked some on Intel I started to "get" the benefits of 
little-endian.

One thing about little-endian I have observed of relevance to software writers: 
if I expect you to pass me a halfword and instead you pass me a fullword, then 
the code will probably work most of the time. Whether that is a benefit or a 
liability depends upon one's point of view.

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of John McKown
Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 8:12 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

This is more a Friday type topic. But I'm curious about why the original 
designers of the S/360 went with "big endian" instead of "small endian"?
The _only_ reason that I can think of is because our arithmetic "system" is 
"big endian". The more I think about it, the more Intel's "little endian"
architecture makes more sense. I also wish the same were true of our writing 
(e.g. one hundred would be written 001, not 100). This latter would actually 
make outputting formatted numbers easier to program.

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curious: why S/360 & decendants are "big endian".

[John McKown]

This is more a Friday type topic. But I'm curious about why the original
designers of the S/360 went with "big endian" instead of "small endian"?
The _only_ reason that I can think of is because our arithmetic "system" is
"big endian". The more I think about it, the more Intel's "little endian"
architecture makes more sense. I also wish the same were true of our
writing (e.g. one hundred would be written 001, not 100). This latter would
actually make outputting formatted numbers easier to program.

Oh, well, feel free to ignore this musing of mine.

-- 
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50 • The Channel

[Ed Gould]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/04/07/ibm_s_360_50_anniversary/


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FYI: Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50 (The Register)

[Mark Regan]

Take it for what's it worth.

===

Big Blue's big $5bn bet adjusted, modified, reduced, back for more

Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50

 
Thanks,
 
Mark Regan
<><

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Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)]

In , on 02/25/2013
   at 08:56 AM, Clark Morris  said:

>Is the MICHMODS OS360 precursor to the CBT tape archived anywhere?

It's not a precursor. The CBT tape, Michican mods tape and MVS mods
tape were independent of each other. Ideally all of them should be
available online, along with several others, e.g., the SVS mods tapes
and several VM collections.

-- 
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 Atid/2
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

l...@garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
> VNET wiki reference
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_VNET
>
> misc. past posts mentioning internal network
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#7 Spacewar! on S/360

warning: vnet topic drift.

JES2 had inherited some networking support from HASP that had "TUCC"
identifier in the source statements. It used spare entries in the (255
entry) psuedo spool device table ... for network defintions
... typically able to define 160 or so entries. However, 23Jun69
unbundling announcement started to charge for application software
(company did make the case that kernel software would still be free).
JES2 had fairly heavyweight development and pricing policies required
that monthly price cover the ongoing costs plus the upfront development
costs. Even with inherited lot of networking support from university
hasp ... there was no forecasted price for JES2 networking that covered
its cost (company normally did three forecast levels, high, medium, and
low ... assumption was that number of customers increased as price went
down ... but there was no price times number of customers ... that
covered the upfront JES networking costs).

VNET had modern layered architecture (compared to JES and other of the
period) ... had no limit on nodes and also could support "drivers" that
talked to other infrastructures. At the time, the internal network had
more nodes than could be defined in JES ... so the basis for the
internal network was all VNET ... but VNET did have drivers that could
talk to JES as boundary nodes (JES couldn't be trusted at other than
boundary ... since it would trash traffic if either the origin or
destination node wasn't in its table ... even at boundary, JES would
trash traffic where that JES was the destination ... if the originating
node wasn't in its table). JES lack of clean layered architecture also
resulted in traffic between two JES systems at different versions would
crash the MVS system. This became increasingly common as the internal
network started to pass 1000 nodes world-wide. As a result, protocol
conversion routines were added to the VNET JES drivers ... which would
convert from any JES format to the specific format required by the
specific JES version that it was directly talking to.

This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_VNET

makes mentioned of 19.2kbit trans-atlantic satellite circuit. This
contributed to the infamous case of traffic from San Jose JES system
crashing Hursley MVS systems (because the releases were at different
level). The crashes was blamed on the Hursley VNET system ... because
they had failed to start the correct JES driver that converted to the
format required by the Hursley JES release.

In any case, this was after the FS failure and the mad rush to get
products into the 370 pipeline ... as well as POK convincing corporate
to kill the vm370 product, shutdown the burlington mall vm370
development group and transfer all the people to POK for MVS/XA (or
otherwise MVS/XA wouldn't meet ship schedule nearly 7-8yrs later;
Endicott managed to save the vm370 product mission, but had to
reconstitute a development group from scratch ... online share archives
has things to say about vm370 product code quality during the period).
As a result, corporate wasn't approving the announcement and release of
VNET as customer product.

The JES group finally convinced corporate to allow VNET release/announce
as part of a pricing gimick ... it would be announced as a combined
JES+VNET product ... where JES & VNET were both priced the same (little
obfuscation since VNET did have JES drivers). Then the combined JES+VNET
forecast times the price was finally larger than the JES development
costs (VNET costs being nearly negligible) ... as an aside, this wasn't
the only time that the slight-of-hand happened using vm370 products to
cover MVS product costs. misc. past posts mentioning hasp, jes, nji, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

besides the story here about Edson talking to ARPA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks

the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just
about the beginning until sometime late 85 or early 86. I've
pontificated it was partially because vnet had layered implementation
with effectively ability for gateway in every node ... something that
the internet didn't get until the great cutover to tcp/ip on 1Jan1983
(at the time arpanet was approx. 100 nodes and 250 hosts, while the
internal network was rapidly approching 1000 ... which it passed that
summer). again, past posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
post with copy of vnet 1000 node announcement 
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#3
and 
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

above also includes other weekly new node announcement

Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

spmcbr...@us.ibm.com (Sean P. McBride) writes:
> I recently found out that Edson Hendricks (the creator of VNET) wrote
> a copy of Spacewar! for the IBM System 360 while he was an MIT
> student.  It was based on the PDP-1 version, and it was used by MIT
> for their annual open house in either 1965 or 1966.  My understanding
> is that this S/360 version ended up getting played by IBMers at the
> IBM Research Lab, which resulted in a corporate ban of running the
> software on IBM machines.  Considering that the source should run on
> modern IBM mainframes with some code modification, I thought that this
> might be something worth resurrecting for the 50th anniversary of the
> System 360 announcement.  Do any of you ever recall playing this game
> on an IBM mainframe or hearing about others that might have done this?
> Do any of you have suggests for finding the source code for this S/360
> version?  Edson does not have a copy, and I have not yet heard back
> the from Computer History Museum.

Ed wrote spacewar at the science center for the 2250M4 (aka 2250+1130
combination, trivia 2250M1 ... aka 360 channel attached 2250 was same
price as 2250M4). misc. past posts mentioning science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

two-person game with the 2250 keyboard partitioned in half for controls
... my kids would come in on weekends and play it. 

maybe confusing a couple other things. 

Ed & I transferred from science center to San Jose Research about the
same time. I imported an early (fortran) version of adventure (had been
ported from pdp10 to vm370/cms) and made it available inside the
corporation (if somebody got all the points, I would send them the
fortran source, one person then ported it to PLI). At one point lots of
people in the santa teresa lab (now silicon valley lab) were playing it
first shift ... instead of working. Their management decreed that after
certain date, anybody caught playing first shift would be severely
disciplined (rumor is that something similar was happening at other
labs). TYMSHARE (up valley from san jose research) had gotten version
from Stanford for their PDP10 and then somebody at TYMSHARE had ported
from PDP10 to their vm370/cms service. TYMSHARE trivia ... TYMSHARE made
their vm370/cms online computer conferencing free to share starting in
aug76 ...  archive here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare

Later, somebody (the author of rexx) did multiuser client/server version
of spacewar for vm370/cms. There was game server ... and game clients
that could "connect" to a game server. It used the internal SPM for
client/server communication. VNET supported SPM ... so clients could run
on either the same machine as a game server ... or connect from anywhere
on the internal network. The clients used cms 3270 terminal ... however
some number of people wrote client 'bots ... that automated controls and
would start to beat all other players. game server was then modified
that power use/penalty increased non-linear as the interval between
client moves decreased (as attempt to level the playing field between
real people players and 'bot players).

Edson wiki reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks
other drift, ITUNEs app about Edson (there is also book)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cool-to-be-clever-edson-hendricks/id483020515?mt=8

VNET wiki reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_VNET

misc. past posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

the internal VNET technology was also the basis for univ.  BITNET (&
EARN in Europe; trivia BITNET is where this ibm-main mailing list
originated). misc. past posts mentioning bitnet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

bitnet wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

misc. past posts mentioning spacewar, adventure, and/or 
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#67 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#24 A question for you old guys -- IBM 
1130 information
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#71 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off 
topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#10 5-player Spacewar?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#13 5-player Spacewar?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#14 5-player Spacewar?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#8 VM: checking some myths.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#26 Help needed on conversion from VM to 
OS390
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#20 6600 Console was Re: CDC6600 - just 
how powerful a machine was
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#22 Computer Terminal Design Over the 
Years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#17 PLX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#0 Wanted: Weird Programming Language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#72 OT: One for the historians - 360/91
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#38 The PDP-1 - games machine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/20

Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[John P Kalinich]

The Michigan Mods tapes are on the CBT web site.

Regards,
John K



From:   Clark Morris 
To: IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu
Date:   02/25/2013 06:56 AM
Subject:Re: Spacewar! on S/360
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List 



On 24 Feb 2013 23:37:07 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

>In a google search, I saw a textbook mention of the game, and that it
>was ported.  No mention of the software.  Did find a web site with the
>PDP-1 version with a PDP-1 emulator on the browser page at
>
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/play-spacewar-on-the-dec-pdp-1-emulated-in-your-browser-20121211/

>
>Maybe someone can isolate the PDP-1 source and re-port it?

Is the MICHMODS OS360 precursor to the CBT tape archived anywhere? the
Goddard tape?

Clark Morris
>
>I am fairly certain the Star Trek and Klingon games are on the CBTTape.org
site.
>
>On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Sean P. McBride 
wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I recently found out that Edson Hendricks (the creator of VNET) wrote a
copy of Spacewar! for the IBM System 360 while he was an MIT student.  It
was based on the PDP-1 version, and it was used by MIT for their annual
open house in either 1965 or 1966.  My understanding is that this S/360
version ended up getting played by IBMers at the IBM Research Lab, which
resulted in a corporate ban of running the software on IBM machines.
Considering that the source should run on modern IBM mainframes with some
code modification, I thought that this might be something worth
resurrecting for the 50th anniversary of the System 360 announcement.  Do
any of you ever recall playing this game on an IBM mainframe or hearing
about others that might have done this? Do any of you have suggests for
finding the source code for this S/360 version?  Edson does not have a
copy, and I have not yet heard back the from Computer History Museum.
>>
>> Thanks for your help!!!
>>
>> Respectfully,
>> Sean P. McBride
>> Millennialmainframer.com

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Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[Clark Morris]

On 24 Feb 2013 23:37:07 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

>In a google search, I saw a textbook mention of the game, and that it
>was ported.  No mention of the software.  Did find a web site with the
>PDP-1 version with a PDP-1 emulator on the browser page at
>http://www.geek.com/articles/games/play-spacewar-on-the-dec-pdp-1-emulated-in-your-browser-20121211/
>
>Maybe someone can isolate the PDP-1 source and re-port it?

Is the MICHMODS OS360 precursor to the CBT tape archived anywhere? the
Goddard tape?

Clark Morris
>
>I am fairly certain the Star Trek and Klingon games are on the CBTTape.org 
>site.
>
>On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Sean P. McBride  wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I recently found out that Edson Hendricks (the creator of VNET) wrote a copy 
>> of Spacewar! for the IBM System 360 while he was an MIT student.  It was 
>> based on the PDP-1 version, and it was used by MIT for their annual open 
>> house in either 1965 or 1966.  My understanding is that this S/360 version 
>> ended up getting played by IBMers at the IBM Research Lab, which resulted in 
>> a corporate ban of running the software on IBM machines.  Considering that 
>> the source should run on modern IBM mainframes with some code modification, 
>> I thought that this might be something worth resurrecting for the 50th 
>> anniversary of the System 360 announcement.  Do any of you ever recall 
>> playing this game on an IBM mainframe or hearing about others that might 
>> have done this? Do any of you have suggests for finding the source code for 
>> this S/360 version?  Edson does not have a copy, and I have not yet heard 
>> back the from Computer History Museum.
>>
>> Thanks for your help!!!
>>
>> Respectfully,
>> Sean P. McBride
>> Millennialmainframer.com

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Re: Spacewar! on S/360

[Mike Schwab]

In a google search, I saw a textbook mention of the game, and that it
was ported.  No mention of the software.  Did find a web site with the
PDP-1 version with a PDP-1 emulator on the browser page at
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/play-spacewar-on-the-dec-pdp-1-emulated-in-your-browser-20121211/

Maybe someone can isolate the PDP-1 source and re-port it?

I am fairly certain the Star Trek and Klingon games are on the CBTTape.org site.

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Sean P. McBride  wrote:
> All,
>
> I recently found out that Edson Hendricks (the creator of VNET) wrote a copy 
> of Spacewar! for the IBM System 360 while he was an MIT student.  It was 
> based on the PDP-1 version, and it was used by MIT for their annual open 
> house in either 1965 or 1966.  My understanding is that this S/360 version 
> ended up getting played by IBMers at the IBM Research Lab, which resulted in 
> a corporate ban of running the software on IBM machines.  Considering that 
> the source should run on modern IBM mainframes with some code modification, I 
> thought that this might be something worth resurrecting for the 50th 
> anniversary of the System 360 announcement.  Do any of you ever recall 
> playing this game on an IBM mainframe or hearing about others that might have 
> done this? Do any of you have suggests for finding the source code for this 
> S/360 version?  Edson does not have a copy, and I have not yet heard back the 
> from Computer History Museum.
>
> Thanks for your help!!!
>
> Respectfully,
> Sean P. McBride
> Millennialmainframer.com
-- 
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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Spacewar! on S/360

[Sean P. McBride]

All,

I recently found out that Edson Hendricks (the creator of VNET) wrote a copy of 
Spacewar! for the IBM System 360 while he was an MIT student.  It was based on 
the PDP-1 version, and it was used by MIT for their annual open house in either 
1965 or 1966.  My understanding is that this S/360 version ended up getting 
played by IBMers at the IBM Research Lab, which resulted in a corporate ban of 
running the software on IBM machines.  Considering that the source should run 
on modern IBM mainframes with some code modification, I thought that this might 
be something worth resurrecting for the 50th anniversary of the System 360 
announcement.  Do any of you ever recall playing this game on an IBM mainframe 
or hearing about others that might have done this? Do any of you have suggests 
for finding the source code for this S/360 version?  Edson does not have a 
copy, and I have not yet heard back the from Computer History Museum.

Thanks for your help!!!

Respectfully,
Sean P. McBride
Millennialmainframer.com

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