Bob George wrote:
>
> "Travis Siegel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Hmm. I think CSC (computer sciences corporation) still has some ebsdic
> > machines lying around. Just a month or two ago, someone was asking on the
> > internal request for help database for a program to convert from ebsdic to
> > ascii. I pointed them to vedit at http://www.vedit.com which is a
> > powerful text editor and can also handle ebsdic as well as ascii files.
> > There's still a few of those machines sitting around somewhere.
>
> Actually, I don't think they've gone away at all. There's mention of gcc
> ebcdic handling on the Linux S/390 pages
> (http://linas.org/linux/i370.html) -- Linux on IBM mainframes -- and the IBM
> AS/400 OS (OS/400) (very much alive) is also ebcdic based according to
> http://www.as400.ibm.com/developer/porting/faq5.html . I saw notes on
> porting the Apache web server to ebcdic-based environments as well.
I can see where the files might be around, paper tape would
last a long time, but the platform? what for? Like he said,
the software which works on an x86 is around which could
handle it, so why bother?
Part of the problem with Y2K is that the IRS routinely gave tax
writeoffs for upgrading equipment, but they didnt do that with
the software. So corporations depreciated the hardware and replaced
it on the standard 7 year cycle, but then just put the old software
on the new platforms. I remember being flabbergasted when I realized
that software me and other people had written in 1970 was still
around. At the time we were writing it, it never occurred to anyone
that the software would still be running in the year 2000.
But the hardware? That would run that long too? hmm. well I do have
an IBM Proprinter I drag out every time another inkjet dies....
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