3 ms·

So your claim is wang and unisys systems are still being built and sold? Do you have further detail on this? Very interesting indeed.

sulam 8y ago
I don’t know if they’re still being built, but parent didn’t make that statement. You can be paying for something even if there aren’t more of them coming off a factory line.
twoodfin 8y ago
Oh yes! https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/ProductInformationSheets/PI_170236_ClearPathForwardLibra8480_8490.pdf https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/ProductInformatio...
Spooky23 8y ago
I don’t know about Wang, but you can absolutely purchase Unisys mainframes, whose product lines are all descendants of ancient Univac and Sperry devices. Can’t go into a lot of detail, but I’d suggest starting here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200 The hardware itself is x86. IIRC, they had some custom ASIC to do some physical isolation of workload, but that may not be a thing anymore. Fortunately, I don’t need to deal with it anymore!
pjmlp 8y ago
Unisys still sells ClearPath MCP mainframes, which descend from Burroughs B5000, developed in 1961 using a variant from Algol (ESPOL) as safe systems programming. Zero Assembly, ESPOL exposed all required hardware features as intrisics. https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2010/fall/cs441/proj1/b5000/ https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2010/fall/cs441/proj1/b5000/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems Based on feedback they rebooted ESPOL as NEWP, which is still the systems programming language from ClearPath MCP. Not only it was already a kind of safe systems programming language, 10 years older than C, it already had the notion of unsafe code via unsafe modules. https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath-forward-products https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath... Here is a PR leaflet about NEWP and safety on modern versions of ClearPath https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/WhitePapers/WP_170213_ClearPathMCPUnsurpassedSecurityMCP.pdf https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/WhitePapers/WP_17... NEWP programming manual https://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/clearpath-mcp-16.0/pdf/86002003-406.pdf https://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/clearpath-mcp... The computing world would have turned out much different if AT&T had been allowed to sell UNIX right from the beginning.
dfox 8y ago
They are built and sold in the similar sense as above mentioned AS/400 is built and sold. The user-visible CPU architecture is from the start designed as VM abstraction provided by the OS, which itself runs on real hardware that does not necessarily use same instruction set. Thus the today's hardware is something essentially off-the shelf (x86 in the unisys case, power for as/400). On the other hand S/360 ("the mainframe") compatible hardware is still being manufactured by IBM and AFAIK even Fujitsu (which in addition to being S/360-compatible mainframe supplier themselves also bough Amdahl, which was the original IBM-compatible mainframe manufacturer, with the company/founder name saying a lot ;)).

sulam 8y ago

I don’t know if they’re still being built, but parent didn’t make that statement. You can be paying for something even if there aren’t more of them coming off a factory line.

twoodfin 8y ago

Oh yes! https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/ProductInformationSheets/PI_170236_ClearPathForwardLibra8480_8490.pdf https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/ProductInformatio...

Spooky23 8y ago

I don’t know about Wang, but you can absolutely purchase Unisys mainframes, whose product lines are all descendants of ancient Univac and Sperry devices. Can’t go into a lot of detail, but I’d suggest starting here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200 The hardware itself is x86. IIRC, they had some custom ASIC to do some physical isolation of workload, but that may not be a thing anymore. Fortunately, I don’t need to deal with it anymore!

pjmlp 8y ago

Unisys still sells ClearPath MCP mainframes, which descend from Burroughs B5000, developed in 1961 using a variant from Algol (ESPOL) as safe systems programming. Zero Assembly, ESPOL exposed all required hardware features as intrisics. https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2010/fall/cs441/proj1/b5000/ https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2010/fall/cs441/proj1/b5000/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems Based on feedback they rebooted ESPOL as NEWP, which is still the systems programming language from ClearPath MCP. Not only it was already a kind of safe systems programming language, 10 years older than C, it already had the notion of unsafe code via unsafe modules. https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath-forward-products https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath... Here is a PR leaflet about NEWP and safety on modern versions of ClearPath https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/WhitePapers/WP_170213_ClearPathMCPUnsurpassedSecurityMCP.pdf https://assets.unisys.com/Documents/Global/WhitePapers/WP_17... NEWP programming manual https://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/clearpath-mcp-16.0/pdf/86002003-406.pdf https://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/clearpath-mcp... The computing world would have turned out much different if AT&T had been allowed to sell UNIX right from the beginning.

dfox 8y ago

They are built and sold in the similar sense as above mentioned AS/400 is built and sold. The user-visible CPU architecture is from the start designed as VM abstraction provided by the OS, which itself runs on real hardware that does not necessarily use same instruction set. Thus the today's hardware is something essentially off-the shelf (x86 in the unisys case, power for as/400). On the other hand S/360 ("the mainframe") compatible hardware is still being manufactured by IBM and AFAIK even Fujitsu (which in addition to being S/360-compatible mainframe supplier themselves also bough Amdahl, which was the original IBM-compatible mainframe manufacturer, with the company/founder name saying a lot ;)).