7 ms·

> It turns out that the BBS also had a warez copy of Lotus 1-2-3 for UNIX. This was widely thought to be lost – I’m told it couldn’t compete with a more popular

> It turns out that the BBS also had a warez copy of Lotus 1-2-3 for UNIX. This was widely thought to be lost – I’m told it couldn’t compete with a more popular UNIX office suite called SCO Professional, so there were not many copies sold. I wonder if anyone still has a copy of Lotus 1-2-3/M? It was the port to the IBM mainframe operating systems MVS (nowadays known as z/OS) and VM/CMS (nowadays z/VM). [0] Not that I ever used it or saw it, but just I have become fascinated with it from reading descriptions of it. From what I understand, it is more different from 1-2-3 for DOS than the Unix or VMS ports were; the Unix and VMS ports work with character mode terminals (such as VT100 compatibles), which while rather different from the terminal model used on MS-DOS or text mode OS/2 (direct memory access to the screen buffer), nonetheless are close enough that the bridge can be gapped–which (on Unix) is classically the job of the curses library (and its various descendants). By contrast, 1-2-3/M was written to work with the block mode 3270 terminals commonly used on IBM mainframes, which send to/from the terminal whole screenfuls of data at a time, rather than individual characters (somewhat similar, in principle, to classic HTML forms). This forced greater changes in the UI compared to the other ports, because a lot of things which are easy to implement with character mode terminals are essentially impossible in 3270. [0] https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/4/897/ENUS290-104/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ss...

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
> which send to/from the terminal whole screenfuls of data at a time, rather than individual characters 3270, and it's derivatives such as 6530, had (have?) a protect mode protocol that sends fields in much the same way as an HTTP post [1]. It doesn't seem to have been used that much on IBM's, probably due to the synchronous write-a-screen-and-wait-for-the-result readline style of programming. However, it was used extensively on the Tandem, which had an asynchronous 3-tier style architecture. 1. https://x3270.miraheze.org/wiki/3270_data_stream_protocol https://x3270.miraheze.org/wiki/3270_data_stream_protocol
- mlyle 4y ago
  A childhood memory from when I was little: We were at Sears, and my parents were waiting for customer service-- they were buying an appliance or something. There were terminals around, open to public use. I recognized them as 3290's from my dad's work. They had an application where you could do form work-- building up an order or searching for stock on items-- that used this protect mode. You'd fill in fields and then hit a pfkey, and wait several seconds for a result. I can't find anything about this system having ever existed online-- one of those blackholes of missing information about pre-web days. There's an interesting web site of how point-of-sale evolved at Sears and other places-- https://vintagepointofsale.com/author/jpnearl/ https://vintagepointofsale.com/author/jpnearl/ but that's not really what I'm talking about. I remember other instances of this from when I was little, too. Lots of IBMs internal applications used this whole forms interface and the lower right status HOLDING while you filled out fields. And I recall travel agents using it with SABRE, too. My memory is that it wasn't uncommon-- that a whole lot of mainframe usage looked like this: https://basis.uark.edu/frequently_asked_questions/email_notifications_of_rejected_txns.php https://basis.uark.edu/frequently_asked_questions/email_noti...
  - genewitch 4y ago
    around 2001 or 2002 JCPenney got rid of their 80s era mainframes, and i got an IBM mainframe, and i can't remember if it was as/400 or rs6000, but it was two racks, with a hard drive the size of a small clothes dryer (and louder), and a 9" floppy. The IBM stuff didn't sell on ebay that well, but the cisco stuff (the second rack?) sold alright. Mostly went to repairing my junker car back then.
    - skissane 4y ago
      AS/400 and RS/6000 are not (per official IBM terminology) “mainframes”. AS/400s were classified as “midrange” systems. From the floppy, I’m guessing it was more likely to be an AS/400. (RS/6000s had them too, and they were originally invented on mainframes, where they were used for microcode updates-but I believe AS/400s dropped them later than RS/6000s and mainframes did.) Now the RS/6000 and AS/400 lines have been merged at the hardware level - but an old machine being thrown out in 2001/2002 would have been from when they were still distinct hardware.
_abox 4y ago
> This forced greater changes in the UI compared to the other ports, because a lot of things which are easy to implement with character mode terminals are essentially impossible in 3270. Couldn't they just render everything to a local virtual terminal and then send the screen after updates?
- mlyle 4y ago
  The speeds to terminals were not great, and this is completely in contrast to how the terminals were meant to be used. The big idea behind the 3270 architecture was to support things like CICS, where you could have tens of thousands of terminals attached to a single processor computer with 16 megabytes of memory, and then take individual requests from terminals, recover state, and render screens.
- skissane 4y ago
  One big problem – on a character mode terminal such as a VT100, the host gets sent every single keystroke. So any key combination can be used as an "action key" – such as the slash key (/) used to open the Lotus 1-2-3 menu system. By contrast, on block mode terminals such as 3270, only a restricted subset of keys – such as ENTER and function keys – triggered a message being sent to the host, the rest of the keys were interpreted locally only. (Was there some mechanism to allow the host to redefine an arbitrary key as an action key? Not that I know of.) How did Lotus 1-2-3/M address this? From what I understand, they adopted an approach commonly used in 3270 applications – a fixed area at the bottom of the screen was reserved as a "Command area". You would type your slash sequence there, and then press ENTER. The whole sequence would be sent to the host. If what you typed was not a full command, just the prefix of a command, I believe it would display you a menu showing the command options, similar to how 1-2-3 worked on other platforms. But it also was a problem with things like scrolling off the screen. On 1-2-3 on other platforms, you could just use the cursor keys, and the screen would scroll immediately. Under 3270, the cursor keys are implemented locally, so you'd have to use a function key or command to scroll instead.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
SAS has a mainframe spreadsheet module.

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago

> which send to/from the terminal whole screenfuls of data at a time, rather than individual characters 3270, and it's derivatives such as 6530, had (have?) a protect mode protocol that sends fields in much the same way as an HTTP post [1]. It doesn't seem to have been used that much on IBM's, probably due to the synchronous write-a-screen-and-wait-for-the-result readline style of programming. However, it was used extensively on the Tandem, which had an asynchronous 3-tier style architecture. 1. https://x3270.miraheze.org/wiki/3270_data_stream_protocol https://x3270.miraheze.org/wiki/3270_data_stream_protocol

mlyle 4y ago
A childhood memory from when I was little: We were at Sears, and my parents were waiting for customer service-- they were buying an appliance or something. There were terminals around, open to public use. I recognized them as 3290's from my dad's work. They had an application where you could do form work-- building up an order or searching for stock on items-- that used this protect mode. You'd fill in fields and then hit a pfkey, and wait several seconds for a result. I can't find anything about this system having ever existed online-- one of those blackholes of missing information about pre-web days. There's an interesting web site of how point-of-sale evolved at Sears and other places-- https://vintagepointofsale.com/author/jpnearl/ https://vintagepointofsale.com/author/jpnearl/ but that's not really what I'm talking about. I remember other instances of this from when I was little, too. Lots of IBMs internal applications used this whole forms interface and the lower right status HOLDING while you filled out fields. And I recall travel agents using it with SABRE, too. My memory is that it wasn't uncommon-- that a whole lot of mainframe usage looked like this: https://basis.uark.edu/frequently_asked_questions/email_notifications_of_rejected_txns.php https://basis.uark.edu/frequently_asked_questions/email_noti...
- genewitch 4y ago
  around 2001 or 2002 JCPenney got rid of their 80s era mainframes, and i got an IBM mainframe, and i can't remember if it was as/400 or rs6000, but it was two racks, with a hard drive the size of a small clothes dryer (and louder), and a 9" floppy. The IBM stuff didn't sell on ebay that well, but the cisco stuff (the second rack?) sold alright. Mostly went to repairing my junker car back then.
  - skissane 4y ago
    AS/400 and RS/6000 are not (per official IBM terminology) “mainframes”. AS/400s were classified as “midrange” systems. From the floppy, I’m guessing it was more likely to be an AS/400. (RS/6000s had them too, and they were originally invented on mainframes, where they were used for microcode updates-but I believe AS/400s dropped them later than RS/6000s and mainframes did.) Now the RS/6000 and AS/400 lines have been merged at the hardware level - but an old machine being thrown out in 2001/2002 would have been from when they were still distinct hardware.

_abox 4y ago

> This forced greater changes in the UI compared to the other ports, because a lot of things which are easy to implement with character mode terminals are essentially impossible in 3270. Couldn't they just render everything to a local virtual terminal and then send the screen after updates?

mlyle 4y ago
The speeds to terminals were not great, and this is completely in contrast to how the terminals were meant to be used. The big idea behind the 3270 architecture was to support things like CICS, where you could have tens of thousands of terminals attached to a single processor computer with 16 megabytes of memory, and then take individual requests from terminals, recover state, and render screens.
skissane 4y ago
One big problem – on a character mode terminal such as a VT100, the host gets sent every single keystroke. So any key combination can be used as an "action key" – such as the slash key (/) used to open the Lotus 1-2-3 menu system. By contrast, on block mode terminals such as 3270, only a restricted subset of keys – such as ENTER and function keys – triggered a message being sent to the host, the rest of the keys were interpreted locally only. (Was there some mechanism to allow the host to redefine an arbitrary key as an action key? Not that I know of.) How did Lotus 1-2-3/M address this? From what I understand, they adopted an approach commonly used in 3270 applications – a fixed area at the bottom of the screen was reserved as a "Command area". You would type your slash sequence there, and then press ENTER. The whole sequence would be sent to the host. If what you typed was not a full command, just the prefix of a command, I believe it would display you a menu showing the command options, similar to how 1-2-3 worked on other platforms. But it also was a problem with things like scrolling off the screen. On 1-2-3 on other platforms, you could just use the cursor keys, and the screen would scroll immediately. Under 3270, the cursor keys are implemented locally, so you'd have to use a function key or command to scroll instead.

ngcc_hk 4y ago

SAS has a mainframe spreadsheet module.