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Did IBM deploy mainframes to universities for academic purposes? I started college in 1989, and it was fully micro. We learned Pascal on 3B2 systems running SVR

Did IBM deploy mainframes to universities for academic purposes? I started college in 1989, and it was fully micro. We learned Pascal on 3B2 systems running SVR3. There was a VAX running 4BSD that was designated as the students' playground. I learned assembly on Apollos running DOMAIN/OS, I think, and then there was a lab full of brand-new diskless SPARCstation ELCs. I guess some BITNET buddies might have been on VM/CMS, but I think even our student bookstore avoided selling IBMs; they had Macs and NeXT stations on the showroom floor.

skissane 4y ago
In the 1960s thru early 1980s, IBM mainframes in academia were extremely common. A lot of academic research and scientific computing was done on IBM mainframes, especially under VM/CMS. Both SAS and SPSS began life on IBM mainframes. The SPIRES database of high energy physics research was hosted by Stanford SLAC on IBM mainframes for decades (and then, when they finally moved it off the mainframe, they kept running the original mainframe software in an emulator). However, as the 1980s progressed, most of it migrated away from the mainframe, on to Unix systems and PCs. So, starting in 1989, you would have missed most of it. IBM mainframes survived longer for administrative computing (accounting, payroll, student records, etc)–but thru the 1990s and 2000s almost all of that went away too. There are still a few colleges/universities out there who run IBM mainframes – primarily to teach them to students as a technology – Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York comes particularly to mind. But nothing like it used to be.