3 ms·

Ah, good to hear that the IBM mainframes are still around, are more powerful, and that the software for the old IBM mainframes will still run on the new mainfra

Ah, good to hear that the IBM mainframes are still around, are more powerful, and that the software for the old IBM mainframes will still run on the new mainframes. So, yup, JCL still works! An 3270 series video terminals with 24 lines of 80 characters each driven with CICS (customer information control system or some such) is still used. But I didn't see that (1) Rexx, often a good replacement for JCL, (2) XEDIT, and the PC version KEDIT, my favorite text editor, (3) and VM/370, an impressive virtual machine supervisor, upgraded from the original CP/67 for the IBM 360/67 mainframe are still supported and used. I would be shocked if they were not still supported and also still used, especially for development and analytical computing tasks.

neverartful 3y ago
The latest incarnation of VM/370 is branded z/VM. Most of my hands-on mainframe work was with VM/CMS and I enjoyed using it.
- graycat 3y ago
  For the software to schedule the fleet at FedEx, I wrote in PL/I on CP/67 (control program, i.e., virtual machine, for the IBM 360/67, with virtual memory) CMS (conversational monitor system, the user interface) on a 360/67 at National CSS time-sharing in Stamford, CT. Right, VM/370 was from CP/67! I wrote the code from my living room while teaching computer science at Georgetown U. Then in Memphis, one evening used the code to develop a schedule for all planned 33 airplanes for all planned 90 US cities. The next day two representatives of BoD member and crucial investor General Dynamics went over the schedule carefully and announced to the BoD that "it is a little tight in a few places but it's flyable". Until that schedule, due to concerns of some BoD members, scheduling had been a show stopper. But with the schedule the BoD was pleased, crucial funding, equity and also counting loans on the planes, etc., $55+ million, was enabled, and FedEx was saved until the next such BoD crisis. I solved the next such BoD crisis with the differential equation y'(t) = k y(t) (b - y(t)) and for this one, for the computing for the data to draw a graph of the solution, used my new HP calculator I'd paid $400 for! There the BoD wanted some revenue projections. NCSS was expensive, but I enjoyed using it AND PL/I! It didn't use 3270 communications and, instead, used asynchronous bits on a phone line and a portable terminal with heat sensitive paper in rolls. The terminal was from Execuport and supposed to be portable. Actually, it was delicate! It is just staggering how far computing has come since then! Hardware, operating system software, APIs, user interfaces, communications, YES, but applied math, algorithms, and programming languages, not as much and, thus, seem more fundamental!!!!

neverartful 3y ago

The latest incarnation of VM/370 is branded z/VM. Most of my hands-on mainframe work was with VM/CMS and I enjoyed using it.

graycat 3y ago
For the software to schedule the fleet at FedEx, I wrote in PL/I on CP/67 (control program, i.e., virtual machine, for the IBM 360/67, with virtual memory) CMS (conversational monitor system, the user interface) on a 360/67 at National CSS time-sharing in Stamford, CT. Right, VM/370 was from CP/67! I wrote the code from my living room while teaching computer science at Georgetown U. Then in Memphis, one evening used the code to develop a schedule for all planned 33 airplanes for all planned 90 US cities. The next day two representatives of BoD member and crucial investor General Dynamics went over the schedule carefully and announced to the BoD that "it is a little tight in a few places but it's flyable". Until that schedule, due to concerns of some BoD members, scheduling had been a show stopper. But with the schedule the BoD was pleased, crucial funding, equity and also counting loans on the planes, etc., $55+ million, was enabled, and FedEx was saved until the next such BoD crisis. I solved the next such BoD crisis with the differential equation y'(t) = k y(t) (b - y(t)) and for this one, for the computing for the data to draw a graph of the solution, used my new HP calculator I'd paid $400 for! There the BoD wanted some revenue projections. NCSS was expensive, but I enjoyed using it AND PL/I! It didn't use 3270 communications and, instead, used asynchronous bits on a phone line and a portable terminal with heat sensitive paper in rolls. The terminal was from Execuport and supposed to be portable. Actually, it was delicate! It is just staggering how far computing has come since then! Hardware, operating system software, APIs, user interfaces, communications, YES, but applied math, algorithms, and programming languages, not as much and, thus, seem more fundamental!!!!