5 ms·

It's always amazing to me to see all the hype around containerization and build once, run anywhere, and a lot of the tech trends happening now and realize that

by rpcope1 11y ago

It's always amazing to me to see all the hype around containerization and build once, run anywhere, and a lot of the tech trends happening now and realize that we've been reinventing the wheel, since products like AS/400 (a.k.a System/38 a.k.a iSeries) have been doing it since before PCs were ever a thing. It's perhaps even more funny when the reimplementation is inferior to the original product (which seems to happen with some level of regularity). It's a shame mid-range IBM iron is both expensive and sort of vendor-locked as it's really often a rather nice system to build for; system/38 really was revolutionary and really has influence more than I think we often give it credit for.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
I agree, though a correction: PCs very much did exist by the time of AS/400, and particularly when OS/400 (IBM i) introduced LPARs, though analogues have been around in plenty of IBM's prior systems.
- apaprocki 11y ago
  ... and they're still called LPARs today on the modern boxes :)
  - ghuntley 11y ago
    Correct and since 2007 LPAR's have been able to be xfered between hosts in a fashion similar to VMotion. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247460.pdf http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247460.pdf Additionally there are WPARs as well which are essentially application/workload management containers :-) https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247955.html?Open https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/s...
- rpcope1 11y ago
  Yeah, you're right. I made a perhaps bad/loose equivocation for System/38, which I think predates IBM PCs, to AS/400, which showed up in the late 80's.
- stox 11y ago
  A predecessor of the AS/400, the System/36 PC was available in very similar chassis to the IBM AT. It used an IBM 5150 ( aka PC ) as the console with a special interface card.
stox 11y ago
A lot of this goes back to the System/3, which was released in 1969. System/3 => System 32 => System 36 => System 38 => AS/400 => iSeries.
- snori74 11y ago
  Well, only sort of. The 38 was a radical departure, and is the the true root of this series.
- nissehulth 11y ago
  Chronologically, it was actually S/32 => S/34 => S/38 => S/36. Though S/36 was more a successor to S/34, built on more modern hardware but didn't really offer anything new in terms of OS architecture.
fit2rule 11y ago
I grew up with computing in the 70's and 80's, and I truly think the 90's were a period of devolution in the computer industry - desktop (Microsoft) computing came a long and gave computing to the masses, but the cost was that a lot of technical advances that were being made in the industry as a whole got swept under the covers - for various reasons, either it confused users, or Microsoft just didn't have the technology chops to get it into their OS, or whatever. But I definitely think we make many, many advances in computing that get washed away by the mass-market mechanics required to get things out there in a way that satisfies the bean counters. I remember being able to freeze/defrost process on MIPS Risc/OS back in the day .. I even used it as part of my development/test process, since security policies in the computer rooms I was working in the 80's meant that some systems (operational) were not allowed to have compilers - the only way I could test my new build was to run the process, freeze it to disk, send it over to the test-ops machines, and defrost them. I did this so often that it just became commonplace - yet the ability to do this just faded during the 90's when I moved to other environment. I still can't do this easily on any of our existing systems, although there's cryopid and company - but it strike me as amusing that these sorts of capabilities are being touted as new and ground-breaking. More often than not, the discoveries of a unicorn comp-sci grad who just spent 5 years on themselves seem to be re-inventing things they were ignoring all the while were standard, in the rush to push the past aside and no longer deal with dinosaurs. Its a funny business we're in. I look forward to the next cycle of devo/evo-lution.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I guess it is one of those flukes of history. Those early home desktops were not the most potent of computers. Remember that there was a distinction made between PCs and workstations. Thus i fear many that grew up with a PC in the home ended up with something akin to mental blinders. And by the time they hit higher educational tiers the labs etc had transitions to using PCs on networks rather than terminals tied to a big iron.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    I believe you are correct and its an interesting aspect of technology that progress in one realm can mask/obfuscate/negate progress made in another ..
wglb 11y ago
Ok, so here is a trick question: Who invented virtual memory?
- GnarfGnarf 11y ago
  It wasn't IBM - IBM actually made fun of virtual memory while their engineers caught up with the competition. I know that the RCA Spectra series had virtual memory in the 70's. The Spectra series was a 360 clone with the same instruction set. RCA developed virtual memory and converted their TSOS (Time Sharing Operating System) to VMOS. Univac bought the Spectra line and converted VMOS to VS/9. I worked for Univac at the time. Virtual memory may have been used earlier by the Scientific Data Systems (SDS) Sigma series, later bought by Xerox. I was once a peripheral device to a Sigma, hooked up for an ECG.
  - wglb 11y ago
    I believe it was Burroughs who first did virtual memory. This was before the IBM Model 67 and the research at University of Michigan. So my first major gig was a startup called Telemed located first in Park Ridge then in Chicago, in an office building at the end of runway 27 L. We built this system of collecting ECG data over the phone line in three-channel FM, converted to digital and then processed by Sigma 5! Sounds like the same system that you were hooked up to. How about that. The Sigma5 didn't have virtual memory, but the Sigma 7 did. But this was well after both Burroughs and IBM had commercial offerings. The Sigma series was produced by Scientific Data Systems, later bought by Xerox. Made Max Plaevsky the largest Xerox until Xerox bought University Microfilms.
    - krylon 11y ago
      I think, the Atlas was the first machine to support virtual memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29), but I am not entirely sure when Burroughs first released a machine with virtual memory. Atlas was - according to Wikipedia - first operational in 1962.
      - 11y ago
digi_owl 11y ago
I think it happened because, as you said, the irons were vendor locked and expensive. Heck, thinking about it i kinda get the feeling that a x86 server rack is a breadboarded big iron.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  I currently work on an iSeries, while there is some vendor lock we have run unix programs through PASE, we run a full suite of web enabled applications some of which reuse code that has been around forever. Even RPG has gone modern with fully free form code, procedures, embedded sql, and with ILE the ability to be bound with modules written in any other supported language. The deployed base is very large and across a great many industries because of resilience, ease of programming, minimal support staff required, and simply because with most big systems it just works. Its not flawless but db2 is far easier to manage than oracle and the iSeries we have operate with much smaller staffs than the AIX/Oracle setups. Overall the biggest failing is IBM's lack of direction. They tend to push systems which generate the biggest kickback and such, usually meaning their AIX fare. No matter how many times efforts were put in place to move off the i or even z it just came down to, it works, its modern, and for businesses having something you know is many times better than going with the newest thing.
pjmlp 11y ago
Even their architecture of using a kernel JIT with a portable format for the executables.

by rpcope1 11y ago

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

I agree, though a correction: PCs very much did exist by the time of AS/400, and particularly when OS/400 (IBM i) introduced LPARs, though analogues have been around in plenty of IBM's prior systems.

apaprocki 11y ago
... and they're still called LPARs today on the modern boxes :)
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Correct and since 2007 LPAR's have been able to be xfered between hosts in a fashion similar to VMotion. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247460.pdf http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247460.pdf Additionally there are WPARs as well which are essentially application/workload management containers :-) https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247955.html?Open https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/s...
rpcope1 11y ago
Yeah, you're right. I made a perhaps bad/loose equivocation for System/38, which I think predates IBM PCs, to AS/400, which showed up in the late 80's.
stox 11y ago
A predecessor of the AS/400, the System/36 PC was available in very similar chassis to the IBM AT. It used an IBM 5150 ( aka PC ) as the console with a special interface card.

stox 11y ago

A lot of this goes back to the System/3, which was released in 1969. System/3 => System 32 => System 36 => System 38 => AS/400 => iSeries.

snori74 11y ago
Well, only sort of. The 38 was a radical departure, and is the the true root of this series.
nissehulth 11y ago
Chronologically, it was actually S/32 => S/34 => S/38 => S/36. Though S/36 was more a successor to S/34, built on more modern hardware but didn't really offer anything new in terms of OS architecture.

fit2rule 11y ago

I grew up with computing in the 70's and 80's, and I truly think the 90's were a period of devolution in the computer industry - desktop (Microsoft) computing came a long and gave computing to the masses, but the cost was that a lot of technical advances that were being made in the industry as a whole got swept under the covers - for various reasons, either it confused users, or Microsoft just didn't have the technology chops to get it into their OS, or whatever. But I definitely think we make many, many advances in computing that get washed away by the mass-market mechanics required to get things out there in a way that satisfies the bean counters. I remember being able to freeze/defrost process on MIPS Risc/OS back in the day .. I even used it as part of my development/test process, since security policies in the computer rooms I was working in the 80's meant that some systems (operational) were not allowed to have compilers - the only way I could test my new build was to run the process, freeze it to disk, send it over to the test-ops machines, and defrost them. I did this so often that it just became commonplace - yet the ability to do this just faded during the 90's when I moved to other environment. I still can't do this easily on any of our existing systems, although there's cryopid and company - but it strike me as amusing that these sorts of capabilities are being touted as new and ground-breaking. More often than not, the discoveries of a unicorn comp-sci grad who just spent 5 years on themselves seem to be re-inventing things they were ignoring all the while were standard, in the rush to push the past aside and no longer deal with dinosaurs. Its a funny business we're in. I look forward to the next cycle of devo/evo-lution.

digi_owl 11y ago
I guess it is one of those flukes of history. Those early home desktops were not the most potent of computers. Remember that there was a distinction made between PCs and workstations. Thus i fear many that grew up with a PC in the home ended up with something akin to mental blinders. And by the time they hit higher educational tiers the labs etc had transitions to using PCs on networks rather than terminals tied to a big iron.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  I believe you are correct and its an interesting aspect of technology that progress in one realm can mask/obfuscate/negate progress made in another ..

wglb 11y ago

Ok, so here is a trick question: Who invented virtual memory?

GnarfGnarf 11y ago
It wasn't IBM - IBM actually made fun of virtual memory while their engineers caught up with the competition. I know that the RCA Spectra series had virtual memory in the 70's. The Spectra series was a 360 clone with the same instruction set. RCA developed virtual memory and converted their TSOS (Time Sharing Operating System) to VMOS. Univac bought the Spectra line and converted VMOS to VS/9. I worked for Univac at the time. Virtual memory may have been used earlier by the Scientific Data Systems (SDS) Sigma series, later bought by Xerox. I was once a peripheral device to a Sigma, hooked up for an ECG.
- wglb 11y ago
  I believe it was Burroughs who first did virtual memory. This was before the IBM Model 67 and the research at University of Michigan. So my first major gig was a startup called Telemed located first in Park Ridge then in Chicago, in an office building at the end of runway 27 L. We built this system of collecting ECG data over the phone line in three-channel FM, converted to digital and then processed by Sigma 5! Sounds like the same system that you were hooked up to. How about that. The Sigma5 didn't have virtual memory, but the Sigma 7 did. But this was well after both Burroughs and IBM had commercial offerings. The Sigma series was produced by Scientific Data Systems, later bought by Xerox. Made Max Plaevsky the largest Xerox until Xerox bought University Microfilms.
  - krylon 11y ago
    I think, the Atlas was the first machine to support virtual memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29), but I am not entirely sure when Burroughs first released a machine with virtual memory. Atlas was - according to Wikipedia - first operational in 1962.
    - 11y ago

digi_owl 11y ago

I think it happened because, as you said, the irons were vendor locked and expensive. Heck, thinking about it i kinda get the feeling that a x86 server rack is a breadboarded big iron.

Shivetya 11y ago
I currently work on an iSeries, while there is some vendor lock we have run unix programs through PASE, we run a full suite of web enabled applications some of which reuse code that has been around forever. Even RPG has gone modern with fully free form code, procedures, embedded sql, and with ILE the ability to be bound with modules written in any other supported language. The deployed base is very large and across a great many industries because of resilience, ease of programming, minimal support staff required, and simply because with most big systems it just works. Its not flawless but db2 is far easier to manage than oracle and the iSeries we have operate with much smaller staffs than the AIX/Oracle setups. Overall the biggest failing is IBM's lack of direction. They tend to push systems which generate the biggest kickback and such, usually meaning their AIX fare. No matter how many times efforts were put in place to move off the i or even z it just came down to, it works, its modern, and for businesses having something you know is many times better than going with the newest thing.

pjmlp 11y ago

Even their architecture of using a kernel JIT with a portable format for the executables.