IBM's 'dinosaur' turns 40

San Francisco Chronicle | April 5, 2004 | Benjamin Pimentel

[NCjim]

Known as drab-looking machines that sit in huge air-conditioned rooms, the IBM mainframe computer has been called the dinosaur of the technology world.

About a decade ago, pundits predicted it would soon become extinct.

But the machine, which companies all over the world have used to manage payroll and monitor expense accounts, and which enabled scientists to send the first men to the moon, is celebrating its 40th birthday this week.

[txhurl]

Evidently you don't hail from a transactional background, such as A/P or A/R or Manufacturing.

Maybe you harness an IBM to gate PHP/HMTL type stuff.

[Contra]

Wasn't the IBM motto "bigger is better?"

[sinkspur]

Sales guys in IBM are making a killing now, but, back in the 80s and 90s, anybody who made quota in July got a quota increase.

I never liked that, and have never experienced it in any other company I've worked for since.

It was a way to control earnings, and I missed a couple of Golden Circles because I made quota too early.

But, overall, I enjoyed selling for IBM. We won a hell of a lot more than we lost.

[null and void]

Not particularly bad stuff. MSDS here:

http://www.scottecatalog.com/msds.nsf/0/08452464b6217ab785256a0a004e3383?OpenDocument

[freedumb2003]

Evidently you don't hail from a transactional background, such as A/P or A/R or Manufacturing.

COBOL on Financials Systems, among others. But we were using cards and tapes. TP Monitors didn't come until much, much later.

[StopGlobalWhining]

And do you remember DEBE ? I met her on a 1401

Does Everything But Eat!

[VMI70]

"To start the computer, one had to hand program the first few instructions to start reading the system tape."

When I first started reading this thread, I wondered, and hoped, if I would read something like your reply. I worked at the Night Vision Lab at Ft. Belvoir in late '69 to mid '70, and occasionally I would have to do what you called "hand program". I don't remember what kind of computer it was. It may have been a custom one, purpose built for us, because I don't remember a name on it anywhere. There was a row of switches, I can't remember how many total (18?, 21?), but as I recall, they were grouped in threes. It was really frustrating, because if you made one miscue, it was start over from the beginning.
When I finally got it right, the perforated tape reader, which was attached to the side of the printer, would activate and read what I assume was the program. The tape was very short, and I remember thinking that it sure was a lot of work just to get this thing to read a yard long piece of perforated paper.

I don't recall any drives or disks in the room. I guess they may have been in another location.

Anyway, thanks for jogging the memory. Was "hand programming" the standard way to start up back then?
What is the equivalent between what we did then (hand program, tape read) to what happens today when we turn on our computers?

[Bobibutu]

One of our sales guys in Tulsa was 0% of quota for the year in Dec. He and his wife (our dispatcher were living off of her salary) - bang he hit something like 1400% for the month and 200%+ for the year thanks to sys 360 - went to work for Merril Lynch as his new quota was impossible.

[Bobibutu]

Sounds like a PDP 7 or 11?

[StopGlobalWhining]

...the first true multi-tasking machines.

The 360 was the first machine with a combination instruction set that included characters (eg MVC), packed decimal (eg ZAP), integer arithmetic (AR), and floating point arithmetic (AWR).

I think GE's GECOS was the first generally available multi-tasking (time-sharing) operating system, but on that point I may be mistaken. It might have been UNICOS (UNIVAC 1108).

[TechJunkYard]

New York (town famous for it's shoe factory - I forget the name just now)

Gotta be Endicott... the shoe plant was in Johnson City -- ergo, Endicott-Johnson Shoes. Spent a month at the Endicott plant one week. Been to Rochester, MN during a snow storm. I owned three 4381s in Charlotte at one time, we got rid of those and got five AS/400s (from a B50 to an F95) to play with.

Those were the days... doing "e-mail" on PROFS well before Lotus Notes came on the scene.

Ex-S/N 137866

[Bobibutu]

Ex-S/N 137866


Ohmygosh - a lower number than me - you mus be a real old f*rt.

[DuncanWaring]

Remember when memory was called "core"?

Yeah - $1.75 million per megabyte.

[TechJunkYard]

The guy I partnered with in system support had 121866... how's that for a coincidence? My best friend got 438665... something about that 866 number.

I still use "IPL" (initial program load) when referring to rebooting a PC. The youngsters have no idea what I'm talking about. ;-)

[txhurl]

I think IPL (IBM) or warm-start or cold-start (HP). MS is such sissy sh!t.

I think the 'mainframe' employment gig is finally coming around, three years later.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

I've got two friends who worked for Cray for some time.

[Hank Rearden]

I could have written exactly what you did! If I came along 3 years later, my life would likely have been different.

I liked the idea of computers, but absolutely hated the midnight treks to the computer center, punching cards for hours, then waiting another hour to get an inch of paper that told me my program wouldn't compile properly.

So I strayed away from computers until the Osborne came along. Then my life ran off the rails in another direction entirely.

[Bobibutu]

Getting "system time" was always a bitch for you guys and then we - the CE's - would have to prove to you that is was your code and not the hardwares fault ;-)

ahhhh memories

[Bobibutu]

Hah! RGR -

[ApplegateRanch]

I haven't operated anything newer than a SYS 360/50. Do you still have to wire plug-boards to run these things? Bwaahahahaha!