[apt4ssx8] Re: update
- From: "Kent A. Reed" <kentallanreed@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: apt4ssx8@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:31:21 -0400
On 6/9/2012 3:42 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Kent A. Reed wrote:
IBM manual N/C 360 APT Application Description (H20-0181-1)
would be a jewel in the crown---or not, you never know 'til you see
it. Keep your fingers crossed.
IBM manuals were VERY good, back in the 360 days!
Jon
Jon:
I agree entirely but even then, especially with applications rather than
systems software, there was sometimes a tendency to break up the
documentation into overviews and details. I'm hoping APT was
sufficiently arcane and low volume in sales that they didn't do that.
Good or bad, I still have to find a copy.
When I moved from Chicago to Gaithersburg in 1981 I chucked out whole
bookcases-worth of IBM documentation. NBS was running a Honeywell 1108
at the time (a bit behind the curve!) and soon moved to CDC systems. By
the time the CDC Cyber-NOS documentation arrived I was up to my elbows
in micros and networked workstations and no longer cared about the
mainframes.
A funny story about the University of Chicago buying its first S/360.
The accounting department had a massive but crufty old 1401-Assembler
program to deal with accounts and payroll. When some professors got a
chance to score an IBM 70x0/7094 lashup (I don't remember if it was a
7040 or 7090) from some Air Force activity, the accountants were happy
to tie it in with their 1401 and everybody got to access their good line
printers, etc. When it came time to replace the 7094, the accountants
overrode the researchers' desire for a computer thought to be better
suited for scientific computing and forced the purchase of the S/360.
Why? Because IBM had included microcode that allowed some 360-models to
emulate a 1401. Fear of having to retool old code was and still is a
powerful motivator.
In the end, researchers rewrote and improved a lot of IBM system
software and even we scientific end-users made contributions to the IBM
Scientific Subroutine Package (SSP). IBM reaped the benefit.
The 1970 bombing of the Mathematics Research Facility at the University
of Wisconsin ended the halcyon period of computing for me. Security
walls and check points were hurriedly thrown up around the UC computing
facility and grad students were no longer allowed to roam where ever we
wanted. Fortunately, that's when my lab partner and I convinced our
research advisor to spend an obscene (for him) amount of money to buy a
PDP11. After that, the S/360 was just the machine I used to analyze my
data so I could publish and graduate.
Regards,
Kent
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