{"id":21252,"date":"2014-04-06T21:06:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T02:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=21252"},"modified":"2014-04-07T10:22:50","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T15:22:50","slug":"happy-anniversary-system-360","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/happy-anniversary-system-360\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday, System 360"},"content":{"rendered":"

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The IBM mainframe is celebrating its 50th anniversary.\"IBM360-40-bw\"<\/p>\n

The first System 360 mainframe was unveiled on 7 April 1964 and its arrival marked a break with all general purpose computers that came before.<\/p>\n

The machines made it possible to upgrade the processors but still keep using the same code and peripherals from earlier models.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I started working on a 360 model 40 two years after its introduction in 1966; I probably would have retired by now if someone hadn\u2019t sued me but, alas, I toil on. What is extraordinary is that the z series mainframes that I now work on have essentially the same instruction set \u2013 admittedly with embellishments \u2013 as the antique 360. Writing a mainframe assembler program today isn\u2019t too different from when I started in 1966.<\/p>\n

The illustration above is a 360 model 40. The one I programmed had, as I recall, 8k of core memory (the early version of RAM: little magnetic rings threaded on wires). The operating system was 8k BOS, a non-multitasking OS which was not even able to spool print output. It was not much later that we upgraded to a luxuriant 16k of core and DOS which could not only spool print but had foreground and background jobs: a very primitive form of multi-tasking.<\/p>\n

Here is a front panel of a 360\/40. The big red knob disconnected power from everything; we never touched that. The lights showed actual bit values in core and the switches allowed us to dynamically change bits if things were not running as they should.<\/p>\n

\"IBMThe 2311disk drives we used held 7.25 megabytes; they were big boxes that shook when in use and, when broken, would occasionally leak hydraulic oil onto the floor. I miss those days.<\/p>\n

\"IBM_2311disk\"<\/p>\n

Then there were the punched cards whose inconvenience was only slightly mitigated by the pool of girls operating the card punches.<\/p>\n

\"punch_card_do_1\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From here: The IBM mainframe is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The first System 360 mainframe was unveiled on 7 April 1964 and its arrival marked a break with all general purpose computers that came before. The machines made it possible … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[1785],"class_list":["post-21252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","tag-ibm-360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}