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Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture

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On Feb 2, 5:47 pm, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

> Yes, and I've seen companies run all their business on a 1401. And I've
> worked for a company that, only a few years before, had run all their
> business on a 402.

A former employer, a hospital, managed to do most of its work on a
1401 (emulation).

In my own opinion, one difference between the old days and now is that
programmers used to spend a lot of their time "shoe horning" the
application to work in the physical space available of the computer
they were using.  For instance, using all eight bits of a byte for
eight separate flags instead of using one byte for a flag.  Also,
converting dates to packed to save space and speed processing.

On my last mainframe applicaton development, the boss said not to
bother packing the date fields or other traditional shortcuts.  As a
result our record lengths are long, but the throughput remains
extremely fast because today the machines are so damn powerful.
(Plus, it's a relatively small file).

And of course today we use 4Gls and other resource hog systems.

Years ago we programmers often had to come in during off hours to do
testing because the day shift was just too bogged down iwth
production.  Not done today.


None the less, it's still amazing how much work they could shove
through a 1401 with only 16k (and many 1401s were even smaller.)

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Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture David Kanter <dkanter@gmail.com> - 2012-01-16 00:37 -0800
  Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-01-16 12:35 -0500
    Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture swestin@earthlink.nospam.net - 2012-01-17 12:52 -0500
      Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture Allodoxaphobia <knock_yourself_out@example.net> - 2012-01-18 04:05 +0000
        Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture swestin@earthlink.nospam.net - 2012-01-18 09:34 -0500
  Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-01-18 11:31 -0500
  Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2012-02-01 10:59 -0800
    Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-01 15:15 -0500
      Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2012-02-02 07:43 -0800
        Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-02 11:45 -0500
          Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-02-02 20:36 +0100
            Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-02 17:47 -0500
              Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-02-03 09:53 +0100
                Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-03 11:46 -0500
                Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-04 16:42 -0500
                Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2012-02-04 14:40 -0800
                Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-07 15:07 -0500
                Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-02-04 22:15 +0100
              Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2012-02-02 18:59 -0800
              Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2012-02-02 19:03 -0800
            Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture Waldek Hebisch <hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl> - 2012-02-05 17:35 +0000
              Re: Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net> - 2012-02-05 13:45 -0500

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