Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!border-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:03:25 -0500 Subject: Re: COBOL and tricks Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc References: <87sfn8pr5t.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <2044901849.680728052.410272.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <06Gdnf3iSPC_InX_nZ2dnUU7-U_NnZ2d@earthlink.com> From: "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2022 01:03:24 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.13.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 57 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 98.77.165.113 X-Trace: sv3-JHGAJrmIVq/zabWHUkkNdhF8bYaKi3xC4AojFfBrfSH65GIJGfTxxDkx5GiBBKrUfJLk8rKkRmWr4vP!eq2qwp4QoeA6BskdbhevTO3ztdMWZ16SA0lGSwH5MRY+oXvWo44ROrHB7xv4Od0p+0JTM3YLg0MR!oPlC0zAz+W+5C8BnItfq X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3823 Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:221653 comp.os.linux.misc:35390 On 8/2/22 10:30 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote: > "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> writes: >> On 7/31/22 5:26 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote: >>> "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> writes: >>>> On 7/30/22 10:56 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote: >>>>> drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) writes: > >>> There's no microcontroller, just a bunch of state >>> machines. The B3500 was transistor >>> based, with some early use of SSI integrated circuits. >>> >>> It wasn't until the third generation (B4900) that microcode >>> became a common adjunct to the hardwired logic. >> >> You're still seeing the peripherals as separate >> from The System. They were not, and still are not >> even though there's a lot more abstraction these >> days. > > Actually, at Burroughs, the peripherals were designed > and implemented in completely different states and or > countries, and were used for multiple lines of mainframes > (when they weren't outsourced to memorex). > > The were completely separate from the system in > every possible respect. But you still had to have DRIVERS so YOUR system could talk to them sensibly. The hardware/firmware/driver people seem to labor in obscurity, deep in the bowels of the Data Mine. Write LOTUS-123 and you'll be famous ... build the complex hardware it RUNS on and you'll be forgotten :-) >> Do you have something against those hardware geeks >> with the faint whiff of solder flux ? Don't let >> them sit at the lunch counter ? :-) > > I don't know what you're talking about. I spent 14 years > architecting and building mainframes and mainframe operating > systems. Then you SHOULD understand ... but don't. Puzzling ... >> Powerful I/O instructions REQUIRE "smart" periphs. > > No, they're not smart. Simple logic. Um ....... maybe in 1960 ................ After that they became "computers" unto themselves. Hardware+firmware+drivers ... an EXTENSION of the main system/software, making it much more powerful. Oh well, someday you'll get it. It's all ONE THING, top to bottom, bottom to top. That's the REAL "system".