Questions tagged [s360]

For questions about the IBM System/360 mainframe computer, and related software and hardware. For questions about IBM hardware in general, use the tag "ibm".

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Mainframe Hater's Handbook?

The famous The UNIX-HATERS Handbook claims this mailing list had been inspired by TWENEX-HATERS(1) and other *-LOVERS mailing lists, a long tradition of MIT. Moreover, the quote below implies there ...
Schezuk's user avatar
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21 votes
17 answers
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Were any IBM mainframes ever run multiuser?

Now of course there is a sense in which they were – some mainframe installations supported thousands of users! But there is a distinction. Consider the familiar fixture in so many 80s computer science ...
rwallace's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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Why did IBM System /360 have byte addressable RAM, but didn't have 8 bits registers

According to wiki IBM System /360 had only 32 and 64-bits registers for data. I'm wondering if they used 8-bits symbol it means that they stored it in a 32-bits register. Did they have any performance ...
No Name QA's user avatar
23 votes
1 answer
879 views

Was the IBM S/360 Responsible for Popularizating the 'A'-to-'F' Notation in Hexadecimal Numbers?

In the early history of computing before the mid-1960s, there was no universal, de-facto standard for the written representation of a hexadecimal number, different computer systems used their own ...
比尔盖子's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
457 views

Data length module of 3.2^n confusion in IBM system/360 architecture

I'm currently reading about the IBM system/360 architecture and there's a part that has me very confused: The decision on basic format (which affected character size, word size, instruction field, ...
KetDog's user avatar
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12 votes
2 answers
1k views

Did any 360-compatible machine implement registers in core?

In the early days of transistors, when they cost on the order of a dollar each, it was possible to implement CPU registers with magnetic cores (the technology used for main memory at the time) instead ...
rwallace's user avatar
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14 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is the purpose of the yellow wired panels on the IBM 360 Model 20?

I just finished reading a story about an IBM 360 Model 20 rescue, and some of the pictures caught my eye. Specifically this one: Searching online, led me to several more pictures, all with ...
Bradley Uffner's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
879 views

What's the deal with System/360's "USASCII" mode?

The original System/360 architecture had a bit in the Program Status Word that would select an "USASCII" mode rather than the usual EBCDIC. Setting this bit changed how the BCD arithmetic operations ...
hmakholm left over Monica's user avatar