41
votes
Can anyone help me identify this old computer part?
According to this page it's a wire punch tool for a 1940 IBM 402 computer programming board.
From that page (screenshot of the page is below):
1940 IBM 402 Computer Programming Board A tidbit fact: ...
- 501
28
votes
Accepted
What date is 74029 on an IBM Mainframe?
TL;DR: DATE=74029 reads as: Year (19)74, Day 029 (Jan 29th),
It's an Ordinal Date in truncated form, expressed in terms of 2 digit year and 3 digit day of the year.
Does anyone know when was it ...
- 195k
27
votes
Accepted
References for the complexity of the COBOL language
No, COBOL is not complex and didn't require complex compilers.
At least not for COBOL up to 74 (*1) which was the standard at the time of introduction of micros (mid 70s to late 80s). From the ...
- 195k
26
votes
Accepted
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
I agree to an extent that COBOL was "indentation-sensitive", but it really wasn't "indentation-sensitive" but rather "column-sensitive". The original COBOL coding format ...
- 3,254
19
votes
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
COBOL and FORTRAN are both (or were) highly indentation-sensitive, precisely because they were created at a time when punch-cards were the most common data-entry medium. Modern editors and compilers ...
- 838
19
votes
References for the complexity of the COBOL language
I would highly recommend Jean E. Sammet’s “Early History of Cobol” for this. She was the chair of two of the committees that developed COBOL, and served on a third.
(If I might take a moment here to ...
- 7,703
18
votes
History of High Availability in the mainframe and minicomputer eras?
I'm pretty certain the concept of RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability) has been in IBM's mainframe line since very early on. I always found it funny that one of the big selling features of ...
- 3,482
17
votes
Accepted
What was the second platform supported by SAP?
According to SAP’s company history page, they began supporting Siemens hardware in 1977. Siemens AG, another German company, was not considered one of “IBM and the Seven Dwarfs.” I suspect, but am ...
- 7,703
15
votes
References for the complexity of the COBOL language
If you want to catch a glimpse of the implicit complexity of COBOL, I suggest taking a quick run through these GnuCOBOL syntax diagrams.
The reason that COBOL is complex is that COBOL is not simply a ...
- 11.5k
15
votes
Accepted
"Mainframe" with Z80
I'm confident that the answer is "no", for two reasons:
Z80-based system with the multiple megabytes of RAM that would be needed for something of the complexity of MVS have existed, but ...
- 9,723
11
votes
Why did IBM skip "System/380" as a mainframe family name?
If you have a look at the announcements for the various System/XXX machines you mention, you'll notice a pattern:
System/360, April 1964.
System/370, June 1970.
System/390, September 1990.
Comments ...
- 3,482
11
votes
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
Historically, was any indentation-based language ever used with pre-screen code entry technology like teletype or punch cards?
Of course, even the very first: Assembler
And it still does:
Any ...
- 195k
10
votes
Accepted
What is the mainframe in this image in Ireland?
It looks to me like an ICT 1902.
The printer here looks the same, same vents etc.
According to this list the picture is probably either at Player Wills Ltd or the Guinness brewery.
- 3,493
9
votes
History of High Availability in the mainframe and minicomputer eras?
Two high availability systems which predate Tandem Computers:
The IBM 9020 (a cluster based on IBM/360 mainframes) was developed for US air traffic control and is described in IBM Systems Journal 1967 ...
- 1,152
8
votes
What was the second platform supported by SAP?
According to the German version of the Wikipedia page you linked to, SAP R/2 was released in 1979 and ran on "IBM's operating systems MVS and VSE as well as BS2000 from Siemens".
Its ...
- 1,544
8
votes
History of High Availability in the mainframe and minicomputer eras?
Every Solution Needs a Problem
High Availability is like any other concept only useful in a context that needs such. Here the context is non planned requests at random time - or in other words: Online ...
- 195k
8
votes
"Mainframe" with Z80
Maybe a silly question but has there ever been a mainframe OS running on a Z80 system,
I'd say rather not - at least not as anything past some for fun/for learning projects.
of course with ...
- 195k
7
votes
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
The earliest programming language that I am aware of that was implemented using the "off-side rule" as referenced in the question (or any similar rule) is SASL (1972). It derives from a ...
- 2,212
7
votes
Mainframe Hater's Handbook?
"The Unix-Haters Handbook" is a product of a particular time and place that made an entire book possible, the rise of RISC workstations and the Internet.
People had been grumbling about ...
- 291
6
votes
References for the complexity of the COBOL language
Four major language developments of the 1950's were Fortran, COBOL, Lisp, and Algol. Comparing just Fortran and COBOL, one could say Fortran was adapted for scientific data processing while COBOL was ...
- 5,033
5
votes
History of High Availability in the mainframe and minicomputer eras?
Some examples of high availability systems from the 1960s and 1970s include:
IBM's System/360 Model 67 and System/360 Model 195 were mainframe computers that used hardware redundancy to improve ...
- 151
4
votes
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
Don't forget about RPG (Report Program Generator, not Role Playing Game). The original versions before 2001 required data and instruction to be placed into certain columns for correct operation.
4
votes
Accepted
How did Bell Labs start to work on Project MAC?
Corbato said that Edward E. David of Bell Labs approached Robert Fano of MIT requesting that Bell Labs join Project MAC.
Multics Reunion: Early Days, Project MAC, CTSS, and Multics, CSAIL video, May ...
- 500
4
votes
How was it possible to run IBM mainframe software in emulation on HP?
People have written products to enable re-hosting of IBM mainframe applications on to other platforms, especially Unix. Rather than CPU emulation, these generally work by combining a COBOL compiler (...
- 755
4
votes
Accepted
Mark IV - information please
Mark IV appears to have been a report generation system, what was known in the 60s and 70s as a “file management system” (readers more familiar with older micro-computer software than mainframe ...
- 111k
4
votes
How does one customize the 3270 terminal login screen in VM/370?
It is now 33 years since I last touched anything remotely connected (no pun intended) to VM/370, VM/SP, or MVS, and the little grey cells are now full of C#, Entity Framework, and SQL Server rather ...
- 838
3
votes
Was any indentation-sensitive language ever used with a teletype or punch cards?
Early languages were 'Fixed Format'. The meaning of different columns was fixed and defined. "a C in the first column means a comment". Those rules were later relaxed allowing "Free ...
- 197
3
votes
Does anyone have any information on GUTS (Gothenburg University Timesharing System)?
I know for certain that Trinity College Dublin used GUTS on their IBM 360/44. I studied there from 1975-1979 and personally used it. It was phased out around 1978-1979 when they got a new DECSystem 20....
3
votes
How the I/O performance of legacy mainframes/minicomputers in different architectures is measured and benchmarked comparatively?
Powerful in computing power, mainframes were irreplaceable thanks to the capability of processing numerous transactions rather than doing the math.
True. At least when using a /360ish mainline. Those ...
- 195k
3
votes
References for the complexity of the COBOL language
There was nothing very complex about COBOL and I taught it to many people from the business who had no mathematical or technical background. The original statement here is simply wrong; there were ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible