Working as a systems programmer on IBM big iron [was RE: Dennis Ritchie has died]

From: vintagecoder at aol.com Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:03 AM I've snipped all the rest, because Mr. Coder won't see any of my reply. I'm familiar with the meaning of "the IBM OS family of operating systems" having worked with System/360s running OS/360 MFT in 1969, and onwards. I made a living on IBM System/370 systems from the early 1970s until 1984, at which time I moved permanently (as I thought) to DEC mainframes running TOPS-20. I was a sysprog on SVS (aka OS/VS1 Release 1) on an Amdahl 470/8 for several years, and wrote the in-house utility for converting decks (i. e., disk files of 80-byte records) of HASP JCL with ACF2 to JES2 JCL with RACF. I *know* what I'm talking about, with regard to access to IBM sources. I was at SHARE in San Francisco when the great OCO debate heated up again, and still have my button reading "When source is outlawed, only outlaws will have source" in my collection. I remember the discussions of the changes in US copyright law, including court cases, which allowed program sources to be copyrighted and have the copyrights stand up, in _ComputerWorld_ and _Datamation_ and other trade rags. I like hearing other people talk, too. I even admit when I have been wrong in interpretations, as in the case of the zSeries processors: It appears that I have drawn the wrong conclusions from the articles about the change in processor technologies in use for IBM's mainframes, and I withdraw my earlier comment about the comparability of Hercules to the zSeries. OK? Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/