[CCTALK] [CCTECH] Re: IBM Series/1

--- Martin Marshall <martinm(a)allwest.net> wrote: Not directly, but indirectly... I used to make/sell bisync communiations boards. Our last product was for the VAXBI. One of the few customers in the late 1980s who *wanted* such a product was a auto parts mfgr in WI that needed to submit purchase orders to WalMart, K-Mart and the DoD electronically over EDI (Electronic Document Interchange). As it turned out at the time, the standard underlying protocol for exchanging these 80-col strictly-formatted text files was the IBM 3780 protocol. It breathed one last puff of new life into the place I worked. The customer bought a brand new, expensive VAXBI serial board, software, license *and* installation. It was my week in the barrel. I go up to Fond-du-Lac, WI, at the southern tip of Lake Winnebago (no kidding) and install our product. It rolls over and dies. We had been selling 3780 products since I was in grade school, long before I ever worked there. It's not a difficult protocol to get right, unlike HASP, which has some subtleties. You have one input stream, one output stream, and that's it (HASP supports 4 printers, 4 readers, console, etc., etc.). We were very surprised that our product could not establish a session with the host on the other end of the modem, an EDI service run by IBM itself, kinda of a private dial-up WAN for purchase orders. You are probably wondering why this is relevant... the central "host" was a Series/1. IBM had managed to violate its' own 40-year-old protocol when some engineering group ported the 3780 protocol to it. We had the IBM docs for a *real* workstation, IBM part number 3780 (I still have them!) and we were doing exactly the right thing. We, of course, to keep the customer, modified our product with a config parameter to talk to a "broken" central host. I don't think I got one support call per month from those guys. They were very happy with our stuff. Ran like a top. I think they only ever called when they upgraded VMS and needed new programs linked against the latest VMS Kernel (every major version IIRC) So... I've done battle with a Series/1, regrouped and won. Never saw the enemy, though. Just heard it whistle... -ethan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ cctech mailing list cctech(a)classiccmp.org http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctech