On 04/05/2013 03:59 PM, Jason McBrien wrote: point my For your situation, and mine, yes, it's overblown. But there are many large companies who do have to worry. Brings back some threads here from 6 - 7 years ago about how to preserve the data for our beloved classics... BTW, what's the word on Sellam these days? What's he up to? -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 6-apr-2013 1:10, William Donzelli wrote: Now they only need to figure out how to keep the mainframe itself alive... - MG

On 6-apr-2013 16:40, Dave McGuire wrote: Not according to the Register. Okay, fair is fair, I think IBM and some other (favorable) sources may claim otherwise. I keep on stumbling over mainframes everywhere, they're just so damn common. Everybody is also talking about them in schools, businesses and so forth. - MG

On 6-apr-2013 20:41, Dave McGuire wrote: VMS gets the same treatment, but probably deservedly so, eh? It's just the poor, poor, mainframes that are 'getting it'. Very unfair indeed. If they were so incredibly profitable, why isn't IBM releasing loads of new "z" things and trying to get one into every major education mill; you know, to make sure that there will be enough know-how to keep these /very profitable/ things up and running...? They weren't wrong though, maybe a bit early with their prediction at most. Touchy subject? Okay... - MG

On 6-apr-2013 22:27, Dave McGuire wrote: You really shouldn't get so 'emotional' over these things. I realize this is a retro/classic computing mailing list, but... But the NonStop and other people tell me exactly the same. Who am I supposed to believe? Also, how would that plead well for the platform considering the recent wave of issues with the internet banking? (Especially here in Europe, which has been in the news the last few days.) Not (just) the financial world. But yes, you probably did... Which is probably too slow for nowadays. Not enough likely. The last contact I had with IBM, via e-mail, I only got a bunch of badly written e-mail messages with very serious, repeated, grammar mistakes and a quote of EUR 350/hr. for a temporary so-called 'service contract'. Yet, all I wanted to do was verify some part numbers (and IBM sure loves [ab]using those and many of them, too!) From then on, I realized I was a few million short to be heard by IBM. /Fortunately/, for a minute I thought it was a touchy subject! LOL. - MG

That is the job of the p line of machines (aka RS/6000). Anyway, IBM has has the "Master the Mainframe" program in schools for a few years now. And one of the problems, of course, is trying to sell a mainframe to the bunches of die hard Unix fanatics that dominate the educational system. IBM could gift z machines to a bunch of schools, and after a month of so, I bet most or all would be running Linux. The past 25 years has shown us that mainframes are dying, but as I posted, that rate seems to have leveled off. It seems that mainframes have died as much as they are going to die. -- Will

On 6-apr-2013 18:00, William Donzelli wrote: At least HP doesn't even bother to lie about the (real) numbers of the VMS and HP-UX install base, they just don't care. So, I guess that does still make IBM a bit better... It doesn't help much either that there are no --- absolutely zero, null, nothing, nada --- remote access "z" systems. Only "i" (an AS/400), that I can think of, but that's not a true mainframe; quasi-mainframe at best? - MG

On Apr 6, 2013, at 14:36, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: Are there any public-access IBM systems (360, 370, or even successors like z) that are friendly to hobbyists in a similar vein to LCM's PDP-10s and 11/780-5? I suspect it wouldn't make a lot of sense since a lot of them are batch systems with little interactivity, but I'd welcome the chance to play with a system. I guess there's always Hercules, and I hear there are pre-built images for that. - Dave

On 6-apr-2013 21:17, Dave McGuire wrote: From what I've read and heard, that has been largely marginalized and replaced with generic Windows-hosted client stuff nowadays with fancy 'GUI' tools. Where? Also, are you allowed to by IBM? Wouldn't you be required to buy a license (and what-not else)? I mean, why else does IBM charge a hefty sum for very restricted remote access to an IBM "z"...? Maybe because you'd get IBM's lawyers after you, that's why you haven't. The fact that you even say you run it at home probably isn't too wise, especially if IBM read about it... As far as I'm aware, it's not exactly 'allowed' to run (e.g.) "z" 'at home', not even for non-commercial/private reasons and end- uses/purposes. - MG

On Sat, 6 Apr 2013, Dave McGuire wrote: But today is not that day! Muahahahahahahahahha! *ahem* g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On 7-apr-2013 8:34, Dave McGuire wrote: Glad your reinforcements arrived, maybe he can provide you tactical ad hominem simulated air support from that F-15C cockpit? - MG

A good idea. I have better things to do with my life. -- Will

On 7-apr-2013 23:45, Dave McGuire wrote: From the same era as IBM's heyday: "Duck and Cover"! - MG

On 6-apr-2013 20:36, Dave McGuire wrote: Yes, I did indeed mean that (but didn't realize I had to spell it out). The VMS, HP-UX, AIX, etc. advocates (and 'artists') will claim the same about their equally obscure/niche platforms. /Here/, an article from a few months back. Have a read, I'd say... <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/gartner_q3_2012_server_numbers/> Thanks for the laugh. Seriously though, I hate to break it to you, but these aren't the 1950~'70s anymore. Nobody cares for those terms anymore, certainly not those getting out of the education mills now (who almost ~99% likely haven't heard of "z" or even "i" either, certainly not through their educational exposure). A true mini nowadays is one of those ITX board systems or even a 'smart phone', if you will. - MG

On 6-apr-2013 21:54, Dave McGuire wrote: A bit of a (stereo-)typical response of an IBM advocate/apologist. Don't kill the messenger. All that I'm doing is stating what I've been observing. It's a plain fact that hardly anyone knows what an IBM mainframe is. I'm sure there are even people --- like those born in the 1990s and beyond --- who don't even know what IBM is. It doesn't help for IBM that they're completely invisible to most people nowadays. I'd love to try "z" sometime (or even something older, like an S/390), but IBM isn't exactly making that very easy for people like myself, now are they? VMS has the excellent "Hobbyist Program", maybe IBM should perhaps consider something similar? Although, even that has not saved VMS and it's in a terrible shape. But, more people have heard of it and had a chance to use it than "z", that's for damn sure. - MG

On 6-apr-2013 23:09, Dave McGuire wrote: Why do you care then? You get overly emotional for something you're not even involved with. Bringing out the big guns, calling me a "PC salesman". Is that the best you can do? Even using one of IBM's own little demon spawn, the PC, which is now undoing their sacred mainframe. It is irony at its best, isn't it? Are you capable of a normal conversation, or are you simply outgunned so fast and need to resort to weird ad hominem remarks? People, i.e. /little people/, right? That actually reminded me of this weird 'gem'... (That I saw years ago.) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G7UA4l2tgA> Again, the NonStop and VMS people will claim the same. I'm (still) not impressed or convinced. In fact, Linux (particularly the Red Hat) crowd will claim the same and even more so once things like Serviceguard start to become available for it. Did you even read that Register article, or are you so convinced of IBM's propaganda? Hilariously, when I search on the 'net for "mainframe", in the top results there are denials and negations like "mainframes aren't dead" and "why the mainframe isn't dead", like also on YouTube and of IBM itself. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlwztJ2_wdk> In other words, hilarious stuff (when you have a few minutes to kill; that's all that IBM spent on that video). It's just /me/? They should be grateful I've even heard of it and show /some/ interest. (Which gradually degrades with every encounter with IBM zealots, like yourself.) - MG

Please. I am the IBM apologist around here. What you say is true - most people, even professionals, do not know what a mainframe was or is. The problem is that you are not observing things as they are. Much of this is due to the outlook that Unix (and Windows) people have - you assume the mainframe is dead, so you look no further, and continue assuming the mainframe is dead. The mainframe will not find you, and will not inform you. In the mainframe market, being invisible has advantages. No, and some mainframe people think this is a problem. I think it would be great to have some sort of program. However, IBM is quite protective of its IP. That would be due to the educational system. Before Unix ruled universities, VMS did (and other DECthings). -- Will

On 04/06/2013 06:39 PM, MG wrote: *laugh* I'll tell IBM to "get right on that". I'm sure they'll value your sage business advice. Troll. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

Clueless! -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA On Apr 7, 2013, at 6:16 AM, MG <marcogb at xs4all.nl> wrote:

On Apr 7, 2013, at 11:52 AM, Jonathan Katz <jon at jonworld.com> wrote: He wasn't being sarcastic or facetious, he was being an ass. A clueless one at that. Not inserting pictures, fonts, and dancing bears into email messages, inflating them to dozens of times the size they should be is "clueful and prudent". "Retro" would be writing said emails on a Teletype. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 04/07/2013 03:41 PM, MG wrote: If I were you, I'd take any bits of information I could get. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe. Actually, it'd work just fine. But you probably didn't know THAT either. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Apr 7, 2013, at 8:49 AM, Guy Sotomayor <ggs at shiresoft.com> wrote: Oh, and here's some more on the zSeries (copied from wikipedia): A direct comparison of System z servers with other computing platforms is difficult. For example, System z servers offload such functions as I/O processing, cryptography, memory control, and various service functions (such as hardware configuration management and error logging) to dedicated processors. These "extra" processors are in addition to the (up to) 101 CPs per frame. System z cores include extensive self checking of results, and if an error is detected the server retries the instruction. If the instruction still fails, the server shuts down the failing processor and shifts workload, "in flight," to a surviving spare processor. The IBM mainframe then "calls home" (automatically places a service call to IBM). An IBM service technician replaces the failed component with a replacement part (possibly even a new processor book, consisting of a group of processors). With System z9 servers, the technician installs the new book and removes the old one without interruption to running applications. (Note that mainframes have reported MTBF figures of 20-50 years). Similar design redundancies exist in memory, I/O, power, cooling, and other subsystems. All these features exist at the hardware and microcode level, without special application programming. The same concepts can extend to coupled frames separated by up to 100km in a Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex when z/OS is used. As has been said by others, mainframes are used by organizations that care about data availability and uptime. BTW zSeries, the z stands for "zero downtime". TTFN - Guy

On 04/07/2013 03:59 PM, MG wrote: "Uptime" is not marketing. Uptime is uptime. But I guess you didn't know that, either. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Apr 7, 2013, at 10:16 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Wasn't TJ Watson Sr.? TTFN - Guy

On Sun, 7 Apr 2013, Dave McGuire wrote: . . . and, until the population of them drops below five, the mainframe is obviously not dead. There don't need to be "millions". -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 7-apr-2013 20:40, Fred Cisin wrote: Sounds rather... foreboding. - MG

On 04/07/2013 10:16 AM, Fred Cisin wrote: How about the paperless office? --Chuck

On 04/07/2013 03:55 PM, MG wrote: For the record, you have been spouting off for two days about how dead the mainframe is. You've been doing a lot more than just quoting an article written by a journalist who knows even less about this stuff than you do. YOU have been railing on and on, including your dreaded ad hominem attacks, as if it's your personal mission in life to CAUSE the mainframe industry to die. You started this pointless drivel by mentioning (not even quoting, that I recall, just MENTIONING, but I could be wrong about that) an article published in a good but notoriously "oooh shiny" publication. An article, I might add, that was very poorly-researched. IBM doesn't mind. Their customers don't mind. Why do YOU mind? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

If I had a niche market of five machines, and made a billion dollars on each, I wouldn't be desperate for expansion. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Dave G4UGM ------ Original Message ------ From: "MG" <marcogb at xs4all.nl> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Sent: 08/04/2013 11:54:11 Subject: Re: Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving ? The Register I don't think so. There are plenty of companies where production is deliberately limited to keep the price high.

On 04/07/2013 05:40 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: Actually, I posted the link to the article; just was something interesting to read. While, yes, the deatils in it may be/ are a bit fuzzy; the overall idea of how to best archive computer data (programs, documents, etc...) is an interesting never-ending issue. -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 7-apr-2013 18:22, Guy Sotomayor wrote: So, why is IBM allowing this to happen? Why aren't they there to give VMware and others hell, perhaps even supply a bit more economical solution for the /little people/? Why does IBM assume that people will have the telepathic ability to learn about IBM and its products? For a supposedly successful platform, with no problems at all (which, by the way, that earlier Inquirer article of late 2012 doesn't seem to support), it sure seems relegated to obscurity and extreme niches at best. For a supposedly successful platform, why isn't IBM interested in making it even more successful and getting more people to use and perhaps switch to it? Why is IBM building "x" (and "i" and "p" for that matter), why not /just/ "z"? Where did you get these figures from? 100% utilization, thus with no headroom whatsoever; that's a good idea in general...? (Regardless of whether a specific platform would subdue or become less stable, or whatever.) - MG

On 04/07/2013 04:11 PM, MG wrote: Obscurity from YOUR "ooh, shiny!" perspective? Your bank transactions won't be processed on iPads anytime soon. Why do you think you know more about the mainframe business than IBM? It actually IS a good idea for the types of workloads mainframes process. There typically aren't "load spikes" on mainframes as we see in, say, web servers. ATMs don't get slashdotted. There is a "batch window", transactions are processed during that time, they know how many there are, they know how long it takes to process them, and having the machine sit there underutilized during that time is a waste of very expensive CPU cycles. If you knew a DAMN THING about what you're spouting off about, you'd already know this. But you don't. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

------ Original Message ------ From: "MG" <marcogb at xs4all.nl> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Sent: 07/04/2013 21:11:40 Subject: Re: Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving ? The Register IBM sell and support VMWare on their Intel and AMD servers. Where I work we have something like 40 to 50 IBM xSeries Intel servers running VMware. The first line support on these on VMWare is provided by IBM. IBM provide customized versions of VMware that includes support for IBM Hardware. IBM provide an internal USB slot and their servers can be ordered with this pre-loaded with a USB memory stick with the custom VMWare pre-loaded. Because of the "suits". By keeping zSeries as a niche product IBM can charge premium prices and keep the profit margins high. When we discarded our Mainframe, a small Multiprise box IBM showed no interest in selling us an upgrade. They are quite happy to keep selling us xSeries servers though. By selling xSeries and iSeries boxes "relatively" cheaply they can sell zSeries as a high reliability, high margin box. I personally think this is what allows zSeries to survive. In my opinion the biggest mistake DEC made was to try and take the Alpha chip down market. It spoilt the brand image. They match with the survey we did before we went to VMWare. A VM to Real ration of 10 to 1 is what folks typically achieve when they virtualize a Windows environment. In general you don't need lots of CPU power, you need fast disks and channels. That's why SSD disks, ZFS and multi-teir SANs are one key area of an evolving market place... IBM typically sell you a box with more CPUs in that you need, and charge by CPU power so it makes sense to run those that are enabled pretty near flat out. If you need a boost then they sell you a code to allow you to enable more CPU speed. From:- http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/zsd03011usen/ZSD03011USEN.PDF "IBM Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD) provides a permanent increase in processing capacity that can be initiated by the customer. IBM On/Off Capacity on Demand (On/Off CoD) provides temporary capacity needed for short-term spikes in capacity or for testing new applications. Capacity Backup Upgrade (CBU) can help provide reserved emergency backup capacity for multiple processor configurations" Dave G4UGM

I do hate answering the obvious trolling, but I am weak willed so some answers in lin ------ Original Message ------ From: "MG" <marcogb at xs4all.nl> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Sent: 08/04/2013 21:14:48 Subject: Re: Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving ? The Register They are big and expensive and difficult to justify for a small business? Even with "Capacity on Demand" the entry level prices are such that an SME (google for what percentage of the market are SME) can't afford to get on the ladder. There is a lot more to VMWare (and Hyper-V) than just Virtualization... I can't possibly comment... ... but others say VMWare is getting expensive compared to the Microsoft Hyper-V. No one outside IBM knows for sure. Getting figures for how many zSeries boxes in use is pretty challenging.. I don't remember it being hard to obtain. I think the "overpriced" argument only appeared when they produced the cheaper "windows only" servers. Poor software library was also an issue, so whilst you could get the Microsoft Exchange server on Alpha, you need an Intel box to run the Lotus Notes and Profs/SNADS connectors. Sorry it was a survey of our internal sever estate, so its not available on the public domain. I feel Oracle (Sun as was) is going the same way as IBM zSeries. Not only has our Mainframe gone but also most of our Oracle (SUN) servers. VMWare lets us deliver Linux or Windows VMs as a service. Ring me up in the morning and I'll usually have a new Red Hat or Windows server up and running by lunch time ready for you to install your apps on. (it could be made quicker but I don't do enough to make it worth while) I guess I could also deliver Solaris X86 the same way. We don't have enough Oracle (nee SUN) boxes to be able to deliver them at that rate, but in theory Oracle Solaris can do the same. VMware works just like IBM used to with 360 mainframes. It has such a really low entry point (S/360 model 30 comes to mind), and generally once you are in you are in and addicted. The smallest physical VMWare server my employer has around $3,000 dollars and was used to consolidate virtualize a small pile of desktop PCs used to manage a thin client environment, and run a time management system. Total cost around $3000 dollars. I am also looking at some big boxes for a CPU intensive application. These may well turn out at $25,000 or more each. If you are really big you can pay twice that... However provided the physical boxes are on the same VLAN and SAN I can transparently move the RUNNING servers from the smallest box to the largest with no impact to the user, no re-boot, and the OS won't even notice the move. http://www.vmware.com/uk/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/vmotion… Microsoft have a similar facility for Hyper-V called "live migration". http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=12601 Watching VMWare VMotion a VM between two ESX hosts is still something I find difficult to believe, but the system does it all the time, to load balance. It will also do dynamic power management where it automatically consolidates the work load during times of low capacity demand. (I haven't tried that yet) Last time I looked IBM was promising this for a future release of zVM but it may be here now. Of course IBM boxes are big enough that they don't need it for performance and there is enough redundancy in a big box for most needs.. Hope thats all clear. Its past my early bed time over here in East Pondia... Dave G4UGM

On 9-apr-2013 1:06, Dave McGuire wrote: Okay, AlphaPCs, AXPpci and the like were offered to 'lower end' and consumer markets. But, like I said, for what were they actually useful and why did nobody end up getting them? I mean, since they weren't hard to obtain, wouldn't that be worse then? I regret to have to inform you that my phone isn't capable of time traveling yet... I did see them on offer in computer magazines. But, again, the aforementioned variety. Also a few additional loans and mortgages... (Especially the more useful and interesting "AlphaStation"/"AlphaServer" systems.) Have you recently tried to build Tru64 UNIX pkgsrc offerings? (For instance.) That convenience, although I can't retroactively check that, is hardly there... (Or, certainly not anymore.) Digital/Tru64 UNIX saw quite a bit of usage, especially here. Many companies and government agencies ran VMS and Tru64 UNIX, but it's sadly all dead now and gone to Windows and Linux. Guess what those affordable Alphas were only capable of running... (Hint: It starts with a /W/.) You are forgetting about graphics and post-production now. Look up things like SOFTIMAGE|3D, mental ray and LightWave 3D, amongst other things. Those enjoyed Windows AXP ports, Tru64 UNIX (and VMS, needless to say) never did... Well guess what happened with their peers as well? - MG

On 9-apr-2013 2:15, Dave McGuire wrote: Why, oh why, would anyone want to run an EOL platform? (Other than to keep things up and running.) I was also talking about the present. I know, not your favorite place to be. Sorry about that. Are you now denying the existence of such ads? Also, I wouldn't call (e.g.) an AlphaStation 200, Digital Personal WorkStation or something else of (roughly) that proportion a "big server". I keep forgetting that it's wholly illogical and unreasonable for people to run systems in their small(er) business environments and, /gawd forbid/, at home! You'd be surprised at the amount of things that were ported (think of F/OSS offerings) to VMS by those evil, non-millionaire, scum /little people/ you so dearly despise. How about now? Keep this also in mind for the below paragraphs. Why would anyone want to run an EOL (read: dead) operating system without even a community left? (Thanks to the PAKs not being provided any longer.) Guess what subsequently happened to F/OSS offerings, to make it even less attractive? The only people still running Tru64 UNIX, over here at least, are in the process of moving to emulators and some --- those daring enough --- moving to HP-UX on HP's miracle denialware (better known as IPF, a.k.a. IA-64 or... /Itanic/ by some). You mean the non-millionaire /little people/? So, who exactly are the "idiots" now? Tru64 UNIX is dead now and it has been for many years. HP didn't even proceed to port off things like TruCluster, AdvFS, etc. to HP-UX, as they promised in the roadmaps at the time (around 2003~'05). Oh, right, that's why nearly everything was bolted down with PAKs? (Product Activation Keys, in case you may have perhaps forgotten.) No, they didn't, but they did make some inroads when it came to raw number crunching; you know, rendering (like I wrote about earlier). Those NT AXP systems supposedly outran some SGI IRIX/MIPS systems at the time. (Note: I'm a huge SGI fan, I also own a good amount of them and still run them, including a close- to-max'ed out quad-processor Tezro.) So, where is SGI now? Where is (pre-Oracle) Sun now? Where is SCO now? Where is DEC itself now? Where are all those HP-UX, AIX, etc. workstations now? - MG

On 9-apr-2013 3:12, Dave McGuire wrote: Because it doesn't work and there are tons of reasons to change. Again, this is for the most part again an observation. You assume too much. I seem to remember you brought these things up. In fact, I still run Tru64 UNIX here, but I don't pretend to run anything seriously. (No way in hell that I'd ever expose a Tru64 UNIX system directly to the 'net either, to name something else.) Do you swear against yourself, by any chance? I mean, you're conspiring with the /debbil/ now, right? You never answered where I asked why you turned that job opportunity down. So yes, definitely your second choice. I'm an idiot /little person/, remember? And I lack the millions/billions in cash, to pay for the kind of acoustics that will be audible by IBM... - MG

On Apr 8, 2013, at 8:56 PM, MG wrote: I'm not interested in getting into this, but that's actually not a bad reason to keep running an EOL platform. Ask the steel mill we worked with to replace their old Multibus- based stand controllers; it's a lot cheaper to keep an old system running (especially if it's a very durable design, like a lot of the Alpha boxes and VAXen) than it is to try to replace the system. Especially if something goes wrong when you're trying to replace it. For the record, we only buckled *one* many-thousand-dollar ingot of steel. :-) And that was a bug in their old documentation for the system we had to interface with. - Dave

Why would anyone want to run _any_ computer other than to keep things up and running? But there actually are multiple answers to that question. Here are a few that occur to me offhand: - To keep an existing system running, as you mentioned. - Emotional attachments (to the hardware, to the software, whatever). - Interfacing to otherwise useless hardware (today, this might mean Qbus or Sbus; AIUI everything using either is EOLed or worse now). /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 9-apr-2013 17:36, Dave Woyciesjes wrote: Did you miss the part where I said I run Tru64 UNIX myself? (And the part, for that matter, that many --- over here, at least --- are moving away from that platform. Or, actually, already moved away.) It equaled none for me, because I never saw anything other than those AlphaPC, AXPpci, etc. offerings (like I said at least twice before). Maybe you should reread some posts? What about getting any exposure to this platform at all? What about allowing people to get acquainted with it? What about allowing people the chance to port and develop software for this platform? (See also the example I gave with VMS earlier.) Then you probably didn't read this thread very well. - MG

On 9-apr-2013 23:02, Dave Woyciesjes wrote: How much good did that do for Alpha in the end? With very palatable benefits, but I guess the /little people/ were also despised by DEC to some degree. Well, look where DEC is now. When will they learn? For man it's /a bit/ too late now. Mean- while, I'm called a "troll", but I'm probably more annoyed by the Googles and Microsofts of this world than many of you combined. Now we're entering the x86/ARM bi-polar world. So, where's IBM --- one of the last big players with alternatives --- to give them hell...? - MG

I'm not going to argue any of the points in this thread because I know little about the technologies (apart from what I've gleaned here) but I'm sure you've all seen these rather amusing ads from IBM. I guess they relate to this conversation. http://youtu.be/Kbn_MUfTG0E (The Invasion - IBM Virtualization Engine) http://youtu.be/rmxPfZtV6w0 (who stole our servers) http://youtu.be/73bMSNPc3Ak (IBM e-server commercial) Terry (Tez)

On 04/08/2013 08:35 PM, Liam Proven wrote: Liam, I appreciate your point of view here, but MG really is just being an ass. He doesn't know very much about what he's talking about, he's found me to be very easy to bait (which I am), and is having fun with it, probably because he REALLY needs to get laid and just can't manage to make it happen. I really need to just be done with it, and make a mental note to beat his ass to a sobbing pulp the next time I'm in his vicinity. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 04/08/2013 10:00 PM, MG wrote: No, to solve Your Problem. Understanding that IBM's mainframe business is doing fine, you'll have to learn a thing or two, starting with how to accept the possibility that there are things going on in the industry that you're not privy to or that you don't understand. You have a VERY easy time of things. You do anything the salespeople tell you to do, and sit behind the safety of the keyboard and rile people up. I'm sitting here getting work done, despite your ridiculous interruptions (which is a miracle, mind you, because you're really quite good at it...there's gotta be something I guess) while you seem to have nothing at all to do but piss in peoples' pools. No, you childish loon, I'm not going to hop on a plane to Europe and beat your ass. Though you sorely need it. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 9 April 2013 02:16, Terry Stewart <terry at webweavers.co.nz> wrote: (!) Gosh. Thanks! You are very welcome! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

On 9 April 2013 02:40, MG <marcogb at xs4all.nl> wrote: Life's too short. It's 3AM here & I'm just doing this while waiting for a VM to update. You know how it is. OK. Well, TBH, nor I. I suppose the only difference is that I've done a lot of research & reading on big iron - partly for a white paper I wrote about them for IBM years & years ago. (I am more of a tech writer than a techie these days; you can find a booklet about virtualization by me on Amazon, if you're curious.) I've done a *tiny* bit of maintenance/admin work on AS/400 and System/36. VMS? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Also, industry-leading clustering. Even now, no other OS can come remotely close. Leading to ridiculous uptimes and so on: take individual nodes of a cluster offline, upgrade them, rejoin, and thus upgrade or even replace an entire server farm with 100% uptime. I quote: ?I've seen smaller form factor IBM mainframes before, like recently in a YouTube video. Also, whatever prevented IBM from creating more and even more compact mainframes? Like I asked before: What the hell is it with this disturbing 'elitism', 'mainframe royalty'? That of all people, the most republican bunch on this planet (Americans) are defending this goes beyond me...? That seems to me to be essentially asking why we never got miniature, PC-size mainframes. There /were/ PC-size mainframes, back in the day. http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/ibm-5364-s36-pc But in the end, IBM seems to have realised that its revenues came from the big expensive boxes and stopped trying to make little cheap ones. Smart move. At the end of the day, it's more a functional than a systematic definition, I think. OK, I get the hint. I had no real idea of your level of historical knowledge; you've been too busy sparring with Mr McGuire. Not really, no. In essence, modern distributed virtualised datacentres are reinventing, just breathtakingly inelegantly and inefficiently. OK. Well, AS/400 was the last ever new mini, essentially, and it was designed to fit into the existing "ecosystem" of IBM kit: peripherals, terminals, cabling, etc. So it's a weird sort of mini that instead of using RS232 or Ethernet, used IBM 3250 or 5250 (or whatever) terminals via SDLC over Twinax or TokenRing, etc. I am not sure what "they" and "those purposes" refer to here. I am not going to guess. The point being that after a while flirting with newfangled ideas like interactive sessions on terminals, mainframes have retreated back to their core strengths, as it were. In a way, yes. Conceptually different, but in some ways broadly comparable in effect. But imagine someone building a Linux distro that ran under VMware and had no disk drivers, no filesystem, no display - it /only/ ran by storing files directly in the VMware filesystem, was only accessible via a remote session over the network, etc. You could in principle really pare it right down by not actually having any code to talk to keyboards, mice, displays, any I/O at all except the network, and so on. Some of the IBM guest OSs are like that. Some are more stripped down still and are not OSs as such at all - just, say, an RDBMS or a transaction monitor that runs directly on a bare VM. Whereas with the x86 way of doing things, you have a whole OS, gigs of it, running VMs, inside which it software-emulates a whole PC, and on that runs /another/ whole OS, emulating files in its emulated filesystem on its emulated hard disk on its emulated hard disk controller, displaying pixels on its emulated screen on its emulated graphics card on an emulated PCI bus attached to an emulated CPU - it's horrifically inelegant: layers and layers and layers of duplicated code, 90% of it completely unnecessary, running imaginary tasks on imaginary hardware, because every layer thinks it's on bare metal. And yes, I know about ESXi and so on. VMware are scam artists. The old server ran a whole copy of Red Hat Linux; their precious VMkernel was just a Linux kernel module. Now they've cut that right down and essentially boot the kernel off a bootloader, but it's still an OS. Compare with IBM Series P, where the firmware can create and destroy VMs. The (equivalent of a) BIOS does virtualisation... and the OS, too, if you want it. In several forms. The PC version is a bodge on a bodge on a bodge. [Shrug] It's a niche and a marginal one. It will probably die in time. For now, they are preserving it by killing off the once-thriving compatible-hardware industry - there used to be loads of IBM-compatible kit and software. All gone now except for the original. Also, by making it expensive, because what it is good at is something only a certain type of business wants. I gather it came as a bit of a surprise to IBM when the Linux kernel was ported onto the mainframe CPU, and more so when a couple of companies started selling boxed distros. IBM's response, continuing to anthropomorphise like hell, was to shrug and say "OK, then" and permit it - after initially trying to shut it down. Then it came up with a special mode of its main hypervisor OS that could only run Linux VMs - but was really cheap. Originally, the idea was that you could run a Linux session and have it serve out your mainframe data over those nasty cheap plasticky PC standards ;) and it was cheaper than buying a licence for the IBM mainframe web server, etc. This did well, so it came up with a special edition of the whole OS that only hosted Linux, no other OS - and again was really cheap. Rather to its surprise, IBM mainframe sales have been doing really well in the last decade, and Linux hosting is driving adoption. My impression is that it was amazed but it is a flexible company and it's rolled with it. If people want to buy zSeries to run shedloads of Linux sessions on, hey, IBM is happy to oblige. Bear in mind, though, that in C21, IBM probably considers shifting a dozen units to be a major sales spike. If it's selling hundreds, I'd be amazed. But then, HP's entire Itanium server range has survived for a decade or more on total sales of just single-digit thousands of units. (I've seen some figures. May not be accurate. But I've heard numbers of 3000-odd units, *in total*. Yes really.) (Aside: you mentioned Cell. A similar scandal, effectively hushed-up, was how broken Cell was. The access times for Cell to its local RAM were in kB/sec. Yes really. Not meg, not gig.) I think your bias is overwhelming you, TBH. Yes, IBM is selling exclusivity etc., but there is more to the story than that. It's like Rolls Royce. "Power: adequate" is all they used to say. If you need to ask, you're not in the target market. Indeed. Yup. My personal take on it, at 45 after 25y in IT, is that, for the main part, C21 IT is run by clueless idiots and we have got to a lowest-common-denominator, cheap'n'nasty sort of plateau. It's why I want out. Someone or something will disrupt it in time. Bear in mind, you pay for CPU bandwidth. It's a metered commodity. Less load = less fees. It's not overstretching the machine, it's overstretching the bank balance. IBM kit the boxes with loads of CPUs and then turn most of 'em off. You pay for 'em when you need 'em and they're remotely enabled. This kind of stunt. Ugly, kinda stinks, but these are not highly price-sensitive performance-sensitive markets. Also, people confuse performance with responsiveness, system size with scalability, etc. There used to be commercial Unix mail server programs that could cheerfully host 30,000 users on a box with a few hundred meg of RAM. Now, people run Hosted Exchange and spawn hundreds of new server instances because the crappy broken software can only handle 1-2 hundred users per box. This is not real scalability; it is using the cheapness of commodity COTS hardware to hide profound scalability problems. Also see, responsiveness vs. performance. E.g. Win7. It's not faster than Vista. It's marginally slower than Vista. But it /feels/ faster because it's been tuned for UI responsiveness. Said responsiveness is still utter crap - BeOS on a Pentium/90 was vastly more responsive in 1998 or so. But it's dead, because it was a niche product and Windows was Good Enough. If you compare a machine with 4 CPUs of a single kind with one with 368 different CPUs of 27 different types, all running different OSes, how do you compare performance? If you just pick one - say the GP arithmetic-logic engine - then the big box will look like utter crap by comparison. Its expensive chips are slower. But its real power is that it has 3581^23 different dedicated processors doing all these different things in different chunks of different types of memory, all at once, and thus can run for years on end at 100% utilisation while preserving the same response time as with 1 task at 1% use. Even TPC measures will be misleading in this sort of scenario, so, IBM avoids benchmarks as much as possible. I have virtually none myself. I freely admit - this is all theoretical, paper knowledge from extensive reading, some of confidential IBM info. Nothing more. It works well when you have something like a multi-tier client-server model, when the server can be offloaded to one of these big engines. Maybe you even have 2 or 3 layers of other server between you and the back end, but eventually, there comes a point where you absolutely positively have to **KNOW** that at the same time as ?42.60 being debited from Mrs Q Smith's account, it was also debiting exactly ?543,432,573,759.43? in riyals from Royal Dutch Shell's account and crediting it to HRH R Saud of Mecca, and both *WILL* go through even if a bomb goes off next door. Bolt a big enough engine on it, a barn door will fly. It's tried. It tried years ago. Have you *looked?* http://www.youtube.com/user/IBMSystemZ It's there. I guess it's stopped shouting about it 'cos word-of-mouth sales were doing just fine. I remember the era when every British computer mag had IBM ads in. Now they're gone. The ads and the mags. It is expanding faster than it's done in years, I believe. Mainly on Linux workloads. You don't see it - but I may as well paraphrase Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: "It might, or might not, have helped Anathema get a clear view of things if she'd been allowed to spot the very obvious reason why she couldn't see Adam's aura. "It was for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can't see England." It's there but they are not playing in the market where people care what brand of tin they are buying. If you even need to ask what kind of server to run, or whether to run Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V 3 versus vSphere Hypervisor, then you're not a potential customer. So there is absolutely no point advertising. Anyone who notices ads is not a potential customer. These guys make sales by taking the finance director for a weekend in Monte Carlo during the 24H and quietly mentioning possible deals between courses at dinner. See billing, above. Very little - but I know what they're good for, even if I don't swim in the kind of waters where these whales lurk. I'm a minnow. My predictions? Big picture? We are in the grip of the "worse is better" (q.v.) school and have been since Unix was invented. But Moore's Law has stopped buying us more CPU power. Now Koomey's Law (q.v.) holds. Worse is Better, I think, will run out of steam. The MIT school will finally prevail. Wheels will get reinvented but some old powers may yet rise from the grave. I think we might see some old /styles/ of tech re-invented, but in new forms, free from restrictive patents and copyrights. I think the whole era of Unix-like OSs written in C-like languages and compiled down to object files will go away and something distantly related to Lisp Machines, or Taos/Intent Elate or something similarly radical like that, will take over. But like the French Revolution, it's too soon to tell. (q.v.) Some further reading: http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/33746.html -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

On 9-apr-2013 17:50, Dave Woyciesjes wrote: It sounds more like there are a bunch of big freeloaders at the top of IBM, just like in many other companies (HP immediately springs to mind), who care more for their own, personal, immediate needs --- their car park, yachts and private jets --- than the prolonged existence of their niche and "legacy" product lines. That's something of and for the /little people/, now isn't it? I guess that's true then. And world peace too, don't forget world peace. Maybe throw in "going green" also, while they're at it. How delightfully 1950s, so in a way also a bit like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman? - MG

On 9-apr-2013 1:13, I wrote: Correction: "Convenient" in the above naturally has to be /inconvenient/. - MG

On 9-apr-2013 1:40, Dave McGuire wrote: Watch the blood pressure. I know it's not an emotional issue for you, but just saying... So? Also a new Itanium arrived a while ago. Your psychic abilities continue to astound me. That would really depend on the weather, now wouldn't it? - MG

On 04/08/2013 07:40 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: Maybe no intentionally trolling, but by the way you presented your arguments, and the lack of links to back up the claims, it most certainly comes across as trolling. Yeah, sorry 'bout adding that confusion, Dave... ;) -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

Cripes, guys, just drop it and plonk the guy already. The humour value of the thread went South some time ago. -- Will

Indeed. Is it? How easy is it to run VM-in-VM with VMware? (That's a serious question; I have never even looked at it myself. Work has never required it, and, like all closed-source software, it's simply not under consideration for my home use. Someday I want to learn enough of the x86 hypervisor hardware facilities to build a hypervisor of my own, but so far opportunity and inclination have not coincided for that.) Allowing? Why would they want to stop it? What's the business case for the massive educational effort that would be required? Why should they? Not everyone is interested in going after every possible market. IBM has, apparently, decided that their shareholders are best served by ignoring tiny-to-small sites, instead going after larger sites more or less excusively. And, for suitable values of "best served", I'm not sure they're wrong. What "people"? Buyers for large corporations (and other entities of similar size, such as governments) _do_ know about IBM; most of them have, and the rest can get hold of, a sales rep with little-to-no trouble. Said sales rep isn't going to be talking to individuals or small businesses, no, but then we're back to IBM having no interest in selling to them. Given the degree of technical cluelessness I've heard of (and occasionally observed) in the individual and small-to-medium business markets, I'm not at all sure they're wrong to do so; the handholding necessary to support such customers may very well leech away too much of their value to the company to be worth bothering with. (Not all such customers ar elike that, but it's hard to tell in advance which ones are clued.) I don't know. See above for some (only partially founded) speculation on the question. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 4/7/2013 7:38 PM, William Donzelli wrote: There is an option for 64 bit systems + the vanderpool vm bit implemented that will allow hypervisors to run nested. I'll put a link to a vmware community posting later. Only thing to point out is that it takes not only the vm assist, but a 64 bit only option. I've not looked into it to quote intel bits, but I do have a couple of 64 bit vm assisted processors that don't support nesting, if you plan to do it study which one you need before wasting money on the wrong processor. When we developed on VM/SP5 we routinely ran everything 2nd level for all of our user work, but had configured all of our working systems to easily be dropped to the hardware and be run standalone. Also one of the guests we developed ran third level frequently on the development machines, but again we had the hardware to have everyone on dedicated 3380's so we could point at them and boot either the VM or the Ultimate system directly if need. the Vmware is usually used from what I've seen for configuring and testing vmware esxi system configurations on a single system before deployment. jim http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8970

On 8 April 2013 08:39, Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote: I am not sure they "prohibit" it, but Hyper-V uses the CPU's hardware virtualisation features. It does not and cannot do software virtualisation. VMware and VirtualBox can do S/W virtualisation, so in principle, you can run one copy under another, stacked arbitrarily deep - as deep as performance allows, anyway. VMware /invented/ S/W virtualisation of x86, thus "breaking" the Popek & Goldberg requirements. It ran x86 ring 0 code through a parser, and if it did "unclean" activity that would violate virtual machine integrity, it ran the code in a software emulator, just like SimH or Charon-VAX does. Slow, but effective, and as the CEO of Connectix (the original creators of VirtualPC) told me personally, "you'll find that, when emulating x86 on x86, the ISAs are a really remarkably good match - so the emulation speed is pretty good." ;?) -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

On Apr 8, 2013, at 6:43 PM, Guy Sotomayor <ggs at shiresoft.com> wrote: Gotcha. Depends on the VM, too. I'm running SIMH under OpenBSD under VMWare for one of my projects. But that wasn't the original question.

MG <marcogb at xs4all.nl> wrote: But you don't seem to understand that IBM and other mainframe guys don't _want_ to be in thee mass market with that big hardware... -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

Dave G4UGM ------ Original Message ------ From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: 08/04/2013 18:13:59 Subject: Re: Re: Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving ? The Register They sold that division to Lenovo , but they still provide the support infrastructure, at least in the UK...

On 04/08/2013 04:25 PM, MG wrote: Hrmm? I thought the MandrakeOT list was the only place members wore shiny hats of tin? -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 04/08/2013 05:40 PM, MG wrote: Nope, I didn't tell you anything. Merely asked a question of the group; regarding the allowed headgear when participating here. It'd be kinda cramped to live under a mainframe, but I'd stay warm at least. Have a good day, Mr. Troll. :) -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 04/08/2013 06:50 PM, MG wrote: Coward? Nah, cowards don't come back for more. And I didn't call you a nut, I just implied in a round-about way that you seem to be a person in the conspiracy theory camp. As for admitting or not, Just having a little fun with words. As for your claim of IBM "...don't want people (and the /little people/ in particular) to find out that they've been providing the "mainframe" backbone for all those /nice/ bailed-out banks..." it does strike me as a conspiracy theory, hence my wise-crack. However, if you can provide evidence to back this up (not counting blogs from some unknown guy & dubious news articles) I will change my mind. As for their bank customers, couldn't one find that info out from IBM's SEC filings? -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 04/09/2013 11:14 AM, MG wrote: Because when the word nut is used in this slang way, it means the person is crazy and should be committed. Conspiracy-theoriest, however, are not crazy. They just believe things are different from what others believe. I don't believe that I stated the bail-outs were a conspiracy, or at least I did not intend to. It was your claim of IBM trying to hide the fact that they supply mainframes to those bank, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Again, if you have proof of them doing this, then I will change my tune on that. As has been mentioned before, and Liam did it the best.. IBM doesn't need to talk about their mainframe customers publicly. They could if they want; but in that league, personal contact is the way to do it. It is your use of phrases like that, "propagandists", that lead people to believe you are trolling. If you could rephrase that, it would go a long way. I've followed this thread, since I was the one who posted the email that started this brouhaha. Haven't seen any proof, links to good sources. Not being a financial guy, I honestly don't know either. Anyone? -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

Fred Cisin wrote: Actually, they are interested in us. They just don't consider us the market for z. The prices for entry-level p has been in small business territory for quite a long time. Peace... Sridhar

On 04/09/2013 02:20 PM, MG wrote: Is this another expression of being "critically interested"? No. To be WRONG, you should proceed to roughly equate "p" to "z" in any way. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 04/09/2013 03:51 PM, MG wrote: No, here's an answer: WHO CARES? Not me, and not IBM. You surely do, though. Perhaps this is an emotional issue for you? I fail to see why this is amusing. You know, them being DIFFERENT and all. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Apr 9, 2013, at 3:51 PM, MG <marcogb at xs4all.nl> wrote: I have. I originally ended up looking up its predecessor (S/390) when IBM started supporting S/390 Linux back in... the late '90s? Early 2000s? Nope. No, but I don't work at a bank or a stock exchange. I once worked at a health insurance company that might have had one, but I certainly never had direct contact with it. I don't read current computer publications. Blogs, yes, I've seen it mentioned (usually in conjunction with the software patent nonsense they've been pulling with Hercules). I know there are public forums on zos.efglobe.com. It appears to be down at the moment, but I haven't seen any explanation of why. Same place: zos.efglobe.com has a public-access system (running z/OS 1.6, which is a bit outdated). It's the only free one I've seen; any others are usually rentals of time on a system because the normal assumption is that you'll be using it for commercial purposes. My two cents (and PLEASE don't make this all emotionally-charged, because it isn't): The mainframe market has established customers (mainly banks) who will continue to buy IBM mainframes because the software that they've invested DECADES into still runs on modern IBM mainframes because IBM is heavily invested in backwards compatibility. They fund IBM's mainframe budget because mainframes are a low-volume, niche industry with high margins. They're analogous to supercomputers, except they trade raw number crunching ability for sophisticated high-bandwidth I/O systems that can support incredible sustained data rates; it's a feature set that no one except very large businesses tend to need. Those very large businesses will train entry-level programmers on their mainframes, so there's very little need for a presence in universities; additionally, the sales channels are essentially established through pedigree. If you have enough money and the requirement for high data throughput, IBM will cold call you. To use your analogy, it is actually a lot like a door-to-door vacuum salesman, except in this case, the salesman already knows you need a vacuum and is probably one of the only people in the world who can sell you the right one. And to address a previous point: yes, it is the same thing that the NonStop and VMS people say when they point out that they're used around the world in stock markets and banks. They're also all mostly correct; NonStop has about the same customer type as IBM does for its mainframes. VMS is maybe a step below that, but there are still a lot of organizations using it because they have a lot invested in VMS-based software (or because it's actually the best tool for their particular task and someone who specified the system actually knew something about VMS). Admittedly, that's basically three major cases of vendor lock- in, which I'm generally not a fan of because it leads to stagnation. Mainframes aren't any more dead than Formula One racing is, but it's understandable that you might think so. The same thing COULD be done with a giant cluster of x86 machines, but IBM has spent 50+ years making a single architecture with the total package of reliability, scalability and pedigree. It's simply an easier call for gigantic enterprise operations to buy a total package that has it all than try to, say, make Linux be fault-tolerant enough to run a whole international bank. Some banks do it, but plenty of others don't, and it doesn't take much to sustain an industry that runs on that much margin. - Dave

Aren't Mainframe rooms still kept cold? (probably not as noisy, anymore) How much cabling is there in the subfloor? WHY would they CARE what you or anybody else who isn't a customer (or qualified lead) know or think about their affiliations with bankers, guvmints, or the nazis in WW2? If it makes them MONEY, then they aren't ashamed of ANYTHING. Or do you think that they would try to conceal their involvement out of fear that they might lose YOU as a potential customer? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 04/09/2013 01:30 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Thanks guys, killing my humor... ;) -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 04/06/2013 12:00 PM, William Donzelli wrote: This is painfully true. And it really shouldn't be, because when the two worlds combine, very cool things can happen. The strengths and weaknesses mesh almost perfectly. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

In article <2F25BE3D5F64F342B56139F31854C9B998D8B010 at 505MBX2.corp.vnw.com>, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> writes: While the above situation is true, it's not like "vendor lock-in" is some sort of new phenomenon that is only due to Microsoft. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

On 5 April 2013 17:58, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote: While not an actual solution, and many will also find this unteneable; but I just simply refused to upgrade from Office 2003. There's a compatibility patch thing that lets Office 2003 use some of the Office 2007 and later formats, and that's fine for me. I refused to upgrade not because of compatibility reasons but because I utterly *loathe* the redesigned interface for Office 2007 and later (also the reason I am going to refuse to get Windows 8, because W8's interface makes me feel that the correct method of interface is "slowly bang head against wall until unconscious"). Can we just go back to VT-220 compatible terminals with ReGIS and Tek graphics, on PDP-11s, please? That would be nice. Cheers, Christian

On 5 April 2013 22:58, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote: LibreOffice 4 - the latest version - runs on Mac OS X 10.4 or higher on a PowerPC Mac with >=512MB of RAM. Also, you can get the official MS "Open XML" filters as a free download, which will enable MS Office 2004 to import 2007/2010 .docx/.xlsx/.pptx files: http://gigaom.com/2008/09/03/open-docx-with-office-2004/ -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884