-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: curious claim questioned [was RE: Free IBM system/1(?) in eastern US.] Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2016 02:00:07 +0000 From: Rich Alderson <RichA at livingcomputers.org> Reply-To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' <cctalk at classiccmp.org> From: jim stephens Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2016 3:21 PM You're going to have to be more specific than that. At what time? On what mainframe(s)? Are you saying that by the time Ultimate, whatever that is when it's at home, was running, no other non-IBM OSes were running on IBM hardware, all others being dead? Or that Ultimate was earlier than, say, MTS on IBM hardware? And are you claiming that no other manufacturers' systems are mainframes? What are you saying? Rich At the time the only OS's were VM and MVS on IBM hardware as far as IBM was concerned for maintenance purposes. If you had MTS or anything else they would run diagnostics for you at most on a contract, then hit the door. If Ultimate had a problem with running, there was a support path for that OS and it was not an IBM OS. The hardware calls related to problems with the OS not working would not be billed T&M by IBM like they would be for any other service calls. If an IBM CE came on site and saw Ultimate it would come up on his little radio gizmo and not be totally unsupported. Ultimate's OS from about 81 thru maybe 88 when Ultimate collapsed and support was taken over by the Florida guys who bought the software rights eventually was the only OS like that. You could boot and run anything you wanted to, but if you had a problem and an IBM service contract, you would get billed T&M for the call unless their diagnostics showed something. With Ultimate, they would run whatever we directed them to if it got to that, and the support call would be in scope of the contract. Thanks Jim <snip>