>But this reminds me of the current struggle to extend DASD volume sizes beyond >54GB, largely because IBM apparently at the introduction of the 3390 made a >committment to support forever programmers with the unconscionable habit of hard- coding device geometry parameters rather than fetching them dynamically from system services.
I think that was a good thing. I was one of the ones, in Canada, complaining about the constant changes in geometry. 3330->3350->3380->3390 (and don't forget 'compatability' mode. This impacted productivity, migration, space (at a time it mattered), and storage management in general. >If no programmers had hard-coded 15 tracks per cylinder, IBM could easily have supported HH values up to 65535. They hard-coded because it was there. >It's all virtual, anyway, nowadays. Yes, but it removes one more responsibility from the programmer. SMS was intended to remove space management from them. Since it's virtual, does it matter? - I'm a SuperHero with neither powers, nor motivation! Kimota! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
