TOS/360 came with a macro library that had I/O macros for various kinds of access methods. Obviously, one had to design one's block size with the entire machine's storage capacity in mind. I was probably using 2K or 3K for a block length, which would have allowed me to start reading the next block of data while processing the one just read, and still had 8K or so for my massive application program. I vaguely remember using DOS transient modules that I coded myself just to get around the storage limitations.
Dave Freeman, who had managed the development of the DOS/360 supervisor for IBM, told me that its design point was 6K so that there would be 10K for application programs on a 16K machine. TOS/360 also fit in the same design limits. At least the versions that I worked with in the late 1960s were this small. Later versions may have exceeded these limits, but by then I had moved way on up to working with MVT on a truly monstrous system with 256K. Bill Fairchild Rocket Software -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 9:38 AM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: History of Hard-coded Offsets (Was: TSSO problems) On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 14:27:40 +0000, Bill Fairchild wrote: >The BPS "supervisor" took 2K, which left 6K for the "application" program. I >never ran this way on an 8K model 30, but you were supposedly able to >configure a model 30 with only 8K. The one I used had 16K. This left me with >a whopping 14K for my application, which Dave Freeman once described to me as >"oceans of core", so why was I having so much trouble getting all my logic in >14K, he wanted to know. :-) > Gulp. BLKSIZE=??? Or, perhaps, BLKSIZE=?? Or was it all UR? >And I used BAL, the Basic Assembler Language, which had many restrictions that >the TOS and DOS assemblers did not. E.g., statement labels were limited to 6 >characters. > If it's enough for FORTRAN it should be enough for you! -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
