You bring up a very good point about when machines were leased. I began in
operations when you had to record the start and end time of each job as well
as the,meter time. We had a manager who wanted to see about 4-5 hours on the
meter out of a 8 hour shift, which was hard to do when everything bombed and
1 hour into the shift and you were done. So the operators used to put DEBE
in and let it crank the meter while they played hearts, but management was
happy that they used 4-5 hours of machine time. I wouldn't do it and got
called on the carpet for not getting more work done. Ah the good ol days!
Bill
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Operating systems are old and busted
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:55:59 -0600
The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main as
well.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#64 Operating systems are old and
busted
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#66 Off Topic But Concept should be
Known To All
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and
busted
part of the timesharing issue was whether the off-shift useage charges
(or just plain useage) could justify the off-shift operational costs
... since useage tended to decline significantly offshift and weekends
(although I finally got my home machine for dial-up access mar70 ... it
was 2741 selectric, and have effectively had online access at home ever
since). lots of past posts about timesharing services ... including
commercial (cp67 & vm370) timesharing service bureaus in the 60s & 70s.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#timeshare
in the 60s & thru some of the 70s, machines tended to be leased ... and
there was system meter ... which would rackup charges as the machine was
used ... even when the machine was in "wait" state ... but I/O was
active. The 2702 "prepare" command was mechanism to leave the terminal
lines "prepared" for any terminal operation ... w/o actually having an
active I/O apparent to the system meter.
the incremental machine lease charges and costs having people/operators
present ... was one of the inhibitors for justifying/providing
around-the-clock, 7x24 timesharing operation (since offshift useage
could be extremely spotty).
eliminating system meter running ... when the system wasn't actually
doing anything (just available for doing something) ... and being able
to run with dark-room, unattended operation ... would significantly
lower the off-shift useage threashold that was necessary to justify
leaving the system up, available and operational (significantly helped
in transition for providing production around-the-clock, 7x24
operation).
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