The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Roger Bowler) writes: > IBM worked long and hard over many years to successfully establish > S/360 and its successors as *the* standard computer > architecture. Indeed for a 20 year period between about 1970 to 1990 > S/360/370/390 was almost the only architecture which would reasonably > be considered for most business systems large or small. With the > result that applications tied to MVS and VSE are now firmly embedded > into the infrastructure of the various information systems (banks, > utilities, government, airlines) that allow our society to function > the way it does. The figure of $1 trillion invested in software > compatible with IBM mainframes has been widely quoted. some recent topic drift in thread that wandered into run-up/justification for 360 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#63 Remembering the CDC 6600 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#65 Remembering the CDC 6600 also referenced in the above, there was an failed/aborted attempt to take a large detour in the early 70s with the future system effort http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#futuresys motivated by the growth in the plug-compatible controller business ... discussed in more detail in this recent post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#74 System 360 EBCDIC vs. ASCII it was in the FS period that Amdahl launched his plug-compatible processor business. In the early 70s, Amdahl gave a talk at MIT where he was quized about it. One of the questions was what justification did he use to raise funding for the company. The response was something about customers had already spent $200b in 360-based application software, and even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360 (could possibly be considered a veiled reference to the future system project), that software base would be sufficient to keep him in business through the end of the century (i.e. the $200b number was less than a decade after 360 had been announced). The future system distraction drew a lot of resources away from 370 activities. When future system was finally killed, there was mad scramble to get software and hardware products back into the 370 product pipeline. The lack of products in the 370 product pipeline possibly contributed to market opportunities for clone processor vendors. The 303x were part of that mad scramble ... which was effectively started in parallel with what was to become 3081 and 370-xa. recent post going into details of 303x effort http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#1 what does xp do when system is copying however, it was the long lead-time to do mvs/xa and the associated mad scramble that led to justification to kill vm370 and transfer everybody from the burlington mall vm370 group to pok ... supposedly as necessary in order to meet the mvs/xa schedule. endicott eventually did manage to acquire the vm370 product mission and keep it alive ... but effectively had to reconstitute the group from scratch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
