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A comment on IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system. Parent comment

Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by protomyth on Monday August 17, 2015 @09:25AM (#10072765)
We have an AS/400 (excuse me, iSeries) and the damn thing is rock solid. It also alerts us and IBM when it needs maintenance. Its basically a tank with a logistics chain.
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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by nickpsecurity on Monday August 17, 2015 @03:22PM (#10075440)
System/38, later AS/400, was one of the most brilliantly designed systems of the time that I've seen:

https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/Chapter8.pdf

Designed for business apps, future-proofing, integrated database, largely self-managing, capability-security, continuing on solid (POWER) hardware... did about everything right. That's why we regularly fix crashed Windows and 'NIX machines but my company's AS/400 has been running for around 10 years.

I've always wanted a modern, clean-slated version of the System/38 w/out relics from that time and with any tricks we've learned since. Throw in hardware acceleration for garbage collection and some NonStop-style tricks for fault-tolerance to have a beast of a machine.

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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by protomyth on Monday August 17, 2015 @06:03PM (#10076438)
Strangely, I've always wanted a modern version of the Burroughs Large Systems, but I like stack machines and have been a fan of Forth and Postscript.
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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by nickpsecurity on Monday August 17, 2015 @06:33PM (#10076571)
It's not strange for anyone whose read this:

http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...

A similarly amazing machine that IBM's System/38 learned from a little bit. Somebody posted a link to an emulator but honestly I don't want to dredge through that. Like you said, a modern system that reimplemented its best attributes without the limitations or baggage would be nice.

Mainframes are complex enough that there's rarely projects to implement them but there's lots of work on safer CPU's. See crash-safe.org's early publications for a CPU that combined Burrough's-style checks, Alpha ISA, and functional programming at system level. Given stack preference, you might like these:

http://www.jopdesign.com/

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jared/ssp-hase-submission.pdf

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/pete/acl206/papers/hardin.pdf

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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by mindcrime on Monday August 17, 2015 @11:54AM (#10073822)
I started out my career in IT as an AS/400 operator / Netware 3.12 admin, and while AS/400 / iSeries aren't "en vogue" these days, I have a lot of respect for those machines. As you say, they are rock solid. One of the places I worked for had an even older machine, an IBM S/36 (predecessor to the AS/400) and while ancient, it just kept plugging away, day after day after day after day...

OTOH, you couldn't pay me to program in RPG/400 using SEU. Building menus, or playing around with a little CL on on the '400 is one thing. But RPG programming sucks. Well, it did anyway. Maybe things have gotten better. I understand the ILE stuff made RPG less column oriented and closer to a free-form language, but I had never had a chance to use that.

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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by Allegrippus on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:41PM (#10074259)
I remember original RPG as being the electronic descendant of the old IBM unit record machines, with their plug boards and mechanical processing cycles. That heritage likely predates even COBOL. IBM added many extensions over the years, and at one of my mainframe workplaces we even did online CICS programming with RPG (not fun at all!).
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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by shawndumas on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:30PM (#10074166)
Who are you and how have you stolen my[1] early career history?!

Let me guess you started in the early 90's, right?

I remember looking at HTTP for the first time and feeling like it was 5250 display files writ anew. The y2k mess made me jump into web dev full time.

-----

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9816696

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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by mindcrime on Monday August 17, 2015 @02:00PM (#10074878)
Who are you and how have you stolen my[1] early career history?!

Hahaha... well, it's a long story, regarding the early part of my career. Especially the whole bit about exactly how I got involved with AS/400's in the first place.

Let me guess you started in the early 90's, right?

Almost. I graduated H.S. in '91, started programming in '92 or so, but didn't start my first IT job until 1997.

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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by chiph on Monday August 17, 2015 @10:15AM (#10073069)
The AS/400 (err, iSeries) never gets any love. If you need line-of-business applications that just work all the time, it'd be a great choice.
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Re:IBM launches Linux-only mainframe system by beauzero on Monday August 17, 2015 @11:07AM (#10073482)
This used to be my choice of integration. Microsoft web front end and AS/400 back end for warehouse. DB2 is a beast.
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