40 Years of Unix

[nihil]

gore old chap,how could you?

That used punch cards though didn't it?

This is from a paper published November 1967:

Abstract : An interface which connects a small special-purpose digital computer to a large general-purpose digital data processing system is described in this report. The small computer is the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-8 which itself is a component of a data collection and distribution system called the Data Concentrator. The large data processing system is the IBM System/360 Model 67, which is the principal computing element at The University of Michigan Computing Center. The interface is designed to be attached to the multiplexor channel of the Model 67 along with other input-output components such as card readers, line printers, and communications equipment, and satisfies all IBM standards and interface conventions established for this type of attachment. The interface provides a bidirectional data transfer between the two machines of up to 80 thousand bytes (characters) per second using cycle-steal techniques in which data are transferred directly between the Model 67 multiplexor channel and the PDP-8 core memory without explicit program intervention.

So, your State University was using a DEC PDP-8 as a direct data entry link to an IBM S/360 (for which OS/360 was written) back in 1967.

I used an IBM S360 Model 60 from 1969 to 1972, and yes, my data entry was via 80 column punched cards. However (IIRC) data entry could also be via punched paper tape, disk drives, magnetic tapes, and directly through a teleprinter-like device. I would guess that 8" floppy disks were supported as these were an IBM invention?

I believe that the possibilities and limitations were down to the peripherals technology of the day, and not a function of the operating system.

I came across this in the IBM history files:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ex...me_PP2044.html

The S/360/M44 is in the left foreground and the nearest guy is leaning over the operator's console, it is one of those teleprinter thingies I mentioned

In the centre background you can see 4 magnetic tape drives.

In the centre between the two guys is a magnetic disk drive. Front right is a card reader and behind it is a dot matrix line printer.

The second guy is sitting at a console looking at what appears to be a VDU. I don't recognise the exact bit of kit, but it looks like a punched card machine.

I am not sure what the thing against the back wall is...........possibly a plotter?

Incidentally, back then you could have any colour you liked as long as it was mushroom, so someone has been busy with the vinyl covering.

EDIT:

Where is system360 used today? No Air traffic control doesn't count.

It isn't................ATC still uses S/370 architecture hardware, but that runs a variety of OSes, not OS/360. Our ATC still uses IBM43xx machines, but I am not sure what OS. I guess these are around 1990 vintage?

By the same token, early versions of UNIX aren't used anywhere either, or DOS, for that matter. Things evolve, and I believe that the S/360 evolution continued through to 2000. [S/360 -> S/370 -> S/390]

OS/360 is a different matter; as it was written to support a specific hardware platform, it became extinct with it, although its legacy carried on.