Re: History(the end)- really let's end it!

["James W. Kilgore" <qappdsn@xxxxxxx>]

I remember this same thread happening last year approaching the first full moon
after the summer solstice.

Must mean that the boss is on vacation, or we've reached summer burn out and
we're due for a vacation.

I've got blisters from hitting the delete key.  Maybe David could start a new
list for the midrange-L geezers pissing contest ;-)

BTW, I'm a geezer too.  Learned Fortran IV on a 360/20 as a junior in HS in 1969
and went to college and PAID to learn how to wire a 409, but then again who
cares?

The definitive answer to the original post is that the S/38 was announced before
the S/36.  The reason being is that the justice department had made waves about
breaking up IBM into multiple companies (ala AT&T) and each company would have 
to
pay fair market value for technology not already announced.  The FS (Future
Systems) division had been working on the S/38 for at least 7 years the way I
heard it and threw it out there so the other divisions could have access to it.
They also threw out the rack mounted 9370 which could run guest OS's but it died
IMO because CPF was a superset, but that's another thread. <g>

The local SE's didn't know squat about it when I wrote my first application on 
it
(later then some) in 1982.  There was very little help at that time other than
Q38 magazine.  The leap from S/34 to S/38 was much more difficult than S/36 to
400.

But giving geezers credit where credit is due, learning Absolute on a 1403(?) 
did
teach me concepts of memory management. Learning how to wire a board taught me
buffer movement to variable.  Programming a 4K 3741 in APL just gave me a
headache!

I'm just glad that the days of a 20mb disk costing the equivalent of the annual
programmers pay are over!  Maybe it's being a geezer that drove a model A
backwards uphill because it didn't have a fuel pump makes one appreciate fuel
injection.  But let's face it, the "good ol' days" sucked.  Sure you learned how
to drive real fast looking in the rear view mirror, uphill, but Dorothy, you're
not in Kansas any more. ;-)



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