I took my son to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA yesterday. We did the docent-led tour this time, and we had a great guide. He'd obviously worked in the valley in the early years and brought a nice perspective to
the exhibits.

They had some pieces of ENIAC and UNIVAC, a room full of midrange computers, including some of the ones I worked on early on in school and in my career (A VAX 11/780, Prime 300, Microdata Reality and PDP-11 stood out)

My son liked the Apple I with "Woz" written in sharpie on the wooden case. I liked some of the early micros. I wish more of them were running.

He was impressed by the Xerox Alto, showing the WIMP interface long before Apple did it in the marketplace, and the last exhibit, an IBM 1401 computer room with raised floors, row of mag tape readers, line printers, paper TTYs, and photos of a team of a dozen people who ran the system. Realizing that computers needed a team of people to manage them 24/7 was shocking to him.

I mentioned that the primary way people interacted with the system was through paper reports. People didn't have computers at their desk, so most companies ran print jobs overnight after crunching sales numbers for the day, and had them waiting on their desk in the morning - and that printing reports was usually one person's job - that's all they did all day.

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I mentioned that the primary way people interacted with the system was through paper reports. People didn't have computers at their desk, so most companies ran print jobs overnight after crunching sales numbers for the day, and had them waiting on their desk in the morning - and that printing reports was usually one person's job - that's all they did all day.

It changed so much over a few years.

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I mentioned that the primary way people interacted with the system was through paper reports. People didn't have computers at their desk, so
most companies ran print jobs overnight after crunching sales numbers
for the day, and had them waiting on their desk in the morning - and
that printing reports was usually one person's job - that's all they
did all day.

I worked somewhere from 1994-1996 and that was still how it was there. We
had an AS-400 and a "Baby 36" PC system that we ran them off of. I was the
day person, while someone else ran the nightlies.



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Re: Computer History Museum
By: Dumas Walker to Poindexter Fortran on Tue Mar 14 2017 05:55 pm

had an AS-400 and a "Baby 36" PC system that we ran them off of. I was the

as400 is fucking awesome. i wish we went back to it at my job.
i'm stuck with jdedwards.

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I worked somewhere from 1994-1996 and that was still how it was there. We had an AS-400 and a "Baby 36" PC system that we ran them off of. I was the day person, while someone else ran the nightlies.

I'm a consultant who work in banking and a lot of our customers (banks) are still using mainframes and as/400 . Sure new stuff are developed with newer technologies but legacy stuff still run on theses.

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I worked somewhere from 1994-1996 and that was still how it was there. We had an AS-400 and a "Baby 36" PC system that we ran them off of. I was the day person, while someone else ran the nightlies.

I'm a consultant who work in banking and a lot of our customers (banks) are still using mainframes and as/400 . Sure new stuff are developed
with newer technologies but legacy stuff still run on theses.

Oh, I wasn't "mocking" the AS/400, rather the part about most people not having a PC and getting all their info from the reports that others ran and left for them to have first thing in the morning. I was saying we were doing that in the 1990's, using the AS/400 instead of the huge, tape-driven machines. :)

I actually work with a mainframe (and COBOL) on a daily basis. But it is not
a world of printed reports and few terminals. It is still a lot of green screens, but it is screens and online reports. Other systems use "modern" front-ends and UIs, but still have the mainframe back-ends.



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had an AS-400 and a "Baby 36" PC system that we ran them off of. I was the

as400 is fucking awesome. i wish we went back to it at my job.
i'm stuck with jdedwards.

I did not get to use it as much as the "Baby 36." I would prefer either, as well as the mainframe I interface with now, over the oracle stuff.



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I actually work with a mainframe (and COBOL) on a daily basis. But it is not a world of printed reports and few terminals. It is still a lot of green screens, but it is screens and online reports. Other systems use "modern" front-ends and UIs, but still have the mainframe back-ends.

Yes, what we use here is more like the later, where the mainframe is at the back and users are on pc's with front end. Some developer would use terminal software to connect to the as/400 and older system. Mainframe mainly generate extract that are loaded with etl on modern database serve to serve bi apps for reporting etc.

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Re: Computer History Museum
By: Poindexter Fortran to All on Mon Mar 13 2017 08:51 am

When I went - some time ago, I reached over and touched an IMP. I thought I was gonna get kicked out. It was amazing to actually touch a peice of history.

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Re: Computer History Museum
By: Knightmare to Poindexter Fortran on Sat Apr 29 2017 08:55 am

When I went - some time ago, I reached over and touched an IMP. I thought I was gonna get kicked out. It was amazing to actually touch a peice of history.

Been watching videos of the restored PDP-1 (DEC, Programmable Data Processor-1). Some amazing stuff there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDZjEcCgaI

(Bill Gates story...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFLMuC5iTyc


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I'm a consultant who work in banking and a lot of our customers (banks)
are still using mainframes and as/400 . Sure new stuff are developed with newer technologies but legacy stuff still run on theses.

Same with hospitals. Many still use the AS/400 and mainframe. Even VAX/VMS.

Our mainframe will be going away in the next year or two, but there are not current plans to replace the AS/400 or VAX/VMS system.

- Mark

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Re: Re: Computer History Museum
By: Weatherman to Ennev on Sun Sep 03 2017 11:31 am

Same with hospitals. Many still use the AS/400 and mainframe. Even VAX/VMS.

Our mainframe will be going away in the next year or two, but there are not current plans to replace the AS/400 or VAX/VMS system.

I haven't worked on an AS/400 in years, but remember that they ran the web services for one of the olympics; they run their own RDBMS, can virtualize hardware nicely and they've been in development for ~30 years.

I bet most big retail shops are still running their back end processes on AS/400s.

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