[HECnet] Test ping

[Clem Cole]

Be careful when you disparage it.    AIX/370 could do some good stuff and I know of a number of firms swore by it for their engineering development teams.    One large semi-conductor  firm used it for all the simulation of an extremely large processor in the 1980s.    At the time, they claimed no other system could handle it.   In fact because of the support for process migration and rolling upgrades they keep the simulation running across some upgrades to the system.

BTW; AIX/370 and AIX/PS2 are actually similar (much in common) code base.    They were developed by Locus Computing Corp for IBM by the late Gerry Popek.   Check out his and Bruce Walker's book:     http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-System-Architecture-Computer-Systems/dp/0262517191 for the details.   

The really cool thing that these versions of AIX supplied was TCF - the Transparent Computing Facility.   A total of 32 nodes of 370s and PS/2 could be "clustered" into a "single system image" and operated as a single computing environment (yes root on a PS/2 gave you root on the 370).     I once saw some one unbox and plug a brand new PS2 into the network.    He put a boot floppy in it, turn it on and with that have it "join" the cluster.    In the background it populated its disk using replication.   

Although neither VMS nor Tru64 would never completely match everything TCF could do, (they never had the full process migration stuff), Locus did sell some of the technology to DEC and it would land make it into TruClusters and DEC would develop similar things for VMS.

Check out:   www.openSSI.org            The technology still is around, although Beowulf style clusters (which are not full SSI) have usurped the market.      Which is actually   real shame.    AIX/370, VMS, and TruClusters were really ahead of anything we have practically speaking today.   I miss full SSI and a cluster where I can move process anywhere - I just saw one giant resource.

Clem




On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Mark Benson <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to Wikipedia, AIX/ESA will run as host or guest on System/370... if I read it right.
>
> --
> Mark Benson
>
> http://markbenson.org/blog
> http://twitter.com/MDBenson
>
> On 20 Nov 2012, at 14:28, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dave McGuire wrote:
>>>>> Well I could use a copy of AIX370....
>>>>
>>>> If you could, you'd be the first!   What a waste of a perfectly good mainframe.
>>>
>>>    I have to agree.   I love UNIX, but running anything other than MVS on
>>> something like that, or maybe VM, is just a sin.
>>
>> Why not as a VM guest?
>>
>> Peace...   Sridhar
>>

Hello!
Close but no noxious smoking device Mark.

That was AIX/ESA. I'm talking about AIX/370. And according to one
associate on another two lists, (One I manage.) that one ran on one
specific customer's machines in the same area that one of our
associates is based in.

If John Wilson is correct and it also ran on the mainframe there,
sharing space with the MTS setup then it adds to the mysteries behind
the product.
And to add the the amusement I also met a family of machines running
ESA grade operating systems, a good long time ago, also a crowd of
RS/6000 machines and a very unhappy IBMer. The surprised look the
woman gave me was worth it.

This was the same time when Ultrix was announced for the VAX, and then
work was being started on the Alpha family, especially since I saw a
couple of MIPS based workstations then as well.

And speaking of that, there are materials available on the TUHS ftp
site for it.......
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."