31 Jan
2022
31 Jan
'22
10:08 p.m.
On 1/31/22 3:22 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Then we are probably talking apples and pineapples.
The product that I'm talking about is exclusively for the 36 bit line,
requiring a DTE to get the data to the PDP-10.
Well, Peter Allan did say he's interested in "2780 emulation for a
PDP-11".
And, Peter, so am I. We have several running mainframes at LSSM,
across the room from a bunch of PDP-11s. One of the things we like to
demonstrate is interoperability between disparate architectures; I'd
love to get something like that working such that we could demonstrate
RJE from a PDP-11 to a mainframe on the other side of the exhibit floor.
I don't recall a 3271, I guess you mean those
green screen terminals?
What a beast... I do recall using 3270, 3276 and the like when I was
hacking the bisync drivers on VM to talk to IBMSPL.
The 3271 is a remote terminal cluster controller for 3270-protocol
terminals.
A number of us swore that IBMSPL was the only
reasonable way to use an
IBM mainframe as the 3270 was a half-duplex terminal that was all to
ready to lock the keyboard if you even thought of typing ahead. The
more modern emulators don't lock like that, but you are still
effectively in a late 1960's half duplex paradigm. Still. Today. Really.
Tom, I'm sorry but that's not a fair assessment at all. It's not so
much a "half-duplex paradigm" as it is forms- and screen-based. You've
used these systems; I know you know this.
The world thought it was a good enough paradigm to reinvent it for
the WWW, and it's still the most efficient way to get to a big machine,
rather than peck-peck-peck and flood the box with interrupts. There's
nothing "still today really" obsolete about it at all; it's just that
people like you (and me) who are accustomed to character-by-character
interaction with the machine see it as foreign.
And of course it turns into a painful experience when you try to fake
a character-by-character interface with it, with something like VM or
TSO. Think about what's going on to make that happen; there's no way it
won't be at least somewhat painful.
And I'm saying this as a late-comer to the mainframe world; I cut my
teeth on PDP-8 and PDP-11 systems.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA