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IBM 9370
The IBM 9370 systems are "baby mainframe" midrange computers, released 1986 at the very low end of, and compatible with System/370. The media of the day, referring to the VAX systems manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), carried IBM's alleged " VAX Killer" phrase, albeit often skeptically. History The IBM 9370 was created in the aftermath of the failed Fort Knox project, which attempted to consolidate all of IBM's midrange systems into a single IBM 801-based hardware platform. The announcement described the IBM 9370 as a " super-mini computer" for commercial and engineering/scientific use—compact, rack-mounted, designed for an office environment, not needing a data center to be used. At the time of announcement the systems were positioned between IBM's midrange systems (IBM System/36 and IBM System/38), and the IBM 4300 mainframe series in performance. The IBM 9370 was partially a replacement for the also-not-so-successful IBM 8100 distributed processing eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VM (operating System)
VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The following versions are known: ;Virtual Machine Facility/370 :VM/370, released in 1972, is a System/370 reimplementation of earlier CP/CMS operating system. ;VM/370 Basic System Extensions Program Product :VM/BSE (BSEPP) is an enhancement to VM/370 that adds support for more devices (such as 3370-type fixed-block-architecture DASD drives), improvements to the CMS environment (such as an improved editor), and some stability enhancements to CP. ;VM/370 System Extensions Program Product :VM/SE (SEPP) is an enhancement to VM/370 that includes the facilities of VM/BSE, as well as a few additional fixes and features. ;Virtual Machine/System Product :VM/SP, a milestone version, replaces VM/370, VM/BSE and VM/SE. Release 1 added EXEC2 and XEDIT System Product Edit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superminicomputer
A superminicomputer, colloquially supermini, is a high-end minicomputer. The term is used to distinguish the emerging 32-bit architecture midrange computers introduced in the mid to late 1970s from the classical 16-bit systems that preceded them. The development of these computers was driven by the need of applications to address larger memory. The term midicomputer had been used earlier to refer to these systems. Virtual memory was often an additional criteria that was considered for inclusion in this class of system. The computational speed of these machines was significantly greater than the 16-bit minicomputers and approached the performance of small mainframe computers. The name has at times been described as a "frivolous" term created by "marketeers" that lacks a specific definition. Describing a class of system has historically been seen as problematic: "In the computer kingdom, taxonomic classification of equipment is more of a black art than a science." There is some dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 4300
The IBM 4300 series are mid-range systems compatible with System/370 that were sold from 1979 through 1992. They featured modest electrical and cooling requirements, and thus did not require a data center environment. They had a disruptive effect on the market, allowing customers to provide internal IBM computing services at a cost point lower than commercial time-sharing services. All 4300 processors used a 3278-2A, 3279-C or 3205 display console rather than a 3210 or 3215 keyboard/printer console. Models Each model - 4331, 4341, 4361, and 4381 - had various sub-models, such as the 4341 model 1 (or 4341-1) and 4341 model 2 (4341-2). The 4381-13 through 4381-24 (announced in 1987) were entry-level machines for the 370-XA architecture. They were positioned between the IBM 9370 and IBM 3090 in performance at the time of announcement. The 4381-3, 4381-14, 4381-24 and 4381-92 are dual-CPU models. Other models included 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, 90 and 91. IBM 4321 The IBM 4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of IBM Magnetic Disk Drives
IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible for many of the innovations in these products and their technologies. The basic mechanical arrangement of hard disk drives has not changed since the IBM 1301. Disk drive performance and characteristics are measured by the same standards now as they were in the 1950s. Few products in history have enjoyed such spectacular declines in cost and physical size along with equally dramatic improvements in capacity and performance. IBM manufactured 8-inch floppy disk drives from 1969 until the mid-1980s, but did not become a significant manufacturer of smaller-sized, 5.25- or 3.5-inch floppy disk drives (the dimension refers to the diameter of the floppy disk, not the size of the drive). IBM always offered its magnetic disk drives for sale but did no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM Hexadecimal Floating-point
Hexadecimal floating point (now called HFP by IBM) is a format for encoding floating-point numbers first introduced on the IBM System/360 computers, and supported on subsequent machines based on that architecture, as well as machines which were intended to be application-compatible with System/360. In comparison to IEEE 754 floating point, the HFP format has a longer significand, and a shorter exponent. All HFP formats have 7 bits of exponent with a bias of 64. The normalized range of representable numbers is from 16−65 to 1663 (approx. 5.39761 × 10−79 to 7.237005 × 1075). The number is represented as the following formula: (−1)sign × 0.significand × 16exponent−64. Single-precision 32-bit A single-precision HFP number (called "short" by IBM) is stored in a 32-bit word: : In this format the initial bit is not suppressed, and the radix (hexadecimal) point is set to the left of the significand (fraction in IBM documentation and the figures). Since the base is 16, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Series/1
The IBM Series/1 is a 16-bit minicomputer, introduced in 1976, that in many respects competed with other minicomputers of the time, such as the PDP-11 from Digital Equipment Corporation and similar offerings from Data General and HP. The Series/1 was typically used to control and operate external electro-mechanical components while also allowing for primitive data storage and handling. Although the Series/1 uses EBCDIC character encoding internally and locally attached EBCDIC terminals, ASCII-based remote terminals and devices could be attached via an I/O card with a RS-232 interface to be more compatible with competing minicomputers. IBM's own 3101 and 3151 ASCII display terminals are examples of this. This was a departure from IBM mainframes that used 3270 terminals and coaxial attachment. Series/1 computers were withdrawn from marketing in 1988 at or near the introduction of the IBM AS/400 line. A US government asset report dated May 2016 revealed that an IBM Serie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Input/output
In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. The term can also be used as part of an action; to "perform I/O" is to perform an input or output operation. are the pieces of hardware used by a human (or other system) to communicate with a computer. For instance, a keyboard or computer mouse is an input device for a computer, while monitors and printers are output devices. Devices for communication between computers, such as modems and network cards, typically perform both input and output operations. Any interaction with the system by a interactor is an input and the reaction the system responds is called the output. The designation of a device as either input or output depends on perspective. Mice a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ESCON
ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection) is a data connection created by IBM, and is commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as disk storage, tape drives and IBM 3270 display controllers. ESCON is an optical fiber, half-duplex, serial interface. It originally operated at a rate of 10MB/s, which was later increased to 17MB/s. The current maximum distance is 43 kilometers. IBM introduced ESCON in September 1990 as part of its System/390 announcement. It replaced the older, slower (4.5MB/s), copper-based, parallel, IBM System/360 Bus and Tag channels technology of 1960-1990 era mainframes. Optical fiber is smaller in diameter and weight, and hence could save installation costs. Space and labor could also be reduced when fewer physical links were required - due to ESCON's switching features. ESCON is being supplanted by the substantially faster FICON, which runs over Fibre Channel. ESCON allows the establishment and reconfiguration of ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ES/9000
The IBM System/390 is a discontinued mainframe product family implementing the ESA/390, the fifth generation of the System/360 instruction set architecture. The first computers to use the ESA/390 were the Enterprise System/9000 (ES/9000) family, which were introduced in 1990. These were followed by the 9672, Multiprise, and Integrated Server families of System/390 in 1994–1999, using CMOS microprocessors. The ESA/390 succeeded the ESA/370 used in the Enhanced 3090 and 4381 "E" models, and the System/370 architecture last used in the IBM 9370 low-end mainframe. The ESA/390 was succeeded by the 64-bit z/Architecture in 2000. History On February 15, 1988, IBM announced Enterprise Systems Architecture/370 (ESA/370) for 3090 enhanced ("E") models and for 4381 model groups 91E and 92E. In additional to the primary and secondary addressing modes that System/370 Extended Architecture (S/370-XA) supports, ESA has an access register mode in which each use of general register ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM Enterprise Systems Architecture
IBM Enterprise Systems Architecture is an instruction set architecture introduced by IBM as ESA/370 in 1988. It is based on the IBM System/370-XA architecture. It extended the dual-address-space mechanism introduced in later IBM System/370 models by adding a new mode in which general-purpose registers 1-15 are each associated with an access register referring to an address space, with instruction operands whose address is computed with a given general-purpose register as a base register will be in the address space referred to by the corresponding address register. The later ESA/390, introduced in 1990, added a facility to allow device descriptions to be read using channel commands and, in later models, added instructions to perform IEEE 754 floating-point operations and increased the number of floating-point registers from 4 to 16. Enterprise Systems Architecture is essentially a 32-bit architecture; as with System/360, System/370, and 370-XA, the general-purpose register ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AS/400
The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost but more powerful than its predecessors, the AS/400 was extremely successful at launch, with an estimated 111,000 installed by the end of 1990 and annual revenue reaching $14 billion that year, increasing to 250,000 systems by 1994, and about 500,000 shipped by 1997. A key concept in the AS/400 platform is Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI), a platform-independent instruction set architecture (ISA) that is compiled along with the native machine language instructions. The platform has used this capability to change the underlying processor architecture without breaking application compatibility. Early systems were based on a 48-bit CISC instruction set architecture known as the ''Internal Microprogrammed Interface'' (IMPI), o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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