Path: ...!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!not-for-mail From: John Levine Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: small old machines, ancient OS history, ARM is sort of channeling the IBM 360 Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2024 17:16:40 -0000 (UTC) Organization: Taughannock Networks Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2024 17:16:40 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="54195"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" In-Reply-To: Cleverness: some X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) Bytes: 2043 Lines: 21 According to Stephen Fuld : >> Virtual memory was pretty new technology at the time, and required a >> disk or drum. The central idea of /360 was having the same ISA across >> a wide range of machines, and virtual memory wasn't affordable at the >> low end at the time, AFAICS. > >But IIRC even low end S/360s required a disk, at least to IPL(boot) Nope. They could IPL just fine from card or tape. You could run TOS on a 16K machine that only had tapes. They also had BPS, which provided card-only assembler, RPG and some utilities, but I do not get the impression that was used much other than for debugging and bootstrapping other stuff. I believe that disk prices came down fast enough that nearly everyone had a had a disk drive, even if they also put most of their data on tapes. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly