Windows 7 opinions so far

[riptides]

Excellent. Could not agree more and it's true. While we've added client server and browser based front ends and backends to well over 100 applications, the core of our business is run on the mainframe under CICS, IMS, DB2 and yes, batch jobs.

When your ready for a consolidation/green/virtualization modernization plan to move forward out from under the IBM family - call me.

 

[MikePA]

Thanks, but we'll stick with what works.

 

[riptides]

Thanks, but we'll stick with what works.

So I'll be hearing from you shortly then....

 

[MikePA]

So I'll be hearing from you shortly then....

Ring, ring, ring.

But seriously...When I started in IT, you considered yourself lucky if you had your own, monochrome (green characters) terminal to access the mainframe. SOP was half a dozen people shared 1 terminal. Of course, the unlucky 5 people were busy desk coding before they created their punched cards and submitted a batch job, then watched (yes, watched) their report print out. No, I didn't walk 15 miles, uphill, both ways, to school.

Then came color terminals, on everyone's desk. Woo hoo! 1,920 characters, in color. Oh, the magic.

Then came the client server revolution, PCs on every desk. Servers. LANs. Radio buttons, drop down boxes, etc. all in the name of making us more efficient. Ooooh, weren't we lucky to have all that computing power on our desktops.

These days, due to all the security and privacy regulations, not to mention the costs of supporting 15,000 PCs, what are we implementing? Why, we are back to 'dumb terminals' accessing virtual desktops, running on servers (over 200 virtual desktops/server), in the data center to ensure data (PHI or PII) doesn't leak.

All someone needs to do is call the dumb terminals 3270s, call the servers 3274s and we're back to the future. If you don't know what the aforementioned numbers mean, ask someone in IT with gray hair, if you can find them. They'll be busy supporting COBOL or assembler programs with a copy of IBM/370 Principles Of Operations in their lap.

 

[dmccarty]

Yeah, sure, later, but I'm talking about the old days.
.

But you did say,

learned that no release of OS/2 could speak to a modem faster than 9600 baud

I THINK I moved up to a 14.4 modem around the Warp time frame. The old MWAVE card replaced the external modem at some point. Pretty sure the MWAVE started out at around 24kbs or maybe it was 18/19kbs, and eventually made it up to 56kbs.

I ran OS/2 from 1.1 until its death. I still have two systems with OS/2 installed. One will be OS/2 Warp and I think the other one is OS/2 1.3. I think. I wonder if they will boot. I dont get rid of systems for some reason. Just stack them up on a shelf. The Warp system might not boot since my kids like to use the CD-ROM drive as a coin slot..... Cleaned out the coins once but they did it again. Booting might be interesting.

OS/2 really was a better OS than Windows but MS got a piece of the action for every license of OS/2 that was sold. And they were able to count the license as a Windows license so OS/2 could always be made to look lower in the OS rankings.

And OS/2 vs Windows is just like Windows vs Mac. It was and is all about the applications. Well for Macs the negative has been the very expensive hardware as well.


I have a 64 bit Vista running at home and have not had any problems with it. Very stable. At some point I will migrate it to Windows 7 but I have to make sure my applications will run. From what I have heard my critical applications are fine on Windows 7 but I am not in a hurry. I like to wait for the Pioneers to collect their arrows.

Later,
Dan

 

[California]

All someone needs to do is call the dumb terminals 3270s, call the servers 3274s and we're back to the future. If you don't know what the aforementioned numbers mean, ask someone in IT with gray hair, if you can find them. They'll be busy supporting COBOL or assembler programs with a copy of IBM/370 Principles Of Operations in their lap.

As an application user, rather than developer, I prefer a user interface that gives clues about what to do next. (Drop-down menus that show what is possible; mouseover help). Instead of thumbing through the manual before entering each line of code. BTDT.

I spent years intermittently in front of a 3270 (green-text mainframe terminal), maybe 3,000 billable hours in all, mostly coding and running one-time Ramis ad-hoc database queries.

The thing I remember most was the 14 seconds communications delay every time between pressing Enter and seeing my line of text appear on the screen. That long delay was a huge obstacle to thinking clearly while constructing a complex inquiry. Simply put, it was man serving the machine on the machine's terms, rather than the machine serving man. Once the dbs query was finally constructed, many lines, and I hit 'run', the processing over on the mainframe was near instantaneous. As it should be, at a cost of $100 - $1500 per run.

Later we had our own Ethernet LAN and were eventually invited to tie into the HQ network. When the mainframe division offered us a share in their 9600 bps line between our building and HQ two blocks away, we replied no thanks, but they might want instead to transport their 9600 bps mainframe terminal link over our new T1. [1,500,000 bps!]

 

[MikePA]

I spent years intermittently in front of a 3270 (green-text mainframe terminal), maybe 3,000 billable hours in all, mostly coding and running one-time Ramis ad-hoc database queries.

Wow, Ramis, I haven't heard that name in years. Never used it but my dept had to install and support it long ago. I was a SAS man. Great, albeit expensive, product.

 

[Chuck52]

You young whippersnappers and your modern toys! I remember upgrading from a PDP5 to a PDP8. I collected data on an instrument that put out the data on punched paper tape, and was thrilled when the computer center finally gave me the option of having my data transferred to magnetic tape instead of punched cards, and the hallway leading to the computer center was uphill both ways! My first resume included a line about my knowledge of IBM JCL. Dad Gum! Who moved my walker?

Chuck

 

[California]

... ...

Yeah. But - I was talking about the really old days! Before this guy, even.

Ray Gwinn's story - OS/2 World

When OS/2 2.0 was first released, the serial drivers were in very sad shape. IBM had restricted the speed to 9600 bits per second (bps), and the drivers did not seem to work well at any speed. Even at this time, there were modems available for 14400bps, and I did not like losing those 5kbps using only 9600bps. With IBM seeming not too willing (or possibly not able for whatever reason) to improve the OS/2 serial drivers, I decided to write a set of serial drivers for my own use. I decided to release the drivers as shareware.

 

[riptides]

You young whippersnappers and your modern toys! I remember upgrading from a PDP5 to a PDP8. I collected data on an instrument that put out the data on punched paper tape, and was thrilled when the computer center finally gave me the option of having my data transferred to magnetic tape instead of punched cards, and the hallway leading to the computer center was uphill both ways! My first resume included a line about my knowledge of IBM JCL. Dad Gum! Who moved my walker?

Chuck

Hah.. YOU young whippersnapper....

I remember Xerox Sigma (line of) processors, feeding paper tape into the CPU modules while flipping switches just to get it to load boot up sequences.

 

[radioman]

anyone like to help me diagnose my dead Dell Inspiron ?

Sure, PM me. I used to be a DELL certified tech till I was laid off due to lack of work.

 

[California]

You young whippersnappers! I collected data on an instrument that put out the data on punched paper tape...

Can't say I operated it, but the oldest EDP equipment I reviewed as part of an information security audit was the Taller-Cooper toll collection registers at a major tollbridge. A keypress on the cash register in the tollbooth sent current down a wire and incremented an odometer-like counter in the basement. Once per shift, the supervisor went to the basement and copied the 'odometer' readings from all 16 toll lanes onto his clipboard. State Of The Art when it was installed in 1936! Over the years, various electronics had been added. We were asked to review the plans for a minicomputer-based replacement.

 

[Barton]

Maybe we could have a new forum. We could call it the Old Farts Tractoring IT Guys. Limit the discussion to before all this fancy smancy stuff like Windows and such. We could talk about the good ole days like back BU (before unbundling). There, we could have topics covering BDAM, ISAM, and BTAM, etc. We could even have a sub-forum about EAM and talk about how we use to recover from jamed and tore up 5081's (you know, like using a steam iron).

Oh well, just a thought.

 

[California]

What's the fun in that? How are the kids going to learn what went before them?

Besides I would rather forget the old difficult ways of doing things. Like standing in front of a card sorter for days on end doing a sort that a $400 pc will do in an instant. The Internet and modern pc's aren't perfect, but an individual user is far more productive today compared to the early big-iron era when only the anointed few had any access at all.

 

[soulasphil]

I've been using computers at work and at home for many years, started with a Tandy machine even before the Apple came out! At present I'm using six computers under Vista 32 bits. I've read here that you experienced a decrease in performance between XP and Vista. That is not my case. But when XP was comfortable with a 512 Kb RAM, Vista needs a minimum of 2 Gb. Apart from that, it's a very stable and efficient system. I meant to upgrade to Win 7 when it came out. They advertised an upgrade pack for 3 computers for just a little over the price of a licence for 1 computer. That meant only 2 boxes for my six machines. Unfortunately, by the time I managed to get the time and money, the offer had ended. So it will have to wait, individual licences are just too expensive. And I wish I could have read many more details from the lucky ones now using the new OS !

 

[Barton]

...standing in front of a card sorter for days on end..

Ah, yes, the sorter! Nothing builds character like having a jam on the last pass of a 15 column alpha/numeric sort on a 50,000 card file.

 

[BungeeII]

Wow, guys, I thought coming in here and talking about my Wang would be obscure.

I guess not.

It's hard to believe how far things have come since the early-to-mid eighties, and yes, it is also funny to see the modern pc being used mostly as a terminal again.


I don't miss much of the old stuff, though. I will say that I didn't know very many people that could build a machine that took less memory in it's config than I. Building a DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.1 machine that would operate smoothly, a lot of times came down to the drivers loaded. I can't remember which, but there were some NE2000 clones out there that didn't take much memory at all. All this talk about modems brings 1 thing to mind... 16550 uart. I remember shopping for modems and being sure the chip was on-board.

2 things I miss:
#1. An XT power supply. Sometimes "shutdown" doesn't do the end of day justice. Sometimes you need that big THUMP of the power switch to end your interaction with that machine properly.

#2. whoami
I haven't supported Novell since like 3.5 or something, but I've always gotten a chuckle out of that command.

 

[timswi]

Yeah, sure, later, but I'm talking about the old days.

IBM's own official docs described this limit. All I found online was people searching for a solution, and being referred back to the IBM statement. (I think dos at the time needed a non-MS serial port driver to make use of the faster chip in the latest serial-port cards, and no such driver had been invented yet for OS/2).

This was back when a common sig line was "You can tell who are the pioneers. They're the ones with arrows in their backs!" A $50 arrow in my case.

I really liked the look and feel of OS/2. Remember, it was supposed to be "Windows-1" or something like that until IBM and MS went separate ways. But discovering that communication limit made it unacceptable to me.

We used to run a dual boot OS/2 and Windows...Those things could do almost anything...Too bad they never fully perfected the OS. Also, if you accidentally deleted an icon, to recover it you had to go to Dante's 7th ring to get a replacement.

 

[riptides]

Ah, yes, the sorter! Nothing builds character like having a jam on the last pass of a 15 column alpha/numeric sort on a 50,000 card file.

And nothing builds stress up like dropping that 50k card box in the parking lot on a rainy windy day.

Probably my only use in life for rubber bands.

What were the commands? Bang, Slash... .

 

[timswi]

RAMIS...Wow that brings back memories...Used that when I first started out, then went to FOCUS...Now I'm 98% SAS and 2% FOCUS...All on MVS.

I'm in my early 40's...you guys are making me feel really old

I used to have an IDEA "dumb terminal"..Direct hookup to a contoller via T1 to the big blue boxes...It was actually faster in response than the token ring attached PC (way before ethernet)...I actually miss that thing