🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 10:50:00 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>On Friday, August 10, 2018 at 9:57:39 AM UTC-4, Peter Flass wrote:
>> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> > On Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 3:54:51 PM UTC-6, Bob Eager wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 09 Aug 2018 17:36:24 -0400, Peter Flass wrote:
>> >>> System/360.
>> > 
>> >> All that base register stuff...
>> > 
>> > But surely that's unavoidable, if you want to have more than 64 K of memory?
>> 
>> That's what makes it  elegant -it's a compromise between addressable memory
>> and instruction size.
>
>IMHO, System/360 represented an elegant design because it
>was able to use a single architecture to serve four different
>categories of data processing (large/small/business/sci-eng).
>Previously, most computers were designed to serve only one
>of those categories.  Many companies required multiple 
>computers if they had multiple needs.

Your so-called "categories" are arbitrary and mostly meaningless.  Even before
the advent of the 360, they were always "general purpose" computers.  Meaning
they could be used for any application, given the proper programming.  The
salient differences were in CPU speed, storage capacity, and data transfer
rates.  Depending on the application, a small business might need a fast machine
that could handle a large volume of data; a large business might well make do
with a slower model.  The big advantage of having a line of computers with a
single architecture would be to ease moving from one machine to another that was
faster and/or bigger.  It also helped IBM, assuming they could consolidate their
OS and system software development and support.


>While S/360 didn't totally eliminate multiple computers for
>a single company (such as a S/360 in the business office
>with some DECs in the labs), many were able to share their
>business office needs and engineering needs on the same machine.

There was nothing stopping them from doing so before, apart from having an
underpowered machine.

It sounds like you are just parroting IBM marketing rhetoric.