[Info-vax] OT: news from the trenches (re: Solaris)

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 23:57:57 +0000 (UTC)
glen herrmannsfeldt via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
> > On 12 Mar 2015 17:44:41 -0400
> > Scott Dorsey via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
>  
> (snip) 
> >> They did in fact design a low-end 370 chip for personal computers,
> >> which was actually a 68k with different microcode to emulate a 370.
> >> And they made the PC/370 with it.
>  
> >> They didn't get Gates to build DOS for the /370 because the whole
> >> point of running a /370 is to run existing code.  They already had
> >> DOS/370.
>  
> > Ok, let's not get too confusing for those not familiar. DOS/370 has no
> > relation to MS/DOS or IBM PC/DOS, preceding both by many years. Still in
> > production today btw as z/VSE http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zvse/
> 
> I don't think there is DOS/370.  There is DOS/360, built for machines
> too small to run OS/360. It was supposed to only last until people would
> move up to OS/360. Later, there was DOS/VS for small 370's, and
> DOS/VSE in later years, leading to z/VSE. 

I should have more specific but I didn't think hair splitting was called
for here. The main point was differentiating IBM mainframe DOS from the PC
OS of the same/similar name.

I don't even remember that were was DOS/360. As far as I can remember it
was just DOS. When DOS/VS came out it ran on the 370. I looked on bitsavers
and I don't see any DOS publications with DOS/360 on the title page (I
don't mean in the filenames).

> > I never saw an XT/370 so I don't know what they ran. Looking quickly
> > over the net it appears they didn't emulate the full instruction set.
> > Do you happen to know what they were actually capable of and used for?
> > It seems they could not boot or run any mainframe OS.
> 
> The XT/370 and AT/370 run VM/PC, a customized version of VM/370.
> The CP (virtual machine) part runs partly on the 370 and partly on
> the 8088 or 80286, communicating with interrupts and shared memory.
> I believe the CMS is the same as VM/SP's CMS.

That's very interesting. And hard to believe. Late model CMS on a PC would
be the cat's meow. I guess CMS on VM/370 wasn't very user friendly- no
XEDIT as I recall, etc.