[Info-vax] BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

[seasoned_geek]

On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 6:40:06 AM UTC-5, li... at openmailbox.org wrote:
> On Thu, 28 May 2015 20:04:41 -0400
> Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 2015-05-28 23:26:16 +0000, David Froble said:
> > 
> > > seasoned_geek wrote:
> > >> On Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 1:50:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> > >> 
> > >>> That was my point.  Is Solaris even relevant in today's IT world?
> > >>> If I were VSI I would not waste time trying to determine how to 
> > >>> "compete" with Solaris.  And AIX while still doing OK is really a
> > >>> very niche product and probably not really a competitor anymore.
> > 
> > Ayup.  I'd expect those AIX folks to head to Linux or to System z, if 
> > they decided to port off of the current POWER systems.  Some few might 
> > go to Solaris or BSD or to some other Unix.
> 
> AIX -> z is an absolute non starter.
> 
> First of all the costs and capabilities of z so far exceed AIX there isn't
> any discussion at all. If they needed z they would already be on it. AIX is
> competition for other commercial UNIX. That market is mighty thin these
> days.

OS/400 people "might" be able to migrate to Zos. I know much of the OS/400 accounts in this area were using RPG and Synon (sp?). I don't know of an RPG compiler for Linux but there could be some standards based front end for GNU which won't have IBM extensions or support EBCDIC.

> 
> I don't believe that at all (check quoting depth- this appears to be from
> seasoned_geek who btw does me a great service 95% of the time since I don't
> have to write anything after reading what he says- but this time I don't
> agree). AIX was designed to kill other commercial UNIX. And it did pretty
> well. Who's left?
> 
> The AS/400 was the grandpa of the S/34 and S/36 and was just a general
> purpose office mini for commercial applications. What it did kill was just
> about every DEC mini. State Farm still has a farm of AS/400s running today.
> None of this is competition for VAX. It's a different market and a
> different workload.
> 

Why thank you kind sir. You are both a scholar and a gentleman.

We do have a slightly different view of history.

AS/400 was the grandchild of S/36 and possibly S/34. It came out with OS/400 and according to articles in DEC/VAX Professional magazine was designed to be their "VAX Killer" platform. Back when DEC existed VAX clusters were popping up all over in IBM data centers. In many cases they ultimately pushed the blue boxes right out the door because of their low cost and high reliability. I had the pleasure of helping shove a few of those boxes right out of the data center.

AIX was originally developed for the RS/6000 (nicknamed the Real Sh*tty 6000). This was supposed to be the "SUN Killer" platform. Targetted at the massively expensive UNIX workstation market. It sold so well that IBM had to foist their excess PowerPC CPUs off on Apple for a good number of years.

Minor detour: Initially IBM did not own the actual CPU put in the RS/6000 nor did they own AIX source code. They owned the trademarks, but not the actual things which comprised the product. I don't remember who did the chip. I do know that Interactive in Naperville, IL was contracted to develop AIX looooong before the chip was even in the prototype stage. Interactive had to develop an emulator based on a paper spec for the chip so they could work on AIX. They didn't have actual hardware until a few short weeks/months before the product shipped. Interactive was then purchased by Kodak because Kodak wanted some imaging software for something or other. Days, some say hours, before Kodak sold what was left of Interactive off to SUN, IBM rushed in and purchased AIX.

Just how hillarious would it have been if IBM had to pay licensing fees to SUN for AIX??

Anyway, the market for $20+K desktop workstations was quickly drying up as sub $5K PCs were getting more capable and there were over a dozen commercial UNIX products they could run. Adding insult to injury, the PCs were now getting graphics cards capable of running those, at the time, massive 20+ inch monitors. (I wonder how many here remember using a 14 inch monochrome or color VGA monitor? They came stock on thos PS/2 model 50s corporations were putting on people's desks.)

In order to breath new life (and recover the cash) just spent on actually owning AIX, it was ported to the AS/400. It may have been about the time they moved the AS/400 from CISC to RISC. I didn't bother to read the Wikipedia article, but here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i

I skimmed the beginning. Didn't sound like it was written by someone who actually lived through it, more like someone who heard snippets here and there, then wrote them down.

> 
> I have lost sight what this is referring to but COBOL and FORTRAN are some
> of the toughest languages to port given how many vendor extensions there
> were, and all of them different. This often comes down to a rewrite too.

Ayup. I would add to that list BASIC since OpenVMS had the Platinum standard for BASIC and most other platforms could barely achieve tin.

Given the vast amount of RPG, Synon, and IBM Assemlber on the OS/400 systems I would say they either spend millions of dollars on "big iron" Zos PLUS the porting cost, or they spend about half of that to port to OpenVMS cluster. Either that or they cross their fingers really hard and hope something like this works:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rpg2cpp.berlios/