mp@ganehd.UUCP (Scott Barman) (03/19/84)
<Food for the line-eater> To: Kurt Guntheroth I have read that IBM put the S/370 arch. on a board to fit in the PC/XT. From what I've seen/heard, it is two MC68000's (One for decoding the instruction and the other for execution) and an Intel 8087 for the floating point. It requires at least 256Kb RAM and the hard disk. The system does not support the S/370 I/O scheme, but everything else is there. For an operating system, they have reworked VM/CMS for the XT (now called XT/VM). The whole VM/CMS Library should be available for those who really want it. It will be good for those shops using 4300, 370, and 303x processors, other than that, it is nothing more than something that we should expect out of Big Blue. For the cost, I heard that it will be in the $10,200 range for start-up and $4,000 for those who want to convert their current XT's to micro 370's. *** DISCLAIMER *** This info is mostly from "Byte Magazine" and "Information System News" (dates of both escape me). I have heard nothing else about this since they've announced that they are going to put UNIX (tm) on the PC and 370-like machines. Scott A. Barman UUCP: ..!akgua!ganehd!mp DDD: (404) 542-2911 USPS: Department of Computer Science University of Georgia 415 Boyd Graduate Studies Research Center Athens, Ga 30602
hal@cornell.UUCP (Hal Perkins) (03/20/84)
The PC-XT/370 contains a card with a 370 processor on it. This includes
a couple of Motorola 68000s with a custom microprogram to handle 370
instructions and floating point.
This gadget is intended as an alternative to a 3270 terminal at an IBM shop.
It really isn't a stand-alone machine, it needs to be wired into a 3274
communications controller and talk to a mainframe running VM/CMS. (Don't you
love all these funny box numbers?:-).
The operating system is pretty much regular VM/CMS. A large part of the
PC's hard disk is used for the user's local files (the A-disk in VMspeak).
The PC user can link to other minidisks on the mainframe to access system
files, etc., just like one links to system minidisks when logged on to a
regular VM/CMS system.
Hal Perkins UUCP: {decvax|vax135|...}!cornell!hal
Cornell Computer Science ARPA: hal@cornell BITNET: hal@crnlcsron%brl-tgr@sri-unix.UUCP (03/20/84)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-tgr> The XT/370 processors are custom chips neither the two "68000-like" chips nor the floating point bear much resemblance to their commercial counterparts. -Ron