jrr@ganehd.UUCP (Randy Romines) (05/23/84)
< Bugs like these keeps us systems programmers employed > I first want to thank everybody who responded to my posting. I wish I had time to respond to everyone personally, but this will have to do. >From the response here and some calling around, it seems Amdahl has the best version of UNIX (tm) for IBM mainframes. The following is only a small sample of what was sent to me. Other detail on UTS follow the summaries. > I know of at least one project inside IBM to bring up UNIX on IBM mainframes. > I have heard rumors that there are at least two more. > I doubt in anyone knows how many users they will support. I called IBM to ask them about this. I was told that they could not pass along any information now. I did find out, from an IBMer that they are trying to work out how to handle variable block sizes(?) under the UN*X. > Amdahl sells UNIX for IBM S/370 style machines. It is called UTS (for Unix > Timesharing System, probably), and from what I've heard (word of mouth/net > only) it provides really good UNIX performance. Again, from what I've heard, > it is currently V7 Unix, soon to be System V. It has alway been said, to me that is, that the best IBM mainframe is an Amdahl :-). Amdahl got in touch with me recently and said that UTS (Universal Timesharing System) is available to run under VM. It is V7 with some Berkeley and their own enhancements. It's performance is highly rated (more on next pages) even with other partitions running CMS. They did tell me that any screen oriented I/O (curses, stty echoe, etc) did not work because of the nature of the half-duplex tty support. The future System V version will fix that (including uucp). > Yes, we have running two UTS systems (UTS is the UNIX version by Amdahl), > UTS run under VM/SP, one runs on an IBM4341 and the other on an Four-Phase, > Both system are quit stable and support as 16-24 users without problems, > the Four=Phase is not very fast, but it is aceptable. > I am working now on the project of link the both machines with the VAX 11/750 > running Unix 4.1 BSD, thru an RSCS link using the UREP package from Penn State, > so this will allow us to have the three system linked and interchange mail,files,news,etc,.... I was glad to see this. Communications is one of the sore points around here (or actually, the lack there of...). This type of usage is great for a 4341. > There are two IBM versions of Unix that I know of. One is Amdahl's UTS > system, which is commercially available, and the other is Bell Lab's > MAXI Unix, which is not. Bell does have a version commercially available but the price was so high that I did not even bother to write it down. I knew we could not afford it. > inside the labs here we run UNIX on IBM-370s, Amdahl 451s, and many other > IBM and IBM compatible mainframe machines. I do not know how many of the > products are up to outside release at this point, or what they would cost. > Call your local AT&T Technologies Sales Representitive and asak about such. When I did call, the person I talked with (who said I was not talking with someone who was officially involved in licensing) recomended the Amdahl version. (This adivce was the person's personal opinion only, not AT&T's) > We run Amdahl UTS (Unix Time Share) on our 3081 here at P.U., > and with one VM running it, we can support the rough > equivalent of a 780's worth of users, in addition to the > normal 2-300 CMS users. And boy, is it FAST. We can > recompile the entire kernel, from scratch, in under > ten minutes. But,... our version is based on Version 7, > oh well. Good luck, I was told by someone at Amdahl that the number of users is limited to the configuration of the partition(s) that it's run under. I was also told that even under a heavy development environment, UTS ran as well as anything else with a heavier than normal load. > The system seems like a real win. It is a lot faster than I expected it > to be. We were running over 40 users (doing non-intense things) in a > 16M virtual machine without problem. The real machine was a 3033N with > 12M and about 100 other users, mostly CMS. > It is real Unix. I know how to page if it runs out of virtual real > memory. The biggest problem is the half-duplex nature of the hardware, > though UTS does have good display terminal support. Of all the responses I got on Amdahl's UTS, this summarizes those not posted here. The half-duplex problem, I was told, will be fixed with their Version V release. > I am a Systems Programmer for Amdahl doing customer support for UTS. > Our marketing representative is Cyndy Ainsworth. Her number is > (408) 746-8945. She will be able to answer more of the marketing > questions (licensing, costs, etc). You can probably order it on > trial, I think. > Later this year we will be releasing our port of Unix System V > (with Release 2 modifications). > As you might expect, UTS is a very speedy Unix. It is fairly complete, > but we don't yet have full-duplex support (no vi, no uucp) -- this > will be available in our System V offering, including vi and uucp. Ms. Ainsworth was very helpful. She sent me info and how to get in touch with an Amdahl rep. in the Atlanta Area. > There is no UNIX offering from IBM for 370 class machines but there may > be in the future. I was told by Interactive Systems, Corp. last year > that they were doing a mainframe UNIX under contract to IBM. > However, IBM hasn't announced anything. I called Interactive Systems. I was told yes, they were working on it. I couldn't get any other info(?). The Universal Time Sharing System from Amdahl seems like a winner. After going over the documentation sent to me by Amdahl, I found that it has excellent communications with the rest of the VM environment, including RSCS for talking with other IBM machines. It even has extensions for running to an MVS system that is under VM. A very good looking 3278 interface and the documentation says that they have routines to provide the protocall to 3270-like devices without the user having to know them. Amdahl does have all the features built in to handle the 370-like architecture and VM capabilities. From all the recomendations, this looks like the best. The only costs I can remember off hand (I left the documentation at home, sorry :-} ) is for an academic licence, it was $1000/month and $10,000/year with a 30 day free trial. If I left anything out, please write to me, I'll try to answer it for you!