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from the There's-nothiing-new-under-the-sun? dept.
http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Eternal_Mainframe.html
In the computer industry, the Wheel of Reincarnation is a pattern whereby specialized hardware gets spun out from the "main" system, becomes more powerful, then gets folded back into the main system. As the linked Jargon File entry points out, several generations of this effect have been observed in graphics and floating-point coprocessors.
In this essay, I note an analogous pattern taking place, not in peripherals of a computing platform, but in the most basic kinds of "computing platform." And this pattern is being driven as much by the desire for "freedom" as by any technical consideration.
"Revolution" has many definitions. From the looks of this, I'd say "going around in circles" comes closest to applying...
-Richard M. Hartman
A funny thing happened on the way to the future. The mainframe outlasted its replacements.
[Ed. Note: This story submission was my first exposure to the linked essay. Though dated from 2013, I found the essay eminently readable as well as making insightful observations of how dramatically the concepts and capabilities of mainframes have persisted for so many years. --martyb[
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:55AM (4 children)
Except at this point IBM mainframes are about the size of a refrigerator.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:32AM
Actually, IBM mainframes [wikipedia.org] are of varying sizes depending on the model.
In fact, I was installing S/390 cards [wikipedia.org] into RS/6000s back in the mid 1990s.
The irony was that while the S/390 processor was an MCA [wikipedia.org] card installed in the ~30-40kg RS/6000, the tape drive (IIRC, a 3480 or 3490 cartridge tape unit) for the processor card weighed ~400kg. I actually had to contact the building managers to make sure the machine room floor (not in a data center -- long story) could handle that monster.
Heck, the bus and tag cables [wikipedia.org] for the tape drive connection were several times heavier than the S/390 card.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:11PM (2 children)
Ah yes, the portable mainframe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:36PM (1 child)
Yes! As/400 P2. Size of a laptop!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday September 17 2019, @07:30PM
Not a laptop, a flattop.
Friend of mine worked with an IBM laptop mainframe emulator but he called it "the flattop" because it was a laptop the size of an aircraft carrier. Took him several days to find a backpack large enough to carry it around in.