This was the last machine I ran as an operator that made you feel like you were actually doing something! I used to love doing IPLs just because we could turn knobs and push buttons! I changed jobs and the next datacenter had a 4331 with the 'Maytag' flat tape drives! I went fulltime into systems programming and we went through the whole 4300 family, through the 9672s and into the Zseries. They are still running the Z12 we had when I retired.
I had to chuckle at a flashback I had at your comment about the ubiquitous Emergency Pull knob. The second computer I ever worked on was a S360/30 at my small community college. The operator who trained me always had it unscrewed and just resting on top of the machine. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to never, ever, EVER pull that knob unless I saw flames over 3 feet high coming from the top of the unit. Fortunately, that day never came. Enjoyed the video.
I worked with a lady who worked for the Army or Navy, one of the armed services. They used a IBM 360. They upgraded to a 4300 series, totally skipping the 370 series. She said one day some component in the computer room caught on fire and they hit the 'emergency power off' kill switch to the room. She said her manager was so mad and asked why did they do that - she said flames were shooting out of the xxx component. We had a good laugh as she told the story.
You actually pulled the emergency power button. This bypasses the power off sequence and shut it down immediately! This would cause a huge power surge in the building. The emergency pull is very easily reset by lifting the little metal spring larch and pushing the button back
Great video! My father started with a System 360.. S/370... and new models.. I had my first contact with a computer when I was 12 years. I built some EXEC, EXEC2, Rexx, Assembler.... Since that moment, I work with mainframes. I never forget of these old models... :)
My first systems job was at a large corporation that had upgraded from a 148 running VM and VS1 to a 158, then upgraded that to MVS. The 158 came to that shop from another within the company with a massive 6 MB of RAM: 2 MB in the main machine, and 4 MB of RAM from some company nobody ever heard of by the name of Intel. Eventually, it had an AP (attached processor, a poor man's multiprocessor system) added; the main machine was blue, but the AP was yellow. The 158 didn't have anywhere near as many blinkenlights as the 148; the console was used for that kind of thing instead.
This brings back a lot of memories. I might have actually worked on this machine. I was the Quality Engineer for the 370/148 and the 370/138 built on the same line in Endicott NY. Later went on to design test equipment for the 4300 series, then the 9370. Remember a few details about them. The 138 implemented the 370 instruction set using what was called vertical microcode. It was similar to what an assembly code. The 148 used horizontal microcode. Each clock cycle it would apply a very long bit string to gates throughout the machine, causing different sections of logic to execute based on whether a specific bit in the microcode was on or off. Really hard to write.
Very cool. I've decided to return to the mainframe and then finish my career in a few years. I've spent the past few months getting back up to speed on OS/MVS on Hercules TK4. Now transitioning over to z/OS and zDTE.
370/148 with 1MB memory (solid state! Woo-hoo!) could run the MTS (Michigan Terminal System), along with an IBM field upgrade for Data Address Translation (hardware) + virtual storage. IBM guys in very spiffy, clean-pressed suits ("Field Engineers") would show up at the data center with these impressive aluminium briefcases with the hardware, etc., and do the upgrades. Afterwards, a fully kitted 370/148 with 1MB could easily support up to 150 users on 3270 & 2741 terminals.
I ued to operate one of these babies! We had an IBM 360/30 with Grasp. This was our upgrade and what difference it was I remember😊 good memories🦾😀. Thank. You!
good to see an old 370. In the 1980s and 1990's I was a partner in leasing co and we had 40 360's and 370's on lease in the nyc area. We would custom paint the machine to customers order. IBM would do the same. Usually just cans of ibm spray paint. red, white, yellow, blue. the front panel was always black.
It’s a 370 because it runs the 370 instruction set and can use 370 peripherals; doesn’t matter the internal implementation. If it had a chipmunk on a flywheel and ran 370, it would be a 370. All the 360s & 370s had micro-programmed CPUs except 360/44, 75, 91, 95, 195 & 370/195, which were hardwired. The CPU in the slower models had a narrower data path (cheaper). That’s mostly what made them slower (and cheaper). But their micro-programming enabled them to process data in 32-bit registers. Very clever actually: a key to their success. It gave them instruction set compatibly over a 50 to 1 speed difference: just amazing. The micro-programmed models lined up like this: CPU 360 model 370 model 8-bit 30/22 115/125 16-bit 40 135/138 32 bit 50 145/148 & 155/158 with cache memory 64 bit 65 165/168 Nice find. I like the white color best of all - very tasteful. Our 145 had that gaudy yellow; screamed. "CAUTION!!" I thought is should be green = money. Don't buy a 168. It needs a water refrigeration system for cooling. What you got there will make a great (if large) Personal Computer.
I got to work on a 148 at Texas Instruments (LICC) in 1979. We used it for around 6 weeks until our 4331 arrived. We ran VM/370 and I was the LICC's first systems programmer.
When we had a service bureau(1980's) we!! ran 10,000 payroll checks on 2 system3's. These machines had 16k !!!!! of memory. WoW 16k was a lot of memory then !!! The 1440's that the system 3 replaced had 8 K!!! memory.
WE MISS THE LIGHTS !!!!!!!!!!!!! In the 1980's we had white system 3(mom's machine), yellow sys3, blue 360/40, black 370 135, 370 145 all in our service bureau running work for our customers. In 1990 we lost our cheap rent and had to down size to dell servers, laptops and pc's, we now run all the same work on dell pc's, servers and laptops.
There was also 370/155, 370/158, 370/165 and 370/168. I believe the larger of these ran MVS/XA. The 148 was replaced by a 4341 and 4381, the 158 and 168 were replaced of the 3031 and the 3081.
The first mainframe on which I was the lead systems programmer was an IBM 370/148. We were waiting for an IBM 4341. IBM provided the 148 so I could start installing and developing our VM/SP system.
In the mid 1970s the university I was at had an ibm 370-145. They upgraded the memory. I think the memory upgrade cost about Can$1.00 per BYTE. Later they upgraded they upgraded the machine to a 370-148. I think the difference was the operating system with the 148 offering virtual memory.
Very cool. MST is an emitter-coupled logic, not TTL. Some of the console circuitry was TTL. IBM called it VTL - Vendor Transistor Logic - because they purchased most of it. MST-4 is kind of like 100K series ECL but centered around ground. VCC is +1.25V and VSS is -3.0V hence the emitter followers center around ground. Also interesting that IBM labeled bits from left to right instead of by their radix weight. A 24-bit address bus, for example, is labeled 1 thru 24 instead of 23 thru 0. Documentation got freaky when upgrading past 16MB. Fun stuff. Good luck with the start-up!
Back at the beginning, the 360/30 was microcoded, basically an 8-bit machine emulating either a 360, or if you paid for the feature, it emulated a 1401 to handle the legacy jobs in the mid-sized batch shops it was meant for.
I thought that all of the 360 models were microcoded, but after spending some time on Wikipedia, it looks like IBM did use hard-coded logic for the fastest S/360 models. I'm fascinated that the Model 30 was an 8-bit machine that emulated the full 32-bit 360 instruction set in microcode.
@@JakeHambyZ80 Pretty sure it could switch to 1401 mode under software control. Hah, yes, from the manual (bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/dos/C27-6940-2_14xx_Emulator_Feb69.pdf) "allows 1400 programs to be run in a stacked job environment, mixed with System/360 jobs."
The one thing about our 370/145 was the incredible noise the MG made. I always thought we had one was so that we could run a machine destined for US voltage and frequency from UK's. It seems that this wasn't the case. The 4341 we had (I was working for a different company by then) was nicknamed the freezer because that was exactly what it looked like - a large chest freezer.
Would love to see it starting up, but thanks for saying close to the start that you weren't actually going to start it up so I wasn't disappointed at the end :-(
I worked with the ibm/360-370 series from 1967-1884 and the 3000 and 4000 series from then to 2001. I never once saw the IBM CE's (repair) ever use the front panel lights...
You mentioned that you have a 3830 storage controller. Well one interesting option on a 3148, is the ISC (integrated storage controller), basically a 3830 that would fit in the rear frame, taking up all that empty space you showed in the video
When IBM took the lights off the front panel, they put light panels inside the machine. THE LIGHTS WERE ESSENTIAL TO FIX THE MACHINE USING THE BLUE MAP BOOKS. TO FIX THAT MACHINE YOU NEED ALL THE BLUE BOOK(MAPS), DIAGNOSTICS AND FE REPAIR MANUALS.
I used to manage small computer networks and I am very glad the servers I had to deal with were not anywhere near as complex as that beast of yours. It really will be a project and a half. I saw what was involved in restoring the IBM 1401 that the Computer History Museum has. They had a team of IBM folks involved and it still wasn't easy. I hope yours isn't as troublesome as that one was. Yours is newer and looks to be in good condition so hopefully it won't be as bad.
iF you have a complete machine(all the box's, blue books etc) it takes i day to install the machine!!! 1 day to generate the operating system. The computer history museum did not have a complete machine, so they took years to kluge together a working machine.
LOL.. brings back memories - I ran a lot of PL/1 code through this machine. As a programmer for one of these I had the option to purchase my company's 148 back in 1985 for $750 when they decommissioned it. Thank god I didn't have the space to store it! Although I did briefly consider that I could heat my apartment with it trying to justify the expense. 🤣 I was so bummed out when the 4381 arrived and it was just a small box with no blinking lights.
If you can restore the machine and get it going, the operator’s console is a delight. The /370 console was the last of the vector consoles where each character was drawn individually instead of being part of a raster (That started with the 303X machines). They were also a delight to play with as as system programmer, stepping through operating system code and setting hardware breakpoints with the dials and buttons.
Actually, while the 3066 console for the 370/168 was vector, the console for the 158 and 148 (at least) was a slightly reworked 3277 raster terminal with light pen.
Side issue, the engine in the S/260 30 and S/360 40 were vastly different. The 30 was a capacitor read only storage for the microcode, they were mylar IBM size cards with conductive lines and rectuanglar points that were excatly where a hole would be punched to change the capacitance. Someting pulesd through the lines caused a string of bits to be reas out. A punched hole was a 0, not punched was 1. The CE at times would get a card oor cards to replace pre-punched. They carried a handful of them, an emergency fix could be made by actually putting one in a keypunch and punching it. The 40 was a transformer ROS, the ling strips of mylar had traces, i think 16 they were about 2 inches wide and maybe 2 feet long. Every so often on the trace there wioud be a trace slooking like a square, the on side of it was the through trace. If the trace was ounched there it made a 1. Again they wold get replacemente, The CE had a manual punch they could use to make one in an emergency.
Hahah I used the front panel on a 360 often to program with! So the blinking lights were very valuable to me! I even wrote micro code on the 360. Remember the airbags??
Great video ! I cut my teeth on an IBM 370-168 back in 1978 as a university student learning IBM assembler and PL1 then it was on to oil patch sys programmer work on 3081,3083 and 3090 model.600 and ending up at a my old Alma matter as a CICS SYSPROG until 2004 using ZOS on a ES9000 what a ride, love your stuff.
I just saw this today. It brings back memories. A funny story about the 3047 MG set. Since the 3047 was near the printer (1403-N1) it was frequently used as a table to break down printouts. One day the operator was working there and triggered something exciting. His belt buckle caught on the EPO knob of the 3047 and suddenly the room went quiet.
Wow .. remember this well ... I worked on the final systems test line in Endicott bringing these systems to life and doing the testing and repair prior to shipping them to the customers. I also working in the development lab in Glendale getting the 3138 ready to transition into manufacturing ...
Do you ever run across any Burroughs equipment? I learned Fortran 77 on a Burroughs B6800 mainframe in the computer science department at the college I attended. This was the college's main computer; there was lots of time-sharing capability, one thing for which the B6800 was known. Had to be, when the college administration and the various business & accounting departments, curricula processing, student exams, etc. And of course, heavy use by the various computer science classes running Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, and even an occasional BASIC program! That B6800 definitely got a workout!
oldest IBM mainframe I ever worked on was a 360/65. Latest was 4381. Also 370/148, 3032, 4341. I thought the 3032 was the most impressive. started as tape librarian, then computer operator, then systems programmer. got out of mainframes in 1987.
I was on the development team for this machine. I wrote the compiler/assembler for the microcode as well as the simulator to run the microcode for the developers. IBM said the mg set would hold up under a loss of 6 cycles. Also, I don’t think that any 360 or 370 machine actually ran 360/370 code directly on the hardware. 360/370 language was too rich to run directly on hardware..
The top of the line 360 model 75 was the only hardwired (no microcode) IBM mainframe that implemented the >full< instruction set; very expensive, but the fastest >full< 360 without cache memory in the CPU. The other hardwired models (44, 91, 95, etc) were number crunching focused and did not implement certain 360 instructions, like Packed Decimal and Storage to Storage, etc. So far as I know all of the 370s were microcoded - with the possible exception of the 370/195. That sounds like a great job you had. I am curious, what language was the 148 microcode simulator written in? System 370 Assembler, I assume. What hardware was the 148 microcode simulator run on? I assume the 370/148 was not available yet - since you had to write the simulator.
@@pking147king6 I can’t imagine implementing instructions like Edit and Mark in hardware. I’m sure it could be done, but it seems like it would take a bunch of hardware.
@@pking147king6 originally the tools for the 370 145 were written in assembler. For the 148 I was convinced to switch to PL/S, an IBM internal language called Programming Language for Systems. I switched kicking and screaming because I love programming in assembler. After using PL/S I learned to love it. It compiled to assembler language which needed to be run through the assembler. Within the source you could jump in and out of assembler if you wished to improve performance in a certain section. It generated reentrant and recursive code.
The lights told you the stop codes. With the blue books(wiring diagrams) you would then find the card that was causing the problem. THEN REPLUG THE CARD!!! FIXING THE PROBLEM!!!
It is inaccurate to say that most of the 370/148's ran either VS1 or VM. At the time 2/3 of all 370 architecture machines ran DOS/VS. VM is and was what is called a hypervisor; by itself it really doesn't do much - it serves as a host for guest operating systems such as CMS, DOS/VS(E), VS1 and/or MVS. The company I worked for that had a 370/148 ran MVS and DOS/VS on it but not at the same time. They were never really big into VM.
@fard: your comments will also apply to DOS or VS1 - by themselves they weren’t much use. That’s why programmers were hired. VM was also used as a application platform. I worked for a company that wrote applications that ran natively on VM. VM is a very good application platform . Been there, done it.
@@deepsleep7822 Strictly speaking, you are correct about DOS, VS1, VS2, etc. But these operating systems always came with an assembler plus an IOCS subsystem which supported SAM, ISAM, BDAM, BTAM and others. Early on, they also came with COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1, SORT-Merge as part of the distribution. Sure you could program the bare metal, but I don't know of any companies that did.
I want to see more of those motor generators. Good history before solid state inverter types and way better power. Like mini Alexanderson /goldschmidt alternators, these devices were 415hz machines. Wish there were more of those units in open frame format. I did just the 4680 and pos rs485 units. Always love seeing the older tech out there.
Most small and medium IBM machines DID NOT USE MOTOR GENERATORS. i had ibm 360 mod 30, mod 40's, system 3's, sys 34's, 370 135's, rca spectra's, 4341 and rca 301's they all used standard 3 phase 208v. I installed these machines in offices, wharehouses, private houses used as offices. WHEN WE LEASED OFFICE SPACE IN NYC, THE RENT IN NEW YORK OFFICE BUILDINGS ALWAYS INCLUDED ELECTRIC!!! SO WE PAID VERY LITTLE FOR ELECTRIC!!!!!
You failed to open the side that contains the computer logic and memory. But it is just PCBs with logic cards on one side and wire wrapped connectors on the other side.
Wow. My last technical system level position was 370 135 and 145 nationwide support. I kept a completes set of ALDs and microcode listing for both beside my desk along with the roller section of a 135. I was already scheduled up to spend ti me in Endicott to do some pre announce work on the 148 and would have picked that one up. But I was promoted into another division and lost touch with the FE products. Thanks for the 148 cross training and I am sorry I missed out on working with that one. Let me know if you have to restore a 135 or 145.
At one time in ocean side long is, a refurbish whare house had over one thousand 370's in a warehouse another referb wharehouse had 500 system 3 and 34, all had been on lease on the east coast. by 1985 all of them had been scraped!!!!
Didn't catch it in the video - what did you have to pay for this gem stone ? Through the 1970s and early 1980s, did application and systems programming (sysgens) (Assembler, COBOL, Fortran, IMS DB/DC), starting out on S360/30 ending up on S370 and 3033. Nowdays, that would give me a headache.
we would usually purchase these 370's 4300 from Ibm for a customer on a 5 or 6 year lease at the end of the lease we got the machine back and then would lease it out in the nyc area. Or sell the machine or put it into our service center(now that would be cloud services). or sell them to people in tiwan who would recover about 10 to 20,000 dollars in gold or paladium and scrap the rest. It ususlly took me 2hrs to repair a 360, 370, sys 3 or 4300 thats the same amout of time it takes me to fix a pc!!!!!!!!
Wow.. I was so jealous that you had found such a great piece of history, until you got into the power requirements for this thing!! I had no idea it would take a motor generator, or for that matter anything more than 3 phase AC straight from the power company at the worst! Good luck with the restore. I subscribed and hope to see it running some day!!!
360's, 4300, sys3, 34, RCA(univac) all worked on single phase or 3 phase 208v. most power cos can sell you 400 cycle ac then you would not need the motor generator.
The 360 line also had a DASD called a data cell 2321. It was 400 Meg an L shaped beast about 5 x 3 on each leg. It had a bin with 10 pie wedge cells, each with 20 subcells, each with 10 mylar strips about 4 x 14 inches, 5 'cylinders' each 20 tracks per cyl. Each strip was 200k times 20 subcells 4 Meg x 10 cells 40 Meg each removable cell. It had a 25 hp motor hydraulic pump to spin the bin to the proper place, two fingers came down and separated the strips using tabs on the top an arm grabbed it. A drum with a clasp grabbed a hole in the strip, the drum spun 60 Ms rotation, air blasts at 3.0 pounds guided the strip and the read write head advanced. It had 56 mb transfer about 1/3 of the 2311. We had one. I helped push it out, i did too many recoveries when it smashed a strip usually putting it away, and it usually smashed the heads and the device was down 3 to 6 hours. Mechanicsburg IBM parts Depot was only 30 miles to get one. One time IBM thought our CE was the problem. They sent an expert from PHL who had 8 of them that had less pick restored together than our one. He spent a couple hour with our guy and called in to tell them, he knows more than I do. The problem was what Carol said in the beginning, a stack of parts in the machine were all in spec but all were on the long side of tolerance. The whole stack was too long. A trip to mechaniscburg with a micrometer found several shorter. Items problem solved.
3090 you could get motor generators for the machine. The customers who did not provided 415hz would need them to run their machine. I maintained an MP 3090 & had 4 of them that I needed to grease.
Interesting, i worked on a 3033 at ibm lab in france, it needed these 415 hz as well and was water cooled, impressive, and we had another 370/158 with an attach procesdor, running cpu design and logic verifying on these, on mvs 3.8. I learned pl1 there because they was using it a lot because it provided n dimensions data structure management, something i have not seen later but i m limited
Hi... what was the bus width on these machines to memory and to peripherals? 32 bit or 8 bit or did it vary with device? Thanks in advance for this presentation!
8 bit Bus and Tag, the usual interface for IBM mainframes until ESCON came out. I really did not show that channel connectors, sorry. When I do the reshoot for my channel, I should include them.
@@ed3987 Thank you for the reply. I used to program mainframes in assembler. I was never really cognizant of the hardware. Things like data bus width never occurred to me and I just thought, "It's a 32 bit register width, that must be thee I/O bandwidth."
Great video Uniservo! I was a programmer back in the days of such machines (on an IBM 4300). Is there an IBM document that explains the meaning of all the myriad of lights that were on the front panel?
I don't know about the 4300, but I have found many docs for the system 360/370 in pdf and software as well for free online download. Just Google it and you should be able to find what you are looking for.
@@BluesClerk I found the IBM Operators reference manual at bitsavers dot org so perhaps you may find what you are looking for there. Good luck and best regards!
My first computer operator job was working on one of these, doesn't seem like ancient history to me. I made a whole - hold your breath - whopping 3 dollars 15 cents and hour as my salary. No where nearly enough money to remotely live on. This was like around 1980.
You are wrong when you say it is not a 370 or that it is emulating a 370. The first paragraph of the Principles of Operation describes what 370 means: 'the way the machine appears to the programmer, distinct from data flows, internal implementation, or performance'. They call this a 370 because it IS a 370.
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This was the last machine I ran as an operator that made you feel like you were actually doing something! I used to love doing IPLs just because we could turn knobs and push buttons! I changed jobs and the next datacenter had a 4331 with the 'Maytag' flat tape drives! I went fulltime into systems programming and we went through the whole 4300 family, through the 9672s and into the Zseries. They are still running the Z12 we had when I retired.
I had to chuckle at a flashback I had at your comment about the ubiquitous Emergency Pull knob. The second computer I ever worked on was a S360/30 at my small community college. The operator who trained me always had it unscrewed and just resting on top of the machine. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to never, ever, EVER pull that knob unless I saw flames over 3 feet high coming from the top of the unit. Fortunately, that day never came. Enjoyed the video.
I worked with a lady who worked for the Army or Navy, one of the armed services. They used a IBM 360. They upgraded to a 4300 series, totally skipping the 370 series. She said one day some component in the computer room caught on fire and they hit the 'emergency power off' kill switch to the room. She said her manager was so mad and asked why did they do that - she said flames were shooting out of the xxx component. We had a good laugh as she told the story.
You actually pulled the emergency power button. This bypasses the power off sequence and shut it down immediately! This would cause a huge power surge in the building.
The emergency pull is very easily reset by lifting the little metal spring larch and pushing the button back
My fist job out of high school was an operator of 370 mod 158 and a 360 mod 50 for a local bank. Thanks for sharing the video.
Great video! My father started with a System 360.. S/370... and new models.. I had my first contact with a computer when I was 12 years. I built some EXEC, EXEC2, Rexx, Assembler.... Since that moment, I work with mainframes. I never forget of these old models... :)
My first systems job was at a large corporation that had upgraded from a 148 running VM and VS1 to a 158, then upgraded that to MVS. The 158 came to that shop from another within the company with a massive 6 MB of RAM: 2 MB in the main machine, and 4 MB of RAM from some company nobody ever heard of by the name of Intel. Eventually, it had an AP (attached processor, a poor man's multiprocessor system) added; the main machine was blue, but the AP was yellow. The 158 didn't have anywhere near as many blinkenlights as the 148; the console was used for that kind of thing instead.
Itel had some microcode which allowed a 145 emulate a 148.for a performance boost.
Totally feeling the engineer who couldn't accept this machine being scrapped and instead hauled it into his garage 😅👍
When I was in college they had an IBM 370/168. They also had an IBM 1620 that one of the professors had rebuilt for training purposes. Fun memories.
This brings back a lot of memories. I might have actually worked on this machine. I was the Quality Engineer for the 370/148 and the 370/138 built on the same line in Endicott NY. Later went on to design test equipment for the 4300 series, then the 9370. Remember a few details about them. The 138 implemented the 370 instruction set using what was called vertical microcode. It was similar to what an assembly code. The 148 used horizontal microcode. Each clock cycle it would apply a very long bit string to gates throughout the machine, causing different sections of logic to execute based on whether a specific bit in the microcode was on or off. Really hard to write.
I worked in an installation using the 370/135 operating system DOS in April-1977. Long ago and far away, in a prior life. Title: Programmer/Analyst.
Very cool. I've decided to return to the mainframe and then finish my career in a few years. I've spent the past few months getting back up to speed on OS/MVS on Hercules TK4. Now transitioning over to z/OS and zDTE.
Brilliant! A walk down memory lane. Proper Computer with. lovely flashing lights
370/148 with 1MB memory (solid state! Woo-hoo!) could run the MTS (Michigan Terminal System), along with an IBM field upgrade for Data Address Translation (hardware) + virtual storage. IBM guys in very spiffy, clean-pressed suits ("Field Engineers") would show up at the data center with these impressive aluminium briefcases with the hardware, etc., and do the upgrades. Afterwards, a fully kitted 370/148 with 1MB could easily support up to 150 users on 3270 & 2741 terminals.
I ued to operate one of these babies! We had an IBM 360/30 with Grasp. This was our upgrade and what difference it was I remember😊 good memories🦾😀. Thank. You!
good to see an old 370. In the 1980s and 1990's I was a partner in leasing co and we had 40 360's and 370's on lease in the nyc area.
We would custom paint the machine to customers order. IBM would do the same. Usually just cans of ibm spray paint. red, white, yellow, blue.
the front panel was always black.
It’s a 370 because it runs the 370 instruction set and can use 370 peripherals; doesn’t matter the internal implementation. If it had a chipmunk on a flywheel and ran 370, it would be a 370. All the 360s & 370s had micro-programmed CPUs except 360/44, 75, 91, 95, 195 & 370/195, which were hardwired.
The CPU in the slower models had a narrower data path (cheaper). That’s mostly what made them slower (and cheaper). But their micro-programming enabled them to process data in 32-bit registers. Very clever actually: a key to their success. It gave them instruction set compatibly over a 50 to 1 speed difference: just amazing. The micro-programmed models lined up like this:
CPU 360 model 370 model
8-bit 30/22 115/125
16-bit 40 135/138
32 bit 50 145/148 & 155/158 with cache memory
64 bit 65 165/168
Nice find. I like the white color best of all - very tasteful. Our 145 had that gaudy yellow; screamed. "CAUTION!!" I thought is should be green = money. Don't buy a 168. It needs a water refrigeration system for cooling. What you got there will make a great (if large) Personal Computer.
Correct. Saves me typing this in. Pay no attention to what is under the hood. Look at the badge.
My last 370 as a Systems Programmer. Ran DOS/VS R34.
I got to work on a 148 at Texas Instruments (LICC) in 1979. We used it for around 6 weeks until our 4331 arrived. We ran VM/370 and I was the LICC's first systems programmer.
When we had a service bureau(1980's) we!! ran 10,000 payroll checks on 2 system3's.
These machines had 16k !!!!! of memory. WoW 16k was a lot of memory then !!!
The 1440's that the system 3 replaced had 8 K!!! memory.
16 M, not K :)
WE MISS THE LIGHTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the 1980's we had white system 3(mom's machine), yellow sys3, blue 360/40,
black 370 135, 370 145 all in our service bureau running work for our customers.
In 1990 we lost our cheap rent and had to down size to dell servers, laptops
and pc's, we now run all the same work on dell pc's, servers and laptops.
There was also 370/155, 370/158, 370/165 and 370/168. I believe the larger of these ran MVS/XA. The 148 was replaced by a 4341 and 4381, the 158 and 168 were replaced of the 3031 and the 3081.
I still have an old original training binder from IBM called „IBM Computer Grundlagen, Arbeitsmittel“, © IBM 1972. It covers the /360 and /370 🙂
The first mainframe on which I was the lead systems programmer was an IBM 370/148. We were waiting for an IBM 4341. IBM provided the 148 so I could start installing and developing our VM/SP system.
In the mid 1970s the university I was at had an ibm 370-145. They upgraded the memory. I think the memory upgrade cost about Can$1.00 per BYTE. Later they upgraded they upgraded the machine to a 370-148. I think the difference was the operating system with the 148 offering virtual memory.
Very cool. MST is an emitter-coupled logic, not TTL. Some of the console circuitry was TTL. IBM called it VTL - Vendor Transistor Logic - because they purchased most of it. MST-4 is kind of like 100K series ECL but centered around ground. VCC is +1.25V and VSS is -3.0V hence the emitter followers center around ground. Also interesting that IBM labeled bits from left to right instead of by their radix weight. A 24-bit address bus, for example, is labeled 1 thru 24 instead of 23 thru 0. Documentation got freaky when upgrading past 16MB. Fun stuff. Good luck with the start-up!
Back at the beginning, the 360/30 was microcoded, basically an 8-bit machine emulating either a 360, or if you paid for the feature, it emulated a 1401 to handle the legacy jobs in the mid-sized batch shops it was meant for.
I think this machine has the 1401 emulation feature as well, so its an emulator running an emulator.
Ahhh yes CCROS. The Model 30: the only computer (that I know of) where the CPU included a compressor to keep the bladders inflated....!
@@uniservo I think they would load in a different set of microcode to emulate the older machine models.
I thought that all of the 360 models were microcoded, but after spending some time on Wikipedia, it looks like IBM did use hard-coded logic for the fastest S/360 models. I'm fascinated that the Model 30 was an 8-bit machine that emulated the full 32-bit 360 instruction set in microcode.
@@JakeHambyZ80 Pretty sure it could switch to 1401 mode under software control. Hah, yes, from the manual (bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/dos/C27-6940-2_14xx_Emulator_Feb69.pdf) "allows 1400 programs to be run in a stacked job environment, mixed with System/360 jobs."
The one thing about our 370/145 was the incredible noise the MG made. I always thought we had one was so that we could run a machine destined for US voltage and frequency from UK's. It seems that this wasn't the case.
The 4341 we had (I was working for a different company by then) was nicknamed the freezer because that was exactly what it looked like - a large chest freezer.
Would love to see it starting up, but thanks for saying close to the start that you weren't actually going to start it up so I wasn't disappointed at the end :-(
instablaster
I worked with the ibm/360-370 series from 1967-1884 and the 3000 and 4000 series from then to 2001. I never once saw the IBM CE's (repair) ever use the front panel lights...
You mentioned that you have a 3830 storage controller. Well one interesting option on a 3148, is the ISC (integrated storage controller), basically a 3830 that would fit in the rear frame, taking up all that empty space you showed in the video
When IBM took the lights off the front panel, they put light panels inside the machine. THE LIGHTS WERE ESSENTIAL TO FIX THE MACHINE USING
THE BLUE MAP BOOKS. TO FIX THAT MACHINE YOU NEED ALL THE BLUE BOOK(MAPS), DIAGNOSTICS AND FE REPAIR MANUALS.
I used to manage small computer networks and I am very glad the servers I had to deal with were not anywhere near as complex as that beast of yours. It really will be a project and a half. I saw what was involved in restoring the IBM 1401 that the Computer History Museum has. They had a team of IBM folks involved and it still wasn't easy. I hope yours isn't as troublesome as that one was. Yours is newer and looks to be in good condition so hopefully it won't be as bad.
iF you have a complete machine(all the box's, blue books etc) it takes i day
to install the machine!!! 1 day to generate the operating system.
The computer history museum did not have a complete machine, so they
took years to kluge together a working machine.
LOL.. brings back memories - I ran a lot of PL/1 code through this machine. As a programmer for one of these I had the option to purchase my company's 148 back in 1985 for $750 when they decommissioned it. Thank god I didn't have the space to store it! Although I did briefly consider that I could heat my apartment with it trying to justify the expense. 🤣 I was so bummed out when the 4381 arrived and it was just a small box with no blinking lights.
If you can restore the machine and get it going, the operator’s console is a delight. The /370 console was the last of the vector consoles where each character was drawn individually instead of being part of a raster (That started with the 303X machines).
They were also a delight to play with as as system programmer, stepping through operating system code and setting hardware breakpoints with the dials and buttons.
Actually, while the 3066 console for the 370/168 was vector, the console for the 158 and 148 (at least) was a slightly reworked 3277 raster terminal with light pen.
@@TheRealTronGuy I'm disappointed. The 3277 wasn't a special terminal at all.
Nice job on that rescue!
Side issue, the engine in the S/260 30 and S/360 40 were vastly different. The 30 was a capacitor read only storage for the microcode, they were mylar IBM size cards with conductive lines and rectuanglar points that were excatly where a hole would be punched to change the capacitance. Someting pulesd through the lines caused a string of bits to be reas out. A punched hole was a 0, not punched was 1. The CE at times would get a card oor cards to replace pre-punched. They carried a handful of them, an emergency fix could be made by actually putting one in a keypunch and punching it. The 40 was a transformer ROS, the ling strips of mylar had traces, i think 16 they were about 2 inches wide and maybe 2 feet long. Every so often on the trace there wioud be a trace slooking like a square, the on side of it was the through trace. If the trace was ounched there it made a 1. Again they wold get replacemente, The CE had a manual punch they could use to make one in an emergency.
Hahah I used the front panel on a 360 often to program with! So the blinking lights were very valuable to me! I even wrote micro code on the 360. Remember the airbags??
Thank you very much for sharing this beauty. Please make some videos of your progress.
Great video ! I cut my teeth on an IBM 370-168 back in 1978 as a university student learning IBM assembler and PL1 then it was on to oil patch sys programmer work on 3081,3083 and 3090 model.600 and ending up at a my old Alma matter as a CICS SYSPROG until 2004 using ZOS on a ES9000 what a ride, love your stuff.
This is a senior moment I forgot about the true last IBM big iron I used a Z800 !
I just saw this today. It brings back memories.
A funny story about the 3047 MG set. Since the 3047 was near the printer (1403-N1) it was frequently used as a table to break down printouts. One day the operator was working there and triggered something exciting. His belt buckle caught on the EPO knob of the 3047 and suddenly the room went quiet.
EPO?
@@sundhaug92 Emergency Power Off
I remember the IBM System 370 Model 145 where I worked as a data typist with first hands on the Entrex Data Scope data terminal in 1973.
11:50 guess what - I called that number. Definitely not IBM anymore :))))
Wow .. remember this well ... I worked on the final systems test line in Endicott bringing these systems to life and doing the testing and repair prior to shipping them to the customers. I also working in the development lab in Glendale getting the 3138 ready to transition into manufacturing ...
That front panel reminds me of what you see in 2001 movie. I know IBM was consulted while making the movie.
Do you ever run across any Burroughs equipment? I learned Fortran 77 on a Burroughs B6800 mainframe in the computer science department at the college I attended.
This was the college's main computer; there was lots of time-sharing capability, one thing for which the B6800 was known. Had to be, when the college administration and the various business & accounting departments, curricula processing, student exams, etc. And of course, heavy use by the various computer science classes running Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, and even an occasional BASIC program! That B6800 definitely got a workout!
I was waiting for you to pop up the top front panel!
Excellent machine, hope you collect it well.
oldest IBM mainframe I ever worked on was a 360/65. Latest was 4381. Also 370/148, 3032, 4341. I thought the 3032 was the most impressive. started as tape librarian, then computer operator, then systems programmer. got out of mainframes in 1987.
Hour meters are such a neat feature
Great! When will you take delivery of this BEAST?
I was on the development team for this machine. I wrote the compiler/assembler for the microcode as well as the simulator to run the microcode for the developers. IBM said the mg set would hold up under a loss of 6 cycles. Also, I don’t think that any 360 or 370 machine actually ran 360/370 code directly on the hardware. 360/370 language was too rich to run directly on hardware..
The top of the line 360 model 75 was the only hardwired (no microcode) IBM mainframe that implemented the >full< instruction set; very expensive, but the fastest >full< 360 without cache memory in the CPU.
The other hardwired models (44, 91, 95, etc) were number crunching focused and did not implement certain 360 instructions, like Packed Decimal and Storage to Storage, etc.
So far as I know all of the 370s were microcoded - with the possible exception of the 370/195.
That sounds like a great job you had. I am curious, what language was the 148 microcode simulator written in? System 370 Assembler, I assume. What hardware was the 148 microcode simulator run on? I assume the 370/148 was not available yet - since you had to write the simulator.
@@pking147king6 I can’t imagine implementing instructions like Edit and Mark in hardware. I’m sure it could be done, but it seems like it would take a bunch of hardware.
@@pking147king6 originally the tools for the 370 145 were written in assembler. For the 148 I was convinced to switch to PL/S, an IBM internal language called Programming Language for Systems. I switched kicking and screaming because I love programming in assembler. After using PL/S I learned to love it. It compiled to assembler language which needed to be run through the assembler. Within the source you could jump in and out of assembler if you wished to improve performance in a certain section. It generated reentrant and recursive code.
The lights told you the stop codes. With the blue books(wiring diagrams)
you would then find the card that was causing the problem.
THEN REPLUG THE CARD!!! FIXING THE PROBLEM!!!
It is inaccurate to say that most of the 370/148's ran either VS1 or VM. At the time 2/3 of all 370 architecture machines ran DOS/VS. VM is and was what is called a hypervisor; by itself it really doesn't do much - it serves as a host for guest operating systems such as CMS, DOS/VS(E), VS1 and/or MVS. The company I worked for that had a 370/148 ran MVS and DOS/VS on it but not at the same time. They were never really big into VM.
@fard: your comments will also apply to DOS or VS1 - by themselves they weren’t much use. That’s why programmers were hired. VM was also used as a application platform. I worked for a company that wrote applications that ran natively on VM. VM is a very good application platform . Been there, done it.
@@deepsleep7822 Strictly speaking, you are correct about DOS, VS1, VS2, etc. But these operating systems always came with an assembler plus an IOCS subsystem which supported SAM, ISAM, BDAM, BTAM and others. Early on, they also came with COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1, SORT-Merge as part of the distribution. Sure you could program the bare metal, but I don't know of any companies that did.
I want to see more of those motor generators. Good history before solid state inverter types and way better power. Like mini Alexanderson /goldschmidt alternators, these devices were 415hz machines. Wish there were more of those units in open frame format. I did just the 4680 and pos rs485 units. Always love seeing the older tech out there.
Most small and medium IBM machines DID NOT USE MOTOR GENERATORS.
i had ibm 360 mod 30, mod 40's, system 3's, sys 34's, 370 135's, rca spectra's, 4341
and rca 301's they all used standard 3 phase 208v. I installed these machines in
offices, wharehouses, private houses used as offices. WHEN WE LEASED OFFICE SPACE IN NYC, THE RENT IN NEW YORK OFFICE BUILDINGS ALWAYS INCLUDED
ELECTRIC!!! SO WE PAID VERY LITTLE FOR ELECTRIC!!!!!
@@billgoodman3537 I am guessing the IBM put motor-generators on the first solid-state memory machines to feed all those RAM chips nice even power.
Man, they were building Thunderbirds back then.
You failed to open the side that contains the computer logic and memory. But it is just PCBs with logic cards on one side and wire wrapped connectors on the other side.
Wow. My last technical system level position was 370 135 and 145 nationwide support. I kept a completes set of ALDs and microcode listing for both beside my desk along with the roller section of a 135.
I was already scheduled up to spend ti
me in Endicott to do some pre announce work on the 148 and would have picked that one up.
But I was promoted into another division and lost touch with the FE products.
Thanks for the 148 cross training and I am sorry I missed out on working with that one.
Let me know if you have to restore a 135 or 145.
At one time in ocean side long is, a refurbish whare house had over one thousand 370's
in a warehouse another referb wharehouse had 500 system 3 and 34, all had been on lease
on the east coast. by 1985 all of them had been scraped!!!!
Didn't catch it in the video - what did you have to pay for this gem stone ?
Through the 1970s and early 1980s, did application and systems programming (sysgens) (Assembler, COBOL, Fortran, IMS DB/DC), starting out on S360/30 ending up on S370 and 3033.
Nowdays, that would give me a headache.
we would usually purchase these 370's 4300 from Ibm for a customer on a 5 or 6 year lease
at the end of the lease we got the machine back and then would lease it out in the nyc area.
Or sell the machine or put it into our service center(now that would be cloud services). or sell
them to people in tiwan who would recover about 10 to 20,000 dollars in gold or paladium and scrap the rest. It ususlly took me 2hrs to repair a 360, 370, sys 3 or 4300 thats the same amout
of time it takes me to fix a pc!!!!!!!!
Wow.. I was so jealous that you had found such a great piece of history, until you got into the power requirements for this thing!! I had no idea it would take a motor generator, or for that matter anything more than 3 phase AC straight from the power company at the worst! Good luck with the restore. I subscribed and hope to see it running some day!!!
360's, 4300, sys3, 34, RCA(univac) all worked on single phase or 3 phase 208v.
most power cos can sell you 400 cycle ac then you would not need the motor generator.
The 360 line also had a DASD called a data cell 2321. It was 400 Meg an L shaped beast about 5 x 3 on each leg. It had a bin with 10 pie wedge cells, each with 20 subcells, each with 10 mylar strips about 4 x 14 inches, 5 'cylinders' each 20 tracks per cyl. Each strip was 200k times 20 subcells 4 Meg x 10 cells 40 Meg each removable cell. It had a 25 hp motor hydraulic pump to spin the bin to the proper place, two fingers came down and separated the strips using tabs on the top an arm grabbed it. A drum with a clasp grabbed a hole in the strip, the drum spun 60 Ms rotation, air blasts at 3.0 pounds guided the strip and the read write head advanced. It had 56 mb transfer about 1/3 of the 2311. We had one. I helped push it out, i did too many recoveries when it smashed a strip usually putting it away, and it usually smashed the heads and the device was down 3 to 6 hours. Mechanicsburg IBM parts Depot was only 30 miles to get one. One time IBM thought our CE was the problem. They sent an expert from PHL who had 8 of them that had less pick restored together than our one. He spent a couple hour with our guy and called in to tell them, he knows more than I do. The problem was what Carol said in the beginning, a stack of parts in the machine were all in spec but all were on the long side of tolerance. The whole stack was too long. A trip to mechaniscburg with a micrometer found several shorter. Items problem solved.
Hope to see it alive :)
you sound a bit like actor Bruce Boxleitner whom played tron in Disney's Tron movie and Babylon 5 sci-fi series.
3090 you could get motor generators for the machine. The customers who did not provided 415hz would need them to run their machine. I maintained an MP 3090 & had 4 of them that I needed to grease.
Interesting, i worked on a 3033 at ibm lab in france, it needed these 415 hz as well and was water cooled, impressive, and we had another 370/158 with an attach procesdor, running cpu design and logic verifying on these, on mvs 3.8. I learned pl1 there because they was using it a lot because it provided n dimensions data structure management, something i have not seen later but i m limited
So, this was 3 years ago…how far did you get with bringing it back online?
usually it took 2 days to refurbish a system, clean and paint it. Installation at customer location took 2 days for hardware, 1 week for software.
13:01 that’s like a Touch Bar on the Mac 😂
Turn that puppy up!
Make sure you do it at night so we can see all the lights in your neighborhood go dim. :-)
Dirt dobbers. Those mud wasps you're referring to are called dirt dobbers. At least in Louisiana.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_dauber
@@garrettnievin5812 Cool. I've never seen it written out. I've always heard it said by old timers with thick accents.
Hi... what was the bus width on these machines to memory and to peripherals? 32 bit or 8 bit or did it vary with device? Thanks in advance for this presentation!
8 bit Bus and Tag, the usual interface for IBM mainframes until ESCON came out. I really did not show that channel connectors, sorry. When I do the reshoot for my channel, I should include them.
24 BIT MACHINE WITH VARIABLE ASSEMBLER INSTRUCTIONS: 8 BIT, 16 BIT, 24 BIT, ALSO STORTAGE TO STORAGE INSTRUCTIONS
@@ed3987 Thank you for the reply. I used to program mainframes in assembler. I was never really cognizant of the hardware. Things like data bus width never occurred to me and I just thought, "It's a 32 bit register width, that must be thee I/O bandwidth."
DID YOU EVER GET THIS MACHINE GOING???
9:30 cool like my old Zenith T/O radio
Any updates on this machine?
Can you please link to the channel of this presenter.
uniservo channel is ruclips.net/user/uniservovideos
What your terminal doesn't have the light pen!
Now, if all that documentation would be scanned and found it's way to bitsavers...
Great video Uniservo! I was a programmer back in the days of such machines (on an IBM 4300).
Is there an IBM document that explains the meaning of all the myriad of lights that were on the front panel?
I don't know about the 4300, but I have found many docs for the system 360/370 in pdf and software as well for free online download. Just Google it and you should be able to find what you are looking for.
@@J_David_Worthington_III I tried but I'm not finding anything that is specific to the lights and controls on the operator's console.
@@BluesClerk Give me a few days and I will see if I have anything in my archives that may be if interest.
@@J_David_Worthington_III Thanks
@@BluesClerk I found the IBM Operators reference manual at bitsavers dot org so perhaps you may find what you are looking for there. Good luck and best regards!
The phone number works, but its not IBM anymore...
Haha, in an alternate universe IBM service would actually answer and want to talk about the extended warranty of your machine 😄
What OS are you running on this 148?
My first computer operator job was working on one of these, doesn't seem like ancient history to me. I made a whole - hold your breath - whopping 3 dollars 15 cents and hour as my salary. No where nearly enough money to remotely live on. This was like around 1980.
31:26 Evidence of mouse... Well... Looks like computer mouse was a thing, even in mainframe world ;-)
You are wrong when you say it is not a 370 or that it is emulating a 370. The first paragraph of the Principles of Operation describes what 370 means: 'the way the machine appears to the programmer, distinct from data flows, internal implementation, or performance'. They call this a 370 because it IS a 370.
Glendale Labs.
99% OF THE TIME YOU WOULD JUST REPLUG CARDS TO FIX A PROBLEM, USING THE MAPS(BLUE BOOKS).
Rancid!