Mainframe man
I’ve been receiving the magazine since some time in the early noughties I think, my first exposure to Linux being while I was doing a part-time MSc at De Montfort University in Leicester, 1999-2001.
We had coursework that needed to be done on Unix workstations and, as a part-time student, couldn’t get access to the workstations that easily, so found Linux and started running it on a home PC.
I loved the article on retro emulation (LXF295). I was expecting something along the lines of similar articles on the likes of Apple II, Tandy TRS and so on, but it was ICL 1900 series mainframes.
My first computer was not a personal computer at all, but a mainframe: an ICL 1904S, so I absolutely loved the article on how to emulate dear old George 3. Coding sheets, card decks and the Westinghouse teletype – though we did also have a couple of MOP terminals as well. I was rewriting PLAN (ICL assembler) programs in COBOL as part of a project for HM Treasury to replace the ageing 1900 series with the 2900 series. This was back in 1980.
I moved on from the ICL 1900 to the ICL 2946, then the NCR V series mainframe, ending up working on the IBM AS/400 around 1988.
Fast-forward a few decades and I’m still working on the IBM AS/400 successor – I’ve lost track of all the marketing changes. I think it’s now a Power System I. The best thing about the latest incarnation: it can run Python, though most of the programming is still RPG.
Alongside the AS/400s, we introduced Linux to the business I worked for around 2002, running Apache and Tomcat with MySQL as the database. We had a bit of opposition at the time (from the US) on why we ran Linux rather than Solaris or AIX, but a few years on from that and almost all the proprietary Unix flavours had been replaced by Linux.
My laptop is still Windows (work-owned) but there is the Subsystem for Linux, and I have treated myself to a Pi 400!
Andrew Bennison
Neil says…
You’ve certainly kept busy over the years. Good to hear the mainframe article brought back some memories and it’s interesting to hear about your transition from Unix to Linux – I bet the sales people weren’t happy about you shifting to Linux! Enjoy the Pi 400 – it’s probably a lot faster than those old systems and much easier to carry!