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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!labrea!aurora!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!ihlpa!rjh
From: rjh@ihlpa.ATT.COM (Herber)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Was the 360 badly-designed?  (was Re: Compatibility with EBCDIC)
Message-ID: <5202@ihlpa.ATT.COM>
Date: Sat, 22-Aug-87 19:23:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpa.5202
Posted: Sat Aug 22 19:23:06 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 14:37:50 EDT
References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> <916@haddock.ISC.COM> <1035@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 29
Summary: :-) :-) no problem! with stack, segment, or char set
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3842 comp.arch:1870

In article <1035@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> In article <1580@sol.ARPA> crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
> >. . .one needs VERY good arguments to claim that the 360
> >architecture was badly-designed.
> 
> No stack, small segments, nonstandard character set with holes.
> -- 
> Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi

1. No stack: make one with existing instructions.
2. Small segments: 1 megabyte is not big enough?
                   And the architecture transparently handles the transition
                   from one segment to another. An instruction or datum can
                   start in one segment and end in another; to the programmer
                   it looks like one piece of memory.
3. Nonstandard character set: Check, I believe that EBCDIC is a standard;
                   and, ASCII has its problems too -- numerics sort before
                   letters. The 360/370 architecture is not tied to EBCDIC.
                   The 360 architecture, in particular, had a bit in its
                   PSW (program status word) to tell the hardware whether to
                   generate EDCDIC or ASCII zones when converting from
                   packed decimal to zoned decimal.
4. BTW {:-)}, this message came from an Amdahl 5890-300 (a 360/370 architecture
                   processor) running UTS (tm-Amdahl) which is Unix (reg.tm-AT&T)
                   System V Release 2 compatible (see also: SVID and SVVS).
                   The character set is ASCII.

	Randolph J. Herber, Amdahl Sr Sys Eng, ..!ihnp4!ihlpa!rjh,
	(312) 979-6553, IH 6X213, AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL 60566