Talk:IBM System/38

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Contents 1 Not sure about the comment about 'tone' 2 System/38 is not like the System/34 3 Possible information to add 4 Explanations Needed 5 First computer with single-level storage? What about Multics?

[edit] Not sure about the comment about 'tone'

It's rather flattering, certainly, but not 'over the top'. As a former IBM employee, I can testify that the System/38 represented an outstanding advance in technology for the time. Importantly, these advances were available in a machine that you could actually buy and use, (if you had the money - the article is right on that point). Unfortunately, the machine was so advanced that it scared people both within IBM and its client base. Jjcarder 17:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC) John Carder

[edit] System/38 is not like the System/34

Unfortunately, the numbering of 32, 34, 36, and 38 is confusing. The S/38 was released one year after the S/34, but it is a much more advanced computer and does not particularly resemble the S/34. The inner workings of S/38 may call to mind the S/370. The S/36, however, does resemble its direct predecessor (S/34) in many ways.

Jessemckay 22:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible information to add

Is the System/38 not considered a minicomputer like its predecessor the System/34? --Fritts1227 18:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It was considered to be a mini in some circles. Of course, this was when a "mini" was often a rack of equipment. drh 00:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Explanations Needed

The following paragraph from the article is nearly meaningless without either further explanation, or creation of the pages for the wikified-but-nonexistent terms:

System/38 and its descendants are unique in being the only existing commercial capability architecture computers. The earlier Plessey 250 was one of the few other computers with capability architecture ever sold commercially. Additionally, the System/38 and its descendants are the only commercial computers ever to use a machine interface architecture to isolate the application software and most of the operating system from hardware dependencies, including such details as address size and register size.

Can anyone provide some information on what a capability architecture is, and how the System/38 used one? It's a little odd to claim that it's unique because of this, but then not provide any information on what it is, or how the architecture is implemented. --Kadin2048 17:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Just as a followup, it seems that an article has been created at capability architecture, or it's been redirected to a page that seems to explain it, so I think that's one problem solved. (It could still use improvement, though, by someone who was really familiar with how the S/38 implemented the architecture, but at least now the concept is explained.) The link to machine interface still leads to an empty page, though. --Kadin2048 07:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems like I may be the only one here. Anyway, I've removed another confusing paragraph from the text, at least until someone can elucidate what it means, exactly:

The machine itself was relative; in theory, it was possible to start processing an instruction in London, continue it a fraction of second later in on a machine in Los Angeles and finish it on one in Tokyo; without the user noticing any difference whatsoever as the machine kept track of this. In practice this was never implemented, but it was indicative of the incredible power of the machine. Thus the very powerful operating system had everything that every system designer might have wanted. ^[1]

This is almost a direct copy-and-paste from the 'futureobservatory.dyndns.org' link, which seems to be from some book or memoir about IBM. Anyway, there isn't any real help from the link about what "relative" means in this context. How does it mean you can stop processing in Los Angeles and resume processing in Tokyo? Without more information on how this is accomplished, or what this means in terms of the machine's architecture, it's pretty meaningless. Do you have to have identical machines in Tokyo and L.A.? Does it imply that storage and processing are detached? I don't know, but neither would a casual reader, so it's not much good. If anyone wants to explain, feel free to bring it back in. --Kadin2048 06:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

That paragraph reads as if it were written by a marketing person who was explaining what he/she understood the engineers to be saying, which means the relationship it bears to what the engineers were actually trying to say is unclear. From looking at that site, I suspect the person who wrote it was a marketing person and might well have misinterpreted some engineer's perhaps half-baked idea as something that actually made it into the system architecture. Guy Harris 07:11, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It appears that the article on capability-based architectures was merged with a largely unrelated one on capability-based security, resulting in the confusion we see. I don't know what happened to the machine interface article. drh 00:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

What happened to the machine interface article is that nobody ever wrote it. :-) It would be an interesting article, although "Technology Independent Machine Interface" would probably be a better title, as there are a lot of types of interfaces to machines, so just "machine interface" would probably be too generic a name, although capitalized "Machine Interface" might also work. Guy Harris 00:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First computer with single-level storage? What about Multics?

The article claims that the S/38 was the first computer with single-level addressing for memory and all I/O devices. Wasn't this done in Multics about 15 years earlier? -- Richardthiebaud (talk) 01:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)