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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Very minor nitpick: Unix machines were never considered mainframes. Unix was born on small computers (legend says its name is a jab at MINIX, which ran on mainframes) and had its most impact was in mini and midrange computers before the arrival of sufficiently capable technical workstations, and only very rarely ran on the really big mainframe-class computers as their main OS.

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Smaller nitpick: Unix was eventually ported to mainframes even before Linux ran on z Series hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl_UTS

> UTS is a discontinued implementation of the UNIX operating system for IBM mainframe (and compatible) computers. Amdahl created the first versions of UTS, and released it in May 1981,[1] with UTS Global acquiring rights to the product in 2002.

I remember it. It felt more like a way to mark a checkbox for government contracts that required POSIX compliance than a real, usable tool.

I have no doubt some people abused it into being a useful tool. IIRC, it came about at the same time the 370s got vector processing that made them better suited for scientific applications.

> (legend says its name is a jab at MINIX, which ran on mainframes)

I think you mean Multics, since UNIX predates MINIX by 16-18 years.

Sorry. It’s Multics. I blame either coffee not having kicked in or the auto “correct” of the phone.

Thank you for that.

I was highly curious how it was possible to so easily compile ancient mainframe code on MacOS.

The cray x-mp and y-mp supercomputers of the 1980s, reserved for simulating nuclear chain reactions or weather or other high compute tasks, had a capacity well below a solid contemporary smart phone. Only in the late 1990s 32GB of ram became available.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Y-MP

For a real main frame in your pocket have a look at the Hercules mainframe emulator. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator)

No but there's a unix v shell on z/os:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos-basic-skills?topic=interface...

I found this by chance one day when poking around at work in $BIG_FIN_CORP and it made me so happy. Until I realised the only editor was... well. ed T_T

No. Just no.

Here is the pdp-11, birthplace of Unix: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11

It's by all means a mainframe. Same goes for the vax which followed it.

"Mid range" and "Mini computers" came up in the 1980s/1990s, e.g. as Department file and print servers.

From the link:

> The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers

It’s a class of computers in the 1960’s that was distinct from mainframes because they were so much smaller and cheaper, even though today all 60’s computers feel equally huge.

Unix was born on the PDP-7 before being ported to the PDP-11. The DEC PDP systems were considered minicomputers. The only DEC PDP considered a mainframe was the PDP-10, but Unix didn't run on it.

> It's by all means a mainframe.

The PDP-11 was a minicomputer. It did not have the data throughput to compete with a mainframe.

The PDP range where Mini computers not Mainframes - the only mainframe class systems DEC had where the DECSYSTEM-20 / 10.

Mainframe = behemoth

Minicomputer = wardrobe/fridge size computers

Microcomputer = your idea of minicomputer

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