IBM 360’s are searching for a new home | Hacker News Reader

IBM 360’s are searching for a new home

ibm360.co.uk

201 pointsngcc_hk26 comments

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Does the Hercules emulator have all the firmware from these systems (and peripherals) in their collection already?

http://www.hercules-390.eu/

I know there was specific microcode here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30073973

Hercules doesn’t emulate at the microcode level. It implements the appropriate instruction set(s).

Reading a little deeper into the previous HN post, this one does:

https://static.righto.com/360/

To clarify, that is an emulator specific for the IBM 360/50 that runs the microcode. It is a demo, not a useful system. It has nothing to do with Hercules.

And thank you for writing it.

The 360 model 20 isn't actually a 360 compatible system. It's a 16 bit subset 'inspired by' the 360.

You are right it is a subset. Not sure it is totally true it is incompatible though, but do have some incompatible instruction.

It is the most numerous 360 computer installed, more than 7000. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_20 .

It is sad to let these go as part of computer history.

It is incompatible. For one example, it doesn't have registers R0-R7, using those as encodings as additional address bits. It also doesn't have the top half of registers R8-R15.

The original intent IIRC was the programs for the model 20 would be upwards compatible with the rest of the series, but that the higher level models would not be downward compatible with the 20. No idea if that ended up being achieved.

> 1x 2152 System Console (possibly the last remaining example of this in the world, though in poor condition)

> 2x 2415 II Tape Drives (One master, one slave) (Possibly only remaining examples of this model globally)

Any pictures/info on those things? "Last example in the world" is pretty interesting and I guess urgent to see.

I hope the Computer History Museum buys it, and fixes it up for live demos. The IBM 1401 they have is cool, but I kind of think an IBM 360 would be cooler, given its historical importance.

In case they hadn't seen the article, I sent it to the senior curator... fingers crossed

I wonder what if someone could reproduce this kind of ancient high-tech using modern precision production technologies and durable materials. Could we build those huge size low density hard drives and other components with orders of magnitude higher quality so they would last forever and never need anything replaced?

Define forever. Especially because you mentioned hard drives - moving parts. Which will definitely wear out in time.

I suppose the modern equivalent of what GP is asking for would be SLC flash. Each bit has its own dedicated cell, compared to the denser and more common MLC/TLC/QLC flash where cells are shared. I would trust data stored in SLC to last unpowered for a lot longer than your average QLC disk.

Or maybe core memory would be more stable over time?

If we're going for ultimate durability, maybe the laser inscribed glass would be the way to go, but not sure it's practical as typical computer memory. [0]

[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/this-new-5d-data-storage-disc-c...

As far as I know hard drives are more and more prone to have bad blocks as you travel back in time. An old man who had access to computers before I have even been born told me every HDD in production had some. However, nowadays as HDDs density went insane and each block is so tiny, a single bad block usually means a red alert suggesting more are coming and the whole drive is dying, nevertheless this is a rare thing to happen as we now can produce all the parts with extreme precision making it a "swiss clockwork" sort of reliable. This way, can't we produce a flawlessly perfect HDD of the old kind so its huge blocks would never turn bad?

I don't think modern hdd bad blocks work this way.

Look at the SMART property "reallocated sector count", which was there before SSDs.

They have firmware and spare capacity just like SSDs. When you do get a bad block it means they ran out of spare space.

I have HDDs (spining rust) in my desktop that are 10+ years and still running fine. I had older SCSI UW-320 disks that were running 20+ years until well, started to give I/O errors. Workloads are low here (mostly read). So I imagine it is doable to do HDD with low density and high grade components that would last 100 years. Interesting challenge imo.

http://civboot.org is basically trying to answer exactly this question

Wow thanks! I always felt anxious about our civilization apparently loosing ways to build things from scratch. Nice to know I'm not alone and somebody is working on this problem.

https://archive.is/5Uqf8

I would love to take atleast one of these & try to restore it... Such a beatiful piece of engineering (and history)!

Looks like they ran a Puma factory/office of some descriptions, would be very interesting to see what the software they made for them does.

https://www.ibm360.co.uk/?page_id=22

I wonder if Sam of "look mum no computer" fame from YouTube might be interested for his museum ("this museum is not obsolete"). He's shown a fascination with and aptitude for all kinds of old tech, although he does tend to focus a bit more on equipment that he can make music with.

His museum doesn't have enough floor space for even one of the mainframes without evicting lots of other interesting stuff. It's actually just a few yards from a computer museum though.

Isn't most of his collection completely analog?

I remember donating to help them transport the 360 out of Germany. Hope some obtainsit who will document its restoration.

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