Talk:IBM System/370

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Infobox formatting

Figured I should add a note to apologise for my rather ugly fix for the way the infobox in the architecture section is rendering the surrounding text. Or mainly so that somebody who's less clueless about infobox markup than I am might do it properly. :D --Vometia (talk) 10:45, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Cutoff point for S/370 compatible?

At what point should new or specialty processors no longer be listed in #Models sorted by date introduced (table)? In particular, should the box include:

• -155 II
• -165 II
• 9472
• P/370 card for PC
• R/370 card for RS/6000
• P/390 card for PC
• R/390 card for RS/6000
• Multiprise 2000
• Multiprise 3000
• 9672

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:46, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Architecture details

If "IBM documentation numbers the bits in reverse order to that shown above", why not reverse the position numbers to agree with the documentation? Peter Flass (talk) 17:25, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@Peter Flass: Something like this?

IBM S/370 registers

00 07 08 15 16 23 24 31 32 39 40 47 48 57 58 63 (bit position)* General-purpose registers 0 R0 Floating-point registers FP0 FP0 Control registers 0 CR0 Basic mode Program Status Word System Mask Key 0MWP Interrupt Code ILC,CC Program Mask Instruction Address BC mode Program Status Word Extended Control mode Program Status Word 0R00 0TIE Key 1MWP S0,CC Program Mask 00000000 00000000 Instruction Address EC mode Program Status Word Note: IBM documentation numbers the bits from high order to low order; the most significant (leftmost) bit is designated as bit number 0.

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 05:10, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@Peter Flass: I've added PSW layouts through S/370-ESA; the tables could use some tweaking. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:41, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Peter Flass: Does User:Chatul/sandbox/Registers look like what you had in mind for the registers? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 05:07, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

What is "the successor"?

The term successor might refer to immediate successor or to final successor, but the article lists ESA/390 as the successor, and it is neither. The sequence of architectures is listed below; the successor should be shown either as 370 XA or as z/Architecture.

• System/370
• System/370 Extended Architecture
• Enterprise Systems Architecture/370
• Enterprise Systems Architecture/390
• z/Architecture

Also, 390 ESA is *NOT* a renaming of 370 ESA; it includes new features. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 02:22, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Recent updates

@Guy Harris: First, I apologize for inadvertently posting an incomplete update.

Second, my intent was that the footnote listing the constituent program products of MVS/XA include the table; I inadvertently terminated the {{refn}} prematurely. The table itself uses <ref>...</ref>, so I can't put it inside <ref>...</ref>. When I tried putting the table inside {{refn}}, the footnote rendered with just "{".

Also, there seems to be something wrong with my style="align:left"; the name header label is centered. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 23:04, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Can footnotes include tables? And, if they can, would that make them too big to make sense? Guy Harris (talk) 23:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I haven't been able to get tables to work inside footnotes, so I'm using definition lists instead. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Harris and Tom94022: At this point in time I have included the register formats for base S/370 through ESA/390. I made it an infobox because the previous version was, but it might look better as a wikitable, possibly with different scaling or location. Should I add the Floating Point Control (FPC) register? What about the layouts of individual control registers?

I've added citations in #Evolution for all of the relevant Principles of Operation manuals, the assists for MVS and VM, and for Start Interpretive Execution, which is used by PR/SM and by VM/XA through z/VM. Some of the information in those manuals should be added to #Evolution or to #I/O evolutions. I've defined |ref={{sfnref|foo}} so that I can cite individual sections as {{sfn|loc=[section-url section]|pp=pages}} without dragging along redundant {{cite}} parameters. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

PSW tables

The article currently has these tables for PSW format

• S/370 BC mode
• S/370 EC mode
• S/370-XA
• ESA/370

The format for ESA/390 is identical to that for ESA/370, but the names of two bits in the program mask have been changed to reflect that they apply only to hexadecimal (legacy) floating point as opposed to binary (IEEE) floating point. I'm considering three options:

1. Add an ESA/390 table that is almost identical to the ESA/370 table.
2. Add footnotes to bits 22 and 23
3. Add text to the ESA/370 table to show both names for bits 22 and 23

Which option is best?

Also, the tables should be copied to Program status word once complete. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:35, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I vote for 2 or 3. Creating a completely new table for two name changes seems like overkill. Peter Flass (talk) 15:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

How about a variation on 3; relabel the table as ESA/370 and ES/390 and distinguish the two bits with one local footnote Tom94022 (talk) 18:51, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I think it's clearer the way that it is now, but if you want to change the name to ESA and change the Program Mask table to present the two nomenclatures in a different fashion, go ahead. Note that I've added layouts to Program Status Word, although I need to decide how to handle z. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:16, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Separate pages for the S/370 family and the S/370 architecture?

We have two separate pages for S/360 - IBM System/360, which talks about the history of S/360, enumerates models, gives release dates, etc., and IBM System/360 architecture, which purely discusses architectural details, mentioning only the Models 20, 44, and 67 in passing because of their exceptions/extensions.

Should we do something similar for S/370?

A similar split for the 64-bit machines arguably exists, with IBM Z and z/Architecture. Guy Harris (talk) 06:54, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, if someone is willing to do the work a split is desirable. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 05:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I/O Evolutions

There is an I/O Evolutions section, but it does not discuss the I/O changes in the S/360 line and has a {{main article|IBM System/360#Channels}} hatnote; It does not discuss, e.g., channel set switching, 4.5 MB/s B&T, ESCON, FICON, the new channel susbsystem of XA; essentially the section only discusses what changed from the initial S/360 to the initial S/370. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 05:34, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

@Chatul: good point. I added ESCON to the section and will add FICON later. Note I had to first improve ESCON before linking here. May I suggest u take a hack at the other evolutions? Tom94022 (talk) 18:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)