[rescue] Cold War hardware movements - was Re: WTB: Functioning VAX machine

[Lionel Peterson]

I once worked for a company that sold a programming/development tool that ran
on IBM mainframes, and was designed to allow business people write programs
(sound familiar? ;^) to run on the mainframe. This tool was built on top of a
very old COBOL compiler that ran on PCs.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, the company licensed the compiler and created
a runtime environment on the mainframe that allowed the x86 compiler to run on
MVS.

It seems to still be alive, but I have to believe it has been rewritten by
now:

http://www.ca.com/us/products/detail/ca-cobol-xe.aspx

When I supported that tool, it was owned by Online Software... And I 'briefly'
worked for CA after they acquired the company.

Lionel

On Feb 22, 2012, at 1:56 AM, vintagecoder at aol.com wrote:

>> hardware.
>
> Maybe sometimes but not always. When they wanted to "port" MVS they found
> it easier to port the hardware! Until now nobody has been able to write a
> compatible MVS z/OS etc. from scratch. Instead they replicated the hardware
in software...