Post by Peter FlassYes, but this is done by the control unit (as you allude later) and
the P bit has no effect on what is stored.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#14 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
there was actually a different kind of problem involving IBM termianls
and ASCII terminals.
IBM terminals weren't ebcdic ... and so terminal data had to be
translated back&forth between terminal bit pattern and ebcdic bit
pattern.
when cp67 was delivered to the univ, it had 1052 & 2741 terminal support
(with appropriate translate tables). The univ had some number of
tty/ascii terminals and I added tty/ascii terminal support and the
appropriate translate tables ... the issue was that there are some chars
in ascii that aren't in ebcdic as well as the reverse ... so there was
some issues of mapping ascii characters (not defined in ebcdic) to
something ... as well mapping some ebcdic characters (not defined in
ascii) to something.
the other issue was that cp67 code as delivered did automatic terminal
type identification ... and dynamically changed the terminal controller
line-scanner to the appropriate one for that kind of terminal. when I
added tty/ascii support ... I extended the automatic terminal type
processing to include tty/ascii. I actually tried to have a single
dial-in number (for all types of dialup terminals; with common
hunt-group ... pool of numbers and corresponding controller port
connections). it turned out that they had taken some sort cuts in the
ibm terminal controller ... while it was possibly to dynamicall change
the terminal type line-scanner for each controller port ... they
hard-wired each port line-speed. It wasn't problem for common pool for
1052 & 2741 terminals since they operated at the same line speed ...
but it was a problem for tty/ascii which operated at different line
speed.
this was part of the motivation for the univ to start a clone controller
project, started with interdata/3 programmed to emulate the ibm terminal
controller (but supporting adapting both the port line scanner as well
as the port line speed) ... as building a controller channel I/O
interface board for the interdata/3 (later it evolved into an
interdata/4 for the channel interface with pool of interdata/3s for
handling ports). early bug was data arriving in 360 memory all garbled
... it turns out that the ibm terminal controller convention was to
place the arriving leading bit in the low-order bit position in the byte
and the fill the byte in reverse direction as the bits arrived ... then
transmit each byte to 360 memory (so bits within byte were in reverse
order of arrival). The initial testing with interdata/3 had bits in the
byte in bit arrival order (not reverse order) ... aka 360 terminal
standard had terminal/line ascii in bit-reversed order.
later, four of us are written up as being responsible for (some part of)
ibm clone controller business. ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm
later still, the folklore is that major motivation for IBM's Future
System effort (completely replace 360 with something radically
different) was to make the controller interface so complex that it would
be a barrier to clone controller business. misc. past posts mentioning
(failed) future system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
The rise and fall of IBM
http://www.ecole.org/en/seances/CM07
from above:
IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future
System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead that
the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such a high
level of integration that it would be impossible for competitors to
follow a compatible niche strategy. However, the project failed because
the objectives were too ambitious for the available technology. Many of
the ideas that were developed were nevertheless adapted for later
generations. Once IBM had acknowledged this failure, it launched its
'box strategy', which called for competitiveness with all the different
types of compatible sub-systems.
... snip ...
actually lots of FS was pure blue sky more like vaporware
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970