Whatever happened to all the 20th century mainframe jocks?

[80251]

Back when I started in IT, PCs were called microcomputers and we were the lowest guys on the IT totem pole while the mainframers were the demigods of IT, although they resented how quickly PCs were invading their turf. I imagine some of them have passed on, but some of them weren't too much older than I was back then. They were the highest paid group in my whole IT department and all of them had their own private offices -- except for the operators. Aside from legacy mainframe installs are mainframes pretty much dead in the IT world now? Whatever happened to those demigods of the IT world? Are any of you MVS/COBOL types out there?

 

[Nine Layer Nige]

I used to have to communicate with the fossils on a regular basis with requirements. Me being a gun slinging "JFDI" MS Access developer often received a cool reception among some of them whose social skills were not on their CV. Most were ok once they realised I actually knew what I was doing but some just grunted. Happy days.

 

[geofelt]

Back when I started in IT, PCs were called microcomputers and we were the lowest guys on the IT totem pole while the mainframers were the demigods of IT, although they resented how quickly PCs were invading their turf. I imagine some of them have passed on, but some of them weren't too much older than I was back then. They were the highest paid group in my whole IT department and all of them had their own private offices -- except for the operators. Aside from legacy mainframe installs are mainframes pretty much dead in the IT world now? Whatever happened to those demigods of the IT world? Are any of you MVS/COBOL types out there?

I guess I count.
I worked on IBM 360 hardware and earlier.
MVT/cobol, assembly language, CICS and so forth.
I retired about the time the IBM personal computers were introduced.
I now have more compute power, ram, storage next to my desk than the largest installation of the time.
Times change.

 

[kanewolf]

Back when I started in IT, PCs were called microcomputers and we were the lowest guys on the IT totem pole while the mainframers were the demigods of IT, although they resented how quickly PCs were invading their turf. I imagine some of them have passed on, but some of them weren't too much older than I was back then. They were the highest paid group in my whole IT department and all of them had their own private offices -- except for the operators. Aside from legacy mainframe installs are mainframes pretty much dead in the IT world now? Whatever happened to those demigods of the IT world? Are any of you MVS/COBOL types out there?

By the time I started in software in the mid 80s, mainframes were on the decline. High costs were limiting them. Dec VAX and HP were on the rise. Mainframes existed (may still exist) in very reliability critical areas. Defense, banking, air traffic were some of the last areas to migrate. If you needed six 9s availability (.999999) then mainframes did the job, but at a high cost. My first job, I had the option of going to a group writing PLI on an IBM or FORTRAN on a VAX. I chose the FORTRAN job.

 

[80251]

By the time I started in software in the mid 80s, mainframes were on the decline. High costs were limiting them. Dec VAX and HP were on the rise. Mainframes existed (may still exist) in very reliability critical areas. Defense, banking, air traffic were some of the last areas to migrate. If you needed six 9s availability (.999999) then mainframes did the job, but at a high cost. My first job, I had the option of going to a group writing PLI on an IBM or FORTRAN on a VAX. I chose the FORTRAN job.

At my shop the only use the mainframe jocks had for VAX/VMS was email. At some point, email was only for the IT department and there was no internet.

 

[80251]

I guess I count.
I worked on IBM 360 hardware and earlier.
MVT/cobol, assembly language, CICS and so forth.
I retired about the time the IBM personal computers were introduced.
I now have more compute power, ram, storage next to my desk than the largest installation of the time.
Times change.

I'll bet you were paid well for your knowledge of Big Iron. I remember the cost of the maintenance contract w/IBM to service just the mainframe and its various peripherals at the hospital i worked at was ASTOUNDING, but considering how quick the response time was maybe it was justified. The IBM PC maintenance contract was thrown in for a song.

 

[Ralston18]

For me it depended somewhat on where I was working at the time.

In a couple of places the mainframe types were very elite and very territorial. Right down to how we used the keypunch machines (FORTRAN).

In other places, the mainframe types were simply just "good geeks" who enjoyed computers and IT.

To everyone's benefit.

We learned from each other as "big iron" became PC and all started to merge, communicate, and network.

Those places were much more successful.

And I also knew a couple of great IBM folks. They worked hard.

 

[punkncat]

I can only sit back with a certain sense of awe. Never dealt with anything such as this.

As a kid my mother worked at an installation where I would be with her at work some days. I recall there being a very long and wide hallway with racks of blinking lights and tape drives to either side. For me, at the time, it was much akin to being on the set of a science fiction film.

 

[80251]

I once went into the cold room that housed the IBM 3090, there was a gigantic cabling trunk that came through the false floor and went through the ceiling -- it must've been 5' across. I'm sure many of the cables were no longer in use but they never bothered yanking them out of the tree trunk sized mass of cables.
Most of the mainframe jocks ignored us guys in the microcomputer group (unless they wanted something like a bigger monitor), but some of them were friendly (here's to you JB Hiller!). They even had to give us PC guys accounts on the mainframe to test some ISA Irma interface cards that allowed a PC to emulate a 3270 terminal. They much preferred the IBM PS/2 keyboards to the clunky 3270 ones.

 

[kanewolf]

I once went into the cold room that housed the IBM 3090, there was a gigantic cabling trunk that came through the false floor and went through the ceiling -- it must've been 5' across. I'm sure many of the cables were no longer in use but they never bothered yanking them out of the tree trunk sized mass of cables.
Most of the mainframe jocks ignored us guys in the microcomputer group (unless they wanted something like a bigger monitor), but some of them were friendly (here's to you JB Hiller!). They even had to give us PC guys accounts on the mainframe to test some ISA Irma interface cards that allowed a PC to emulate a 3270 terminal. They much preferred the IBM PS/2 keyboards to the clunky 3270 ones.

Those 3270 keyboards were bullet proof!!! You could easily bludgeon someone to death with one of them, and still type your resume after !!!

 

[80251]

@kanewolf
I wouldn't be surprised if the 3270 terminals were bulletproof. They were made of heavy gauge steel -- much heavier than that seen in any PC case. The ugly green screen displays went along perfectly w/the clunky keyboards. There were some really nice terminals for DEC VAX equipment. The nicest I think wasn't even made by DEC and had a nice PC style keyboard.
The great thing about being in microcomputer support is that we were the only ones who could play games at work.

 

[kanewolf]

@kanewolf
I wouldn't be surprised if the 3270 terminals were bulletproof. They were made of heavy gauge steel -- much heavier than that seen in any PC case. The ugly green screen displays went along perfectly w/the clunky keyboards. There were some really nice terminals for DEC VAX equipment. The nicest I think wasn't even made by DEC and had a nice PC style keyboard.
The great thing about being in microcomputer support is that we were the only ones who could play games at work.

We had color 3270s at work. Used them for document generation. I had an orange phosphor VT220. There was one VT240, sort of graphics capable. Yes, I did play "adventure" on our VAX 11/780.

 

[80251]

I've never seen a color 3270. I had thought IBM came out w/a newer terminal, 3151? The color 3270 must have been really rare.

 

[kanewolf]

I've never seen a color 3270. I had thought IBM came out w/a newer terminal, 3151? The color 3270 must have been really rare.

Maybe the model number wasn't 3270, but we refered to them as 3270s..

 

[JeffreyP55]

Back when I started in IT, PCs were called microcomputers and we were the lowest guys on the IT totem pole while the mainframers were the demigods of IT, although they resented how quickly PCs were invading their turf. I imagine some of them have passed on, but some of them weren't too much older than I was back then. They were the highest paid group in my whole IT department and all of them had their own private offices -- except for the operators. Aside from legacy mainframe installs are mainframes pretty much dead in the IT world now? Whatever happened to those demigods of the IT world? Are any of you MVS/COBOL types out there?

A bit off the main topic but when I started in computers there were just mainframes. No Micro, mini's or other assorted failures. 80 column keypunch card for what was called data entry. Then 8" Shugart floppies. Keypunch machine (Tab products company) had an aluminum bed and weighed 200 + pounds. IBM had a no lay-off policy. Those techies made the big bucks.Have a nice Sunday..

 

[bill001g]

I am one of those old guys who coded in cobol and fortran. Was so glad they no longer used punched cards.

I soon discovered though I did not really like business software stuff so did mostly OS level stuff in assembler. In the days you could actually get source code from IBM for the OS. A lot of the code I worked on was related to communication between different remote mainframes. Well before even very basic internet existed. There were so many proprietary communication methods used by all the different computer makers. As everything went to IP it let me transition to pure networking even as mainframes were outsourced or discontinued.

The last guy I knew that actually did cobol also did CICS which seems to still be very valuable. He was paid huge money by jcpenny until they went bankrupt.

 

[80251]

A bit off the main topic but when I started in computers there were just mainframes. No Micro, mini's or other assorted failures. 80 column keypunch card for what was called data entry. Then 8" Shugart floppies. Keypunch machine (Tab products company) had an aluminum bed and weighed 200 + pounds. IBM had a no lay-off policy. Those techies made the big bucks.Have a nice Sunday..

In the movie Koyaanisqatsi they briefly show a woman doing data entry on keypunch cards. I've never seen a keypunch machine. One of the guys I worked with once played a joke on someone who had a collated stack of keypunch cards that constituted a program he had written, he replaced his stack of keypunch cards w/a stack of random keypunch cards then knocked them over, spilling them all over the floor. 80 column keypunch cards correspond perfectly with FORTRAN-77's column major programming style/syntax.
My friend who had a degree in CompSci from UCLA wasn't given much respect by the mainframe guys, who couldn't care less about C, C++ or UNIX and why should they? Outside of academia those programming languages and OS were practically irrelevant.

 

[kanewolf]

In the movie Koyaanisqatsi they briefly show a woman doing data entry on keypunch cards. I've never seen a keypunch machine. One of the guys I worked with once played a joke on someone who had a collated stack of keypunch cards that constituted a program he had written, he replaced his stack of keypunch cards w/a stack of random keypunch cards then knocked them over, spilling them all over the floor. 80 column keypunch cards correspond perfectly with FORTRAN-77's column major programming style/syntax.
My friend who had a degree in CompSci from UCLA wasn't given much respect by the mainframe guys, who couldn't care less about C, C++ or UNIX and why should they? Outside of academia those programming languages and OS were practically irrelevant.

My college courses for many programming languages were on cards. When modems got to 28.8 or 56K, then dial up became available. I used a Commodore 64 with a monochrome monitor in a fake 80 column mode. Commodore 64 did not have 80 column output, so the terminal emulation software treated the whole thing as a bitmap display and used smaller characters to achieve 80 columns. It only worked on monochrome monitors.

 

[80251]

@kanewolf, did you used to wear a three piece suit and tie to your mainframe jobs? Most all of the mainframe jocks in the IT dept. I worked at did (while us microcomputer serfs wore slacks and button down shirts).

 

[geofelt]

I was a IBM systems engineer in the 1960's.

We had a dress code of suit and tie. The requirement for a hat was gone buy.
The exception was for the guys from Hawaii, their dress code was Hawaiian shirts.
Essentially, we dressed the way the customer's managers dressed.

 

[kanewolf]

@kanewolf, did you used to wear a three piece suit and tie to your mainframe jobs? Most all of the mainframe jocks in the IT dept. I worked at did (while us microcomputer serfs wore slacks and button down shirts).

I never worked on a mainframe. My first (and only) employer out of college didn't have that strict a dress code.