UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Amazing story: the preservation of an IBM 360 mainframe computer

MrBungle · 22nd May 2019, 8:54 pm

Yes horrid things. My first proper IT job was replacing a global payroll system written on a 360 and dragged along for about 25 years filling IBM’s pockets up with gold penance. Not sure what hardware platform it was on as I was working from the specifications.

It was replaced with a £600 4U rackmounted pentium 3 running an 8000 line long perl script from a cron job. Took four weeks and gained an automated test suite that didn’t require 12 people to run it from a binder of notes.

Processing time? 1 hour down to 22 seconds.

And that’s how the mainframe died. Commodity hardware saving about £2 million a year.

22nd May 2019, 8:54 pm	#8
MrBungle Dekatron Join Date: Jun 2016 Location: London, UK. Posts: 3,687	Re: Amazing story: the preservation of an IBM 360 mainframe computer Yes horrid things. My first proper IT job was replacing a global payroll system written on a 360 and dragged along for about 25 years filling IBM’s pockets up with gold penance. Not sure what hardware platform it was on as I was working from the specifications. It was replaced with a £600 4U rackmounted pentium 3 running an 8000 line long perl script from a cron job. Took four weeks and gained an automated test suite that didn’t require 12 people to run it from a binder of notes. Processing time? 1 hour down to 22 seconds. And that’s how the mainframe died. Commodity hardware saving about £2 million a year.