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Aucbvax.1993 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!Barns@OFFICE Tue Jun 30 01:21:07 1981 Addressing and File Accessing The recent discussions of address space size, remote file access, etc., brought back to my mind the IBM System 38 - specifically the notion of only one kind of addressing (48 bits in that machine) which is used to access "main memory" or data on secondary storage - rather than having files, there is the notion of various "access paths" possibly existing through a great heap/swamp/"data base" of bits and bytes.

As far as I know the machines under discussion generally belong to the Multics/Tenex/Unix school of thought that on the one hand, there is memory, and on the other hand, there are files. All sorts of nasty things like networks, terminals, users, etc., are mapped into one of the two (usually files). But it seems to me more desirable (in principle at least) to have only one kind of thing ala S/38, with various notions of access paths, objects, classes of objects, etc.

I for one would be interested in knowing if my feeling is shared by others, and also whether there are any plans on the part of the research groups or other entrepreneurs to build such machine/software combinations for those of us who would rather not program in RPG.

Bill Barns -------

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