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Aucbvax.2049 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!COMSAT.SoftArts@MIT-Multics Thu Jul 2 19:11:35 1981 Re: Addressing and File Accessing Poor Multics. People seem to attribute all the limitations of its imitators to the original. One of the major advances in Multics was its large address space and the uniform treatment of the address space. Files are not an intrinsic part of Multics -- only a convention for access memory through I/O routines. There isn't even I/O -- just a set of conventions for writing for writing an I/O interface module.

Yes, the system/38 does work out a lot of the ideas and I still feel it is IBM's most advanced system and have suggested people look at it as a model. But from what I hear it has not solved its performance problems, though the model of using gobs of computational power to provide a powerful interface is the correct one.

The other difference is that Multics provides the full power of its process to its users. The System/38 is packaged like a real computer but seems to be much closer to an assembly language/PLS interpreter running the user code. It was clever to invent the term vertical microcode, it means that they don't need to give you a listing of the operating system and are free to change the internals as long as they preserve the user interface.

Overall I think that the System/38 is a winner and one day IBM will tell people that it is more than a System/34 upgrade. On the other hand, I have not used it directly and RPG III (a VHLL production language if you want to look at it that way) is the only language currently available. It is also a little on the expensive side, even compared to a Star.

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