GETTMAIN

This post will make sense to approximately two readers.

While doing mass-cleaning and thorwing away of the detritus from various moves and houses and jobs, I came across the December 1993 draft of Unlimited Storage Availability for MVS/ESA, featuring the GETTMAIN macro. GETTMAIN was very different from the existing GETMAIN macro in that it would allow you to acquire all virtual storage across all computers in existence at the time, this being 1993 this was probably 1Gb or less.

GETTMAIN was a joke, in case there's any MVS lurkers scanning their 1993 era Init & Tuning guides looking for it.

Anyway, it was funny in its own Myers Corners Lab exclusive way, and reflected a time at IBM when you could take a moment to have some fun at work. I'm sure those moments have been excised from the corporation, wouldn't want people to enjoy working after all.

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Comments

alister added:

I remember there being a lot of random comments, poetry, and programmer rants in the old RETAIN code... quite entertaining. I bet that still lurks to this day.

David Singer added:

Of course, that draft was supposed to have come out in April, but the reviewing cycle pushed it all the way to December. Strange that it never showed up on my Gopher server, though....

Me added:

Watch it or I'll post snippets of the draft here.
I might not be able to though, it may be marked "insanely confidential".

Slightly acerbic and eccentric dog walker who masquerades as a web developer and occasional CTO.

Spent five years running the technology side of the circus known as www.ibm.com.

More about me here.

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