Talk:IBM System/390

History of this article
... response to item as MOVE- NOT a MOVE, it was a 3 way merger: IBM calls it Triadic
 * It was absolutely not a move at all.
 * On the exact same day, IBM said, in 3 different annoucements:
 * (1) _System/390 Announcement_ "IBM today introduced System/390... System/390 introduces  the IBM Enterprise System/9000 family of 18 new processors ...
 * (2) _Enterprise System/9000_ " Based on IBM's Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 (ESA/390), the IBM ES/9000 family offers users ..."
 * (3) _ES/9000 Characteristics_ (subhead System/390 ES/9000 Processor characteristics) "The IBM Enterprise System/9000 (ES/9000) family of 18 processors announced today for System/390 ..."


 * Now which is the left head and which is the right head of what IBM termed "dyadic" for a prior generation system with two processors, the 3081. Is 390 what opticians call O.D. (D=Dexter, the major one) for right, and 9000 what they call O.S. (S=Sinister) the left)? Since 390 is what survived, actually being called S/390 (and that's what they put on the system box), 390 is the first name

on the article.


 * Since most of the models that followed were 4 digits, starting with a 9, 9000 is the second name.
 * For reasons too lengthy to explain in this brief (lawyer's style "brief") explanation, the top of the article was focused on the Air-vs-Water cooling, since Amdahl had already patented its air-cooling a decade prior. This info came from 3 sources: non-Wiki writeups about Amdahl, the 390 article and the 9000 article. MERGER - not a move.
 * Not yet complete. Pi314m (talk) 22:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Edit histories of the three-way merge (IBM did a same-day triple announcement)
390 (152 edits), 9000 (28 edits). 3-way (other info) merge: 9 edits to date.

The 9000 article was identified by the now-RedLined Angusus as "Created page with 'ES/9000 is the family of processors developed to accommodate System/390-based operating systems. Hardware features new with the ES/9000 family of processors)" Kubanczyk made 11 edits in the 390 article (vs 5 in 9000), Robertgreer made 2 edits in 390, one in 9000. Rwessel and Bumm13 made none in 390.
 * Angusus - made 3 more edits that day (17 Sept 2007) and, that's it.
 * Kubanczyk - made 5 edits that same day, then one more a month later.
 * Other edits aside from mine were mostly one edit, as follows.
 * Robertgreer one edit, Rjwilmsi one, Hellisp one.
 * Bumm13 two edits, Malcolmxl5 one, Dawynn one, Jake Wartenberg one
 * Rwessel made one edit, 3 were bots, one anon,
 * I made the last 6 edits.

Guy Harris, a heavy contributor to Mainframe articles, made 25 edits in 390, none in 9000.

As for the time line, 390 began as a 6-sentence article (by anon) and had edits each year since. 9000 began 2007, with no edits in 2008, 2010, 2014 or 2016. I made 6 edits in 2017.

For those who wish to click on "Compare selected revisions" there is no loss, since each article's edit history is there. Pi314m (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Please read Copying within Wikipedia Christian75 (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The "Edit Summary" of the initial 3-way-merge said " initial article, new material plus ESA/390 & ES/9000 ," thus giving the names of the 2 Wiki articles as well as mentioning that there was new material. It was the lack of seeing an easy to integrate this new material into BOTH articles, and leaving them as parallel, plus the realization that it was necessary to build on IBM's own same-day 3-part introduction, that had to be addressed. To make this all more clear.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pi314m (talk • contribs) 08:48, 16 February 2017 (UTC)


 * To the
 * that was placed atop this talk page, I've added
 * resulting in:
 * resulting in:
 * resulting in:

Pi314m (talk) 08:38, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Accessing edit history
Click on an entry below, and then click on "View history" There were 28 edits in the 9000 article, 152 edits in the 390 article, and 9 edits (to date) in the three-way merged article.
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IBM_ES/9000_family&redirect=no
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IBM_ESA/390&redirect=no

Requested move 13 June 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 06:01, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

IBM System/390 ES/9000 Enterprise Systems Architecture ESA family → IBM System/390 – Current title is not the commonly used name for the subject: 'System/390' is the generation name, 'ESA' the architecture name, and 'ES/9000' the model family name. Currently unable to move due to a redirect that exists under the same name. Hayazin (talk) 08:25, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Support - the current title is rather clunky. Guy Harris (talk) 09:11, 13 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Generations of System/3x0?
This page currently says S/390 is the fourth generation. S/360 is presumably the first generation; what are the second and third generations? Guy Harris (talk) 19:58, 18 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The article currently counts from S/370. The mainline is
 * S/360
 * S/370
 * S/370-XA
 * ESA/370
 * ESA/390
 * z


 * with a dead end ECPS:VSE following S/370. Should the article count from S/360 or from S/370? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The article currently begins with "The IBM System/390 was the fourth generation of the System/360 instruction set architecture."; given that, I'd say it should count from S/360. Guy Harris (talk) 21:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Channel subsystem
The section ESA/390 architecture claims

"The architecture ... employs a channel I/O [sic] subsystem in the System/360 tradition, offloading almost all I/O activity to specialized hardware."

In fact, it was only the parallel (bus and tag) channel that was "in the System/360 tradition". The channel subsystem was introduced with S/370-XA and performed queuing previously performed by the OS. Also, the name in IBM publications is simply Channel Subsystem, without the term 'I/O''. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Note list
An anonymous user added notelist after the existing in edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IBM_System/390&curid=53030665&diff=1122952548&oldid=1122950585#Notes. However, the existing notes use  rather than efn.

Either the change should be reverted or (which I prefer) the should be reoved and the existing notes changed to use efn. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:23, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I did the latter. Guy Harris (talk) 22:32, 21 November 2022 (UTC)