The IBM 9370 systems are "baby mainframe"

midrange computer Midrange computers, or midrange systems, were a class of computer systems that fell in between mainframe computers and microcomputers. This class of machine emerged in the 1960s, with models from Digital Equipment Corporation ( PDP lines), Data ...

s, released 1986 at the very low end of, and compatible with

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the IBM System/360, System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migrati ...

. The media of the day, referring to the

VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

systems manufactured by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

(DEC), carried IBM's alleged "VAX Killer" phrase, albeit often skeptically.

History

The IBM 9370 was created in the aftermath of the failed

Fort Knox Fort Knox is a United States Army installation in Kentucky, south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Elizabethtown. It is adjacent to the United States Bullion Depository (also known as Fort Knox), which is used to house a larg ...

project, which attempted to consolidate all of IBM's midrange systems into a single

IBM 801 The 801 was an experimental central processing unit (CPU) design developed by IBM during the 1970s. It is considered to be the first modern RISC design, relying on processor registers for all computations and eliminating the many variant addressi ...

-based hardware platform. The announcementIBM 9370 INFORMATION SYSTEM OVERVIEW
/ref> described the IBM 9370 as a " super-mini computer" for commercial and engineering/scientific use—compact, rack-mounted, designed for an office environment, not needing a

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

to be used. At the time of announcement the systems were positioned between IBM's midrange systems ( IBM System/36 and IBM System/38), and the IBM 4300 mainframe series in performance. The IBM 9370 was partially a replacement for the also-not-so-successful IBM 8100 distributed processing engine. High-level 9370 models were mentioned as a substitution when low-level 4300 models were withdrawn from marketing 1987. Intended to be sold in large amounts as departmental machines ("

killers"), the 9370 initially suffered from lack of software and the failure of IBM to market it properly. Nevertheless, the systems were popular at least with users actually ''needing'' System/370 compatibility while not wanting to accept the expense of a larger system (like e.g. smaller software houses) or with users (like some large IBM customers) preferring hierarchically structured distributed processing solutions rigidly managed by central communication controllers like

IBM 37xx IBM 37xx (or 37x5) is a family of IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) programmable communications controllers used mainly in mainframe environments. All members of the family ran one of three IBM-supplied programs. *''Emulation Program'' ( ...

. By 1990 the 9370 line had around 6,300 installed systems and generated over 2 billion dollars in sales for IBM. The relatively lacklustre commercial success of the 9370 served as an impetus for the creation of the much more successful

AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

midrange systems. While becoming part of the IBM Enterprise Systems Architecture in 1988 ("ES/9370" like "ES/4300" and "ES/3090"), the 9370s weren't XA systems. In 1990 IBM announced the " ES/9000" series; the rack-mounted models 120-170 with 31-bit ''Enterprise Systems Architecture'' (ESA) and

ESCON ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection) is a data connection created by IBM, and is commonly used to connect their mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large o ...

were the suggested upgrades for ES/9370 users.

Models and options

Early models

The original 9370 hardware was based on technology created for the Fort Knox project - reusing some of the

-based processor design, and the SPD I/O bus which was derived from the Series/1 bus. All models included a

floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that ba ...

accelerator as well as a processor console to install, operate and maintain the system. A militarized variant of the 9370 named the ''System/MIL-370'' was announced alongside the original 9370 models, designed to operate in harsher environmental conditions than the standard 9370 hardware. Each ''DASD/Tape Controller'' had eight device addresses and provided a data transfer rate of 3 MB. IBM 9332 (368 MB) and IBM 9335 (824 MB) DASD and IBM 9347 nine-track half-inch tape have been announced for the 9370s. Each ''Workstation Controller'' could interface up to 32

IBM 3270 The IBM 3270 is a family of Block-oriented terminal, block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971 and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display ter ...

terminals / printers. Software for all models included VM/SP+VM/IS, VSE/SP, and VM/SP+ IX/370, while MVS/SP was only available for larger models.

Enterprise systems architecture models

An upgrade (''Miscellaneous Equipment Specification'', MES) was available which involved - among other things - replacing the 9332 FBA drives with CKD enabled DASDs. In 1988, ''Distributed Processing Programming Executive'' DPPX/370 for ES/9370 was made available to customers wanting to migrateIEEE Xplore - Porting DPPX from the IBM 8100 to the IBM ES/9370
/ref> from the IBM 8100 running DPPX. The "Micro Channel 370" Models 010, 012, 014 (later 110, 112, 114) ES/9371 introduced in 1990 used the Micro Channel bus and a 386 CPU for input/output (I/O) processing. Additionally, a dual-processor model was offered, providing a second 386 CPU for DOS and OS/2 applications, implementing a high-speed link between the processors. With the models mentioned, APPC support was added, using LU6.2 based on SNA PU2.1.

Notes

References

External links

IBM Archives: 1986
(With photos of IBM 9370)
IBM 9370 product announcement
{{DEFAULTSORT:IBM 9370 9370 32-bit computers