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This MainframeZone page provides interesting and useful information for IBM mainframe users.

MainframeZone founder, Bob Thomas, has been publishing mainframe-centric magazines since 1986. The titles of these publications have been: 4300 Journal, Mainframe Journal, Enterprise Systems Journal, z/Journal, Enterprise Tech Journal and Enterprise Executive.

04/25/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
Ode to the IBM Mainframe

In ‘64, a bold debut, the System/360 came through,
A revolution, sleek and wide, with tape reels spinning side by side.
Modular, vast, and coded tight—
It changed the world overnight.

With punched cards fed by human hands,
It served the needs of many lands.
Banks, airlines, labs, and weather rooms
All hummed beneath its data looms.

Then came the ‘70s, proud and strong,
The 370 rolled along.
Batch and online, it could do both—
A sturdy beast, a workhorse oath.

Through ‘80s haze and disco’s fade,
The mainframe still stood firm, not swayed.
The 390 claimed its throne,
In copper halls and silicon stone.

As networks grew and servers spread,
They said the mainframe soon was dead.
But in the ‘90s, sleek and sly,
It proved the doubters wrong—and why?

For uptime ruled and downtime fled,
While other systems crashed and bled.
It scaled with grace, it held its ground,
With RACF locks and DB2 sound.

Then came the z, a name so brief,
Yet packed with power past belief.
z900 first, with Linux flair,
Then z10 sliced through z-flavored air.

z13, z14, and z15,
Each one faster, cool, and lean.
Encryption strong and AI grown,
A digital fortress, built and known.

Now z16 and z17 shine,
Quantum-safe and redesigned.
Still they hum in clouds and cores,
Guarding banks and retail stores.

Decades pass, yet still they claim:
“I am the heart—you know the name.”
IBM’s child, bold and supreme,
The mainframe lives—it’s not a dream.

(Created with the help of ChatGPT)

04/18/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
The IBM 360/30 mainframe was introduced on April 7, 1964. The first two customers who received their systems in 1965 were Ketchikan Pulp Co. in Alaska and McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in Missouri.

More than 14,000 System360/30’s were sold, making it IBM’s best selling mainframe of all time.

04/16/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
I decided to play with AI, while also wanting to celebrate the mainframe’s beginning as well as the latest mainframe — the amazing z17.

04/10/2025

Needing z/OS performance education? Boost your knowledge in Workload Manager (WLM) with our WLM Performance & Re-evaluating Goals Workshop, scheduled May 12th – 16th. Taught by Peter Enrico, you will work with your own data while learning about considerations for re-evaluating goals and WLM functions. Register by April 28th at https://lnkd.in/gnsFmP-Z!

04/09/2025

Check out the cool mainframe attire now available in the MAINFRAME STORE.
To celebrate the new z17, we’re offering a 15% discount on everything. Just enter promo code PROMO15 at checkout.
https://mainframe-store-3.creator-spring.com/unisex-men-s-t-shirts

04/08/2025

IBM announces the new z17 — The first mainframe fully engineered for the AI age!
The z17 is the culmination of five years of design and development which included the filing of more than 300 patents. It was designed from the ground up to fully integrate into hybrid environments by tightly joining hardware innovations, software capabilities for AI, and rich support for open-standards and tooling. This enables differentiated performance and reliability while reimagining how developers and systems operators engage with and manage IBM Z.
The new z17 will be generally available June 18, 2025. For more information go to https://lnkd.in/eNnyBWvh. To see the z17 video go to https://lnkd.in/e67Gyuzb

03/10/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
In October 1962, IBM announced the first disk storage system with interchangeable disk packs, the 1311 Disk Storage Drive to run on the IBM 1440 computer.

On April 7, 1964, at the same time as the System/360 mainframe announcement, IBM announced the 2311 Disk Storage Drive (see below) that was a much-improved version of the 1311. The 2311 was a top-loading device similar in size to a washing machine. It accommodated removable disk packs with a whopping 7.25 megabytes capacity.

Because of IBM’s lenient rental plan that provided a 30-day cancellation privilege, a swarm of competitors, led by Memorex and Telex, swooped in with lower-priced, plug-compatible disk drives and non-IBM disk packs.

A year later, in April 1965, IBM announced the much-improved 2314 Disk Storage Drive that offered a data rate double that of the 2311 (310,000 bytes per second). The 2314 was also four times lower in price-per-megabyte of storage.

02/26/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
ISPF (Interactive System Productivity Facility) was first introduced by IBM in 1974 as Structured Programming Facility (SPF).

In 1980, the name was changed to System Productivity Facility (still SPF).

And then In 1982, IBM changed the name to Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF).

02/15/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
IBM introduced the 3800 Laser Printer in 1976. It was the first plain paper laser printer. It attached to the mainframe via a parallel Bus and Tag channel. At its peak, more than 10,000 IBM 3800s were deployed worldwide. It was replaced by the IBM 3900 in 1990, and discontinued entirely in 1999.

01/30/2025

Welcome to the latest issue of Enterprise Tech Journal! https://lnkd.in/eDg7sTNA

01/26/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
Pictured below are the three of the most recent mainframe models: the z14, z15, and z16.
* The z14 mainframe was launched on July 17, 2017 and was based on the z14 chip.
* The z15 mainframe was launched on September 12, 2019 and was based on the z15 chip.
* The z16 mainframe was launched on April 5, 2022 and was based on the Telum processor.

It is expected that the z17 mainframe will be launched sometime in 2025 and will be based on the Telum II processor.

01/09/2025

MAINFRAME HISTORY
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged American industry to send an American man to the moon.

In 1966, 12 people from IBM, along with 10 people from North American Rockwell and 3 people from Caterpillar, began to design and develop a system that was called Information Control System and Data Language/Interface (ICS/DL/I).

During the design and development process, the IBM team was moved to Los Angeles and increased to 21 members. The IBM team completed and shipped the first release of ICS in 1967.

In April, 1968, ICS was installed. The first "READY" message was displayed on an IBM 2740 typewriter terminal at the Rockwell Space Division at NASA in Downey, California, on August 14, 1968.

In 1969, ICS was renamed to Information Management System/360 (IMS/360) and became available to the IT world.

Since 1968, IMS:
• Helped NASA fulfill President Kennedy's dream
• Started the database management system revolution
• Continues to evolve to meet and exceed the data processing requirements demanded by today's businesses and governments.

07/17/2024

MAINFRAME HISTORY
Dr. Gene Amdahl, chief architect of the System/360, was once referred to as the “Father of the System/360” by IBM’s Chairman and CEO, Thomas J. Watson Jr. In fact, Fred Brooks, the project manager of the System/360, said Amdahl “maintained architectural consistency across six engineering teams by sheer intellectual force and banging on the table.”

He left IBM in 1970 and founded the Amdahl Corporation to build computers compatible with hardware and software of the System/370. He cleverly called his systems the Amdahl 470 Series. They were faster and cheaper than IBM’s comparable computers, and by 1979, Amdahl had more than $200 million in revenue, and 22% of the mainframe market. He died at 92 in Palo Alto, CA on November 2015.

04/27/2024

MAINFRAME HISTORY
When it was first widely used almost 99 years ago, 80 column punched cards held nearly all of the world's known information for almost half a century.

Very quickly, after the announcement of the IBM mainframe, the IBM 29 card punch was announced on October 14, 1964, the newest version of a device first developed 83 years earlier. The punch (and its companion, the IBM 59 card verifier) were used to record and check information in punched cards. The IBM 29 card punch remained in the product catalog until May 1984.

04/23/2024

MAINFRAME HISTORY
At one time, the name UNIVAC was synonymous with computers for most Americans. Although IBM clearly held the number one position in the computer industry by the mid 1950s, the name most familiar to the general public was UNIVAC, primarily because it was used to predict the outcome of the presidential election in 1952 on national TV. It was also well known as the first computer used by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Needless to say, IBM took off big-time with the introduction of the System/360 in 1964; to the point that they owned 95+ percent of the computer market by the late 1970s.

04/02/2024

The IBM mainframe was first introduced to the world on April 7, 1964: 60 years ago! And with constant enhancements over the years, it’s still running the world!

To celebrate the mainframe’s amazing success, all mainframe-centric merchandise in the MAINFRAME STORE is available with a 15% discount. Just enter PROMO15 at checkout. We ship worldwide!
https://lnkd.in/gWwsT5q5

02/01/2024

MAINFRAME HISTORY
The IBM 3270 display terminal, often referred to as a “green screen," was designed and developed by IBM's Kingston, NY laboratory. It was first revealed to the public on April 9, 1971. Later, in 1979, the color 3279 display was designed and developed in IBM’s Hursley labs in the U.K.

The 3270 terminal was unique in two primary ways. First, the 3270 didn’t use the standard ASCII character set; rather it used the EBCDIC character set (a legacy from the time when mainframes were programmed via punched cards. Second, the 3270 used block mode communication instead of character mode.
By the end of the 1990s, most 3270 terminals had been replaced with emulator software.

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