Invisible wrote:
> So the concept of a filesystem storing named files already existed at 
> this time?

Generally, yes. But you usually wound up pre-allocating files, and they were 
contiguous on disk.

> Interesting. So the system actually "knows" where each field of a record 
> is then?

Records were fixed size, so it was trivial to calculate.

>> I doubt that the internal processor speed is that much different than 
>> current
>> PCs, but the i/o bandwidth is much higher in the mainframe.
> 
> Really? I didn't think anybody had mainframes any more... just big 
> server farms.

The people who want to do lots of I/O have machines where instead of GPUs 
they have IOPs.  A 800,000 line phone switch, for example, is pretty much 
all IOP, with something like a 68000 running the actual switching part.

Of course, what one might call a "PC" nowadays has a terabyte of RAM and 96 
quad-core processor chips, so the lines blur.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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