Talk:Midrange computer

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Further

In the eighties PC's were considered intruders by the typical data processing dept but by 1990 most were beginning to make some acomodation and granting network access to PCs - as dumb terminals. The full scale replacement of mainframes by client server didn't really get going until the mid '90s. In between PCs got more and more function (albeit still accessing mainframe enterprise applications) and ultimately in many shops the mainframes would be replaced by PC servers. This transition was largely complete by the turn of the century when the mainframe/high-end PC server distinction largely vanished. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 23:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Today, even the PC servers have ceded to public and private clouds, formed of thousands of VM-serving servers, so rather than access the PC server itself, we have slowly but surely returned to a centralized "mainframe-like" arrangement of Services hosted on an huge amount of interconnected hardware that simulates the IBM PC but no longer follows its hardware conventions. Hardware Abstraction Layers and C++ drivers—invented indirectly by NeXT Computer using Objective C—have returned us to an era of intelligent terminals in the form of modern HTML5/JavaScript capable browsers. In this new model, every Subscription to an AWS or Azure Cloud could be considered a midrange system, while the cloud as a whole could be thought of as a huge mainframe system--187.161.147.78 (talk) 17:35, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Recentism

When the industry started using the terms midicomputer and midrange computer, microprocessors were not a significant factor in the marketplace. The midi was a machine positioned between relatively inexpensive minicomputers and expensive mainframes. Further, the term microcomputer covers a huge range, from a cheap tiny system to a massively parallel processor classified as a supercomputer. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:50, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely; "Midrange computers, or midrange systems, were a class of computer systems that fell in between mainframe computers and microcomputers." was, in the early days of those systems, bogus, as "microcomputers" didn't exist, given that the first general-purpose single-chip microprocessors didn't come out until 1970.

The microcomputer article says that they're "small, relatively inexpensive computer[s] having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor"; that rules out this microprocessor-based computer, as well as these microprocessor-based computers. Guy Harris (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Classification of S/7, S/1 and 8100

Should the IBM System/7, IBM Series/1 and IBM 8100 be considered midrange computers? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think, no. I has not a perfect point of view, but I think, the listed lines was a "IBM mainstream (true) minicomputers", and the "Midrange computers" was a "IBM hi-end (business-oriented) minicomputers". The S/1 and S/7 was a more Fortran-oriented (general-purpose for this time) real-time machines, and S/3# series was a more RPG- (and later COBOL-)oriented line, with more overall powerful structure, but with significant internal latencies. And so, even the both lines can use the Fortran and COBOL code, the Fortran was more common for entry systems, and COBOL - for Midrange. Also, User:Guy Harris can know this better, I think. ThisIsNotABetter (talk) 23:00, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, we should have references from reliable sources either 1) defining the terms "minicomputer" and "midrange computer" or 2) showing how the terms were commonly used at the time. I suspect that "midrange computer" was generally used for "data processing" computers, meaning "business data processing" computers, and "minicomputer" was generally used for machines used for scientific and engineering computation, process control, and laboratory data acquisition and control, with both categories meaning "smaller than a mainframe".

With that categorization, neither System/7 nor Series/1 would be midrange computers.

Note, though, that there were Fortran compilers for at least some midrange computers and COBOL compilers for at least some minicomputers, with some midrange machines even supporting floating-point instructions and some minicomputers supporting string and decimal instructions

By the 32-bit superminicomputer era, the distinction between midrange computers and minicomputers blurred; at least at the application-layer instruction-set level, they were mainframe-like, and supported similar programming languages.

As for the 8100, that seems to have been intended to be used as a satellite processor to a mainframe, so it might belong in a different category - midrange computers and minicomputers were intended to be usable by themselves. Guy Harris (talk) 00:13, 9 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Violation of MOS:TENSE?

Recent edits have changed present tense to oast tense, in apparent violation of MOS:TENSE. I reverted one of those edits, citing MOS:TENSE, but another editor reinstated the change. Am I reading it correctly? What is the next step in resolving this? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 21:44, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]