I've been programming professionally since 1982. I've worked on a very wide range of hardware and software platforms, often at the same time. Following is a "little" list:
I started with IBM midrange systems (System 34/36) with RPG II. My first machine had a whopping 128K (that's right, "K") of RAM and about 200 Meg of disk. It had about 6 5250 terminals connected and we ran the entire company on it.. This was followed by a Sys/36 and then a pair of Sys/36s at my second IT job.
Since then (1985), I have done a lot of work with IBM Mainframes. This started with a little 4361 running DOS/VSE and continues through today with a SysPlex of the latest z/Series machines running MVS. This has included a lot of CICS work with DB2 and VSAM.
There has been a variety of IBM RS/6000s with AIX and some Sun Unix machines the last 5 years as well.
Along with the "primary" job on minis and mainframes, I have spent a great deal of time with lots of Intel hardware and software. This started in the early 1980s with IBM PCs, Apple IIs, and even Commodore 64s. Having a hard disk was a rare and expensive luxury in those early days. On Intel, this started with DOS 2.1 and has included working extensively with Windows starting with Win 286 v2.1 through Win 2k, a lot of OS/2 starting with v1.1 though Warp 4, and more recently, a good amount of time with Linux (primarilly Red Hat) at home. I've done more than a little networking and communications work over this time as well. This included everything from selection to purchasing and even stringing wires...
As to programming languages, I've worked with COBOL, CICS, SQL, PL/SQL, Java, HTML, PostScript, Smalltalk, REXX, C++, BASIC, RPG, JCL, OCL, and a bit of FORTRAN and PC ASM.
From early 1999 through late 2000, I worked primarilly with Oracle tools. Development was done on NT and AIX. I worked with a number of Oracle ERP Release 11 implementations using Java clients, usually from Terminal Server, to Oracle 8 on IBM RS/6000s. Most of the work was with forms and/or PL/SQL on custom extentions. Much of the work was multi-lingual, so that put an interesting twist on things. It's loads of fun doing everything once while attempting to leave enough room for fields, boilerplate, and the like for at that point unknown translations. I got reasonably good at it on the first pass through.
Before that, I was doing most of my programming for the 4 previous years using a wonderful tool called VisualAge Generator. This is a package from IBM that is based on VisualAge Smalltalk and is also the successor to IBM's CSP package. It offers programming in both Smalltalk and/or CSP 4GL code. It offers generation of code to a very wide range of platforms from common source including PCs, midrange, and mainframes running OS/2, Win NT, Win95/98, AIX, HP-UX, OS/400, Solaris, VM, MVS, VSE, and probably a few I've missed. The GUI componants are all run in Smalltalk while the host components are done generated as C++ or COBOL. Database access is available to many types of DBs. We happen to use DB2 MVS v6.1. The development and GUI runtime was Citrix Metaframe/Terminal Server 4.0. The server apps in both cases are run in CICS/MVS.
After moving to the Chicago area at the end of 2000, I'm back to working with VisGen quite a bit. I migrated us to the Java based variety of v4.5 on Win 2000. This ended up being for just CICS and batch MVS applications. Due to changes in corporate direction, there isn't a lot of future for anything that is used primarilly on the mainframe. It's really a shame as it is a fantastic tool and can be used on many platforms and even has a lot of Web extensions in it today. At one point, I migrated our entire COBOL generated CICS/MVS Sales system (which is written in VisGen) to C++ generated CICS/NT and UDB on NT. There were only a handfull of code changes required on some things that were done non-portable in the first place for no reason. This is a massive system and could have been very interesting on NT. There were a few CICS/NT stability issues with apps the size of ours, but I didn't get to spend enough time with it to attempt to work out the kinks.
Along with VisGen, I'm also doing native Java work these days. Beyond that, I'm doing DBA work (UDB v8.1) and starting to dable in ASP.
To the home front!
I noticed that mantei.com became available again in January of 2000, so I promptly snagged it. It had been assigned to some software company in Washington state (I think it was).
There is a full blown network happening around the house. At one point, you would have been viewing these pages from one of the boxes there. Due to connectivity issues in the Chicago burbs, I ended up moving the site to an external hosting company when we moved to Illinois. That situation has improved a bit, but I'm leaving it external for now.
At home, we are connected to the web via an 802.11b wireless link. We hit that via a trusty homebuilt machine featuring dual Pentium Pros running Redhat Linux 7.2.
The Linux box used to host all of the mantei.com services: Web, ftp, mail, dns. For the internal network, it provides firewall protection, IP masquerading (no proxies required), file serving, DHCP, and WINS for the Windows boxes.
My regular machine is another homebuilt. It is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe based AMD 2.7Ghz Athlon machine with 1G RAM, 160G of disk, Matrox G550 video. Backups are accomplished via 4mm DAT. I use a MicroTek ScanMaker E6 for scanning and a graphics tablet from Calcomp. It also has a film scanner from Pacific Image. Alternative media is handled by Pioneer 10X DVD with a Hollywood+ MPEG card and a Plextor 12/10/32 CD-RW drive. I also have USB2 and Firewire connectivity for our Casiodigital camera and Panasonic digital camcorder. This machine runs Win 2K and Red Hat 8.0.
My floater machine from work is an IBM Thinkpad a21p. It is has an 850Mhz PIII with a 15.1" screen running at 1600x1200. It is one heck of a machine. It runs Win 2K and RH 8.0.
The other machines have a bit of variety as well. We have an IBM Intellistation M-Pro with dual 333 Pentium IIs and 32 Meg Matrox G400-MAX Millennium video and Canon LED scanner. We round out the current collection with another home built machine with: Intel Celeron 500 on a Tyan S1854 motherboard, 16M Matrox G200 video, Creative Soundblaster Live audio, and Sony 5X DVD.
We share printing tasks over our network on an HP 4M laser printer via HP Jet Direct, an HP 7550A plotter, and an Epson Stylus 1520 color ink jet printer via an Intel NetPort Print Server. Everything is tied together via ethernet cards from IBM, National Semiconductor, Allied Telesyn, Intel, and MicroDyne and an 8 port 10/100 hub from LinkSys. I finish filling up all of the cases with hard drives from Seagate and IBM.
This page last updated on July 18, 2004.