Talk:Mainframe computer

message: #History has a picture labelled . There may still have been 704s in 1964, but any 704 or IBM 709 still in operation would be considered to be a museum relic; more realistic machines for 1964 would be, e.g., Burroughs B5500,  GE 635, Honeywell 800,  IBM 7074, IBM 7080, IBM 7094, UNIVAC 1107.
There should be a photo for a 1950s mainframe, but the photo in IBM 704 has a more reasonable date, and photos of earlier mainframes, e.g., IBM 701, UNIVAC I, UNIVAC 1101, are available.
Would it be TMI to include a photo for each decade? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:07, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anachronistic photo 

message: Doesn't the term "Big Iron" refers to the class of overall large commercial computers?   Galzigler (talk) 21:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Those two One of those sources appears to be contributor-based (i.e. anyone can add a definition), however , , and  are decent WP:RS if anyone wants to add further clarification of the term to the article with appropriate citations. - LuckyLouie (talk) 21:53, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Big Iron 

message: a recent edit added the template  without a talk link. I agree with the comment, and believe that the issue of security of software versus hardware should be discussed here. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:20, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secure platform includes software 

message: Saving time:   1)  "mainframe" as the hand-wavy term that it is, is most strongly defined by the COMPANIES AND CUSTOMERS that CONTINUE to develop and purchase them, obviously in addition to the historical record. IBM, or their competitors are, in this case, the "authorities" whose notion of where to draw the lines is the reference.  2)  As it stands, product offerings exist for HPC mainframes that can be easily referenced with face-palm obvious examples.   Drug discovery (an industry that strangely depends almost as strongly on low-error, auditable computational power as the banking or securities industiries).   There are at least a few mainframes marketed to drug discovery companies that are based on custom silicon, with custom software, and deployed within a custom operating system environment.   These are miles short of "supercomputers", with the largest systems fractions of the size of the oldest LINPAC systems many steps away from "clusters" or any other term.     THe same is true of contemporary non COTS based Neural Network hardware offerings, which *notoriously* include non-standard and completely bizarre custom software ("Wafer scale single chip" system anyone?).   Mainframes are most importantly characterized and distinguished by being PRODUCT OFFERINGS and not just generalized schemes for enterprise scale systems.   This is a hard reqirement.  ALL mainframes are products developed by company and sold or deployed as either a discrete one-time purchase or service contract.   Usage requirements are even more general than transaction-heavy.   THey must be high-uptime with low error, auditable or with a comparable functionality, and come equipped with high levels of security.   Those factors overshadow EVERYTHING else even compared to high speed or high computational power.   You could walk away with that defintion:   A commercial enterprise scale computer system that is designed to deliver highly reliable low error performance with high security, among other characeristics that combined toghether cannot be met with COTS based system architecture nor software67.165.123.62 (talk) 19:12, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whoever wrote this has a warped perception of how terminology gets agreed upon"