#Execution begins
This directory contains a bunch of random projects I wrote for the IBM 370
(actually a 3081D, followed by a 3090, and now an ES/9000, which is no longer
available for general use at any price because RPI is run by idiots) running
MTS (the Michigan Terminal System).  They're probably of no practical use to
anyone but they might be fun reading.  MTS is nothing like the kind of hell
to program under that the IBM OSes are, so you can concentrate on the joys
of the 370 architecture itself when you're programming.  Well it gets to
be a *little* fun if you do it enough!

John Wilson  ID=HA8G  Feb17/1995
#Execution terminated  RC=4

bb.s		Big Brother.  This program reads a database maintained by WHO
		which keeps track of every name that each userID has ever
		been seen using, and every userID that each name has ever
		been seen using.  Under MTS you can have arbitrarily many
		e-mail addresses per account, and you can use other mailboxes
		if they're permitted properly (MTS has a very well-developed
		concept of permissions, sadly it hasn't caught on in other
		OSes).

		Once RPI's MTS machine got its Internet hookup I decided that
		since BB is already watching YOU, it should watch THEM too
		so I added RPI's only MTS Finger client as part of BB rather
		than as a separate program.  Why not.  This got kind of hairy
		once we stopped using the host table (I used to have a
		program which would build two cross-referenced files of host
		names and IP addresses so you could look up either way based on
		the 32-bit IP address or on a 32-bit hash of the name, which
		was far faster than the linear search used by MTS's BSD-derived
		FTP client) since MTS has no built-in DNS resolver, so I wrote
		my own simple one (requires a recursive server).

		There's also a HOST command which is supposed to look a little
		like the old HOST program on MIT-OZ, it would look up a host's
		IP addresses, CNAME and HINFO records, and MX records too if the
		host has no IP address of its own.  More stuff for BB to watch.

		Also a LIST command which looks up mailing lists (by sending
		EXPN commands to SMTP servers).  See, this way BB can watch
		whole groups too.

dos11.s		Program to read DOS-11 magtapes on MTS.  I had no tape drive
		on my PDP-11/34a so I wrote this program to help me hand-build
		a bootable RSTS/E V9.0 RK07 pack from a V8.0 pack and the V9.0
		tapes.  It wasn't easy!

fmt.s		Program to reformat files for printing.  MTS uses EBCDIC and
		doesn't know about tabs or backspaces or anything.  Yet the
		MTS machine is the one with the nicest printer on campus
		(double sided output, very fast).  So I FTP stuff to MTS and
		use this program to turn the (translated) control characters
		into the appropriate FORTRAN carriage control codes (MTS really
		likes FORTRAN, so you have to use carriage control codes in
		column 1 in all output even if you're not using FORTRAN).

ftp.s		My unfinished from-scratch FTP client.  The "stock" one is
		based on the one from 4BSD and thus, sucks.  This one would
		not have sucked if I had ever finished it.

tapesrv.s	Ultra-simple write-only tape drive server program.  Makes it
		possible to access MTS's (three) tape drives via TCP from a
		UNIX box.  I used this to write ITS tapes for a PDP-10.
		FTPing files and dumping them to tape works too, except that
		MTS's TCP/IP code has the misfeature that closing a TCP
		connection blocks your job for about 10 seconds, so you lose
		big when you transfer a lot of little files.  So I saved
		many hours by batching things up on the UNIX side and squirting
		them through a single TCP connection to this server.

uname.s		A little subroutine which can be loaded by *TEXTFORM files
		to retrieve the name that the user has currently $SET.
		It just tickles me that you can call assembly language from
		the text formatter input language.  Anyway I used this to
		put little blurbs in documents like "last updated by ___
		on ___".

who.s		Program to skip through the (undocumented) MTS task table
		and print the names of everyone it finds who's also listed
		in a file you supply attached to unit 1.  This was a bit
		risque at the time I wrote it because RPI had a very strict
		policy about punishing people who attempted to reverse-
		engineer MTS.  Like what's the big deal.  I also took some
		shit from people who didn't want it to be generally known
		that they spend all their time running *FORUM or ACM:CB
		(the program has an option to list what files each user
		has locks on), but like tough.  It can be accomplished from
		the command line anyway, this just makes it a lot easier.
		So you're fooling yourself if you think getting rid of WHO
		gives you privacy.  There's another command line option
		which makes the program update Big Brother's data files
		(this added an extra nickel or so onto the cost of running
		the program so I made it optional, some people objected to
		Big Brother on moral grounds and didn't want to be forced
		to help update it when they ran WHO).

whonames.s	Program to add/remove/modify a user's own entry/ies in
		the default names file for WHO, which is used by people
		who want to see as many people as possible listed by name.

yow.s		Program to print a random Zippy quote.  Used to be part
		of a program I wrote to stick an email message in a wrapper
		and send it to the ARPAnet gateway at WISCVM, back when MTS
		first got its Bitnet connection (but no ARPAnet) and it
		took the sys progs *months* to get it working with the
		"SEND" command in the real MTS mailer.