iCl TECHNICAL JOURNAL Volume 6 Issue 1 May 1988 Published by INTERNATIONAL COMPUTERS LIMITED at OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS iC L - r r p u |\ |i p / \ | The ICL Technical Journal is published twice a year by ■ PV.nX.. International Computers Limited at Oxford University JOURNAL Press. Editor J. Howlett ICL House, Putney, London SW15 ISW, UK Editorial Board W.S. Harbison J. Howlett (Editor) F.F. Land H.M. Cropper (F International) (London Business School) D.W. Davies, FRS K.H. Macdonald G.E. Felton M R. Miller M.D. Godfrey (British Telecom Research (Imperial College, Fondon Laboratories) University) J.M.M. Pinkerton C.H.L. Goodman E.C.P. Portman (STLTechnology Ltd B.C. Warboys (University and King’s College,) of Manchester) London) All correspondence and papers to be considered for publication should be addressed to the Editor. The views expressed in the papersare those of the authors and do not necessarily represent ICE policy. 1987 subscription rates: annual subscription £32 UK, £40 rest of world, US $72 N. America; single issues £17 UK, £22 rest of world, US $38 N. America. Orders with remittances should be sent to the Journals Subscriptions Department, Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP, UK. This publication is copyright under the Berne Convention and the Inter­ national Copyright Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any copying under the UK Copyright Act 1956, part 1, section 7, whereby a single copy of an article may be supplied, under certain conditions, for the purposes of research or private study, by a library of a class prescribed by the UK Board of Trade Regulations (Statutory Instruments 1957, No. 868), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owners. Permission is, however, not required to copy abstracts of papers or articles on condition that a full reference to the source is shown. Multiple copying of the contents of the publication without permission is always illegal. © 1988 International Computers Limited Printed by H Charlesworth & Co Ltd, Huddersfield ISSN 0142-1557 i C L TECHNICAL C ontents JOURNAL Volume 6 Issue 1 Foreword J.M. Proctor 1 ICL series 39 support process R. Allison 2 The ICL systems support centre organisation J. Young 17 ICL Services Product Centre M.D. Griffiths 33 Knowledge engineering as an aid to the system service desks J.D. Mitcalf 57 Logic analysers for system problem solving B. Parker 64 Repair - past and future G.M. Coiley 81 OSI migration J. Houldsworth 88 A Network to Support Application Software Development V. Bodsworth 107 Universal Communications Cabling, A Building Utility A.V. Flatman 117 Collecting and generalising knowledge descriptions from task analysis data P. Johnson, H. Johnson and F. Russell 137 The architecture of an automated Quality Management System J.F. Walker and B.A. Kitchenham 156 ICL Technical Journal May 1988 I ICL Company Research and Development Part 2: Mergers and Mainframes, 1959-1968 M. Campbell-Kelly 171 Notes on Authors 200 ii ICL Technical Journal May 1988 Foreword The first six papers in this issue all deal with various aspects of support and maintenance of computer hardware and software. This is a vitally important service and is one that does not always get the credit and attention that it deserves. In today’s conditions computer service presents an exceedingly demanding task, both organisationally and intellectually. A modern computer, even what is now considered a small system, is really a very complex and sophisticated device, made even more so by the fact that it is often required to do very complicated things with the data given to it. Users very reasonably expect to get the very best out of their systems and any fault that does occur to be corrected very quickly. In many cases the continuous error-free working of the system is so vital to the organisation that it serves that anything but the highest standard of reliability is not tolerable. ICL has many thousands of systems installed all round the world, of all sizes and used for all manner of purposes. To meet the users’ needs for reliability it must have an organisation and the physical means to gather, analyse and classify information on the performance of these systems, on any malfunctionings and on how faults have been corrected. Also it must exploit all the techniques and technologies - and be always on the lookout for new ones - to improve the process of inferring the reason for a fault from whatever was observed. Modern equipment is really remarkably reliable, but the degree of interworking, particularly via networks, results in the reason for a failure being often not at all obvious: hence the need for skilled diagnosticians supported by powerful tools. The aim of these papers is to give an idea of the organisation that ICL has set up to meet these needs and of the tools that are being used. J.M. Proctor ICL Director of Services ICL Technical Journal May 1988 1 ICL Series 39 Support Process R. Allison ICL Southern Regional Support Centre, Reading, Berkshire Abstract The ICL Series 39 mainframe computers were designed from the start to be maintained entirely by a remote support process. The paper describes this process and the ICL organisation that operates it. Key technological components are special hardware built into the machines, the Node Support Computer, that monitors all activities continuously and collects diagnostic information, and through its Watchdog facility can ensure that the VME operating system is functioning correctly; and special software permanently resident in each machine, SAM - Support And Maintenance - that, among other activities, processes and interprets this information. In “system dead” situations the NSC can be accessed by special software available to the service. This software, VISA-VME Inoperable System Access, runs in either a remote 2900 or Series 39 mainframe and enables investiga­ tion and diagnosis to take place. The support system can deal with both hardware and software faults. 1 Historical background The first commercially produced computers, whoever the manufacturer, were maintained by a team of engineers who lived on the customer’s site and were responsible for solving whatever problems arose and keeping the system running. They would carry a stock - often a large stock - of spares; they could call on specialist help, for example in connection with peripherals, from the manufacturer’s relevant area base. In the mid-1960s machines were becoming more complex and were being designed in compatible “families”, such as the ICL 1900 range of which first deliveries were being made in 1965. Also, they were being installed in much greater numbers: when ICL was formed in 1968 by the merger of ICT and English Electric-Leo-Marconi it had an installed base of over 1000 1900- series mainframes. These machines provided more information to help diagnose faults, but because of their greater complexity the maintenance process had to be separated into a number of specialist activities. The on-site service, covering the system on a broad basis, became known as the “first line” support and dealt with the problems that arose most often - and which therefore the site engineers could deal with themselves; the more specialised 2 ICL Technical Journal May 1988 services were provided by area or otherwise centralised “second line” support units. The second line support staff had to decide if they could diagnose a fault, and give its cure, from the information given to them by the site engineers, or whether they needed to go to the site for more investigation; and if the latter, what spares, and possibly further test equipment, they needed to take with them. They became very skilled in this, but with the increasing size, complexity and installed numbers of the systems this procedure became increasingly costly and impractical. There was thus an increasingly strong drive to automate as much of the process as possible; in ICL this culminated in the features designed into the Series 39 machines and in the support organisation and process described in the rest of the paper. 2 Series 39 forerunner: The ICL 2900 and the ADEMS software A great deal of self-monitoring and diagnosis was built into the machines of the 2900 range, both in the first P-series and its successor (and current) S-series; and a number of software products were developed to use the information provided as an aid to maintenance. This culminated in a system called ADEMS - Automated Diagnostic and Error Management System - which resided in the customer’s machine. This could be used to provide very detailed information on the behaviour of the installation over short periods, or summarised information, for example in the form of bar charts, over long monitoring periods of up to 40 weeks. It included a system diary in which all load, dump and fault times were recorded automatically. The information was presented in a very easily readable form and the system could be, and was, used by the customer’s staff as well as by the ICL engineers. Also, many customers installed modems to connect their systems to ICL support centres; and the latter, through a network of ME29s, could monitor the welfare of the systems thus linked and provide a remote support and maintenance service. ADEMS was very well liked, was undoubtedly successful and gave valuable experience in remote support. But it was passive in the sense that it almost always left the support engineers to make the diagnosis, only in very few cases attempting to resolve a problem itself. Its successor SAM - Support And Maintenance - goes much further, as will be explained.