The SHARE week traditionally ends with a ballroom full of war-weary MVS footsoldiers, a couple of strategically placed microphones, and an open agenda.

A lady from an outfit in Canada complained about software vendors stepping all over the TCBUSER field. An IBMer at the front of the room denied that IBM did this, and she acknowledged that it was other vendors besides IBM. She withdrew her question and rephrased it: how can you code a program that keeps data for each user task but doesn't use the TCBUSER field? I met her offline and introduced her to the MVS subsystem affinity routines.

Interesting comment: IBM has formally announced the last release of MVS/XA, but has not announced the last release of MVS/370! An IBMer said it was because IBM still markets some 9370s which are 370-only (but not for long).

Someone asked the ballroom at large: "Who has had HDA problems with their 3380 model-K drives? Many people raised their hands, but very few of these were installed beyond October 1988 (the date IBM supposedly fixed the HDA problem on the K's).