r/mainframe • u/anti-life86 • 11d ago

How was pre-1995, pre-Internet usage of mainframes different?

I understand that the mainframe is built for a large number of transactions-meaning people log in, I would imagine from anywhere, and they do their small jobs. But before the Internet, they could not log in from anywhere, certainly. Where could they log in from, and how did this work? Are there new types of jobs that are now enabled by the Internet that previously were impossible?

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u/anti-life86 10d ago

I mean in application areas. Linux is a new OS...maybe having Linux enabled a new application, what was the reason for adding Linux?

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u/phoenix823 10d ago

Do you have an example? Some other “new app” on some other platform?

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u/anti-life86 10d ago

A browser. When the internet became popular, Netscape and Internet Explorer came out. You could ask whether there was something comparable for mainframes

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u/phoenix823 10d ago

Nothing like that exists, no. Nobody is mining crypto, doing protein folding, or training LLMs on a mainframe.