The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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From: Jan Vorbrüggen on 22 Mar 2007 03:50 > easy ... it frequently could take 7-10 years to come out with new item > (research, development, testing, etc) ... and the clone makers could > create a knock-off within six months. What - the owner of the biggest patent portfolio in the world didn't protect itself and its intellectual property properly!? Jan
From: Morten Reistad on 24 Mar 2007 11:58 In article <1174094086.080231.14760(a)l75g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, Quadibloc <jsavard(a)ecn.ab.ca> wrote: >jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >> There were many sane ways to move customers from the one product >> line to the other, IF that was a goal. The choice was the most >> insane method. This was part of the IBM thinking that was >> injected (sorry, Lynn) into middle management. IBM customers >> were used to being ordered around "for their own good". DEC >> customers had always been severely allergic to this kind of >> treatment; this allergy was why they bought DEC instead >> of IBM in the first place. > >I was not in any way directly involved or affected by this. When I >read about DEC's decision at the time, I did disapprove of it. I wasn't. It just confirmed what we otherwise knew. The decision of May 17th 1983 couldn't have been much different. >After all, people want to upgrade their computers in the most >effective way possible - and the most effective way is the one that >requires them to spend the least money converting their own programs >and data. > >So if nobody makes PDP-10 computers any more, there's no particular >benefit to their owners doing their next upgrade with DEC - and a >motive not to do so, so as to punish this behavior. > >Under what circumstances would abandoning their 10 and 20 customers be >rational? This is where I have an issue with DEC. It was the abandonment of the customers. It was just an abandonment. There was no forward path. No real alternative. No porting efforts. No adequate hardware. The suff that they had, the VAX models 780/750/785 were laughable, and so were DECNET. We would have been better served by a 8way or 16way PDP11, or a networked cluster of them. >DEC is smaller than IBM. The PDP-11 was their most popular >architecture, and it was in line with prevailing industry standards. >DEC had many competitors which were larger than it, and which had >fewer architectures. PDP11's could easily have become stopgap efforts. >So, they may have felt that they *could not* use their limited >engineering resources to support both lines of product. If they tried, >they would make the VAX non-competitive - and the successor to the >DECsystem-20 so laughable as to permanently impair the company's >reputation. Only by putting *all* the company's strength into making a >better VAX could DEC *hope* to survive! > >Is that scenario obviously false? No. They just had such unbelievable arrogance in their offerings. >Is DEC around today? Maybe that *isn't* because it kicked their loyal >DECsystem-20 customers in the face. Maybe it is because the market was >so competitive that even with their best efforts, the VAX and the >Alpha couldn't become big enough to be players. > >Where is the SEL32? Where is Interdata? Does Honeywell still make >computers? (They did make a nice mouse a while back...) > >Is AMD making PowerPC architecture chips, has it even considered >licensing the Itanium architecture from Intel, or the Alpha >architecture from Compaq, or the Sparc architecture from Sun? > >So maybe DEC management may have been heartless and unfeeling. They >may have made the mistake of valuing a *future* for DEC which it >wasn't big enough to grasp anyways too much over the *present* of a >DECsystem-20 market that could bring in more cashflow for a little >while. I, and scores of other professionals, learned an important lesson May 17th 1983. It was to never put your trust into a single vendor or architecture ever again. Be prepared to move on short notice. This was the start of the Open Source movement. Always have a Plan B. >But were they truly as irrational as they seem to you - or were they >acting as is standard practice today, as is inevitable in a brutally >competitive computer marketplace, where only the gigantic companies >have the resources to survive? DEC had in reality dumped the PDP10 sometime late 1979, when resources for development were diverted. They just didn't come clean about it. -- mrr
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 24 Mar 2007 12:39 Morten Reistad <first(a)last.name> writes: > I, and scores of other professionals, learned an important lesson > May 17th 1983. It was to never put your trust into a single vendor > or architecture ever again. Be prepared to move on short notice. > > This was the start of the Open Source movement. Always have a Plan B. in the early 80s were also the OCO wars ... corporate statements about transition from source to object-code-only. unbundling announcement on 23jun69 started transition to charging for software ... but you could still get source http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#unbundle it was largely motivated by various litigation. however, they did draw a line and applied it (at the time) only to application software; maintaining that kernel software was still "free" (and available in source). later, when i was getting ready to release the (vm370) resource manager (as a separate kernel feature) ... it was decided to make it a guinea pig for starting to charge for kernel software. I was given the privilege of attending all sort of business and planning meetings about establishing policies for charging for kernel software. part of the change to charging for kernel software was motivated by the appearance of clone processors. some recent posts mentioning clone processors http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#26 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#28 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#57 Is computer history taught now? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#61 Is computer history taught now? thread from vmshare archive about customer business issues around OCO http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCOBUS&ft=MEMO 8FEB93 thread about it being ten yrs since IBM announced the object code only policy (for a little context regarding some of the statements in this thread, IBM was in the "red" the previous year) http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCO:BDAY misc. past posts mentioning OCO (wars/transition) that went on in the early to mid 80s http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#11 REXX http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#32 20th March 2000 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#6 Blame it all on Microsoft http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#11 OCO http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#4 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#3 IBM OS source code http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#7 myths about Multics http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#46 Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#50 Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#19 REXX still going strong after 25 years http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#10 What is the truth ? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#47 IBM Open Sources Object Rexx http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#53 4GHz is the glass ceiling? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#5 History of C http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#13 Mainframe Virus ???? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#21 need a firewall http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#42 [Lit.] Buffer overruns http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#34 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#35 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#15 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#29 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#41 TSO replacement? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#5 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#8 Free to good home: IBM RT UNIX http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#38 Over my head in a JES exit http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#29 How to implement Lpars within Linux http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#33 How to implement Lpars within Linux
From: Andrew Swallow on 25 Mar 2007 09:47 jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: > In article <rqh3ue.6m61.ln(a)via.reistad.name>, > Morten Reistad <first(a)last.name> wrote: [snip] >> >> The decision of May 17th 1983 couldn't have been much different. >> >>> After all, people want to upgrade their computers in the most >>> effective way possible - and the most effective way is the one that >>> requires them to spend the least money converting their own programs >>> and data. >>> >>> So if nobody makes PDP-10 computers any more, there's no particular >>> benefit to their owners doing their next upgrade with DEC - and a >>> motive not to do so, so as to punish this behavior. >>> >>> Under what circumstances would abandoning their 10 and 20 customers be >>> rational? >> This is where I have an issue with DEC. It was the abandonment of the >> customers. > > No, no. _PDP-10_ customers. This was Bell's doing through and through. Worse DEC dropped the PDP-11 customers, LSI-11 customers, PDP-8 customers and the VAX/VMS customers. Eventually the company runs out of customers. Andrew Swallow
From: jmfbahciv on 26 Mar 2007 07:27
In article <Vf-dnSMExMAU4JvbnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d(a)bt.com>, Andrew Swallow <am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: >jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >> In article <rqh3ue.6m61.ln(a)via.reistad.name>, >> Morten Reistad <first(a)last.name> wrote: >[snip] > >>> >>> The decision of May 17th 1983 couldn't have been much different. >>> >>>> After all, people want to upgrade their computers in the most >>>> effective way possible - and the most effective way is the one that >>>> requires them to spend the least money converting their own programs >>>> and data. >>>> >>>> So if nobody makes PDP-10 computers any more, there's no particular >>>> benefit to their owners doing their next upgrade with DEC - and a >>>> motive not to do so, so as to punish this behavior. >>>> >>>> Under what circumstances would abandoning their 10 and 20 customers be >>>> rational? >>> This is where I have an issue with DEC. It was the abandonment of the >>> customers. >> >> No, no. _PDP-10_ customers. This was Bell's doing through and through. > >Worse DEC dropped the PDP-11 customers, Sigh! Now _when_ are you talking about. This was not true in the early 80s. When the PDP-11 product line was sold off, Bell was long gone. > LSI-11 customers, PDP-8 >customers and the VAX/VMS customers. Eventually the company runs >out of customers. You are talking about the 90s when the plan was to strip the company down to its help desk, which is the only piece that Compaq wanted. What is really sad is that they trashed it and then HP seems to have completed the job. /BAH |