The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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From: Eugene Miya on 27 Mar 2007 13:19 From a.f.c. not c.a.: >>>>>>>>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? DEC reached its internal technical limits. It did that more than once. >>>>>>>>This is where I have an issue with DEC. It was the abandonment of the >>>>>>>>customers. Hey it didn't know how to make a larger, cheaper computer that its customers were willing to buy. >>>>>>>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. Gawd, you guys. Are you doing to endlessly circle and chomp bites out of each other over a long dead company? Gordon has moved on with his life. Put up a bitchin' web site, or put up a wiki and move on. >>>>There is no law that bans a company from repeating the same mistake. >>>>>>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. HP is not the firm that it used to be either. >>>They probably would have run out of pdp-8 and pdp-11 customers sooner or >>>later. And by the early 80's I would think those systems were in the >>>down part of the lifecycle. And Apple stopped maintaining the Apple II, and so too did Woz move to Macs. And likes them. >> LSI11 based support systems everywhere could have made the mainframes >> last until the 8600 was out, and could have assisted in a transition. >> >> Perhaps. Prime tried this strategy, but got bought out and gutted midway >> in the process. >> >> DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed >> to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had >> evaporated. Embarassment to the Cray guys on the T3D. >> Snake oil, may 17th and all that. >> >> We keep harping on this. I have wondered why. I think this is a discussion >> of today's dangers by proxy. The past and history are easy. The future is much harder. Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan as many have said before. >> The important lesson from the events is that you should never, ever >> have a single source for the equipment that runs your business critical >> systems. Even if it is DEC, IBM, HP or a similar blue-chip giant. >> >> DEC folded ... >> The lesser ones all imploded.... .... >> It is when outfits like Apple, IBM, Intel or Microsoft folds that we >> are shaken, all of us. Microsoft will keep Apple alive on life support just to show that it has diverse competition. >> The lesson from DEC is that it can happen. >> Always have a Plan B. And C, and D. ... >Note that IBM damn near folded in the early 90's as well during the last >days of the reign of John Akers. I think that IBM had enough separate business units that the pieces could have survived on inertia. It's not the same IBM as under Watson. IBM folding would have been interesting. Chrysler got bailed out once. It's not clear to me that IBM would have been treated quite the same way as brick and mortar firms. Follow ups to folklore only. -- ------------ And now a word from our sponsor ---------------------- For a quality mail server, try SurgeMail, easy to install, fast, efficient and reliable. Run a million users on a standard PC running NT or Unix without running out of power, use the best! ---- See http://netwinsite.com/sponsor/sponsor_surgemail.htm ----
From: Andrew Swallow on 27 Mar 2007 13:26 krw wrote: > In article <fqWdnV-JLsRJ_ZXbRVnyiAA(a)bt.com>, > am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com says... >> Morten Reistad wrote: >> [snip] >> >>> DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed >>> to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had >>> evaporated. >> The only sensible use for the Alpha was to run microcode as a VAX. >> When chip manufacturing technology allowed CISC CPUs on a single chip >> the cost advantages of RISC were over. > > I think you'll find there are a few people who will disagree with > you. > Probably but were they customers of DEC? The ARM chip is still around in mobile phones but the Acorn desk top is not. Andrew Swallow
From: Andrew Swallow on 27 Mar 2007 13:34 jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: > In article <N6CdnbheLacUuJXbnZ2dnUVZ8v-dnZ2d(a)bt.com>, > Andrew Swallow <am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: >> Del Cecchi wrote: >>> Andrew Swallow wrote: >>>> jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >>>> >>>>> 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. >>>> >>>> There is no law that bans a company from repeating the same mistake. >>>> >>>>>> 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 >>> They probably would have run out of pdp-8 and pdp-11 customers sooner or >>> later. And by the early 80's I would think those systems were in the >>> down part of the lifecycle. >>> >> We are talking LSI-11 vs 8086. Even if DEC did not sell to the consumer >> market the $1000 business computer on every desk market is enormous. > > And I'm telling you, again, that DEC did not have the infrastructure > to handle that support. DEC's main business was not retail-ish. Neither did IBM, so IBM created a new distribution infrastructure. DEC sold to the technical part of companies - so the salesmen, warehouses and trucks needed in the first year existed. Andrew Swallow
From: krw on 27 Mar 2007 13:46 In article <DZSdnaHeS49TzpTbnZ2dnUVZ8tXinZ2d(a)bt.com>, am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com says... > krw wrote: > > In article <fqWdnV-JLsRJ_ZXbRVnyiAA(a)bt.com>, > > am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com says... > >> Morten Reistad wrote: > >> [snip] > >> > >>> DEC _did_ come back with the alpha, just as soon as they had managed > >>> to deVAXify their brains. Except, by then the trust in the company had > >>> evaporated. > >> The only sensible use for the Alpha was to run microcode as a VAX. > >> When chip manufacturing technology allowed CISC CPUs on a single chip > >> the cost advantages of RISC were over. > > > > I think you'll find there are a few people who will disagree with > > you. > > > Probably but were they customers of DEC? Every Alpha ran VAX microcode? Dunno, never seen a real live Alpha. Never the less, what DEC's customers did or didn't do has little to do with the reasons RISC CPUs exist. You pretend that RISC wouldn't exist without tube logic. How many RISC microprocessors today vs. RISC. How does legacy software fit into that mix? > The ARM chip is still around in mobile phones but the Acorn desk top > is not. And this has to do with DEC, RISC, or Alpha exactly how? The 8051 is still around too, but... -- Keith
From: Andrew Swallow on 27 Mar 2007 13:50
David Kanter wrote: [snip] > > A much more reasonable, and possibly true, assertion would be that the > advantage of RISC architectures decreased over time. However, even as > late as the Pentium 1, there was a huge advantage for RISC > architectures. With the Pentium Pro that became less clear, although > RISCs still ruled the roost for FP heavy applications. We can certainly have a nice debate as to whether anything containing floating point hardware is RISC. Andrew Swallow |