The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 27 Mar 2007 18:54 Peter Flass <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> writes: > Series-1's were also in this market. IBM sold them with an IUP as a > terminal driver. "Yale ASCII" or something like that. old email mentioning (general purpose) series/1 "cost" as a ascii terminal controller vis-a-vis more dedicated box http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800312 couple old posts mentioning yale iup http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#36 Difference between Unix and Linux? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#43 IBM 3174 other (recent) mention of series/1 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#80 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
From: Morten Reistad on 27 Mar 2007 18:08 In article <4608678f$0$1410$4c368faf(a)roadrunner.com>, Peter Flass <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> wrote: >Morten Reistad wrote: >> >> We keep harping on this. I have wondered why. I think this is a discussion >> of today's dangers by proxy. >> >> The important lesson from the events is that you should never, ever >> have a single source for the equipment that runs your business critical >> systems. Even if it is DEC, IBM, HP or a similar blue-chip giant. > >Perhaps. I think the lesson is "never f&ck with your customers." Lots and lots of organisations f&cks with their customers, and gets away with it. Getting f&cked with is one thing, getting folded on is quite another. >> Because even DEC folded on us. Not as spectacularly as International >> Harvester a century before, but enough to shake us all. >> >> DEC was a company with a reputation far ahead of today's HP or Microsoft. >> Somewhat like a reconsituted IBM of today, or Intel, or Apple. These companies >> are/were blue-chip giants that constitute a core of IT technology. > >Probably ahead of Apple. M$ isn't even in the same league. DEC was the >anti-IBM - their computers were simple and fun to use (like Apple, Nowadays, IBM has pretty much become an anti-IBM. The organisation is still a machine, but it is better to deal with than DEC ever was, and they have lots of interesting stuff in their portfolios. >perhaps), inexpensive (not like Apple), and easily interfaced to a >variety of equipment (not like anybody). > >> >> But the lesson is that if DEC can implode, so can they. >> >> The lesser ones all imploded. Wang, Prime, Norsk Data, ICL, Honeywell, >> NCR, Siemens, DG and more all imploded in that decade. In our guts, >> we kind of expected somesuch to happen. It was DEC that shook us. > >I think the problem is that it appeared totally unnecessary. Barb >blames individuals in management. I don't know enough to comment, but I >do know that they had a very competitive product line, and obviously >loyal customers. Perhaps, to those in the know, the decisions that were >made were the only ones possible, but it seems stupid in hindsight. With hindsight, I cannot see what could have saved Wang, Prime or ND. DG might have had a fighting chance, as would DEC. >> Today we wouldn't be much shaken if HP/Compaq, Dell, Lenovo, TCI, Via, Sun, >> or even AMD implodes. It will be momentarily painful for us as customers, >> but we will migrate elsewhere. Workers and PHB's can follow the business >> that moves without too much trouble. >> >> It is when outfits like Apple, IBM, Intel or Microsoft folds that we >> are shaken, all of us. > >I refrain from commenting with reghard to Microsoft. Just watch the pain unfold when Vista cannot run your application. With binary-only, Microsoft products you will have a similar experience as we had when DEC folded on us. There is no Plan B in this scenario. >> The lesson from DEC is that it can happen. >> >> Always have a Plan B. Always. -- mrr
From: Morten Reistad on 27 Mar 2007 18:18 In article <euauli$8qk_001(a)s961.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, <jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote: >In article <crh9ue.mc82.ln(a)via.reistad.name>, > Morten Reistad <first(a)last.name> wrote: >>In article <56qh33F29t3i0U1(a)mid.individual.net>, >>Del Cecchi <cecchinospam(a)us.ibm.com> wrote: >>>Andrew Swallow wrote: >>>> jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >>>> >> >>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. > >No. What happened with that was they sent out signals that VMS >was going the way of TOPS-10. The customers were savvy enough >to do their own migration plans off the platform without telling >anybody. The trust was by then long gone. They had imploded once before. >>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. > >Yes. It also has to do with excellence. Doing a job well does not >guarantee longevity; there will always be somebody or something >that will destroy it. It means you cannot rely on external forces from your organisation to keep excellence. You must have control. >>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. > >Please, please, please include software in this. You also have >to consider the software. The computer biz is depending on essentially >two pots for software; one of them can be expected to screw you up >and the other still needs some evolution. Software is a part of it, but software goes nowhere without a system to run it on. This is also why later software have been so extensively based on portable compilers. Bliss software was dead May 18th 1983. >>Because even DEC folded on us. Not as spectacularly as International >>Harvester a century before, but enough to shake us all. >> >>DEC was a company with a reputation far ahead of today's HP or Microsoft. >>Somewhat like a reconsituted IBM of today, or Intel, or Apple. These >companies >>are/were blue-chip giants that constitute a core of IT technology. >> >>But the lesson is that if DEC can implode, so can they. > >People keep assuming that it was a goal to stay in business. It >was not from all the evidence I saw. If the moves DEC management did were done without a goal of a going concern the managers would have been guilty of several crimes. The presumption of a going concern is part of all bookkeeping and exchange listing. You must be very careful about stating what parts of the company you plan to liquidate or wind down. >>The lesser ones all imploded. Wang, Prime, Norsk Data, ICL, Honeywell, >>NCR, Siemens, DG and more all imploded in that decade. In our guts, >>we kind of expected somesuch to happen. It was DEC that shook us. >> >>Today we wouldn't be much shaken if HP/Compaq, Dell, Lenovo, TCI, Via, Sun, >>or even AMD implodes. It will be momentarily painful for us as customers, >>but we will migrate elsewhere. Workers and PHB's can follow the business >>that moves without too much trouble. >> >>It is when outfits like Apple, IBM, Intel or Microsoft folds that we >>are shaken, all of us. >> >>The lesson from DEC is that it can happen. >> >>Always have a Plan B. > >And plans C, D, E, F, ...., Z, omega. > >You're missing software aspect in this post :-). Software is just a necessary part of the systems. >The reason, I think, that this thread drift has happened is >because of an assumption that, if the PDP-10 was "no good", >one shouldn't make a new CPU architecture that includes >it's good ideas. What people refuse to believe is that >a company would shutdown a product line that made money >and was wanted^Wdemanded by its customers. It happened. We see it happen again with MS Vista. Those customers don't have a Plan B, and will be just as burnt as we were. But I have told them for a decade that it will happen. -- mrr
From: Andrew Reilly on 27 Mar 2007 19:31 On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:01:45 +0100, Andrew Swallow wrote: > The ARM is the worlds best selling RISC machine and a rival to the > Alpha. Rival in that DEC had architects working on both? They certainly weren't rivals in any kind of capability or market sense, which IMO makes any claim of rivalry very tenuous. Yes, the DEC-derived ARM in my phone is more powerful than the VAX that I coded on as an undergrad, but that's using very large wodges of silicon refinement and time to make up the difference. -- Andrew
From: David Kanter on 27 Mar 2007 20:03
On Mar 27, 10:50 am, Andrew Swallow <am.swal...(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: > 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. You are certainly welcome to have that debate, but I doubt anyone will take you seriously. The benefits of FP are rather evident. Certainly, taking a logical argument to the Nth degree results in odd conclusions - the extension of RISC ultimately leads to a one instruction ISA, which is pretty much a waste of time. Yes it can work, but why the hell would you want to? DK |