The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 30 Mar 2007 19:34 Peter Flass <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> writes: > IBM had and has this problem too. Maybe there's just no way to > quantify it sufficiently for the MBAs that look at this stuff. Many > times I've seen them cancel a product that probably sold lots of > other stuff with it. gov litigation threw a big monkey wrench into such considerations .... which also led to 23jun69 unbundling announcement and the change-over to charging for software http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#unbundle each individual component had to have its own price and profit and be justified purely based on the specific item's profit .... w/o consideration of possible synergy with other things. there had been a lot of synergy among components in the 60s (i.e. bundled) ... but with unbundling ... it started to unravel .... customers were expected to (effectively) justify paying for each individual component (theoritically w/o regard to any synergy). In such an environment ... there were difficulties not only for vendors but also in the customer ranks.
From: Andrew Swallow on 30 Mar 2007 21:46 David Powell wrote: > In article <eugdic$8qk_012(a)s879.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, > jmfbahciv(a)aol.com in alt.folklore.computers wrote: > >> In article <9gal035ncoglbdnvkd8m7odgl59o2opg9b(a)4ax.com>, >> David Powell <ddotpowell(a)icuknet.co.uk> wrote: >>> In article <Stydndude4YPyJTbRVnygAA(a)bt.com>, >>> Andrew Swallow <am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com> in >>> alt.folklore.computers wrote: >>> >>>> jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >>> [big snip here] >>> >>>>>> 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. >>>> >>> Do you remember Hamilton Rentals, or Rapid Recall? >> No. >> > > I wouldn't expect that you would, my comment was responding to Andrew > S, who, apparently, is not aware of how DEC sold LSI-11etc in the UK. > I remember Rapid Recall. >>> They were the two >>> distributors appointed by DEC (United Kingdom) in the early 1980s to >>> sell the small LSI-11 etc stuff. >> I did not say that there were none; AAMOF, I very carefully >> wrote that it wasn't our main business. > > See above. Just for the record, in UK, 1980s, DEC were interested in > VAX /VMS to the exclusion of all else. > >>>> DEC sold to the technical part of companies - so the salesmen, >>>> warehouses and trucks needed in the first year existed. >>>> >>> Trucks with tail-lifts to move VAXes, LSI-11 stuff came in small >>> cardboard boxes delivered by the postman on his pushbike. :) >> Did you require a full-blown soft/hardware maintenance contract? >> The infrastructure to provide is what I'm talking about. Swallow >> is ignoring this aspect of the computer biz on purpose. >> > > Regards, > > David P. >
From: krw on 30 Mar 2007 21:53 In article <460d9c5a$0$1428$4c368faf(a)roadrunner.com>, Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com says... > jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: > > In article <euggeu$92m$1(a)gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk>, > > nmm1(a)cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote: > > > >>In article <eugf8g$8qk_003(a)s879.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, > >>jmfbahciv(a)aol.com writes: > >>|> > >>|> It could be the way DEC tracked the sales. PDP-10 product line > >>|> never got any "credit" for all the minis it sold. > >> > >>I was actually thinking from the customer end, but cannot say which > >>was the chicken and which the egg. > > > > > > Neither could DEC managmeent and their bean counters. They ended > > up ignoring that (I can never remember the correct value) somewhere > > between 60-70% of the mini customers also had at least one PDP-10. > > Most had more. > > > > IBM had and has this problem too. Maybe there's just no way to quantify > it sufficiently for the MBAs that look at this stuff. Many times I've > seen them cancel a product that probably sold lots of other stuff with it. > We constantly were up against that problem in the crypto group. We could point to systems that wouldn't have been sold were it not for ICRF (take-aways from Hitachi, IIRC) but the CPU sales team claimed them. Since our profits were minimal (intended as a differentiator) we were up against cancelation every six months or so. When the layoffs came to the Hudson Valley ('93) we were rather nervous (we were spared for some unknown reason and I found a life raft to the frozen North). -- Keith
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler on 30 Mar 2007 22:22 krw <krw(a)att.bizzzz> writes: > Sure, but you forgot the 3081 series in there. The 303x series was > needed because the 3081 technology (originally intended for FS) > wasn't going to be ready when needed. TCMs, and all that, took a lot > more work than expected. OTOH, the 303x was pretty much a remapped > 3168 (with differences you've noted) so could be pushed out the door > quickly. The 3033 was ready when the economy turned up in '80ish. > The 3081 wouldn't have been and kabillion$ would have been left on > the table. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#17 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits? we didn't co-op any of the 3081 processor engineers ... just the guys working on 3033 ... so I knew much less about what the 3081 guys were doing ... other than i think they got to play leapfrog, the kingston(?) engineers doing the 3081 while the pok engineers did the 3033, who then went on to do trout/3090. i.e. get 3033 out in half the time (4-5 years) while it was taking 7-8 years to get 3081 out (as soon as 3033 was out the door ... switch to trout/3090 in parallel with finishing 3081) ... or ... are we possibly in violent agreement. one of the suspicions was that the "i/o" in the 158, 303x channel director and 3081 had similar characteristics/profile ... i was doing tests on latency involving different vendor disks, different vendor controllers, channels and processors ... related to disk head-switch. 3081, 303x channel director and 158 elapsed latencies were nearly identical. i/o commands in "channel programs" were executed end-to-end syncronous ... with programs residing in processor memory ... so end-to-end latency on each command involved processor memory, channel, control unit, device (and various cable lengths) you have channel program that reads record on one track and then does a head switch to a different track ... and attempts to read the next record ... how much has the disk continued to rotate while the processing of the head switch command is being processed. past posts mentioning doing variety of head-switch latencies tests http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#7 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#12 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#3 YKYGOW... http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#17 index searching http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#64 System/360 40 years old today http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#65 System/360 40 years old today http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#66 System/360 40 years old today http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#41 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#43 Hard disk architecture: are outer cylinders still faster than inner cylinders? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#38 storage key question http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#22 MVCIN instruction http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#40 REAL memory column in SDSF http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#19 old vm370 mitre benchmark http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#8 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
From: CBFalconer on 31 Mar 2007 00:17
Jan Vorbr�ggen wrote: > .... snip ... > > Incidentally, the one non-standard device on our PDP-10 dual-processor > KL (IIRC) was _not_ home-grown, but actually built by DEC for a small > number of customers analysing CERN bubble chamber images - it was a > high-speed memory-to-memory interface between a PDP-11 and a PDP-10. > So there. If you are at CERN you may know what happened to Dan Pop. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. -- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems. <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net> -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |