someone smarter than Dave Cutler
in [Device Drivers]
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From: jmfbahciv on 2 Apr 2010 09:26 Jim Stewart wrote: > Patrick Scheible wrote: >> Jim Stewart <jstewart(a)jkmicro.com> writes: >> >>> Mark Crispin wrote: >>>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Pat Farrell posted: >>>>> Jim Stewart wrote: >>>>>> Setting that aside, and it's a big set-aside, I question >>>>>> how much the PDP-10 was responsible for building the >>>>>> internet. My understanding is that PDP-11's, Vaxen and >>>>>> IMP's built the early internet. >>>> When it comes to Internet history, Jim Stewart is blowing farts out >>>> his anus and claiming that they are facts. >>>> >>>> I was there in the 1970s. >>> Yeah, but I try hard not to be an arrogant >>> jerk. >>> >>> And if you'll reread my post, you'll see that >>> it might be my understanding is incorrect, not >>> my claim of fact. >>> >>> In any case, I thought about this whole thread >>> long and hard last night. What really mattered >>> was the people, not the processor. Was the PDP-10 >>> itself critical to the the accomplishments that >>> you listed, or was it clever people that had easy >>> access to good computing hardware? >>> >>> Could the AI groups have done their work on a >>> pair of 360/67's? >> >> IBMs were leased. Would IBM continue to support a computer that had >> some academics' experimental hardware hooked up to it? Could new and >> experimental device drivers be added to IBM's OS? These might be as >> important as the machine's architecture. > > I guess I wasn't clear. Suppose that IBM was willing > to supply machines with roughly the same performance > as a PDP-10, under the same terms and conditions as > DEC would. And assume the machines would be given to > the CS department where they would be available to > the students and researchers under the same conditions. > it was still mostly card decks. Phone calls were too expensive. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 2 Apr 2010 09:29 Patrick Scheible wrote: > Jim Stewart <jstewart(a)jkmicro.com> writes: > >> Patrick Scheible wrote: >>> Jim Stewart <jstewart(a)jkmicro.com> writes: >>> >>>> Mark Crispin wrote: >>>>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Pat Farrell posted: >>>>>> Jim Stewart wrote: >>>>>>> Setting that aside, and it's a big set-aside, I question >>>>>>> how much the PDP-10 was responsible for building the >>>>>>> internet. My understanding is that PDP-11's, Vaxen and >>>>>>> IMP's built the early internet. >>>>> When it comes to Internet history, Jim Stewart is blowing farts out his >>>>> anus and claiming that they are facts. >>>>> >>>>> I was there in the 1970s. >>>> Yeah, but I try hard not to be an arrogant >>>> jerk. >>>> >>>> And if you'll reread my post, you'll see that >>>> it might be my understanding is incorrect, not >>>> my claim of fact. >>>> >>>> In any case, I thought about this whole thread >>>> long and hard last night. What really mattered >>>> was the people, not the processor. Was the PDP-10 >>>> itself critical to the the accomplishments that >>>> you listed, or was it clever people that had easy >>>> access to good computing hardware? >>>> >>>> Could the AI groups have done their work on a >>>> pair of 360/67's? >>> IBMs were leased. Would IBM continue to support a computer that had >>> some academics' experimental hardware hooked up to it? Could new and >>> experimental device drivers be added to IBM's OS? These might be as >>> important as the machine's architecture. >> I guess I wasn't clear. Suppose that IBM was willing >> to supply machines with roughly the same performance >> as a PDP-10, under the same terms and conditions as >> DEC would. And assume the machines would be given to >> the CS department where they would be available to >> the students and researchers under the same conditions. > > Possibly... but an IBM that would be willing to supply computers on > that basis would be so different from the real IBM as to be > unrecognizable. Much of DEC's competitive advantage in the 1960s and > 1970s was in making and supporting computers for experimental > applications. So the computers were less expensive, field service was > more accomodating about experimental hardware being attached. The > people are important -- but that means the people working for the > vendor as well as the researchers. > > IBM's competitive advantage was in highly reliable data processing. > Businesses going with IBM paid a premium for that reliability. > DEC also didn't care what kinds of machines their machines talked to. IBM did. For quite a while, IBM would only support homogeneous networks. DEC did heterogeneous from the beginning. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 2 Apr 2010 09:35 Michael Wojcik wrote: > Joe Pfeiffer wrote: >> To the best of my recollection, I never saw an IBM computer when I was >> an undergrad. DEC-10, VAX, PDP-11, DG Nova, CDC, Harris... yes. IBM, >> no. It would be easy to forget how big IBM was, if I were to go from my >> own university recollections. > > And on the other hand, IBM has a long history of putting its boxes in > universities - so this really comes down to a question of which > university you attended. The Watson Lab at Columbia was established in > the '40s, I think, and they had a 360 back in 1968. > > University of Michigan got theirs in, what, 1967? Actually, I guess > that was the Model 67 - they already had a Model 50. And so on. > > A lot of universities were on BITNET, though that didn't start until > 1982, which is rather late by AFC standards (and those of this > discussion specifically). > WMU had an account at UofMich but only serious runs were run on that 360 (I thought it was 360). We could call it up, but long distance was expensive. I'd prepare the card decks (this was in 1968 and 1969) and two of the guys would drive to Ann Arbor and hand the card deck to the operator in the window (but only at night...computer renting rates were probably cheaper). At the time, we had a 1620. Some jobs would have taken months to run when it only took a few seconds on the 360. Then we got the PDP-10 because DEC gave a lower bid than IBM. My life changed forever. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 2 Apr 2010 09:38 Mark Crispin wrote: > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Scott Lurndal posted: >> Your bigotry is showing. > > It is not bigotry to observed the proven fact that IBM sucked. > >> Tell me again how many commercial enterprises >> ran their business on PDP-10/20? > > I personally did business in one form or another with a few hundred that > did. I no longer keep all of my contact lists from 30+ years ago. But > many of the names would surprise you. For example, they included all of > the major Wall Street banks. > > A lot of these sites also used IBM gear. The one thing that IBM did not > suck at doing was for printing paychecks and other such tasks that were > ameniable to COBOL batch processing. > >> And the idea that Academe was "dominated" by PDP-10/20 (your words) >> also is silly. While a few high-profile universities had PDP-10/20 >> gear, the majority by far didn't (mine had IBM and PCM gear, later >> supplemented with PDP-11's and VAXen). > > I see. You went to the one school that didn't have one, and generalized. > > Or perhaps you were just not allowed to use a PDP-10. > > That was the case at Stanford until 1976; ordinary undergraduates were > forced to use Wylbur on IBM gear. PDP-10 access was a dainty of > faculty, grad students, and the few undergrads who managed to land a job > at one of the three facilities. That situation is what finally led to a > student march on the computer center and subsequent agreement to buy a > PDP-10 that students could use. > > Similar situations existed elsewhere; undergraduates in the early 1970s > weren't considered worthy of being allowed anything more than punch cards. > >> Does anyone have the actual number of PDP-10's build and shipped >> along with a breakdown on commercial vs. educational? > > Over 3000 PDP-10s were built. That's a lot of mainframes by any account. > > Barb would know better, but from DECUS attendees it was probably about > 60% commercial and 40% educational. Some of the commerical > installations (e.g., CompuServe) were huge. > There were government systems, too. I think the 20s penetrated the commercial more than the 10s. However, Compuserve and ADP were big customers. ADP tended to do their own support, though. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 2 Apr 2010 09:43
Scott Lurndal wrote: > Mark Crispin <mrc(a)panda.com> writes: >> On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Scott Lurndal posted: >>> No. I visited a large number of schools in the 70's in the midwest >>> and none of them had PDP-10's. >> OK, so Uncle Bob's Pig Farm and College of Swineology couldn't afford >> anything else after the lease payments for a 360/25 to RJE to some 360/90 >> in a real school. >> >> That in no way changes the fact that PDP-10s dominated computing at real >> colleges and universities in the 1970s. >> > > Your bigotry is shining brightly today. > > FWIW, the school I chose _invented_ the digital computer. It also has a very > well respected Vet Med college. > > Have a nice day (Barb often uses a less polite response). > Children, children. The truth is that WMU was DEC's first sale in the midwest. From there the biz crept westward and southward. /BAH |