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From: brandon@tdi2.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: The Itty Bitty Monster in trouble re: PC's?
Message-ID: <128@tdi2.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Dec-86 22:57:20 EST
Article-I.D.: tdi2.128
Posted: Sun Dec 28 22:57:20 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Dec-86 01:35:40 EST
References: <650@imsvax.UUCP> <1373@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: brandon@tdi2.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Tridelta Industries, Inc., Mentor, OH
Lines: 36

Quoted from <1373@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> ["Re: Many Questions/ some answers"], by news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Usenet netnews)...
+---------------
| >allowing them to challenge minis and mainframes.  And IBM?  They
| >invented the PC/DOS game and now they can't even play their own game
| >successfully and the game is threatening to destroy their big Fortune
| >500 mainframe business.  Kind of like letting the genie out of the
| >bottle.
| 
| Next, I can't see how PCs are competing with minis and mainframes.  An
| 80[23]86 at 8 or even 16Mhz still doesn't pack a fraction of the
| computing power of a Vax 11/780.  And, for the work I do, a Vax is
| a small machine.  A 3090/400 is roughly 50 times as powerful.
+---------------

An article I read in Datamation (pre-386) stated (from memory; this is not
the exact quote):  ``if IBM produces a machine more powerful than the AT,
it will be in competition with its own System/36 line'' -- I think it was
the /36, it may have been the /1 or /3, I'm not familiar with IBM's mini
line.  Anyway, the 386 is on its way.  Frankly, I doubt that IBM will sell
386 machines, since they will then be in competition with themselves, and IBM
won't want to compromize its mini sales.

Given this, I suspect that people at IBM, upon hearing about the 80386, tore
their clothes, shaved their hair, and put on sackcloth.  The demise of the
low-end IBM mainframe seems imminent.  So much for IBM; their 1979 bombshell
just blew up in their own offices.

++Brandon
-- 
``for is he not of the Children of Luthien?  Never shall that line fail, though
the years may lengthen beyond count.''  --J. R. R. Tolkien

Brandon S. Allbery	           UUCP: cbatt!cwruecmp!ncoast!tdi2!brandon
Tridelta Industries, Inc.         CSNET: ncoast!allbery@Case
7350 Corporate Blvd.	       INTERNET: ncoast!allbery%Case.CSNET@relay.CS.NET
Mentor, Ohio 44060		  PHONE: +1 216 255 1080 (home) +1 216 974 9210