Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!bunker!stpstn!aad From: aad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: AT&T Joining OSF Message-ID: <1991@stpstn.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 88 19:33:03 GMT References: <347@spies.UUCP> <670025@hpclscu.HP.COM> <24355@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <63717@sun.uucp> <722@mcrware.UUCP> Reply-To: aad@stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) Organization: The Stepstone Corporation, Sandy Hook, CT Lines: 34 In article <722@mcrware.UUCP> jejones@mcrware.UUCP (James Jones) writes: >In article <63717@sun.uucp>, pope@vatican (John Pope) writes: >>In article <24355@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, madd@bu-cs (Jim Frost) writes: >>>[...] IBM became big by being reliable; they never >>>did anything really new so what they had was most likely going to >>>work. >> Aren't you ignoring things like RISC and Virtual Memory?... >No doubt many people will point at the Ferranti Atlas and Burroughs large >systems (B5000 et seq.) as virtual memory systems predating the 370 by >quite a few years. Actually, I think IBM became big largely by being there. They built up a decent office machine business, and they started leasing mid-range computers, which made them affordable. Then around 1963-4, they invested something like One Billion bucks in the 360 project. Of course, as a side effect, they're still building 360's, and still running OS/360 on them. At one point IBM modified two (2) 360/65's to have virtual memory, and called it the 360/67, as a test to see if virtual memory would work. CMU had one of them. As I understand it, the 370 is basically a 360 with vm. This is all from the various computer history books I have, recalled from memory. IBM has indeed come up with a lot of things -- the floppy, for example. One of my gripes with them is that they refuse to abandon the brain-damage of yesteryear. EBCDIC. Operating systems that treat users like card readers. EBCDIC. Stupid networking. EBCDIC. And, of course, there's the interesting bit that KERMIT came about because of Columbia's difficulites in transferring files to and from anIBM mainframe. -- @disclaimer(Any concepts or opinions above are entirely mine, not those of my employer, my GIGI, or my 11/34) beak is beak is not Anthony A. Datri,SysAdmin,StepstoneCorporation,stpstn!aad