Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!decwrl!atha!auvax.uucp!lyndon From: lyndon@auvax.uucp (Lyndon Nerenberg) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,u3b.misc Subject: Re: "AT&T to resell Pyramid computers" (for real) Message-ID: <1123@aurora.AthabascaU.CA> Date: 26 Sep 89 20:15:39 GMT References: <1185@vsi.COM> Sender: news@cs.AthabascaU.CA Reply-To: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA Distribution: comp Lines: 39 friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: > I'm not a marketing type, but this looks like a positive >development. We looked into a 3B4000 some time ago and got the >pretty clear impression that they weren't doing so well, so maybe >this was in fact the case. This is in fact the case. The 3b4000 is a great machine for milking accounting data out of a 5ESS, but as a general purpose UNIX timeshare system it's hopeless! (I speak from experience here. We have a 3b4000 sitting in the corner of the machine room. AT&T said it would support 300-400 users. The president of the University believed them :-) The machine has been in production as a tape server for several months now. Performance is terrible.) [ I asked Ken Thompson why Plan 9 wasn't running on any AT&T hardware, "such as the 3b4000." His answer answer was most amusing :-) ] > A question I have is whether they will do their own raw port >of UNIX to it or rely on Pyramid's. Certainly the latter is the >more expedient, but it opens them up to the same kind of >nonportability problems they had with the UNIX PC where the >operating systems aren't the same all around. What I want to know is if AT&T is going to bugger the hardware sufficiently such that a UNIX distribution from Pyramid won't run on it. What would be *really* nice would be if AT&T would become a Sun OEM. We have ~$1M that we have to spend on AT&T products (credit for the 3b4000 we're sending back :-) I'd much rather buy a bunch of RISC servers and SPARCstations, or a big Pyramid. Mind you, the 3b2/1000's that we *are* getting look pretty impressive. [ Betcha never thought you would catch *me* saying *anything* good about AT&T :-) ] Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,decwrl,lsuc}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA "I think every man should have a wife. You can't blame everything on the government." -- Jed Clampett