[HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40

[Bill Pechter]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
Well, the 11/70 easily outlived the 11/44, in that 11/70 machines were still sold after the 11/44 was terminated, as far as I know.

Interesting data.    I'm a little surprised to hear it because DEC was clearly trying to get the traditional 11/70 customer to move to the VAX line in those days.    I wonder if the 70 was used in some commercial settings where they wanted a real duplicate.    Unlike the Nova/Esclipe the VAX had a "compatibility mode" but it was a tad impure.    The OS was different and binaries did not work with some assistance.      Other than running Dungeon and few other games, I never knew a customer that used compatibility mode in production - it was a great sales tools, but once folks got their VAX they tended to do a "full port" of the code.       So swapping a VAX besides costing more, meant some systems/SW work on the customers part.    That was not true of the 11/44.

I remember buying an 11/44 for use where we did not need (could not afford an VAX for that use) but wanted the larger address space over the 40 class machines.   We had a very large 11/70 and were also buying Vaxen at the time,

That particular machine was the last 11 I ever personally was part of the purchase and I moved on to other things, so I sort of stopped watching the progress of the PDP11 line.    I know the QBUS gave the 11 some amount of resurgence, although by then most of us were using Vaxen or 68K based UNIX boxes.



Thanks for the information.

Clem

I thought the 11/70 couldn't be sold past about 1984 or 85.
Some FCC Regulations on emissions blocked new ones.   They didn't want to reengineer and retrofit them.

They pulled back all the ones they could from the field and regional offices (replacing some with the rare 11/74 KB11Cm boxes) so they could sell refurbs to AT&T (who purchased a ton for COSMOS and other network functions).

I had the fun of troubleshooting an 11/74 single cpu and parts were really rare.

I seem to remember 11/44's being sold until the 11/84 came out.   A google search said it was in '88, two years after I left DEC...

I'm pretty sure the 11/70 may have outlived the 11/44 on used and refurb boxes, only.

Bill

--
   d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN.   Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
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