[HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40

[Steve Davidson]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE 
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 19:21
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Cc: Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40

On 2013-02-11 22:43, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:

On Feb 11, 2013, at 4:38 PM, Mark Benson wrote:


On 11 Feb 2013, at 21:02, Dave McGuire wrote:

You know DEC, they loved supporting legacy products 
almost into oblivion.

Yes, for GOOD products

As much as I'd like to agree, it didn't necessarily work that way 
round. It was more a case of 'is someone important still 
using this? 
Then we best not ditch them or it'll look awfully bad... 
and they'll 
go and buy an IBM/DataGeneral/etc.' :)

Not even that.   For example, shortly after the 11/780 was 
announced, there was a definite (and, as I recall, explicitly 
stated) push to drop all PDP-11 support ASAP.

For that matter, when IAS was announced, RSTS customers 
were told that IAS was the future and they should move there 
right away.   Not long after that, IAS was recognized for the 
boat anchor it was, and it remained an obscure niche product.

So DEC definitely had a history of angering customers by 
attempting to drop support for products that were very much 
alive and in some cases superior to the alleged replacement.

Of course, they sometimes did get it right, as in the example of 
TRAX... :-)

Is this the time I should mention the PDP-10? Talk about 
making customers angry... :-)

Speaking of IAS, it really looks cool when reading specs, but 
I've never touched it, and another aspect of those specs is 
that it looks like it would be rather slow...

I used to support IAS-11.   It ran just fine.   Most installations were on
PDP-11/70's with full memory.   BTW - the NSA and the EPA really liked
it!   They were the two largest customers in the US.   I was the primary
support person for both agencies.   Other groups outside the US were
mostly government based.

-Steve


Never seen TRAX in real life either, btw. What was so good about it?

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                    ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol