27 Apr
2024
27 Apr
'24
1:24 p.m.
On 2024-04-27 2:39 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
When you say “software drove hardware sales” do you
mean complete software application systems or do you mean compilers available for the
hardware so the software teams had variety in what they could program?
Up to the ‘90’s, companies had big, expensive hardware and little to no canned software
applications so companies also had relatively cheaper software developers to make custom
programs.
Sent from my iPhone
Well I know of some systems where software sure helped with hardware
sales and that is with the IBM System/34 and System/36 and perhaps even
the System/32 before them. The basic hardware in all three was similar
S/32 was single user with 64K of memory and a 10MB disk S/34 added
multi-user as well as more memory and storage and S/36 was an improved
S/34 with more speed and memory still more storage and a very user
friendly OS, but the big selling point was the very wide variety of
software available including very customizable business packages such
as MAPICS and BPCS. The hardware in these systems was to put it mildly
was unspectacular, but user friendly and available software seemed to
close the deal.
By comparision, one time I took a call on a S/32, that a customer was
using long after end of support. This customer also had a Data General
system that was quite a bit newer, that they had purchased because it
was the coolest machine at the time, but they where not using it because
there was no software available for it.
Paul.