<>So I guess Dave Cutler was there from the beginning of VMS development.
<
<However, it's my understanding he left somewhere shortly after Version 1.0
Yep! Cutler was long gone from active product design DEC before the advent
of NT. DECwest was the research facility.
Allison
Does anyone on this vast earth know the jumper settings for a MiniScribe
3438 hard drive???
I've searched EVERYWHERE, and found the following:
- It is either MFM or RLL
- It is either 32 or 22 MB
- It is either 5.25 HH or 3.5" FH.
Of the sites I've found, one says that it's RLL, another says it's MFM.
Another site says it's both. Between the sites, one said it was 22 MB, the
other two said 32. One of the sites said that it was a 5.25" HH drive, and
the last said that it was a FH 3.5" (is there even such a thing?).
Other than the fact that it's 5.25" HH, I know NOTHING (useful) about this
drive. The jumper settings seem to have vanished, along with the physical
drive specs.
Help!....
--
-Jason Willgruber
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1>
Eric -
At 11:46 PM 3/15/99 -0000, you wrote:
>Because it *isn't* based on Mach.
Roger.
>Which part of that is hard to understand?
>The historical record of this is fairly well documented.
I stand corrected. I guess the early hype I heard about NT was entirely
falacious and a complete figment of my imagination.
>There are some "UNIX servers" that can be run on top of Mach, but
>Mach is not UNIX.
I don't think I ever stated ... "Mach is UNIX". I will be more careful in
the future to distinguish that UNIX might be layered on a Mach kernel, then
again, it might not.
>IIRC, the NT kernel *has* a built-in distributed lock manager. If not, it
>would be easy to add it. The NT kernel is actually small, simple, and
>almost elegant. ...
If it was as trivial as you indicate, then there would be NT clusters as far
as the eye could see. It took Digital several versions of VMS to support
clusters.
>Certainly you *can* run applications on your file server. And on a good OS,
>it will work OK. But that doesn't prove that it is the best way to do
>things.
It is the only way to do things if that is what you can afford. It appears
that I have been much less fortunate than you in my selection of employers.
-- Dean
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dean Billing Phone: 530-752-5956
UC Davis FAX: 530-752-6363
IT-CR EMAIL: drbilling(a)ucdavis.edu
One Shields Way
Davis, CA 95616
I seem to have misplaced my copies of muMath and muLisp for
the Apple II. If anyone would like to sell their old ones
to me, please let me know. The CP/M version would also be
of interest. If all else fails, I could live with the
PC-DOS version, but I don't want Derive (the product that
replaced muMath).
Thanks!
Eric
ALERT! Large VAX in danger of hitting the dumpster! Contact information
follows. (please do not reply to the list)
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 14:11:56 -0500
From: Jason Scott <jason(a)snuh.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: GIVEAWAY: Vax 8650 in Medford, MA by Mar. 18
My company is decommissioning a VAX 8650 with Expansion Unit and while
the current plan is to throw the thing into the dump, if there are
souls out there who want one of these things for Nostalgia, Spare Parts,
or to drop out of a plane, give me a holler at (781)-393-3283 and we'll
talk. Or, mail to jason(a)snuh.com works just as well.
If you think you can stop by with a Toyota and put this thing in the
trunk, you don't want it. Vax 8650's are the size of large meat lockers
and you'll need at least a truck to pick it up. The power needs are
beyond imagining. The only real use for these things are spare parts
or some sick project I can't think of, but I can't bear to not take
at least a try at finding them a home.
The VAXen are located in Medford, MA, just about 5 miles north of
Boston, off Route 93. We're throwing the things out Thursday Night
(March 18) so act fast. First call and show, first serve. Thanks!
- Jason Scott
Philip.Belben(a)pgen.com wrote:
> I think Leo Computers may be regarded as the world's first
> commercial computer manufacturer. But I don't think they existed as
> early as the '40s. I think the original LEO project was early '50s,
> and Leo Computers (as a manufacturer) mid '50s and later. But I'm
> not sure...
> Anyone care to add to the above? Correct my mistakes? Etc.?
There's a recent book:
LEO: The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer
by David Caminer (ed.), John Aris, Peter Hermon, Frank Land
published by McGraw-Hill, December 1997
ISBN 0-07-009501-9
Basically, yes, they realized that automation of their data processing
was a desirable thing, and a survey of the market for such machines
in 1949 or so forced them to conclude that if they wanted it done in
any reasonable time they would have to do it themselves. So they did,
and they ended up with a computer that was pretty good at doing what
Lyons needed done.
BTW, the people who wrote and edited this book are the people who
designed and built LEO: it's really a collection of their writings
about their work. Reading it I had the impression that Caminer went
around and darn near forcibly extracted a chapter from everyone he
could.
I gather the machine had some sort of support for doing arithmetic on
pre-decimalized currency, does anyone here know what that looked like?
It wasn't explained very well in the book.
-Frank McConnell
Further from The Dream Machine, after many pages about IBM:
"The British computer industry, started by Lyons in the late 1940s [by sending
two people to the EDVAC team] never had a chance. In 1963, after selling only
[!] 100
computers, Lyons sold their computer division to the English Electric Company.
..... After several mergers the English Electric Company would be absorbed
into ICL, ... in 1990 Fujitsu bought 80 % of ICL."
John G. Zabolitzky
<There is a lot more, of course (variables, loops, conditionals, accessing
<memory, even defining words used to make new definitions (you could
<define a word like : which is then used to define a new type of object)),
<but that will do to start with.
And if you have a postscript printer (or running Ghostscript) you can do
that and print the results too.!
Allison
>> I guess it is time to auction off some punch cards now ... one at a time
>> :). Actually, I am toying around with putting one punch card on ebay just
>> to see what would happen. It is a bit unusual though in that it is imprinted
>> with "Leo Computers", and just to keep it a set, perhaps putting one sheet
>> of original Leo Computers stationary. Anyone here remember Leo Computers
>> (late 40's, early 50's)?
>
> You mean Lyons, the people who produced the LEO? I think it was the first
> commercially sold computer; it was a cleaned-up version of one of the
> British research machines (Manchester Mark I? EDSAC?).
The story as it is usually told here in the UK:
Lyons had a large chain of tea shops across the UK. They had a system that
worked well for ordering stock for the shops and dispatching it, but it was
data-processing-intensive and they knew they needed to streamline in order to
survive.
What do you do if you have a system that's DP-intensive and needs streamlining?
Obvious! You computerise it! (All Lyons' DP was being done by hand at that
time)
Right. Who sells computers for business? Well, a few DP machines (tabulators
etc.) exist, and can probably be bought, but nobody sells computers at all!
Lyons had the far-sightedness to push ahead with their plans to computerise, and
sent two (?) technicians to Cambridge to work on the EDSAC project (a rare
example of collaborative research actually working!)
The technicians duly went and worked on EDSAC, and came back to Lyons well
knowledgeable about computers. Lyons then set out to design their own computer,
which they called LEO.
They soon discovered that other companies, seeing the benefit that computerising
the business had had for Lyons, wanted business computers too. And thus Leo
Computers was born - a subsidiary of Lyons, who made and sold business
computers. I think there's about one each of their later (solid state) and
original (hollow state) machines still around...
I think Leo Computers may be regarded as the world's first commercial computer
manufacturer. But I don't think they existed as early as the '40s. I think the
original LEO project was early '50s, and Leo Computers (as a manufacturer) mid
'50s and later. But I'm not sure...
Anyone care to add to the above? Correct my mistakes? Etc.?
Philip.
PS Let us know how the Leo Computers punched card sells! Should fetch a lot!
