18 Jan
2007
18 Jan
'07
7:17 p.m.
On Jan 18, 2007, at 4:05 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
This mention of the Lisa, M20, Onyx, etc. running some
flavor of Unix
around 1982-84 and my memories of the Hated Plexus reminds me of an
experience that I had about that time (i.e. right about the time of
the Ma Bell breakup).
I'd read in one of the trade rags about the AT&T 3B5 and thought it
would make a great development machine. To this day, I don't know if
my hunch was right or not. I called AT&T computer sales and got the
runaround for at least a week. Fortunately, most of the referrals I
was given were 800 toll-free ones. I never could find someone who
could sell me one. It seems that everyone thought I was talking
about the 6300. It was very frustrating--"We have dollars; we like
trade them for computer. Don't want 6300; want 3B5. Ugh"
Did anyone on this list ever succeed in acquiring one around that
time? If so, how was the service and performance?
Cheers,
Chuck
Heh. 3B5's were about the size of VAX 11/750's (which was the targeted
competition). They had a bad reputation in-house (at least in the
part of
AT&T I was at) with performance about VAX 11/730ish and power supply
reliability was not good.
The replacement 3B15 was much better.
The "micro's" were 3B300, 400, (500 and 600?) series. I liked the
3B400's.
These were supposed to compete with MicroVAXen.
20+ year old memories may be suspect on exact details.
Mike