19 Jun
2009
19 Jun
'09
2:53 p.m.
From: William Donzelli
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 9:05 AM
> Tha was not DEC's way. They tended to keep
things or offer them to
> educational establishments. I can't imagine a conversation along the lines
> of: Q. "Please may we have your PDP-6 to preserve?"
> A. " No I want to scrap it"
In the early 1980s? From every DEChead I have talked
to, the early
1980s was a time for change in DEC - the company "grew up" and became
far more corporate. Many say DEC lost their soul in the 1980s.
And was't Jupiter killed about this time? The
PDP-6 could have fallen
just for spite.
The cancellation of Jupiter[1] was announced at DECUS in May, 1983, the 20th
Anniversary celebration a year and a half later, in December, 1984. I don't
believe that the cancellation and the PDP-6 disappearance were related.
In point of fact, the DECUS Large Systems SIG had enough influence that they
were able to negotiate a continuation of support for the 36-bit line for a
very long time: Digital agreed to continue hardware development for 5 years,
and software development for 10. This gave us the MG20 memory (4MW in two
boxes vs. 3MW in four boxes with MF20); the MCA25 cache (doubled the cache
size); the CI interface, the HSC-50 and RA81 disk drives[2]; and the NIA-20
Ethernet interface[2]. It also gave us TOPS-20 versions 6.0, 6.1, and 7.0,
and Tops-10 version 7.04.[3]
This was a good thing. It gave the PDP-11, and later VAX, customers an
example of what could be negotiated when those product lines were on the
chopping block.
[1] For those not familiar with the DEC 36-bit line, Jupiter was the code
name for the follow-on to the KL-10 based systems (2040/2050/2060/2065
and 1080/1088/1090/1099/1095, defined by operating system and until the
1095/2065 by some microcode differences). It was expected to be called
the 2090, although the sales materials produced immediately prior to
the cancellation are labeled DECSYSTEM-4050. It was supposed to be a
lot faster, but never reached even 50% of the expected speed improvement.
As much as it pains me to say this, Digital was right to cancel it.[4]
[2] OK, not everything was an improvement.
[3] Possibly 7.03 as well, but I didn't work with Tops-10 until 5 years ago,
and don't know the history well prior to chairing the DECUS session at
which TOPS-20 v7 and Tops-10 v7.04 were announced.
[4] Many many 36-bit customers turned away from Digital altogether following
the Jupiter cancellation, replacing equipment with Sun or HP gear rather
than VAX (or later Alpha), although a very few were able to hold out for
the clones from System Concepts, and even fewer for the XKL Toad-1.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
http://www.pdpplanet.org/