8 Apr
2004
8 Apr
'04
3:32 a.m.
As a former DEC guy, I certainly know the power of
marketing, and the
damage a CEO can do to a company if he claims that marketing doesn't
matter. But I wouldn't confuse marketing excellence with engineering
excellence. CDC and IBM had one each -- opposite ones.
My point was not really the marketing aspect (although it is probably the
biggest aspect), but the engineering aspect. As someone pointed out, the
CDC 6600 does one thing well - speed. The same is true for just about any
CDC mainframe. The things, however, were crap in most other aspects. They
were not as reliable as IBMs, the operating systems were nothing to brag
about, and worst of all, CDC painted themselves into corners every machine
the brought out by not making the things easily expandable to the next
generation. When the issue came to a head with the 170 line, with
customers screaming about "what comes next?", the solution, the 180 line,
was a complete kludge. The CDC answer was always "put another bag on the
side". I don't know what happened with the line after the 180 machines
(Cyber 1000 and 2000 - information on the net is extremely vague), but I
would not be suprised if they were kludges as well.
IBM did things fairly properly, even if it did take an army of people.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org