6 Jul
2005
6 Jul
'05
5:42 a.m.
On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, William Maddox wrote:
Size is probably a big issue, but DEC made some big
machines and IBM
made some small ones, and the DEC boxes still seem to get more attention
from collectors. I think that the relative availability of DEC hardware,
software, and documentation simply makes the DEC machines more practical
if one's interest is in restoring and running them. That would explain
the 8's and 11's anyway. It's frustrating how little of the older
non-DEC minicomputer material seems to be available.
Well, actually, the reason is clear.
In the old days, IBM was stupid and didn't want anyone to learn about
their computers. They kept them locked up behind glass walls where one
could only drool over them, and only let priveleged people touch them. So
in general, most IBM computers (i.e. not the 1620 or 1130) were
off-limits, and thus there is relatively little hacking experience for
people today who are older and richer and want to reiminisce to draw upon
and drive interest in IBM machines.
DEC, on the other hand, fully understood the hacking instinct. They made
machines that were meant to be touched, programmed, and hacked. From
their very first models they made them open and friendly and approachable
and PERSONAL. Most people today who went to college from the early 1960s
onwards probably had access to DEC machines and learned to love them as
they touched and prodded them and flipped their switches and hacked on
them all night. So that experience remains with them and today that is
what they seek.
So that's why a DEC PDP-1 will always have much more appeal than a gray
thing that IBM created.
IBM wanted to keep computers away from the masses, to keep them in the
hands of the "priveleged", and their reward was to be able to continue to
dominate the market to this day. DEC wanted computers to be free and for
people to use them. Their reward was to be sucked up, torn apart and
destroyed by a lesser company whose origins was in making clones of IBM's
computers.
How ironic.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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