12 Apr
2019
12 Apr
'19
11:15 a.m.
The article says:
Poughkeepsie?s engineers were close to completing work on a set of four
computers known as the 8000s that were compatible with
the 7000s.
AFAICT, that is totally wrong. The 8000 series was completely INCOMPATIBLE
with any of the 7000 series machines. In fact, most of the 7000 series
machines weren't even compatible with each other, though the 7040 and 7044
had partial compatibility with the 7090 and 7094.
There are some 8000 documents on Bitsavers so you can see for yourself.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/8000/
Had the 8000 series in fact been compatible with the 7090/7094, I suspect
that Bob Evans might not have recommended killing them, as part of the
rationale for killing them was the fact that they weren't compatible with
anything, but I think Bob still would have recommended that IBM develop a
broad line of compatible computers (but mostly incompatible with 7094 and
8000) to replace them.
I only met Bob once in 2004 at CHM, and only got to talk with him for a few
minutes, so I could be entirely wrong.