27 Oct
1999
27 Oct
'99
8:35 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 3:15 PM
Subject: Re: gauging interest in VAX 6000-530
Yikesl I eliminated our Vax for PCs years ago and have never had any
problems! Vax was a "breakdown" nightmare... slower than NT for filesharing
and DEC couldn't get "appletalk" right either. We found MAC IIs much faster
even. (I toasted all the MACs in '96).
Vax - Costly mother, boards expensive, service/software/license costs
rediculous. Brutal learning curve for new system support employees (not
everyone has a Vax at home), and of course Digitals "Unlimited Training" for
a year at $5000/employee! X-Windows? Yuck.The only thing I liked was RDB
(wonder WHO bought that?!??! :-) ). Foxpro was still faster.
I jumped in like many other large companies and quickly junked our
mainframes/minis for PCs.
Gee, as much as folks like to pidgen-hole me, I'm really only trying to
understand the performance and lure of the old iron, like vaxes, in
I can perhaps help with the 'lure'. For me, speed is not that important
(provided it's fast enough for _what I want to do_). What is important is
having a reliable machine that I can understand, repair, and keep going.
And I find it a _lot_ easier to keep a PDP11 or an old VAX running than
to keep a PC running.
> relation to newer iron that I have or can use, and also understand
better.
Strange. I find the older machines are lot easier to understand than the
more modern ones. And _much_ better documented.
Thats not strange. Old systems USUALLY had parts and boards from a limited
number of vendors, heavily tested... How many garages are knocking out video
cards today!?!??!?! Old systems were easy to maintain for large sites, get a
million dollars from Finance and send it to DEC! It isn't so easy now... but
much easier for the end user.
> This is, unfortunatly, gobbdleygook to me.
"multiples of them for
parallelism"?
Why would this
be necessary? Why can't one fast one be used?
There are good electronic reasons why you can't switch bus lines as fast
as you would like (just try sending 64 1GHz signals down a bus and
expecting them (a) not to get skewed wrt each other, (b) not to couple to
everything else in sight, and (c) not to be an EMC nightmare).
Yes, improvements in bus design and driver/receiver technology has
allowed us to produce faster buses. But there are still limits. And then
you start using _several_ independant buses.
-tony