25 Mar
2010
25 Mar
'10
12:10 a.m.
blstuart at bellsouth.net wrote:
Back then they'd lease
you their grandmother but not sell much of anything.
Actually they would sell you
anything that they would lease, at
commensurate pricing. That was part of their 1956 Consent Decree:
http://www.cptech.org/at/ibm/ibm1956cd.html
That's what allowed a thriving market for leasing from third parties
rather than IBM itself.
When IBM got machines back from lease, or as an exchange in an upgrade
deal, if they couldn't (or didn't want to) lease them out to another
customer, they would make sure they were destroyed in order to prevent
them from finding their way back into third-party sales or leasing.
This is why there are so few surviving 360 and 370 systems.
Eric