20 Apr
2018
20 Apr
'18
9:13 a.m.
On 04/20/2018 03:23 AM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:
That reminds me of when I phoned IBM here in Ireland
looking for software
support for their VM mainframe operating system not too many years later,
sometime in the early 1990s. I spelled out every variation of the name
I could think of but they kept asking me what version of OS/2 I had.
I guess by then the circle had turned again.
Around 1983-4, we were looking for a smallish minicomputer to share the
workload of our VAX 11/750. So we were considering alternatives. Since
the 750 was running BSD, we definitely wanted another Unix box.
I saw a product announcement for the AT&T 3B5 mini and it looked like
something that might fit the bill. So, I wanted to find out about
pricing and where we could benchmark one. AT&T had just gone through
its breakup/"consent decree", so I placed a call to AT&T Sales and asked
about the 3B5. I was transfered several times to various sales types
who didn't have the faintest idea of what I was talking about, even
after I read them the product announcement. It was an hour of being
transfered from department to department, with absolutely no satisfaction.
We eventually gave up--if AT&T was going to be this difficult just to
*sell* us a system, what kind of nightmare was *support* likely to be?
The only computer anyone knew anything about was the PC 6300. I told
them that I could drop by the Sears Computer Store (remember those?) on
El Camino and take one home this evening if that's what I wanted.
In the end, they offered to send us some literature--you guessed
it--that described the 6300.
--Chuck