24 Mar
2010
24 Mar
'10
2:16 p.m.
Reading a thread on old RS/6000's, I came to think
of something I heard in
the 80's or thereabouts.
It was said, that decommissioned 360's were dumped in the Atlantic, to
prevent that they fell in the hands of the OEM manufacturers.
Is there any truth in this statement?
I don't know about the ocean, but they did send them off to
scrap yards and stuff to be demolished. I had a roommate in
college who had worked at one of these places in high school
and he had one of the 360 nameplates as a souvenir. And there
was more than just OEMs to consider. Back then they'd lease
you their grandmother but not sell much of anything. So
when something went off lease and they had a new model,
most customers were "gently" encouraged to lease the new
one and IBM would pull the old one. So what to do with
the old ones? Well, you can guess. Certainly couldn't have
the older model in the used market to cut into leases on
the new one...
BLS