On Tue, 17 May 2005, Joe R. wrote: Does the thing sitting in front of you "compute"? Are you the only one using it at any one time? If so, I'd call that a Personal Computer ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On 5/18/05, Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org at irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk> wrote: Worst processor/user ratio for PeeCee-class equipment, or on a per-cycle basis? We used to routinely put 40-60 users on our VAX-11/750 (0.6 VUPs, 8MB of RAM, *roughly* the same CPU horsepower as an 8MHz 68000, but with broad I/O channels). When more than 50% of our users were active, memory was a problem. We used to have to encourage people not to sit in MAIL or MASS-11 (word processor app) because even with shared code segments (each user maintained their own swappable store), more than about a dozen users sitting idle in those apps would absorb most of the free memory. We used that machine for intra-company e-mail, sales letters, and software development (in-house assemblers, Whitesmith's C, VAX-C...), and product testing. _That_ was by all standards of the day, a mini, not a micro. Later machines had much faster processors, and somewhat more memory, but the I/O architectures of those later machines were much more sparse. Three 32-bit I/O channels (MASSBUS), and a 16-bit asynch I/O bus (Unibus) trumps much of the early PC era substantially. So in the great mini-vs-micro debate, once one is talking about later 16 and 32-bit minis (early 12 and 16-bit minis do tend to have one medium-performance I/O bus), I'd have to say that I/O architecture has as much to do with the definition as the number of processors. -ethan

At 20:08 18/05/2005, Ethan Dicks wrote: I was thinking specifically of the PeeCee based stuff. I did have for a while an ex-customer "Microfive" machine, 8088 based, 12 serial ports on the back, no kb or video, and not PC architecture. With maximum users that would have been worse... Thinking about it, though, some of the VAX (11/780) and own-brand machines I used years back at Ferranti would have been far less cycles/user. [snip] I think the micro/mini is a pretty hard distinction to make when talking about current hardware; the technologies cross-pollinate! Even in old stuff, it certainly sounds like it's more of a marketing term rather than a technical definition - The "small enough for a department to afford" meaning of mini feels best to me for the older machines. Rob