UNIX V7 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Jun 2009

...
  Here is a challenge to the whole list membership. Lots
of folks here
 are well embedded into the industry, so I think this is a good sample.
 Try to think of as many new customers (not upgrades) for the following
 OSes (again, keeping the old names): AOS/VS, MCP, TOPS-10, TOPS-20,
 OS/2200, VM, MVS, VSE, OS/400, Multics, PrimOS. Lets keep this to year
 2009. I bet we can not even get to twenty. 
For what it's worth, here's two recent articles about what Unisys is
up to with the MCP / OS2200 machines:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/26/unisys_mainframe_upgrades

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/08/unisys_clearpath_kickers

Apparently a mix of emulation on the low end and "real" chips on the
high end.  What I find fascinating is that Unisys sells a laptop (lx170) 
for MCP devs which runs the emulator on top of Windows (seems like the 
lowest-end emulated MCP servers are Dells running Windows too).  I have 
no idea who buys this stuff though. 

I'm under 30, so I don't remember the early 80s.  It seems like Burroughs
had some pretty good technology up to that point.  What happened to them
that didn't happen to IBM? 

John Finigan