4 Jun
2009
4 Jun
'09
4:23 a.m.
Has anyone read Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the
Computer Age ?
http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895
I swear the more and more I read about the history of computers, the
more I keep coming back to Xerox PARC. The 70's must have been a pretty
exciting time to be there.
Anyone have any back stories or have read the book? I've got it on
order, but I've read some scathing reviews about how the author got it
wrong. I know some of the scathing reviews might be by people who
weren't described in a favorable light in the book --- but I've seen
plenty of technical stories get screwed up.
Also any comments on Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System
would be helpful.
Thanks
Keith
4 Jun
4 Jun
4:31 a.m.
Has anyone read Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and
the Dawn of the
Computer Age ?
Yes. I liked the book very much. Highly recommended.
You'll also enjoy "The Dream Machine" by Mitchell Waldrop. Much of it
overlaps with D.o.L.
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Computing/dp/01420…
4:42 a.m.
Keith Monahan wrote:
Anyone have any back stories or have read the book?
look for:
Bob Taylor
Butler Lampson
Chuck Thacker
Wayne Lichtenberger, Project Genie, Berkeley Computer Corporation
William English
Doug Englebart, SRI, Augment, Bootstrap Institute
Bill Duvall
Burt Sutherland
Alan Kay
Dan Ingalls
Adele Goldberg
..and on and on and on
They hired good people, and it was part of a continuum starting
in the late fifties and many are active in the Valley decades
after the events in the book.
5:02 a.m.
look for:
Bob Taylor
Butler Lampson
Chuck Thacker
Wayne Lichtenberger, Project Genie, Berkeley Computer Corporation
William English
Doug Englebart, SRI, Augment, Bootstrap Institute
Bill Duvall
Burt Sutherland
Alan Kay
Dan Ingalls
Adele Goldberg
..and on and on and on
... and Larry Tesler
2:36 p.m.
Evan Koblentz wrote:
After I wrote that, a dozen more people came to mind. As I said,
PARC CSL and SSL were amazing labs at the time. By the early 80's
they had built their large CISC machines, and the world (and many
of the people) had moved on to DEC, Apple, Microsoft ...
I worked under Larry when I was in the Advanced Technology Group at
Apple. ATG did some good work too, and we had the same sorts of
problems with technology transfer that they had at Xerox. The only
way to get ideas accepted was to go into the product development
group, which very few people wanted to do because ATG didn't have
the pressure that Apple product development had. When Jobs came back,
ATG was killed off. It was cheaper for him to just buy a startup if
he wanted new technology than to have an in-house research group.
look for:
Bob Taylor
Butler Lampson
Chuck Thacker
Wayne Lichtenberger, Project Genie, Berkeley Computer Corporation
William English
Doug Englebart, SRI, Augment, Bootstrap Institute
Bill Duvall
Burt Sutherland
Alan Kay
Dan Ingalls
Adele Goldberg
..and on and on and on
... and Larry Tesler
5:34 a.m.
I read it, it was a good read, it really visualizes to the reader the
whole atmosphere of PARC from its beginnings, I thought it well detailed
how corporate nearly lost its prized possession - the Xerox copier with
its arrogance. The refrigerator sized video frame buffer system and
other amazing products, its a lot more then just a discussion about the
Alto and the GUI. Its a good book overall.
If you enjoy reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about the
creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
Curt
Keith Monahan wrote:
Has anyone read Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and
the Dawn of the
Computer Age ?
http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895
I swear the more and more I read about the history of computers, the
more I keep coming back to Xerox PARC. The 70's must have been a pretty
exciting time to be there.
Anyone have any back stories or have read the book? I've got it on
order, but I've read some scathing reviews about how the author got it
wrong. I know some of the scathing reviews might be by people who
weren't described in a favorable light in the book --- but I've seen
plenty of technical stories get screwed up.
Also any comments on Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System
would be helpful.
Thanks
Keith
5:48 a.m.
If you enjoy reading it, also read Soul of a new
Machine, its about
the creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree.
Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing.
6:03 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote:
Oh no, I have to agree with Curt... Soul Of A New Machine is a great
read, as was Dealers. Of course, I'm a huge DG fan so I'm probably
biased a bit. ;)
Mark
If you enjoy
reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about the
creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree. ?Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." ?I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing. 
6:22 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Evan Koblentz
<evan at snarc.net> wrote:
Oh no, I have to agree with Curt... Soul Of A New Machine is a great
read, as was Dealers. Of course, I'm a huge DG fan so I'm probably
biased a bit. ;)
Actually my interest in DG is largely a result of Soul. It's
one of the few books I've read more than once, and one
of even fewer that I've read in one sitting. One of the things
that makes it stand out is that it comes at the story more
If you
enjoy reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about the
creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree. ?Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." ?I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing. from the engineer's perspective and less of the
business
perspective than many of the others. And for me the
engineering is far, far more interesting than the business.
BLS
6:42 a.m.
Actually my interest in DG is largely a result of Soul. It's one of the few books
I've read more than once, and one of even fewer that I've read in one sitting.
One of the things that makes it stand out is that it comes at the story more from the
engineer's perspective and less of the business perspective than many of the others.
And for me the engineering is far, far more interesting than the business.
BLS
Fair enough. I'm more interested in the "story" behind the
companies
and products. For my own book, I'm concentrating on writing about who
the people were, what they were thinking about, what decisions they had
to make, etc., when designing products in a certain genre of computer
history.
1:11 p.m.
Actually my interest in DG is largely a result of
Soul. It's
one of the few books I've read more than once, and one
of even fewer that I've read in one sitting. One of the things
that makes it stand out is that it comes at the story more
from the engineer's perspective and less of the business
perspective than many of the others. And for me the
engineering is far, far more interesting than the business.
I think my favorite quote from that book is (approximately), "I shall deal
with no measurement of time shorter than a fortnight". :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
2:14 p.m.
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 06:11:35 -0700 (PDT), Gene Buckle wrote:
I think my favorite quote from that book is
(approximately), "I shall deal
with no measurement of time shorter than a fortnight". :)
About the time they added KPH to the spedo of american cars, a number of followers
began looking at Furlongs Per Fortnight (FPF) as a more meaningfull distance over time
unit of mesurement than Kph based on a therory of large numbers being better and faster
....
We all know 60 mph = 96 kph which sounds faster.
The same 60 mph = 161280 fpf which sounds real fast but is too big a number for most auto
displays.
It was not until fpf was converted to the biniary K that it made using a 4.5 digit display
usefull for
something other than a cheep digital scale.
Introducing 1024, the galatic binary constant, into the conversion helped to modernize it
a bit.
60 mph = 157.5 Kfpf, now that sounds real fast to a binary person.
As a project planning person, plan for a week but ask for a fortnight,
that way when they cut you project time/budget way back there was still a good chance of a
timely
completion.
I like and use a Fortnight based billing and accounting system, that way I have 2 weeks to
recover from
the experiance of dealing with the book keeping chore. I have always questioned if the 28
day cycle that
the credit card companys liked to use, was based on a bifortnight or was it more Menstrual
in its origin?
I am sure it was because they liked the idea of 13 periods a year, the cycle of lunacy
based on a pagan
lunar calander.
Back under my rock
The other Bob
7:29 p.m.
From: Gene Buckle
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 6:12 AM
Regarding _Soul of a New Machine_, Gene wrote:
I think my favorite quote from that book is
(approximately), "I shall deal
with no measurement of time shorter than a fortnight". :)
"season". The engineer in question left DG to live on an agrarian commune.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
6:27 p.m.
On 04/06/2009 07:03, Mark Davidson wrote:
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Evan Koblentz
<evan at snarc.net> wrote:
Oh no, I have to agree with Curt... Soul Of A New Machine is a great
read, as was Dealers. Of course, I'm a huge DG fan so I'm probably
biased a bit. ;)
I first read Soul Of A New Machine many years ago, and have re-read it
since. I too found it a better read than Dealers of Lightning, but
that's just me.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
If you
enjoy reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about the
creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree.
Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing. 
5 Jun
5 Jun
5:03 p.m.
Mark Davidson wrote:
Oh no, I have to agree with Curt... Soul Of A New
Machine is a great
read, as was Dealers. Of course, I'm a huge DG fan so I'm probably
biased a bit. ;)
I'm not specifically a DG fan and I've enjoyed Soul of a New Machine
quite a bit. :-)
So there's another data point.
8 Jun
8 Jun
2:02 a.m.
I've been following all the comments about Soul with considerable interest.
Am I the only one who found it a bit sad? I finally got around to reading
it a couple of years ago, and it seemed to me to describe all too accurately
what strikes me as the employee abuse that characterized way too much of the
engineering development process during that era.
Later,
Charlie Carothers
--
My email address is csquared3 at tx dot rr dot com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: anyone read dealers of lightning?
Mark Davidson wrote:
Oh no, I have to agree with Curt... Soul Of A New
Machine is a great
read, as was Dealers. Of course, I'm a huge DG fan so I'm probably
biased a bit. ;)
I'm not specifically a DG fan and I've enjoyed Soul of a New Machine
quite a bit. :-)
So there's another data point.
9 Jun
9 Jun
12:20 a.m.
From: CSquared
Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:03 PM
I've been following all the comments about Soul
with considerable interest.
Am I the only one who found it a bit sad? I finally got around to reading
it a couple of years ago, and it seemed to me to describe all too accurately
what strikes me as the employee abuse that characterized way too much of the
engineering development process during that era.
"during that era"? I saw the same kinds of things 20 years later, and
don't think they've stopped since then. It's something you sign up for,
in expectation of appropriate reward.
10 Jun
10 Jun
6:01 a.m.
Ars Technica just reviewed and
recommended<http://arstechnica.com/media/guides/2009/06/fathers-day-gift…
book as a Father?s Day gift:
Contributing writer Chris Foresman believes the
tale is still relevant:
> > I've been following all the
comments about Soul with considerable
> interest.
> > Am I the only one who found it a bit sad? I finally got around to
> reading
> > it a couple of years ago, and it seemed to me to describe all too
> accurately
> > what strikes me as the employee abuse that characterized way too much of
> the
> > engineering development process during that era.
> "during that era"? I saw the
same kinds of things 20 years later, and
> don't think they've stopped since then. It's something you sign up for,
> in expectation of appropriate reward.
--
Marcin Wichary
Sr. user experience designer, Google
Graphical User Interface gallery >> www.guidebookgallery.org
Tracy Kidder's *Soul of a New Machine* was first
published in 1981, so it
may not, at first glance, seem very relevant to today's technology?but it's
important to see where we've been before thinking about where we might be
going. The book chronicles the development of Data General's first 32-bit
minicomputer?and the hackers and young college grads that spent the better
part of a year making it happen in record time. The story, which Kidder
fleshes out with clever character studies of those on the hardware and
software teams (which were often at odds with each other), is oddly similar
to the "90 hours a week and loving it" story of the development of the
Macintosh chronicled in *Revolution in the Valley*.
"While computers are rarely designed in the
manner that the Data General
MV/8000 (aka "Eagle") was," he says, "the long hours, constant
stress, and
odd camaraderie are not unlike that experienced in many of today's
technology startups."
On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
> > From: CSquared
> > Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:03 PM
11 Jun
11 Jun
3:25 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marcin Wichary" <mwichary at gmail.com
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org Sent: Wednesday, June
10, 2009 1:01 AM
Subject: Re: anyone read dealers of lightning?
Ars Technica just reviewed and
recommended<http://arstechnica.com/media/guides/2009/06/fathers-day-gift…
book as a Father?s Day gift:
Contributing writer Chris Foresman believes the
tale is still relevant:
> > I've been following all the
comments about Soul with considerable
> interest.
> > Am I the only one who found it a bit sad? I finally got around to
> reading
> > it a couple of years ago, and it seemed to me to describe all too
> accurately
> > what strikes me as the employee abuse that characterized way too much of
> the
> > engineering development process during that era.
> "during that era"? I saw the
same kinds of things 20 years later, and
> don't think they've stopped since then. It's something you sign up for,
> in expectation of appropriate reward.
--
Marcin Wichary
Sr. user experience designer, Google
Graphical User Interface gallery >> www.guidebookgallery.org
I suppose I've just been lucky then. I've not experienced that sort of
thing in enough years that it has sort of all faded to just a very bad
memory. I think the last of it for me was in the 80's. My "reward" for
doing that sort of thing at the time was my monthly salary, and eventually a
few stock options. Overtime pay, for "salaried" employees, what's that???
Now that the house is paid for and I'm semi-retired, I guess I should just
be thankful to have had a job for all of those years. Not everyone was so
fortunate then, and now of course things are pretty bad for those who must
work.
I've always sort of ascribed the demise of a lot of that employee abuse to
the "kids" who came along and just flat refused to be bullied into working
under those conditions, but ICBW.
Later,
Charlie Carothers
--
My email address is csquared3 at tx dot rr dot com
Tracy Kidder's *Soul of a New Machine* was first
published in 1981, so it
may not, at first glance, seem very relevant to today's technology?but
it's
important to see where we've been before thinking about where we might be
going. The book chronicles the development of Data General's first 32-bit
minicomputer?and the hackers and young college grads that spent the better
part of a year making it happen in record time. The story, which Kidder
fleshes out with clever character studies of those on the hardware and
software teams (which were often at odds with each other), is oddly
similar
to the "90 hours a week and loving it" story of the development of the
Macintosh chronicled in *Revolution in the Valley*.
"While computers are rarely designed in the
manner that the Data General
MV/8000 (aka "Eagle") was," he says, "the long hours, constant
stress, and
odd camaraderie are not unlike that experienced in many of today's
technology startups."
On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
> > From: CSquared
> > Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:03 PM
4 Jun
4 Jun
11:25 a.m.
Evan Koblentz wrote:
I read it shortly after it came out and I thought it was a great read.
A few years later, in 1986, I was working for Calera Recognition
Systems, which at the time was called Palentir. Two or three months
after joining, someone told me that the guy in the office next to my
cube, Carl Alsing, was one of the people in Soul of A New Machine (Carl
was the leader of the microkids, who wrote the microcode). I read the
book again.
The thing that impressed me about Tracy Kidder's writing was that in the
part where Carl was described, Kidder captured aspects of Carl's
personality in a paragraph or two that I recognized as being spot on.
It gave the rest of the book that much more credibility.
As was mention, the book wasn't so much about the DG business, but I'd
disagree and say it wasn't so much about the engineering either; very
little actually. It was mostly about the dynamics of the to bring the
machine to life, both the internal politics of this skunk-works project
and the inherent dynamics of the teams of mostly inexperienced engineers
trying to accomplish something way beyond what they should have been
able to do. If it had been a book about the actual engineering, very
few people would have read it.
If you enjoy
reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about
the creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree.
Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing. 
11:46 a.m.
Jim Battle wrote:
..
Systems, which at the time was called Palentir. Two or
three months
after joining, someone told me that the guy in the office next to my
cube, Carl Alsing, was one of the people in Soul of A New Machine (Carl
was the leader of the microkids, who wrote the microcode).
That's funny. I worked with Josh Rosen for 6 months before someone
pulled me aside and whispered, "he's *that* Josh Rosen" :-)
It didn't change anything (he was still fun to work with and very good)
but it gave us more to talk about :-)
-brad
3:58 p.m.
As was mention, the book wasn't so much about the
DG business, but I'd
disagree and say it wasn't so much about the engineering either; very
little actually. It was mostly about the dynamics of the to bring the
machine to life, both the internal politics of this skunk-works project
and the inherent dynamics of the teams of mostly inexperienced engineers
trying to accomplish something way beyond what they should have been
able to do. If it had been a book about the actual engineering, very
few people would have read it.
Good point. That's part of why I phrased it as being told from
the point of view of the engineers, rather than being about
the engineering. Still there were elements that rang very
familiar. It's been a long time since I last read it, but the
picture is still vivid of going into a machine room, pulling
the boards from a VAX one at a time and just looking at the
choice of chips and the layout getting a feel for the mind
of the creators. And who could forget the perspective of
comparing features to a paper bag taped to the side of the
machine? Those aspects of the engineering do make for an
insightful story. After all, it's all too easy to get lost in the
details of clock skew and debates over VHDL and forget that
engineering is fundamentally about creation of artifacts that
never before existed.
BLS
5:58 p.m.
It was a great point of view from the actual engineers and not
management... to read about the daily frustration and struggles getting
the first system going, the visualization of the wirewrapped "mess"
being worked on and the toil they went through to get such a great
computer design completed and out the door made for a very good read...
Evan Koblentz wrote:
If you enjoy
reading it, also read Soul of a new Machine, its about
the creation of Data General and I think that was an even better read.
I disagree.
Nobody would have bought Soul if it was titled, "How Data
General designed its latest computer." I found it very dull, whereas
Dealers tells a story of a whole new era in computing.
7:25 p.m.
From: Curt @ Atari Museum
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 10:35 PM
If you enjoy reading [_Dealers of Lightning_], also
read Soul of a new
Machine, its about the creation of Data General and I think that was an
even better read.
De gustibus non disputandum. However, _Soul_ is very much NOT about "the
creation of Data General", which was incorporated in 1968. It is rather
about DG's effort, c. 1976, to get to market with a so-called supermini, in
order to compete with DEC's VAX (which was under development at the same
time).
I first read _Soul_ as a serial in _Computerworld_ in the summer of 1977, and
enjoyed it enough that I put it on my Christmas list (hey, I was still in
grad school and had no money for extra books). Even so...
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
9:46 p.m.
Rich Alderson wrote:
De gustibus non disputandum. However, _Soul_ is very much NOT about "the
creation of Data General", which was incorporated in 1968. It is rather
about DG's effort, c. 1976, to get to market with a so-called supermini, in
order to compete with DEC's VAX (which was under development at the same
time).
Can someone acquainted with both machines weigh in with an opinion of how they
compared in terms of performance and capability? Did the VAX win out because it
was DEC (market prominence, etc.) or because in the main it was a better
machine, or some other reason?
(I used and programmed with 780's and 750's under both VMS and BSD in the
80's
but never worked with DG machines.)
10:15 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Brent Hilpert<hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
Rich Alderson wrote:
I don't have nearly as much experience with VAXen as I do with DG
machines, but I will say this (and please remember, I LOVE DG hardware
and software)... VMS simply rocks IMHO. AOS/VS is a very cool OS, but
doesn't hold much of a candle to VMS.
I'll go crawl back in my hole now... :)
Mark
De gustibus non disputandum. ?However, _Soul_ is very much NOT about "the
creation of Data General", which was incorporated in 1968. ?It is rather
about DG's effort, c. 1976, to get to market with a so-called supermini, in
order to compete with DEC's VAX (which was under development at the same
time).
Can someone acquainted with both machines weigh in with an opinion of how they
compared in terms of performance and capability? Did the VAX win out because it
was DEC (market prominence, etc.) or because in the main it was a better
machine, or some other reason?
(I used and programmed with 780's and 750's under both VMS and BSD in the
80's
but never worked with DG machines.)
10:37 p.m.
Mark Davidson wrote:
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Brent Hilpert<hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
Well, the manufacturer operatings systems are another variable, perhaps another
way of expressing the question would be: how would the machines compare if BSD
had targetted the DG machine instead of the VAX?
Rich Alderson wrote:
I don't have nearly as much experience with VAXen as I do with DG
machines, but I will say this (and please remember, I LOVE DG hardware
and software)... VMS simply rocks IMHO. AOS/VS is a very cool OS, but
doesn't hold much of a candle to VMS.
I'll go crawl back in my hole now... :)
De gustibus non disputandum. ?However, _Soul_ is very much NOT about "the
creation of Data General", which was incorporated in 1968. ?It is rather
about DG's effort, c. 1976, to get to market with a so-called supermini, in
order to compete with DEC's VAX (which was under development at the same
time).
Can someone acquainted with both machines weigh in with an opinion of how they
compared in terms of performance and capability? Did the VAX win out because it
was DEC (market prominence, etc.) or because in the main it was a better
machine, or some other reason?
(I used and programmed with 780's and 750's under both VMS and BSD in the
80's
but never worked with DG machines.) 
11:04 p.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Well, the manufacturer operatings systems are another
variable, perhaps another
way of expressing the question would be: how would the machines compare if BSD
had targetted the DG machine instead of the VAX?
Interesting question, but a difficult one to answer. Both Eagle (MV)
and VAX architectures had good and bad implementations, with (from an
ISA standpoint) the VAX being decidedly the more CISC-ish of the two
(the Eagle retaining a lot of the RISC-ish flavor of the original Nova
and then Eclipse families). Somewhat to its detriment the Eagle
retained the horrible Nova I/O bus (although in some cases several
distinct instances of it), but eventually compensated by hanging
relatively intelligent devices off of it.
In the end targeting *nix to the Eagle was problematic because of the
way that byte pointers work (or don't) relative to what was expected by
C, making implementation of the language a great deal more difficult. It
was eventually done, but it was decidedly a later arrival in the
marketplace.
I suspect a better apples-to-apples comparison might be the theoretical
porting of Multics to each architecture. There, that should put the fox
in with the chickens ;)
--
Chris Kennedy
chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP
http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
"Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..."
5 Jun
5 Jun
4:18 a.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Rich Alderson wrote:
The SEL Systems 32 series out performed both the Vax 11/780 and the
MV8000(not released until '80) in the 70's. The Vax 11/780 was built
_after_ the SEL Systems 32 series as well.
=Dan
[ S.E.L. = http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/computers_mini_sel.html ]
De gustibus non disputandum. However, _Soul_ is
very much NOT about "the
creation of Data General", which was incorporated in 1968. It is rather
about DG's effort, c. 1976, to get to market with a so-called supermini, in
order to compete with DEC's VAX (which was under development at the same
time).
Can someone acquainted with both machines weigh in with an opinion of how they
compared in terms of performance and capability? Did the VAX win out because it
was DEC (market prominence, etc.) or because in the main it was a better
machine, or some other reason?
(I used and programmed with 780's and 750's under both VMS and BSD in the
80's
but never worked with DG machines.)
4 Jun
4 Jun
11:36 p.m.
From: Rich Alderson
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 12:26 PM
I first read _Soul_ as a serial in _Computerworld_ in
the summer of 1977,
and enjoyed it enough that I put it on my Christmas list (hey, I was still
in grad school and had no money for extra books). Even so...
Ha. No, I didn't. Summer of 1977 I was still in New Haven working on being
a grad student there. I read it in 1981, when it was published, like anyone
else.
Some of the ECC bits aren't quite up to snuff, any longer, but the backing
store eventually catches up.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
7:15 p.m.
From: Keith Monahan
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 9:23 PM
Has anyone read Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and
the Dawn of the
Computer Age ?
You should also read _Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored,
the First Personal Computer_, first published in 1988 when the look&feel
lawsuits were getting hot.
For those interested in the business side of this kind of book, there is a
good bit more of that here.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
5690
days inactive
5697
days old
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