chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (06/16/88)
In article <1105@unmvax.unm.edu> mike@turing.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell) writes: >... DEC has a competitor for Ultrix, but the response has not been to >improve Ultrix, it has been to keep hardware manuals secret so UCB >can't write drivers. Unless there is a conspiracy of which I am unaware (which is of course possible), this is not why DEC clings to their hardware documentation so tightly. Rather, it is in a (laughably ineffective) attempt to keep hardware vendors like Emulex from gleaning some of `their' market share. From my vantage point, the only thing this policy gets DEC is lost sales, because I recommend against products for which detailed manuals are not available. (Ah well: we already have our revenge :-) , as the RISC machines sweep past DEC while DEC's marketing dithers. If they had brought out their RISC [nicknamed Titan, I believe] four years ago, they might have the lead.) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
haugj@pigs.UUCP (The Beach Bum) (06/17/88)
In article <11990@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > (Ah well: we already have our revenge :-) , as the RISC machines sweep > past DEC while DEC's marketing dithers. If they had brought out their > RISC [nicknamed Titan, I believe] four years ago, they might have the > lead.) > -- > In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) The world is already having their revenge on DEC. Micros and superMicros are sweeping way past DEC. They are losing market share to Sun's and Apollo's, which are little more than souped up PC's. As for the Titan, (you did notice the Followup-To:, right? ;-), I had heard the following rumors: (these are _just_ rumors, remember) Venus - superVax - turned out to be the VaxCluster Jupiter - new 36 bit machine - got dropped with DECSystem 20 Titan - Cray-caliber 36 bit machine - dropped same as Jupiter Did I miss some of the rumors while I was gone??? - John. -- The Beach Bum Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers UUCP: ...!killer!rpp386!jfh jfh@rpp386.uucp :SMAILERS "You are in a twisty little maze of UUCP connections, all alike" -- fortune
heisterb@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (06/19/88)
/* Written 11:10 am Jun 17, 1988 by haugj@pigs.UUCP in uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.unix.questions */ /* ---------- "Re: DEC hardware manuals" ---------- */ Venus - superVax - turned out to be the VaxCluster /* End of text from uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:comp.unix.questions */ I think Venus was the code name for the 8600. Which, except for the marketing people would have been called the 11/790, as that's what the processor type is in the technical writings.
david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) (06/20/88)
In article <11990@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > (Ah well: we already have our revenge :-) , as the RISC machines sweep > past DEC while DEC's marketing dithers. If they had brought out their > RISC [nicknamed Titan, I believe] four years ago, they might have the > lead.) But as Ken Olson said recently: "RISC is irrelevant" ;-) -- David Robinson elroy!david@csvax.caltech.edu ARPA david@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov ARPA {cit-vax,ames}!elroy!david UUCP Disclaimer: No one listens to me anyway!
hershman@acf3.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman) (06/21/88)
I don't know about how Titan fits in, but my understanding is that
both the Venus and Jupiter projects were failing and some manager was
smart enough to figure out that one project could succeed if the two
were merged. Given that DEC (Gordon Bell, in particular) had wanted
to kill off the 36 bit line for years for political reasons, that
choice was easy to make. Alan Kotok and company made the first VAX
which looked like a PDP-10 sans 4 bits -- the VAX-8600 "Venus".
-Ittai
PS: The above is all based on gossip and hearsay mixed with a bit of
common-sense. If anyone was there, I'd be interested hearing what
really happened.vixie@palo-alto.DEC.COM (Paul Vixie) (06/21/88)
In article <11990@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > (Ah well: we already have our revenge :-) , as the RISC machines sweep > past DEC while DEC's marketing dithers. If they had brought out their > RISC [nicknamed Titan, I believe] four years ago, they might have the > lead.) Maybe so. DEC WRL has a thing we call a "Titan," and it's RISC, but I don't know if it was ever planned as a product. (I've checked with some folks around here and they've told me that the box is no secret, so I'm not going to be fired for talking about it.) We had the name before Dana/Ardent existed, but since it wasn't going to be a product, the name didn't get trademarked. Sigh. So now when I go out to dinner with friends from Ardent and I tell them the latest thing I found trying to make X11 clients work on a Titan, they get confused. "Oh, the DEC Titan." "No, the _Titan_. You work on the Ardent Titan." Smiles all around. Great boxes, though. I would have recommended to my clients that they purchase them, back when I was a consultant, except that they aren't a product and I'd never heard of them before I came here anyway. Just setting a small part of the story straight. Disclaimer: just me, folks. -- Paul Vixie Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013
shan@mcf.UUCP (Sharan Kalwani) (06/22/88)
In article <7064@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) writes: > >But as Ken Olson said recently: > > "RISC is irrelevant" > >;-) I have learned some time ago - Ken Olsen is irrevelant. A lot of things he says always seem quite the contrary to what DEC ends up doing. As Barry Shein once eloquently put it "They ought to put him out to pasture". From what I understood at a recent gathering DEC had in our area, they already have about 150 systems internally running RISC and were talking about a January '89 release. What actually happens, well...your guess is as good as mine ;-). -- sharan kalwani ....!{uunet!umix, pur-ee!iuvax, ucbvax!mtxinu}!mcf!shan internet: shan%mcf.uucp@umix.cc.umich.edu shan@mcf.uucp "The answer is UNIX: now what was the question?" -- title of a technical report published by some one in some university somewhere in the UK.