tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay) (05/02/89)
I might be consulting for a company that is running a large application written in DIBOL. They want to upgrade from their 11/70 platform. DEC proposes a Micro Vax. The prices are outrageous. They charge about $8,000 for each incremental 10-user license. They charge about $11,500 for each disk drive! Questions: 1. Does the software restrict you from running more users than you are licensed? 2. Do other vendors make RS232 serial boards for the MV3300? 3. What do I need to know about finding alternate vendors for disk space? I suppose I would need controller cards that would hook up to Maxtor disks, for example? 4. Are there other platforms that run DIBOL? Preferably under Unix? Tim
jmarek@td2cad.intel.com (John Marek) (05/04/89)
In article <10547@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes: >I might be consulting for a company that is running a large >application written in DIBOL. They want to upgrade from their 11/70 >platform. DEC proposes a Micro Vax. The prices are outrageous. They >charge about $8,000 for each incremental 10-user license. They charge >about $11,500 for each disk drive! I wouldn't jump too fast on the "prices are outrageous" bandwagon. The company probably paid $200K for their 11/70 if they bought it new. An MV3300 even with DEC drives and the VMS license is probably less than $100K. >Questions: > 1. Does the software restrict you from running more users > than you are licensed? VMS does restrict the number of INTERACTIVE users (via direct login or SET HOST). It does not restrict the number of non-interactive processes. > 2. Do other vendors make RS232 serial boards for the MV3300? There are tons of third-party peripherals of all types for Q-bus devices. I would recommend Emulex or Able for serial ports. You may also want to check the used equipment market for DEC stuff. (Personally, I recommend terminal servers if you can afford them). > 3. What do I need to know about finding alternate vendors > for disk space? I suppose I would need controller cards that > would hook up to Maxtor disks, for example? Try SI or Emulex. > 4. Are there other platforms that run DIBOL? Preferably > under Unix? Supposedly there are a lot of DIBOL-clones on the market (not called DIBOL since that's trademarked). I haven't found any (haven't looked that hard). We only use DIBOL in a very limited way under VMS but I would be interested in a UNIX version. >Tim John. -- John Marek, Intel Corp (...!decwrl!td2cad!jmarek -- jmarek@td2cad.intel.com) Any opinions in the above text are not Intel's. Therefore, they are correct.
tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay) (05/07/89)
>In article (Timothy L. Kay) (that's me) writes: >>I might be consulting for a company that is running a large >>application written in DIBOL. They want to upgrade from their 11/70 >>platform. DEC proposes a Micro Vax. The prices are outrageous. They >>charge about $8,000 for each incremental 10-user license. They charge >>about $11,500 for each disk drive! In article (John Marek) writes: >I wouldn't jump too fast on the "prices are outrageous" bandwagon. The >company probably paid $200K for their 11/70 if they bought it new. An MV3300 >even with DEC drives and the VMS license is probably less than $100K. First, let me thank John Marek for his response, which was for the most part very helpful. I must take issue with the above comment, however. First of all, while they may have paid significantly more for their 11/44 (I was wrong when I reported that they have an 11/70), this is no excuse for DEC charging extremely high prices by today's market. The going rate for hard disks was indeed very high a few years ago. Now, however, disk drives can be purchased for about $5/MB. This means that the above 800 MB should cost about $4,000. To charge five times as much seems like gouging to me. It is easy to avoid paying DEC for disk space, though, as there are many vendors that make alternatives available. What really gets me is that DEC is charging a per-user licensing. When I buy a carton of ice cream, I pay the same amount of money whether one person or twelve are going to eat from it. For somebody to charge varying amounts of money for the *same* product just because I use it in a different manor than somebody else is ludicrous. And, when they bought their 11/44, they didn't pay a per-user license for their RSTS/E. It demonstrates that DEC is only recently suffering from IBM-itis. However, such policies make it easy for me to conclude, I will not buy a product from DEC unless there is no alternative. Fortunately, DEC has no differentiator that we are concerned about. With respect to DIBOL, I have found a company DISC 11070 White Rock Road, Suite 210 Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 916-635-7300 (Thanks, John Stampfl, for alerting me to them!) which will allow us to discard our ("outrageously expensive") DEC alternative in favor of Suns or MIPs. The price for a complete system could end up under $20,000 rather than around $80,000. I'll bet it will perform better, as well. Tim
don@grc.UUCP (Donald D. Woelz) (05/11/89)
In article <10547@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes: > >I might be consulting for a company that is running a large >application written in DIBOL. They want to upgrade from their 11/70 >platform. DEC proposes a Micro Vax. The prices are outrageous. They >charge about $8,000 for each incremental 10-user license. They charge >about $11,500 for each disk drive! > > 4. Are there other platforms that run DIBOL? Preferably > under Unix? Our company, GENROCO, Inc., manufactures a UNIX engine based on the National Semiconductor 32332 running System V Release 3.0. We also have available a DIBOL compiler from DISC called DBL that runs in this UNIX environment. This CPU is designed to run on the DEC Qbus but has been used successfully on UNIBUS machines such as the 11/44 and the 11/84 through the use of the ABLE Microverter bus converter. The cost to upgrade is low compared to the above. If you want some more information, please send me email or call. -- Don Woelz {ames, rutgers, harvard}!uwvax!uwmcsd4!grc!don GENROCO, Inc. Phone: 414-644-8700 205 Kettle Moraine Drive North Fax: 414-644-6667 Slinger, WI 53086 Telex: 6717062 or 158279420
ecf_stbo@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Tom B O'toole) (05/12/89)
In article <10591@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes: > What really gets me is >that DEC is charging a per-user licensing. When I buy a carton of ice >cream, I pay the same amount of money whether one person or twelve are >going to eat from it. For somebody to charge varying amounts of money >for the *same* product just because I use it in a different manor than Well, I agree that the per user license prices are pretty out there, but so are the unlimited use license prices! DEC is going to have to be careful of pricing themselves out of the market, with software more so than hardware. I must disagree with your statement above however. Why should a site with only a few users have to pay the same amount for a software product as a large company which has hundreds of users using the same product as the main application? At academic sites where I have been employed, you can often get nice discounts, but you still get killed when they base software price on CPU type. An academic site usually doesn't have a few applications that every user runs, but many different ones, to try to accomodate the different users needs. When just a very few users need a particular product, the site must often do without, although the purchase could have been justified if there was a per-user license available. To my eyes, CPU type pricing is much more unfair than per-user pricing. It seems to be based on the "deep-pockets" theory: "Let's take 'em to the cleaners because they bought a bigger machine", rather than any kind of estimate of usage. Perhaps the only thing that screws the consumer more is software that checks the SID register (whoa, don't get me started....). Software isn't ice cream and shouldn't be purchased that way. -- Tom O'Toole - ecf_stbo@jhuvms.bitnet JHUVMS system programmer Guess we should'a bought that fan belt Homewood Computing Facilities here Rick; it would have been a lot cheaper. Johns Hopkins University, Balto. Md. 21218 -Rascal Reporters