SANTAS@GWUVM.BITNET (Photenos Santas) (11/14/87)
I have to agree with the recent message from Franco Carlacci concerning
the neglect granted by the list to the PRO. DEC might have disconnected
the production of both software and hardware for the aforementioned micro
for reasons that I (we) will never know, but this doesn't mean that the
interest in it has declined. In fact, once I asked a salesperson and he
could not explained to me why this line of products had been abandoned.
Obviously, I own one of these machines myself and try to experiment
with it as much as time permits. Limiting the interest of the group to
one particular product is neither constructive nor promoting the purposes
of networking.
I would really like to see some more attention, comments, info on this.
Photenosit goes goPETERSC@VUENGVAX.BITNET (11/15/87)
I must say the little I have seen of the PRO seems like a nice machine.
I bought a Rainbow (don't laugh) at a clearance sale a couple years ago
and got a bunch of disks for the PRO300 series. They are up for grabs for
the cost of shipping plus best offer.
PRO LIBRARY DSKT V1.0
PRO350 DEMO (NPL, TK!SOLVER)
PRO350 DEMO (FINGRAPH, VISICALC)
ROSS SYSTEMS MAPS/PRO CYCLING DEMO (PC350 VER)
PRO DISPATCH DSKT V1.0
PRO SYSTEM DSKT V1.0
PROSE DISKETTE V1.0
PRO INSTRUCTION V1.0
PRO/BASIC V1.0
P/OS HARD DISK SYS V1.0
PRO SETUP DISKETTE V1.0
(and other sales demos and such)
Anyone want this stuff? I can't use it, so it is going to waste.
-Chris Petersen
petersc@vuengvax.bitnet {@wiscvm.wisc.edu for internauts}dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser) (11/17/87)
Well, I may be able to shed a little light onto the fate of the late, lamented, PRO-300 family. I was working for DEC, and was involved at one level or another in the development of the PRO from very early on until P/OS V2.0 (or was it 3.0?)... I wrote graphics firmware for a few P/OS versions, and attended more meetings than I can recount. The problem with the PRO was that it never found its market. This machine was driven by MARKETING (insert flame here). These people made decisions which most of the engineers working on the product agreed would alienate the loyal PDP-11 following, ignore the base of software already available on for the PDP, and be generally hostile to the traditional DEC user. They wanted to go after the "Power Users". People who don't want to know anything, they just want it done. They chose to go with a modified version of RSX-11M Plus with no MCR, or even DCL, take away multi-user protection, drop a lot of CLI support, etc., and make the machine act like an applications engine. The RT-11 group developed for the PRO against the wishes of some of the managers responsible. The man in charge of software for the PRO at one time said that Unix would be available for the PRO only "over my dead body". The hardware engineers designed a reliable workhorse in a packaging that I've yet to see the equal of, and the product managers insisted that the floppy drive controller have its formatting logic removed so that cheap floppys could not be used (since they would have a high failure rate and some brands would screw up the RX-50 heads) because none were available certified for the high density (now being used by IBM AT's) and if the floppy format failed, the user might blame DEC! They then made application development too expensive and complicated for small organizations (The native toolkit helped, but not enough). No applications, no sales. No sales, no further development to extend the family. No further developments, no applications. Repeat application until out of business... RT-11 came too late to get the PRO into the lab. Unix came too late to get the PRO into the schools. Applications, if they came, were too late to get the PRO into the offices. Too bad. A machine with so much going for it was killed by bad marketing. If the engineers had had their way, it may have been different. -- Daniel A. Glasser ----------------------------------------+---------------------------- Cheese is not a discipline! | ...!ihnp4!chinet!dag | ...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag | ...!ihnp4!chinet!gorgon!dag Disclaimer: I assume full responsibility for my opinions. If my employer knew of some of them, I'd be unemployed.
D-ROGERS@EDWARDS-2060.ARPA (11/18/87)
The best use for those diskettes is to reformat to Rainbow config. and reuse. v1.0 is so far out of date (there's been 1.5, 1.7, 1.8, 2.0 and maybe more, since then - and v2.0 is three years old now) that it is almost useless. The demos might still be of interest to someone who hasn't seen them, but even there, they might prefer checking out the latest versions. [dale] "...of course my opinion differs from 'most everyone else! If it were the same, i'd probably have to change it, lest i remain in error." -------