andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner) (10/26/90)
Scott Glasser (glasser@dg-rtp.dg.com) writes:
"The US Geological Survey (DIS II) and Sprint International
have placed "bets" totaling over $150M that DG's AViiON 88k
Systems will be around at least until the late '90s."
I could make similar statements about companies that bet on the
Tektronix 88k system. In withdrawing from the market, we dealt a death
blow to at least two of them.
-=- Andrew Klossner (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew) [UUCP]
(andrew%frip.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA]massengi@unx.sas.com (Darrell Massengill) (11/13/90)
In article <9401@orca.wv.tek.com> andrew@frip.wv.tek.com writes: >Scott Glasser (glasser@dg-rtp.dg.com) writes: > > "The US Geological Survey (DIS II) and Sprint International > have placed "bets" totaling over $150M that DG's AViiON 88k > Systems will be around at least until the late '90s." > >I could make similar statements about companies that bet on the >Tektronix 88k system. In withdrawing from the market, we dealt a death >blow to at least two of them. > Did you really? I find that difficult to believe. They may have lost some non-BCS functionality that the Tektronix system offered, but the point of BCS is that their BCS applications and software can be moved to another hardware platform if necessary. They haven't lost any investment in software or development. I thought that Tek was going to offer some hardware support to the existing customer base for some time to come and that will take care of short term Maint. issues. In the long term, it will cost to upgrade because they will have to move to another BCS vendor, but I don't know if I would call that a "death blow". Disclaimer: Opinions are mine, mine, mine ... -- Darrell Massengill Manager of Host Development SAS Institute Inc. massengi@unx.sas.com (919) 677-8000 x7658 SAS Campus Dr, Cary, NC
andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner) (11/14/90)
I said:
"I could make similar statements about companies that bet on
the Tektronix 88k system. In withdrawing from the market, we
dealt a death blow to at least two of them."
To which Darrell Massengill (massengi@unx.sas.com) replied:
"Did you really? I find that difficult to believe ... They may
have lost some non-BCS functionality that the Tektronix system
offered, but the point of BCS is that their BCS applications
and software can be moved to another hardware platform if
necessary."
(Maybe it's not of general interest, but at least it concerns the 88k
chip, in marked contrast to some recent postings here.)
There's nothing in the BCS about how to do graphics or imaging, the
features along which Tektronix tried to differentiate its product line.
The BCS-compliant portions of the applications in question were quite
small. Opening and reading a file is cheap; rendering geometry models
from that file into a 3D screen image takes a huge amount of
system-dependent code.
-=- Andrew Klossner (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew) [UUCP]
(andrew%frip.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA]