[Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 145, Issue 52

[William Pechter]

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>    1. Re:  VAX/VMS (Timothe Litt)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 10:23:12 -0500
> From: Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org>
> To: simh at trailing-edge.com
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX/VMS
> Message-ID: <56C33EE0.3070100 at ieee.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On 16-Feb-16 10:16, Dave Wade wrote:
>> I
>>
>>
>> I think it is also interesting to compare the Intel architecture which
>> was designed to be economical with Silicon against the M6800, M6809
>> and the M68000 which were designed to be programmer friendly, and of
>> course note the similarities between the 68000 & S/360 with 16 general
>> purpose registers and orthogonal instruction set) and wonder where we
>> would be today had IBM chosen them for its PC rather than the 8086
>> which I assume was cheaper…
>>
>>
> I worked with IBM in Boca Raton at one point.  This is where the IBM PC
> was developed, and I talked with some of the originators.
>
> They told me that they considered the 8086, the 68000 & the T11 for the
> PC.  They really, really wanted the -11.  IBM had the largest population
> of -11 programmers in the world at one time.  They used the 11 for
> manufacturing and real-time.  There was a huge amount of software.  But
> DEC wouldn't sell the -11 to them.  So they went for price and that deal
> with Gates to write DOS.  Neither was supposed to last...
>
Boy -- that could've been a saving thing for DEC in '86 or so.   A lot
of $$$ for chip sales and maybe IBM second sourcing the T11.

Actually, one of DEC's biggest mistakes was not OEMing the uVax chips...
They would've killed the 68k had they had the uVaxII chipset
available for early workstations. 

That revenue could've given them the cash they needed to push the Alpha
and 64 bit computing.


Bill

-- 
Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-gmail.com  http://xkcd.com/705/