Groups | Search | Server Info | Login | Register

Groups > comp.sys.prime > #469

Re: Pr1me OAS again

Show all headers | View raw

On 12/6/2023 7:19 PM, Dennis Boone wrote:
>   > Having been involved in pre-sales competition with DEC using Pr1me
>   > 50-series I can assure you moving to a VAX would have been a losing
>   > proposition.  We beat out the VAX on every benchmark we ever did.
>   > Sadly, we often found ourselves competing against, "I don't care
>   > which machine wins as long as it says VAX on the front."
> 
> Well, until Prime got far behind the performance curve.  Marketroids-
> excluded performance numbers for later machines were heavily inflated.
> The fastest single Prime processor was maybe 10 MIPS.  And Prime never
> addressed the slow backplane bus in the 50 Series, so when DEC did the
> higher performance interconnects, they were likely faster at I/O too.
> 

The last one of these bids I worked  on we provided two boxes of
greenbar fan-fold paper with benchmark results.  Dec provided a
letter in an envelope that said if the machine we are bidding was
in production these would be the results.  That bidding conference
was where and when I heard the quote above.  I learned a big lesson
that day.

But, it all turned out well in the end.  DEC won. Delivered a
massively slower machine while waiting for the one they bid to
actually go into production.  And the real story came out. DEC
had bid a VAX running VMS.  The man who made the infamous quote
above was insistent on it having to be a VAX because he had
received a whole bunch of free scientific software from Kitt's
Peak Observatory.  You guessed it.  It all ran on BSD.  :-)

bill

Back to comp.sys.prime | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Pr1me OAS again Peter Ruscoe <plruscoe@gmail.com> - 2023-11-28 15:17 -0800
  Re: Pr1me OAS again drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2023-11-30 01:32 +0000
    Re: Pr1me OAS again bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2023-11-30 09:14 -0500
      Re: Pr1me OAS again drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2023-12-07 00:19 +0000
        Re: Pr1me OAS again bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2023-12-10 12:20 -0500
          Re: Pr1me OAS again drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2023-12-10 17:49 +0000
            Re: Pr1me OAS again bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2023-12-10 15:10 -0500
              Re: Pr1me OAS again drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2023-12-11 03:44 +0000
                Re: Pr1me OAS again bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2023-12-11 10:18 -0500

csiph-web