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Re: Harvest time!

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Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> IBM went much, much further. Remember, they pioneered the concept of
> “FUD” (“Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”) to scare customers off rivals’
> products, as notoriously happened with CDC. They didn’t have product
> superiority, but they had marketing superiority. Their products were
> clunky, expensive and inflexible, as well as being outdated in many
> ways, but they still dominated the market (at least for mainframes)
> because “nobody got fired for buying IBM”.

Amdahl won the battle to make ACS, 360 compatible ... and he left when
it was killed (folklore that they were afraid ACS/360 would advance the
state of art too fast and IBM woould loose control of the market).
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

above list most aggregate MIPS was 360/65 at 23%, univac 1108 2nd at 14%
and CDC 6600 3rd at 10%

About the same time, I was undergraduate and hired fulltime into small
group in Boeing CFO office to help with the formation of Boeing Computer
Service (consolidate all dataprocessing into independent business
unit). I think Renton datacenter largest in the world. 360/65s arriving
faster than they could be installed (boxes constantly staged in hallways
around the machine room) ... comments that Boeing was ordering 360/65s
like other companies ordered keypunch machines. Both IBM and Boeing told
story than day 360 was announced (7Apr1964), Boeing walks in with order
making the IBM marketing rep highest paid IBM employee that year (still
straight commission, following year IBM moves to quota). When I
graduate, I join the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center (instead of staying
with Boeing CFO).

In 1st part of 70s, IBM has "Future System" project. During "FS",
internal politics was killing off 370 efforts and the lack of new 370s
is credited with giving the clone 370 makers their market foothold (and
marketing "FUD", Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt; really came to
forefront. When FS finally implodes there is mad rush to get stuff back
into the 370 product pipelines ... including kicking off the quick and
dirty 3033 and 3081 efforts in parallel
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Future_Systems_project
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html

... from "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World"
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Wars-The-Post-IBM-World/dp/1587981394/

... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr
of free and vigorous debate was replaced with *SYNCOPHANCY* and *MAKE NO
WAVES* under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in
the shadow of defeat ... But because of the heavy investment of face by
the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrong
headedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during
F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former
top executive

... snip ...

trivia: 3081 was going to only be multiprocessor systems. The 1st 3081D
ship was 2-CPU that had less aggregate MIPs than the Amdahl single
processor. IBM doubles the 3081 processor caches for 3081K, bringing
aggregate MIPS up to about the same as Amdahl 1-CPU. However, IBM's
favorite son batch operating system ("MVS") documentation had its 2-CPU
only getting 1.2-1.5 times throughput of one CPU (because of inefficient
multiprocessor support), as a result a MVS 3081K (with approx same
aggregate MIPs) only had .6-.75 throughput as a MVS 1-CPU Amdahl.

trivia2: also after FS implodes, I got asked to help with 16-CPU 370 and
we con the 3033 processor engineers working on it in their spare time (a
lot more interesting than remapping 168 logic to 20% faster
chips). Everybody thought it was great until somebody tells the head of
POK (IBM high-end processors) that it could be decades before IBM's
favorite son batch operating system ("MVS") had (effective) 16-CPU
support (IBM doesn't ship 16-CPU system until after turn of the
century) and some of us were told to never visit POK again (and the 3033
processor engineers were told, "heads down and no distractions").

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

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Harvest time! David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> - 2026-10-01 02:06 +0000
  Re: Harvest time! Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-10-01 11:26 -0300
    Re: Harvest time! Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> - 2026-10-01 23:44 +0800
    Re: Harvest time! David LaRue <huey.dll@tampabay.rr.com> - 2026-10-01 21:22 +0000
  Re: Harvest time! Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-01 22:11 +0000
    Re: Harvest time! Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-10-01 20:05 -0700
      Re: Harvest time! Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-02 04:50 +0000
        Re: Harvest time! Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-10-02 18:17 +0000
          Re: Harvest time! Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-02 21:44 +0000
            Re: Harvest time! Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2026-10-02 13:43 -1000
              Re: Harvest time! James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-10-03 19:31 +0000
                Re: Harvest time! Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-03 21:43 +0000
                Re: Harvest time! Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2026-10-03 16:16 -1000
                Re: Harvest time! James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-10-06 21:23 +0000
  Re: Harvest time! John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2026-10-02 01:48 +0000

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