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From: jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.misc
Subject: Re: DEC and The Americans
Date: 3 Feb 2016 14:25:01 GMT
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William Pechter wrote:
> In article <PM00052A523B95B608@aca4109b.ipt.aol.com>,
> jmfbahciv  <See.above@aol.com> wrote:
>>Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> "jmfbahciv" <See.above@aol.com> wrote in message
>>> news:PM00052A3CF4346EF5@aca46c41.ipt.aol.com...
>>>> Michael Black wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, RS Wood wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyone here familiar with that TV series, The Americans?[1]  If you're
>>>>>> not,
>>>> I
>>>>>> can recommend it - it's pretty well done drama, set in about 1982
>>>> Washington
>>>>>> DC, where undercover KGB agents and the FBI are facing off.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thought I'd mention it because every scene shot within the Russian
>>>>>> embassy
>>>> to
>>>>>> the USA (ie, the USSR's building in Washington DC) features a lot of
>>>>>> prominent shots of DEC VT100 terminals gracing everyone's desks.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At first I thought, typical Hollywood - they chose DEC because the
>>>> terminals
>>>>>> look a bit more dated than the more modern PCs sitting on the desks of
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> FBI, but poking around a bit [2], it might be accurate: the VT100
>>>>>> reigned
>>>>>> from about 1978 to 1982, so that would correspond with the show.
>>>>>>
>>>>> But could the Soviets buy DEC computers?
>>>>
>>>
>>> One way the Soviets bought modern computers is to have a third-party in
some
>>> other country, like Germany or France, to buy the U.S. computer.  The
>>> computer would be transferred to the USSR in secret.  So the Soviets could
>>> *not* legally buy advanced US computers, but they could buy them through
>>> back-alley deals.
>>
>>They tried that but the VAX was intercepted, IIRC, in Germany.
>>
>>/BAH
>
> Yup...  let's see where it was... September 10, 1984 Computerworld.
>
> Page 4 -- DEC fined 1.5 million following export investigation (this was
> for a VAX 11/782 shipped via a German Company (Deutsche Integrated Time).
>
> The owner of DIT (Richard Mueller) had been involved in the 1970's in two
> export violation cases.
>
> The VAX 11/782 was such a crock we should've let them have it.

<grin>  Some people in Marlboro had a similar opinion.

> IIRC -- I had to move memory between the main cpu and attached processor
> so they could back up the beast at RCA's Semiconductor in Sommerville NJ...
>
> A flawed design hack which was master/slave and lousy. Software support
sucked.

Yea, well, the OS people at the time had biases which would keep the
OS from making that hardware work.

> They would've been better run as separate 11/780s... Probably put the
> Soviet computer program back a few years...
>
> https://goo.gl/7G86LH

I wonder why DEC got fined.  The story I heard was that DIT was
about a third or maybe fourth party so that the Feds wouldn't
be able to track the sale.

/BAH