Re: : 20ish years old: Gray's survey of Computer Industry Laws

On 06/09/2014 01:17 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> (Personal annecdote: I was always interested in having my own
> computer.  But I didn't buy a microcomputer early because they were so
> useless for my purposes compared with the UNIX machines I used.  I was
> able to buy my own UNIX machine in 1983.)

My first computer was an IMSAI 8080, a better quality clone of the
Altair, which I bought in Nov. 1976.  I later worked on the PDP-8i and
Data General Nova 800 computers.  My  IMSAI could have provided similar
or better performance.

>
> The VAX was a big success as a computer sold for business
> applications, something earlier minicomputers were mostly technically
> capable of but not culturally capable of.  It was a breakthrough
> computer.
From 1977 to 1989, I was a computer tech, working on minicomputers,
including the VAX 11/780.  I also worked on the Collins C8500 system,
which was a mil spec version of an IBM mainframe.  I realized it was
time to move into another area when the Intel 386 was announced and said
to be as powerful as the CPU in the VAX.  To me, that was the death
knell for minicomputers.
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