On 04/20/2018 03:23 AM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote: > That reminds me of when I phoned IBM here in Ireland looking for software > support for their VM mainframe operating system not too many years later, > sometime in the early 1990s. I spelled out every variation of the name > I could think of but they kept asking me what version of OS/2 I had. > I guess by then the circle had turned again.
Around 1983-4, we were looking for a smallish minicomputer to share the workload of our VAX 11/750. So we were considering alternatives. Since the 750 was running BSD, we definitely wanted another Unix box. I saw a product announcement for the AT&T 3B5 mini and it looked like something that might fit the bill. So, I wanted to find out about pricing and where we could benchmark one. AT&T had just gone through its breakup/"consent decree", so I placed a call to AT&T Sales and asked about the 3B5. I was transfered several times to various sales types who didn't have the faintest idea of what I was talking about, even after I read them the product announcement. It was an hour of being transfered from department to department, with absolutely no satisfaction. We eventually gave up--if AT&T was going to be this difficult just to *sell* us a system, what kind of nightmare was *support* likely to be? The only computer anyone knew anything about was the PC 6300. I told them that I could drop by the Sears Computer Store (remember those?) on El Camino and take one home this evening if that's what I wanted. In the end, they offered to send us some literature--you guessed it--that described the 6300. --Chuck
