On 06/24/11 04:44, Boudewijn Dijkstra wrote: > Some of the historic fortune(6) adages are good to have, but I have my > doubts about this one: > > ======================================================================= > Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has > a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk > storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on > voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. > What's the first question that the computer community asks? > > "Is it PC compatible?" > ======================================================================= > >
What lie? Looks dead-on to me. As someone who's interest in the small computer predates the IBM PC (0.625M RAM, 10M HD, 4.8MHz proc, 320x200 graphics), I can relate to everything on that quote, other than an imbalance in the imagined progress (STILL waiting for my 4096x4096 screen). yes, there was a time when "Meg" was a woman's name and Gig was something a band did, and if you said "gigahertz" to someone, they'd probably look around to see if there were any children or members of the opposite sex around, and all those numbers were absurdly big. Long ago (~1989), in a job much closer than where I'm working now, I worked for Zenith Data Systems. We had an interesting machine called a Z-1000 -- an asymetric multi-processor machine (20MHz 80386 work processors, 16MHz 80386 control processor...or maybe other way around, I'm not going to swear to those specs), fair amount of RAM for the day per processor, no video board, lots of serial port concentrators. Ran SCO Xenix, about the size of a dorm room fridge, and a lot heavier. To deal with the questions (which I found annoying), I put a sign on it, "Zenith Z-1000. Not PC Compatable. Will not run Flight Simulator, will not run Lotus 123, not even at gun point". I was somewhat horrified to find out it would boot a PC's version of MSDOS over the serial console, but fortunately no one noticed my experiment or that it worked. Didn't sell a single one of them. That's all people wanted to know. "Is it PC compatible? Does it run Flight Simulator? Does it run Lotus 123?" (FS and 123 were the benchmarks of PC compatibility. In the earlier days, there were a few machines which were built to the benchmarks, ran Lotus 123 and Flight Simulator and little else). Nick. (showing his age)
