Sun and the CPU Wars (was Re: NeXT cubes or slabs.)

From: John Ruschmeyer <jruschme_at_exit109.com>
Date: Fri Jun 26 18:35:04 1998

Bill/Carolyn Pechter wrote:
> >
> > William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net> wrote:
> > > Actually, the 88000 was killed off because Sun went with the SPARCs for
> > > their next generation of machines, the Sun-4 series.
> >
> > So...how did/do you read the 386i? Back then, I read it as Sun
> > hedging its bets against a total victory by Intel in the CPU Wars of
> > the late 1980s: they could sell Motorola, Intel, and SPARC today
> > (today being then, not now) and promise to be around tomorrow no
> > matter what the CPU of tomorrow looked like.

Well, given the number of x86s running some variant of Unix, it looks
like they had the right idea, but too early. Imagine Solaris on a Sun
686i.... :-)

> I read the 386i as the Unix machine which had some dos compatibility
> possibilites.
>
> Until the SunPC software SunPC card for the Sparc there was no way the
> Word/Excel business types could use both Sun and Win easily.

Well, two things...

First, remember that this was 1989, so Windows is not an issue.
Basically, it had to be able to run Lotus 1-2-3, Harvard Graphics, Word
Perfect, etc.

Second, SunPC and the hardware card have their roots all the way back to
the Sun 3 era. IIRC, there was a VME bus 286 coprocessor card.

> I think they would've had a better shot with a better Intel Processor.
> The 386i was the best they had at that time. The 486i would've been
> much better for them -- but was dead before final introduction.

Supposedly there was a couple of protypes, but that's all.

IMHO, the real problem with the 386i was the same one as with the AT&T
UnixPC. Basically, it wasn't a real engineering workstation, so the
traditional Sun buyers couldn't get interested and it wasn't a PC, so
the suits couldn 't get interested.

To some degree this split still exists. SunPC, Wabi, etc. are all great
products, but their real demand, when all is said and done, is to allow
a few "key" applications (MS Office, mostly) to run in an otherwise pure
Unix environment.

<<<John>>>

P.S. Out of curiousity, how "interesting" is a 386i from a
collectability standpoint? I may have an opportunity to get one, but is
it really worth it?
Received on Fri Jun 26 1998 - 18:35:04 BST