Corrections to trivia

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Tue Oct 6 22:04:47 1998

< major an impact the military has played on computers. The ENIAC,
< F14CADC, DEC Alpha, and other stuff I'm sure can all be attributed
< to the pentagon.

While the military was a prime consumer of advaced technoology and even
fostered some, how the hell did DEC Alpha get in there? Alpha was
developed by DEC as an answer to what to do to create the next generation
of better than VAX machines (they were betting the farm on it too!).
It was the exact thing DEC was doing when they developed the VAX to
better the PDP-11.
 
< And _that_ is significant because instead of saying that the computer
< is a triumph of enterpreneurs and daring capitalists, we can _also_
< say that it is a triumph of America's great war machine.

political crock unfortunatly. Most of the developments were actually
driven trying to be better than that competition. At that time you had
AMD, AMI, Intel Fairchild, RCA, Signetics, TI, motorola, MOS technology,
SMC and that's only the few. That commercial space battle was far higher
pitched and far longer lasting than any war.

Also if anything any of the guys here that were in the military will
tell you while the F14 CADC or other hardware were at one time advaced
they also tended to stay in service for many years after the commercial
space caught up and passed it!

Allison
Received on Tue Oct 06 1998 - 22:04:47 BST