Any Pr1me fans out there?

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Tue Sep 8 14:38:57 1998

I have seen plenty of Pr1mes in junkyards, but most had received "the
treatment" before I could pull them.

> What's wrong with my IBM Series/1? Well, other than it isn't quite in
> working condition... I have the CPU converted to 110v(from 220v), but
> nothing else is going quite that well. But I'm happy now that I have a
> PDP-11/84 :-) That reminds me, I'm going to be getting rid of three IBM
> 4967 hard drives(220v) and a rack(hesitant to give it up, but I need the
> room), as well as a 4959 expansion unit.

Please pull all of the parts that you can out of these units - boards,
heads, maybe a motor or two. S/1s definitely are not in the common
category, so those of us with them (I think that makes the two of us!)
will have spares in the future. We all know how standard IBM parts are...

> Never heard of them. But I do have a question... Considering how powerful
> computers are getting, where do you draw the line between micros, minis and
> mainframes? The minis are getting small(take a look at the AS/400 line,
> about the size a a PC server for the smaller models), and you can even fit
> a miniature version of a S/370 into a PC(actually in two ways, IBM has a
> PCI card and I seem to remember a software emulator from somewhere)...
> Looking back to older computers it's pretty easy, but with the newer stuff
> it gets confusing.

The line between micros and workstations is getting very dull, but minis
are still minis and mainframes are still mainframes. Sure, everything now
fits on one chip (or maybe a few - no more scads of misc), but minis tend
to be multiprocessor boxes with _loads_ of memory and expandability.
Mainframes, of course, can always be characterized by theie I/O channels.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Tue Sep 08 1998 - 14:38:57 BST