Any Pr1me fans out there?

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Tue Sep 8 19:14:35 1998

> Microcomputer: a computer based on a single microprocessor.

Almost ALL machines today use just a few chips (at most) in the CPU. The
days of little glue logic chips are long gone. Some S/390s, for example,
typically use only two chips in the CPU, and only for redundancy! Same
with the AS/400s.

> Workstation: a computer designed to run Unix with a bitmapped display.

Unix? What about other OSes? Even NT...

> Minicomputer: a timesharing computer that can support fewer than 100
> simultaneous users.

Many minis do not timeshare - embedded control was and is a favorite duty.
PDP-8s were single user machines (yeah, I know about TSS/8, so keep
quite!), yet when someone says "mini", they instantly come to mind of many
people.

> Mainframe: a timesharing computer than can support 100 or more users
> simultaneously.

Many mainframe applications do not have lots of people online, all tapping
away at their terminals. Some of the big boxes do their best work when
everyone is sleeping.
 
I think the best definition for a "mainframe" is a machine designed not
for processor speed, but I/O speed (thus the use of channels - some
mainframe CPUs actually _idle_ under a heavy load, because the channels
are doing all the work).

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Tue Sep 08 1998 - 19:14:35 BST