Honeywell Bull + [OT] insert

From: RICCARDO <chemif_at_mbox.queen.it>
Date: Wed May 19 22:15:38 1999

At 17:09 18/05/99 -0500, you wrote:
>On 18 May 99, at 16:58, Jay West wrote:
>
>> I am by no means well acquainted with the Honeywell line. But I was under
>> the impression that a Honeywell DPS was never called a BULL, it was called
>> a DPS.
This is true:I also know that Bull put the label "Honeywell/Bull" on many
machines that were projected under Honeywell and still in the market when
they step in (e.g. I've personally seen many CQ36 and CQ38 printers with
both labels, according to theyr manufacturing period).

>> The only system with the Honeywell brand that was called a BULL was
>> actually an OEM'ed RS6000 that Honeywell put the BULL label on.
>> Can someone confirm or deny?
This is not true.
After the DPS and before the RS6000 line, BULL presented a line of machines that
should be a connecting ring between the DPS architecture and the UNIX.

>Don't know about that but I have a box which I picked up from a
>company I worked for a long time ago which was always called a
>Honeywell Bull. It wasn't an RS6000 but used an M68020.

The family name was DPX/2 and models no's went from 210 to 380
In the company where I work we are still running a DPX/2 380 under B.O.S.IX
The machine was the last one that used the Motorola 68000 family.
If I remember correctly, 2xx family was monoprocessors while 3xx where multi;
DPX320 and DPX360 used 68020 and 68030.
Ours (380) has one 68040 at 25 Mhz but could accept up to 4 CPU.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Begin [OT] corner about price policy and machines sizing

The funny (or sad) about that is that the expandibility offered by those
machines are always not a good policy: After 3 years (1995) from the
installation date, I decided to check the opportunity to upgrade the machine
with another cpu. The official price was
21 million lira! (Abt 12 thousand USD) that was nearly the current price for
a new system with a Pentium class processor: instead of adapting the price
to the current market value price, they keep (or increase) the pricelist,
probably to better convince them to change earlier the machine.
I believe this policy is widely spread between constructors of propietary
architectures machines.
Now since the old DPX wouldn't see the lights of the new year in a sane
condition, I'm quite indecided between the purchase of an entry level
machine (you keep it 3-4 years then change without upgrades) or just a step
further, with 2way processor capability.
Do you have any personal experience on that?.

End of [OT] corner
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming back to DPX family...well before the IBM collaborations (and shares
exchange)
on the PowerPc architecture, Bull released a contemporary line machine based
on a RISC
processor that still used BOSIX. Again the name was DPX/2 (cannot remember
models name).
After this model Bull came out with Estrella and Escala PPC machines. Some
machines where developed by Bull and manufactured by IBM for both labels,
some were developed and made by Bull.

Ciao
Riccardo Romagnoli
<chemif_at_mbox.queen.it>
I-47100 Forl?
Received on Wed May 19 1999 - 22:15:38 BST