gauging interest in VAX 6000-530

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Sun Oct 24 22:34:56 1999

  I really hate to become a part of this stupid flame war, but there are some
real misconceptions here that I really feel the need to try to address.
Nothing personal; smarter people than I have been known to fall for PC-itis.

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Mike Cheponis wrote:
>> >My main belief is that nobody is going to keep a VAX anything running with
>> >dozens of simultaneous users. So, if a VAX is to be something close
>> >to "useful" today, it'll be in single-user mode. In that case, Integer
>> >performance is very important.
>>
>> Ah, to bad you don't know what you're talking about here. I know of a
>> certain major corporation that just got done putting a whole pile of new
>> VAX 7000's in a brand new computer room. Said corporation has numerous
>> computer rooms with VAXen, and these systems are heavily used.
>
>Maybe I should have said "Nobody -sane- is going to....".

  I'm generally considered to be rather sane, and if I'm betting my reputation
and my company's livelihood on it, I sure would.

>The paradigm today is client on Ethernet, server cluster in the back room.
>Scalable, cheap, reliable.

  You mean "the paradigm that vendors want to sell today is..."

  Keep in mind that there are computer rooms other than yours, with different
requirements than yours, doing different things than yours. It's easy to put
blinders on and think "what works for me ought to work for anybody" (hell, I do
it all the time myself!)...but keep in mind that people do *different* things
with computers.

>One Big Box In The Back Room is what people did in the 40s, 50s and 60s.....

  And 70s and 80s and 90s. It's not going away anytime soon. Just because it
was also done a long time ago doesn't mean it sucks now.

  "Wow, when are you going to get rid of that automobile? People used those
way back in the 30's, man! Throw that old shit away!"

>>>Hey, I'm not saying the original IBM PC was going to outperform the VAX 6500;
>>>but a modern PC will crush any VAX in any application, IMHO, with equivalent
>>>h/w attached.
>>
>> Speed isn't everything.
>
>You're right, speed isn't everything; it's the -only- thing! ;-)

  I think the point was "integer cpu speed" isn't everything...which is about
all a "modern" PC has. There's more to computer architecture than clock speed.
A 500MHz PentiumIII has better raw integer performance than a VAX9000...but a
VAX9000 can easily handle upwards of a thousand interactive users without
breaking a sweat. The pentium will fold up with a hundred at most.

  Too many smart people have fallen for Intel's marketing and PC hype. Don't
be one of them. Real computers are still available...you just can't buy them
in malls.

                -Dave McGuire
Received on Sun Oct 24 1999 - 22:34:56 BST