IBM System/1

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Mon Jul 10 20:16:15 2000

> A minicomputer. In some sense an incompatible followon to the
> IBM 1130 & 1800.

And a real dud, at that. It was to be a family of PDP-11 killers. IBM
started to figure out what DEC was all about in the early 1970s, and the
S/1 (actually its a "Series", not a "System" - nit) was born. I think
they started being deployed in 1976 or so. They were big on intelligent
I/O (many of the I/O cards look about as complex as the processor!). In
terms of architecture, they were roughly CISCy, like a PDP-11 or 16 bit
"S/360".

The S/1s turned out to be a huge flop. The PDP-11 didn't die. In the S/1s
defense, they were well built. Comparing an S/1 to a PDP-11 shows just
how much ahead of DEC IBM was in the field of packaging and integration.

> Please save the docs! If noone who actually has a System/1 needs them,
> I'd like to have them, and would be happy to pay postage.

Yes, please save the docs. I think a few of us have S/1 hardware (I do,
anyway) that may need docs.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Mon Jul 10 2000 - 20:16:15 BST