[Info-vax] RealWorldTech on Poulson

[John Wallace]

On Jul 5, 2:47 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
wrote:
> On 7/4/2011 6:00 PM, John Wallace wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jul 4, 10:40 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> > undress to reply) wrote:
> >> In article
> >> <db641605-1816-415e-9a4b-109629d4e... at v12g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,
>
> >> John Wallace<johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk>  writes:
> >>> By the time the DIGITAL Personal Workstation(433, 500 and 600MHz,
> >>> fwiw) came out, the basic prices were reasonably competitive compared
> >>> with similarly configured UNIX workstations from other vendors (sorry,
> >>> no references right now).
>
> >> I remember once we had about DM 150,000 or so and wanted to buy the most
> >> computing power possible.  This was about 1995 (we reckoned DM 100 per
> >> MB for RAM, just to keep things in perspective; times have changed!).
> >> At the time, we had only early-1990s RS6000 machines.  So, we got test
> >> machines from IBM, DEC, HP, SUN and SGI and ran our own applications on
> >> them.  The SUN was quick on an application which was I/O bound,
> >> otherwise HP and DEC were much better than the other three.  We went
> >> with DEC (ALPHAstation 500) because the compilers were better than HP's.
> >> So, this was DEC getting a new customer based purely on
> >> price/performance (and compiler quality) when running the customer's own
> >> (self-written) applications.
>
> >> What went wrong?
>
> > What went wrong?
>
> > You bought value. Most people bought cheap. Most people didn't know or
> > care about the difference.
>
> The plain and simple fact was that DEC was living in a dream world.
> They missed the PC revolution.
>
> When they finally got into the PC business they priced themselves out of
> the market.  DEC charged fantastic prices for the Rainbow.  I recall
> that DEC wanted something like $700 for 32MB of RAM.  I got brand X RAM
> chips for $32!  They worked just fine.  The 20MB disk drive was
> something like $2000.  I bought "Brand X" for $300.  And so on!!
>
> DEC was either unwilling or unable to compete on price.  The market
> rolled right over them!  It's a miracle that DEC lasted as long as it
> did!  R.I.P. DEC.

Once again, Richard, you may wish to check your recollection before
posting.

The Rainbow predates PCs. The Rainbow comes from an era when the
industry hadn't even decided whether the Z80 (CP/M) or the x86 (DOS,
was the future, so the Rainbow had one of each, and was designed to
automagically use whichever suited the programs you were using. What
kind of person would expect that kind of functionality to come for
anything like the same price as a box that had only one of the two
architectures?

Back in those days, there were frequent shortages of RAM and of hard
disks. DEC bought their parts in advance on long term contracts at
fixed prices, in order to increase the chance that parts were actually
available when customers wanted them. If there wasn't a shortage, Joe
Public might be able to get parts on the "spot market" at a
substantial discount re DEC prices. If there was a shortage there
wasn't anything for Joe Public to have on the "spot market" at any
price, and those with the parts made sure that their faithful
customers were first in the queue for the limited supplies that were
available.

Back in those days, only the little people paid list price.

It'd be stupid to say DEC wasn't expensive far too often. But
sometimes there were reasons for at least part of it, reasons which
Richard perhaps isn't aware of or has forgotten.