[Info-vax] OT: news from the trenches (re: Solaris)

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On 12 Mar 2015 17:44:41 -0400
Scott Dorsey via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> JF Mezei  <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> >On 15-03-12 09:50, lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
> >
> >> As you know IBM didn't design x86 and it was never their baby.
> >
> >In hindsight, imagine if they had designed a low end 370 chip for
> >personal computers and got Gates to build DOS to the 370 instead of 8088.
> 
> They did in fact design a low-end 370 chip for personal computers, which
> was actually a 68k with different microcode to emulate a 370.  And they
> made the PC/370 with it.
> 
> They didn't get Gates to build DOS for the /370 because the whole point of
> running a /370 is to run existing code.  They already had DOS/370.

Ok, let's not get too confusing for those not familiar. DOS/370 has no
relation to MS/DOS or IBM PC/DOS, preceding both by many years. Still in
production today btw as z/VSE http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zvse/

I never saw an XT/370 so I don't know what they ran. Looking quickly over
the net it appears they didn't emulate the full instruction set. Do you
happen to know what they were actually capable of and used for? It seems
they could not boot or run any mainframe OS.

> >Of course, a large corporation is prevented from going that way because
> >making an affordable 370 based computer is tantamount to cannibalasing
> >higher end sales. DEC also suffered that fate.
> 
> And it's a small market item too, really.  But the PC/370 was actually
> very cheap considering what it was and what you could do with it.

Ditto for the P/390. For 30,000 bucks you could run a real development shop
with 30-50 guys. They actually ran honest to goodness copies of VM and
OS/390.

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