[Info-vax] Alpha Ready System Upgrade

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <mj6en0$cc2$1 at pechter.eternal-september.org>,
	pechter at S20.pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) writes:
> In article <crh03lFbovuU4 at mid.individual.net>,
> Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>In article <38f67133-de7c-4296-9a64-ac1cfa034dee at googlegroups.com>,
>>	johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk writes:
>>> On Tuesday, 12 May 2015 15:05:48 UTC+1, Stephen Hoffman  wrote:
>>>> On 2015-05-12 13:48:07 +0000, Bob Koehler said:
>>>> 
>>>> > In article <5551321c$0$64021$b1db1813$2411a48f at news.astraweb.com>, JF 
>>>> > Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
>>>> >> On 15-05-11 18:33, mcleanjoh at gmail.com wrote:
>>>> >> 
>>>> >>> Vax is hardware.  Alpha is hardware.  Ergo "Vax Alpha" doesn't make 
>>>> >>> much sense to people familiar with VMS.
>>>> >> 
>>>> >> Wasn't there one VAX model that was sold as being upgradable to an 
>>>> >> Alpha?  (I guess board swap).
>>>> > 
>>>> >    There were more than one VAX 4000 qbus models sold as upgradeable to 
>>>> > Alpha.  No such upgrade was ever produced.
>>>> 
>>>> Interesting.   I don't recall that case; a VAX 4000 Q-bus that was sold 
>>>> as being upgradable to Alpha short of a box-swap.  There was the 
>>>> rarely-seen but still available VAX 4000 model 50 upgrade for some 
>>>> Q-bus boxes, and there were Q-bus expansions for various VAX 4000 model 
>>>> 1xx seres boxes, but AFAIK all of the non-box-swap upgradable VAX 
>>>> systems were among the VAX 7000 and VAX 10000 series.   Not the VAX 
>>>> 4000 series.  Have any more details on that Alpha-upgradable VAX 4000?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC
>>> 
>>> Some VAX 4000 models were sold with the assurance of an "upgrade to Alpha
>>> in the future", see e.g.
>>> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax4000_100.html
>>> 
>>> In this case upgrade presumably meany get a good deal on an Alpha when
>>> you trade in your VAX 4000-100, 'cos there's not much hardware they'd
>>> have in common.
>>> 
>>> Similar "Alpha Ready System Upgrade" offers were also available with
>>> the 3100 Model 80/90:
>>> http://www.compaq.com/cpq-alphaserver/vax/archive/mv3100_3040_8090.html
>>> 
>>> The relevant upgrades were to desktop Alpha systems.
>>> 
>>> There was an similar upgrade program for VAX 7000/10000 systems, which
>>> offered an upgrade to a datacentre-class Alpha system:
>>> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax7000_600.html
>>> 
>>> This is the kind of upgrade that would frequently be called a "fork lift"
>>> upgrade but that terminology doesn't really seem right for a 3100 or a 
>>> 4000-100.
>>> 
>>> Not sure whether the 7000/10000 upgrades involved a total box swap -
>>in principle they wouldn't need to, would they, but sometimes it was
>>useful
>>> to arrange for things like parallel running and you just end up shipping
>>> in a new system and in due course returning the old one.
>>> 
>>> I'm going from what I remember of Customer Update articles and such. The
>>> relevant ones don't seem to be easily findable online. Corections welcome.
>>
>>I remember my AT&T days.  AT&T sold off the 3B line (minus the 3B1 which
>>was a convergent and not an AT&T at all) to NCR.  There were "upgrades"
>>offered for the whole 3B2 line.  Open box, dump out everything but the
>>power supply, install NCR M68K system in box.  Voila, upgraded 3B2.  :-)
>>
>>bill
> 
> Not to mention of the 3B-MIPS stuff they had internally  and the AT&T 
> 7000 series (Rebadged Pyramid MIS-Server S Systems).

Never saw any "3B" using Mips.  3B's originally were pure AT&T with the
various flavors of the WE32000 processors.  Very M68K like but actually
better.

> 
> Did they really "Sell it off" or just drop it nearly immediately in favor
> of the x86 based star server line.

Well, that's corporate business, not techie.  I know that after all that
fighting to get into the computer business int he end they opted out and
turned commercial business over to NCR either sold or contracted.  And
NCR's first move wa to kill all the Western Electric hardware and use
the outlet to push their Motorolla boxes.  While I have always liked
the Motorolla stuff, I think the WE stuff was better.

> 
> There went my job... since 50% Pyramid systems were sold via AT&T and Siemens
> under their own branding.  There was an immediate loss of what I guessed
> was about 25% or more of Pyramid's sales since AT&T and Siemens pretty much
> split their OEM business which was supposedly 50% of Pyramid's sales.
> I was in Training and was already doing training for AT&T folks in Georgia 
> as well as NJ.
> 
> A lot of the high end SMP AT&T systems were rebadged Pyramids (both
> Pyramid Risc and Pyramids using Mips R3000 chips) and the upgrades and 
> training I was involved with stopped as all new purchases  were all forced to 
> be NCR boxes. 
> 
> There was also a contract to replace the older IRS boxes which included
> SystemIII Z8000 based Zilog/Exxon Office Systems stuff with newer hardware
> which disappeared I think at the same time.  I went back to Concurrent
> Computers and later Fort Monmouth afted that.
> 
> AT&T really always wanted to buy DEC... but something happened around
> '84 that blew that up.  DEC was to get the outsource deal to do all
> the Bell Labs sysadmin and operations and my wife heard it on the 
> AT&T side in Bell Labs.  I was to move from Field Service to Unix
> Sysadmin and was told I'd be trained shortly.
> 
> Somehow something hit the fan and the deal unraveled quickly.
> 
> Ended up going to Concurrent Computer's training in 87 or so
> and to Unix admin there shortly after in the fall.
> 

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>