24 Aug
2018
24 Aug
'18
10:46 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 12:06:22PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
IIRC, it was a server
and pretty inflexible in the I/O subsystem for that use.
Sun would quickly produce the first Sparcs, which as Larry has pointed out,
kicked butt and were cheaper
I dunno that they kicked butt, my memory is we were all playing leapfrog.
People remember the alpha with a lot of revisionist history, talking
about fast it was. I was actually measuring performance of all the
CPUs at that time and the Alpha I had wasn't anything to write home
about. SPARC was sort of like that too, it was better but it was
really really rare to have a chip that was 2x faster than its peers,
if that happened it was usually the introduction of one CPU generation
compared to the tail of another CPUs generation.
The only 'successful' product that I can
remember that used the WE32100
was the second version (*a.k.a.* product version) of the Blit (Bart's first version
was 68000 IIRC).
Ah, the BLIT. Pretty sure Wisconsin's CS department had the first generation
(aren't those the ones that caught on fire?). I *loved* those terminals,
so much nicer than a single screen.
BTW, I had Greg Chesson here for a pig roast once, and he brought Bart.
I've got pics somewhere if anyone cares.
--lm