29 Nov
2022
29 Nov
'22
5:33 p.m.
It would be nice to get more technical information on the 3B2s. As late
as 2016, I had reached out to Ed Eckart the archivist at Alcatel-Lucent
and Seth had contacted William Caughlin at AT&T archives for more
information. Both seemed to indicate the systems were still in use at
some customer sites and thus detailed technical info (eg. schematics,
theory of operation docs, etc) could not be shared with the public. But
that sort of information was preserved and safe.
If anyone has contacts into either organization, a gentile nudge would
be appreciated! :)
-Alan
On 2022-11-26 13:46, Seth Morabito wrote:
Hello all,
I'm giving a presentation on the AT&T 3B2 at a local makerspace next
month, and while I've been preparing the talk I became curious about
an aspect that I don't know has been discussed elsewhere.
I'm well aware that the 3B2 was something of a market failure with not
much penetration into the wider commercial UNIX space, but I'm very
curious to know more about what the reaction was at Bell Labs. When
AT&T entered the computer hardware market after the 1984 breakup, I
get the impression that there wasn't very much interest in any of it
at Bell Labs, is that true?
Can anyone recall what the general mood was regarding the 3B2 (and the
7300 and the 6300, I suppose!)
-Seth