24 Jun
2018
24 Jun
'18
8:41 p.m.
On 2018, Jun 24, at 9:03 AM, Paul Winalski
<paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/23/18, Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote:
Some customers of the 11/RC figured out how to buy the full backplane as “spare parts”
which worked for a while.
Every industry with up-front R&D or capital costs has the problem that the marginal
cost of goods is much lower than the average cost. It happens to airlines, chip
companies, system companies and especially commercial software companies. Trying to
introduce product differentiation is one solution. Glue or microcode NOPs or DRM licence
unlock codes work, but they tend to damage your reputation.
-L
Ron Minnich:
Jon Hall used to love telling the story of the VAX backplane with the
glue
in the board slots, which clever customers managed to damage and have
repaired with a non-glued-up backplane.
That was the VAXstation-11/RC. Marketing wanted a VAXstation with
fewer backplane slots that it could sell at a cheaper price. Rather
than manufacture a different board, they just filled the extra
backplane slots with glue to render them unusable. "RC" officially
stood for "restricted configuration", but we in Engineering called it
"resin caulked".
-Paul W.