[TUHS] Reaction to the 3B2 at Bell Labs

[Marc Donner]

IBM built a major semiconductor fab up in Fishkill, NY.  About two hours
drive north of NYC.  At one point (mid-1980s) it was the biggest fab in the
world according to some metric.

On Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 17:35 ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was visiting Holmdel in 1981, and there was a tradeshow for the BellMAC
> CPUs there, filling ground floor of the central atrium. There was some
> swag, which I had for a few years, including refrigerator magnets. The one
> I remember:
> "Don't be alone, call MACphone!"
>
> I remember reading an article in the early 80s pointing out that, due to
> the scale of the Bell System, the center of the universe of semiconductor
> fabrication at that time was ... Allentown, PA. Western Electric had an ad,
> along the lines of, "who will create the 256 Kb memory part? WE will" -- WE
> as in Western Electric.Those parts would have been fabbed in Allentown
> IIRC.
>
>  It is a bit hard to recall, much less believe. but PA, land of dead still
> mills, the Molly Maguires, and underground coal mine fires that will burn
> for centuries, also had silicon.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 1:01 PM Kenneth Goodwin <
> kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That must be the 300 B superhive model CPU
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 1:54 PM William Corcoran <wlc at jctaylor.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have a 3b2/300.  Anytime you run a command that is compute bound, like
>>> factoring a large prime number, the CPU buzzes!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bill Corcoran
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 27, 2022, at 9:52 AM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> [EXTERNAL]
>>>
>>>
>>> We were "gifted" a 3B2, as in "take this and use it!". I ran a "ps"
>>> command in single user mode, and it took 20 seconds to run.
>>> Our machine names were themed around bird names, so we christened the
>>> 3B2 "junco". Our director said we had to get along,
>>> so we renamed it "jay". But everyone knew what the J stood for. The 3B2
>>> served as a doorstop.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Nov 26, 2022 at 11:44 PM Phil Budne <phil at ultimate.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Larry McVoy wrote:
>>>> > I read the Wikipedia page on the 9000.  It's sad that the 9000
>>>> > wasn't cancelled when they had better alternatives.
>>>>
>>>> In an oral history Bob Supnik described Ken Olsen couldn't get his
>>>> head around the fact that the NVAX chip could equal the 9000:
>>>>
>>>> @2:59:45 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3tcCBHRIfU
>>>>
>>>> In part 2, Bob described how then DEC VP Gordon Bell having earlier
>>>> predicted when the microprocessor performance curve would cross over
>>>> minis and mainframes:
>>>>
>>>> @1:51:45 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3tcCBHRIfU
>>>>
>>>> He also talks about how the company couldn't command the bsame gross
>>>> margins as it did in the VAX era.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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