[TUHS] Research UNIX on the AT&T 3B2?

[Larry McVoy]

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