[TUHS] core

[Clem cole]

And I believe at the time, KO was commenting in terms of Bell’s  ‘minimal computer’ definition (the ‘mini’ - aka 12 bit systems) of the day -DEC’s PDP-8 not the 10.  IIRC The 8 pretty much had a base price in the $30k range in the mid to late 60s.  FWIW the original 8 was discrete bipolar (matched) transistors built with DEC flip chips. And physically about 2or3 19” relay racks in size.  Later models used TTL and got down to a single 3U ‘drawer.’

Clem

Also please remember that originally, mini did not mean small.  That was a computer press redo when the single chip, ‘micro’ computers, came to being in the mid 1970s

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

On Jun 16, 2018, at 8:51 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

>> From: Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org>
> 
>>> one of the Watson's saying there was a probably market for
>>> <single-digit> of computers; Ken Olsen saying people wouldn't want
>>> computers in their homes; etc, etc.
> 
>> I seem to recall reading somewhere that these were urban myths...  Does
>> anyone have actual references in their contexts?
> 
> Well, for the Watson one, there is some controversy:
> 
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_attribution
> 
> My guess is that he might actually have said it, and it was passed down orally
> for a while before it was first written down. The thing is that he is alleged
> to have said it in 1943, and there probably _was_ a market for only 5 of the
> kind of computing devices available at that point (e.g. the Mark I).
> 
>> E.g. Watson was talking about the multi-megabuck 704/709/7094 etc
> 
> No. The 7094 is circa 1960, almost 20 years later.
> 
> 
>> Olsens's quote was about the DEC-System 10...
> 
> Again, no. He did say it, but it was not about PDP-10s:
> 
>  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ken_Olsen
> 
> "Olsen later explained that he was referring to smart homes rather than
> personal computers." Which sounds plausible (in the sense of 'what he meant',
> not 'it was correct'), given where he said it (a World Future Society
> meeting).
> 
>    Noel