[TUHS] Reaction to the 3B2 at Bell Labs

[ron minnich]

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.
>>>
>>
>>
>> THIS IS AN EXTERNAL EMAIL -- This email was sent from someone OUTSIDE of
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>> THIS EMAIL.
>>
>>
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