On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 9:56 AM, Mark Wickens <[email protected]> wrote: > It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are > too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they > primarily came after PCs started dropping in price. > > On 9 February 2016 at 04:50, Ethan Dicks <[email protected]> wrote: >> With 8-20 users on 9600 bps terminals, 8MB... >> All this power for under $5,000 per user, terminal included, years >> before $5,000 would buy you an IBM 5170 PC-AT.
VAXen weren't exactly cheap (our 11/750 was ordered the week they were announced and was, I'm told, the first one shipped to the midwest (S/N BT000354). ISTR it was $120,000 with 2MB and 2X RK07, then we added a Systems Industries SI9900 SMD controller and had a 160MB Fuji drive and a 400+ MB Fuji Eagle. I don't have the numbers on that, but it was another $30,000 at least, I'm reasonably certain. I do know when we bought an RA81 in mid-1984, it was 424MB for $24,000. DEC VT100s were around $1,800 in the early-1980s, I'm pretty sure, then we switched to CiTOH terminals for around $1,600. When you add in 16-port Emulex CS21s to attach all those terminals, and divide the cost of the central machine by the number of users, I think you get that $5,000 per user cost. IBM-brand PCs were also about the same cost per seat, but the software was a lot cheaper (minicomputer apps were tens of thousands of dollars for a handful of users; PC apps were hundreds per user), and PC maintenance was way cheaper (but not as convenient as a full-service maintenance contract). So, yeah, DEC gear was expensive and PCs were cheaper, but perhaps not as much cheaper as people felt they were. BTW, these are all new prices from when the gear was first launched (when we bought those items). Where the savings came was if you could live 2-3 years behind the leading edge. I bought a lot of DEC equipment from resellers that kept us going for more than 10 years. Lots of other companies went with Ethernet and PCs on every desk, etc. We stuck with minicomputers (VAXen and PDP-11s) for the vast majority of our work (correspondence, software development, cutting customer tapes...) and used PCs for a couple of specific tasks (accounting, because Peachtree on an IBM PS/2 Model 30 was way cheaper than any equivalent app for VMS, and circuit board design with OrCAD and PADS-PCB). So there's a slice of the mid-80s and how we got things done. I'm reminded a bit of all this recently as I'm refurbing a DEC VT220 and an IBM 3130 terminal, to use with a modern Linux box to share with folks the experience of life on dumb terminals. I'll probably make a post soon, once I get the hardware all cleaned up, calling for favorite DEC and IBM games that play on dumb terminals. -ethan
