On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:09:41 -0600, McKown, John wrote: > >Back around 1978, I worked for the City of Ft. Worth (Texas). >We had a 145 and needed an upgrade to a 158 type box. Tandem >bid their non-compatible machine. Of course, it did not meet the >RFP. When we got an Itel (NAS) 158 equivalent, Tandem >threatened to sue because "the RFP was too restrictive!" and >"we could convert all our OS/VS1 application - batch and CICS >to native Tandem and still have it cost less!"
A year or two earlier than that, I was working at Wayne State University in Detroit. We wanted to upgrade our 360-67, which was running MVT and MTS. Of course, IBM bid something (probably a 168, but I don't remember), and Amdahl bid a 470V/6. There was also a bid from Burroughs, whose world headquarters was only about a five minute walk away from our data center. Compared to the Amdahl, Burroughs needed more power and more air conditioning. Part of their specifications was that the raised floor had to go from 12 inches to 18 inches high to accommodate the required airflow. Of course, Burroughs tried to get us to convert all of our applications. Burroughs tried to sweeten their offer like they had a couple of years earlier, when they gave the university $2 million for some campus beautification project and the university bought a $0.25 million minicomputer. That's another story. If I remember right, they were going to practically give us the machine. Amdahl won the bid. -- Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
