The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thompson, Steve) writes: > WANG with their WANG/VS systems came up with an idea that would have met > your problem. The workstations had a button that caused the CEC to > download microcode for DP/WP (Data Processing / Word Processing). So > your workstation could switch between types of work. [ASCII based S/360 > type architecture on steroids.] > > IBM attempted to make a product to market against WANG. They couldn't > figure out how to do it economically. Problem was the distance from the > tree to the eyeballs of the powers that were was about 2 inches. The > problem was solved by having a PC that could do word processing while > having an emulator (3270) for the 3270 type tasks, and then the PC would > handle the word processing type tasks. for some topic drift ... past posts about PC getting early market traction because it sold for about the same price as 3270 and in single desktop footprint could get 3270 terminal emulation and some local (personal) computing http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation OPD's displaywriter was in WANG wordprocessing market segment. ROMP was early 801 risc chip originally designed to be used for displaywriter follow-on product. when that was killed, the group looked around for something else to use the machine for and settled on the unix workstation market. they got the company that had done the pc/ix port to do one for the displaywriter "follow-on" and renamed the product the PC/RT (and the software AIX). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801 The PC/RT followon was the RS6000 with RIOS chipset. RS6000 was relogo'ed as hardware platfrom by some number of other companies ... including WANG as it got out of the hardware business. As part of that change-over, some number of the people from RS6000 group went to WANG. old time article from nov80 mentioning wang, word-processing market http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950498,00.html?iid=chix-sphere page mentioning some of the old/70s wordprocessing market http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/DedicatedWPMicros.htm article on demise of dedicated wordprocessor boxes; having given away to multi-application PCs http://www.cbronline.com/article_cg_print.asp?guid=265D4108-6F66-49EC-80B1-E51D2AA8876E note that there was a project in the early 80s to replace the wide variety of internal microprocessors with 801/risc processors (including the ones used for displaywriters). this included all the processors in the low and mid-range 370s ... at the time, the 4341-followon (4381) was going to use a 801/risc processor; the s/38-followon (as/400) was going to use a 801/risc processor ... and lots of others were also. A special flavor of 801/risc, Iliad had additional features for supporting emulation of other architectures ... some old 801-related email, including mention of work on Iliad chips http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801 for other topic drift, old email mentioning 43xx ... "e-architecture" machines http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx i.e. while the high-end 370 came up with 370-xa (code named "811" for nov78 document publication date), the low/mid range came up with "e-architecture" (where dos/vs to vse came from). for some archeological trivia, i contributed to the document killing 801/risc idea for the 4341-followon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
