[email protected] ([email protected]) writes:
> My first year-end retirement account statement -- for 1971! -- listed
> my projected retirement date as the incredibly distant, unimaginable,
> science-fiction-like date of February 1, 2012. So back then at least
> TIAA-CREF understood time windows spanning entire careers and beyond.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#90 Query for Destination z article -- 
mainframes back to the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#0 Query for Destination z article -- 
mainframes back to the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#2 Query for Destination z article -- 
mainframes back to the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#13 Query for Destination z article -- 
mainframes back to the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#15 Query for Destination z article -- 
mainframes back to the future

I think 71 (72?) was when Amdahl gave talk in large (full) auditorium at
MIT.  A student in the audience asked him how did he convince the VC
people to invest in his 360 clone company. His reply was that IBM
customers had already spent enormous amount on 360 applications ... and
even if IBM were to completely walk away from 360, that software base
would be enough to keep him in business through the end of the century.

Of course Future System was starting up ... which was planned to
completely replace 360 (and be radically different from 360). I've since
been told that he wasn't aware of FS (even though his reference "walking
away from 360" might be considered veiled reference to FS). However, the
scarcity of 360/370 products during the period is credited with giving
the clone processors a market foothold (FS internal politics were
shutting down &/or suspending 370 efforts).

misc. past posts mentioning FS (along with some URLs for other online FS
sources):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

as i've mentioned in the past, during that period I continued to work on
360/370 stuff and periodically ridicule the FS activity.

then with the failure of FS, there was mad rush to get products back
into the 370 hardware&software pipeline.

for other drift, recent posts about Amdahl and IBM ACS-360 effort
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#46 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#47 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

more detail here:
http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.htm

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

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