On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 08:29:29AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > People can get hold of an Intel box today and bring up a reasonable > development environment for peanuts. This is impossible with mainframes. > IBM has never demonstrated any commitment of any kind to develop a > reasonable entry level approach to the mainframe that would capture the > interest of many people. I can't buy an ATX motherboard form factor > mainframe. Heck, I can't even buy a new mainframe that will just run on > 110V power.
True. OTOH, you can take that $1000 Intel box and run Hercules on it and get reasonable power. The gotcha is that IBM hasn't seen fit to allow the same low-cost access to its mainframe software. (No, Peter and Phil, $20K is not low-cost.) > Until IBM realizes that it needs an entry level box with reasonable > software prices that most people understand, growth will be at a snail's > pace in the mainframe space for the foreseeable future. The computer > science mafia at the universities will continue to make idiotic and > foolish anti-mainframe remarks, and yet another generation of students > will be completely clueless about the mainframe world. Yup. This is why I've been arguing for a hobbyst/personal-use license for the past 2 years.
