> A computer with the massive overengineering common to Western Electric > bakelite-encased telephone handsets? What's not to love!? ;)
Um, the lack of TCPIP support in the v1 OS? The anemic performance, even on the 3b2-400, top of the line (beaten handily by a 11/730 with 512K of RAM and one RA-81)? The regular lockups of the terminal mux cards if you had more than two 9600 baud serial devices attached? The utter screaming brain-death of pure System V stream-oriented I/O? The lack of useful hardware diagnostics diagrams? The interminable delays required to get AT&T to fix bugs in the console monitor code that would periodically panic the kernel, but weren't considered "serious" because they didn't occur with only switch devices attached at 300 baud? I could go on, but my doctor doesn't like it when I get over-excited...8-). I've had two periods in my life where I've been partially or completely responsible for the operation of one of these bowsers. I like old weird hardware, but you couldn't give me one of these on a bet. A roommate coined the term "yacht anchor" for the 3B2-10 we were "given" at one point -- it's pretty much all they were ever good for: taking them outside, filling them with concrete and using them as boat anchors. I'd rather do Symbolics and LMI source maintenance any day. Tschah. -- db
