Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: PR1ME 32I mode (was Re: Porting OSes (was DEC RISC Architecture)) Message-ID: Date: 6 Nov 90 17:51:36 GMT References: <1990Nov5.171547.2912@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 28 Nntp-Posting-Host: odin In-reply-to: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu's message of 5 Nov 90 17:15:47 GMT On 5 Nov 90 17:15:47 GMT, mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) said: mcdonald> In article meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes: meissner> UNIX sales on VAXen didn't hit their stride until about 1982 meissner> or 1983. When the person who had preceded me had done the meissner> research, the UNIX market was small, and almost all PDP-11 meissner> based. meissner> Everybody has 20/20 hindsight. :-) In my case my proposal to Pr1me and then DG for porting BSD was done in 1982. And the above arguments held. It was a very good bet. When I learned that Mach was DARPA supported a few years ago I also knew that was a good bet. mcdonald> Yep. But some people have working crystal balls. They are mcdonald> called "rich" and "successful". I wish I had one. Only if they find other like minded people to do business with... Who would have bet on Patterson and Hennessy on speed when all they could show was a 1 RISC MIPS CPU when others had a 0.5 VAX MIPS one? They could show impressive cost reductions, thanks to advnaced compiler technology, and that was it. -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk