Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca.wv.tek.com!frip!andrew
From: andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m88k
Subject: Re: Betting on 88k futures (was Tektronix shutdown ...)
Message-ID: <9521@orca.wv.tek.com>
Date: 14 Nov 90 15:30:38 GMT
References: <15779@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1990Oct25.131727.21139@dg-rtp.dg.com> <9401@orca.wv.tek.com> <1990Nov12.161846.16356@unx.sas.com>
Sender: news@orca.wv.tek.com
Reply-To: andrew@frip.wv.tek.com
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon
Lines: 26

I said:

	"I could make similar statements about companies that bet on
	the Tektronix 88k system.  In withdrawing from the market, we
	dealt a death blow to at least two of them."

To which Darrell Massengill (massengi@unx.sas.com) replied:

	"Did you really?  I find that difficult to believe ... They may
	have lost some non-BCS functionality that the Tektronix system
	offered, but the point of BCS is that their BCS applications
	and software can be moved to another hardware platform if
	necessary."

(Maybe it's not of general interest, but at least it concerns the 88k
chip, in marked contrast to some recent postings here.)

There's nothing in the BCS about how to do graphics or imaging, the
features along which Tektronix tried to differentiate its product line.
The BCS-compliant portions of the applications in question were quite
small.  Opening and reading a file is cheap; rendering geometry models
from that file into a 3D screen image takes a huge amount of
system-dependent code.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (uunet!tektronix!frip.WV.TEK!andrew)    [UUCP]
                        (andrew%frip.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net)   [ARPA]