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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Intel Microprocessors
Message-ID: <667@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Aug-87 15:42:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: neoucom.667
Posted: Tue Aug 18 15:42:21 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Aug-87 04:06:34 EDT
References: <1112@lznv.ATT.COM> <399@aucs.UUCP> <3225@cucca.columbia.edu> <79@LBI.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 39
Summary: What about the IBM 9000


<< various stuff about 80x8[8|6] vs. 680x0 and IBM, etc. >>

Anybody remember the truly awful IBM 9000 so-called laboratory
computer?  I'm not sure; what it had inside seems like it might have
been a 68K chip.  It hit the market at about the same time as the
original PeeCee.

Regardless of the PeeCee, virtually everybody I knew that can in
contact with the IBM 9000 was pretty annoyed with it.  It was
totally incompatible with everything else in the world, including
everything from IBM itself.  IBM refused to sell us software.  They
sold it to us to ostensibly run our liquid chromatographs, but
waited two years to deliver the LC software.  Actually, IBM did
deliver some LC software, but it would only digitize a single
channel.  They had promised that the machine would be able to
handle two channels.  They never did manage
to deliver the assembler for it, which is why I'm not sure what
chip was really inside.  We struggled along trying to write our
software in a really rotten port of Microsoft MBASIC.  It had the
feature of yielding 2*8=16 while something like 1*16=15.75!!  The
internal representation was supposed to support 6 digits of
precision: oh well.

The 9000 also featured a color printer mechanism made by IDS (now
Data Products) that was unbelievably unreliable.  (Anybody ever
have to endure a IDS Paper Tiger?) IBM has since sold their
laboratory instrument division to Nicolet and mercifully burried
the 9000.  Nicolet **gave** us a manual operating station to run
the LCs so that the IBM computer could be removed.  The IBM now is
used mainly to prop the door to the room open on hot days.

Oh, I just heard that it was definitely based on the 68000.  The
person looking over my shoulder also complained that the darn RAM
chips were soldered in, so they couldn't even be used for something
worthwhile like an Aboveboard.

--Bill
(wtm@neoucom.UUCP)