Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!killer!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Summary: Tektronix 8560
Message-ID: <3378@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 2 Feb 89 13:29:35 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <11630010@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 45

In article <11630010@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>, ham@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Bob Hamilton) writes:
> > 2) We had an IBM cluster controller controlling some 3270 terminals.  We
> > paid $5000 for an upgrade that would allow more users to be connected to
> > the controller.  The IBM service rep came in and REMOVED a board, that
> > was put there to deliberately slow things down.

On the Tektronix 8560, a multiuser Unix system that could interface to and
operate in-circuit emulators, logic analyzers, and such, there was a
two-serial-port, 13 MB disk version, and this could be upgraded for something 
like $13,000 to be a 30 MB disk and four serial ports.  (This was a few years
ago.)  Anyway, some guys over at Ford had it done and all Tek did was
replace the two-port serial connector board and a PROM on the disk controller.
We duped their PROM and soldered DB-25 connectors into the two unfilled
locations in the "two-port" serial board.  We booted, formatted, restored
and spawned getty on the two new serial ports.  Voila, a 4-port 30 MB
system for half a day of two guy's time.

If Tektronix had sold the 30 MB, 4-port system for the 13 MB, 2-port price,
they 8560 would have been a barn burner (at the time) and perhaps have been 
able to achieve a critical mass of installations for Tektronix to have succeeded
in that area.  (I guess they still have, but by going with attachments to 
people's bought-from-DEC VAXes running VMS.)  (Unlike most people I knew who
used it, by the way, I liked it a lot.  It was underpowered and got real slow
if things like links had to spill to disk, but you could do fantastic things
configuring the emulator from shell scripts and such.) 

On an 8560 contract I worked, we had a Z8000 Pascal cross-development 
environment that they'd only sold six copies of!  Needless to say, it was 
unsupported, necessitating assembler a lot of times to get around bugs in code 
generation involving intermediate 32-bit values during integer calculations 
being truncated (and sign-screwed) to 16-bits because the compiler generated 
spurious 16-to-32-bit sign-extends, but I digress...

One of my best friends worked for MDI Qantel field service for a long time,
and they sold a 150 MB disk drive that could be upgraded to 300 MB by flipping
a switch and reformatting the disk.  This "upgrade" cost about $15000.
They also had a "3 + 3" and a "6 + 6", which were 3 MB fixed plus 3 MB
removable and a similar 6 MB version.  To upgrade a 3+3 to a 6+6, the field
engineer would cut a trace on the controller board and reformat.  Needless
to say the 150/300 disk came after these guys.  I think flipping the switch is
clearly superior :-(
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