Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!philmtl!philabs!ttidca!hollombe
From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: USSR Microcomputers: How far behind US?
Message-ID: <4372@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 5 May 89 18:53:45 GMT
References: <1805@orion.cf.uci.edu> <8013@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <528@laic.UUCP> <1905@etive.ed.ac.uk> <2829@cps3xx.UUCP>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath)
Organization: The Cat Factory
Lines: 30

In article <2829@cps3xx.UUCP> rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang) writes:
}In article <1905@etive.ed.ac.uk> nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes:
}
}   Well, in Space Research in particular, I get the impression that the USSR
}   have some advantages. How come their space shuttle can land itself, but the
}   American one can't?

Not true.  See other postings.

}Because the American one was designed quite a while ago, and uses
}repackaged IBM System/360 machines as its computers.  ...

Not quite.  The AP-101 computers on the Shuttle have a similar, but not
identical, architecture to the System/370. (The major difference is two
sets of 8 general purpose registers instead of one set of 16).

The way I heard it, NASA originally went to IBM, saying "We want an S/370
in orbit." IBM replied: "You can't have one.  They're too big." The AP-101
was the best compromise at the time.

The Shuttle contains a lot of hardware that's outright archaic by today's
standards (some of it was pretty weird, even then).  They had to freeze
the technology at some point so they could start construction without
continuous design changes.  Otherwise, they'd never have completed it.

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimati Nil
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