From: ldo@nz.invalid

On Sun, 21 Sep 2025 23:35:43 +0100, David Wade wrote:

> On 21/09/2025 21:31, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> Imagine trying to run a full-screen text editor on those block-mode
>> terminals -- TECO, TPU/EVE, Emacs ... a few dozen users interrupting
>> the CPU on every keystroke would probably bring a big,
>> multi-million-dollar IBM system to its knees.
>
> You actually can't write an editor that works like that, and you don't
> need it. IBMs  XEDIT is just as powerful as EMACS in its own way ...

I like that “in its own way” -- it’s such a ... versatile ... phrase ...

> ... with the while screen being multiple, editable fields.

You can do that in Emacs easily enough. The point being, you don’t have to
work that way if you’re just doing basic file editing.

But if you want to see the advanced stuff in action, just check out its
help system.

> You have to leverage what you have. I still prefer xedit to teco or
> emacs.

Funny how those two sentences are somewhat at odds with each other ...

>>> I think DEC or was it HP forgot this with the Alpha.
>>
>> No they didn’t. DEC machines were all about interactivity, right from
>> the original PDP-1. That meant low latency, even at the expense of high
>> throughput. That’s why they were able to run circles around far more
>> expensive (and complex) IBM hardware in the interactive timesharing
>> market.
>
> Then why did they try and sell them as Database Servers or Exchange
> Server.

Remember that DEC was on its way down at this point, while Microsoft was
still on the way up. Call it desperation: trying to find any kind of
market at all, to try to maximize the sales of Alpha servers.

This was the point where Jon “maddog” Hall was able to persuade his boss
to send a brand spanking new Alpha to some young Comp Sci student in
Finland, so that the latter could port this new OS kernel he was working
on to something other than x86.

Unlike Windows NT (or even OpenVMS), he even made it a full 64-bit port.

> In fact the converse applies. I well remember sharing a drink
> with a friend who was rolling out office automation in a big bank.
>
> At the time the VAX servers he had for All-In-One would not scale to all
> the users he needed to deliver OA too. So senior managers and directors
> got all-in-one, but the plebs got IBMs Office Vision because the
> mainframe scaled better with large numbers of screens, with sub-second
> response.

Was this “Office Vision” thing based on fields on block-mode screens? If
so, I rest my case.

>> Remember machines in the various PDP families were quite popular in
>> lab/ factory situations, doing monitoring, data collection and process
>> control in real time.
>>
> We must have had hundreds of 11-s running CAMAC crates, but there is
> usually no random database access on such systems. Bang the data to tape
> or floppy disk. Send to mainframe for analysis..

That was because in those days, a “database” (in the sense of “something
more complex than ISAM files, with its own query language”) needed big
iron to run. That restriction didn’t really go away until the 1980s.

As an example of the opposite extreme nowadays, look at the data
collection for experiments on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider: much of the
sensor input is discarded as noise or otherwise unimportant at a low level
close to its source, before passing the choicer parts on for higher-level
analysis. That reduces petabytes of raw data to mere terabytes. ;)

> Exchange is very efficient in terms of CPU use. It just hammers the
> disks.

I don’t know why it would need to. It’s only email, for goshsakes. It’s
not even the most data-intensive thing a typical company would need to
deal with.

The most resource-intensive thing an email server needs to deal with
nowadays is scans for viruses and other malware. That needs fair amounts
of RAM and CPU.

(Speaking from experience.)

> If you were Microsoft at the time you wanted Exchange which only runs on
> Windows so other OSs not an option.

So much for “open standards”, eh? They were very much able to make
themselves the “new IBM”, at least for a while.

Thankfully that “while” is over.

>> Correct. VMS, again, followed in that DEC tradition of being primarily
>> an interactive, not a batch, OS.
>
> well yes, but it degrades terribly when you get short of RAM and hit the
> dreaded type-behind. I remember some of my users coming back from a VMS
> introduction and saying there was no way they were having a VAX how
> could we get an IBM 4381. I told them and they were very happy...

Did they not try a RISC Unix machine? Those were the ones that left the
VAX in the dust.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)