[rescue] SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

On Mon, 03 Aug 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>
> Many people don't realize how much batch processing still goes on.  Ever
> used an ATM?  Checked out at a national retail chain?  Booked an airline
> ticket?

Heh.  If you booked an airline ticket in the mid-1980s, you were quite
possibly talking to an agent at a generic glass terminal hanging off a
DG Nova clone (Point 4, Bytronix, IDP, Star Tech) running IRIS or
BITS, with most of the code in 16K BASIC...

I know this because at the tender age of 19 or 20 I happened to have
some expertise in what was even then a fairly obscure niche, and
because of that I was hired by a company that wrote airline
reservation systems on that platform.  I quit after one day.  I'd
spent the previous two years of my life rewriting hundreds of programs
for another company in town and just couldn't face *another* job
shoveling out the stables... In the 20+ years since then I still don't
think I've seen code that badly written.

But I have nothing but fond memories about hacking on those old Nova
clones, and BITS BASIC had some *really* cool features.  Ah, the days
when a 2MB extended memory board cost $4500, and the top-of-the-line
50ns/256K CPU board set you back $17,500...

Er, sorry my reminiscences have strayed off topic... Don't suppose
there are many old DG Nova hackers lurking here?  Those classic
machines are certainly Rescue worthy. :-)

-- Skeez