[rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Saith Joshua Boyd ...
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 01:28:23PM -0500, Eric Dittman wrote:
> > > > Why didn't that ever take off?
> > >
> > >    It did.  It's tremendously popular on modern systems.
> > >    PCs, however, are not modern systems.
> >
> > Early '80s designs aren't modern?  :-)
>
> Don't you mean late 70s?

And remember ... the original PC came with 16K (not M) bytes of memory, and
stored its data and programs on a cassette tape.  IBM only expected to sell
25,000 of them.  Amortizing a big-buck design over so few units would have
made the thing far more expensive than it already was.

The problem isn't that the thing was poorly designed for its time, but that
we haven't learned from the PC's design compromises and moved on to
something better.  Of course, no one want to come out with something
PC-incompatible, since they would have to create an OS ($$$), convince
software houses to produce applications for the machine/OS (more $$$), and
have an uphill marketing compaing to sell the thing (yet more $$$).  Since
they'd have to price it in the same ballpark as "what's out there" in order
to sell it, spending all that money on marketing and bespoke software
wouldn't leave much profit.

PCs aren't very good, but they are inexpensive, popular, and hard to compete
with.

-Shel