Wondering Why DEC Is The Most Popular ...

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.

***@theon:pdf> du -ks .
566891248 .

And nearly half of that is to do with DEC:

***@theon:pdf> du -ks */ | sort -rn | head -10
254918868 dec/
81202392 ibm/
16331456 cdc/
15633620 hp/
13508404 tektronix/
12812876 mit/
8938224 burroughs/
7970864 microsoft/
7183128 univac/
6438392 xerox/

As you can see, IBM is a distant second, and the others are way
behind.

[w***@bibble.com.invalid]

On Sun, 28 Apr 2024 02:51:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.
566891248 .
254918868 dec/

snip

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
As you can see, IBM is a distant second, and the others are way
behind.

They probably have copies of the Grey and Orange walls. Never saw
anything like that with any other system supplier.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by w***@bibble.com.invalid
They probably have copies of the Grey and Orange walls. Never saw
anything like that with any other system supplier.

Surely the IBM stuff was a whole lot more complicated, and would have
needed much more documentation. It took armies of people to sell it, after
all.

You’re talking about DEC’s VMS docs. They were quite well organized.

[Peter Flass]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by w***@bibble.com.invalid
They probably have copies of the Grey and Orange walls. Never saw
anything like that with any other system supplier.

Surely the IBM stuff was a whole lot more complicated, and would have
needed much more documentation. It took armies of people to sell it, after
all.
You’re talking about DEC’s VMS docs. They were quite well organized.

IBM didn’t have walls, they had whole rooms of shelves. Maybe it’s because
the VAX stuff came as a set, but with IBM you ordered product by product,
and it just depends on what got saved. There are a couple of IBM manuals
I’m still hunting for.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Peter Flass
IBM didn’t have walls, they had whole rooms of shelves.

That I can believe. Did the local branch have some kind of “reference
library” that customers could visit?

On the other hand, given the size (and cost) of IBM installations, maybe
the customers could afford their own roomfuls of manuals ...

At my former employer (heavy DEC shop), we kept the “Orange Wall” (later
“Grey Wall”) in the tea room, where it fitted nicely along one wall.

[Peter Flass]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Peter Flass
IBM didn’t have walls, they had whole rooms of shelves.

That I can believe. Did the local branch have some kind of “reference
library” that customers could visit?

Not IME. My college had a library for then-new OS/360 in the computer
center. It had two or three rows of head-high shelves loaded with manuals.
I felt like I was walking into church. Later a local service bureau shut
down and my employer acquired their set of manuals, which had filled a
small room. Good times. CDs spoiled all the fun. Collating and inserting
all the new and revised pages (TNLs) was a good way to check out all the
latest features.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
On the other hand, given the size (and cost) of IBM installations, maybe
the customers could afford their own roomfuls of manuals ...
At my former employer (heavy DEC shop), we kept the “Orange Wall” (later
“Grey Wall”) in the tea room, where it fitted nicely along one wall.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Peter Flass
Collating and inserting
all the new and revised pages (TNLs) was a good way to check out all the
latest features.

The deputy director of the department I was in was previously from the IBM
world. He said that, among those new/revised pages, you might have a sheet
with nothing on it but “destroy this page”. Did you ever come across one
of those?

I think he was glad to be out of the IBM world. This was back when Apple
Macs were still new, and he (and I) thought they were great fun.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Peter Flass
Collating and inserting
all the new and revised pages (TNLs) was a good way to check out all the
latest features.

The deputy director of the department I was in was previously from the IBM
world. He said that, among those new/revised pages, you might have a sheet
with nothing on it but “destroy this page”. Did you ever come across one
of those?

I was in the Univac world, but I remember when an update to the OS/3
supervisor reference manual removed the entire chapter on physical IOCS.
Needless to say, I stashed our copy of those pages somewhere safe.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I think he was glad to be out of the IBM world. This was back when Apple
Macs were still new, and he (and I) thought they were great fun.

Ah, before they got big...

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Charlie Gibbs
I was in the Univac world, but I remember when an update to the OS/3
supervisor reference manual removed the entire chapter on physical IOCS.
Needless to say, I stashed our copy of those pages somewhere safe.

I think I have hit that situation more than once, where an earlier version
of some docs had juicy details that were dropped in later versions ...

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
This was back when
Apple Macs were still new, and he (and I) thought they were great fun.

Ah, before they got big...

Apple were already in the Fortune 500 at that point.

GUI-centric computing was a breath of fresh air. At least, I thought at
the time. It was only more recently that I realized that the Unix
workstation vendors had the right idea: build the GUI as a separate layer
on top of the command-line/scriptable tools. That way, you don’t have to
wrestle with the GUI to try to automate things.

[John Ames]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:21:22 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
GUI-centric computing was a breath of fresh air. At least, I thought
at the time. It was only more recently that I realized that the Unix
workstation vendors had the right idea: build the GUI as a separate
layer on top of the command-line/scriptable tools. That way, you
don’t have to wrestle with the GUI to try to automate things.

And yet...they never really integrated the GUI elements as well as O.G.
MacOS did, or provided a user experience as consistent and pleasant. X
has, IMHO, always felt like a separate thing bolted onto command-line
*nix, from Ye Olde Motif Dayes right on into the modern "choose your
all-in-wunder window-manager/file-manager/browser/media-player/mail-
client/theme-set/tribal-allegiance/doctrine-on-the-Eucharist mega-
package, or assemble your desktop environment out of stone knives,
bearskins, and dedicated panel applications configurable only by text
file" dichotomy. Still searchin' for the fabled OS that manages to be
the best of both worlds...

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by John Ames
On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:21:22 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
GUI-centric computing was a breath of fresh air. At least, I thought
at the time. It was only more recently that I realized that the Unix
workstation vendors had the right idea: build the GUI as a separate
layer on top of the command-line/scriptable tools. That way, you
don’t have to wrestle with the GUI to try to automate things.

And yet...they never really integrated the GUI elements as well as O.G.
MacOS did ...

I notice you don’t seem to count current “macOS” in that. You think that’s
been a step backwards?

Post by John Ames
X has, IMHO, always felt like a separate thing bolted onto command-line
*nix, from Ye Olde Motif Dayes right on into the modern "choose your
all-in-wunder window-manager/file-manager/browser/media-player/mail-
client/theme-set/tribal-allegiance/doctrine-on-the-Eucharist mega-
package, or assemble your desktop environment out of stone knives,
bearskins, and dedicated panel applications configurable only by text
file" dichotomy. Still searchin' for the fabled OS that manages to be
the best of both worlds...

All those GUI desktops built on X11--and now Wayland--originated from
people feeling exactly the same way you do, that no existing setup quite
fits their needs, so they create yet another one.

You are free to do the same.

[John Ames]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 22:34:08 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I notice you don’t seem to count current “macOS” in that. You think
that’s been a step backwards?

I do indeed. Classic MacOS, its deficiencies in scripting/automation
(and a few other issues) aside, hit a pretty solid sweet-sport in
abstracting the underlying mechanisms of an operating system enough to
be accessible/convenient without unduly hampering the user; *nearly*
everything it can actually do is represented to the user in a
consistent and discoverable manner.

NeXTSTEP/OSX was not quite so successful; it's a more solid OS under
the hood (I mean, it can actually do proper multitasking, for starters,)
but as with XWindows it's sort of a layer cake of something-else
frosted onto *nix. The Mac parts work well enough, and the *nix parts
work well enough, but they don't really gel into something *coherent*
as the old system did.

And modern "macOS" increasingly eschews capability altogether in favor
of abstraction; these days they don't even want to acknowledge that
local mass storage exists (the better to upsell you on iCloud!) and
it's an ordeal just getting to the root directory of the HDD/SDD in
Finder... :/

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
All those GUI desktops built on X11--and now Wayland--originated from
people feeling exactly the same way you do, that no existing setup
quite fits their needs, so they create yet another one.
You are free to do the same.

In my infinite free time for which I have no higher priorities, yes ;)

[moi]

Post by John Ames
And modern "macOS" increasingly eschews capability altogether in favor
of abstraction; these days they don't even want to acknowledge that
local mass storage exists (the better to upsell you on iCloud!) and
it's an ordeal just getting to the root directory of the HDD/SDD in
Finder... :/

You are using it wrong.

[John Ames]

On Thu, 2 May 2024 20:58:21 +0100

Post by moi

Post by John Ames
And modern "macOS" increasingly eschews capability altogether in
favor of abstraction; these days they don't even want to
acknowledge that local mass storage exists (the better to upsell
you on iCloud!) and it's an ordeal just getting to the root
directory of the HDD/SDD in Finder... :/

You are using it wrong.

A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of the
original Mac OS four decades ago! Nowadays it requires you to go dig
through the settings; why? Search me, unless it's that they'd really
rather you didn't think about the fact that the computer *has* its own
local storage...

[Bill Findlay]

Post by John Ames
On Thu, 2 May 2024 20:58:21 +0100

Post by moi

Post by John Ames
And modern "macOS" increasingly eschews capability altogether in
favor of abstraction; these days they don't even want to
acknowledge that local mass storage exists (the better to upsell
you on iCloud!) and it's an ordeal just getting to the root
directory of the HDD/SDD in Finder... :/

You are using it wrong.

A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of the
original Mac OS four decades ago! Nowadays it requires you to go dig
through the settings; why?

No, it doesn't.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by John Ames

Post by moi
You are using it wrong.

A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of the
original Mac OS four decades ago!

I think it’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to a certain (in)famous curt and
dismissive response from Steve Jobs to some user who was having trouble
with the wireless reception on their Iphone.

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by John Ames
On Thu, 2 May 2024 20:58:21 +0100

Post by moi

Post by John Ames
And modern "macOS" increasingly eschews capability altogether in
favor of abstraction; these days they don't even want to
acknowledge that local mass storage exists (the better to upsell
you on iCloud!) and it's an ordeal just getting to the root
directory of the HDD/SDD in Finder... :/

You are using it wrong.

A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of the
original Mac OS four decades ago! Nowadays it requires you to go dig
through the settings; why? Search me, unless it's that they'd really
rather you didn't think about the fact that the computer *has* its own
local storage...

Pull up a shell (terminal) window and use ls/find.

[John Ames]

On Fri, 03 May 2024 14:30:14 GMT

Post by Scott Lurndal

Post by John Ames
A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of
the original Mac OS four decades ago! Nowadays it requires you to go
dig through the settings; why? Search me, unless it's that they'd
really rather you didn't think about the fact that the computer
*has* its own local storage...

Pull up a shell (terminal) window and use ls/find.

Totally possible, yes! Also completely unneccessary in prior versions,
where the dumb thing was right on the desktop!

[Bill Findlay]

Post by John Ames
On Fri, 03 May 2024 14:30:14 GMT

Post by Scott Lurndal

Post by John Ames
A bold assertion, considering that I'm trying to do something which
*had* been entirely straightforward since the very first version of
the original Mac OS four decades ago! Nowadays it requires you to go
dig through the settings; why? Search me, unless it's that they'd
really rather you didn't think about the fact that the computer
*has* its own local storage...

Pull up a shell (terminal) window and use ls/find.

Totally possible, yes! Also completely unneccessary in prior versions,
where the dumb thing was right on the desktop!

It still is.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by John Ames
On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 22:34:08 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I notice you don’t seem to count current “macOS” in that. You think
that’s been a step backwards?

I do indeed. Classic MacOS, its deficiencies in scripting/automation
(and a few other issues) aside, hit a pretty solid sweet-sport in
abstracting the underlying mechanisms of an operating system enough to
be accessible/convenient without unduly hampering the user; *nearly*
everything it can actually do is represented to the user in a consistent
and discoverable manner.

In my experience, GUIs work best when they are purpose-built to solve a
specific set of problems.

Trouble is, the computing landscape evolves. And so the GUIs have to
evolve along with that, in ways not envisaged in their original design. At
some point the added complexity threatens to overwhelm the integrity of
the original concept, so you have to abandon that and start again with a
fresh, more up-to-date design.

In other words, GUIs are inherently inflexible. Which is why they keep
being rejigged and reworked so often. And the users get annoyed with that,
when functions are moved around and they can no longer do things in the
same old way they’re accustomed to.

By the way, you and I may appreciate the “Classic” MacOS because of our
experience with it. Some go back further than that, and have a fondness
for the original GUI from Xerox PARC, which one could claim was even more
cohesive than MacOS, for the reason I mentioned: it had to solve a more
tightly-constrained set of problems

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
In my experience, GUIs work best when they are purpose-built to solve a
specific set of problems.
Trouble is, the computing landscape evolves. And so the GUIs have to
evolve along with that, in ways not envisaged in their original design. At
some point the added complexity threatens to overwhelm the integrity of
the original concept, so you have to abandon that and start again with a
fresh, more up-to-date design.
In other words, GUIs are inherently inflexible. Which is why they keep
being rejigged and reworked so often. And the users get annoyed with that,
when functions are moved around and they can no longer do things in the
same old way they’re accustomed to.

GUIs define a sandbox - or playpen, depending on which metaphor you
like better. As long as you stay in the playpen, things are easy.
But as soon as you try to climb out of the playpan, the walls go up.

At that point, a command prompt can help a lot. It makes me want to
scream when I watch someone pointing and clicking and pointing and
clicking and dragging and dropping and... oops, where did I drop it?
Give me a minute to find it...

Meanwhile, I've opened a command prompt and solved the problem with
a dozen keystrokes - or written a script that does everything I want
in a fraction of the time. Yes, it takes skill to do this - but I
have the skills, and I resent efforts to keep me in the playpen.

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
In my experience, GUIs work best when they are purpose-built to solve a
specific set of problems.
Trouble is, the computing landscape evolves. And so the GUIs have to
evolve along with that, in ways not envisaged in their original design. At
some point the added complexity threatens to overwhelm the integrity of
the original concept, so you have to abandon that and start again with a
fresh, more up-to-date design.
In other words, GUIs are inherently inflexible. Which is why they keep
being rejigged and reworked so often. And the users get annoyed with that,
when functions are moved around and they can no longer do things in the
same old way they're accustomed to.

GUIs define a sandbox - or playpen, depending on which metaphor you
like better.

And an analog one at that, like shopping. You come to know to choose
this thing, then that thing, move this over there. If someone changes
it, it's like the periodic consternation that occurs when your favorite
supermarket inexplicably moves everything around and you have to hunt
all over for the tinned tuna or the baking powder.

Post by Charlie Gibbs
As long as you stay in the playpen, things are easy.
But as soon as you try to climb out of the playpan, the walls go up.
At that point, a command prompt can help a lot. It makes me want to
scream when I watch someone pointing and clicking and pointing and
clicking and dragging and dropping and... oops, where did I drop it?
Give me a minute to find it...
Meanwhile, I've opened a command prompt and solved the problem with
a dozen keystrokes - or written a script that does everything I want
in a fraction of the time. Yes, it takes skill to do this - but I
have the skills, and I resent efforts to keep me in the playpen.

Yeah, what he said. And I'm an elderly retired artist blacksmith, not
an IT professional of any kind.

[Peter Flass]

Post by Mike Spencer

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
In my experience, GUIs work best when they are purpose-built to solve a
specific set of problems.
Trouble is, the computing landscape evolves. And so the GUIs have to
evolve along with that, in ways not envisaged in their original design. At
some point the added complexity threatens to overwhelm the integrity of
the original concept, so you have to abandon that and start again with a
fresh, more up-to-date design.
In other words, GUIs are inherently inflexible. Which is why they keep
being rejigged and reworked so often. And the users get annoyed with that,
when functions are moved around and they can no longer do things in the
same old way they're accustomed to.

GUIs define a sandbox - or playpen, depending on which metaphor you
like better.

And an analog one at that, like shopping. You come to know to choose
this thing, then that thing, move this over there. If someone changes
it, it's like the periodic consternation that occurs when your favorite
supermarket inexplicably moves everything around and you have to hunt
all over for the tinned tuna or the baking powder.

Post by Charlie Gibbs
As long as you stay in the playpen, things are easy.
But as soon as you try to climb out of the playpan, the walls go up.
At that point, a command prompt can help a lot. It makes me want to
scream when I watch someone pointing and clicking and pointing and
clicking and dragging and dropping and... oops, where did I drop it?
Give me a minute to find it...
Meanwhile, I've opened a command prompt and solved the problem with
a dozen keystrokes - or written a script that does everything I want
in a fraction of the time. Yes, it takes skill to do this - but I
have the skills, and I resent efforts to keep me in the playpen.

Yeah, what he said. And I'm an elderly retired artist blacksmith, not
an IT professional of any kind.

Sometime it’s easier to use the command line, sometimes the GUI. It all
depends.

[Sn!pe]

Peter Flass <***@yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]

Sometime it's easier to use the command line, sometimes the GUI.
It all depends.

Exactly so.

One's choice of which to use is likely to be influenced by one's
prejudices; not that I'm pointing a finger at anybody here, obvs.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Peter Flass
Sometime it’s easier to use the command line, sometimes the GUI. It all
depends.

The fun thing is, having a GUI actually makes the command line more
powerful. Because we now have GUI-based terminal emulators that support
cut/copy/paste and scrollback and other fun stuff.

The irony is that such a basic GUI feature as cut/copy/paste doesn’t
actually work with GUI actions or widget settings or any of that; yet it
is so useful for the command line.

[Stefan Ram]

Post by Peter Flass
Sometime it’s easier to use the command line, sometimes the GUI. It all
depends.

To reiterate what others have already laid out here: For
my programs, I aim to structure them as a library of the
business operations that can then be built upon to create
a GUI or command-line interface.

.-------------------------. .-------------------------.
| GUI | | commands |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
'-------------------------' '-------------------------'
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
.-----------------------------'
|
|
|
V
.-------------------------.
| business library |
| |
| |
| |
'-------------------------'

If I really want to go the extra mile, I'd also build in
an interpreter (like VBA in Microsoft® Office) so that
the GUI users can do some programming themselves. This
interpreter could handle text commands, or it could just
provide a unified interface, like COM.

.-------------------------. .-------------------------.
| GUI | | commands |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
'-------------------------' '-------------------------'
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
.-----------------------------'
|
|
|
V
.-------------------------.
| facade |
| |
| |
| |
'-------------------------'
|
|
|
V
.-------------------------.
| business library |
| |
| |
| |
'-------------------------'

[Stefan Ram]

Post by Stefan Ram
If I really want to go the extra mile, I'd also build in
an interpreter (like VBA in Microsoft® Office) so that
the GUI users can do some programming themselves. This
interpreter could handle text commands, or it could just
provide a unified interface, like COM.

Microsoft® Word is a GUI app, but you can totally write a C
or Python program to control it and use hella Word features.
And it shouldn't be too tough to whip up some command line
tools that can leverage Word like that. Gotta hand it to
Microsoft and COM, that's pretty slick. Maybe some of that
mindset was inspired by Rexx, and systems like ARexx.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Microsoft® Word is a GUI app, but you can totally write a C or Python
program to control it and use hella Word features.

Or better still, why not use a library like odfpy, which you can directly
use to create/access/manipulate office documents in a high-level language
like Python, and bypass the complicated, slow GUI-centric app altogether?

[Sebastian]

Post by Stefan Ram

Sometime it?s easier to use the command line, sometimes the GUI. It all
depends.

To reiterate what others have already laid out here: For
my programs, I aim to structure them as a library of the
business operations that can then be built upon to create
a GUI or command-line interface.
.-------------------------. .-------------------------.
| GUI | | commands |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
'-------------------------' '-------------------------'
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
.-----------------------------'
|
|
|
V
.-------------------------.
| business library |
| |
| |
| |
'-------------------------'
If I really want to go the extra mile, I'd also build in
an interpreter (like VBA in Microsoft? Office) so that
the GUI users can do some programming themselves. This
interpreter could handle text commands, or it could just
provide a unified interface, like COM.

Common Lisp can allow you to do all of this in one go. Its
REPL can be a command shell (or a REPL could be added to the
GUI without much difficulty), allowing the business logic to
be accessed directly. And the GUI can be written in the
same language, and it's also very easy to load and execute
new Lisp code into a running process, giving you a built-in
scripting language. Code can be compiled, allowing it to
be closed-source, or interpreted, all in the same process.

Since it's all in the same process, commands and user scripts
could interact or integrate with your app's GUI elements or
have their own GUI windows or create widgets that integrate into

It would save you from having to create all the architecture
that is required for COM to work. Your architecture could
be simplified to:

.----------------.
| GUI |
`----------------'
|
.---------------------------.
| business library/commands |
`---------------------------'

The most difficult part of the whole project would be
documenting it well enough that those users who wanted
to write scripts could actually do it.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by w***@bibble.com.invalid
On Sun, 28 Apr 2024 02:51:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.
566891248 .
254918868 dec/

snip

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
As you can see, IBM is a distant second, and the others are way
behind.

They probably have copies of the Grey and Orange walls. Never saw
anything like that with any other system supplier.

When I worked at Univac I was issued my own Black Wall (for OS/3).
I have since scanned it and uploaded it to Bitsavers (it's part of
that "Univac" total in the original poster's list).

Next up: assembly instructions, schematics, and ROM listing for
the Heath 19 terminal.

[Lynn Wheeler]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.

Inside IBM: Lessons of a Corporate Culture in Action
https://www.amazon.com/Inside-IBM-Lessons-Corporate-Culture-ebook/dp/B0C8BV1HM3/

Inside IBM: Lessons of a Corporate Culture in Action
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/cort21300
CHAPTER 11 GRAY LITERATURE IN IBM'S INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM (pp. 317-358)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/cort21300.15

It was said within IBM in the 1970s and 1980s that the company was the
world's second-largest publisher after the U.S. Government Printing
Office (GPO), as measured by the number of pages printed. It might have
been an urban myth because there are no extant statistics to document
how much IBM published, but a look at a KWIC (Key Word in Context) index
of its publications from that period reveals it occupied four to five
linear feet. Each page in it had two columns of brief citations printed
in font sizes normally reserved for endnotes in academic publications.

... I remember hearing the claim in the 80s ... however it was the total
number of pages printed ... as opposed to number of unique document
pages.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Lynn Wheeler
It was said within IBM in the 1970s and 1980s that the company was the
world's second-largest publisher after the U.S. Government Printing
Office (GPO), as measured by the number of pages printed.

So where has all that stuff gone? You’d think there would be more
contributions to an archive like Bitsavers than there has been.

Or maybe former DEC users just feel a stronger urge to ensure the memory
of that company never dies, than former IBM users do ...

[Peter Flass]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Lynn Wheeler
It was said within IBM in the 1970s and 1980s that the company was the
world's second-largest publisher after the U.S. Government Printing
Office (GPO), as measured by the number of pages printed.

So where has all that stuff gone? You’d think there would be more
contributions to an archive like Bitsavers than there has been.
Or maybe former DEC users just feel a stronger urge to ensure the memory
of that company never dies, than former IBM users do ...

We ate our elderly. Usually, when a new version of something came along, we
were more than happy to toss the old stuff and go with the new. I carted
around a box of Burroughs 5500 manuals thru several moves before I finally
binned them. Nobody considered them “history” then, so no one bothered to
save them.

[Lynn Wheeler]

note VAX sold into the same mid-range market with IBM 4300s and in about
the same numbers for small number orders ... however some large
corporations had multi-hundred vm/4300s orders for placing out in
departmental areas (sort of the leading edge of the coming distributed
computer orders). IBM was expecting that 4361/4381 order volume would
continue like the 4331/4341 orders ... however can be seen in the VAX
numbers, by the mid-80s the mid-range market was starting to move to
workstation and large PC servers.

a.f.c. repost from 2002:

more drift ... from a 1988 IDC report:

VAX INVENTORY
-------------
SYSTEM US NON-US TOTAL
--------- --------- --------- ---------
11/725 950 550 1,500
11/730 4,100 2,950 7,050
11/750 12,230 9,370 21,600
11/780 14,280 9,660 23,940
11/782 190 120 310
11/785 2,460 1,590 4,050
MVI 1,840 960 2,800
MVII 41,000 23,900 64,900
82XX 2,800 1,870 4,670
83XX 900 600 1,500
85XX 1,200 905 2,105
86XX 2,360 1,240 3,600
8700 400 270 670
8800 300 200 500
-------- -------- --------
TOTAL 85,010 54,185 139,195

VAX SHIPMENTS
-------------
NO. OF VAX
YEAR US NON-US TOTAL MODELS SHIPPED
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------------
1978 312 78 390 1
1979 627 313 940 1
1980 1,512 1,038 2,550 2
1981 1,979 1,726 3,705 2
1982 4,129 2,794 6,923 4
1983 6,178 4,384 10,562 5
1984 11,703 8,227 19,930 7
1985 17,600 7,300 24,900 8
1986 19,190 12,840 32,030 12
1987 21,780 15,485 37,265 12
-------- -------- --------
TOTAL 85,010 54,185 139,195

VAX SHIPMENTS - NON US
----------------------
1978-
SYSTEM 1984 1985 1986 1987 TOTAL
-------- -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
11/725 450 100 0 0 550
11/730 2,350 600 0 0 2,950
11/750 7,040 1,700 430 200 9,370
11/780 7,700 1,500 270 190 9,660
11/782 120 0 0 0 190
11/785 40 1,100 350 100 1,590
MVI 860 100 0 0 960
MVII 0 1,900 10,000 12,000 23,900
82XX 0 0 725 1,145 1,870
83XX 0 0 200 400 600
85XX 0 0 305 600 905
86XX 0 300 470 470 1,240
8700 0 0 60 210 270
8800 0 0 30 170 200
-------- -------- -------- -------- --------
TOTAL 18,560 7,300 12,840 15,485 54,185

VAX SHIPMENTS - US
------------------
1978-
SYSTEM 1984 1985 1986 1987 TOTAL
-------- -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
11/725 650 300 0 0 950
11/730 3,200 900 0 0 4,100
11/750 9,300 2,200 560 170 12,230
11/780 11,500 2,200 400 180 14,280
11/782 190 0 0 0 190
11/785 260 1,600 500 100 2,460
MVI 1,340 500 0 0 1,840
MVII 0 9,000 15,000 17,000 41,000
82XX 0 0 1,150 1,650 2,800
83XX 0 0 300 600 900
85XX 0 0 420 780 1,200
86XX 0 900 730 730 2,360
8700 0 0 80 320 400
8800 0 0 50 250 300
-------- -------- -------- -------- --------
TOTAL 26,440 17,600 19,190 21,780 85,010

VAX SHIPMENTS - WORLD-WIDE
--------------------------
1978-
SYSTEM 1984 1985 1986 1987 TOTAL
-------- -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
11/725 1,100 400 0 0 1,500
11/730 5,550 1,500 0 0 7,050
11/750 16,340 3,900 990 370 21,600
11/780 19,200 3,700 670 370 23,940
11/782 310 0 0 0 310
11/785 300 2,700 850 200 4,050
MVI 2,200 600 0 0 2,800
MVII 0 10,900 25,000 29,000 64,900
82XX 0 0 1,875 2,795 4,670
83XX 0 0 500 1,000 1,500
85XX 0 0 725 1,380 2,105
86XX 0 1,200 1,200 1,200 3,600
8700 0 0 140 530 640
8800 0 0 80 420 500
-------- -------- -------- -------- --------
TOTAL 45,000 24,900 32,030 37,265 139,195

... also 1988

6,500 clusters installed, From 14,000 DEC VAX sites:

Percentage of VAX processors clustered

15% - 1985
21% - 1986
26% - 1987

...

IBM favorite son batch system (MVS) looked at the size of the
distributed vm/4341 market and wanted some of the business ... however
it required non-datacenter hardware ... and MVS was CKD DASD only, never
getting around to supporting FBA (fixed-block) disk ... and the only new
CKD DASD was large datacenter 3880/3380 (note there has been no CKD DASD
made for decades, all being simulated on industry standard fixed-block
disks). Eventually IBM came up with CKD simulation for the 3370 FBA as
3375 ... but didn't do MVS much good. MVS was still scores of staff per
system, and the distributed computing market was scores of systems per
staff.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Lynn Wheeler
... however can be seen in the VAX
numbers, by the mid-80s the mid-range market was starting to move to
workstation and large PC servers.

Also RISC was taking over the workstation market from around 1989, and VAX
no longer had the price/performance edge after that. It was only backward
compatibility that kept it in business from that point.

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.

There's one person who collects, collates and scans those
documents. He has limited time and he chooses which to
scan. I believe he has many more documents yet to scan
and make available (I've got a couple of boxes ready to
drop off with him sometime).

[Peter Flass]

Post by Scott Lurndal

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.

There's one person who collects, collates and scans those
documents. He has limited time and he chooses which to
scan. I believe he has many more documents yet to scan
and make available (I've got a couple of boxes ready to
drop off with him sometime).

Al subscribes to this NG. Sometimes if you ask nice…

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Scott Lurndal

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Looking at the software-docs collection at Bitsavers
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/>, there is over half a
terabyte of files there.

There's one person who collects, collates and scans those
documents. He has limited time and he chooses which to
scan. I believe he has many more documents yet to scan
and make available (I've got a couple of boxes ready to
drop off with him sometime).

I scanned about 50,000 pages of manuals and uploaded them.
I used a little Brother scanner which just generated PDF
images. When the manuals appeared for general downloading,
Al had shrunk the files to a third of their size and OCRed
the text to make it searchable. Magic.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

I scanned about 50,000 pages of manuals and uploaded them. I used a
little Brother scanner which just generated PDF images. When the
manuals appeared for general downloading,
Al had shrunk the files to a third of their size and OCRed the text to
make it searchable. Magic.

He has put together an amazing collection. I just wish he would include
sha256sum hashes in his IndexByDate.txt files ...