Path: ...!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!not-for-mail From: John Levine Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 02:09:04 -0000 (UTC) Organization: Taughannock Networks Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 02:09:04 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="22283"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" In-Reply-To: Cleverness: some X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) Bytes: 2040 Lines: 19 According to Brian G. Lucas : >>>> That was not what customers were interested in. There were various >>>> Unix variants available for the PC, but the customers preferred using >>>> DOS, which was preinstalled and did not cost extra. ... >> >> Yup. PC/IX was a really nice Unix port for the IBM PC and nobody was interested. >> >As this (the kernel part) was my project, it was very disappointing. I think >IBM priced such that with DOS being "free", it had no chance. Nobody knew what the market for PC/IX was supposed to be beyond some handwaving "if 5% if PC users buy it we'll be rich." PC/IX could do anything a PDP-11 running Unix could do, give or take peripherals, but the PC market was very different from the PDP-11 market and by that time the PDP-11 was rather long in the tooth. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly