Pr1me OAS again

[Peter Ruscoe]

In the lead up to Pr1me's acquisition of PRIMACS which became OAS, I flew (from New York) to London for their UK sales conference.

VERY interesting. The sales guys were slavering to get their hands on the 7(?) reels of mag tape I had brought with me, so they could get a peek at the product.

The weekend was alcohol-fuelled, and I'm a bit hazy. But three things stick in my mind.

The banquet was extravagant, and the speaker was Ken Fisher who said, among things, "The world is betting on war." Hmm.

The conference sessions were held a Beaulieu motor museum. And at a strategic point in the proceedings, there was a spitting roar from the back of the room. In drove Stirling Moss in a D-Type Jaguar. He pulled up at the front as a Pr1me employee dressed as a copper on a bicycle rolled up and said "who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" The group roared at this take-off of a British TV commercial. Stirling gave a sales-oriented speech, including the words "show me someone who comes second, and I'll show you a loser." (If you are not familiar with Stirling Moss, Google him.)

The other thing that sticks in my mind was a (commercial) helicopter flight from Gatwick to Heathrow to catch my plane home. My first and only trip in a helicopter.

Peter

[Dennis Boone]

> The other thing that sticks in my mind was a (commercial) helicopter
> flight from Gatwick to Heathrow to catch my plane home. My first and
> only trip in a helicopter.

At one point we considered porting our application (in COBOL) from Prime
to VAX. They loaned us a Microvax II to do a basic port, and then I was
mailed to Marlboro to the DEC benchmarking lab to run the thing on a
couple of types of machines. IIRC I estimated around 30 users on an
8600. Of course the thing that killed any chance of a port was the
reseller discount schedule -- Prime did a much larger percentage.

They put me on the DEC helicopter to get back to Logan for the flight
home. Sat front and center, under the drip from the roof leak, watching
over the pilot's shoulder and loved it.

De

[bill]

Having been involved in pre-sales competition with DEC using Pr1me
50-series I can assure you moving to a VAX would have been a losing
proposition. We beat out the VAX on every benchmark we ever did.
Sadly, we often found ourselves competing against, "I don't care
which machine wins as long as it says VAX on the front."

bill

[Dennis Boone]

> Having been involved in pre-sales competition with DEC using Pr1me
> 50-series I can assure you moving to a VAX would have been a losing
> proposition. We beat out the VAX on every benchmark we ever did.
> Sadly, we often found ourselves competing against, "I don't care
> which machine wins as long as it says VAX on the front."

Well, until Prime got far behind the performance curve. Marketroids-
excluded performance numbers for later machines were heavily inflated.
The fastest single Prime processor was maybe 10 MIPS. And Prime never
addressed the slow backplane bus in the 50 Series, so when DEC did the
higher performance interconnects, they were likely faster at I/O too.

De

[bill]

The last one of these bids I worked on we provided two boxes of
greenbar fan-fold paper with benchmark results. Dec provided a
letter in an envelope that said if the machine we are bidding was
in production these would be the results. That bidding conference
was where and when I heard the quote above. I learned a big lesson
that day.

But, it all turned out well in the end. DEC won. Delivered a
massively slower machine while waiting for the one they bid to
actually go into production. And the real story came out. DEC
had bid a VAX running VMS. The man who made the infamous quote
above was insistent on it having to be a VAX because he had
received a whole bunch of free scientific software from Kitt's
Peak Observatory. You guessed it. It all ran on BSD. :-)

bill

[Dennis Boone]

> But, it all turned out well in the end. DEC won. Delivered a
> massively slower machine while waiting for the one they bid to
> actually go into production. And the real story came out. DEC
> had bid a VAX running VMS. The man who made the infamous quote
> above was insistent on it having to be a VAX because he had
> received a whole bunch of free scientific software from Kitt's
> Peak Observatory. You guessed it. It all ran on BSD. :-)

Yeah, if the "benchmark" against which you're competing is in OSI
layer 8, you're screwed. Also if the specification doesn't include
critical details.

De

[bill]

I think you missed the point. They didn't do the required benchmarks.
They couldn't because the machine they were bidding didn't exist and
wouldn't exist for at least 6 months. And yet, they won.
"Sometimes the only way to win is to not play."
or
Rule #1: The customer is always right.
Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, remember Rule #1.

bill

[Dennis Boone]

> I think you missed the point. They didn't do the required benchmarks.
> They couldn't because the machine they were bidding didn't exist and
> wouldn't exist for at least 6 months. And yet, they won.

No, I didn't miss it. OTOH, did it really make any difference in the
outcome, given the guy who was going to buy a VAX no matter what? Who
didn't put the BSD requirement in the RFQ?

De

[bill]

On 12/10/2023 10:44 PM, Dennis Boone wrote:
> > I think you missed the point. They didn't do the required benchmarks.
> > They couldn't because the machine they were bidding didn't exist and
> > wouldn't exist for at least 6 months. And yet, they won.
>
> No, I didn't miss it. OTOH, did it really make any difference in the
> outcome, given the guy who was going to buy a VAX no matter what? Who

No, but who would have expected this going into n RFP?

> didn't put the BSD requirement in the RFQ?

Three guesses.
I still keep one of the textbooks he wrote to remind me. :-}

bill