I've played with one (was Re: Risc System/6000

[A. Lester Buck]

In article <1990Feb21.073230.11534 at lavaca.uh.edu>, jet at karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) writes:
> In article <20635 at netnews.upenn.edu> bradley at grip.cis.upenn.edu (John Bradley) writes:
> >Yes, but has anybody actually PLAYED with these things?  I attended the 
> >Philadelphia unveiling and got to try out a 320, a 530, and an X terminal.
> 
> First off, at the Houston show, nobody was allowed to *touch* the
> things, much less get at the keyboard.

I got to touch one at the Houston announcement.  The Ingres guy let me play
around a bit.  Unfortunately, I crashed their system just doing some ls's and
cd's. :-(  They were rebooting for more than five minutes, but they weren't
particularly mad.  I really can't complain, since they told me this was an
alpha release of AIX 3.0 and an alpha release of Ingress.

But here was the _bizarre_ part.  I caught the tail end of the technical
announcement in a large auditorium, spent some time in the demo room, and
then went looking for the next announcement cycle, pitched for "commercial"
customers.  I tried to get in one of the closed doors, but an IBM lady said
"You can't go in there because of the lights."  I start to open another door,
but some really weird sounds are coming from inside.  The room is pitch
black, rock music is blaring, people are packed standing room only, a smoke
machine is pumping out clouds over the audience, and there is some laser
light show being displayed on the front curtains.  As a guy next to me said,
"I don't know whether to sit down or ask someone to dance!" I was repelled
by this show and left without even waiting for the presentation.  I was told
this show lasted something like ten minutes.  Sorry, I came in the middle of
a work day to get product information, not to waste time at some mobile
disco.  This was the most unprofessional display I have ever experienced
from IBM.  Did IBM inflict this dog and pony show on the entire country, or
were we in Houston just "lucky?"

But the machines themselves seem quite impressive at first look.

-- 
A. Lester Buck     buck at siswat.lonestar.org  ...!texbell!moray!siswat!buck