Risc System/6000

[ibmjb at garnet.berkeley.edu]

In article <1514 at fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> adam at fcs260c.UUCP (Adam W. Feigin) writes:
>In article <10307 at hoptoad.uucp> gnu at hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>>>    . . . POWERstations and POWERservers . . .
>>
>>I like the way they adopted the Sun Marketing naming convention
>>(SPARCstations and SPARCservers).
>
>Well, since they licensed the graphics technology from SGI, and they
>call their machines the "POWER Series" and IBM is going after Sun and
>their SPARCstations/servers, its natural that IBM should call their
>machines in this manner.
>
>>
>>>                          . . . a complete system starting at $12,995.
>>
>>Including OS and window system?  Manuals?  Ethernet?  Compilers?  In
>>the original RT/PC announcement a few years ago, the lowball price
>>didn't even include a keyboard or monitor, which cost $thousands!  One
>>analysis showed that if Sun had charged as much for Unix as IBM, they
>>could've thrown in the workstation for free!
>
>Correct. The base price does NOT include OS & Window system or
>ethernet (I assume that you get manuals & compilers with the OS, but I
>could be wrong, and I certainly wouldn't put it past IBM NOT to
>include them, and charge extra for them, as they have a nasty habit of
>doing). I did notice that in the glossy that the 3-button mouse and
>keyboard are marked as "optional products".. Nice, very nice, looks
>like IBM is up to their old tricks again. They never learn, do they ??
>
The OS and window system and ethernet are included.

>(BTW the price sheet I have show the OS + X-Window System at $2000)
>
>>Also, one breakdown I saw was that this system only has four slots --
>>and all of them are in use.  No expandability.
>
>I'm not sure about this, but the base system comes with a 120MB
>DBA ("Direct Bus Attached" -- whatever that means) disk; I dont know
>if you need a slot for a controller, but if you want to add more disk,
>you gotta buy a controller. Lets not forget a slot for ethernet
>(optional), a slot for graphics (you really dont want to see anything,
>do you ??, you can just watch the blinkin' lights...)
>

Only one of the expansion slots is used in this configuration
(display adapter).

>>>               Documentation is available on a 5.25-inch compact disc
>>> (CD-ROM) that may be accessed from the user's POWERstation or from a
>>> network POWERserver.
>>
>>At extra cost
>
>Of course !!
>
>It will be a cold day in hell when the temperature is below freezing
>when IBM gets serious about the Unix/Workstation market.
>

The extra cost is only $115, which is pretty cheap if you ask me...

Yes, IBM IS serious about the workstation business.  Skeptics beware.