sorting was: The System360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That 3897

re:

3270 terminal amortized business analysis was done late 70s ... long before rolm

and for some drift ... from long ago and far away ... a little rolm drift:

To: lovex

just talked to lovex ... who wanted to know what i know about what is going on at rolm. As an aside she mentioned that after the AT announcement, Rolm decided that PC-AT is strategic direction rather than S-1s and they will cancel their order for 900 S-1s. ....

To: lovex just got back from rolm ... they have a number of 512k s-1s with high speed programmable interfaces, v.35, two 200meg hard disks, tape drives, & 370 channel attach (I was there looking for a couple of s-1s to send to hawthorn for the DBS project). Rolm needs to double check the serial numbers against their books next week to determine which specific machines have not been installed &-or any money paid for. They will know by the week of dec. 3rd which machine's we can possibly hijack ... do you want try for any out of Rolm??? Other than that, i've found IBM four "small" S-1s w-o channel attach &-or hard disks, two 512k S-1s w-o channel attach but with 200meg disk, and one 512k s-1 w-o channel attach but with 60meg hard disk. Do you want to try for any of these? Two of the 512k S-1s are packed and ready to be shipped back ... probably Monday morning ... so say now if you want them (the 512k S-1s apparently were configured for ADS ... & I don't know how to match the HONE list for YALE-IUP against the ADS list).

... snip ...

the first email refers to some people at rolm that I had known before the acquisition that were in the rolm datacenter organization ... and were trying to find out who might be making what decisions. the DGs that ROLM had been using were getting old and creaky and they had decided to migrate to S-1s as a platform (and placed an order for 900 S-1s).

i had been told that I had to demonstrate at least some ibm content in my high-speed data transport project

the "old time" telecommunication that would support even up to T1 (1.5mbits-sec us, 2mbits-sec european) was the 2701 from the 60s (nearly twenty years old). the only other choice was that FSD (federal systems division) had done an RPQ "zirpel" card for the S-1 for special federal bids (as upgrade to 2701, there was no standard "product" on the drawing boards before the early 90s). as a result, I was being forced to scrounge up some S-1s to use with zirpel cards (and the rolm 900 S-1s order had temporarily made s-1s impossible to get ... at least until rolm decided to change direction ... and I could then pick up several machines that were still sitting crated in rolm hallways).