Forgot your password?
Cyhist Apr 11 1997 C
Document Actions
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 13:10:33 -0400
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security"
<PADGETT@HOBBES.ORL.MMC.COM>
Subject: Re: Prices from Yesteryear
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>According to those who have really studied these issues (particularly Gary Chien, ex of IBM), prices for each "workstation" have remained remarkably constant from mainframes (lotsa desktops per machine) all the way through to PCs (one machine, one desktop).
Do not think that is quite true since what you appear to be calling a "workstation" would have been a VT-100/3270 in the 1980 timeframe (U$2,000-U$3,000) and neither had any computational capability.
When you spead the U$1,000,000+ cost for a typical mini/mainframe over the number of simultaneously supportable terminals, the cost/user goes up considerably. Now if you consider the mainframe a fixed cost absorbed by overhead and are looking just at the delta cost of adding the next user, can see that that has remained fairly steady.
However, when you consider that you could still buy a decent car for U$5,000 then, the analogy begins to fall apart.
I suspect that you could make a better case for individual chip costs remaining constant as the number of chips required for X declined.
Warmly,
Padgett
ps incidently I just came across a longish (20+k of flat ASCII text)
report done 10 years ago on Mil-Std-1750 computers and the major players with performance analysis and benchmarks used then - any interest ?
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security"
<PADGETT@HOBBES.ORL.MMC.COM>
Subject: Re: Prices from Yesteryear
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>According to those who have really studied these issues (particularly Gary Chien, ex of IBM), prices for each "workstation" have remained remarkably constant from mainframes (lotsa desktops per machine) all the way through to PCs (one machine, one desktop).
Do not think that is quite true since what you appear to be calling a "workstation" would have been a VT-100/3270 in the 1980 timeframe (U$2,000-U$3,000) and neither had any computational capability.
When you spead the U$1,000,000+ cost for a typical mini/mainframe over the number of simultaneously supportable terminals, the cost/user goes up considerably. Now if you consider the mainframe a fixed cost absorbed by overhead and are looking just at the delta cost of adding the next user, can see that that has remained fairly steady.
However, when you consider that you could still buy a decent car for U$5,000 then, the analogy begins to fall apart.
I suspect that you could make a better case for individual chip costs remaining constant as the number of chips required for X declined.
Warmly,
Padgett
ps incidently I just came across a longish (20+k of flat ASCII text)
report done 10 years ago on Mil-Std-1750 computers and the major players with performance analysis and benchmarks used then - any interest ?
______________________________________________________________________
