Re: FW: OS/400 upgrades for CISC -- MIDRANGE-L

Message text written by INTERNET:MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com


Dave Mahadevan said;

<snip>

> The point I am trying to make to all the
>people with the shiny black boxes is the gray boxes will remain there
>and if the manufacturer doesnt feel like supporting it, they will do a
>cost benefit analysis and may move (could be RISC or nowadays it points
>to NT !).

Dave you have got to be kidding.   If I'm using a software package on the 400 to
run my business,
 I'm going to the RISC box.    Even if I'm buying for the first time with no
prior software running , there is still good reasons to go to the RISC box(in
light of total ownership cost, and Neils forwarding of the RPMark95 stats etc.
etc.). 

What conscience do you think WinTel has about 16 bit apps having to be rewritten
and re-bought to take advantage of 32 bit technology?    If Microsoft was in
this position what do you think he would do?

I think Chris has a point when he said  { I don't think the numbers are all that
relevant. After all, I would guess that there are more 486s installed than
Pentiums, but that wouldn't stop me from calling the 486 "dead". } 

Do you think that Windoz 3.1 should still be supported by Microsquash ?  They
didn't even fix the bugs when it WAS supported(Thats right they were
undocumented Features).

Going along with the NT "threat" idea for a moment,  I am personally very happy
that IBM is spending every dime & every developer to make V4Rx the best yet,
and that It's Java(etc,etc)  compliant and that it will really SCREAM
(RPMark95).  And I own a CISC box.   The future of the AS/400  is VERY VERY 
important to me.   That future is NOT CISC period.   I'm just happy that I have
a very easy migration path. 

 Remember 80 - 88 was the SYS/38,   88-97 was CISC,   97-?? is RISC  and in each
case it was a Save/Restore.   I think HP would have liked that when moving their
software base to 64 bit.  and DEC would have loved to have moved PDP-11's that
easily onward. 

Not having a migration path to a Bigger/Faster/Better  future would have been a
problem.  V3R2 is very stable, just stay on it as long as you like.  But most
AS/400 customers , I think,  if givin a choice wouldn't want IBM to make
everything on V3R7(V4R1) backward compatable to V3R2.  They  would rather have
the limited engineering talent & development dollars spent on the Future not the
past.

BUT  Thats just my opinion.   I'm probably wrong as usual.  

John P. Carr   CDP
EdgeTech Inc. 



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