RE: What do you tell folks you work on?

["James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Yer showin' your age, David!  Geez, "mini" is ... is so '70s-ish!  Mini
> seems to predate the desktop PC, so while it may have been "mini"
> compared to the mainframes back in the day, you should hardly call it
> mini today. And, yes, PCs were once known as microcomputers, but when
> was the last time you heard that term?

I'll second that. "Minicomputer" became an obsolete term the day Radio
Shack began offering multi-user Xenix for their 68000-based "Model 16"
(effectively a multi-user microcomputer). Or maybe when DEC added the
11/70 to their PDP-11 line (effectively the first full-size mainframe to
be based on scaled-up "mini" architecture).

For me, the "worst case" conversation goes something like:

"I write software for AS/400s"
"For what?"
"IBM midrange computers"
"IBM what?"
"What they used to call minicomputers, before the term became obsolete."

Incidentally, my old Tandy 1000SL had an EMS card made by a company called
"Micro-Mainframe."

--
JHHL