A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong.
Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers
built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor
SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built
superprocessor SC-40. These machines were marvels of engineering
design; although not much slower than the unique {Foonly} F-1, they
were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much slower
{DEC} KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also
completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries
(including the operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3
times faster than a KL10.
When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their followup to the
PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling their
machine into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and
in fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of
excitement in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by
the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the
hackers running Systems Concepts were much better at designing
machines than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed
itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually
improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates
continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously;
they believed they were competing with the KL10 and {VAX} 8600 and
failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry
startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a
fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to
Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic
decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most
of the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by CompuServe.
This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for hackers:
if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to learn Real World
moves.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Foonly}{PDP-10}]