Bella Vista Babelfish
Reviews and Discussions by Movers and Shakers. Join us for the FUN!

Home » xyzzy » Tower » Data General Days
Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend 
Return to the default flat view Create a new topic Submit Reply
Data General Days [message #88838] Thu, 30 September 2021 16:14
Wayne Parham is currently offline  Wayne Parham
Messages: 12
Registered: December 2000
Chancellor

"Remember the good old 1980s?
When things were so uncomplicated?
I wish I could go back there again
And everything could be the same."

(From ELO - Time)

For anyone feeling sentimental, especially Data General alumni, here's a poster I had hanging on my wall in 1980. My first full-time job was as an engineer for Data General. These were heady times, when Tracy Kidder wrote "The Soul of a New Machine" about the development of a Data General super-minicomputer. Lots of good memories.

http://ParhamData.com/microNOVA_Fever.jpg

One thing I loved about Data General is that it's equipment looked so good. Performance was good too, for its time, but nobody made better looking systems, in my opinion. From the Nova 3 and Eclipse front-panel switches to the 6026 tape drives - with vacuum column tensioners - their gear just looked great.

The photo below is me in the 1980s, standing in front of a couple of Data General tape drives. It was part of an Eclipse S/130 system. I'm holding a Rubik's Cube to illustrate the idea of parallel processing. Each block of the cube represented a processing node, as I was describing when this photo was taken by a local Tulsa journalist.

http://ParhamData.com/Wayne_Parham_1980s.jpg

I doubt my picture sold as many systems as the girl in the microNOVA fever poster did. Laughing

[Message index]
 
Read Message
Previous Topic: Welcome!
Next Topic: Artificial Intelligence
Goto Forum:
  

-=] Back to Top [=-
[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [ RSS ] [ PDF ]

Current Time: Thu Mar 28 12:22:13 CDT 2024