On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
Nope. The 11/60 wasn't a big flop. It wasn't a success, admittedly, but it did
sell in some numbers. (I at one time, had four 11/60 machines to play with in a computer
club, and I still have a complete CPU board set for an 11/60 - no WCS though.)
The limited success of the 11/60 was due to the totally incomprehensible decision to go
for 11/34 feature parity at a time when the 11/70 had already set the future standard.
But apart from that stupidity, it was a rather nice machine, in a very nice package.
I still occasionally still see product manager for it, socially. He was the one that
told me that it was the fastest from release to EOL. I once asked him about why the
40/34 not the 45/55/70 [i.e. at least add the 17th bit - I/D] space, and he told me that
the 60 was marketed to be a small business machine -i.e. going up against the Burroughs
B1700 and IBMs System 34 and 38. WCS was so they could have special uCode for different
languages such as RSTS Cobol something both IBM and Burroughs were making a big deal about
(the B1700 switched it ucode on the fly - actually very cool machine). Anyway, he once
told me that marketing was afraid that people that we buying 11/70s would go for the 60 if
it I/D space (what they would later do with the 11/44).
Clem
Show replies by date