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Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

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Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tracker1 wrote: post #45
tromp wrote: post #3

It's rare that a tech story brings me to tears, but I couldn't help feel one swelling up when reading the final paragraphs. > Eventually, it was Wilkie who made the first move. Overwhelmed with emotion, his eyes red and swollen with grief, he stepped forward and detached the red rosette from the lapel of his suit jacket. It was the same one Don had given him years before. Leaning down, he gently placed the rosette on…

I feel the same way. The end of the story is just sad. I wish that more companies could break their own structures to offer rewards, bonuses and more freedom to teams like this. The kinds of people that thrive with these kinds of opportunities tend not to do as well with general corporate culture. So many times a relatively small upstart team with enough freedom will accomplish greatness, only for corporate culture t…

Although I sometimes wonder how much survivor bias there is in these stories.

How many misfit teams failed?

Which is not to defend corporate hyper-control at all. But I suspect that knowing how often skunkworks projects work, and how success can be affected by different personalities and corporate contexts, might be useful information.

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#82

Post by phone8675309 »

folsom wrote: post #53
phone8675309 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than "what they did" They thought it was a fad - that centralized systems (coincidentally, the machines they made) would be the computing platform that people would pay-per-minute/pay-per-hour/pay-per-month to access remotely. They wanted to be an information utility - a supplier to all - instead of selling a small, low margin b…

So you are saying that they were too far ahead of their time.

Sure, we can go with that

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#83

Post by phone8675309 »

kragen wrote: post #72
phone8675309 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than "what they did" They thought it was a fad - that centralized systems (coincidentally, the machines they made) would be the computing platform that people would pay-per-minute/pay-per-hour/pay-per-month to access remotely. They wanted to be an information utility - a supplier to all - instead of selling a small, low margin b…

google, fecebutt, amazon, and azure seem to be doing okay with centralized systems providing continuing revenue

I didn't say the model was wrong - I was just saying there were focused on it

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#84

Post by phone8675309 »

jhoechtl wrote: post #41
phone8675309 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than "what they did" They thought it was a fad - that centralized systems (coincidentally, the machines they made) would be the computing platform that people would pay-per-minute/pay-per-hour/pay-per-month to access remotely. They wanted to be an information utility - a supplier to all - instead of selling a small, low margin b…

Are you talking about Microsoft Azure?

No but thanks for play

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#85

Post by kragen »

phone8675309 wrote: post #83
kragen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google, fecebutt, amazon, and azure seem to be doing okay with centralized systems providing continuing revenue

I didn't say the model was wrong - I was just saying there were focused on it

it's true, they were

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#86

Post by akira2501 »

phkahler wrote: post #11

>> His divisional heads always had the same answer. Microcomputers—home computing—were a fad. They were low-cost and low-profit. Let others scrabble around in the metaphorical dirt of home computing. The real money was in the markets that IBM’s divisions already dominated—selling vast mainframes and minicomputer systems to large businesses. Cary was even told to buy Atari, which by then had established itself as Amer…

> Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than "what they did".

I encourage everyone to get a copy of the Hercules emulator and a copy of the "Turn Key 5" MVS distribution and spend a little time using it. The mainframe idea of "computing" and "running jobs" is so comprehensively different it's really hard to map any previous consumer computing experience into it. It's also just a lot of fun because of that.

The whole experience is centered around efficient use of machine resources while providing a comprehensive batch execution and scheduling system for centralized job execution in this environment. The level of accounting, reporting, repeatability, and job language features is actually something worthwhile to dive into.

In any case, I'm willing to bet that IBM's internal ideology is that end users wouldn't want to do the computing themselves, but would instead go to middle men who would would purchase computing either directly from IBM or as some form of "remote job entry" through a third party provider. To that end they were rapidly building out the infrastructure to do just that.

> Intel seemed to have missed the mobile market due to a similar attitude.

In both cases, they're still here, although Intel did a much better job of catching up to their past mistakes.

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#87

Post by selimthegrim »

yardie wrote: post #12
nedrylandJP wrote: post #5

There is a "high tech middle school" with his namesake in Boca Raton, FL, next to the former 1960s IBM R&D complex. https://www.palmbeachschools.org/DonEstridgeMiddle

Well, TIL. When I see a school named after someone who is not widely famous I assume they were an educator or politician.

Alonzo Mourning and his ex-wife have a North Miami HS named after them.

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#88

Post by doubloon »

forinti wrote: post #43
nabla9 wrote: post #30

Classic example of Worse is Better. All competing architectures were better than IBM PC architecture, PC BIOS was bad, chosen processor instruction set was the worst, MS-DOS operating system was bad. Only the keyboard was good. What made it winner was open architecture, 80-column screen and IBM name.

I did some historical research to understand why the PC caught on (it made no sense to my 1980s teenage mind). A PC with 80 columns card, 64KB of RAM and a floppy drive cost about the same as an Apple II Plus with the same specs (US$2,700). A BBC Micro would set you back about US$1,500 (£900). It didn't offer slots, but did have 80 columns standard. It also had a lot of ports. You couldn't even argue that the 8088 wa…

its the soft power of the IBM name. it's not possible to describe it now or for people nowdays to understand what that name meant.

you went to a big company they ran IBM. you want to get the same kind of computer 'that they use at work'. and what they have at work is IBM.

like this concept just makes no sense whatsoever in todays culture. computers used to be secret. they were tools of the priesthood. you wanted to join the priesthood. thats why you got IBM.

its like coming to America, you want to learn to speak English. not Esperanto.

Re: Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC

#89

Post by [deleted] »

folsom wrote: post #39
assimpleaspossi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The acting is horrible. The writing is terrible. The story veers off into areas unrelated. There is a moment of a thoroughly unrelated homosexual encounter. (What was the point of that?!) Moments I know that are so really stretched too far to be believable. And on and on. So bad I couldn't finish the series.

I think the homosexual encounter is to show how joe and folks like joe use sex as a tool to exert power over other people.

[deleted]
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