I'm a youngster when it comes to this hobby, being manufactured myself
in the early years of the 90's. As such i cannot really quote from my
experiences "at the time", but i have spent many an hour tinkering with
old machines and researching for this vintage (and modern) computing
hobby of mine, as well as working with some modern enterprise gear that
makes me, in some ways, probably quite well versed in this sort of subject.
The demands for software and hardware definitely differ greatly between
business requirements and home user requirements. Businesses have always
had strict needs that must be fulfilled by the hardware they purchase,
namely performing the operations they require. In the "early days", this
might have been payroll tasks, document processing, inventory, computer
aided manufacturing etc. Software to perform such tasks was often
developed "in house", especially in the 60's, and the demands from the
software would often dictate what hardware was required. Remember,
computers were (and in some senses still are) expensive bits of kit, and
savings should be made where possible. Sure, you could use an IBM
System/360 to do manufacturing automation, but it would be much more
cost effective to use a PDP-8, PDP-11, or DG Nova. On the flip side,
that PDP-8 is not going to have the hardware support or speed to handle
large volumes of ASCII characters to run a flight booking system for a
major airline. You purchase the hardware that runs the software you
require. Of course, in the later years of the "early days", more
software was available "off the shelf", which would definitely steer
more purchasers to a certain platform, with the System/360 and PDP-11
being two notable examples of major platforms for which a multitude of
software was available from 3rd parties, which would have no doubt
bolstered their dominance.
Even today, a modern rack of servers will be specced for the tasks it
will run. Whilst the differences are by no means what they used to be,
there's still no point putting a 96 core Threadripper in a machine
running an Exchange server for a medium sized business. Some servers
will be built specifically for the tasks they will run, and embedded
applications being a prime example of commercial gear which has to cater
for the software market. For the industrial and embedded market, for
example, a lot of software still exists and is distributed that runs on
MS-DOS and compatibles, requiring even modern boards to support BIOS
level calls, as well as ISA and PCI slots for custom hardware.
Industrial and embedded is a prime example of where the software needs
dictate the hardware solution. For some companies that /still/ rely on
PDP-11 gear, there are vendors out there that can interface your custom
QBUS and UNIBUS hardware to interact with a virtualised PDP-11 running
on an Intel PC box. "technical debt", as some call it, is rife in many
industrial sectors, and will not be fully replaced with a "modern"
solution for decades to come.
However, lets contrast it with the home market. For most, it's not the
"computer you want", but the "computer you can afford". Back in the
"early days" (and i'm calling the early days the mid 70's here),
computers were still very new and novel for the home user. Those that
might have been used to VAXen and PDP-11's at work may have lusted after
one to tinker with at home, but their budget probably stretched to an
Altair 8800 at best. Which is great if all you're doing is tinkering
with it and writing some assembly yourself, as many hobbyists did. Of
course, each platform gained it's own following and software became
available, but for the home user, there was largely no "killer apps"
that dictated the hardware purchase. Later on in the 80's, as home
computers became more mature, some platforms became more powerful and
dominant than others, but for those that couldn't afford a top end home
computer, the cheaper end often sufficed. Most of the tasks that home
users wanted to complete (gaming, word processing, maybe some
spreadsheets) had software packages available for most home computing
systems, with lower graphical performance or computing power usually
correlating with what the user could afford at the time. Every system
had it's own quirks, and users often had to sacrifice something.
Compare it to the world of modern home computing. Whether your own a
Macbook or Windows PC, each has competent software packages for
performing your tasks. In some ways, for most non-gaming tasks, the
platform just does not matter any more. If you're a gamer, the size of
your paycheck will be the biggest determining factor in your hardware
purchases, and whether you can support running games in 4K at 144FPS or
if you can access the full library of modern console titles.
So in some senses, nothing has changed. Business are always worried
about costs, so will often buy exactly what they require, and nothing
more, dictated by the task it will perform. However, home users will buy
what they can afford, and live with the platform limitations and
software library available to them.
Thanks for reading my TED talk,
Josh Rice
On 27/04/2024 18:15, Tarek Hoteit via cctalk wrote:
Do you guys* think that software drove hardware sales rather than the other way
around for businesses in the early days? I recall that computer hardware
salespeople would be knocking on businesses office doors rather than software
salesmen. Just seeking your opinion now that we are far ahead from 1981.
(*I do wish we have female gender engaged in the classic computing
discussions threads as well. Maybe there is.)
Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
AI Consultant, PhD
+1 360-838-3675
