The difference between Sun systems and everything else out there in the late 1980’s (mostly Novell Netware or Microsoft LAN Manager networks) is that Sun networks just worked, all the time.
Ugh, not quite. I installed and configured an early version of DECNet-PC (ultimately renamed PathWorks) on a 4-node Vax 8650 cluster in late 1986 that networked three Epson PC's over ethernet to a common virtual DOS drive mapped on an RA81. It was solid as a rock, behaved itself well, and easily shared files for WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase.
An early Netware (2.11?) network had been setup three floors above us to show the power of 'client-server' computing. It crashed at least 5 times daily when it finally would run and its unreliability got two of my co-workers fired because they couldn't make Novell's empty promises work.
Lan Manager? Late 1980's? Are you kidding?
Sun started by unseating DEC in the scientific desktop market with their "workstations," not their network.
Just look at the nodes on maps of the early ARPANet if you don't believe me. PDP's, VAX's and mainframes.
When Scott McNealey announced that the "network was the system" he was taking direct aim at DEC whose installed systems already made up the world's largest collection of networked computers and pc's, were clustered to 16 nodes and more, offered full load balancing, were tied to gigs and gigs of storage using high-speed teflon interconnects and routinely ran 200 days and more without a restart.
Don't get me wrong, Unix/NFS was nice, but it needed a lot more work to compete with DEC, VAX/VMS and Ultrix. What prevented DEC from eating Sun's lunch was it's insistence on centralized computing using terminals. Had they fully understood what they had in DECNet-PC back in 1986 there never would have been a need for Novell, or Banyan Vines, or WFW 3.11 or any of the other wannabe's and Sun's "networked desktop workstation" would have been a much more difficult sell.
Here's the spec for a VMS filename circa 1985:
NODE "accountname password"::device:[directory.subdirectory]filename.type;ver
Meaning: Use the text editor "edt" to open version "4" of the file named "mylog.txt" that's located in the "configs" directory under the root directory named "sysfiles" on drive "0" attached to disk unit "a" on the node named "orion". Log me in using the "system" account with password "somepwd."
From anywhere in the world as long as it's on the network.
Everytime I configure Samba I think about those Epson PC's.
Ugh, not quite. I installed and configured an early version of DECNet-PC (ultimately renamed PathWorks) on a 4-node Vax 8650 cluster in late 1986 that networked three Epson PC's over ethernet to a common virtual DOS drive mapped on an RA81. It was solid as a rock, behaved itself well, and easily shared files for WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase.
An early Netware (2.11?) network had been setup three floors above us to show the power of 'client-server' computing. It crashed at least 5 times daily when it finally would run and its unreliability got two of my co-workers fired because they couldn't make Novell's empty promises work.
Lan Manager? Late 1980's? Are you kidding?
Sun started by unseating DEC in the scientific desktop market with their "workstations," not their network.
Just look at the nodes on maps of the early ARPANet if you don't believe me. PDP's, VAX's and mainframes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arpnet-map-march-1977.png.
When Scott McNealey announced that the "network was the system" he was taking direct aim at DEC whose installed systems already made up the world's largest collection of networked computers and pc's, were clustered to 16 nodes and more, offered full load balancing, were tied to gigs and gigs of storage using high-speed teflon interconnects and routinely ran 200 days and more without a restart.
Don't get me wrong, Unix/NFS was nice, but it needed a lot more work to compete with DEC, VAX/VMS and Ultrix. What prevented DEC from eating Sun's lunch was it's insistence on centralized computing using terminals. Had they fully understood what they had in DECNet-PC back in 1986 there never would have been a need for Novell, or Banyan Vines, or WFW 3.11 or any of the other wannabe's and Sun's "networked desktop workstation" would have been a much more difficult sell.
Here's the spec for a VMS filename circa 1985: NODE "accountname password"::device:[directory.subdirectory]filename.type;ver
Here's a typical EDT (text editor) command: $ edt orion"system somepwd"::dua0:[sysfiles.configs]mylog.txt;4
Meaning: Use the text editor "edt" to open version "4" of the file named "mylog.txt" that's located in the "configs" directory under the root directory named "sysfiles" on drive "0" attached to disk unit "a" on the node named "orion". Log me in using the "system" account with password "somepwd."
From anywhere in the world as long as it's on the network.
Everytime I configure Samba I think about those Epson PC's.