2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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Mars
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong. Mars
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was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers built by
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Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor SC-30M, the small
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uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built superprocessor SC-40. These machines
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were marvels of engineering design; although not much slower than the unique
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Foonly F-1, they were physically smaller and consumed less power than the
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much slower DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also
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completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries
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(including the operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3 times
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faster than a KL10. When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their
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followup to the PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling
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their machine into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and
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in fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement
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in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of 1984,
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and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems
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Concepts were much better at designing machines than at mass producing or
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selling them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of
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perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as
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delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product
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ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600
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and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry
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startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a
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fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford
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in late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic decision to
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abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most of the Mars
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computers built ended up being purchased by CompuServe. This tale and the
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related saga of Foonly hold a lesson for hackers: if you want to play in the
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Real World , you need to learn Real World moves.
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