From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: What is so greate about the PDP 10?
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 23:03:46 GMT

In article <BzJH5K.525@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <1992Dec19.130721.13324@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> When the Rainbow was being thunk through, the world was using Victor 9000
>> aka Sirius 1, a much better 8088 PC than an IBM.
>
>Among others. I don't think there was a serious company out there that
>didn't look at the IBM-PC and say "geeze, we could do better than this with
>one lobe tied behind our hindbrain" and proceed to produce an 8088, 8086,
>or (later) 80186 based machine that made the IBM look sick. If they'd got
>together and agreed on the *same* superior box they might have pulled it
>off, too. Unfortunately, IBM was bigger and only Compaq had a product that
>was better *enough* to hang on.
>
>I think the Victor used an 8086, by the way. Other contenders were the HP (yes
>the 150 had lots of HP brain damage but it was still better than the first few
>generations of the IBM), Corona, Compaq (of course), and DEC.

I can fill in the entire Victor non-PC product line:

First there was the original 9000 aka Sirius 1.  This was a machine with
800 x 400 monochrome graphics and some really nice text chars standard.
Terminal emulators for VT-100 are available including quite readable 132 
column mode.

Disks consisted of "quad" density floppies with "zones" such that the
motor speed is adjusted depending on the track, and different sector counts
are written on each zone (same sector count on any track in any one zone).
Total disk capacity was 660K while IBM eventually had 360K in DD drives.

Later, the drives were upgraded to double-sided for a 1.3 Meg capacity!  This
is still using 250 KHz diskette head technology and is in the same category
as the later DEC RX50 which gets 400K on a side (but alas only one side!).
The zoning gets the extra boost.

Configurations were either two floppies with optional external hard disk
or the A: floppy was removed and an internal hard disk was added using
the XEBEC SASI hard disk controller.  Usually it was a 30 Meg MFM Tandon drive.
(Note: the Victor can boot to A: or B: or hard disk or net, so the removal of
the A: drive is not really abnormal!)

Memory can be upgraded to 896K, same as the later Rainbow, and 128K is 
standard on early models, 256K on later ones.  Standard screen color is
a deep green with a long-persistance to avoid flicker; amber on special order
only.  There is a 4-card buss, and a standard memory upgrade card to enhance
any machine up to 896K whether it was 128K or 256K at the start.  Machine is
a 5.00 MHz 8088.  All memory is 0 wait-state whereas IBM's buss memory needs
wait states.

An upgrade for 9000 was "PLUS-PC" which allows some code-blue-type PC emulation
that is good enough to run Flight Simulator.  360K floppies can be read or
written but not formatted.  I suspect it actually could format, but this was
the standard problem of a thin-film head machine trying to format a 48 TPI
diskette.  Most vendors shy away from formatting, or in some cases even
merely writing on 48 TPI drives on 96 TPI headed machines.

Eventually the "cadillac" of the line came out: the VI.  This machine was
a 9000 with much better PC emulation.  The floppies could read/write and
format 360K, and even boot PC-DOS disks, including booting the Flight
Simulator disk.  A lot of quite elaborate graphic demos were written for
VI, but it was a poor seller being caught up in the Charlie Chaplin advance.
This was an early example of a machine with MS-DOS not using command.com.  It
was replaced with two different shells, one Victor-like, and the other being
essentially a clone of PC-DOS.  (Victor's OEM version of MS-DOS was modified
to include some additional quirky commands not found in IBM's version; by
using two command shells, all known programs were compatible with either
version as necessary.)

There was also a portable Victor with two half-height drives only called the
Vickie.  It was essentially compatible with the 9000 minus hard disks, and
had a quite small monitor and a popup keyboard in the cover.

Eventually, this all went away, and the VPC series was started.  These are
really Tandon true clones with Victor's name on them, a common machine of
that era.  Tandon would put almost anyone's name on the machine you could
think of.

Then there was the VPC II which was an 8086-based machine with an interesting
(but incompatible) early attempt at 16-bit slots predating the AT.  Only the
8-bit portion is XT compatible, and I doubt much was ever done with the
incompatible extension.  (I don't think 16-bit compatible cards even plug
in.)  A standard option was a W-D MFM card commonly found in XT clones with
an ST-225 (20 Meg) disk.  This machine was also an early example of a 
name-brand machine that was *not* a mechanical clone, as opposed to the
later "no-name" clones made by everyone, including me :-).  (Which are
true clones, and have no special mechanical oddball parts hard to acquire, 
such as are found in Compaq, etc.)

Eventually there was a VPC-286, a mostly AT-clone.  I believe it isn't totally
CMOS-RAM compatible with PC-AT, but is otherwise a fair clone.

So, in the end, it was just a "catchup" product line to follow in knee-jerk
fashion, the stumblings of IBM.

cjl

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