[Serusers] why combine ser with asterisk

[SIP]

Michael Grigoni wrote:
> SIP wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Take Cray Supercomputers as a prime example. Seymour Cray built this 
>> fantastic supercomputer architecture, but didn't build any 
>> peripherals for it or even an operating system, assuming that, if 
>> people had the raw speed and power available, they'd be eager to use 
>> it even if they had to build their own hardware/software.
>
> Yes, Seymour liked to code in machine language right from the console
> and the O/Ses for his machines developed 'organically' from the bottom up
> in general, but wouldn't you consider SCOPE, KRONOS, NOS etc. operating
> systems?  And as for hardware, the CDC peripherals and Hyperchannel
> offerings seemed to be the best in the industry on Cray CPUs...
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael
Right, but Cray himself was TOTALLY against their creation.  This was
one of the reasons he left CDC to form Cray Research (which, mind you,
CDC was very much in support of, as they had much faith in Cray's
abilities). He argued vehemently that the peripherals were unnecessary
products, and eventually, this disagreement caused him to leave and form
Cray Research, where he could be free from 'management failures' as he
liked to call them. The CDC, however, was extremely supportive of Cray
Research, and put money and development time into it, much to Cray's
chagrin.

Then, again, when Cray Research was faced with the decision of whether
to build computers that people would buy or computers for the sake of
building computers, they understood that they needed to stay in
business, and decided on the path that would lead them to solvency.

This caused Cray to leave his own company and form Cray Computers. He
vowed that CCC would make fast and powerful computers and that nothing
else would be a priority. He assumed that speed and power were the
ultimate goal and that everything would fall into place if he achieved
that goal.  Of course, his shortsightedness caused bankruptcy.


Incidentally, having had to use NOS on a regular basis back in the day,
I would scarcely call it an operating system. Anything that lets you
manually change the bits in memory of a running program isn't an OS,
it's just a GUI for the hardware. ;)

N.