M1 Macs - first machines where the OS/CPU/machine made by same mfgr?

[jdb8167]

Never went there. About as close as I got was the engineering facilities in Nashua, NH.

Place is practically abandoned now. I can’t imagine DEC when they were so big that they couldn’t fit everyone in those buildings.

 

[jerryk]

Place is practically abandoned now. I can’t imagine DEC when they were so big that they couldn’t fit everyone in those buildings.

DEC had over 130,000 employees at one time. Your badge number was based on when you started. KO (Ken Olsen) was badge #1. I had a badge number of 200,000+.

 

[pshufd]

Place is practically abandoned now. I can’t imagine DEC when they were so big that they couldn’t fit everyone in those buildings.

Dell is in there and I think a bunch of small startups. I used to run around the campus from time to time and there were a decent number of cars though I'm sure many worked from home.

 

[jdb8167]

Dell is in there and I think a bunch of small startups. I used to run around the campus from time to time and there were a decent number of cars though I'm sure many worked from home.

Are you talking NH? Because the biggest company in the old mill in Maynard is Stratus.

 

[pshufd]

Are you talking NH? Because the biggest company in the old mill in Maynard is Stratus.

Yes. Spit Brook Rd. I haven't been to Maynard in decades. I used to work at Parker St. Sometimes in the Mill and in Stow for a few years. I play tennis in Merrimack now - Fidelity is there.

 

[dmccloud]

Cool. There is a series of books about the history of Commodore which is pretty good - it gets into the chip stuff in some detail, and explains that Tramiel essentially didn’t care about the computers except as a way of using the CPUs he was making at his other company.

He basically used Commodore as the customer for his CPU business, if I'm not mistaken. That's also why as newer models of Commodores (and later Amigas) were released, they proceeded to fall further behind the rest of the industry.

 

[cmaier]

He basically used Commodore as the customer for his CPU business, if I'm not mistaken. That's also why as newer models of Commodores (and later Amigas) were released, they proceeded to fall further behind the rest of the industry.

Yeah, he sort of forced engineers to do some dubious things from time to time in the interest of minimizing costs and attempting maximize his personal profits. The Amiga used Motorola 68000-series CPUs, but they designed a lot of the other chips in the box, if I remember correctly.

 

[cmaier]

Alpha team was an interesting group. Nice people and bright. We had a lot of them out since our group supported Lawrence Livermore and other high-energy physics labs. And the Alpha was a good way for researchers to get lots of computing power in a small package.

I worked with a bunch of those folks later on at AMD. Very smart folks. A couple of them are great friends.

 

[dmccloud]

Yeah, he sort of forced engineers to do some dubious things from time to time in the interest of minimizing costs and attempting maximize his personal profits. The Amiga used Motorola 68000-series CPUs, but they designed a lot of the other chips in the box, if I remember correctly.

I believe that part of the Amiga's video prowess was due to the use of an upgraded version of the VIC chip originally used in the VIC-20 and then the C64. I know they kept iterating on that chip until the very end.