Created at: 2026-03-02
Published in 1981, this book tells the story of how Data General's Eclipse MV/8000 came to reality.
A good read for people who work on computers for a living. It was written in an era where a single engineer was starting to not be able to "keep everything in their mind" in terms of designing a whole computer. It is interesting that such a time even existed.
The book is about the technical struggles (written in a non-technical way), the management hardship, and the plain hard work put out by many engineers to make this computer possible.
It is great that such a book exists, giving us a window into what was happening in the early 80's.
The analyst imagined the difficulties of finding that many qualified people so
quickly. And what must it be like, he asked, to work at a place like that?
You’d come to work some morning and suddenly find yourself in charge of a dozen
new people, or suddenly beneath a new boss to whom you would have to prove
yourself all over again. “That sort of growth puts a strain on everything,” the
analyst concluded. “It’s gonna be intriguing to see if they get caught.”
Looking into the VAX, West had imagined he saw a diagram of DEC’s corporate
organization. He felt that VAX was too complicated. He did not like, for
instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with
each other; for his taste, there was too much protocol involved.
Then he gave us the march to victory speech and left.” West added, “Morale hit
an all-time low at Westborough.”
We had to get the resources
“A friend of mine told his girlfriend they had to ECO their relationship.” Give
me a core dump meant “Tell me your thoughts,” for in the past, when computers
used “core memories,” engineers sometimes “dumped” the contents of
malfunctioning machines’ storage compartments to see what was wrong.
“His mind is only one stack deep,” says an engineer, describing the failings of
a colleague, but the syntax is wrong and he rephrases, saying: “See. He can
push, but when it comes time to pop, he goes off in all directions”—which means
that the poor fellow can receive and understand information but he can’t
retrieve it in an orderly
Hey, when I wake up in the morning I want to hear the stock market report on
the radio, not the price of tobacco and hogs. And what they considered good
food—I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” Wallach sniffs, wrinkles his nose,
and then delivers such lines with his chin forward, as if daring someone to hit
it. “I said, ‘That’s not a place where I want to bring up my wife and
children.’ ”
Picture an Army encampment in which all the tents are arranged in several
concentric rings. The general’s tent lies at the center, and he can move freely
from one ring of tents to another. In the next ring out from the center live
the colonels, say, and they can move from their ring into any outer ring as
they please, but they can’t intrude on the general’s ring without his
dispensation. The same rules apply all the way to the outermost ring, where the
privates reside. They have no special privileges; they can’t move into any ring
inside their own without permission. Analogously, each ring defines some part
of the computer’s memory. How does the computer mediate a user’s access to
these various areas? In the general case, it compares two numbers—the number of
the ring to which the user has free access and the number of the ring that the
user wants to get into.
Alsing believed that the team’s managers, in handling the new recruits, really
were practicing
“the mushroom theory of management.” It was an old expression, used in many
other corners of corporate America. The Eclipse Group’s managers defined it as
follows: “Put ’em in the dark, feed ’em shit, and watch ’em grow.” It
“the mushroom theory of management.” It was an old expression, used in many
other corners of corporate America. The Eclipse Group’s managers defined it as
follows: “Put ’em in the dark, feed ’em shit, and watch ’em grow.”
One evening West paused to say to me: “I’m flat out by definition. I’m a mess.
It’s terrible.” A pause. “It’s a lot of fun.”
On the Magic Marker board in his office, West wrote the following: Not
Everything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well.
To some the design reviews seemed harsh and arbitrary and often technically
shortsighted. Later on, though, one Hardy Boy would concede that the managers
had probably known something he hadn’t yet learned: that there’s no such thing
as a perfect design. Most experienced computer engineers I talked to agreed
that absorbing this simple lesson constitutes the first step in learning how to
get machines out the door. Often, they said, it is the most talented engineers
who have the hardest time learning when to stop striving for perfection.
What had the EGO wars proven but that talented engineers can dispute narrow
technical issues and never come to agreement?
He seemed quiet, pleasant, shy—all in all somewhat like Alsing, easily
overlooked—and he felt that he had been, thus far in his career.
EACH JUNE, in order to promote the further rise of information processing, the
computer industry puts on a fair, called the National Computer Conference, and
known, of course, as the NCC.
Wallach said that two of the best-named companies were not on hand: Itty Bitty
Machines (another “IBM”) and Parasitic Engineering. But I saw many other names,
passing by.
Wallach said that two of the best-named companies were not on hand: Itty Bitty
Machines (another “IBM”) and Parasitic Engineering. But I saw many other names,
passing by. Among others, I saw Centronics, Nortronics, Key Tronic, Tektronix
and also General Robotics.
Claims and counterclaims about the likely effects of computers on work in
America had also abounded since Weiner. Would the machines put enormous numbers
of people out of work? Or would they actually increase levels of employment? By
the late seventies, it appeared, they had done neither. Well, then, maybe
computers would eventually take over hateful and dangerous jobs and in general
free people from drudgery, as boosters like to say. Some anecdotal evidence
suggested, though, that they might be used extensively to increase the reach of
top managers crazed for efficiency and thus would serve as tools to destroy the
last vestiges of pleasant, interesting work.
Computers performing tasks as prosaic as the calculating of payrolls greatly
extend the reach of managers in high positions; managers on top can be in
command of such aspects of their businesses to a degree they simply could not
be before computers.
In The Nature of Gothic, John Ruskin decries the tendency of the industrial age
to fragment work into tasks so trivial that they are fit to be performed only
by the equivalent of slave labor