Model II Saved

[Hwlngmad]

Saw this video recently and just thought I would share as the Model II was a pretty interesting computer for its time but just not a winner.

 

[George Phillips]

On 9/27/2021 at 8:14 AM, Hwlngmad said:

Saw this video recently and just thought I would share as the Model II was a pretty interesting computer for its time but just not a winner.

I'm going to straight-up copy from pski's post in another thread just to nip a potential misconception in the bud.

 

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The Model II line was far, far from a failure.  

 

The Model II family ran for 10 years.  Of course it did not sell as many units as the smaller TRS-80s or Apples or Commodores.  This was a workstation class machine meant for medium sized businesses and serious technical environments. In one year,  the Model 16B was the most popular Unix based workstation by sales across the industry!

The 8" floppy drives offered multiple times the storage capacity of comparable 5.25 drives for most of the lifetime of the series.  This was a critical feature for data intensive workloads for which the machine was intended. 

Of course, by 1988 it was hopelessly outdated.  This was a time of rapid progress in the microcomputer industry.

 

The Model II line was a success by any measure.

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[Hwlngmad]

On 10/2/2021 at 12:07 PM, George Phillips said:

I'm going to straight-up copy from pski's post in another thread just to nip a potential misconception in the bud.

 

----

The Model II line was far, far from a failure.  

 

The Model II family ran for 10 years.  Of course it did not sell as many units as the smaller TRS-80s or Apples or Commodores.  This was a workstation class machine meant for medium sized businesses and serious technical environments. In one year,  the Model 16B was the most popular Unix based workstation by sales across the industry!

The 8" floppy drives offered multiple times the storage capacity of comparable 5.25 drives for most of the lifetime of the series.  This was a critical feature for data intensive workloads for which the machine was intended. 

Of course, by 1988 it was hopelessly outdated.  This was a time of rapid progress in the microcomputer industry.

 

The Model II line was a success by any measure.

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Success, perhaps as iterations and/or evolution of the Model II line were around for 10 years.  However, and all and out winner; not even close.  Sorry, but there is no misconception in that aspect.

[George Phillips]

4 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

Success, perhaps as iterations and/or evolution of the Model II line were around for 10 years.  However, and all and out winner; not even close.  Sorry, but there is no misconception in that aspect.

I took the more colloquial meaning along the lines of "we've got a winner on our hands".  That is, a product that will sell well and generally be a success for the company.  As opposed to a product that doesn't sell, fades away quickly and may even lose a company money.  For instance, in that sense the Apple ][ was a winner while the Apple /// was not.

 

What do you mean by winner?  In a more sports-oriented sense of the word I'd say only the IBM PC was a winner.  It and the Mac are the only microcomputers produced today and the PC has a vastly greater market share than the Mac.  PC's also grew out of the microcomputer market to destroy the workstation market.  Sun and DEC machines are not winners, just temporarily successful.

[Hwlngmad]

32 minutes ago, George Phillips said:

I took the more colloquial meaning along the lines of "we've got a winner on our hands".  That is, a product that will sell well and generally be a success for the company.  As opposed to a product that doesn't sell, fades away quickly and may even lose a company money.  For instance, in that sense the Apple ][ was a winner while the Apple /// was not.

 

What do you mean by winner?  In a more sports-oriented sense of the word I'd say only the IBM PC was a winner.  It and the Mac are the only microcomputers produced today and the PC has a vastly greater market share than the Mac.  PC's also grew out of the microcomputer market to destroy the workstation market.  Sun and DEC machines are not winners, just temporarily successful.

What I mean by 'winner' (in terms of computing) is something that was a sales and market percentage success along with significantly changing the computing narrative.  While the Model II line can be considered (by some) to be a success, it just wasn't a winner that it did not significantly get a huge market percentage and did nothing to change the computing narrative as other machines made a much bigger impact on computing than it.

[George Phillips]

2 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

What I mean by 'winner' (in terms of computing) is something that was a sales and market percentage success along with significantly changing the computing narrative.  While the Model II line can be considered (by some) to be a success, it just wasn't a winner that it did not significantly get a huge market percentage and did nothing to change the computing narrative as other machines made a much bigger impact on computing than it.

At one time the Model 16 (or was it 6000?) was biggest installed base of Unix machines.  It being part of the Model II line I'd say it was a market success.  Only half of your requirements but something that should be better well known.

[Hwlngmad]

7 minutes ago, George Phillips said:

At one time the Model 16 (or was it 6000?) was biggest installed base of Unix machines.  It being part of the Model II line I'd say it was a market success.  Only half of your requirements but something that should be better well known.

In short, I would say that the Model II line did see a (measurable) level of success.  Also, yes, perhaps some clarification and/or updates to the Model II line's narrative is needed.  However, that being said, it (meaning the original Model II) was (more-or-less) beaten down by other business computers which is was meant to directly compete with.  I would highly recommend listening to the Floppy Days podcast episode on the Model II for further information and/or details.