From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=LOTS_OF_MONEY, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 19751 invoked from network); 6 Jul 2023 23:14:19 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 6 Jul 2023 23:14:19 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6AB2C429E9; Fri, 7 Jul 2023 09:14:18 +1000 (AEST) Received: from anduin.eldar.org (anduin.eldar.org [IPv6:2001:470:c620:0:280:c8ff:fef8:70bc]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 94D41429E4 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2023 09:14:08 +1000 (AEST) Received: from anduin.eldar.org (IDENT:brad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by anduin.eldar.org (8.16.1/8.13.8) with ESMTPS id 366NCXQq017717 (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 6 Jul 2023 19:12:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from brad@localhost) by anduin.eldar.org (8.16.1/8.13.8/Submit) id 366NCUmb022508; Thu, 6 Jul 2023 19:12:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Brad Spencer To: steve jenkin In-Reply-To: (message from steve jenkin on Thu, 6 Jul 2023 18:48:32 +1000) Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2023 19:12:30 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.6.4 (anduin.eldar.org [0.0.0.0]); Thu, 06 Jul 2023 19:12:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID-Hash: USTER67VHI6OB7ULF6BHGSYAUUJL74WZ X-Message-ID-Hash: USTER67VHI6OB7ULF6BHGSYAUUJL74WZ X-MailFrom: brad@anduin.eldar.org X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: coff@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [COFF] Re: Bell System and the Video Game Industry? List-Id: Computer Old Farts Forum Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: steve jenkin writes: >> On 4 Jul 2023, at 11:57, segaloco via COFF wrote: >>=20 >> So this evening I've been tinkering with a WECo 2500 I've been using for= playing with telecom stuff, admiring the quality of the DTMF module, and i= t got me thinking, gee, this same craftsmanship would make for some very ni= ce arcade buttons, which then further had me pondering on the breadth of th= e Bell System's capabilities and the unique needs of the video game industr= y in the early 80s. >>=20 >> In many respects, the combination of Western Electric and Bell Laborator= ies could've been a hotbed of video game console and software development, = what with WECo's capability to produce hardware such as coin slots, buttons= , wiring harnesses for all sorts of equipment, etc. and then of course the = software prowess of the Labs. >>=20 >> Was there to anyone here's knowledge any serious consideration of this m= arket by Bell? The famous story of UNIX's origins includes Space Travel, a= nd from the very first manual, games of various kinds have accompanied UNIX= wherever it goes. It seems that out of most companies, the Bell System wo= uld've been very well poised, what with their own CPU architecture and othe= r fab operations, manufacturing and distribution chains, and so on. There'= s a looooot of R&D that companies such as Atari and Nintendo had to engage = in that the Bell System had years if not decades of expertise in. Would an= ti-trust stuff have come into play in that regard? Bell couldn't compete i= n the computer market, and I suppose it would depend on the legal definitio= ns applicable to video game hardware and software at the time. >>=20 >> In any case, undercurrent here is the 2500 is a fine telephone, if the s= ame minds behind some of this WECo hardware had gone into video gaming, I w= onder how different things would've turned out. >>=20 >> - Matt G. > > Matt, > > An astute question and one that, IMHO, deserves an answer because, if you= =E2=80=99re asking, you never saw AT&T operate as a full throated monopoly. > A caveat, I wasn=E2=80=99t ever at Bell Labs, didn=E2=80=99t work in the = USA but have talked to folk. > > The short answer would be =E2=80=9CSuits and Lawyers=E2=80=9D. [None of the following really answers the original question, but may be interesting anyway] So... I wasn't there for the earlier times, certainly not the monopoly days, but I was there later and (in my opinion) until Lucent more or less fell apart (and maybe after that), AT&T and all of the companies it spawned still acted like a monopoly in a lot of ways (and I include the Baby Bells in that). Yes, it was often about "Suits and Lawyers"... [snip] > That management & legal stance of =E2=80=98protecting=E2=80=99 all I.P. i= t could claim and trying to charge as much as it could, > how did it work out for them? That persisted until I left in the early 2000s. I had a account rep say that they had no idea how much anything costed because each customer was charged something different. More or less it came down to "Charge the customer as much as you can get away with". As a developer, we certainly didn't have any idea for what a end customer was paying. Maybe an interesting side story.... I was sold as a Value Added Service once for $40,000 to a end customer. I went on site to two different locations that the customer had, and performed about 8 hours of work all told spread out over two days. The sales person who sold this VAS to the customer was very worried that the customer would be unhappy if I didn't spend a week on the effort... personally I just wanted to get the work done and get home, and I knew that the customer would be happy with it taking only two days... [snip] > In 1994, AT&T sold off their Computers (to NCR) and Software (Unix) to No= vel, who=E2=80=99d already paid for some of it. I was there more or less for the NCR thing.... what I remember is that it was bought to get access to a computer platform outright. NCR was renamed GIS and later spun back out of AT&T as NCR again (if I remember it all correctly). My group was forced to port our application platform to GIS even though we wanted to move to HP instead. When GIS didn't pan out for us (in the end) we ended up on HP anyway. [snip] > AT&T management in the 1960=E2=80=99s & 70=E2=80=99s thought they could = =E2=80=98milk=E2=80=99 Unix and new IC-based computers in the same way > they=E2=80=99d milked the telephone business since Alexander Graham Bell = invented a working telephone circa 1875. The management thought that they could milk EVERYTHING. The product I worked on was ported and ported and ported starting with a VAX running SVR3 (or maybe something earlier) to an HP (when I left)... I suppose it makes some sense, as it made money as it was, but it was really hard to innovate. I managed to do it a couple of times, but my efforts were really rare. The product I worked on was pure software doing traffic management on a classic circuit switched phone network. But, as best as I can tell, products like the 5ESS did the same thing. As I remember it, the 5ESS-2000 was the 5E software running on a couple of Sun sparcs in a emulator. Some of the assembly happened at 6200 Broad St. and I got to observe some of it while walking around the factory floor after lunch. I recall two sparc servers hooked together with an internal Ethernet switch. Slap all of that in a 5E cabinet and you were good to go. Part of this stagnate nature was the demand of the customer base in the US, for the product I worked on, at least... they did tend to demand that nearly NOTHING change about the product at all (at least at the time). > Their mismanagement killed the business, causing Bell Labs as we knew it,= to eventually fade away. I agree pretty much with that, but probably have somewhat different reasoning as to the why. I see it more as the management had little idea as to what they had a lot of the time. I worked with a guy who had been there a lot longer then I had... something like 20 years when I started... and I don't think he had ever worked on a product in the 20 years UNTIL he arrived on ours that ever actually went to market and if it did ever lasted any great length of time. A lot of the stuff he worked on was pretty neat, but was either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was mismarketed or honestly was just silly (i.e. some product to stroke the ego of someone in management). [snip] > all my best > steve > > -- > Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design=20 > 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) > PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA > > mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin --=20 Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org