From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: Mon, 22 Oct 01 07:31:12 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 8 Message-ID: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVbGdHFqihFOJIWcjYXs30o4NZf03JJUEpNQhelV8F9smE063MhYpMSf X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Oct 2001 10:26:21 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsmi-eu.news.garr.it!newsmi-us.news.garr.it!NewsITBone-GARR!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-216-31 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7223 The other day somebody asked me how much it cost to have DEC do maintenance. I had no idea. What did we charge? Was it split up into hardware and software? Was it a percentage of the cost of hardware? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: "Don Chiasson" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Lines: 48 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 Message-ID: Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 11:13:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.42.241.65 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news3.rdc2.on.home.com 1003749214 24.42.241.65 (Mon, 22 Oct 2001 04:13:34 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 04:13:34 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.direct.ca!look.ca!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news3.rdc2.on.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7232 wrote in message news:9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net... > The other day somebody asked me how much > it cost to have DEC do maintenance. I had no > idea. What did we charge? Was it split up > into hardware and software? Was it a percentage > of the cost of hardware? > My recollection is that for a DEC20, annual maintenance cost worked out to about 10% of the cost of the machine. This included hardware maintenance and keeping the hardware up to revision. The customer did not have to touch the hardware or keep any spares, that was done by field service. It also included software updates, including the software dispatch listing SPRs. DEC did not install the new software, that was up to the customer. The cost was a function of the level of support and in our case FS was on call five days a week, eight (ten??) hours a day with a guaranteed response time of two (?) hours and work until the problem is fixed. While FS was usually pretty good, sometimes the DEC20 expert was busy so they would send over someone to meet the two hour criteria but who didn't really know the system. If you wanted 24/7 service, it cost more; if you didn't want work till repaired, it cost less (oops, five o'clock, time to go home, see you in the morning). If you were away from a DEC office, response time might be longer or pay more for essentially your own field service person. That 10% seems high, especially for a machine that cost, say $1 million. On the other hand, is it out of line to pay $100 per year for maintenance of a $1K PC? With no software updates. Don e-mail: it's not not, it's hot. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: Mon, 22 Oct 01 08:59:45 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 63 Message-ID: <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYGbNHeo+xXyNooeLMmBDjr5yEU+bBEgzSkg3m75WUsoftSKRMdYFMD X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Oct 2001 11:54:54 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!colt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-216-31 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7221 In article , "Don Chiasson" wrote: > > wrote in message >news:9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net... >> The other day somebody asked me how much >> it cost to have DEC do maintenance. I had no >> idea. What did we charge? Was it split up >> into hardware and software? Was it a percentage >> of the cost of hardware? >> > My recollection is that for a DEC20, annual >maintenance >cost worked out to about 10% of the cost of the machine. >This included hardware maintenance and keeping the >hardware up to revision. The customer did not have to >touch the hardware or keep any spares, that was done by >field service. > It also included software updates, including the >software >dispatch listing SPRs. DEC did not install the new software, >that was up to the customer. > The cost was a function of the level of support and >in >our case FS was on call five days a week, eight (ten??) >hours a day with a guaranteed response time of two (?) hours >and work until the problem is fixed. While FS was usually >pretty >good, sometimes the DEC20 expert was busy so they would send >over someone to meet the two hour criteria but who didn't >really >know the system. If you wanted 24/7 service, it cost more; >if >you didn't want work till repaired, it cost less (oops, five >o'clock, >time to go home, see you in the morning). If you were away >from >a DEC office, response time might be longer or pay more for >essentially your own field service person. > That 10% seems high, especially for a machine that >cost, say $1 million. Did DEC20s cost that much? I thought they had been on the order of $200K or so. I know a DEC10 system could cost that much but then we allowed anything to hang off the system and allowed more than one CPU. Note that I knew absolutely nothing about pricing. > On the other hand, is it out of line >to >pay $100 per year for maintenance of a $1K PC? With >no software updates. I guess it was worth it for a PDP-10 since the hardware was not robust. I don't know about these PCs though. I doesn't seem that a human hand could repair them. Even with the advent of the VAXes, the way to repair them was board replacement, not fancy tech work. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: Rich Alderson Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: 22 Oct 2001 15:50:52 -0400 Organization: Systems Administration, XKL LLC, Redmond WA 98052 Lines: 13 Sender: alderson+news@panix1.panix.com Message-ID: References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix1.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 1003780253 2224 166.84.1.1 (22 Oct 2001 19:50:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Oct 2001 19:50:53 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!kanja.arnes.si!news-hub.siol.net!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!144.212.100.101!newsfeed.mathworks.com!panix!news.panix.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7238 jmfbahciv@aol.com writes: > The other day somebody asked me how much it cost to have DEC do maintenance. > I had no idea. What did we charge? Was it split up into hardware and > software? Was it a percentage of the cost of hardware? The last figure I knew was $40,000/year for the KL ($20,000/year educational discount)--the price was lowered just after we had sent in our $120,000 for 3 systems at LOTS, so we got two years' support for that payment. -- Rich Alderson alderson+news@panix.com "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." --Death, of the Endless ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: Tue, 23 Oct 01 07:08:53 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 10 Message-ID: <9r3faq$iti$2@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVY+rCykeUODPYp4lAyuhXKpWyncijWVa11wAfClPGWIDKI7KRn6qA9V X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Oct 2001 10:04:10 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.stealth.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-216-27 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7246 In article , "Don Chiasson" wrote: > Sorry for the prvious double post: I was trying >to fix some margins and Something Happened. ROTFL. Ain't that just the way with those pesky computers? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: "Don Chiasson" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Lines: 67 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 Message-ID: Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 22:38:45 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.42.241.65 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news3.rdc2.on.home.com 1003790325 24.42.241.65 (Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:38:45 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:38:45 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!fu-berlin.de!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!news3.rdc2.on.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7253 wrote in message news:9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net... > In article , > "Don Chiasson" wrote: > > > > wrote in message > >news:9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net... > >> The other day somebody asked me how much > >> it cost to have DEC do maintenance. I had no > >> idea. What did we charge? Was it split up > >> into hardware and software? Was it a percentage > >> of the cost of hardware? > >> > > My recollection is that for a DEC20, annual > >maintenance > >cost worked out to about 10% of the cost of the machine. <> > > The cost was a function of the level of support <> > > That 10% seems high, especially for a machine that > >cost, say $1 million. > > Did DEC20s cost that much? I thought they had been on the > order of $200K or so. I know a DEC10 system could cost > that much but then we allowed anything to hang off the > system and allowed more than one CPU. Note that I knew > absolutely nothing about pricing. You are right: $1M would have been a fully loaded system. Also, I think in Canadian$, worth less than US$ (back then, I think the difference in dollars was about 20%). Digging deep in the supposedly non volatile core memory, I think some of the money specified in the contract was used for site prep or maintenance or training. Perhaps my 10% was a bit high. But close enough for government work. > > > On the other hand, is it out of line > >to pay $100 per year for maintenance of a > >$1K PC? With no software updates. > > I guess it was worth it for a PDP-10 since the > hardware was not robust. I don't know about > these PCs though. I doesn't seem > that a human hand could repair them. Even > with the advent of the VAXes, the way to repair > them was board replacement, not fancy tech work. > On the 20, most repairs were board replacement, with the boards shipped off somewhere for repair. Power supplies, mechanical adjustments and such were, of course, done on site. PC boards are so cheap and chips so multifunction repairs are not economic. I remember the days of extender boards and oscilloscopes...... Don e-mail: it's not not, it's hot. ###### From: "Don Chiasson" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Lines: 67 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 Message-ID: Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 22:38:45 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.42.241.65 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news3.rdc2.on.home.com 1003790325 24.42.241.65 (Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:38:45 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:38:45 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.stealth.net!feed.textport.net!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news3.rdc2.on.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7254 wrote in message news:9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net... > In article , > "Don Chiasson" wrote: > > > > wrote in message > >news:9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net... > >> The other day somebody asked me how much > >> it cost to have DEC do maintenance. I had no > >> idea. What did we charge? Was it split up > >> into hardware and software? Was it a percentage > >> of the cost of hardware? > >> > > My recollection is that for a DEC20, annual > >maintenance > >cost worked out to about 10% of the cost of the machine. <> > > The cost was a function of the level of support <> > > That 10% seems high, especially for a machine that > >cost, say $1 million. > > Did DEC20s cost that much? I thought they had been on the > order of $200K or so. I know a DEC10 system could cost > that much but then we allowed anything to hang off the > system and allowed more than one CPU. Note that I knew > absolutely nothing about pricing. You are right: $1M would have been a fully loaded system. Also, I think in Canadian$, worth less than US$ (back then, I think the difference in dollars was about 20%). Digging deep in the supposedly non volatile core memory, I think some of the money specified in the contract was used for site prep or maintenance or training. Perhaps my 10% was a bit high. But close enough for government work. > > > On the other hand, is it out of line > >to pay $100 per year for maintenance of a > >$1K PC? With no software updates. > > I guess it was worth it for a PDP-10 since the hardware was not > robust. I don't know about these PCs though. I doesn't seem > that a human hand could repair them. Even with the advent > of the VAXes, the way to repair them was board replacement, > not fancy tech work. > On the 20, most repairs were board replacement, with the boards shipped off somewhere for repair. Power supplies, mechanical adjustments and such were, of course, done on site. PC boards are so cheap and chips so multifunction repairs are not economic. I remember the days of extender boards and oscilloscopes...... Don e-mail: it's not not, it's hot. ###### From: "Don Chiasson" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Lines: 6 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 Message-ID: Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 22:43:30 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.42.241.65 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news3.rdc2.on.home.com 1003790610 24.42.241.65 (Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:43:30 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:43:30 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!news3.rdc2.on.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7257 Sorry for the prvious double post: I was trying to fix some margins and Something Happened. Don ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: Sat, 03 Nov 01 09:44:17 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 17 Message-ID: <9s0l52$6v6$1@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <3BE39551.9E066B74@its.uq.edu.au> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYuM83grIHtNirn505Qnq1OEMynJDHlHIMlPWGZTViDMymM2afKFVEM X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Nov 2001 11:41:22 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!HSNX.atgi.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-216-35 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7363 In article <3BE39551.9E066B74@its.uq.edu.au>, Wilber Williams wrote: >Through our 25 years of running '10s, we always maintained our in-house >techies to look after them. So we have had a good history of being able >to look after everything. > >But lately, my tech managers have been getting the "new techies" to do >work getting old PDP-11's, DECwriters, etc into working condition, since >this DOES give the techs an opportunity to do REAL electronics work! >Otherwise, it's just board swapping, and our techs were loosing their >edge. Good. That means that the knowledge isn't getting lost. This is one of things that has me very, very worried. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: Wilber Williams Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Price of maintenance on the PDPs Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 16:57:21 +1000 Organization: The University of Queensland Lines: 30 Message-ID: <3BE39551.9E066B74@its.uq.edu.au> References: <9r0s8d$qr6$2@bob.news.rcn.net> <9r11ee$em9$1@bob.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: chook.cc.uq.edu.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au 1004770694 21155 130.102.128.100 (3 Nov 2001 06:58:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@uq.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Nov 2001 06:58:14 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news1.optus.net.au!optus!bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7361 Through our 25 years of running '10s, we always maintained our in-house techies to look after them. So we have had a good history of being able to look after everything. But lately, my tech managers have been getting the "new techies" to do work getting old PDP-11's, DECwriters, etc into working condition, since this DOES give the techs an opportunity to do REAL electronics work! Otherwise, it's just board swapping, and our techs were loosing their edge. Wilber jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: < < > I guess it was worth it for a PDP-10 since the hardware was not > robust. I don't know about these PCs though. I doesn't seem > that a human hand could repair them. Even with the advent > of the VAXes, the way to repair them was board replacement, > not fancy tech work. -- Wilber Associate Director, Networks And Design Services +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Wilber WILLIAMS w.williams@its.uq.edu.au | | Telephone : +61 7 3365 4232 | |ITS The University of Queensland Facsimile : +61 7 3365 7539 | |Brisbane Qld 4072 AUSTRALIA Mobile : +61 412 210 063 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+