[Elecraft] IBM's resources (OT)

[Tony Estep]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 7:47 PM, Don Wilhelm <w3fpr at embarqmail.com> wrote:

> ...Elecraft is nowhere the size of IBM and does not have those huge
> resources....

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Don's comment reminded me of one of the great hacker stories of all time.
When IBM launched the 360, it obsoleted all its customers' code, because in
those days the machines all ran assembly language and the 360 had a
different instruction set. The clients screamed for an emulator, but none
was forthcoming. (Parenthetical note: at that time IBM was the world's most
profitable company and by far the largest by market capitalization.)

A couple of months later, 2 guys who worked for Boise Cascade (yes, the
plywood company) published a 360-based emulator that would run 1401 code,
and gave it away free. They wrote it in the evenings after work. It worked
fine, and shamed IBM into writing their own version. When the spokesman for
IBM was asked why IBM didn't provide one in the first place, his answer was
classic: "IBM does not have unlimited resources."

Tony KT0NY