TheMobRules wrote on 2020-06-28, 04:59:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-06-27, 22:57:

That what I use to think about Sun Microsystems too until I visited there main facility. It was not that great.
However today with Oracle culture they should be more driven with a set goal.

🤣, the only goal Oracle has for the Sun/Java stuff is the same they have for everything they acquire: to bury everything worth a damn under absurdly expensive licenses, obfuscate the software with lots of unnecessary bloat and lock their clients to their product so they can have a steady flow of money due to "technical support". As long as some people in the industry keep saying "no one got fired for choosing Oracle, right?" they'll keep getting rich.

You clearly don't know much about Sun if all you can say about them is that their main facility "was not that great". Any possibility of innovation or thinking outside the box ended with the Oracle purchase.

Oh no, I am just saying. There are some companies that had a “BLUE” collar culture and some that had a “White” collar culture.
Sun and Intel seemed more like a BLUE collar culture to me. Where software companies and HP and IBM appears to be more of a White collar culture. It had allot to do with dress attire and attitude and atmosphere but that has nothing to do with programmers developer.
Sun had some very smart programmers and engineers and intel too.

It has more to do with how people dressed.

Casual , NO dress code, tee shirts, or shirt and tie.

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-28, 05:21:

Videoton Hungary in the 80's.
They lacked the resources western companies had but still developed quality personal computers and even kept up with IBM.
Most of these computers (especially the VT-models) are super rare now.

I'd like to hear more about that. Not a company I have heard mentioned before.
Best,
Chris

BSA Starfire wrote on 2020-06-28, 15:49:

I'll try to give you the short version.

Videoton was the biggest developer and manufacturer of consumer electronics in the Hungarian People's Republic (yes, very communist-driven).
In the early days computers in the Comecon region (countries under soviet influence) were incompatible with each other, they often malfunctioned and spare parts were hard to obtain. Leaders in the Comecon countries decided to develop a computer system with better compatibility and reliability. The main consumer was the Soviet Union.
The soviets had 2 methods for obtaining western technology: industrial espionage (e.g. the stealing and reverse-engineering of the IBM System 360 by East-Germany's Robotron company) and agreements with US companies through friendly Comecon countries.
Videoton was famous for such agreements with IBM and other western companies in the 70's. They obtained the computers and licenses legally, developed their own versions and gave everything to the SU (mainly computer terminals). This gave the company the much needed resources to finally be able to develop computer systems on their own. Most notable personal computer systems from the 80's:

Videoton VT-16: Dual CPU (Z80/8080), 256K RAM, green monochrome display
Videoton VT-110: 8088/8 Mhz CPU, 640K RAM, 2x20 MB MFM, 360K FDD, green monochrome display
Videoton VT-160: 286 6/8 Mhz CPU, 3,5 MB RAM (on expansion card), 2x40 MB MFM, 2x1,2M FDD, hercules or CGA display
Videoton VT-180: 386/33 Mhz CPU, 3,5 MB RAM (on expansion card), 2x40 MB MFM, 2x1,2M FDD or 60 MB tape drive, CGA/EGA/VGA options (this was often used as a server)

By the end of the 80's they had way too many orders but not nearly enough capacity to fulfill them.
Videoton manufactured ~10.000 personal computers for the entire Comecon region so they are very rare now. The dissolution of the SU broke them and by the 90's their production rate dropped to 1/3 and they soon went bankrupt. The company was privatized and they stopped developing computers and started manufacturing industrial products, battery packs, car parts, 3D printers and many more products.
They are the 4th biggest manufacturers in Europe now.

Thanks for the background. Very interesting story!