Symbolics 3600: A decade of performance

[Mabry Tyson <TYSON@ai.sri.com>]

Darwin, a Symbolics 3600 (S/N 102), was brought to life December 28, 1982
(As I recall, it and S/N 101 were delivered during the year-end break.)
The machine is in daily use by one of our staff (who has used it for years).

As with George Washington's ax, most of its pieces have been replaced over
the years (it got an IFU so all its processor cards were changed
and its I/O was upgraded so the I/O and I/O paddle cards were changed)
but:

512K Memory (P/N 170002, Serial 117) in LBus slot 01:
    Octal Base address: 2000000
    Manufactured on 12/13/82 as rev 1, functions as rev 1, ECO level 0.


The original quote (dated 12/7/81, based on price lists of 4/81 and
11/81) was for $57,750 for the basic 3600 (w/ 256K words of main memory,
80mb drive) with another $7,000 for another 80mb drive.  As I recall,
before delivery the amount of memory was upgraded to 512K words (price
list: $9,000) and we got an Owl drive (160mb for $4,400 if replacing the
80mb drive).  The price list also had Pascal ($10K), C ($12.5K), and
Fortran 77 ($12.5K).

Symbolics has had hard times for the past few years but it made a worthy
product a decade ago.  It is interesting that it is still usable.  The
Sun 1 came out about that time.  I don't know of any that are still in use.


I hope that Symbolics can somehow thrive during the next decade.