On 18-5-2010 22:31, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> 1980, except that it was the next day and not six months later.
> 
> To be clear, they pretty much stopped making that sort of machine in the 
> late 70s, but many of them lasted into the 90s before they ahd to be 
> retired, often for lack of parts.
> 

What I actually meant that when I started at uni (1982) we could still 
hand over a deck of cards at a front office and collect our results next 
day. It was also the first year we could also do it using terminals, 
though we still had to collect our output ourselves. The machine the 
programs were run on was, IIRC, a Cyber 205 in the central super 
computing facility.

At the medical physics department we had a VAX, this was retired in 
about 85 after running against an IBM compatible. Although the VAX won 
by 60% there was a small difference in cost. The IBM compatible costed 
about $2000 or so whereas the VAX consumed a couple of $100000 just in 
electricity and maintenance per year. (forgot the actual numbers but the 
difference was a factor in that ballpark).

We also had a VAX in the experimental cardiology department, where I am 
working now. That one was retired around 1998, after a colleague and me 
wrote a program that could finally do on a PC what the VAX had been 
doing until then. Although it is even now hard to duplicate the 4000 by 
4000 resolution we had on our display monitor.

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