Next big things that never lived up to the hype, failed, or disappeared without a trace... What do you remember??

[ebikeerwidnes]

Oh - I read - on a proper computer place

that "they" had said that there was no further big changes for it - they were basically just letting it carry on as is and not taking it any further

I will have to check
sometime "the media" talk rubbish!

Just read something about it

does look like planned updates coming

clearly slowed down as the last version I worked on was 7.2
and that was 2001
and now they are on 9.2

when I was working on it full time I would implement a new version most years!!

 

[Dogtrousers]

Sent me down rabbit hole seeing what, if anything is happening with VOS, the OS that I used to live and breathe. It's not entirely dead, surprisingly.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

I never did much under OpenVMS but did a lot of years developing in assembler (Macro-11) under RSX-11M.
Brilliant OS.

I did some work on that
but my boss was the expert - he worked on it mostly using RatFIV
a weird pre-compiler that produced Fortran IV
...

Back in those days before all the PDP 11 stuff we used PDP-8s.

DEC engineers loved the PDP-8s and not the PDP-11s as fixing a PDP-8 meant doing real diagnostic work, then getting out a soldering iron and replacing some components on a board. PDP-11s they found boring as it was just working out which board the fault was on (really easy as many were single board or few boards and all the boards others were specialist interfaces) and swapping out the faulty board - quick, easy, unskilled and they found it really boring.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Sent me down rabbit hole seeing what, if anything is happening with VOS, the OS that I used to live and breathe. It's not entirely dead, surprisingly.

WOW - Stratus - I had forgotten about that

If things had gone a bit differently I would have worked on that rather than VMS

In fact - as we found out later - if my boss hadn;t cocked up the formulae on his spreadsheet
we WOULD have been working on it rather than VMS - he found a "minor error" in it several years after everything was installed and he was looking for stuff to archive

He decided not to mention it to his boss!!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Flying cars.

Oh, no, wait...

 

[Dogtrousers]

Tamagochi

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Advanced passenger train.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

HS2

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Advanced passenger train.

Only because it was before it's time and the funding was cut.

Meanwhile, the Italians saw it, copied it and made a success of it with their 'Pendolino' trains, some of which are now working in this country (class 390) as the children/grandchildren of APT.

It was a great, if flawed project (the APT I mean).

Nowadays, the surviving APT set (370003) sits at the Crewe Heritage Centre and sees it's eventual successors (class 390) work the West Coast Main Line every day.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

@Ming the Merciless
390125 at Glasgow Central:

390042 and 390020 at London Euston:

390013 at Crewe:

The same working as that above, as 390013 departs from
Crewe:

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Now @Ming the Merciless, what about this?

The class 89!:

A rare, rare beast these days as 'prototypes' are not the done thing now.

Technically superior to the class 91 that eventually worked the East Coast, a fleet of these was shelved due to costs.

30+ years on, it is being brought back to the mainline for tours, which will be insanely popular!!

 

[Dogtrousers]

Only because it was before it's time and the funding was cut.

Meanwhile, the Italians saw it, copied it and made a success of it with their 'Pendolino' trains, some of which are now working in this country (class 390) as the children/grandchildren of APT.

It was a great, if flawed project (the APT I mean).

Nowadays, the surviving APT set (370003) sits at the Crewe Heritage Centre and sees it's eventual successors (class 390) work the West Coast Main Line every day.

I read that another contributing factor was the ICT 125.

Not flashy but cheaper and good enough. And good enough is good enough.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I read that another contributing factor was the ICT 125.

Not flashy but cheaper and good enough. And good enough is good enough.

Yeah, the HST was hard to beat.

Anyway, l'll be out for the class 89's first tour!

 

[Drago]

Ionica.

 

[Gunk]

Ionica.

Was that not similar to the Rabbit system