Talk:Tandem Computers

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[edit] the present

The whole article is almost entirely just the past history of Tandem, which is understandable, but it should have a section about the present. Ratbert42 02:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Considering that Tandem has not existed as a company since being bought out by Compaq (1999?), and that Compaq itself was purchased by HP in 2002, I think the information provided here is sufficient. 68.94.213.153 13:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] failure rate of other systems

The following reads like unsubstantiated marketing literature: "While conventional systems of the era, including mainframes, had failure rates on the order of a few days". Ratbert42 02:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] software-only

The following sentence from this article is COMPLETELY false and erroneous:

Over the two decades from the 1970s into the mid-90s, Tandem systems evolved into software-only solutions running on other platforms.

Tandem systems CANNOT be implemented to run on other platforms. They can be implemented using commodity microprocessors -- and much cooperation with INTEL has led to the inclusion at the hardware level of key features necessary to use Itanium Processors in Tandem systems.

HP NonStop Servers are the ONLY hardware platform able to support the NonStop Kernel Operating System (formerly known as Guardian).

FYI, Jay Van Dwingelen, former employee of Tandem Computers for 21+ years.

—The preceding comment was added 15 August 2003

[edit] other suggestions

I recall that in the beginning HP refused the nonstop-fault-tolerant concept and that is why the engineers left HP to startup Tandem. If this is true, this should be inserted into the article.

Also mention of competitors in this area would be nice, Sequent, Stratus, IBM...others?

The article also mentions that, Himalaya and S-Series are the same... I thought they were different systems.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.96.43.80 (talk • contribs) 5 August 2004 (UTC)

[edit] HP refused to develop the concept

(part of the previous section)

Yes, this is true. I'm a little hazy about the details, but in the early 70s an HP team did a proposal for a Dutch company for a more robust system than HP's current offerings. The people involved were Horst Enzelmueller, Josef Broeker and [damn! I've forgotten his name, just remember his face], all from HP in Frankfurt, Germany. They later became the CEO, software support manager and hardware support manager for Tandem Computers Germany, thus explaining why Germany was the first place outside the USA to have a Tandem subsidiary. My recollection, which I'll research, is that HP wasn't interested in their idea, so along with colleagues in the USA, notably Jimmy Treybig and Dave Mackie, they developed their own architecture and company. Groogle 05:44, 23 February 2007 (UTC) (Tandem customer 1977-1982, then employee 1982-1992).

[edit] Integrity series

The information on this page is very inaccurate. The Integrity series was originally a competitive offering to the T/16 architecture, developed in Austin TX, and it ran a version of MIPS UNIX. The first product was the S2 in 1989. Some time in the mid-90s they ported Guardian (sorry, NSK) to the hardware and introduced the S7000. The S4000 carried on with UNIX.

All this is off the top of my head, so I'm putting it here rather than in the main article. If anybody wants to build on it, feel free. Groogle 05:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

The article said Integity was introduced in 1990, so I've changed that to 1989. Otherwise, I don't see inaccuracies; the article fits with what you've written above, although with slightly less detail. -R. S. Shaw 19:02, 23 February 2007 (UTC)