Fairchild 944x

[Chuck Guzis]

On 4 Nov 2008 at 13:49, Eric Smith wrote:

> They tried to sell it, they just weren't good at it.  They didn't want 
> small customers, though they did send me the data sheets and such.  They 
> wanted big customers, but they didn't want big customers that would 
> produce general-purpose computers that would compete with low-end Nova 
> minis.

Contrast that with the sales approach by Intel, who would sell to you 
if they could hear the sound of change jingling in your pocket.  I 
could count on regular phone calls, literature and free lunches by 
the local Intel sales guy--and we were definitely small potatoes.  I 
think Intel understood the idea of an architectural "lock-in" better 
than DG or DEC, who apparently didn't think that principle applied to 
microprocessors.

That Intel support meant a lot--you could get samples of just about 
anything and expect an applications engineer to return your calls.  
It wasn't that Intel had the best products out--it was that they made 
you feel important and did their best not to let you fail.  OTOH, 
National, with some very good product offerings generally wasn't 
trusted for much more than commodity TTL and linear, unless it was as 
a second source for someone else's products that you were already 
using.

Just goes to show that "if you build it, they will come" doesn't 
always hold true.

Cheers,
Chuck