UNIXpc discontinued...

[Isaac Rabinowitz]

In article <246 at bacchus>, darren at bacchus (Darren Friedlein) writes:
> 
> I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I was just talking with Mark Dill
> (AT&T public relations) and he informed me that the UNIXpc has been
> discontinued, that no more will be made or sold, and that AT&T is putting
> its UN*X weight behid their new 386 machine.  He said that AT&T will
> continue to support the UNIXpc (service contracts, expansion boards, etc.)
> but I don't think we'll see many more software updates from them.

This might be an appropriate time to revive the following topic.  The
Unix PC is actually manufactured by Convergent Technologies in San Jose.
The contract between CT and ATT forbids CT selling machines to anybody
except ATT.

About 1 1/2 years ago I was a CT employee.  It was clear even then that
the product was dead and that ATT was continuing to buy them only out
of bureaucratic inertia.  Paul Ely used to tell us that the only reason
the machine didn't move was ATT's failure to market it properly; he
hoped to obtain the right to sell the machine to other OEMs and/or under
CT's label.  Don't know where this went, as I (and 1/4 of my co-workers)
left the company about that time.  But I wonder what would happen if
CT got a few thousand inquiries of the form "Are you gonna sell it
yourself now?"