Is the 3b2 dead?

[~XT6561110~Frank McGee~C23~L25~6326~]

In article <1990Jun4.224210.23804 at aqdata.uucp> sullivan at aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan) writes:
>:From article <3532 at wb3ffv.ampr.org>, by smarc at wb3ffv.ampr.org (Marc Siegel):
>> 
>> I wonder how many other people out there work for companies that
>> have LARGE investments in 3b2 hardware and software. We have several
>> 3b2's that may not be supported very much longer. While nobody at
>> AT&T will actually confirm this, it seems that the 3b2 is a dead
>> product line.
>
>Do you mean the whole 3B2 line or the 310/400 models?  I doubt the former
>and I believe the latter has already been announced.  The low-end 3B2's
>are slower than 386's so why not phase them out.  However, I have heard
>nothing to suggest that the rest of the entire 3B2 line is on its way out.

Do you refer to support, or availability of new product ?  Most
people are primarily concerned with support, and that will be around
for quite a while.

In general, AT&T continues to support a product until 5 years after
it has been manufacturer discontined (md'd) - ie, no longer
orderable as a new product.  The worst case for the 3B2 would be the
300/310, which was md'd last year I believe.  I don't know if the
400 is still available, and the 500 and higher will probably be
available for a long time to come, and then supported for about 5
years after they are no longer available.

In fact, there are a lot of people in my building that work on
support for 3B2's, and they'll be around for a long time to come.

As for peripherals, most of the 3B's use SCSI, and the 6386 line
introduced SCSI peripherals this year.  The 6386 machines use the
same SCSI peripherals as the 3B2, so they will be around for a long
time as well.

Frank McGee
Entry Level Systems Support
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-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Entry Level Systems Support
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