More IBM-tans

[Chocofreak13]

I SMELL A SOUTHERN BELLE(a)

(btw, i sketched Cairo. i'll scan and upload when i'm not feeling lazy. >>; )

[Bella]

Poast toast Kari~

Annnyway...... I've been thinking of making a catch-all LISP machine-tan ... I see her as being somewhat plain-looking and simple - not dumb, just single-minded and somewhat spacey - yet is very good at her job. She originated in the MIT Hacker community along with ITS and Emacs-kun, and in the late 70s went through some sort of commercialization identity crisis. May've worked with the Unices at some point and even attempted to reconcile the differences between the old-school and Unix hacker communities; later on she associated with the Macs for awhile. Has a bad habit of being abandoned ... repeatedly ...

Also, I have this feeling we should make a TX-0/1/2-tan but i have no idea where to start. OTL

[stewartsage]

Revised To Do:
CDC VSOS
NORC
CALDIC
ETA EOS
MUMPS-11

[Bella]

Revised To Do:
CDC VSOS
NORC
CALDIC
ETA EOS
MUMPS-11

I demand a MUMPS-tan so Artronix PC12-tan has somebody to keep her company.....

I'm interested in seeing NORC and CALDIC too.

[Chocofreak13]

@bella: i will....EVENTUALLY!!! [/amandashow]
that said, a catchall LISP sounds like a good idea, and it leads me to wonder, do we have a catchall IBM-tan?
don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to squash all that's been done here. i just thought of it like OSX-tan is to Panther/Leopard/Snow Leopard/Cheetah/Lion-tan. :\

@stew: go for eet~~

[Bella]

I imagine an IBM-tan would difficult to personify, since s/he'd (presumably) have to represent hundreds of different computers models of a dozen different kinds (early computers, supercomputers, mainframes, minicomputers, micros, specialized systems, etc).

On the other hand, LISP Machine-tan simply represents the LISP Machines made by various manufacturers (like MIT, Symbolics and Texas Instruments) in the same way that Emacs-kun represents the 100+ Emacs varieties and PDP-10-tan represents the several different PDP-10 models that exist.

[Chocofreak13]

fair enough, it was just a suggestion.

btw, i'm curious, are all the -tans here in the wiki?

it might be a good policy to create the article as soon as the -tan is created. but that might actually gunk up the wiki, so maybe not. :\

[Bella]

Not yet. Personally, I'd wait until a character concept is drawn or described first before listing them.

Seconding.

You'd be surprised how many characters are proposed, but never actually get characterized. Or are proposed and only developed months (years?) later.

[Bella]

Some ideas for VAX-TAN:

-Physically fairly small, perhaps in the lower-mid 5' range, athletic and muscularly-built.
-Unlike many of her DEC kin, she gravitates to martial arts rather than swordsmanship (VAX was a big departure from the other DEC machines and bucked a lot of DEC tradition).
-PDP-11-tan's daughter / sister / something, barely gets along with 11-tan though (see above comment).
-Despite her small stature, she's incredibly strong (the VAX was as powerful as the System/370 at a fraction the cost).
-Has asserted that she's a mainframe and/or supercomputer-tan at various points in her life (DEC marketed it as a mainframe at different points, and it's classified as a superminicomputer).
-She was born in 1977 and grew up alongside VMS-tan (VMS and VAX developed in parallel).
-Probably VMS-tan's oldest/nearest friend, even if they don't always physically express their affection for each other very well, there's a deep understanding between them that sort of transcends words (VMS and VAX are complementary).
-They've grown somewhat geographically-separate in recent years, though they still keep in touch no matter how far apart they may be (uh, VAXclustering I guess).
-Involved in academia, unlike VMS-tan (VAX used in many universities and colleges, though VMS was rejected as an academic system).
-Befriended many Unices during her time in academia, in particular BSD-tan, and likely introduced Unix into the DEC ranks (Ultrix).
-Metaphorically-speaking , she dealt PDP-10-tan a number of severe blows. First in the early 1970s, when DEC decided to forgo creating a derivative of PDP-10 in favor of building VAX.  Later on, PDP-10-tan and her OS-tans were retired in favor of VAX- and VMS-tan, thus causing the major schism between VAX + VMS and PDP-10, TOPS-10 and TENEX.
-Is partially, if not fully, aware that she inadvertently caused the downfall of the DEC Faction (DEC was so committed to VAX's success that they neglected to expand into the then-burgeoning microcomputer market).
-Has a large following, but is rather disliked by many of her DEC comrades to this day .... (see last two points)

[Bella]

LOOK GUYS SOMEBODY MADE A BASH-TAN

Physically-speaking, she seems to fit in ok with C-chan's original design....... dohohohoho.

[Nichi]

I like her ^_^

[Aurora Borealis]

@Bella: Your VAX-tan concept sounds great. I'd also like to note that her success sabotaged Rainbow-tan's possibility of being successful. Rainbow was the only DEC microcomputer-tan and wasn't able to get the support she needed; many of the resources she needed (including training, and how to cope with being in a separate division on her own) got diverted to VAX-tan instead, and Rainbow feels resentful over that, and she's generally not the resentful type!

I could also see some room for conflict between VAX and VMS because of their different attitudes towards the Unices at the time. VMS also still followed DEC traditions, though maybe not as strictly as the older DECs.

[Bella]

That sounds about right... just from what I've read, the VAX pretty much diverted funding from ALL of DEC's other projects, and it's been theorized that this contributed to the demise of the company. (As explained somewhere in this really fascinating article - it's a bit long, but details much of DEC's history, corporate culture and technological developments and is entirely worth a read if you have the time.)

Fortunately for VMS and VAX-tan, their friendship would have been old enough and strong enough to withstand the latter associating with the Unices. Heck, it's probably how VMS-tan met most of the Unix-tans in her life... (and here we always wondered how she and Unix-sama befriended each other).

[Bella]

YOU GUYS, HAS THIS OS EVER BEEN -TANNED?????


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Operating_System

BECAUSE I REALLY NEED FOR IT TO BE -TANNED FOR POSSIBLY SUPER-IMPORTANT STORY PURPOSES.

Edit: A trip to the OS-tan wiki confirmed that COS is indeed covered in the personification of Cray-1-tan...

But would Cray-1-tan also personify other systems that ran COS? I'm asking because COS also ran on the X-MP, which Wikipedia says is more or less an updated Cray-1, which makes me think that the X-MP would fall under Cray-1-tan's personification...?

[Bella]

TBH, I'm just going to consider COS-tan to be CRAY-1-tan, in the same fashion that the CDC-tans represent both their hardware and software. (And, well, it's what it says in her wiki article too.)

Unless one of us can actually come up with an idea for a COS-tan. I don't have anything in mind, Crays are far outside my area of knowledge.

*Edited for coherency