You mentioned in the post that you "received a stack of 4 Pi marketing brochures and articles". Do you plan to scan these and place them on your website or the Internet Archive? I'd love to read them!
replyCould a single person lift the complete set of manuals for one computer model?
replyAnd what percentage of the pages of the manual said "this page intentionally left blank"?
just one: why it named System/4 Pi ? (the Pi part especially)
replyThe name is essentiallly a geometry joke. The IBM System/360 line of mainframes (1964) revolutionized the computer industry with the concept of one family of computers for all applications: business and scientific. (Before the 360, nobody considered compatibility, so different computer models were entirely incompatible, which was a mess.) The name symbolized that System/360 covered the full 360º of applications.
replyThe 4 Pi name extended this idea to applications in the 3-dimensional world: 4π is the number of steradians making up a full sphere. As IBM put it, "System/4 Pi also fills a sphere—the full spectrum of military computer needs—for airborne, space, or shipboard use."
My local carwash's top-end wash is called the "Ultimate 360°", despite the fact that it obviously cleans the entire surface area of the car, and I'm simultaneously annoyed by the name and reminded of the System/4 Pi.
replyAnd a follow up, was the Raspberry Pi named as a joke reference to these?
replyAre there any similar parallel series in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia or the UK that you have had a chance to study?
replyI'd like to study aerospace systems from other countries. Unfortunately, it's even harder to get information on foreign systems than US systems.
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