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The Jargon File, version 4.4.8 (jargon)

Mars: n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong.
Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers built by
Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor SC-30M, the small
uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built superprocessor SC-40. These
machines were marvels of engineering design; although not much slower than
the unique Foonly F-1, they were physically smaller
and consumed less power than the much slower DEC
KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also completely
compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries (including the
operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3 times faster than a
KL10.When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their followup to the
PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine
into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their
spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the PDP-10
world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20
by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were
much better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling them;
the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism
into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery
dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously;
they believed they were competing with the KL10 and
VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun
Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power
comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped
the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made
the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix
boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by
CompuServe.This tale and the related saga of Foonly hold
a lesson for hackers: if you want to play in the
Real World, you need to learn Real World moves.