The internal turmoil that has been so apparent at IBM over recent weeks appears to have struck again in the decision to announce the 3390 disk drives tomorrow: gossip doing the rounds is that the announcement is being made now more because the documentation for the Hiperbatch version of MVS for the J series machines must be full of references to the 3390 and IBM doesn’t have time to redo it with the references deleted, lending weight to suggestions that it won’t ship in real volume until the second quarter; at all events the date has caused major headaches because most of the analysts IBM wants to brief on the thing will be in Las Vegas for Comdex this week, and it was still trying to round up people for a New York briefing on Friday.
