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Didn't DEC go bankrupt due to its own inept sales force pushing Pentium machines over the AlphaPC? I once heard someone complain that DEC was a company you couldn't give money away to (his words). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ark~enwiki ( talk • contribs) 19:33, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
One reason that DEC fell was its inability to hold its senior executives accountable for financial performance after the abolition of the Product Lines in the early 1980's. Ken Olsen was very proud of creating the Product Lines after the problems with the PDP-6 that almost killed the company in the early 1960's. Each Product Line had responsibility for a computer system (PDP-8,9/15, 11, DEC-10's) and the GM/Managers were held accountable for profit, revenue growth, and to a lesser extent customer satisfaction.
It knew early in the mid 1980's that it needed to cut its cost structure by about 1/3 if it was to compete in the 1990's. However, Ken Olsen absolutely forbid layoffs, so little happened until the situation became so desparate that he had to relent.
Instead it attempted to grow its way out of the problem through a massive re-deployment of resources to the field that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another major reason the company failed was that it did not adjust to the restructuring of the computer industry from full service highly integrated systems suppliers to areas of horizontal expertise - Intel for micros, Oracle for database, etc. DEC had the technologies to compete in many areas but the corporate strategy was to only sell systems.
It was a great company that could not adjust to a dramatically changing business environment that meant tightening its belt and changing what it sold and how it sold... until it was too late. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.238.233 ( talk • contribs) 20:45, January 14, 2006.
Well, let me tell you a story which says why DEC lost one customer. In the mid-1980s, the company I was then working for had bought 20 PDP 11/73s, delivered in pairs over ten months. We also got a tape with the operating system (RSTS/E) and other software with the first pair of systems. Unbeknownst to us, halfway through the period, there was a hardware upgrade in the CPU, which was subtly incompatible with the version of RSTS we had. After we had been running for well over a year, I was able to track down some errors that we were having on some machines to this incompatibility. The old hardware was no longer available, and we were told that we would need to get ten new CPU boards and a new software tape to make all the hardware the same and to have a good version of the OS. The kicker was that DEC insisted that we pay $8000 for each board and $2500 for the software upgrade, for a total of $82,500. We maintained that since the problem was caused by them, they should eat the cost. We might have come to some arrangement for splitting the cost, but they were adamant. We had to pay it all. They would not come down even on the price of the tape. Since even the properly working systems were slow and the application software difficult to maintain, we determined that we would start over again on this application, using a proper DBMS (the old one used ISAM files), C (the old one used BASIC+2), and UNIX and faster hardware. However, at the conclusion of the meeting where this was decided, the CIO stated "Digital Equipment Corporation will not be invited to bid on this contract." Thus, DEC lost out on a contract worth over a million because they insisted that we pay $82,500 for a problem that was really their fault. Jhobson1 ( talk) 13:34, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
The reason I came to this page was because I read (on a web history page) that DEC put up the first commercial website. In this article it says they were amongst the first .com websites. Were there any .com websites before DEC that weren't commercial? I thought if it was one it would be the other as well, but it'd seem strange to refer to the first ever as one of the first... sheridan 03:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe one of the other items DEC divested was their management software known as Polycenter. This software went to Computer Associates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by D9nno ( talk • contribs) 22:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Is it worth noting that an 11/782 was seized in 1983 as part of a contraband shipment to the Soviets? -- Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Without a citation, I don't buy the idea that any of the early Intel 4-bit or 8-bit microprocessors were "inspired by the PDP-8". There is no significant architectural similarity between the PDP-8 and the 4004, 8008, or 8080. On the other hand, there are very clear similarities between the PDP-8, DG Nova, and HP 2116 family (of which the HP 2100 is a member). If no citation is forthcoming in the near future, I will remove the 4004 and 8080 references in that section. -- Brouhaha 18:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The article discusses how one can get the acronym "W/NT" by incrementing each letter in "VMS". Someone just edited in "Cutler later verified this."
AFAIK, Cutler has never actually made any affirmative statement such as "Yes, I did that intentionally." Instead, he's always said something coy like "Did you just notice that?". (That is, he makes it clear that it was deliberate while not actually saying so.)
Have I got this right?
If so, we should edit the article.
Atlant 16:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I still don't buy it. "Machines based on the PDP-8 can be characterized by a small number of accumulators?" No, this is hardly a defining characteristic that makes an architecture PDP-8-like. Broadly speaking, small numbers of accumulators (and small numbers of registers with somewhat specialized, asymmetrical functions) are found in any situation in which registers aren't cheap. Many, many early machines have an "accumulator" and an "accumulator extension," for example. I think the (original) Illiac did. Certainly the PDP-1 did.
The advantages of having many registers are obvious, and they appeared whenever the economic balance for that particular machine permitted it. Conversely, any machine that was cheap or otherwise constrained to have minimal hardware, had a few.
Here are a list of PDP-8-specific characteristics. I'd like to see an architecture match a handful of these before I'd call it "PDP-8-like." I'm not very familiar with the 8080, but I don't think it matches any of them.
Any similaries between microprocessors and the PDP-8--other than the Intersil 6100, of course!--are simply the result of having to solve the same problems, i.e. build a very small computer with limited hardware resources. The PDP-8 and 8080 are no more similar than the PDP-8 and the LINC, or the PDP-8 and the CDC-160.
This is quite different from the situation with respect to, say, Digital operating systems like OS/8 and CP/M and MS-DOS. If you compare these three, you notice things like
All of these characteristics are shared by OS/8, CP/M, and (early) MS-DOS. None of these characteristics are shared by the Apple ][ DOS 3.3; only one of them is possessed by UNIX.
Thus, I think it is very reasonable to see evidence of Digital OS influence in microcomputer OSes. I do not see any obvious influence of the PDP-8 on microprocessors. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
P. S. And, regardless of what I or anyone else might have to say, in any case the verifiability and no original research policies mean that anything said on this topic, however well-founded, must be traceable to a published source, not stated without attribution. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
*the use of the CR-LF pair to separate lines
*the use of file names consisting of a name and an extension separated by a dot
Just thought I'd add a pointer to a query about the logo here. I'm probably wrong, but anybody know for certain? I'm intrigued now, and don't have any DEC logos handy to leer at. Chris 23:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
DEC did sell Intel-based Windows compatible computers under their logo (for example, Prioris, Celebris and Venturis product lines). -- 195.218.145.14 16:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
"AR&D later sold its investment in Digital for approximately $450 million, certainly the best VC return ever at the time"
http://www.computinghistorymuseum.org/teaching/lectures/pptlectures/10-dec.ppt
"When Doriot sold his share in 1972, it was worth $350,000,000" — Preceding unsigned comment added by CSuarezdelReal ( talk • contribs) 20:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
It is quite interesting that Digital excluded the word "Computer" from their product and brand names, both, as an early way to get funds, so that investor were not afraid to give money to a company that would compete against giant IBM (besides other large computer companies were losing money at that time), and as an early marketing strategy to sell their products to engineering teams in companies where the accountants would reject computers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.116.112.10 ( talk) 21:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I dispute the use of the word 'architect' as a verb in this otherwise well-written article, because it is not a verb.
There are plenty of other verbs that can be used in place of 'architecting' and 'architected': construct, design, create, devise, invent, plan, produce. JeffreyMeunier 01:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Atlant removed the information on writable control store, and in the edit summary asked which models supported it. WCS was optional on the 11/780, and standard on the 11/785, 11/750, 8600, 8650, 9000 series, and possibly other models. Microcode development tools were offered as a product for the 11/78x. Most of the later VAX implementations based on VLSI processors had small a on-chip WCS intended to patch microcode bugs. -- Brouhaha 00:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Could someone add information on this chip? Drutt 08:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
In the '70s I was a DEC customer. I was told that the PDP line (Programmable Digital Processor) and the DEC name (Digital Equipment Corporation) avoided the word "computer" because government procurement procedures for "computers" were far more complex than the procedures for almost anything else... by avoiding the word "computer" procurement of DEC products was easier. Could be urban legend?
RobertTaylor21 21:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I was hired by Digital just before its acquisition by Compaq, and all the legal documents that we changed over to "Compaq Computer Corporation" had used the name "Digital Equipment Company" [not Corporation]. Digital was indeed a corporation, but the formal name needs to be verified -- especially since "Corporation" is used in the title of the article. -- NameThatWorks 18:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I can't be sure at this late date, but I think when I started work for DEC in the UK (1977) I was working for Digital Equipment Company, a subsidiary (or something) of Digital Equipment Corporation. --dave, 2009-07-01 22:20-0400 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.203.11.215 ( talk)
I noticed a few details that maybe should be corrected/cleared up.
First of all, I don't believe the DECtape was created for the PDP-10. I think the DECtape actually predates the PDP-10. If I remember correctly, the DECtape was pretty much based straight off from the LINKtape, with a few changes. It definitely exists for PDP-8, PDP-10 and PDP-11 systems (since I've observed those), but I think it was used on 18-bit systems as well.
Second, the C language didn't originate on the PDP-7. It might just be that I'm reading too much into that section, but to me it appears as if that is claimed. Unix ran on the PDP-7, yes, but that was written in assembler. The same is true for the early versions of Unix on the PDP-11. It was only rewritten in C after a few iterations on the PDP-11 had already been done.
Under the list of what happened to various DEC produects, I'm missing the disk manufacturing. Sure, DEC retained StorageWorks, but the actual disks was sold. If I remember, that went to Seagate.
Oh, and could someone find a proper logo? Blue, that is, not the (pretty recent) burgundy or whatever the color was called... :-)
/bqt@softjar.se 213.115.50.13 ( talk) 17:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Having just finished reading Ed Schein's book on DEC (DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC - Schein 2003) I wonder whether this article might be enhanced by some additional emphasis on DEC's role as one of the first learning organisations. As well as the technology legacy, Schein observes that DEC was one of the first companies to explore democratic management, and made significant innovations in community relations and corporate social responsibility, affirmative action, people development and human resource practices, leadership and management, team building (including virtual teams supported by the internal network Easynet), sales methods and practices, and even marketing innovations such as DECworld. Redwaterjug ( talk) 21:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
This article severely needs to be restructured in chronological sequence. Grouping products by the architecture type does not really accurately reflect how this company developed, unlike, say, Intel. Also, one tidbit that should be added -- DEC produced some very hard drives for a long time. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were among the best (if not the best) in the business. As part of the dismantling of the company in the early 1990s, that group was sold to Quantum. The Quantum Atlas line was the result. This facility passed through Maxtor, and then to Seagate. The DEC Shrewsbury facility still operational. 66.92.132.155 ( talk) 05:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that HP has retired the server that runs ftp.digital.com. The announcement can be found here: http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/options/asgs1280/asgs1280_options.html
The ftp service is now inaccessible. The ftp.digital.com link(s) at the bottom of this page should be replaced with another link that provides the same information if possible, or removed. Rilak ( talk) 08:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The sentence "However, Palmer was unable to stem the tide of red ink." has been bothering me for some time, and I was wondering if anybody had any comments about this: I know we need to keep away from anything that's perhaps largely based on opinion and possibly rather subjective, which is why I'm not inclined to change anything myself since I'm not certain the exact facts of the matter, but wasn't Palmer actually responsible for much (most?) of the red ink in question? I do recall that the number of vice presidents doubled (or more) under Palmer and the number of managers appeared to rise exponentially during the swathes of layoffs; and Palmer's own bio here on Wikipedia does indicate his fondness for restructuring, something that was a constant blight on the company to the point where many people were simply unable to do their jobs. And apart from anything, "was unable to" seems a curiously disempowering statement for the man who was in total control of the organisation.
I'm aware that we must be neutral and not allow personal feelings to negatively influence what's documented, but I think that the article goes much too far the other way, it's far too favourable and actually exonerates Palmer of his responsibilities. While I think that Wikipedia's account is far less inaccurate than other versions of DEC's demise, some of which are just blatantly untrue (though I figure it probably isn't helpful to comment further!) I think that this section could probably do with some attention. — Chris ( blather • contribs) 15:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's incorrect to credit DEC with the idea of not using letters which are homoglyphs or near-homoglyphs. I expect there are several examples of prior art - one that springs to my mind are United Kingdom military aircraft serials, which have omitted the letters C, I, O, Q, U and Y since 1940. Letdorf ( talk) 09:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC).
Besides tons of messages in mail archives, I gave an invited talk at Usenix some years ago to cover (some of X's) history. I leave it to someone who knows wiki markup better than me to add it to the main article JimGettys ( talk) 21:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix2000/invitedtalks/gettys_html/
Added Radia Perlman because of her many achievements. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.130.5.129 ( talk) 20:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
On 2 apr 2009 10:55 User:Badger Drink removed my original/historical Digital coffee-mug?
What do the others think? Geert Van Pamel ( talk) 00:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I added this sentence concerning the DEC Alpha but it has been suppressed because of lack of citations:
But there are no citation for the other parts concerning DEC Alpha and I remember very well discussing with DEC people and testing their first 64 bits binaries. It was obvious for researchers involved in computer science at that time. We have worked on Univac machine whichs were 36 bits, they did not add so much in comparison with IBM 32 bits for scientific computations. Also when the VAX came, its main advantage was virtual memory and its ability to swap its memory on hard disk. And thus adressing full 32 bits was just possible with a VAX, and it made its success. But adressing 64 bits was not a real need. I remember Digital saying: Yes, it is not the current need for scientists now, but it will come and we are offering you 64 bits machines at the price of 32 bits machines. And it wasn't true, because we needed to buy many more memory which was very costly. And thus if somebody find citations, the above sentence could be reinserted.-- Nbrouard ( talk) 16:50, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
In March 2010, a series of major edits were made that introduced major changes into the article. One of the changes made greatly concerns me. It is in regards to DEC's PC product lines during the 1990s. If one looks at the revision from 25 Feb. 2010, one will find that DEC's PC product lines of the 1990s are mentioned. This is very important because DEC's Alpha business only constituted less than a third of the company's revenue, IIRC. The other major hardware product line were PCs. The omission of these product changes how the article reads. Before, it was: "DEC failed in early its PC attempts, but it eventually got out some PC product lines during the 1990s." Now it reads like this: "Stupid DEC failed in its early PC attempts, it never tried to get back into the PC market, and left only with silly overpriced closed VAX systems, DEC failed. What a bunch of dinosuars! LOL!" Not NPOV is it?
I would fix it myself, if there was a section that I could put it in. But the article structure was altered significantly, and it is not much better from the previous structure. The issue remains the same. Trying to tell DEC's history by organizing it into sections around product lines mixed with out-of-place sections about specific happenings doesn't work. Why? Because DEC's product lines overlap each other. It also encourages work on the products, not the history. And it is a problem as people for some reason don't seem to realize that Wikipedia has articles on the products, so they add detailed information about products into an article that was not meant to be about the products.
The article needs to be rewritten entirely. The present version is poorly structured and it misses the point. For example, if one were to look in Electronics, the articles from the late 1980s say that DEC got successful from one ISA, one OS, one product line from workstations to superminicomputers, networking, and VAXclusters. And then it began to decline because of client/server computing, open platforms, and RISC microprocessors. The current article doesn't say this explicitly, it barely even mentions these points, and it implies that what caused DEC's demise were "business microcomputers". In regards to structure, the history should be organized by decade, not by product. This will allow the article to read more smoothly and allow it to show relations between events and products that are presently disjointed.
Have the problems that I described been noticed by other editors? Are there any comments about my proposed solutions or my comments in general? Rilak ( talk) 04:13, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
I think Rilak's comments above have considerable merit. A better overview of the evolution of DEC should be presented in this article, beyond a simple chronicle of different product lines. For example, the long-standing influence and then departure of Gordon Bell at the highest levels of DEC management was a significant factor in the rise and fall of DEC. Bell reputedly was one of the few people within DEC who could tell Ken Olsen to his face that he was completely wrong, and still be listened to. His involvement in multiple product lines was more than incidental, in that he guided much of the "big picture" strategic technical vision of the company. As Rilak points out, DEC continued to make products for the PC market into the 1990s, and these products were an influential presence in the market, even if they failed to achieve market dominance.
IIRC, the book by Edgar Schein et. al. "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" was chronologically organized. I don't have a copy at hand right now, but I remember that the book's coverage correlated well with my experience as a long-time DEC user and acquaintance of many DEC employees. The book is already listed as a reference for many DEC-related articles, and is a must-read for anybody interested in better understanding the rise and fall of DEC, as well as its continuing legacies.
Rather than the daunting (and possibly controversial) project of reorganizing the entire article at one fell swoop, perhaps it would be better to start a new section organized chronologically, as a parallel overview of DEC's history. It could absorb some of the existing non-product-line sections of the article, and also host new content such as the history of DEC's PC efforts in the 1990s. If and when it becomes apparent that the product-line oriented approach has been superseded, the remaining content could be subsumed into the chronological narrative, or broken out as separate subsidiary articles.
In other words, start building something better, before making the major change of deconstructing the current article organization. Reify-tech ( talk) 21:20, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
The comments for Cutler and Getty far exceed their actual accomplishments. TEDickey ( talk) 01:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Two people led the RSX-11 team of which Cutler was 1
- Three people led the VMS development team of which Cutler was 1
This is fairly well documented in the various books published by the Corporations own "DEC Press" / "Digital Press".
Furthermore - RSX was not such a complicated system to be developing an OS for ex. a total of 64KB real memory! so a bit exaggerated.
Whilst Cutler was 1/3 leading the VMS 1.0 Development in 1974 there were 14 releases over some 30 years. He did however contribute to some of what would be significant formative & characteristic design of early VMS but did not stay around to contribute to even bigger stuff like Clusters and SMP back in the 1980s when nobody else even knew what that meant.
His BS was in Physics at a time when Universities did not teach Computer Science. So he learned everything on the job (unheard of these days).
He then left NH for CA to set up WRL to do new work on RISC with his MICA project. Another technological innovation which the business (back then) had no use for. This was the final straw for him.
The next 3 years were spent in the wilderness before he eventually got the call from Bill Gates.
Most memorable Cutler Quote, "Getting past HR is the most difficult part of the Job".
Mld01 ( talk) 21:14, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
"In the period 1994–99 Linus Torvalds developed versions of Linux on early AlphaServer systems made available to him by the engineering department. Compaq software engineers developed special Linux kernel modules"
You cannot mention Compaq to the effect it is substitutable for Digital Equipment
Alphaserver hardware first commercial shipping was during 1993. There were already a comprehensive range of platforms ready to go. Workstations, Servers, Datacentre Systems. so 'early Alphaserver' is vague & misleading.
Linus Torvalds is not in any way part of the Digital Equipment Story.
By direct comparison 20% of the DECs substantial OS budget went into staffing & running out of the DEC WRL office a Digital Internal Engineering Group effort to Port under Licence from Microsoft NT v1.0.
Mld01 ( talk) 21:52, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The couple of unsourced comments about Linux don't belong in the section on DEC's accomplishments. Further, the two sentences don't belong together, since they apparently equate events that took place several years apart. TEDickey ( talk) 01:15, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I still fail to see how either could be fairly categorized as a DEC accomplishment. It was first developed for x86 and then ported to many systems; what makes this port a DEC accomplishment particularly when it is not clear that DEC did the porting? Likewise, its hard to see how LINUX on an alphaserver after DEC disappeared is a DEC accomplishment, Compaq, maybe, but even there is a port an accomplishment worthy of Wikipedia inclusion. If everything done on a DEC system is a DEC accomplishment then the list needs to be a lot longer, so I still support removing the two cites. Right now there does not appear to be a consensus - let's see what others say. Tom94022 ( talk) 23:50, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
UNIX / Linux History suggests the only thing DEC did was lend Torvald's a computer - is that worthy of inclusion in Wikipeida as a DEC accomplishment? Tom94022 ( talk) 00:01, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Dec is a corporation that died and merged with other corporations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.114.77.38 ( talk) 17:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
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Didn't DEC go bankrupt due to its own inept sales force pushing Pentium machines over the AlphaPC? I once heard someone complain that DEC was a company you couldn't give money away to (his words). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ark~enwiki ( talk • contribs) 19:33, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
One reason that DEC fell was its inability to hold its senior executives accountable for financial performance after the abolition of the Product Lines in the early 1980's. Ken Olsen was very proud of creating the Product Lines after the problems with the PDP-6 that almost killed the company in the early 1960's. Each Product Line had responsibility for a computer system (PDP-8,9/15, 11, DEC-10's) and the GM/Managers were held accountable for profit, revenue growth, and to a lesser extent customer satisfaction.
It knew early in the mid 1980's that it needed to cut its cost structure by about 1/3 if it was to compete in the 1990's. However, Ken Olsen absolutely forbid layoffs, so little happened until the situation became so desparate that he had to relent.
Instead it attempted to grow its way out of the problem through a massive re-deployment of resources to the field that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another major reason the company failed was that it did not adjust to the restructuring of the computer industry from full service highly integrated systems suppliers to areas of horizontal expertise - Intel for micros, Oracle for database, etc. DEC had the technologies to compete in many areas but the corporate strategy was to only sell systems.
It was a great company that could not adjust to a dramatically changing business environment that meant tightening its belt and changing what it sold and how it sold... until it was too late. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.238.233 ( talk • contribs) 20:45, January 14, 2006.
Well, let me tell you a story which says why DEC lost one customer. In the mid-1980s, the company I was then working for had bought 20 PDP 11/73s, delivered in pairs over ten months. We also got a tape with the operating system (RSTS/E) and other software with the first pair of systems. Unbeknownst to us, halfway through the period, there was a hardware upgrade in the CPU, which was subtly incompatible with the version of RSTS we had. After we had been running for well over a year, I was able to track down some errors that we were having on some machines to this incompatibility. The old hardware was no longer available, and we were told that we would need to get ten new CPU boards and a new software tape to make all the hardware the same and to have a good version of the OS. The kicker was that DEC insisted that we pay $8000 for each board and $2500 for the software upgrade, for a total of $82,500. We maintained that since the problem was caused by them, they should eat the cost. We might have come to some arrangement for splitting the cost, but they were adamant. We had to pay it all. They would not come down even on the price of the tape. Since even the properly working systems were slow and the application software difficult to maintain, we determined that we would start over again on this application, using a proper DBMS (the old one used ISAM files), C (the old one used BASIC+2), and UNIX and faster hardware. However, at the conclusion of the meeting where this was decided, the CIO stated "Digital Equipment Corporation will not be invited to bid on this contract." Thus, DEC lost out on a contract worth over a million because they insisted that we pay $82,500 for a problem that was really their fault. Jhobson1 ( talk) 13:34, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
The reason I came to this page was because I read (on a web history page) that DEC put up the first commercial website. In this article it says they were amongst the first .com websites. Were there any .com websites before DEC that weren't commercial? I thought if it was one it would be the other as well, but it'd seem strange to refer to the first ever as one of the first... sheridan 03:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe one of the other items DEC divested was their management software known as Polycenter. This software went to Computer Associates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by D9nno ( talk • contribs) 22:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Is it worth noting that an 11/782 was seized in 1983 as part of a contraband shipment to the Soviets? -- Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Without a citation, I don't buy the idea that any of the early Intel 4-bit or 8-bit microprocessors were "inspired by the PDP-8". There is no significant architectural similarity between the PDP-8 and the 4004, 8008, or 8080. On the other hand, there are very clear similarities between the PDP-8, DG Nova, and HP 2116 family (of which the HP 2100 is a member). If no citation is forthcoming in the near future, I will remove the 4004 and 8080 references in that section. -- Brouhaha 18:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The article discusses how one can get the acronym "W/NT" by incrementing each letter in "VMS". Someone just edited in "Cutler later verified this."
AFAIK, Cutler has never actually made any affirmative statement such as "Yes, I did that intentionally." Instead, he's always said something coy like "Did you just notice that?". (That is, he makes it clear that it was deliberate while not actually saying so.)
Have I got this right?
If so, we should edit the article.
Atlant 16:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I still don't buy it. "Machines based on the PDP-8 can be characterized by a small number of accumulators?" No, this is hardly a defining characteristic that makes an architecture PDP-8-like. Broadly speaking, small numbers of accumulators (and small numbers of registers with somewhat specialized, asymmetrical functions) are found in any situation in which registers aren't cheap. Many, many early machines have an "accumulator" and an "accumulator extension," for example. I think the (original) Illiac did. Certainly the PDP-1 did.
The advantages of having many registers are obvious, and they appeared whenever the economic balance for that particular machine permitted it. Conversely, any machine that was cheap or otherwise constrained to have minimal hardware, had a few.
Here are a list of PDP-8-specific characteristics. I'd like to see an architecture match a handful of these before I'd call it "PDP-8-like." I'm not very familiar with the 8080, but I don't think it matches any of them.
Any similaries between microprocessors and the PDP-8--other than the Intersil 6100, of course!--are simply the result of having to solve the same problems, i.e. build a very small computer with limited hardware resources. The PDP-8 and 8080 are no more similar than the PDP-8 and the LINC, or the PDP-8 and the CDC-160.
This is quite different from the situation with respect to, say, Digital operating systems like OS/8 and CP/M and MS-DOS. If you compare these three, you notice things like
All of these characteristics are shared by OS/8, CP/M, and (early) MS-DOS. None of these characteristics are shared by the Apple ][ DOS 3.3; only one of them is possessed by UNIX.
Thus, I think it is very reasonable to see evidence of Digital OS influence in microcomputer OSes. I do not see any obvious influence of the PDP-8 on microprocessors. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
P. S. And, regardless of what I or anyone else might have to say, in any case the verifiability and no original research policies mean that anything said on this topic, however well-founded, must be traceable to a published source, not stated without attribution. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
*the use of the CR-LF pair to separate lines
*the use of file names consisting of a name and an extension separated by a dot
Just thought I'd add a pointer to a query about the logo here. I'm probably wrong, but anybody know for certain? I'm intrigued now, and don't have any DEC logos handy to leer at. Chris 23:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
DEC did sell Intel-based Windows compatible computers under their logo (for example, Prioris, Celebris and Venturis product lines). -- 195.218.145.14 16:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
"AR&D later sold its investment in Digital for approximately $450 million, certainly the best VC return ever at the time"
http://www.computinghistorymuseum.org/teaching/lectures/pptlectures/10-dec.ppt
"When Doriot sold his share in 1972, it was worth $350,000,000" — Preceding unsigned comment added by CSuarezdelReal ( talk • contribs) 20:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
It is quite interesting that Digital excluded the word "Computer" from their product and brand names, both, as an early way to get funds, so that investor were not afraid to give money to a company that would compete against giant IBM (besides other large computer companies were losing money at that time), and as an early marketing strategy to sell their products to engineering teams in companies where the accountants would reject computers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.116.112.10 ( talk) 21:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I dispute the use of the word 'architect' as a verb in this otherwise well-written article, because it is not a verb.
There are plenty of other verbs that can be used in place of 'architecting' and 'architected': construct, design, create, devise, invent, plan, produce. JeffreyMeunier 01:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Atlant removed the information on writable control store, and in the edit summary asked which models supported it. WCS was optional on the 11/780, and standard on the 11/785, 11/750, 8600, 8650, 9000 series, and possibly other models. Microcode development tools were offered as a product for the 11/78x. Most of the later VAX implementations based on VLSI processors had small a on-chip WCS intended to patch microcode bugs. -- Brouhaha 00:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Could someone add information on this chip? Drutt 08:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
In the '70s I was a DEC customer. I was told that the PDP line (Programmable Digital Processor) and the DEC name (Digital Equipment Corporation) avoided the word "computer" because government procurement procedures for "computers" were far more complex than the procedures for almost anything else... by avoiding the word "computer" procurement of DEC products was easier. Could be urban legend?
RobertTaylor21 21:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I was hired by Digital just before its acquisition by Compaq, and all the legal documents that we changed over to "Compaq Computer Corporation" had used the name "Digital Equipment Company" [not Corporation]. Digital was indeed a corporation, but the formal name needs to be verified -- especially since "Corporation" is used in the title of the article. -- NameThatWorks 18:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I can't be sure at this late date, but I think when I started work for DEC in the UK (1977) I was working for Digital Equipment Company, a subsidiary (or something) of Digital Equipment Corporation. --dave, 2009-07-01 22:20-0400 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.203.11.215 ( talk)
I noticed a few details that maybe should be corrected/cleared up.
First of all, I don't believe the DECtape was created for the PDP-10. I think the DECtape actually predates the PDP-10. If I remember correctly, the DECtape was pretty much based straight off from the LINKtape, with a few changes. It definitely exists for PDP-8, PDP-10 and PDP-11 systems (since I've observed those), but I think it was used on 18-bit systems as well.
Second, the C language didn't originate on the PDP-7. It might just be that I'm reading too much into that section, but to me it appears as if that is claimed. Unix ran on the PDP-7, yes, but that was written in assembler. The same is true for the early versions of Unix on the PDP-11. It was only rewritten in C after a few iterations on the PDP-11 had already been done.
Under the list of what happened to various DEC produects, I'm missing the disk manufacturing. Sure, DEC retained StorageWorks, but the actual disks was sold. If I remember, that went to Seagate.
Oh, and could someone find a proper logo? Blue, that is, not the (pretty recent) burgundy or whatever the color was called... :-)
/bqt@softjar.se 213.115.50.13 ( talk) 17:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Having just finished reading Ed Schein's book on DEC (DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC - Schein 2003) I wonder whether this article might be enhanced by some additional emphasis on DEC's role as one of the first learning organisations. As well as the technology legacy, Schein observes that DEC was one of the first companies to explore democratic management, and made significant innovations in community relations and corporate social responsibility, affirmative action, people development and human resource practices, leadership and management, team building (including virtual teams supported by the internal network Easynet), sales methods and practices, and even marketing innovations such as DECworld. Redwaterjug ( talk) 21:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
This article severely needs to be restructured in chronological sequence. Grouping products by the architecture type does not really accurately reflect how this company developed, unlike, say, Intel. Also, one tidbit that should be added -- DEC produced some very hard drives for a long time. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were among the best (if not the best) in the business. As part of the dismantling of the company in the early 1990s, that group was sold to Quantum. The Quantum Atlas line was the result. This facility passed through Maxtor, and then to Seagate. The DEC Shrewsbury facility still operational. 66.92.132.155 ( talk) 05:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems that HP has retired the server that runs ftp.digital.com. The announcement can be found here: http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/options/asgs1280/asgs1280_options.html
The ftp service is now inaccessible. The ftp.digital.com link(s) at the bottom of this page should be replaced with another link that provides the same information if possible, or removed. Rilak ( talk) 08:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The sentence "However, Palmer was unable to stem the tide of red ink." has been bothering me for some time, and I was wondering if anybody had any comments about this: I know we need to keep away from anything that's perhaps largely based on opinion and possibly rather subjective, which is why I'm not inclined to change anything myself since I'm not certain the exact facts of the matter, but wasn't Palmer actually responsible for much (most?) of the red ink in question? I do recall that the number of vice presidents doubled (or more) under Palmer and the number of managers appeared to rise exponentially during the swathes of layoffs; and Palmer's own bio here on Wikipedia does indicate his fondness for restructuring, something that was a constant blight on the company to the point where many people were simply unable to do their jobs. And apart from anything, "was unable to" seems a curiously disempowering statement for the man who was in total control of the organisation.
I'm aware that we must be neutral and not allow personal feelings to negatively influence what's documented, but I think that the article goes much too far the other way, it's far too favourable and actually exonerates Palmer of his responsibilities. While I think that Wikipedia's account is far less inaccurate than other versions of DEC's demise, some of which are just blatantly untrue (though I figure it probably isn't helpful to comment further!) I think that this section could probably do with some attention. — Chris ( blather • contribs) 15:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's incorrect to credit DEC with the idea of not using letters which are homoglyphs or near-homoglyphs. I expect there are several examples of prior art - one that springs to my mind are United Kingdom military aircraft serials, which have omitted the letters C, I, O, Q, U and Y since 1940. Letdorf ( talk) 09:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC).
Besides tons of messages in mail archives, I gave an invited talk at Usenix some years ago to cover (some of X's) history. I leave it to someone who knows wiki markup better than me to add it to the main article JimGettys ( talk) 21:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix2000/invitedtalks/gettys_html/
Added Radia Perlman because of her many achievements. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.130.5.129 ( talk) 20:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
On 2 apr 2009 10:55 User:Badger Drink removed my original/historical Digital coffee-mug?
What do the others think? Geert Van Pamel ( talk) 00:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I added this sentence concerning the DEC Alpha but it has been suppressed because of lack of citations:
But there are no citation for the other parts concerning DEC Alpha and I remember very well discussing with DEC people and testing their first 64 bits binaries. It was obvious for researchers involved in computer science at that time. We have worked on Univac machine whichs were 36 bits, they did not add so much in comparison with IBM 32 bits for scientific computations. Also when the VAX came, its main advantage was virtual memory and its ability to swap its memory on hard disk. And thus adressing full 32 bits was just possible with a VAX, and it made its success. But adressing 64 bits was not a real need. I remember Digital saying: Yes, it is not the current need for scientists now, but it will come and we are offering you 64 bits machines at the price of 32 bits machines. And it wasn't true, because we needed to buy many more memory which was very costly. And thus if somebody find citations, the above sentence could be reinserted.-- Nbrouard ( talk) 16:50, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
In March 2010, a series of major edits were made that introduced major changes into the article. One of the changes made greatly concerns me. It is in regards to DEC's PC product lines during the 1990s. If one looks at the revision from 25 Feb. 2010, one will find that DEC's PC product lines of the 1990s are mentioned. This is very important because DEC's Alpha business only constituted less than a third of the company's revenue, IIRC. The other major hardware product line were PCs. The omission of these product changes how the article reads. Before, it was: "DEC failed in early its PC attempts, but it eventually got out some PC product lines during the 1990s." Now it reads like this: "Stupid DEC failed in its early PC attempts, it never tried to get back into the PC market, and left only with silly overpriced closed VAX systems, DEC failed. What a bunch of dinosuars! LOL!" Not NPOV is it?
I would fix it myself, if there was a section that I could put it in. But the article structure was altered significantly, and it is not much better from the previous structure. The issue remains the same. Trying to tell DEC's history by organizing it into sections around product lines mixed with out-of-place sections about specific happenings doesn't work. Why? Because DEC's product lines overlap each other. It also encourages work on the products, not the history. And it is a problem as people for some reason don't seem to realize that Wikipedia has articles on the products, so they add detailed information about products into an article that was not meant to be about the products.
The article needs to be rewritten entirely. The present version is poorly structured and it misses the point. For example, if one were to look in Electronics, the articles from the late 1980s say that DEC got successful from one ISA, one OS, one product line from workstations to superminicomputers, networking, and VAXclusters. And then it began to decline because of client/server computing, open platforms, and RISC microprocessors. The current article doesn't say this explicitly, it barely even mentions these points, and it implies that what caused DEC's demise were "business microcomputers". In regards to structure, the history should be organized by decade, not by product. This will allow the article to read more smoothly and allow it to show relations between events and products that are presently disjointed.
Have the problems that I described been noticed by other editors? Are there any comments about my proposed solutions or my comments in general? Rilak ( talk) 04:13, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
I think Rilak's comments above have considerable merit. A better overview of the evolution of DEC should be presented in this article, beyond a simple chronicle of different product lines. For example, the long-standing influence and then departure of Gordon Bell at the highest levels of DEC management was a significant factor in the rise and fall of DEC. Bell reputedly was one of the few people within DEC who could tell Ken Olsen to his face that he was completely wrong, and still be listened to. His involvement in multiple product lines was more than incidental, in that he guided much of the "big picture" strategic technical vision of the company. As Rilak points out, DEC continued to make products for the PC market into the 1990s, and these products were an influential presence in the market, even if they failed to achieve market dominance.
IIRC, the book by Edgar Schein et. al. "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" was chronologically organized. I don't have a copy at hand right now, but I remember that the book's coverage correlated well with my experience as a long-time DEC user and acquaintance of many DEC employees. The book is already listed as a reference for many DEC-related articles, and is a must-read for anybody interested in better understanding the rise and fall of DEC, as well as its continuing legacies.
Rather than the daunting (and possibly controversial) project of reorganizing the entire article at one fell swoop, perhaps it would be better to start a new section organized chronologically, as a parallel overview of DEC's history. It could absorb some of the existing non-product-line sections of the article, and also host new content such as the history of DEC's PC efforts in the 1990s. If and when it becomes apparent that the product-line oriented approach has been superseded, the remaining content could be subsumed into the chronological narrative, or broken out as separate subsidiary articles.
In other words, start building something better, before making the major change of deconstructing the current article organization. Reify-tech ( talk) 21:20, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
The comments for Cutler and Getty far exceed their actual accomplishments. TEDickey ( talk) 01:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Two people led the RSX-11 team of which Cutler was 1
- Three people led the VMS development team of which Cutler was 1
This is fairly well documented in the various books published by the Corporations own "DEC Press" / "Digital Press".
Furthermore - RSX was not such a complicated system to be developing an OS for ex. a total of 64KB real memory! so a bit exaggerated.
Whilst Cutler was 1/3 leading the VMS 1.0 Development in 1974 there were 14 releases over some 30 years. He did however contribute to some of what would be significant formative & characteristic design of early VMS but did not stay around to contribute to even bigger stuff like Clusters and SMP back in the 1980s when nobody else even knew what that meant.
His BS was in Physics at a time when Universities did not teach Computer Science. So he learned everything on the job (unheard of these days).
He then left NH for CA to set up WRL to do new work on RISC with his MICA project. Another technological innovation which the business (back then) had no use for. This was the final straw for him.
The next 3 years were spent in the wilderness before he eventually got the call from Bill Gates.
Most memorable Cutler Quote, "Getting past HR is the most difficult part of the Job".
Mld01 ( talk) 21:14, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
"In the period 1994–99 Linus Torvalds developed versions of Linux on early AlphaServer systems made available to him by the engineering department. Compaq software engineers developed special Linux kernel modules"
You cannot mention Compaq to the effect it is substitutable for Digital Equipment
Alphaserver hardware first commercial shipping was during 1993. There were already a comprehensive range of platforms ready to go. Workstations, Servers, Datacentre Systems. so 'early Alphaserver' is vague & misleading.
Linus Torvalds is not in any way part of the Digital Equipment Story.
By direct comparison 20% of the DECs substantial OS budget went into staffing & running out of the DEC WRL office a Digital Internal Engineering Group effort to Port under Licence from Microsoft NT v1.0.
Mld01 ( talk) 21:52, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The couple of unsourced comments about Linux don't belong in the section on DEC's accomplishments. Further, the two sentences don't belong together, since they apparently equate events that took place several years apart. TEDickey ( talk) 01:15, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I still fail to see how either could be fairly categorized as a DEC accomplishment. It was first developed for x86 and then ported to many systems; what makes this port a DEC accomplishment particularly when it is not clear that DEC did the porting? Likewise, its hard to see how LINUX on an alphaserver after DEC disappeared is a DEC accomplishment, Compaq, maybe, but even there is a port an accomplishment worthy of Wikipedia inclusion. If everything done on a DEC system is a DEC accomplishment then the list needs to be a lot longer, so I still support removing the two cites. Right now there does not appear to be a consensus - let's see what others say. Tom94022 ( talk) 23:50, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
UNIX / Linux History suggests the only thing DEC did was lend Torvald's a computer - is that worthy of inclusion in Wikipeida as a DEC accomplishment? Tom94022 ( talk) 00:01, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Dec is a corporation that died and merged with other corporations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.114.77.38 ( talk) 17:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)