Technology

Ah, DEC. Some really cool stuff came out of Maynard, MA.

A few notable things about DEC:

• They made computers that were affordable by smaller businesses and universities.
• The PDP-10 - one of DEC's only mainframes - was where the bulk of early Lisp development occurred, mostly for AI research.
• UNIX originated on DEC hardware (before VMS).
• The team that developed the Alpha (the successor to the VAX) was hired by AMD to develop the 64-bit Athlon architecture (what became X86_64 - i.e. what your computer is probably based on).
• Intel chose a little-endian architecture for the 8086 because that's what the VAX used.
• TCP/IP was developed on UNIX running on a VAX.
• After the minicomputer market crashed, DEC was bought by Compaq, taken out behind the woodshed, and shot like a dog.

My first compsci course was on a PDP/11. On RSTS/E. On a paper teleprinter console.

Good times.

I remember using a DEC Alpha back in the late '90s. It was the fastest computer I had ever used by a long shot and I had access to most of the hardware from IBM, Sun, HP, etc at the time. It was an absolute monster.

Also my first connection to the internet in 1993 was via a VAX.

I will always have fond memories of DEC.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In 1977, DEC introduced the VAX, a new line of minicomputers that featured a 32-bit instruction set architecture and virtual memory.

Its operating system, VMS, was a multi-user, multitasking OS that provided features we now take for granted, including virtual memory, file sharing, and networking.

“Prior to [IDS], the PC or TRS-80 were only engineered originally to be single-user, and they weren't set up to be multi-user,” Green told Ars.

“The fact that VAX and VMS in general were designed for [multiple users] from the scratch is what facilitated the multi-user aspect.”

It had a user-friendly interface and powerful command-line tools, and it was one of the first operating systems to support networking protocols, including TCP/IP, DECnet, and SNA.

In 1988, a senior VMS engineer named David Cutler joined Microsoft to lead the development of the Windows NT operating system.

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