mrcopilot , 4 months ago to random

This #Microsoft is #DEC analogy / CEO nightmare is unexpectedly making my day.

During an employee-only town hall last week, the CEO said that he was "haunted" by the story of Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer company in the early 1970s that was swiftly made obsolete by the likes of IBM after it made significant strategic errors.

Nadella explained that "some of the people who contributed to Windows NT came from a DEC lab that was laid off,"

#RetroComputing #pdp11 #vax

Palmer's reign (1992–1998) At its peak in the late 1980s, DEC had $14 billion in sales and ranked among the most profitable companies in the US. With its strong staff of engineers, DEC was expected to usher in the age of personal computers, but the commonly misunderstood belief then argued by the board to its shareholders was that Mr. Olsen was openly skeptical of the desktop machines, stating "the personal computer will fall flat on its face in business", and regarding them as "toys" used for playing video games. ... The board forced Olsen to resign as president in July 1992 after two years of losses in operating income. He was replaced by Robert Palmer as the company's president. DEC's board of directors also granted Palmer the title of chief executive officer ("CEO"), a title that had never been used during DEC's 35-year existence. Palmer had joined DEC in 1985 to run Semiconductor Eng & Mfg. relentless campaign to be CEO, and success with the Alpha microprocessor family, succeeds Olsen. At the same time a more modern logo was designed. ...when marketing DECpc that while "the Digital of yesterday was not known for competitive prices, this new line of PC offerings is competitive in features and price", & bragging about its more than $1 billion in annual mail order sales. Palmer restructured DEC into nine business units that reported directly to him. Nonetheless, DEC continued to suffer record losses,
Through 1997, DEC began discussions with Compaq on a possible merger. Several years earlier, Compaq had considered a bid for DEC but became seriously interested only after DEC's major divestments and refocusing on the Internet in 1997... Compaq was making strong moves into the enterprise market, and DEC's multivendor global services organization and customer support centers offered a real opportunity to expand their support and sales worldwide. Compaq was not interested in a number of DEC's product lines, which led to the series of sell-offs. Notable was DEC's Hudson Fab, which made most of their custom chips, a market that made little sense to Compaq's "industry standard" marketing. DEC had previously sold its semiconductor plant in South Queensferry to Motorola in 1995, with an understanding that Motorola would continue to produce Alpha processors at the facility, along with continuing a two-year foundry agreement with AMD to continue producing the Am486 processor. ... In May 1997, DEC sued Intel for allegedly infringing on its Alpha patents in designing the original Pentium, Pentium Pro, and Pentium II chips.[82] As part of a settlement, much of DEC's chip design and fabrication business was sold to Intel including DEC's StrongARM implementation of the ARM computer architecture, which Intel marketed as the XScale processors ... On January 26, 1998, what remained of the company was sold to Compaq in what was the largest merger up to that time in the computer industry.
In 1998, following the takeover by Compaq Computer Corporation, a decision was made that Microsoft would no longer support and develop Windows NT for the Alpha series computers, a decision that was seen as the beginning of the end for the Alpha series computers.

ALT

elb , 3 years ago to random

By way of #introduction, this is my #SDF alt account for @elb , where the timelines are getting wonky.

Long time #Unix guy (mid-90s), #SystemsProgrammer, and lover of all things #retrocomputing. I have a #PDP11 (or four), #CPM and #BASIC microcomputers of various stripes, and I love #terminal:s.

#HamRadio operator (KB8OJH) and #VintageRadio enthusiast – Central Electronics, Drake, Electro-Voice, etc. #VacuumTube/#Valve radios preferred!

Professional #ComputerScience #educator.