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0 pointsimglorp3y ago0 comments

I was thinking the same as implied here, and yes he said that in 1977 but it was taken out of context; he was referring to home automation and not personal computing. [2]

It seems, no, DEC did not miss the PC boat due to one person's nearsighted view.

Microvax was 1985 and yes it would have been interesting if they had a low-end personal product based on VAX at that time. They did have the Professional [0] around 1982 based on PDP-11 which I used at school to learn Macro-11 assembly, C and Pascal. It was blazing fast and ran RSX/11 which was years ahead of DOS. They also had the Rainbow [1] around 1982 (maybe marketed to officework) with a z80 and 8088. And then there was the VAXMate in 86 which we don't talk about :). So it seems these were all aiming at the new "PC" market in a scattergun manner but nobody really knew what that was at the time.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100

2. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ken-olsen/

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panick21_3y ago

The had to many attempts at building a PC, not to few. It kind of crazy, they basically launched 3 PC type computers at the same time.

Between non of them being a actual PC clone, not running the same software and not really able to compete in the race to the bottom price fight they simply failed to get traction.

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