Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing
Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing
One of the early pioneers in computing, the company disappeared in the late 1990s.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
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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