> Smaller PDP-11s could also be personalised, and eventually you could buy LSI versions of the architecture. But the sales channels were almost exclusively corp

> Smaller PDP-11s could also be personalised, and eventually you could buy LSI versions of the architecture. But the sales channels were almost exclusively corporate/industrial/academic One of the great missed opportunities. I remember drooling over the DEC VT-103 in late 1979. This was a VT-100 terminal with an LSI-11 inside along with a TU-58 tape drive (one of the variety of strange little tape drives DEC were so fond of). It ran RT-11 (the inspiration for CP/M) which was a mature system with lot of software and good documentation. This would have made a really sweet personal computer with floppies instead of the TU-58. Had DEC marketed it as such back in 1979 might have forestalled the IBM PC. I wanted one really badly, and the pricing was not that bad for the time, but there was no way to get one as an individual. They were only sold to large companies or integrators for factory automation projects and such like. Two years ahead of the IBM PC DEC had a factory churning out better systems with great software and all the development costs already paid for. Imagine what might have happened if they had thought to actually sell them to anyone who wanted one.