4 ms·
The old HP and DEC I mourn but Compaq I don't. Compared to HP and DEC Compaq's period of "greatness" was a flash in the pan. By the time they bought DEC in 1998
by tssva 4y ago
The old HP and DEC I mourn but Compaq I don't. Compared to HP and DEC Compaq's period of "greatness" was a flash in the pan. By the time they bought DEC in 1998 they were already a shell of what they had been. Their servers had been a mess for years and their service techs were not great. DEC service techs were fantastic, and it was a real step down in quality when Compaq service techs started coming out for support calls.
- hakfoo 4y agoI feel like Compaq was evolutionary, and DEC was revolutionary. Their great coups are more about timing than anything else, I'd say. By showing up shortly after the very first generation of "PC Compatibles", they managed to miss the tendency to build something "better but not compatible", and had a chance to plan a strategy for when IBM's lawyers came calling. Getting a 386 to market was inevitable; if they didn't do it, someone else would. Without Compaq, the PS/2 Model 80 might have been the first 386 PC, but it would still have had a hard time fighting off cheaper and more versatile ISA-bus clones. Maybe I'm still resentful of the mid-late 90s days, when the dream was a standard AT chassis and power supply and its reliable upgrade path, rather than manufacturers like Compaq with their zany form factors.
- neilv 4y agoBTW, Advanced Logic Research (ALR) also had an early '386 PC, in what looked like a mostly generic AT clone case, around the same time as the Compaq Deskpro 386. (News around the time was confusing, with both ALR and Compaq being called first.)