6 ms·

This might have been the crucial point, where DEC missed the microcomputer boat. In early 1985, the only full 32-bit single-chip processor that was generally a

by retrac 4y ago

This might have been the crucial point, where DEC missed the microcomputer boat. In early 1985, the only full 32-bit single-chip processor that was generally available was the Motorola 68020. The Intel 386 would come out later that year. DEC was focused on the high end though. Much of the R&D was going into high-end designs with rack-sized arrays of ECL logic for the processors in their VAX mainframes and vector supercomputers, which they never sold very many of. The later CMOS NVAX design, when process shrunk, ended up being faster than the $1 billion ECL VAX 9000 line not long after it was introduced.

convolvatron 4y ago
yeah, thats true. the 9000 was a really lovely workhorse though.
em500 4y ago
It seems like the repeating cycle of the industry is the low end "toy" computers eating the high end "real work" computers, first in volume, eventually also in performance, from mainfraim (IBM) -> mini (DEC) -> workstation (SUN) -> PC (Intel) -> phone (Apple/ARM). With the incumbents never learning from history.
- wrs 4y ago
  They learn, they just can't usually do anything different. See Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    I wonder if these classic patterns still hold now that everyone competent has read these 1990s era books. I could be strongly biasing myself without realizing it but I think they've become less common except on really grand scales where no single industry player is big enough to really control things Here's a few I see: podcasts and YouTube are successfully attacking conventional television and radio Home recording studio equipment improvements have seriously been eating into studio time. Home audio improvements have made the high end less relevant Display technology improvements have made affordable displays eat into the high end market. I think transportation and energy are the next big ones; solar panels will be so cheap that they'll start to be integrated just about everywhere and smaller electric cars (under 1500lbs or so) will become so affordable that those who drive for pure function will start adopting them en masse
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    The Innovator Dilemma doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Its just harder to do and you need to make the necessary investments (usually doesn't even require that much money) and need to have the right strategy to do it.
- rsecora 4y ago
  SGI -> Nvidia
rsecora 4y ago
"I just don't understand it, I don't see how this is possible, how this one chip can replace these racks of electronics, I just don't get it" "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" "Unix is snake oil" —Ken Olsen (DEC Founder, president, and chairman)
- bsder 4y ago
  Sorry, Unix IS snake oil when compared to VMS. Olsen got that one right.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code .... so it was portable - just a page or two of assembly. Also prior to that OSs were proprietary - if you didn't work for a hardware manufacturer you mostly didn't get to play with them much. There was no incentive to make them portable - then along came Unix and it was dropped into the hands of a generation of college kids. Sure VMS had a better VM story (I both ported Unix and was a VMS systems hack at the time) - but you couldn't pick it up and put on anything other than a vax, it was pretty useless as an OS unless you were DEC, Unix didn't have that yoke around its neck (it had others mostly because AT&T didn't understand what it had)
    - bsder 4y ago
      The VMS filesystem aboslutely shit all over any offering from Unix (and still does with the exception of ZFS). The Vax FORTRAN compiler smoked everything on Unix until IBM put a good FORTRAN compiler on AIX. VMS systems had actual security that we still don't have nowadays. VMS systems could be used for real-time tasks (Intel's fab line ran on VMS for a very long time). I can go on and on ... Unix "won" by becoming the darling of the people not willing to pay money while Windows swept the field of those willing to cough up cash. However, don't mistake the virality of Unix for it being "better" than VMS.
      - Taniwha 4y ago
jdougan 4y ago
“No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!” -- Eugene Brooks, circa 1990
saxonww 4y ago
Maybe relevant to this discussion, "A Historical Look at the VAX": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27527140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27527140 And also "The VAX": https://yarchive.net/comp/vax.html https://yarchive.net/comp/vax.html I don't really understand all of this, but the high level gist is that the VAX ISA was almost out of runway; it wasn't entirely that DEC made bad choices but also that they couldn't take VAX where it would need to go to remain competitive anyway.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I don't know, if you have an Alpha and you simply write a fast hardware virtualization layer I don't see why you couldn't sell those machines to the exact same costumers you did before. Now Alpha was a bit late but the same strategy could have been adopted earlier. IBM has the same costumers and has virtual layer onto of virtual layer to support technology from the 60s. You then also port the OS to some RISC system and x86 and attempt to get new costumers using VMS on those system architectures.
  - saxonww 4y ago
    That's what DEC did, they ported VMS to Alpha. No virtualization necessary. OpenVMS is still out there and used by people, but VAX is dead. As is DEC :/.

by retrac 4y ago

convolvatron 4y ago

yeah, thats true. the 9000 was a really lovely workhorse though.

em500 4y ago

It seems like the repeating cycle of the industry is the low end "toy" computers eating the high end "real work" computers, first in volume, eventually also in performance, from mainfraim (IBM) -> mini (DEC) -> workstation (SUN) -> PC (Intel) -> phone (Apple/ARM). With the incumbents never learning from history.

wrs 4y ago
They learn, they just can't usually do anything different. See Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I wonder if these classic patterns still hold now that everyone competent has read these 1990s era books. I could be strongly biasing myself without realizing it but I think they've become less common except on really grand scales where no single industry player is big enough to really control things Here's a few I see: podcasts and YouTube are successfully attacking conventional television and radio Home recording studio equipment improvements have seriously been eating into studio time. Home audio improvements have made the high end less relevant Display technology improvements have made affordable displays eat into the high end market. I think transportation and energy are the next big ones; solar panels will be so cheap that they'll start to be integrated just about everywhere and smaller electric cars (under 1500lbs or so) will become so affordable that those who drive for pure function will start adopting them en masse
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The Innovator Dilemma doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Its just harder to do and you need to make the necessary investments (usually doesn't even require that much money) and need to have the right strategy to do it.
rsecora 4y ago
SGI -> Nvidia

rsecora 4y ago

"I just don't understand it, I don't see how this is possible, how this one chip can replace these racks of electronics, I just don't get it" "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" "Unix is snake oil" —Ken Olsen (DEC Founder, president, and chairman)

bsder 4y ago
Sorry, Unix IS snake oil when compared to VMS. Olsen got that one right.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code .... so it was portable - just a page or two of assembly. Also prior to that OSs were proprietary - if you didn't work for a hardware manufacturer you mostly didn't get to play with them much. There was no incentive to make them portable - then along came Unix and it was dropped into the hands of a generation of college kids. Sure VMS had a better VM story (I both ported Unix and was a VMS systems hack at the time) - but you couldn't pick it up and put on anything other than a vax, it was pretty useless as an OS unless you were DEC, Unix didn't have that yoke around its neck (it had others mostly because AT&T didn't understand what it had)
  - bsder 4y ago
    The VMS filesystem aboslutely shit all over any offering from Unix (and still does with the exception of ZFS). The Vax FORTRAN compiler smoked everything on Unix until IBM put a good FORTRAN compiler on AIX. VMS systems had actual security that we still don't have nowadays. VMS systems could be used for real-time tasks (Intel's fab line ran on VMS for a very long time). I can go on and on ... Unix "won" by becoming the darling of the people not willing to pay money while Windows swept the field of those willing to cough up cash. However, don't mistake the virality of Unix for it being "better" than VMS.
    - Taniwha 4y ago

jdougan 4y ago

“No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!” -- Eugene Brooks, circa 1990

saxonww 4y ago

Maybe relevant to this discussion, "A Historical Look at the VAX": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27527140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27527140 And also "The VAX": https://yarchive.net/comp/vax.html https://yarchive.net/comp/vax.html I don't really understand all of this, but the high level gist is that the VAX ISA was almost out of runway; it wasn't entirely that DEC made bad choices but also that they couldn't take VAX where it would need to go to remain competitive anyway.

panick21_ 4y ago
I don't know, if you have an Alpha and you simply write a fast hardware virtualization layer I don't see why you couldn't sell those machines to the exact same costumers you did before. Now Alpha was a bit late but the same strategy could have been adopted earlier. IBM has the same costumers and has virtual layer onto of virtual layer to support technology from the 60s. You then also port the OS to some RISC system and x86 and attempt to get new costumers using VMS on those system architectures.
- saxonww 4y ago
  That's what DEC did, they ported VMS to Alpha. No virtualization necessary. OpenVMS is still out there and used by people, but VAX is dead. As is DEC :/.