Making the microprocessor is just one challenge - you have to produce a workable system that someone wants to buy (aka, is cheaper or more attractive than the o

Making the microprocessor is just one challenge - you have to produce a workable system that someone wants to buy (aka, is cheaper or more attractive than the other options. It does appear that DEC could have made a single chip PDP-11 in 1980, and probably could have made one with an expanded address space to get around the memory limitations in the PDP-11. Intel did not do that, IBM in this case managed to - and it had the cachet and name recognition to sell an product that was largely middling in a technical level, over other options that were often superior technically and cheaper. Intel made a decent enough microprocessor, yes it was kludgy (even the 8086 was), but it performed well enough (I've never seen a claim that the 68000 significantly outperformed the 8086), and was available in quantity. The rest of the things that made the IBM PC a system that stormed the world were COTS parts assembled in an attractive package. Now, could DEC have done all of that with the PDP-11, yes, absolutely - but the winds were prevailing against it because of the nature of DEC management - I fundamentally do not believe that DEC would not have allowed itself to ship something as 'flawed' as the IBM PC was.