[HN] Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing
[HN] Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing
One of the early pioneers in computing, the company disappeared in the late 1990s.
[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]
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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