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<p>Spectacular is quite the word. I was thinking 'legendary' might
be more apt. Indeed, even after 10 or 20 years, I would hear
about some grudges that were still being kept.</p>
<p>You have to wonder whether the other lines got cancelled just so
management could have some piece and quiet.<br>
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<p>It's really a shame because at least at one point there was a
kind of a mutual admiration society among some groups. The 36
bit/PDP-8 line comes to mind. We mainframe types would look at
the latest 8 stuff and say, "Wow, how in the world did you get
it to do that?". One comment in VTECO really gave us a laugh,
"How does all this work? KLUDGES". But there was a lot of
pride (rightful in my opinion). And the 8 people would look at
the big iron in wonder; "Wow, look at all those registers,
instructions and memory; boy could I do plenty with that!"</p>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">But it wasn't just a lot of talented
and loyal engineers that had the rug pulled out...</div>
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<p>The effect on some of the larger customers (particularly those
with millions of man hours of unportable code) was absolutely
electric. I remember the screaming in some of the meetings
downtown. I knew of some installations that completely walked
away from anything that DEC had to sell; not interested in doing
business. Ever. That's understandable, but also a shame; the
Alpha really was incredible.<br>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">On 5/5/20 4:55 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
At one point DEC built a PDP-11 based terminal server that speaks CTERM. It worked, after a fashion, but it was so large, expensive, and slow, that Bruce Mann decided to see how quickly he could do better. That's how LAT came into existence. The resulting turf war was quite spectacular.
paul
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