[HECnet] Cisco DECnet routers and NML

[Thomas DeBellis]

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.

You have to wonder whether the other lines got cancelled just so 
management could have some piece and quiet.

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!"

But it wasn't just a lot of talented and loyal engineers that had the 
rug pulled out...

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.

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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