Showing posts with label Data General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Data General. Show all posts

Monday, January 5, 2015

How soon we forget

From the Economist:  "Data General introduced the first minicomputers in the late 1960s"   Not true.  I was in the industry way back when, and everyone knew the first commercially successful minicomputer was the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corp (DEC everyone called them).  The PDP-8 wasn't much of a computer, it was only 12 bits and could only address 4 K of  "core" memory. (RAM had not been invented yet).  It sold for $10k, 1960 dollars no less.  But it was enough computer to automate a lot of test and assembly tasks, and $10K looked cheap when compared to a mainframe. 
   DEC and competitor Data General thrived on making minicomputers up thru the 1980s but neither of them were able to transition to the microprocessor age.  The remains of DEC were bought up be Compaq in the 90s and Data General faded away somewhere and nothing was heard from them.