DEC's PC Challenge 1982

[DevSodDribble]

The HP plant in Andover still has a few mousepads, keyboards and plastic kit trays with the old 'DIGITAL' logo. Kind of neat to learn some history here.

[ssalemi]

Avram Miller. Whatever happened to him?

[Groth1175]

I wonder what ever happened to this attitude towards programming, doubt these people would have ever tolerated the kind of sloppy bloat we deal with now.

[pixelr0]

@Groth1175 programers today are so high level that they don't even understand how the computer works. Sure they are "efficient" but at what cost?

[Groth1175]

@pixelr0 Not sure, all I know is my PC bluescreens constantly.

[leliep]

Thanks for posting this. We really had a good Time with DIGITAL.

[pcfix411]

ComputerHistory, This video rocks.

[x246869]

We were a Dec shop and had a few of those PCs.

I played with the Rainbow a bit later.

[twylo]

I guess I'm what you could call a "DEC Fanboy", so this is fantastic to see. Thanks so much for making this video available.

I miss those guys. Yes, they sure messed up in the PC market, and I wish they'd stuck with their 36 bit architecture instead of going VAX, but they were an amazing company nonetheless.

RIP DEC!

[apple2forever]

Thanks for posting this.

What was interesting to me, was watching the body language (lots of arms folded in meetings), and noting that Ken Olsen's quote "we had an obligation" to do it, doesn't have the same passion as "we built computers we wanted to use ourselves" (attributable to Woz and others at Apple)

The focus on 'beating' the Japanese in the PC market, seemed to show a focus on the wrong competitors. How many of you use an MSX system today?

[EricTheRed03]

That's likely a mind set which derived from the Japanese automotive market.

[progvoice]

Funny to see my uncle from back in the day. Just as I remembered. Almost bought a Rainbow PC. Went with the C64 instead.

[wpechter]

Those were the days. Wonder if the 68k box was a Fortune system.

[Lsmaf]

Awesome! Thanks for the memories. Those were the good times. RIP DEC!

[dabbuhl]

In the part of the video at the 1982 National Computer Conference the two main project people were checking out the competition and at 32:01 the look at a computer. The conversation at 32:20 goes like this:

First guy "what do you think of those guys"

second guy "I think their the best, fortunately their small"

First guy "yeah"

Does anyone know what company they are talking about?

[michaeljamespinto]

The same year this film was produced a tiny startup called Compaq went into business making PC clones — and by 1998 they would own what was left of DEC. Of course the irony of that is that Compaq would be swallowed by HP.

[dragonheadthing]

That was a neat documentary. Thanks for posting.