Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC

On Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:21:32 GMT
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote:

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> writes:

Anton Ertl wrote: 

They did not succeed.  Maybe that's the decisive difference from
HP: They did succeed in the PC market. 

>

Digital sold solid PCs in the 1990s. Some under brand DECpc, others
under brand DEC Station. Later on (after 1994) the used yet another
brand that I can not recollect. Wikipedia says that most of this
machines were not manufactured on DEC factories, but I would think that
as reseller they still got some profit.

For some definition of success, i.e they were sufficiently worse at
PCs to later merge with Compaq who was the first significant vendor
in the PC Compatible marketplace. 

 
Pfeiffer got Compaq into trouble by buying DEC and not being able to
digest it.  HP then bought Compaq and was able to digest all the
parts, leading to a successful PC business (I have no idea how much
Compaq contributed to that and how much HP did)

My impression is that Compaq contribution prevailed.

and a successful HPE;
pretty much all of the stuff coming from/through DEC went away (I
think the Tandem legacy may still be identifiable), but maybe they
managed to keep the customers.
 

They preserved VMS. Sold it some 15+ years later.

Columbia beat both of them by half a year or
so, but faded away a bit later. 

 
I don't think I ever heard about Columbia.  At what did they beat
Compaq and HP?
 
- anton