Digital Equipment Corporation

What happened to Digital Equipment Corporation?

by Dave Farquhar
June 20, 2017October 3, 2018

Digital Equipment Corporation was perhaps the second most important computer company in history, behind IBM. Its minicomputers challenged IBM, and, indeed, Unix first ran on a DEC PDP-7. DEC’s Alpha CPU was one of the few chips to make Intel nervous for its x86 line. It created the first really good Internet search engine. In a just and perfect world, DEC would still be dominating. Instead, it faded away in the 1990s. What happened to Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC?

There’s a short answer and a long answer.

Compaq Deskpro 386

by Dave Farquhar
June 7, 2017April 28, 2022

The Compaq Deskpro 386, announced in September 1986, was a landmark IBM PC compatible computer. The first fully 32-bit PC based on the Intel 386, its release took the leadership of the PC ecosystem away from IBM, and Compaq became the leader.

Compaq was no upstart by 1986. Its Compaq Portable was a runaway success earlier in the decade, and Compaq was a darling of the industry. The Deskpro 386 solidified Compaq’s position as an industry innovator.

Common AmigaDOS commands

by Dave Farquhar
August 16, 2016June 28, 2019

The Amiga had a command line, or CLI. It was a rather powerful CLI, especially for its time. But there are a number of differences between AmigaDOS and other operating systems you may be familiar with. These are the common AmigaDOS commands and their equivalents from other operating systems like DOS, Windows, Unix or Linux.

I’ve never seen a primer that relates or cross-references Amiga commands to Windows and Unix. So I wrote one. I hope it helps you understand your Amiga better. Because Amiga is sometimes like Windows and sometimes it’s like Unix, I think it might. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn something you didn’t know about Windows or Unix too.

Origin of CP/M’s PIP command

by Dave Farquhar
June 8, 2016November 26, 2018

CP/M was, as you probably know, the first popular microcomputer operating system. It was good but imperfect, and its cryptic command for copying files, PIP, is often cited as an example. Copy makes sense. Even the Unix equivalent, cp, makes sense–it’s copy without the vowels. But what does PIP mean? What’s the origin of CP/M’s PIP command?

Read More »Origin of CP/M’s PIP command

What happened to Altavista

by Dave Farquhar
July 2, 2013November 4, 2017

For as long as I can remember, my home page has been about:blank. But for a good chunk of the 1990s, I would have done well to set it to altavista.digital.com. Here’s what happened to Altavista.

Most people remember Altavista as the thing people used before Google, if they remember it at all. But I remember it as the first great search engine, because I’ve done my best to forget what search was like before Altavista came along. So I was a little sad to see Yahoo shut down what was left of the first great search engine in the summer of 2013.Read More »What happened to Altavista

What happened to GEM?

by Dave Farquhar
August 10, 2012February 21, 2022

GEM was an early GUI for the IBM PC and compatibles and, later, the Atari ST, developed by Digital Research, the developers of CP/M and, later, DR-DOS. (Digital Equipment Corporation was a different company.) So what was it, and what happened to GEM?

It was very similar to the Apple Lisa, and Apple saw it as a Lisa/Macintosh ripoff and sued. While elements of GEM did indeed resemble the Lisa, Digital Research actually hired several developers from Xerox PARC.

DRI demonstrated the 8086 version of GEM at COMDEX in 1984, and shipped it on 28 February 1985, beating Windows 1.0 to market by nearly 9 months.
Read More »What happened to GEM?

Marketing or Engineering?

by Dave Farquhar
May 9, 2011July 14, 2017

The topic of marketing and engineering came up today. I won’t go into details. I’ll just share what I said about the two, by throwing out a few company names and just a little snippet about each company.