What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 1974

But Intel, AFAIK, did not take the software with it. No matter how much you hardware types think the gear is the most important, the strength of the SYSTEM is how the software drives it. I call it user thruput or how much work the user can get done per unit time without having to utter a swear word trying to convince the SYSTEM to do what the user wants.

This lack of "computer system usage" knowledge is what end DEC; bottom line. This is what Charlie calls the difference between customer and consumer.

The Alpha could continue if, and only if, the software keeps up with it. The reason Compaq and HP are failing in this neck of the biz, is precisely because they don't understand the way hardware and software development feed each other.

You (generic you) keep complaining about my so-called obsession with DEC f***ups. I will inform you that DEC did not have the corner market in abject stupidity about how the gets done well. I'm seeing it happening now. VMS is going to have more knowledge lost than all the PDP-10 OSes combined. And if you privatesheads don't wake up, you are going to continue to have to deal with crap. The younger generation (take a good look at the so-called buttembly language programmers) will have a Mipoo bias to computing because that is all they are ever going to know. Mix that bias in with the next generation of Unix developers and there will be a worst mess.

For those of you who do embedded systems, this also affects you indirectly. Do an experiment. Spend one of your works days using only software that was developed by a software-only house. This includes comm, OSes, debugging tools, editors, compilers, emulators, and ASCII mbuttagers.

I'm not yelling at only you, Peter. :-)

BAH