What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2057

Bill Pechter (pechter-at-gmail-dot-com)

Open enough to spawn a whole clone market that would actually kill it?! No, as great as the PDP series was, it NEVER was open enough where a whole market of clone PDPs came along that were cheaper. IBM couldn't make an ISA machine after the AT cheap enough to compete with the clones, hence MCA was born.

Open is good, but if you're so open that people can duplicate your bus, steal your BIOS code and then use Intel's chip and Microsoft's DOS (like you -IBM- did), then you're TOO open!

Board swap became the way you do business right at that EXACT time. Gee, do you think the PC may have had something to do with that?!?

The operative word, "anything". I'd have to disagree also, with kit microcomputers, like the SWTPC 6800 or IMSAI 8080, which came with everything you mention with the PDP and more. PDP may have had the most open mini, but that is really from a previous era as compared to the IBM PC.

While everyone was going smaller DEC, going from the PDP to Vax, bucked the trend. That is pretty amazing. What DEC lacked was the transition after the Vax. But that is another thread...

DEC PC? Rainbow?

Well the clone market got their niche due to that expense. When people figured that what you needed was Intel's CPU and M$'s DOS and not 'IBM' on the label, then IBM PC's days were limited. The rest is history...

Eric