What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2100

All that said, why did DEC fail? My point was that DEC thought that Alpha was their saving grace, bet the farm on it and lost. Technical excellence aside, the Aplha alone was unable to salvage DEC.

...that people weren't buying in the same numbers as SGI and Sun, because both of those companies still exist!

"You grasp"? and you question my English?!? I'll let THAT sentence speak for itself. But that isn't your ONLY mistake here. One product isn't enough data to determine which way a market is going. You look up the numbers for minicomputer sales from 1982 to 1992 (when Alpha came into being) as compared to workstation sales during the same time period. They will tell you that DEC got into the workstation market too late and held on to the minicomputer market too long. Whole segments of products vs. whole segments.

MicroVax? Nice systems, but not open. DEC going with Alpha "open", etc. was an admission that the microVax was too closed. Period.

I believe your characteristics are more serpentine than mine...

Reality shouldn't have happened? There is therapy for this you know. It is what it is and it's perfect, and you can't prove me wrong! Even it that isn't correct, your life will be better if you choose to live it like that.

Given that philosophy I still wished that IBM had chosen Motorola for the PC's chip and Digital Research for it's OS.

Ken is probably sailing in the Caribean, nonetheless. I'm sure his fate is nothing like that of Gary Kildahl's. Perhaps you know?

Eric