What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2102

So they didn't sell Alphas to the public? Hell, then what was that seminar for that I attended back in 1992?

Right and at the heart of many of nuclear plants were Sel-Gould-Encore 32-77s. Somehow, I think you miss the meaning of the term "building block" here.

In the context of a microprocessor in a box that has memory and I-O it is.

Couldn't you just say that they were the leader of the minicomputer market? Also, didn't the workstation kill the minicomputer? Given that DEC didn't lead in the workstation market, could it be said that DEC died due to not being able to transition from the minicomputer to the workstation and be the leader during that transistion?

And I think many of their core customers adandon DEC for the workstation market, which didn't include them until 1992 when it was too late!

You make a strong case for why Linux is so popular these days.

After the clone market beat up IBM, Big Blue went back to mainframes. DEC wasn't about to be able to recreate a minicomputer niche in the mid-90s.

What core business did DEC leave?! Minicomputers became obsolete due to workstations running Unix.

Like IBM, when you bought DEC you didn't just buy HW and SW, you bought a whole staff and support. Nowadays support is a phone call and to India for that matter! I get that DEC really didn't like the notion of distributed computing very much, unless it was all DECNet. Speaking of which, the Internet relly didn't help DEC with their network.

Agreed. Who knew that IBM would get back on their feet going back to big iron either?

Yes, maybe...

Eric