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De - Pt| English Dictionary: Digital Equipment Corporation | by the DICT Development Group |
| 1 result for Digital Equipment Corporation | |
| From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
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Digital Equipment Corporation Before the {killer micro} revolution of the late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic with DEC's pioneering {time-sharing} machines. The first of the group of hacker cultures nucleated around the {PDP-1} (see {TMRC}). Subsequently, the {PDP-6}, {PDP-10}, {PDP-20}, {PDP-11} and {VAX} were all foci of large and important hackerdoms, and DEC machines long dominated the {ARPANET} and {Internet} machine population. The first PC from DEC was a {CP/M} computer called {Rainbow}, announced in 1981-82. DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era (roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace {microcomputers} and {Unix} early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after {silicon} got cheap. However, the {microprocessor} design tradition owes a heavy debt to the {PDP-11} {instruction set}, and every one of the major general-purpose microcomputer {operating systems} so far (CP/M, {MS-DOS}, {Unix}, {OS/2}) were either genetically descended from a DEC OS, or incubated on DEC {hardware} or both. Accordingly, DEC is still regarded with a certain wry affection even among many hackers too young to have grown up on DEC machines. The contrast with {IBM} is instructive. Quarterly sales $3923M, profits -$1746M (Aug 1994). DEC was taken over by {Compaq Computer Corporation} in 1998. {Home (http://www.digital.com/.html)}. (1999-06-03) | |
