from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Digital Equipment Corporation
DEC
<company> (DEC) A computer manufacturer and software vendor.
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.
(http://digital.com/.html).
(1999-06-03)