[Info-vax] Vaxes shutting off this week

[JF Mezei]

Tom Linden wrote:
> But as I have said before, abandoning the
> VAX was the seminal event that led to Digital's failure.

I disagree.

The conversion from VAX to Alpha happened during a time of void in
leadership and that is the seminal event.

During the last years of Olsen, his policy to let departments compete to
 set direction of company lead to unfocused efforts and a lot of wasted
parralel efforts (VAX 9000, nvax, Prism, Alpha). And his refusal to get
Digital to compete/lower prices allowed Digital to lose all the momentum
it had gained just a few years before.

And then came Palmer who, instead of fixing Digital, sabotaged it to
downsize it to be small enough to be purchased by Compaq.

Apple managed 68k to PowerPc migration very succesfully. And it managed
a rebirth with OS-X, and then another platform change.

The migration from VAX to Alpha could have been succesful. Alpha could
have been succesful if Digital had stopped wantin to price it at a
premium. Microsoft had been quite interested in it, in case it really
took off and it *could* have replaced the 8086 as industry standard
chip. (remember, at that time, it was thought the 8086 was going to hit
a roadblock).