[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[JF Mezei]

Tim E. Sneddon wrote:

> No.  Bell left DEC in 1983 after 23 years with the company.  If you listen
> to the PDP-10 crowd he left after ensuring the death of 36-bit computing.


So there was a 12 year gap between him leaving Digital and joining the
Redmond devil.

Microsoft is a one product company (ok there are game consoles too). So
it is easy to set a single direction for the Windows suite (OS, Office etc).

Digital has had for some time, multiple competing products, the PDPs,
the DECsystems, the VAX, and then VAX/Alpha.  Olsen had a management
style that fostered such competition.

However, during the 80s, Digital seemed to have finally gotten itself
into a single track with the VAX and really built up the application
portofolio for VAX and was poised for great success.

Then, it unravelled as DEC waivered on what to do with VAX and whether
to replace it.


Bell would have experienced the PDP-VAX battles. But he was gone during
the DIgital heydays of the 1980s when those battles were over.