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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <75fcf71f-99c9-4ad6-837f-bcfe8b4024fd at x16g2000vbk.googlegroups.com>,
	John Wallace <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> On Nov 24, 12:49=A0pm, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> I just finished the book =93Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create
>> Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft=94 and found it a
>> riveting description of the activities of Cutler and other DEC people
>> at Microsoft. Here are two final extracts you may find amusing.
>>
>> P 179: Digital Equipment, his (Cutler's) former employer and current
>> nemesis, agreed to become the first computer maker to buy NT for the
>> purpose of porting, or adapting, it to computers powered bu Digital's
>> own microchip, called Alpha. The very people assigned to do the port
>> were some of Cutler's old employees at Digital West. Cutler exulted,
>> "Digital's management ran me out of the company" he said, "and a mere
>> four years later they knocked on my door." Cutler saw the Mica
>> operating system , whose cancellation by Digital prompted his
>> departure, as a rough equivalent of NT. "Digital is now paying for
>> something they could have had for free".
>>
>> P 179. =A0But some Digital people privately agreed that Culter's
>> departure still ranlked top executive and the Digital's adoption of NT
>> was tantamount to admitting a mistake. "Driving asway Culter was one
>> of the dumbest f*ck*ng things Digital ever did", on person said. "But
>> we can't say we screwed up because some of the idiots responsible for
>> that are still here".
>>
>> P 266. Windows-NT (version 1.0) was build from 5.6 million lines of
>> code
>>
>> Neil Rieck
>> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
>> Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
> 
> I don't remember anybody ever calling DECwest "Digital West". The
> Internerd remembers lots of relevant references to DECwest but a quick
> look finds no relevant references to "Digital West". If that's a
> direct quote rather than a transcription hiccup, then I do hope the
> rest of the book is a lot more reliable and trustworthy.
> 
> As an example of such reliability or otherwise, does the book contain
> any references to the untrustworthiness of Microsoft as a "bet your
> business" 'partner' organisation? This wasn't necessarily well known
> in the Palmer era but plenty of people and plenty of organisations
> have had first hand experience of it since then.

I thought it was called DECwrl as in "DEC Western Research Lab".

And just out of curiosity, wasn't that where "Gatekeeper" was?

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>