[Info-vax] RealWorldTech on Poulson

[ChrisQ]

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> 
> When they finally got into the PC business they priced themselves out of 
> the market.  DEC charged fantastic prices for the Rainbow.  I recall 
> that DEC wanted something like $700 for 32MB of RAM.  I got brand X RAM 
> chips for $32!  They worked just fine.  The 20MB disk drive was 
> something like $2000.  I bought "Brand X" for $300.  And so on!!
> 
> DEC was either unwilling or unable to compete on price.  The market 
> rolled right over them!  It's a miracle that DEC lasted as long as it 
> did!  R.I.P. DEC.

If you have ever seen inside the rainbow and looked at the amount of
hardware on the motherboard, you would understand why it was so
expensive. Or, look at a kda50 or uda50. Both a two board set, full of
bit slice and hundreds to ttl and gate array devices. The 7000 ukp list
price here probably makes some sort of sense. That disk controller
probably had more compute power than many of the systems it plugged
into, never mind the 5 volt rail current, which must have been 10's of
amps.

Dec never could do kiss hw design, A critcal failure in a market where
reduction of chip count and build cost is key to survival...

Regards,

Chris