[Info-vax] OT: About Digital and divisions

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Neil Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote:

(snip)
> You are correct (sort of). Woz was out (at Apple) because he was
> pushed out of the way by Jobs after Woz crashed his plane then ended
> up in hospital with amnesia. When Woz returned to Apple, he was pushed
> back into the 8-bit division. I find it amusing when people still
> criticize the OPEN/CLOSED argument. 

(snip)
> Wozniak was 100% correct and the Mac would be in a very different
> place Apple had allowed the world-wide computer industry to partner
> with them rather than compete with them. The same case could be made
> of Digital by the way. Digital raised the technical bar so-high that
> one very rarely saw third party devices plugged into a PDP or VAX
> (although it happened all the time at my penny-pinching company).
> Third party devices were more common in Alpha (since that platform
> relied upon COTS technology) but the wakeup call was (IMHO) too
> little, too late.

Well, using non-DEC terminals wasn't all that rare, though many
that I knew did use DEC terminals.  For remote dial-up, though,
you used what you had.

Other than that, though, yes, likely rare.  Did anyone use
non-DEC disks with VAX?   For PDP-11 it seems more common to
use other disk systems.

-- glen