[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[David Froble]

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <rETYr.14427$NK4.4937 at fx24.am4>, ChrisQ <meru at devnull.com> writes:
>> On 08/21/12 20:21, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>>
>>> Could have beens don't count for much. Pure and simple, DEC blew it! DEC
>>> totally missed the desk top revolution! By "desk top" I mean both X86
>>> and Alpha workstations. Yes, I know about the Rainbow. DEC was asking
>>> totally outrageous prices. Just about everyone could sell at a profit
>>> for far less than DEC was asking. People bought their Desktops on price
>>> and DEC could not or would not compete. Bye-bye DEC.
>>>
>> If you take the lid off a Rainbow, it's obvious why it was so expensive. It
>> was engineered the same way DEC engineered the pdp11 or Vax. Very high 
>> quality
>> hardware and quality multilayer boards, but just too much hardware and 
>> capability
>> (separate z80 to run cpm etc, iirc)  inside the box to compete with the 
>> likes of
>> Compaq, or heck, even IBM pc's. They got the message later with Alpha 
>> desktops:
>> commodity psu's. keyboards, peripherals etc and lean design, but perhaps 
>> then
>> it was too late.
> 
> I think Rainbow was well ahead of Compaq.  If you look at the prices of
> the IBM 5150 -- and what a piece of junk it was -- in the same era, it 
> wasn't cheap either.  The Rainbow was far superior in its capabilities
> to the 5150.
> 
> 

DEC usually made excellent HW.  Their DECpc x86 systems were very good.  Of 
course, that seemed to be the first place the Compaq ax fell.

The Rainbow didn't have a backplane for plugging in additional stuff.  Poor 
decision.  I honestly feel that is why it failed.  But they did work well, for 
the time frame.