I was a contractor at DEC in Galway, Ireland for just over a year in the late 90's. They were a great company to work for and a brilliant bunch of employees. Happy memories.
I used to support a VAX for British Rail in the late 80’s. So many memories of reel to reel tape and the huge “washing machine” disk drives. Happy days.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject they were. The drives had removable disk packs. 8 platters if I remember correctly, and all of 300mb capacity each… yes mb. 300 whole megabytes. We had 5 drives. Ran the whole office on it. Thick wire Ethernet through the building, mix of VT200 text terminals and CAD machines with a telex-style console. Electrostatic plotters running batch prints over night. Happy days. VAX 700 series. 😊
Memories! Worked for DEC for 19 years starting in 1981 in both engineering and marketing positions - mostly in Merrimack and Nashua, NH facilities. Good years!
Started In Tewksbury Ma. In 1980 thru Compaq acquisition- was Sysadmin on Dec 10’s/20’s and then managed Vax prototypes 8 and 12 (Yoda and Phoenix) systems. Vax/Vms was the best o/s on earth IMO! Great times, wonderful people and memories that will always be with me. Of all the facilities I helped open, then closed the ZKO campus was my favorite!
The first computer I ever used was a PDP-8e in my senior year in high school. Then when I got a job at a university I worked on a PDP-11/70 running RSTS/E. That was followed by so many models of the VAX running VMS, 11/780, 750, 9000, 6000 series, 7000 series, MicroVAX II. A large part of my IT career as a programmer/systems manager was on DEC computers. Such fond memories.
Had a PDP-11/23 with RK-01, 1MByte fixed and one removable. Member of DECUS a great bunch of nice guys and ladies helping each other. Manuals for RT-11 were second to none. Don't see that kind of documentation anymore. Good times, too bad they (DEC) are gone.
DEC equipment was great - i was systems operator and started with a PDP 11/34 and 11/44 networked using DECnet using RSTS/E (which was very unfirendly to work with); we moved on to a MicroVAX-II and eventually had a a VAXcluster with hundreds of terminals across a big college campus, we networked pretty much every building, As a customer we practically designed our network with the information in DECdirect - the sales catalogue. It was that good. VAX/VMS was doing stuff that Microsoft didn't do for another decade. The customer service was great, you always felt that the engineers and support personal cared about their work and that there was a great company ethos. I know they felt DEC was a good employer.
Hi @richardgregory3684, thank you very much for sharing your experience and a bit of history with the DEC systems! Very interesting. I had heard mostly good things about their products over the years, they put out some nice quality equipment! ~ VK
Back in 1984 I left school with no qualifications and got a job as a computer operator on DEC VAX. Doing backups etc on massive magnetic tape reels. Then started programming on it with Cognos 4GL. Today I am an independent Business Intelligence software engineer. I have fond memories of DEC VAX.
Thanks for the memories was an employee at Dec, CPQ, HP, 2 weeks after Army discharge in 76' up to early retirement 05. Span of near 30 years. Worked in Field Service, Sales, Marketing, Logistics, Service, Management. Olsen, Palmer, Peifer, Cappellas, Fiorina, Hurd, and a couple others after Hurd. What a ride. Great company, products and people. Dec slogan when I started ;"We're the company looking for people". Got up to nearly 150k of them at one time.
Hi Bill, sounds like a great career, spanning some amazing tech growth years! I bet you have some great tales to tell. Glad you found our channel. ~ Thanks very much! ~ Victor
Had a few good years with Digital after they aquired Philips Computers. To bad it was late in the game when the company got into bad weather. Still proud to have been a smal part of it.
Back in the late 70s and through the 80s, I was a computer tech. While most of my work was on Data General gear, I also supported a PDP-8/i, several PDP-11s and seven VAX 11/780s. My first exposure to Ethernet was the DECNet connecting the VAXs. When I took a FORTRAN course at night school, I did my homework on a VAX at work. I was working with VAX/VMS before I ever saw a PC with MS-DOS. What a let down that was, after working with VAX/VMS.
Hi James, your sentiment echos some of what I have heard from other VAX/VMS users over the years. I knew several great guys that really enjoyed and were continuously impressed by that technology in their computer careers. DEC has quite a reputation for that! Thank you very much for your feedback and sharing of your experiences! ~ Victor, CHAP
I used to work on several VAXs and Data General systems. One time my wife visited my office and I showed her around. After that, she was able to relate to some of what was mentioned in the book "The Cuckoo's Egg".
My Dad worked for Digital. I want to say from 1980 until late 90s until they were bought by Compaq. I forgot his role, I think he was systems or software engineer. As for location, he worked at the San Diego, CA office in Kearny Mesa on Kearny Villa Road. I born in '83 so I was still a kid and have limited memory of those days. I remember going to work with him sometimes on the weekends. That office campus was pretty big at the time. I think they occupied 3 buildings on the lot. I remember him bringing home weird random hardware; servers, laptops, desktops. I think they were either dev kits or some kind of beta testing. I remember the company being very generous on his tenure and great perks. Company gifts, vacation trips, car discounts from local dealership.
I was once a computer engineerr at Digital Equipment..... long time ago. DecNet, VMS and MicroVax were on my plate. We were told that the number on our badge is ethernal which means that once we return to DEC we will have the same number .....
I did my PhD thesis in DEC Ada under VMS on a VAX clone around 1990. An excellent compiler, debugger, IDE (LSE). By far my favorite system. Great memories!
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject You have a great project. Great work keeping history alive! I wonder if you are aware of the counterfeit systems as well. The USSR, DDR, Bulgaria cloned major US computing series they could not officially buy due to sanctions on advanced technology. In particular, they industrially produced clones of IBM 360/370, DEC PDP-11/VAX-11. These were fascinating projects considering massive technological inferiority of the Soviet block. Yet the clones were almost 100% compatible and capable to run the original software. I worked on such clones as well as on original systems. A special division of KGB used to buy sanctioned systems through third countries. As a historic anecdote, I heard than when DEC's official representatives came to the USSR for the first time, they appeared to know all places where illegally obtained systems were installed. CIA did not sleep either...
Hi Dmitry, yes, I am a bit aware of this history, but not in great detail. It was fascinating to find out how many clones were made. Sounds you have some first hand experience with some of these. Very cool. Some interesting memories I bet too! ~ Victor
My greatest brag was that I could hand-assemble code for a PDP-11, which I sometimes needed to do for the computer-controlled electron microscopes in the first company for which I worked. Mostly they were PDP-11/23s ROMmed out to the point of idiocy, with 32KB RAM available for any other purpose other than x-ray spectra, and 8 inch floppies compatible with RSTS. Two scopes were built around PDP-11/04s that we had to boot up with toggle switches. Fortunately, someone else did that from graph paper instructions.
Worked at DEC from 1987 to 1993. Loved the people and the company. But competition from Sun, HP and others that made UNIX workstations slowly killed us.
I worked in field service in the NY/NJ metro area from 1981 until I retired in 2013. I was very fortunate to make it through all of the wfr's and mergers. I work on everything from pdp11/34's all the way up to Vaxclusters and all associated peripherals, and all of the Compaq/HP servers, storageworks, 3Par and whatever else needed fixing. DEC was the best company to work for, Compaq and HP, not so much.
Hi Mark, great comment and history, thank you. Can you tell me what you meant by "wfr's" ? I probably should know, but can't seem to remember... ~ Victor
I recall rebooting a PDP11 used for Satnav on offshore seismic surveys by crouching or lying on the instrument room floor and flipping switches in the correct sequence (and in a hurry). Why it was installed at or near deck level, I have no idea, and didn't ask. I only had to do it once, but that was enough! (1982).
DEC invented the DDR bus AMD put into the Athlon, and that is now standard on all computers made today, albeit highly improved. So in a way, a little bit of DEC lives on in every computer made now.
Besides home computer stuff from that era, I get the most nostalgia from DEC equipment. We still used PDP-11 at university and my first summer job was writing FORTRAN and assembler for PDP-11. DEC had a big office in our town when I was in high school too, lots of people worked there (Kanata, Ontario.)
wcg66, interesting! Thanks for the perspective. It is one of those languages that one reads about, but never had the chance to learn it myself. Assembler was hard.... RPG was boring... : ) Hunter
I cut my teeth working on a VAX 11/780 back in 1984. The computer was used for CAD. I wrote Fortran code to automate CAD tasks. That was a fun time in my engineering career.
I worked for Storage Technology for 30 years. We used a lot of DEC systems there including PDP8, PDP11, VAX, and four DEC10 systems. We also used a lot of LSI11 systems. I was surprised the LSI11's weren't mentioned in the video.
Hi Speedmiata, yes, it is surprising the LSI II systems weren't mentioned. It would have been nice to see them compared with the others. It sounds like you have a lot of experience after 30 years with Storage Technology! Thank you for the feedback~ Hunter, at CHAP
I started in module repair in Maynard in 1973, and then was field service from 1977 until 2001 while Compaq owned it. I was kind of a generalist working on pdp-8's, 11's, teletypes, and all manner of terminals, printers, pc's and word processors. A lot of non-DEC stuff, too. You know you found a special place, when certain things happen. My father had passed away the previous year in 1972. Somehow this was noticed at the HQ, and I received a nice letter signed by Ken Olsen, expressing regret for my loss. I think it's unlikely anything like that would happen in corporate America today. Ken had what was said to be "Puritan" values, and treated employees a certain way. They were valued, rewarded and appreciated. Now, the only things that seem to matter are profits, stock price and the CEO's bonus.
Hi @dr.detroit1514, thank you for sharing your memories of working in the DEC world. Sounds like fascinating times. I bet you got to work with many different types of equipment back then. I have to share your thoughts about how the corporate influence has changed the workplace. It was much nicer to be valued back in the day. Thanks again.~ Victor, CHAP
VMS is the spiritual predecessor to Windows NT (which even Win10/11 today is still based on), David Cutler implemented a lot of the same structured and ideas in both products.
Learned to code BASIC-PLUS on a PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E the same quarter as taking a FORTRAN IV class where we ran our programs on an IBM 360/75 using punched cards. Needless to say, the interactive environment was so much more productive that I would write and debug skeleton programs in BASIC then recode in FORTRAN. We could also run BASIC-PLUS programs on PDP-11 systems at Harvard and MIT using the ARPANET for free. One DEC exec arranged to give his kid's fraternity their own PDP-11. Worked on PDP-11 big and small from 11/03 to 11/70. Feel like I missed out by being too late to the party to work on a PDP-8 however. DEC squandered their last/best chance for survival by overpricing the Alpha. The iNtel 8008 instruction set is a subset of the PDP-8 instruction set. Unsupported PDP-8 instructions can be emulated on the 8008. 8008 code will run on an 8080 and 8080 code on several subsequent x86 generations requiring only re-assembly or recompilation.
Similar experience here. My first real computer class was batch BASIC on a 11/34 running RT-11. I fiddled around with MUBAS on that computer for a summer. Then came FORTRAN IV and PASCAL on a 11/70 running RSTS/E. Much later, I returned to school as a non-traditional student, and we used VAXes running VMS and various UNIX flavors.
The computer used in Lockheed Martin's Consolidated Automated Support System was a VAX machine. Sadly that's all I know about it, because you really needed a good excuse to examine something like that in the machine. Being VAXen, that part of CASS didn't need maintenance. I did manage to network four CASS machines together to enhance my workflow. That was a documented feature but nobody in the shop knew about it because nobody bothers to dig through the manual. CASS is used for testing and troubleshooting avionics in aircraft. You'd attach the unit under test and the test program set would begin troubleshooting. Every now and then it would have you perform some steps. Well sometimes it took a while before it needed you to perform some action (like 8 hours in some cases!). And sometimes it wouldn't be much help even after going through that big long process and you'd have to start over, adjusting somethings. Well I figured it would be much better if I could network several machines together so it would send me alerts to one console when a step needed to be performed on the other machines.
I learned to program in one of these (PDP-1140 running the RSTS/E operating system), it had 8 CRT dumb terminals and two printer type (LPT:) terminals, the Line printer was huge as were the "Disk drives" the size of washing machines. For leisure we ran STRTRK (A text based Start Trek game to destroy a Klingon ship by guessing the quadrant where it was located by firing fasers at it by angle approximation. The damn thing had to have an AC system all for itself, it was cold working in the room where the CPU was standing. The thing with those mini computers was that they made everything look like Space 1999, something that modern PCs lack.
Hi Abe, it sounds like those were interesting times. It is fun to think we had giant minicomputers like DEC PDP-1140's and other machines weighing 900 pounds or more, and we played games. Now we have smart phones weighing 9 ounces and we........ play games... : ) VK
Cool video! At 1:27 there's an image of a PDP-11 being used to display what looks like a four car version of Intellivision Auto Racing. Does anyone know where this image comes from?
Forgot about that! Pdp 1170 at Langley AFB in early 80s. Swapped system disks to change O/S. Unix was fun. Wrote system code in "C". Training was non-existent so used the kernigan/richie book .. we were on our own. Also had to write system code on IBM assembler but that I got training by marines at Quantico. After PDP was wang (terrible in my opinion) and of course IBM mainframe.
I worked for DEC, badge #196032, for years under Ken Olsen b4 palmer ruined the company. It was the best part of my career and it s still hard to believe DEC is no more !!
I worked for DEC in the early '90s. Went to DECworld once. Neat technology but the cracks were already starting to show. My current employers ran a VAX for years. When they scrapped it I was interested. Until I looked at its electricity requirements...
I learned programming in VAX BASIC and COBOL in college on a VAX 11/780. When I got a job it was on an IBM System/36 and what a step backwards. The S/36 was so rudimentary compared to the VAX. The VAX was designed by real computer tech guys and the IBM was designed by salesmen.
I worked on a VAX in the mid 80s, doing word processing and simple statistical analysis for a minor thesis. I felt like a sardine trying to nudge a whale.
I have the VAX 4000-600 that I used as an undergrad at Drake University. They called me one day a while after they decommissioned it, asked if I wanted it.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject It did the last time I powered it up a few years ago. Sadly all I have now is the CPU shelf with the DSSI drives in it; the rack with some SCSI drive arrays, a tape library, and one of the vacuum-loading reel tape drives, I had to downsize through my various moves. But at one point it was part of a VAXcluster running in my house. When I finally get a place with more room I want to get it back online.
High school I went to had a very small vax (bar fridge sized) in the computer room. 8 terminals I think but can't remember what version of the OS they had. that was the 80's. I'm probably the only 1 to remember it. A coop placement I had in my last hear of high school also had a couple them running (Ithink) RSX11/M+
I used to be a DEC employee. When it was family -owned, it was a great place to work. The Augusta Maine plant where I worked was the most profitable of their facilities, with 1200 employees, it made over a Billion dollars per year in profit. Impending liabilities and its value made it an easy asset to sell. We were not allowed to transfer to another DEC facility, as the employees were considered an asset and part of the sale. We were sold to a contract manufacturer who began to eliminate the liabilities by firing employees. There was a nice lady who's job was to get a list of employees to let go. She would go around, giving a tap on the shoulder and escorting the victims out the door. They were not even allowed to clean-out their locker. One Morning she got a list of names for the day and her name was the last one on the list. One Monday morning,employees came to work, the doors were locked and the lights were out. Management had come over the weekend and stripped anything of value from the plant.
Hi unter mench, that is quite a sad ending for both the plant and the employees who had to leave. It is too bad when these things happen. Do you know what year this was that this happened? ~ VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I saw it coming and there was a lot of discussion among the employees as to the future of the plant. The people who took it over were just out to squeeze the State for any subsidies they could get and when they ran out( new employees were regarded as trainees) The new employees were let-go en masse. A new group were hired, then fired as the State subsidies ran out, this way the company could hire people for almost nothing. I put-up with it until 1997. A year or so later, I got a call from one of me former fellow employees who told me how they shut the place down. It appears to me that DEC was just using this company to launder their liabilities (older employees close to retirement and some that were having work-related illnesses ( there was a large cancer cluster there}}. What was left of DEC was sold-out, I think to Compaq. There was a lot of skill there, all gone now.
@@untermench3502 Yes, it does sound like 1997. The purchase by Compaq in 1998 was pretty brutal from what I have read. I wonder who at DEC engineered that method of hiring and firing. I know that the founder, Ken Olsen, was gone by then. (Left in 1992). ~ That is a fascinating story of the dark side of corporate work force and employee abuse. Thank you very much for sharing this bit of history with us! ~ Victor, at CHAP
@@greenhornet101 That hiring and firing was done by the new contract manufacturing company that took over from DEC. The CEO of that company learned his trade from Werner Von Braun and the use of slave labor to produce the V2. He learned that trade while working for Braun in Alabama on the NASA space program. I have heard that they declared bankruptcy some time later.
I worked repairing DEC equipment for decades for the Defense Mapping Agency and their later names. DEC made great stuff! I especially liked the VAX 11/780. They were much more stable than our ModComp equipment. I remember when Data General tried stealing DEC secrets. D.G. quickly got popular and then died! The computer industry is really competitive and cut throat. If you’re a technical kind of person and like history of these things, find a copy of “The Soul of a New Machine”. It is a fascinating look at how a mid-size computer was invented. Both from the software and hardware sides.
Hi Keith, yes, its is a very cut throat business. Even some very big, well funded companies could not stay in the business long (RCA, GE, Honeywell) Thank you for the book recommendation. Will check that one out! ~ VK
In my experience, many of their videos are like that. Especially fun, as the RUclips app frequently ignores a click, right when I want to pause, or jump back...
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I was a contractor at DEC in Galway, Ireland for just over a year in the late 90's. They were a great company to work for and a brilliant bunch of employees. Happy memories.
I managed and used Vax 6410 ...
The best company ever existed. I did work for DEC for almost 20 years. Mr. Ken Olsen, a great president who was people's oriented.
God bless his soul.
VAX/VMS was the most stable OS created. I worked in the Aircraft industry and from what I remember we had systems with at least 13 years uptime.
I used to support a VAX for British Rail in the late 80’s. So many memories of reel to reel tape and the huge “washing machine” disk drives. Happy days.
Hi Rich, those sounds like some interesting times! ~
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject they were. The drives had removable disk packs. 8 platters if I remember correctly, and all of 300mb capacity each… yes mb. 300 whole megabytes. We had 5 drives. Ran the whole office on it. Thick wire Ethernet through the building, mix of VT200 text terminals and CAD machines with a telex-style console. Electrostatic plotters running batch prints over night. Happy days. VAX 700 series. 😊
Rich, heavy duty equipment! Thanks for sharing your experience! ~ Victor
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject you’re welcome. It’s nice to reminisce.
Amazing how times have changed huh? I went to uni when Unix terminals were still a thing.
I started at Westboro in chip testing and went on to Hudson SEG, part of the VAX 8200/8300 team. Thanks Del, it was great working with you.
Memories! Worked for DEC for 19 years starting in 1981 in both engineering and marketing positions - mostly in Merrimack and Nashua, NH facilities. Good years!
Very cool! Thank you for your comment. ~~ Hunter, at CHAP
Started In Tewksbury Ma. In 1980 thru Compaq acquisition- was Sysadmin on Dec 10’s/20’s and then managed Vax prototypes 8 and 12 (Yoda and Phoenix) systems. Vax/Vms was the best o/s on earth IMO! Great times, wonderful people and memories that will always be with me. Of all the facilities I helped open, then closed the ZKO campus was my favorite!
42 years and I’m still dealing with this equipment
I was a Vax 8650, 11/780 technician for 17 years, from 1988 to 2005 when they ( 3 systems) were retired.
The first computer I ever used was a PDP-8e in my senior year in high school. Then when I got a job at a university I worked on a PDP-11/70 running RSTS/E. That was followed by so many models of the VAX running VMS, 11/780, 750, 9000, 6000 series, 7000 series, MicroVAX II. A large part of my IT career as a programmer/systems manager was on DEC computers. Such fond memories.
Hi Victor, that sounds like a great series of machines to have experience with! Glad this vid brought back come good memories! ~ VK, at CHAP
Worked for a CAD/CAM/CAE company in the 80's. They used only DEC equipment. The moon buggy was designed & simulated with DEC computers.
Dadcss, thank you for your comment and info. Didn't know that about the moon buggy design. Thanks!
Had a PDP-11/23 with RK-01, 1MByte fixed and one removable. Member of DECUS a great bunch of nice guys and ladies helping each other. Manuals for RT-11 were second to none. Don't see that kind of documentation anymore. Good times, too bad they (DEC)
are gone.
DEC equipment was great - i was systems operator and started with a PDP 11/34 and 11/44 networked using DECnet using RSTS/E (which was very unfirendly to work with); we moved on to a MicroVAX-II and eventually had a a VAXcluster with hundreds of terminals across a big college campus, we networked pretty much every building, As a customer we practically designed our network with the information in DECdirect - the sales catalogue. It was that good. VAX/VMS was doing stuff that Microsoft didn't do for another decade. The customer service was great, you always felt that the engineers and support personal cared about their work and that there was a great company ethos. I know they felt DEC was a good employer.
Hi @richardgregory3684, thank you very much for sharing your experience and a bit of history with the DEC systems! Very interesting. I had heard mostly good things about their products over the years, they put out some nice quality equipment! ~ VK
Back in 1984 I left school with no qualifications and got a job as a computer operator on DEC VAX. Doing backups etc on massive magnetic tape reels. Then started programming on it with Cognos 4GL. Today I am an independent Business Intelligence software engineer. I have fond memories of DEC VAX.
Learned my first programming language, PDP Basic Plus, on the College of Charleston's PDP-11 back around 1978. My how things have changed since then.
Thanks for the memories was an employee at Dec, CPQ, HP, 2 weeks after Army discharge in 76' up to early retirement 05. Span of near 30 years. Worked in Field Service, Sales, Marketing, Logistics, Service, Management. Olsen, Palmer, Peifer, Cappellas, Fiorina, Hurd, and a couple others after Hurd. What a ride. Great company, products and people. Dec slogan when I started ;"We're the company looking for people". Got up to nearly 150k of them at one time.
Hi Bill, sounds like a great career, spanning some amazing tech growth years! I bet you have some great tales to tell. Glad you found our channel. ~ Thanks very much! ~ Victor
Brings a tear to my eye.
Alpha, Vax,
PDP and coffee cup owner
Superb - so much of my life has been tied up with DEC systems. Sadly missed.
Rob, they were quite an environment in their heyday.. too bad the downhill slide seemed to come quickly. ~
That's nostalgic. I once worked for a short period at Japan DEC's ``ikebukuro'' in Japan.
Had a few good years with Digital after they aquired Philips Computers. To bad it was late in the game when the company got into bad weather. Still proud to have been a smal part of it.
Nijmegen?
Back in the late 70s and through the 80s, I was a computer tech. While most of my work was on Data General gear, I also supported a PDP-8/i, several PDP-11s and seven VAX 11/780s. My first exposure to Ethernet was the DECNet connecting the VAXs. When I took a FORTRAN course at night school, I did my homework on a VAX at work. I was working with VAX/VMS before I ever saw a PC with MS-DOS. What a let down that was, after working with VAX/VMS.
Hi James, your sentiment echos some of what I have heard from other VAX/VMS users over the years. I knew several great guys that really enjoyed and were continuously impressed by that technology in their computer careers. DEC has quite a reputation for that! Thank you very much for your feedback and sharing of your experiences! ~ Victor, CHAP
I worked for DEC from 1975 to 1985. My wife would say 'you don't go to work, you go and play with your friends'
I used to work on several VAXs and Data General systems. One time my wife visited my office and I showed her around. After that, she was able to relate to some of what was mentioned in the book "The Cuckoo's Egg".
My Dad worked for Digital. I want to say from 1980 until late 90s until they were bought by Compaq. I forgot his role, I think he was systems or software engineer. As for location, he worked at the San Diego, CA office in Kearny Mesa on Kearny Villa Road. I born in '83 so I was still a kid and have limited memory of those days. I remember going to work with him sometimes on the weekends. That office campus was pretty big at the time. I think they occupied 3 buildings on the lot. I remember him bringing home weird random hardware; servers, laptops, desktops. I think they were either dev kits or some kind of beta testing. I remember the company being very generous on his tenure and great perks. Company gifts, vacation trips, car discounts from local dealership.
A very fascinating bit of history! Thank you for sharing that. Hope it brings back some good memories. ~ Victor, CHAP
I was once a computer engineerr at Digital Equipment..... long time ago. DecNet, VMS and MicroVax were on my plate. We were told that the number on our badge is ethernal which means that once we return to DEC we will have the same number .....
Mine was! I got my old number back when I returned.
By far the best company I even worked for!
I did my PhD thesis in DEC Ada under VMS on a VAX clone around 1990. An excellent compiler, debugger, IDE (LSE). By far my favorite system. Great memories!
Hi Dmitry, that sounds like a fascinating combination of technology. Very cool. ~ Victor
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject You have a great project. Great work keeping history alive!
I wonder if you are aware of the counterfeit systems as well. The USSR, DDR, Bulgaria cloned major US computing series they could not officially buy due to sanctions on advanced technology. In particular, they industrially produced clones of IBM 360/370, DEC PDP-11/VAX-11.
These were fascinating projects considering massive technological inferiority of the Soviet block. Yet the clones were almost 100% compatible and capable to run the original software. I worked on such clones as well as on original systems.
A special division of KGB used to buy sanctioned systems through third countries. As a historic anecdote, I heard than when DEC's official representatives came to the USSR for the first time, they appeared to know all places where illegally obtained systems were installed. CIA did not sleep either...
Hi Dmitry, yes, I am a bit aware of this history, but not in great detail. It was fascinating to find out how many clones were made. Sounds you have some first hand experience with some of these. Very cool. Some interesting memories I bet too! ~ Victor
My greatest brag was that I could hand-assemble code for a PDP-11, which I sometimes needed to do for the computer-controlled electron microscopes in the first company for which I worked. Mostly they were PDP-11/23s ROMmed out to the point of idiocy, with 32KB RAM available for any other purpose other than x-ray spectra, and 8 inch floppies compatible with RSTS.
Two scopes were built around PDP-11/04s that we had to boot up with toggle switches. Fortunately, someone else did that from graph paper instructions.
Sounds like a pretty complex operation you had to do. It would take some skill and worth bragging about. : ) !
Worked at DEC from 1987 to 1993. Loved the people and the company. But competition from Sun, HP and others that made UNIX workstations slowly killed us.
I worked in field service in the NY/NJ metro area from 1981 until I retired in 2013. I was very fortunate to make it through all of the wfr's and mergers. I work on everything from pdp11/34's all the way up to Vaxclusters and all associated peripherals, and all of the Compaq/HP servers, storageworks, 3Par and whatever else needed fixing. DEC was the best company to work for, Compaq and HP, not so much.
Hi Mark, great comment and history, thank you. Can you tell me what you meant by "wfr's" ? I probably should know, but can't seem to remember... ~ Victor
@Computer History Archives Project wfr's = work force reductions
Mark, thanks very much. I will add this to my acronym dictionary. : )
Nicely done. Thanks from a former Milrat!
I recall rebooting a PDP11 used for Satnav on offshore seismic surveys by crouching or lying on the instrument room floor and flipping switches in the correct sequence (and in a hurry). Why it was installed at or near deck level, I have no idea, and didn't ask. I only had to do it once, but that was enough! (1982).
Hi Pablo, a PDP-11 for "Satnav" - that sounds interesting! ~ Victor
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Pre-GPS navigation with far fewer satellites, relying on computerized dead reckoning between "fixes".
DEC invented the DDR bus AMD put into the Athlon, and that is now standard on all computers made today, albeit highly improved. So in a way, a little bit of DEC lives on in every computer made now.
Besides home computer stuff from that era, I get the most nostalgia from DEC equipment. We still used PDP-11 at university and my first summer job was writing FORTRAN and assembler for PDP-11. DEC had a big office in our town when I was in high school too, lots of people worked there (Kanata, Ontario.)
Hi wcg66, sounds like interesting times. What did you think of FORTRAN?? -
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject FORTRAN is interesting but it really is a nightmare language if you are trying to figure out other people’s code.
wcg66, interesting! Thanks for the perspective. It is one of those languages that one reads about, but never had the chance to learn it myself. Assembler was hard.... RPG was boring... : ) Hunter
Brings back some memories. In my early days in the Navy we had PDP-1170 systems for message processing. They were a lot of fun to operate.
I cut my teeth working on a VAX 11/780 back in 1984. The computer was used for CAD. I wrote Fortran code to automate CAD tasks. That was a fun time in my engineering career.
I went to work for DEC in 1987 in Colorado Springs after working with the VAX at Bell Labs.
I used to work at 3M and was maintaining VT100 terminals and printers.
I worked for Storage Technology for 30 years. We used a lot of DEC systems there including PDP8, PDP11, VAX, and four DEC10 systems. We also used a lot of LSI11 systems. I was surprised the LSI11's weren't mentioned in the video.
Hi Speedmiata, yes, it is surprising the LSI II systems weren't mentioned. It would have been nice to see them compared with the others. It sounds like you have a lot of experience after 30 years with Storage Technology! Thank you for the feedback~ Hunter, at CHAP
I started in module repair in Maynard in 1973, and then was field service from 1977 until 2001 while Compaq owned it. I was kind of a generalist working on pdp-8's, 11's, teletypes, and all manner of terminals, printers, pc's and word processors. A lot of non-DEC stuff, too. You know you found a special place, when certain things happen. My father had passed away the previous year in 1972. Somehow this was noticed at the HQ, and I received a nice letter signed by Ken Olsen, expressing regret for my loss. I think it's unlikely anything like that would happen in corporate America today. Ken had what was said to be "Puritan" values, and treated employees a certain way. They were valued, rewarded and appreciated. Now, the only things that seem to matter are profits, stock price and the CEO's bonus.
Hi @dr.detroit1514, thank you for sharing your memories of working in the DEC world. Sounds like fascinating times. I bet you got to work with many different types of equipment back then. I have to share your thoughts about how the corporate influence has changed the workplace. It was much nicer to be valued back in the day. Thanks again.~ Victor, CHAP
VMS is the spiritual predecessor to Windows NT (which even Win10/11 today is still based on), David Cutler implemented a lot of the same structured and ideas in both products.
True.
Learned to code BASIC-PLUS on a PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E the same quarter as taking a FORTRAN IV class where we ran our programs on an IBM 360/75 using punched cards. Needless to say, the interactive environment was so much more productive that I would write and debug skeleton programs in BASIC then recode in FORTRAN. We could also run BASIC-PLUS programs on PDP-11 systems at Harvard and MIT using the ARPANET for free. One DEC exec arranged to give his kid's fraternity their own PDP-11. Worked on PDP-11 big and small from 11/03 to 11/70. Feel like I missed out by being too late to the party to work on a PDP-8 however. DEC squandered their last/best chance for survival by overpricing the Alpha. The iNtel 8008 instruction set is a subset of the PDP-8 instruction set. Unsupported PDP-8 instructions can be emulated on the 8008. 8008 code will run on an 8080 and 8080 code on several subsequent x86 generations requiring only re-assembly or recompilation.
Hi Dale, sounds like tons of experience with a wide range of the PDP-11 line(!) What's the answer to you last question?
~ Victor
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Just between you and me, Bill Gates.
Oh, of course. You had me on that. I thought it was a trick question. : ) Thanks!
Similar experience here. My first real computer class was batch BASIC on a 11/34 running RT-11. I fiddled around with MUBAS on that computer for a summer. Then came FORTRAN IV and PASCAL on a 11/70 running RSTS/E. Much later, I returned to school as a non-traditional student, and we used VAXes running VMS and various UNIX flavors.
The computer used in Lockheed Martin's Consolidated Automated Support System was a VAX machine. Sadly that's all I know about it, because you really needed a good excuse to examine something like that in the machine. Being VAXen, that part of CASS didn't need maintenance. I did manage to network four CASS machines together to enhance my workflow. That was a documented feature but nobody in the shop knew about it because nobody bothers to dig through the manual. CASS is used for testing and troubleshooting avionics in aircraft. You'd attach the unit under test and the test program set would begin troubleshooting. Every now and then it would have you perform some steps. Well sometimes it took a while before it needed you to perform some action (like 8 hours in some cases!). And sometimes it wouldn't be much help even after going through that big long process and you'd have to start over, adjusting somethings. Well I figured it would be much better if I could network several machines together so it would send me alerts to one console when a step needed to be performed on the other machines.
I learned to program in one of these (PDP-1140 running the RSTS/E operating system), it had 8 CRT dumb terminals and two printer type (LPT:) terminals, the Line printer was huge as were the "Disk drives" the size of washing machines. For leisure we ran STRTRK (A text based Start Trek game to destroy a Klingon ship by guessing the quadrant where it was located by firing fasers at it by angle approximation.
The damn thing had to have an AC system all for itself, it was cold working in the room where the CPU was standing.
The thing with those mini computers was that they made everything look like Space 1999, something that modern PCs lack.
Hi Abe, it sounds like those were interesting times. It is fun to think we had giant minicomputers like DEC PDP-1140's and other machines weighing 900 pounds or more, and we played games. Now we have smart phones weighing 9 ounces and we........ play games... : ) VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject But RAM is so cheap now!
Cool video! At 1:27 there's an image of a PDP-11 being used to display what looks like a four car version of Intellivision Auto Racing. Does anyone know where this image comes from?
My dad worked with some of their gear in the late 70's and 80's. Clear Lake city, Texas.
Very cool. Clear Lake City Texas is also home to the Space Center Houston. DEC's PDP-1 and other machines were some of those used by NASA.
I worked at the Parker Street facility in Maynard the same year DEC had its first 1B year.
Thank you Ken.
Forgot about that! Pdp 1170 at Langley AFB in early 80s. Swapped system disks to change O/S. Unix was fun. Wrote system code in "C". Training was non-existent so used the kernigan/richie book .. we were on our own. Also had to write system code on IBM assembler but that I got training by marines at Quantico. After PDP was wang (terrible in my opinion) and of course IBM mainframe.
I worked for DEC, badge #196032, for years under Ken Olsen b4 palmer ruined the company.
It was the best part of my career and it
s still hard to believe DEC is no more !!
Badge 191691 , worked in Germany for DEC,CPQ,HP from 1985 to 2015. Good Memories until last jears in HP.
I worked for DEC in the early '90s. Went to DECworld once. Neat technology but the cracks were already starting to show.
My current employers ran a VAX for years. When they scrapped it I was interested. Until I looked at its electricity requirements...
I learned programming in VAX BASIC and COBOL in college on a VAX 11/780. When I got a job it was on an IBM System/36 and what a step backwards. The S/36 was so rudimentary compared to the VAX. The VAX was designed by real computer tech guys and the IBM was designed by salesmen.
You speeketh some truth here....
1:21 what is the large unit below the TU60 cassette tape drive?
1944GPW, can't make it out, sorry. Maybe someone else watching can recognize it. ~
I worked on a VAX in the mid 80s, doing word processing and simple statistical analysis for a minor thesis. I felt like a sardine trying to nudge a whale.
I have the VAX 4000-600 that I used as an undergrad at Drake University. They called me one day a while after they decommissioned it, asked if I wanted it.
Hi Thomas, that is quite a find! Is it still running?
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject It did the last time I powered it up a few years ago. Sadly all I have now is the CPU shelf with the DSSI drives in it; the rack with some SCSI drive arrays, a tape library, and one of the vacuum-loading reel tape drives, I had to downsize through my various moves. But at one point it was part of a VAXcluster running in my house. When I finally get a place with more room I want to get it back online.
Recognize a lot of those peripherals having worked on rival Data General systems round about that time :)
High school I went to had a very small vax (bar fridge sized) in the computer room. 8 terminals I think but can't remember what version of the OS they had. that was the 80's. I'm probably the only 1 to remember it. A coop placement I had in my last hear of high school also had a couple them running (Ithink) RSX11/M+
CJ99, very interesting! Thanks for sharing that. ~ VK
I used to be a DEC employee. When it was family -owned, it was a great place to work. The Augusta Maine plant where I worked was the most profitable of their facilities, with 1200 employees, it made over a Billion dollars per year in profit. Impending liabilities and its value made it an easy asset to sell. We were not allowed to transfer to another DEC facility, as the employees were considered an asset and part of the sale.
We were sold to a contract manufacturer who began to eliminate the liabilities by firing employees. There was a nice lady who's job was to get a list of employees to let go. She would go around, giving a tap on the shoulder and escorting the victims out the door. They were not even allowed to clean-out their locker. One Morning she got a list of names for the day and her name was the last one on the list.
One Monday morning,employees came to work, the doors were locked and the lights were out. Management had come over the weekend and stripped anything of value from the plant.
Hi unter mench, that is quite a sad ending for both the plant and the employees who had to leave. It is too bad when these things happen. Do you know what year this was that this happened? ~ VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject
I saw it coming and there was a lot of discussion among the employees as to the future of the plant. The people who took it over were just out to squeeze the State for any subsidies they could get and when they ran out( new employees were regarded as trainees) The new employees were let-go en masse. A new group were hired, then fired as the State subsidies ran out, this way the company could hire people for almost nothing. I put-up with it until 1997. A year or so later, I got a call from one of me former fellow employees who told me how they shut the place down. It appears to me that DEC was just using this company to launder their liabilities (older employees close to retirement and some that were having work-related illnesses ( there was a large cancer cluster there}}. What was left of DEC was sold-out, I think to Compaq.
There was a lot of skill there, all gone now.
@@untermench3502 Yes, it does sound like 1997. The purchase by Compaq in 1998 was pretty brutal from what I have read. I wonder who at DEC engineered that method of hiring and firing. I know that the founder, Ken Olsen, was gone by then. (Left in 1992). ~ That is a fascinating story of the dark side of corporate work force and employee abuse. Thank you very much for sharing this bit of history with us! ~ Victor, at CHAP
@@greenhornet101
That hiring and firing was done by the new contract manufacturing company that took over from DEC. The CEO of that company learned his trade from Werner Von Braun and the use of slave labor to produce the V2. He learned that trade while working for Braun in Alabama on the NASA space program. I have heard that they declared bankruptcy some time later.
A pretty amazing story... thanks again!
The destruction of Digital is a crime in American business history.
I worked repairing DEC equipment for decades for the Defense Mapping Agency and their later names. DEC made great stuff! I especially liked the VAX 11/780. They were much more stable than our ModComp equipment. I remember when Data General tried stealing DEC secrets. D.G. quickly got popular and then died! The computer industry is really competitive and cut throat. If you’re a technical kind of person and like history of these things, find a copy of “The Soul of a New Machine”. It is a fascinating look at how a mid-size computer was invented. Both from the software and hardware sides.
Hi Keith, yes, its is a very cut throat business. Even some very big, well funded companies could not stay in the business long (RCA, GE, Honeywell) Thank you for the book recommendation. Will check that one out! ~ VK
I loved my vt100 man !
Still fix DEC DS25's to this day even the occasional vax still in production
I had never heard of DEC before Today, February 21, 2022
really?
I kid you not
Great job !!! CHA Projec
Hi Oscar, thank you for the kind words. ~ CHAP
元々、それがゆめなはずさ。
なぜ
未だ解決すら解決の以前の絶望 感じなくとも わたしたちの
だから せめて 不完全でも
補間できるなら。
ぼくは しあわせ、 命をまもる職業につけた。
Why can't I put this video on a RUclips playlist? It isn't RUclips kids?
Your montage was a bit too short in places...urgh, kept having to pause, scrub back...pause...
I hear your concern... Might try playing the video at .5 or .25 speed, gives a whole different experience...
In my experience, many of their videos are like that. Especially fun, as the RUclips app frequently ignores a click, right when I want to pause, or jump back...
😲
Going back and forth in time again and again makes very little sense.