VAX9000 (was: RE: kda50 manual and sdi cables & questions)

shoppa> It may have been late, but DEC really was a leader in disk shoppa> and tape storage in the early 90's, thanks largely to the shoppa> technology they developed for the RA9x. They got out of the shoppa> business (selling their storage tech stuff to Quantum, shoppa> right?) just before it got commoditized to the point where it shoppa> became uninteresting (and possibly too-profit- thin). I think that was part of the "sell everything in little pieces" approach Bob Palmer used. Maybe he once was a good manager but he clearly was nowhere competent enough to be CEO of DEC. So he just chopped it up and sold the bits one by one, until finally Compaq bought the last piece and retired him with way more money than he deserved. Yech. KO made his shared of mistakes, but at least he had the right intentions. BTW, on the topic of disk drives, I heard about a prototype created by the disk engineering group for a disk drive (3.5 inch, or maybe smaller) that was made mostly of plastic. Apparently it was very cheap, and might have been a big hit but people didn't want to invest in the new manufacturing line required for it... paul