John> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, John Allain wrote: John> Quite a fascinating piece, though it would have been nicer John> (IMHO) had the interviewer had a bit more engineering knowledge Or other knowledge to help him poke at weaknesses. I saw (in a cursory scan) nothing about Ken's bad habit of setting up several competing projects inside (often with N-1 being canceled at the last minute, but not always), as if there wasn't enough competition outside. Or his bad habit of personally redesigning product details at the very last moment. The MMJ connector is an example of the latter problem; examples of the former are harder to spot though the three PCs (Rainbow/DECmate/Pro) may be an example. paul

John> Seemed like a successful product, back then. What's been John> Olsened' with it? The DECserver-100 -- the first LAT terminal server from DEC -- was almost ready for release. It came in a fairly small box, about the same dimensions as two fairly large laptops stacked on top of each other. It had terminal connectors with snap latches on the side. Ken came in at the last minute and decreed that (a) it had to go into a larger box, and (b) it had to use different connectors, the MMJ connectors. The result was that the initial release of that product came in a large box with a small PC board inside, and 8 jumper cables to connect from the original terminal connectors on the board to the MMJ jacks in the new cabinet. Needless to say, this caused a significant product delay as well as some highly annoyed engineers. As a result, Ken was at times referred to as "the chief connector architect". This was not by any means the only example of Ken meddling in the detailed design engineering of a project. That's perhaps understandable in a startup (but you have to do it at the right time); it makes no sense in a 50,000 person company. John> FWIW, internal competition is practiced at all market leading John> companies that I've seen, IBM, Seiko, HP, to name a few. John> Last minute changes as dictated by a team of one sound like a John> recipie for disaster, if that in fact was what happened. The John> only person I heard of getting burned in DEC was Cutler, but John> there must have been others. There were whole competing organizations: the networking products group in Littleton vs. the Low End networking products group in Maynard. Those ended up both shipping product, which wasted resources (money) and confused customers. Various VAXen had the same issue, for example the 8800 vs. a watercooled variant thereof, or the 8800 vs. the next lower series (7000? 6000? I forgot). Cutler's case may have been a bit different, though he did end up in at least one major project that went a long way and was then canceled. That was the second RISC project at DEC -- it was the THIRD that finally made it to product release (the Alpha). In the meantime, so much time was wasted that MIPS had to be brought in to save the day. John> Not dead, just totally retired. I don't think his obituary John> would've made it past me. Sounds like from just this short John> transaction that the man has some enemies. Too bad, I'd like John> to hear him talk. I hope that "enemy" wasn't applied to my comments. I have no personal problems with Ken, I don't know him well enough and what little contact I had with him was certainly pleasant. My issues are around management inability. Not that his successor was any better, just the opposite actually; he actually set out to dismantle the company and succeeded, while the worst Ken ever did was to botch up what should have been a lot more successful. paul

The DS100 had 8 DB25 connectors IIRC. The later DS200 came in two variants: DS200/MC with 8 DB25 (with modem control) and the DS200 with a harmonica connector off to a panel (I guess, I don't recall exactly) with either 8 or 16 MMJ ports. The DS300 was 16 MMJ with no RS232 variant. The DS700 was RJ45 (IIRC). So Ken fiddled with the 2nd product. I never understood why the DS200 was the way it was (rather than having the MMJs directly on the back). Maybe Ken's last minute fiddle was the problem. It was always touted as a strength: make your best products fight each other and pick the winner. Worked for a while, I guess, but not in the long run. He grew it from nothing to #2 computer maker in the world; that's no mean achievement. OTOH it obviously ran away Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, John Allain wrote: Probably just inaudible words on the tape recordings :) No conspiracy here, move along... -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]