DEC - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

24 Apr 1999

I don't really have an anti-DEC bias.  They kept the industry moving forward
(which served their interests if no one else's) at a time when the BIG guys
didn't really want it to move form mainframes to distributed minis/micros.
I did however, back in the days when this happened, have a bias against
buying what we could make and sell at a profit, since I was the resident
hardware/systems guru.  Having come from a circuit design background as
opposed to the usual "rack 'em and stack 'em" position assumed by
defense/aerospace contractors, I wanted build something which inherently was
suited to the task as opposed to buying a bunch of stuff that didn't and
then filing, cutting, and gluing until it did.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Pechter &lt;pechter(a)pechter.dyndns.org...

To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu...
  Date: Saturday, April
24, 1999 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: DEC

...
 > That's the name of the guy!  Stan Olson . . .
the fellows at that one pitch
...
 > to which I was referring in my original post on
this subject were touting
> Stan Olson as being so cagey that he kept the gov out of the company's
books
...
 > by selling his wares to the gov through
integration contractors so that the
...
   folks at the
gov could specify DEC without naming them, and the various
 competing contractors would always decode the RFP to mean DEC and so DEC
 would win every time.  I thought it was clever, if true, but the genius's
 name was Stan Olson. 
 This is actually a very clever and inherently legal way
to get around the
risk that someone else's product might get introduced into a market you
nearly own all for yourself.
...

No.  Stan Olson's Ken Olson's brother and one of the folks who
kept pushing the company into things like the VT78 and WPS word
processors.  He left the company a while back.
 Well . . . it COULD have been Ken Olson to whom reference was being made.
...

I think you've got a serious anti DEC bias here.

Someone's very misinformed here or (more likely) the sales guy's full of
it.
...
  Well, there were bunches of them swooping down
on us . . . the project in
question involved about 60 8800's and bunches and bunches of microVaxen with
each one.  It was many hundreds of the taxpayer's millions that were
involved . . .
...
  >Q: How do you tell a computer salesman is
lying?
>A: His lips move.
...
  >Q: What's the difference between a
computer salesman and a used car
salesman?
>A: The used car salesman KNOWS when he's lying.
...
  >Bill