Missing computer company's

[dstig1]

Digital Equipment went out in the 90s / early 2000s

IIRC digital was bought by compaq which was then bought by HP

 

[JasperFrank]

One of my first paid software jobs was for a medical lab in Seattle that worked with medical stuff. They had several Ohio Scientific PCs and a TRS Model II. Access was kind of funny, as one of the owners was working on a Ledger Books program. But he was 9 to 5. I was okay with being locked away over night in the facility. So that is what we did. Literally, I would be locked in.... over night to work on these projects. And then leave everything as it was, for the other owner/ partner in the lab.

 

[Mirage276]

I worked in NASA STDN 1968 to 1972 every computer we had was one of a kind.

I remember when or communication center was up graded from a small kitchen size room with racks of equipment and ended up with just 2 small cabinets.

The only time we interfaced with Manned Flight was President Nixon talking to the astronauts on the moon voice came through our equipment in Rosman, NC.

PARI as it's now known in Rosman still has the removable floor panels. I was trying to get my wife to volunteer for the summer camps so I could get a bit more access than the tour provided lol.

 

[MossRoad]

Here... geek out....

Vintage Computing Dec Digital FOR SALE!

Vintage Computing Dec Digital FOR SALE!. Shop the Largest Selection, Click to See! Search eBay faster with PicClick. Money Back Guarantee ensures YOU receive the item you ordered or get your money back.

picclick.com

 

[riptides]

Digital Equipment went out in the 90s / early 2000s

IIRC digital was bought by compaq which was then bought by HP

Compaq acquired DEC in 1998.
HP aquired Compaq in 2002.

Quite a lot of DECcies made it through both aquisitions. Testamount to their skills.

 

[WinterDeere]

Perfect Writer and Perfect Software
Novell Networks
...
AOL, now a subsidiary of Yahoo

If you're going to name software, I'd put Netscape at the top of most "where'd they go?" lists, but also it's predecessor, NCSA Mosaic. Heck, we could put the whole Gopher Space protocol up there, as the predecessor of the WWW.

Then there's the long list of popular search engines that came and went, like Webcrawler and Ask Jeeves.

Why is it my Apple//e has never crashed and still works perfect nearly 45 years later but drives seem to last only a few years?

First, they did crash, but yeah... not too often. Two reasons:

1. It was a deterministic operating system, meaning it was extremely easy for the coders to replicate and then fix crash scenarios. Once OS's went non-deterministic, that all changed, but we gained the ability for true multi-tasking.

2. Closed-source hardware and OS. Apple controlled it all, no third-party stuff. Again, made it very easy to control both quality and to debug problem scenarios.

Speaking of deterministic versus non-deterministic OS's, which was first? I had Mac OS7 and then Win95, and it always felt like Win95 was really a rip-off of the OS7 workflow and appearance. But I think Win95 was actually the first non-deterministic operating system with true multitasking, not to mention first to PnP.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

If you're going to name software, I'd put Netscape at the top of most "where'd they go?" lists, but also it's predecessor, NCSA Mosaic. Heck, we could put the whole Gopher Space protocol up there, as the predecessor of the WWW.

Then there's the long list of popular search engines that came and went, like Webcrawler and Ask Jeeves.


First, they did crash, but yeah... not too often. Two reasons:

1. It was a deterministic operating system, meaning it was extremely easy for the coders to replicate and then fix crash scenarios. Once OS's went non-deterministic, that all changed, but we gained the ability for true multi-tasking.

2. Closed-source hardware and OS. Apple controlled it all, no third-party stuff. Again, made it very easy to control both quality and to debug problem scenarios.

Speaking of deterministic versus non-deterministic OS's, which was first? I had Mac OS7 and then Win95, and it always felt like Win95 was really a rip-off of the OS7 workflow and appearance. But I think Win95 was actually the first non-deterministic operating system with true multitasking, not to mention first to PnP.

Windows NT was the first true multitasking Microsoft OS, released July 27, 1993. Windows 95 was released July 14, 1995. OS7 was released May 13, 1991.

 

[WinterDeere]

Windows NT was the first true multitasking Microsoft OS, released July 27, 1993. Windows 95 was released July 14, 1995. OS7 was released May 13, 1991.

I don't think that's correct. Yes, NT 3.1 came out in 1993, but it was not true multitasking, it was an early form of re-entrant multitasking. Essentially, you could switch between applications, but the one you switched away from had to stop running, it would not continue solving a large simulation problem while you toggled over to MS Word to type a document.

I also ran OS7 in my personal Mac at the time, which for the time was a very nice operating system. But like NT 3.x, it was not true multitasking, it was only re-entrant.

Mentioning Windows NT: To keep us all on our toes, Microsoft named their home products Windows 95 and 98, but then they re-named Win NT 5.0 to Windows 2000. So, many thought the upgrade path was from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, but really 98 migrated to Me (Millenium) and NT 4.0 migrated to 2000.

 

[1Mech]

I had an internship with Unisys in 1994, oh and whom doesn't remember the Italian Computer company Olivetti. They were famous for their wired patches of leads of their PCB's on their computer system.

I remember the Olivetti typewriter, but not the computer.

 

[1Mech]

Wait - you have a model T&A? That sounds ...interesting...

A well rounded model, firm yet supple!

 

[1Mech]

A bakery in Indiana is still using Commodore 64 computers as cash registers.

Indiana bakery still using Commodore 64s originally released in 1982 as cash registers — Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg sticks to the BASICs

If it ain't broke...

www.tomshardware.com

 

[Langanobob]

I recall that Burroughs became Unisys? No?

 

[kenmbz]

A guy I worked with back in the early 80's had gone to school with Wozniak and had an Apple 1 that had wires soldered in by the Woz himself.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I don't think that's correct. Yes, NT 3.1 came out in 1993, but it was not true multitasking, it was an early form of re-entrant multitasking. Essentially, you could switch between applications, but the one you switched away from had to stop running, it would not continue solving a large simulation problem while you toggled over to MS Word to type a document.

I also ran OS7 in my personal Mac at the time, which for the time was a very nice operating system. But like NT 3.x, it was not true multitasking, it was only re-entrant.

Mentioning Windows NT: To keep us all on our toes, Microsoft named their home products Windows 95 and 98, but then they re-named Win NT 5.0 to Windows 2000. So, many thought the upgrade path was from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, but really 98 migrated to Me (Millenium) and NT 4.0 migrated to 2000.

I did a lot of programming on NT, it was definitely truly multi-threading. The consumer versions of Windows (ie W95) were re-entrant, as you said.

 

[ultrarunner]

A guy I worked with back in the early 80's had gone to school with Wozniak and had an Apple 1 that had wires soldered in by the Woz himself.

He is someone you would never forget…

The story of Apples founding is interesting in that there originally were 3 individuals…

The third was living in a trailer park having bailed very early saying the others were juvenile for lack of a better word.

 

[WinterDeere]

I did a lot of programming on NT, it was definitely truly multi-threading. The consumer versions of Windows (ie W95) were re-entrant, as you said.

I think there must have been a difference in the way early NT (e.g. 3.1 - 3.5) handled multi-tasking, versus later NT (e.g. 4.0 - 2000), as I clearly remember processes halting or going at a very clipped rate when you'd toggle away from them in early NT. I suppose it could have been just poor/coarser time slicing or scheduling, prior to the implementation of modern program priority calls (see Task Manager), or even just software manufacturers taking too long to catch up with the options NT was providing them.

I run computer simulations that take hours each, on todays hardware. On the computers of 1995 - 2005, we could only run much more simplified models, and a single solver run would take between a half day and all weekend! We used to run separate computers for the solver and daily chores (e.g. email, MS Office), but now just run everything on a single PC with two dozen cores or more.

 

[kenmbz]

We found modern CPUs with multi-threading slowed down older programs as the first thread would wait for the other threads to finish.
We turned off multi-threading for older programs and they really flew.

 

[flyerdan]

I've got a lot of old stuff kicking around. Have three original IBM XTs, a bootable 8088 in the shop, bootable Win 98 and XP machines. Keeping with the theme, here is a Bondwell, t powers up but probably needs a cmos battery to boot. Main battery is toast, of course but the charger will start it.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

Let's see, off the top of my head...

Encore, Gould, Perk & Elmer, HP (HP-1000), DEC (PDP-11's, VAX 11/785's, microvax's, vax stations), IBM, Honeywell. Probably forgetting a few... Worked on each of the above at one point or another.

 

[MossRoad]

Windows NT:
Not Today
Next Time
Nice Try

We got a service bulletin on NT saying to reboot the machine every X days to keep it operating well.

We wondered how they ever got to X days in the first place to figure that out it barfed so often.