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....

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[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!