Data General History by Foster

Summary

It was perfect!! Really characterized Data General — the bastards, no fear. But sadly it was never run. I suppose it was Ed that pulled the plug on it. Too bad, the ad would have generated all kinds of additional free publicity.Tandem: Killing Me SoftlyBy the spring of 1978 I was in a real funk. I loved my job but I was restless. Tandem was riding high — they were the talk of the computing world. I was totally jealous of my old friends. These guys were now rich and famous!! If I had tried harder in 1974 I could have been a founder of Tandem!! I screwed up royally!!Ok, so what do I do? Start a computer company?? Is that even possible? Well, my friends showed me that it was — I was as good as the Tandem guys and look what they had achieved! And look at DG — a highly successful company run by some smart guys with quirky ideas that broke all the rules. Really, if the DG and Tandem folks could do it, why not me?I am a note taker. And a note saver. I still have notes from staff meetings at HP in 1972!! The notes for “Nimbus” begin in March of 1978. (For some reason even back then I glommed on to the idea of naming my company after a type of cloud.)I would need money, and an idea. The idea department was pretty empty back then. I would start a company to go after DEC, HP, DG, Prime, and Tandem. It would be a “low cost, 32-bit, virtual memory machine with a fast commercial instruction set.” Pretty weak. Nothing really new. No breakthroughs. So, most of the notes focus on staffing, schedules, and financing. I knew this whole idea was pretty lame from the get-go. But by June of ’78 my focus began to change. I would go after Tandem. Strictly Tandem and the market they created — “non-stop” computers. The only improvements over Tandem that I could come up with were: “less application work to provide non-stop”, and “repair the system on the fly.” Plus, I now was a considering a 48 bit word. But none of that was very exciting. There still wasn’t the Technical Contribution -- the b...