> On Jun 27, 2023, at 7:26 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> On 27/06/2023 21:17, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
>> > Different thing, I believe.
>>
>> Gotcha. I'd find it funny and perfectly fitting if DEC had two departments
>> working on the same concept and coming up with completely different, but
>> equally oddball solution
>
> Like the VAX 6000 and the VAX 9000 :-) Having competing teams wasn't unusual
> in DEC, at least for a portion of its history.
It was a long running operating principle of Ken Olsen, and one of the worst
management notions in the history of the world. He didn't just do it with
individual projects, though that's bad enough -- he had whole product family
organizations competing. A notorious example I know well was the network
products group (building routers and bridges and terminal servers, out of
Littleton) competing with the Loe End network products group (building smaller
routers and bridges and terminal servers, out of Maynard.
Once in a while there was some connection between the two, as in the DEChub
family which came out of LENAC (90 series) but evolved to include products from
NAC as well (900 series, like the DECbridge 900 FDD/Ethernet bridge I worked
on. But the misguided notion that DEC had enough money to burn that it could
build two product lines and cancel one of them, or have each take a fraction of
the available market, surely is part of why DEC failed as a business in the
long run.
paul
