Data General
Encyclopedia
Data General was one of the first minicomputer
firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation
. Their first product, the Data General Nova
, was a 16-bit
minicomputer. This used their own operating system, RDOS
, and in conjunction with programming languages like "Data General Business Basic
" they provided a multi-user operating system with record locking and inbuilt data bases far ahead of many contemporary systems. The Nova was followed by the Supernova and Eclipse
product lines, all of which were used in many applications for the next two decades. The company employed an Original Equipment Manufacturer
(OEM) sales strategy to sell to third parties who incorporated Data General computers into the OEM's specific product lines. A series of missteps in the 1980s, including missing the advance of microcomputers despite the launch of the microNOVA in 1977, and the Data General-One
portable computer in 1984, led to a decline in the company's market share. The company did continue into the 1990s, however, and was eventually acquired by EMC Corporation
in 1999.
who were frustrated with DEC's management and left to form their own company. The chief protagonists were Edson de Castro
, Henry Burkhardt III
, and Richard Sogge of Digital Equipment (DEC), and Herbert Richman of Fairchild Semiconductor
. The company was incorporated in the state of Delaware
in April 1968.
De Castro was the chief engineer in charge of the PDP-8
, DEC's line of inexpensive computers that created the minicomputer market. It was designed specifically to be used in laboratory equipment settings; as the technology improved, it was reduced in size to fit into a 19-inch rack
. Many PDP-8's still operate today, decades later. de Castro, convinced he could do one better, began work on his new 16-bit design.
The result was released in 1969 as the Nova
. Designed to be rack-mounted similarly to the later PDP-8 machines, it was smaller in height and ran considerably faster. Launched as "the best small computer in the world", the Nova quickly gained a huge following and made the company flush with cash, although Data General had to defend itself from misappropriation of its trade secrets. With the initial success of the Nova, Data General went public in the fall of 1969. The Nova, like the PDP-8, used a simple accumulator-based architecture. It lacked general registers and the stack-pointer functionality of the more advanced PDP-11
, as did competing products, such as the HP 1000
; compilers used hardware-based memory locations in lieu of a stack pointer.
The original Nova was soon followed by the faster SuperNova, then later by several minor versions based on the SuperNova core. The last major version, the Nova 4, was released in 1978. During this period the Nova generated 20% annual growth rates for the company, becoming a star in the business community and generating US$
100 million in sales in 1975. In 1977, DG launched a 16-bit microcomputer called the microNOVA to poor commercial success.
The Nova series plays a very important role as instruction-set inspiration to Charles P. Thacker
and others at Xerox PARC during their construction of the Xerox Alto
.
. Based on many of the same concepts as the Nova, it included support for virtual memory
and multitasking
more suitable to the small office environment. For this reason, the Eclipse was packaged differently, in a floor-standing case resembling a small refrigerator
.
Production problems with the Eclipse led to a rash of lawsuits in the late 1970s. Newer versions of the machine were pre-ordered by many of DG's customers, which were never delivered. Many customers sued Data General after more than a year of waiting, charging the company with breach of contract
, while others simply canceled their orders and went elsewhere. The Eclipse was originally intended to replace the Nova outright, evidenced by the fact that the Nova 3 series, released at the same time and utilizing virtually the same internal architecture as the Eclipse, was phased out the next year. Strong demand continued for the Nova series, resulting in the Nova 4, perhaps as a result of the continuing problems with the Eclipse.
In 1976, Digital announced the VAX
series, their first 32-bit
minicomputer line, described as super-minis. The first products would not ship until February 1978. This coincided with the aging 16-bit products (notably the PDP-11
), which were coming due for replacement. Data General immediately launched their own 32-bit effort in 1976 to build what they called the "world's best 32-bit machine," known internally as the "Fountainhead Project". When Digital's VAX-11/780 was shipped in February 1978, however, Fountainhead was not yet ready to deliver a machine, due mainly to problems in project management. DG's customers left quickly for the VAX world.
Soon afterwards, Data General launched a hyperactive 32-bit effort based on the Eclipse known as the "Eagle Project". By late 1979, it became clear that Eagle would deliver before Fountainhead, igniting an intense turf war
within the company for constantly-shrinking project funds. In the meantime, customers abandoned Data General in droves, driven not only by the delivery problems with the original Eclipse (including very serious quality control and customer service problems), but also the power and versatility of Digital's new VAX line.
The Eagle Project was the subject of Tracy Kidder
's Pulitzer prize
-winning book, The Soul of a New Machine
(see references), making the MV line the best-documented computer project in recent history. The MV/8000 was a straightforward, 32-bit extension of the Nova-based Eclipse, yet still lacking a hardware stack pointer adopted by most new computers since the late 1960s. It was backwards-compatible with 16-bit Eclipse applications, used the same command-line interpreter as the 16-bit Eclipse, and because it was as advanced in function as VAX/VMS, could execute proprietary 32-bit applications.
. The MV systems generated an almost miraculous turnaround for Data General. Through the early 1980s sales picked up, and by 1984 the company had over a billion dollars in annual sales. Data General's proprietary video terminals would be among the first to adopt a wide 3-pad layout later standardized by versions of the IBM PC
.
The MV series came in various iterations, from the MV/2000 (later MV/2500), MV/4000, MV/10000, and ultimately concluded with the MV/60000HA minicomputer. The MV/60000HA was intended to be a High Availability system, with many components duplicated to eliminate the single point of failure. Yet, there were failures among the system's many daughter boards, back-plane, and mid-plane. DG technicians were kept quite busy replacing boards and many blamed poor quality control at the DG factory in Mexico where they were made and refurbished.
In retrospect, the nicely performing MV series was too little, too late. At a time when DG invested its last dollar into the dying minicomputer segment, the microcomputer
was rapidly making inroads to the lower-end market segment, and the introduction of the first workstation
s wiped out all 16-bit machines, once DG's best customer segment. While the MV series did stop the erosion of DG's customer base, this now smaller base was no longer large enough to allow DG to develop their next generation. DG had also changed their marketing to focus on direct sales to Fortune 100 companies and thus alienated many resellers.
for the Nova, RDOS and AOS for the 16-bit Eclipse C, M, and S lines, AOS/VS
and AOS/VS II for the Eclipse MV line, and a modified version of System V Unix called DG/UX
for the Eclipse MV and AViiON machines. The AOS/VS software was the most commonly used DG software product and included CLI (Command Line Interpreter) allowing for complex scripting, DUMP/LOAD, and other custom components.
Related system software also in common use at the time included such packages as X.25
, Xodiac, and TCP/IP for networking, Fortran
, COBOL
, RPG
, PL/1, C
and Data General Business Basic
for programming, INFOS II and DG/DBMS for databases, and the nascent relational database software DG/SQL.
Data General also offered an office automation suite named CEO
(Comprehensive Electronic Office), which included a mail system, a calendar, a folder-based document store, a word processor, a spreadsheet processor, and other assorted tools. All were crude by today's standards but were revolutionary for their time.
Some software development from the early 70s is notable. PLN (created by Robert Nichols) was the host language for a number of DG products, making them easier to develop, enhance, and maintain than macro assembler equivalents. PLN smacked of a micro-subset of PL/1, in sharp contrast to other languages of the time, such as BLISS. The RPG product (shipped in 1976) incorporated a language runtime system implemented as a virtual machine which executed pre-compiled code as sequences of PLN statements and Eclipse commercial instruction routines. The latter provided microcode acceleration of arithmetic and conversion operations for a wide range of now-arcane data types such as overpunch characters. The DG Easy product, a portable application platform developed by Nichols and others from 1975-1979 but never marketed, had roots easily traceable back to the RPG VM created by Stephen Schleimer.
Also notable were several commercial software products developed in the mid to late 1970s in conjunction with the commercial computers. These products were popular with business customers because of their screen design feature and other ease-of-use features. The first product was IDEA (Interactive Data Entry/Access) which consisted of a screen design tool (IFMT), TP Controller (IMON) and a program development language (IFPL). The second was the CS40 line of products which used COBOL and their own ISAM
data manager. The COBOL variant used included an added screen section. Both of these products were a major departure from the transaction monitors of the day which did not have a screen design tool and used subroutine calls from COBOL to handle the screen. IDEA was identified by some market watchers as a precursor to fourth-generation programming language
s.
The original IDEA ran on RDOS and would support up to 24 users in an RDOS Partition. Each user could use the same or a different program. Eventually IDEA ran on every commercial hardware product from the MicroNova (4 users) to the MV series under AOS/VS, the same IDEA program running all those systems. The CS40 (the first of this line) was a package system which supported four terminal users, each running a different COBOL program. These products also led to the development of a third product, TPMS (Transaction Processing Monitoring System (announced in 1980)) which could capably run a large number of COBOL or PL/I users with a smaller number of processors, a major resource and performance advantage on AOS and AOS/VS systems. TPMS had the same screen design tool as the earlier products. TPMS used defined subroutine calls for screen functions from COBOL or PL/I, which in some users' eyes made it more difficult to use. However, this product was aimed at the professional IS Programmers as were its competitors—IBM’s CICS
and DEC’s TRAX. As with IDEA, TPMS used INFOS for information management and DG/DBMS for database management.
in 1984 is an interesting story, as it is one of the few cases of a minicomputer company introducing a truly breakthrough PC product. The DG One was a nine-pound battery-powered MS-DOS
machine equipped with dual 3½" diskettes, a 79-key full-stroke keyboard, 128K to 512K of RAM, and a monochrome LCD
screen capable of either the standard 80×25 characters or full CGA
graphics (640×200). The Data General One was considered a modest advance over similar Osborne-Kaypro
systems.
Despite the memorable advertisements ("The first computer able to fit inside the IBM PC"), the DG-1 was, however, only a modest success. One problem was the use of 3½" diskettes, which were slightly ahead of their time; popular software titles were not available in 3½" format and this was a serious issue because then-common diskette copy-protection schemes made it difficult for users to copy the software into that format. Additionally, the diskettes used a proprietary formatting scheme not compatible with products from other companies. Although Creative Computing
termed the price of US$2895 "competitive", it was a very expensive system and optional additions, such as expanded RAM and an external 5¼" floppy drive, drove the price considerably higher. The Achilles heel
, however, was the liquid-crystal display
itself, which was not backlit, had poor contrast, and was frequently accused of serving better as a mirror than as a screen. Usable outdoors or in bright offices only, a flashlight
, it was joked, was often necessary to see the contents of the screen.
Another product killer was the incompatible serial port chip, an Intel 82C51 which was used to conserve power, instead of the 8250 used in the IBM PC. For a portable system, this was a critical flaw — PC programs that used the serial port wouldn't run on the DG-1 due of the non-standard register arrangement within the 82C51.
An updated version of the DG-1 appeared later with a much improved electroluminescent screen. However, the light-producing display could be washed out by bright sunlight. Additionally, the new screen was power hungry and consumed so much power that the battery option was removed, thereby causing the DG-1 to lose its status as a true portable.
often delivered machines whose only purpose was to generate accounting data for a single company, running software tailored for that company alone.
By the mid-80s the introduction of new software development methods and the rapid acceptance of the SQL database was changing the way such software was developed. Now developers typically linked together several pieces of existing software, as opposed to developing everything from scratch. In this market the question of which machine was the "best" changed; it was no longer the machine with the best price/performance ratio
or service contracts, but the one that ran all of the third-party software you intended to use.
This change forced changes on the hardware vendors as well. Formerly almost all computer companies attempted to make their machines different enough that when their customers sought a more powerful machine, it was often cheaper to buy another from the same company. This was known as "vendor lock-in
", which helped guarantee future sales even though the customers detested it.
With the change in software development, combined with new generations of commodity processors that could match the performance of low-end minicomputers, lock-in was no longer working. When forced to make a decision, it was often cheaper for the users to simply throw out all of their existing machinery and buy a microcomputer product instead. If this was not the case "now", it certainly appeared it would be within a generation or two of Moore's Law
.
In 1988 two company directors put together a report showing that if the company was to continue existing in the future, DG would have to either invest heavily in software to compete with new applications being delivered by IBM and DEC on their machines, or alternately exit the proprietary hardware business entirely.
Thomas West
's report outlined these changes in the marketplace, and suggested that the customer was going to win the fight over lock-in. They also outlined a different solution: instead of trying to compete against the much larger IBM and DEC, they suggested that since the user no longer cared about the hardware as much as software, DG could deliver the best "commodity" machines instead.
"Specifically", the report stated, "DG should examine the Unix
market, where all of the needed software already exists, and see if DG can provide compelling Unix solutions." Now the customer could run any software they wished as long as it ran on Unix, and by the early 1990s, everything did. As long as DG's machines outperformed the competition, their customers would return because they liked the machines, not because they were forced; lock-in was over.
s known as the AViiON
. The name "AViiON" was a reversed play on the name of DG's first product, Nova, implying "Nova II". In an effort to keep costs down, the AViiON was originally designed and shipped with the Motorola 88000
RISC processor. The AViiON machines supported multi-processing, later evolving into NUMA
-based systems, allowing the machines to scale upwards in performance by adding additional processors.
line. The CLARiiON arrays, which offered SCSI
RAID
in various capacities, offered a great price/performance and platform flexibility over competing solutions.
The CLARiiON line was marketed not only to AViiON and Data General MV series customers, but also to customers running servers from other vendors such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics. Data General also embarked on a plan to hire storage sales specialists and to challenge EMC's Symmetrix in the wider market. The success of the CLARiiON product and the challenges faced by the other parts of Data General eventually led to Data General being acquired by EMC in 1999.
, Motorola decided to end production of that line. The 88000 had never been very successful, and DG was the only major customer. When Apple Computer
and IBM
proposed their joint solution based on POWER
designs, the PowerPC
, Motorola picked up the manufacturing contract and killed the 88000.
DG quickly responded and introduced new models of the AViiON series based on a true commodity processor, the Intel "x86" series. By this time a number of other vendors, notably Sequent Computer Systems
, were also introducing similar machines. The lack of lock-in now came back to haunt DG, and the rapid commoditization of the Unix market led to shrinking sales. DG did begin a minor shift toward the service industry, training their technicians for the role of implementing a spate of new x86-based servers and the new Microsoft
Windows NT
domain-driven, small server world. This never developed enough to offset the loss of high margin server business however.
CLARiiON did better after finding a large niche for Unix storage systems, and its sales were still strong enough to make DG a takeover target. EMC Corporation
, a major data storage company, acquired Data General and its assets in 1999. Although details of the acquisition specified that EMC had to take the entire company, and not just the storage line, EMC quickly ended all development and production of DG computer hardware and parts, effectively ending Data General's presence in the segment. The maintenance business was sold to a third party, who also acquired all of DG's remaining hardware components for spare parts sales to old DG customers. The CLARiiON line continues to be a major player in the market today, and is still marketed under that name.
Data General would be only one of many New England based computer companies, including the original Digital Equipment Corporation
that collapsed after the 1980s. On the World Wide Web, even the old Data General domain (http://www.dg.com), which contained a few EMC webpages that only mentioned the latter company in passing, was sold to the Dollar General
discount department store chain in October 2009.
Minicomputer
A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...
firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
. Their first product, the Data General Nova
Data General Nova
The Data General Nova was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by the American company Data General starting in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single rack mount case and had enough power to do most simple computing tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world, and...
, was a 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
minicomputer. This used their own operating system, RDOS
RDOS
RDOS was a real-time operating system released in 1972 for the popular Data General Nova and Eclipse minicomputers...
, and in conjunction with programming languages like "Data General Business Basic
Data General Business Basic
Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter developed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers...
" they provided a multi-user operating system with record locking and inbuilt data bases far ahead of many contemporary systems. The Nova was followed by the Supernova and Eclipse
Data General Eclipse
The Data General Eclipse line of computers by Data General were 16-bit minicomputers released in early 1974 and sold until 1988. The Eclipse was based on many of the same concepts as the Data General Nova, but included support for virtual memory and multitasking more suitable to the small office...
product lines, all of which were used in many applications for the next two decades. The company employed an Original Equipment Manufacturer
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
(OEM) sales strategy to sell to third parties who incorporated Data General computers into the OEM's specific product lines. A series of missteps in the 1980s, including missing the advance of microcomputers despite the launch of the microNOVA in 1977, and the Data General-One
Data General-One
The Data General-One was a portable personal computer introduced in 1984 by minicomputer company Data General.-History:The 1983 Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 was a truly battery-operated, portable, and operable computer resting in one's lap—but had an 32x8 character screen, a rudimentary ROM-based...
portable computer in 1984, led to a decline in the company's market share. The company did continue into the 1990s, however, and was eventually acquired by EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation , a Financial Times Global 500, Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, develops, delivers and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure hardware, software, and services. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.Former Intel executive Richard Egan and his...
in 1999.
Origin, founding, and early years: The Nova and SuperNova
Data General (DG) was founded by several engineers from Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
who were frustrated with DEC's management and left to form their own company. The chief protagonists were Edson de Castro
Edson de Castro
Edson de Castro is a computer engineer perhaps best known for designing the Data General Nova series of computers.De Castro was founder and CEO of Data General Corporation throughout the 1970s, the 1980s and into the 1990s when he was replaced by Ronald L Skates, a former Price Waterhouse Coopers...
, Henry Burkhardt III
Henry Burkhardt III
Henry Burkhardt III was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and was schooled there. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Princeton University. He began his career as a programmer at Digital Equipment Corporation...
, and Richard Sogge of Digital Equipment (DEC), and Herbert Richman of Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. is an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957, it was a pioneer in transistor and integrated circuit manufacturing...
. The company was incorporated in the state of Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
in April 1968.
De Castro was the chief engineer in charge of the PDP-8
PDP-8
The 12-bit PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1960s. DEC introduced it on 22 March 1965, and sold more than 50,000 systems, the most of any computer up to that date. It was the first widely sold computer in the DEC PDP series of...
, DEC's line of inexpensive computers that created the minicomputer market. It was designed specifically to be used in laboratory equipment settings; as the technology improved, it was reduced in size to fit into a 19-inch rack
19-inch rack
A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws.-Overview and history:Equipment designed...
. Many PDP-8's still operate today, decades later. de Castro, convinced he could do one better, began work on his new 16-bit design.
The result was released in 1969 as the Nova
Data General Nova
The Data General Nova was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by the American company Data General starting in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single rack mount case and had enough power to do most simple computing tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world, and...
. Designed to be rack-mounted similarly to the later PDP-8 machines, it was smaller in height and ran considerably faster. Launched as "the best small computer in the world", the Nova quickly gained a huge following and made the company flush with cash, although Data General had to defend itself from misappropriation of its trade secrets. With the initial success of the Nova, Data General went public in the fall of 1969. The Nova, like the PDP-8, used a simple accumulator-based architecture. It lacked general registers and the stack-pointer functionality of the more advanced PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...
, as did competing products, such as the HP 1000
HP 2100
The HP 2100 was a series of minicomputers produced by Hewlett-Packard from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. The 2100 was also a specific model in this series. The series was renamed HP 1000 by the 1970s and sold as real-time computers, complementing the more complex IT-oriented HP 3000, and would be...
; compilers used hardware-based memory locations in lieu of a stack pointer.
The original Nova was soon followed by the faster SuperNova, then later by several minor versions based on the SuperNova core. The last major version, the Nova 4, was released in 1978. During this period the Nova generated 20% annual growth rates for the company, becoming a star in the business community and generating US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
100 million in sales in 1975. In 1977, DG launched a 16-bit microcomputer called the microNOVA to poor commercial success.
The Nova series plays a very important role as instruction-set inspiration to Charles P. Thacker
Charles P. Thacker
Charles P. Thacker is an American pioneer computer designer.-Biography:Thacker was born in Pasadena, California on February 26, 1943.He received his B.S...
and others at Xerox PARC during their construction of the Xerox Alto
Xerox Alto
The Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use , making it arguably what is now called a personal computer. It was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973...
.
Late 1970s to late 1980s: Crisis and a short term solution
In 1974, the Nova was supplanted by their upscale 16-bit machine, the EclipseData General Eclipse
The Data General Eclipse line of computers by Data General were 16-bit minicomputers released in early 1974 and sold until 1988. The Eclipse was based on many of the same concepts as the Data General Nova, but included support for virtual memory and multitasking more suitable to the small office...
. Based on many of the same concepts as the Nova, it included support for virtual memory
Virtual memory
In computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...
and multitasking
Computer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
more suitable to the small office environment. For this reason, the Eclipse was packaged differently, in a floor-standing case resembling a small refrigerator
Refrigerator
A refrigerator is a common household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room...
.
Production problems with the Eclipse led to a rash of lawsuits in the late 1970s. Newer versions of the machine were pre-ordered by many of DG's customers, which were never delivered. Many customers sued Data General after more than a year of waiting, charging the company with breach of contract
Breach of contract
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance....
, while others simply canceled their orders and went elsewhere. The Eclipse was originally intended to replace the Nova outright, evidenced by the fact that the Nova 3 series, released at the same time and utilizing virtually the same internal architecture as the Eclipse, was phased out the next year. Strong demand continued for the Nova series, resulting in the Nova 4, perhaps as a result of the continuing problems with the Eclipse.
In 1976, Digital announced the VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
series, their first 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
minicomputer line, described as super-minis. The first products would not ship until February 1978. This coincided with the aging 16-bit products (notably the PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...
), which were coming due for replacement. Data General immediately launched their own 32-bit effort in 1976 to build what they called the "world's best 32-bit machine," known internally as the "Fountainhead Project". When Digital's VAX-11/780 was shipped in February 1978, however, Fountainhead was not yet ready to deliver a machine, due mainly to problems in project management. DG's customers left quickly for the VAX world.
Soon afterwards, Data General launched a hyperactive 32-bit effort based on the Eclipse known as the "Eagle Project". By late 1979, it became clear that Eagle would deliver before Fountainhead, igniting an intense turf war
Turf war
According to Wordnet the definition of a turf war is "a bitter struggle for territory or power or control or rights". For example: a turf war erupted between street gangs; the president's resignation was the result of a turf war with the board of directors. In larger companies Turf wars could...
within the company for constantly-shrinking project funds. In the meantime, customers abandoned Data General in droves, driven not only by the delivery problems with the original Eclipse (including very serious quality control and customer service problems), but also the power and versatility of Digital's new VAX line.
The Eagle Project was the subject of Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder
John Tracy Kidder is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer of the 1981 nonfiction narrative, The Soul of a New Machine, about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation...
's Pulitzer prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning book, The Soul of a New Machine
The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder's non-fiction book, The Soul of a New Machine, chronicles the experiences of an engineering team racing to design a next generation computer under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure. This machine was eventually launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000...
(see references), making the MV line the best-documented computer project in recent history. The MV/8000 was a straightforward, 32-bit extension of the Nova-based Eclipse, yet still lacking a hardware stack pointer adopted by most new computers since the late 1960s. It was backwards-compatible with 16-bit Eclipse applications, used the same command-line interpreter as the 16-bit Eclipse, and because it was as advanced in function as VAX/VMS, could execute proprietary 32-bit applications.
MV Series
In two short years the first results of the project were released in 1980, the Eclipse MV/8000Data General Eclipse MV/8000
The Eclipse MV/8000 was the first in a family of 32-bit minicomputers produced by Data General during the 1980s. Codenamed Eagle during development, its architecture was a new 32-bit design backward compatible with the previous 16-bit Eclipse series. The development of the computer and the people...
. The MV systems generated an almost miraculous turnaround for Data General. Through the early 1980s sales picked up, and by 1984 the company had over a billion dollars in annual sales. Data General's proprietary video terminals would be among the first to adopt a wide 3-pad layout later standardized by versions of the IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
.
The MV series came in various iterations, from the MV/2000 (later MV/2500), MV/4000, MV/10000, and ultimately concluded with the MV/60000HA minicomputer. The MV/60000HA was intended to be a High Availability system, with many components duplicated to eliminate the single point of failure. Yet, there were failures among the system's many daughter boards, back-plane, and mid-plane. DG technicians were kept quite busy replacing boards and many blamed poor quality control at the DG factory in Mexico where they were made and refurbished.
In retrospect, the nicely performing MV series was too little, too late. At a time when DG invested its last dollar into the dying minicomputer segment, the microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
was rapidly making inroads to the lower-end market segment, and the introduction of the first workstation
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
s wiped out all 16-bit machines, once DG's best customer segment. While the MV series did stop the erosion of DG's customer base, this now smaller base was no longer large enough to allow DG to develop their next generation. DG had also changed their marketing to focus on direct sales to Fortune 100 companies and thus alienated many resellers.
Software
Data General developed operating systems for its hardware: DOS and RDOSRDOS
RDOS was a real-time operating system released in 1972 for the popular Data General Nova and Eclipse minicomputers...
for the Nova, RDOS and AOS for the 16-bit Eclipse C, M, and S lines, AOS/VS
AOS/VS
Data General wrote operating systems for its hardware: DOS and RDOS for the 16-bit Nova line; RDOS and AOS for the 16-bit Eclipse C, M and S lines; AOS/VS and AOS/RT32 and later AOS/VS II for the 32-bit Eclipse MV line....
and AOS/VS II for the Eclipse MV line, and a modified version of System V Unix called DG/UX
DG/UX
DG/UX was a Unix operating system developed by Data General for its Eclipse MV minicomputer line, and later the AViiON workstation and server line ....
for the Eclipse MV and AViiON machines. The AOS/VS software was the most commonly used DG software product and included CLI (Command Line Interpreter) allowing for complex scripting, DUMP/LOAD, and other custom components.
Related system software also in common use at the time included such packages as X.25
X.25
X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...
, Xodiac, and TCP/IP for networking, Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
, COBOL
COBOL
COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
, RPG
RPG programming language
RPG is a high-level programming language for business applications.It has a long history, having been developed by IBM in 1959 as the Report Program Generator - a tool to replicate card processing on the IBM 1401 then updated to RPG II for the IBM System/3 in the late 1960s, and since evolved into...
, PL/1, C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
and Data General Business Basic
Data General Business Basic
Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter developed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers...
for programming, INFOS II and DG/DBMS for databases, and the nascent relational database software DG/SQL.
Data General also offered an office automation suite named CEO
CEO (Data General)
CEO Office software from Data General was introduced in 1981. It included word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets, business graphics and desktop accessories. The software was developed mostly in PL/I on and for the AOS and AOS/VS operating systems.CEO was considered Office Automation Software...
(Comprehensive Electronic Office), which included a mail system, a calendar, a folder-based document store, a word processor, a spreadsheet processor, and other assorted tools. All were crude by today's standards but were revolutionary for their time.
Some software development from the early 70s is notable. PLN (created by Robert Nichols) was the host language for a number of DG products, making them easier to develop, enhance, and maintain than macro assembler equivalents. PLN smacked of a micro-subset of PL/1, in sharp contrast to other languages of the time, such as BLISS. The RPG product (shipped in 1976) incorporated a language runtime system implemented as a virtual machine which executed pre-compiled code as sequences of PLN statements and Eclipse commercial instruction routines. The latter provided microcode acceleration of arithmetic and conversion operations for a wide range of now-arcane data types such as overpunch characters. The DG Easy product, a portable application platform developed by Nichols and others from 1975-1979 but never marketed, had roots easily traceable back to the RPG VM created by Stephen Schleimer.
Also notable were several commercial software products developed in the mid to late 1970s in conjunction with the commercial computers. These products were popular with business customers because of their screen design feature and other ease-of-use features. The first product was IDEA (Interactive Data Entry/Access) which consisted of a screen design tool (IFMT), TP Controller (IMON) and a program development language (IFPL). The second was the CS40 line of products which used COBOL and their own ISAM
ISAM
ISAM stands for Indexed Sequential Access Method, a method for indexing data for fast retrieval. ISAM was originally developed by IBM for mainframe computers...
data manager. The COBOL variant used included an added screen section. Both of these products were a major departure from the transaction monitors of the day which did not have a screen design tool and used subroutine calls from COBOL to handle the screen. IDEA was identified by some market watchers as a precursor to fourth-generation programming language
Fourth-generation programming language
A fourth-generation programming language is a programming language or programming environment designed with a specific purpose in mind, such as the development of commercial business software. In the history of computer science, the 4GL followed the 3GL in an upward trend toward higher...
s.
The original IDEA ran on RDOS and would support up to 24 users in an RDOS Partition. Each user could use the same or a different program. Eventually IDEA ran on every commercial hardware product from the MicroNova (4 users) to the MV series under AOS/VS, the same IDEA program running all those systems. The CS40 (the first of this line) was a package system which supported four terminal users, each running a different COBOL program. These products also led to the development of a third product, TPMS (Transaction Processing Monitoring System (announced in 1980)) which could capably run a large number of COBOL or PL/I users with a smaller number of processors, a major resource and performance advantage on AOS and AOS/VS systems. TPMS had the same screen design tool as the earlier products. TPMS used defined subroutine calls for screen functions from COBOL or PL/I, which in some users' eyes made it more difficult to use. However, this product was aimed at the professional IS Programmers as were its competitors—IBM’s CICS
CICS
Customer Information Control System is a transaction server that runs primarily on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.CICS is a transaction manager designed for rapid, high-volume online processing. This processing is mostly interactive , but background transactions are possible...
and DEC’s TRAX. As with IDEA, TPMS used INFOS for information management and DG/DBMS for database management.
Data General-One
Data General's introduction of the Data General-OneData General-One
The Data General-One was a portable personal computer introduced in 1984 by minicomputer company Data General.-History:The 1983 Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 was a truly battery-operated, portable, and operable computer resting in one's lap—but had an 32x8 character screen, a rudimentary ROM-based...
in 1984 is an interesting story, as it is one of the few cases of a minicomputer company introducing a truly breakthrough PC product. The DG One was a nine-pound battery-powered MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
machine equipped with dual 3½" diskettes, a 79-key full-stroke keyboard, 128K to 512K of RAM, and a monochrome LCD
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
screen capable of either the standard 80×25 characters or full CGA
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
graphics (640×200). The Data General One was considered a modest advance over similar Osborne-Kaypro
Osborne 1
The Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable microcomputer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighed 10.7 kg , cost USD$ 1795, and ran the then-popular CP/M 2.2 operating system...
systems.
Despite the memorable advertisements ("The first computer able to fit inside the IBM PC"), the DG-1 was, however, only a modest success. One problem was the use of 3½" diskettes, which were slightly ahead of their time; popular software titles were not available in 3½" format and this was a serious issue because then-common diskette copy-protection schemes made it difficult for users to copy the software into that format. Additionally, the diskettes used a proprietary formatting scheme not compatible with products from other companies. Although Creative Computing
Creative Computing
Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from 1974 until December 1985, Creative Computing covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically-oriented BYTE. The magazine...
termed the price of US$2895 "competitive", it was a very expensive system and optional additions, such as expanded RAM and an external 5¼" floppy drive, drove the price considerably higher. The Achilles heel
Achilles Heel
Achilles Heel may refer to:* Achilles' heel, a metaphor for a fatal weakness in spite of overall strength* Achilles Heel , music by Pedro the Lion* Achilles Heel , off Antarctica...
, however, was the liquid-crystal display
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
itself, which was not backlit, had poor contrast, and was frequently accused of serving better as a mirror than as a screen. Usable outdoors or in bright offices only, a flashlight
Flashlight
A flashlight is a hand-held electric-powered light source. Usually the light source is a small incandescent lightbulb or light-emitting diode...
, it was joked, was often necessary to see the contents of the screen.
Another product killer was the incompatible serial port chip, an Intel 82C51 which was used to conserve power, instead of the 8250 used in the IBM PC. For a portable system, this was a critical flaw — PC programs that used the serial port wouldn't run on the DG-1 due of the non-standard register arrangement within the 82C51.
An updated version of the DG-1 appeared later with a much improved electroluminescent screen. However, the light-producing display could be washed out by bright sunlight. Additionally, the new screen was power hungry and consumed so much power that the battery option was removed, thereby causing the DG-1 to lose its status as a true portable.
Lock-in or No Lock-in?
Throughout the 1980s the computer market had evolved dramatically. Large installations in the past typically ran custom-developed software for a small range of tasks. For instance, IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
often delivered machines whose only purpose was to generate accounting data for a single company, running software tailored for that company alone.
By the mid-80s the introduction of new software development methods and the rapid acceptance of the SQL database was changing the way such software was developed. Now developers typically linked together several pieces of existing software, as opposed to developing everything from scratch. In this market the question of which machine was the "best" changed; it was no longer the machine with the best price/performance ratio
Price/performance ratio
In economics and engineering, the price/performance ratio refers to a product's ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for its price. Generally speaking, products with a higher price/performance ratio are more desirable, excluding other factors....
or service contracts, but the one that ran all of the third-party software you intended to use.
This change forced changes on the hardware vendors as well. Formerly almost all computer companies attempted to make their machines different enough that when their customers sought a more powerful machine, it was often cheaper to buy another from the same company. This was known as "vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in
In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs...
", which helped guarantee future sales even though the customers detested it.
With the change in software development, combined with new generations of commodity processors that could match the performance of low-end minicomputers, lock-in was no longer working. When forced to make a decision, it was often cheaper for the users to simply throw out all of their existing machinery and buy a microcomputer product instead. If this was not the case "now", it certainly appeared it would be within a generation or two of Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
.
In 1988 two company directors put together a report showing that if the company was to continue existing in the future, DG would have to either invest heavily in software to compete with new applications being delivered by IBM and DEC on their machines, or alternately exit the proprietary hardware business entirely.
Thomas West
Tom West
Joseph Thomas "Tom" West III was the protagonist of the Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book The Soul of a New Machine. West worked for Data General Corporation as a hardware engineer and vice president, retiring as Chief Technologist in 1998. West died at the age of 71 in his Westport,...
's report outlined these changes in the marketplace, and suggested that the customer was going to win the fight over lock-in. They also outlined a different solution: instead of trying to compete against the much larger IBM and DEC, they suggested that since the user no longer cared about the hardware as much as software, DG could deliver the best "commodity" machines instead.
"Specifically", the report stated, "DG should examine the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
market, where all of the needed software already exists, and see if DG can provide compelling Unix solutions." Now the customer could run any software they wished as long as it ran on Unix, and by the early 1990s, everything did. As long as DG's machines outperformed the competition, their customers would return because they liked the machines, not because they were forced; lock-in was over.
AViiON
De Castro agreed with the report, and future generations of the MV series were terminated. Instead, DG released a technically interesting series of Unix serverServer (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s known as the AViiON
Data General AViiON
AViiON was a series of computers from Data General that were the company's main product from the late 1980s until the company's server products were discontinued in 2001. Earlier AViiON models used the Motorola 88000 CPU, but later models moved to an all-Intel solution when Motorola stopped work on...
. The name "AViiON" was a reversed play on the name of DG's first product, Nova, implying "Nova II". In an effort to keep costs down, the AViiON was originally designed and shipped with the Motorola 88000
Motorola 88000
The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola. The 88000 was Motorola's attempt at a home-grown RISC architecture, started in the 1980s. The 88000 arrived on the market some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS...
RISC processor. The AViiON machines supported multi-processing, later evolving into NUMA
Non-Uniform Memory Access
Non-Uniform Memory Access is a computer memory design used in Multiprocessing, where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor...
-based systems, allowing the machines to scale upwards in performance by adding additional processors.
CLARiiON
An important element in all enterprise computer systems is high speed storage. At the time AViiON came to market, commodity hard drives could not offer the sort of performance needed for data center use. DG attacked this problem in the same fashion as the processor issue, by running a large number of drives in parallel. The overall performance was greatly improved and the resulting innovation was marketed originally as the HADA (High Availability Disk Array) and then later as the CLARiiONCLARiiON
CLARiiON is a discontinued SAN disk array manufactured and sold by EMC Corporation, it occupies the entry-level and mid-range of EMC's SAN disk array products....
line. The CLARiiON arrays, which offered SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
RAID
RAID
RAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit...
in various capacities, offered a great price/performance and platform flexibility over competing solutions.
The CLARiiON line was marketed not only to AViiON and Data General MV series customers, but also to customers running servers from other vendors such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics. Data General also embarked on a plan to hire storage sales specialists and to challenge EMC's Symmetrix in the wider market. The success of the CLARiiON product and the challenges faced by the other parts of Data General eventually led to Data General being acquired by EMC in 1999.
The Final Downturn and EMC Takeover; Life After Death
Despite Data General betting the AViiON farm on the Motorola 88000Motorola 88000
The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola. The 88000 was Motorola's attempt at a home-grown RISC architecture, started in the 1980s. The 88000 arrived on the market some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS...
, Motorola decided to end production of that line. The 88000 had never been very successful, and DG was the only major customer. When Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
and IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
proposed their joint solution based on POWER
IBM POWER
POWER is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
designs, the PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
, Motorola picked up the manufacturing contract and killed the 88000.
DG quickly responded and introduced new models of the AViiON series based on a true commodity processor, the Intel "x86" series. By this time a number of other vendors, notably Sequent Computer Systems
Sequent Computer Systems
Sequent Computer Systems, or Sequent, was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing open systems, innovating in both hardware and software Sequent Computer Systems, or Sequent, was...
, were also introducing similar machines. The lack of lock-in now came back to haunt DG, and the rapid commoditization of the Unix market led to shrinking sales. DG did begin a minor shift toward the service industry, training their technicians for the role of implementing a spate of new x86-based servers and the new Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
domain-driven, small server world. This never developed enough to offset the loss of high margin server business however.
CLARiiON did better after finding a large niche for Unix storage systems, and its sales were still strong enough to make DG a takeover target. EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation , a Financial Times Global 500, Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, develops, delivers and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure hardware, software, and services. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.Former Intel executive Richard Egan and his...
, a major data storage company, acquired Data General and its assets in 1999. Although details of the acquisition specified that EMC had to take the entire company, and not just the storage line, EMC quickly ended all development and production of DG computer hardware and parts, effectively ending Data General's presence in the segment. The maintenance business was sold to a third party, who also acquired all of DG's remaining hardware components for spare parts sales to old DG customers. The CLARiiON line continues to be a major player in the market today, and is still marketed under that name.
Data General would be only one of many New England based computer companies, including the original Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
that collapsed after the 1980s. On the World Wide Web, even the old Data General domain (http://www.dg.com), which contained a few EMC webpages that only mentioned the latter company in passing, was sold to the Dollar General
Dollar General
Dollar General Corp. is a U.S. chain of variety stores headquartered in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. As of January 2011, Dollar General operated over 9,300 stores in 35 U.S. states....
discount department store chain in October 2009.
Notable alumni
- DJ DelorieDJ DelorieDJ Delorie is an American software developer. He initiated and maintains the DJGPP project, a port of the GNU C/C++ compiler and tools suite, targeted for PCs running MS-DOS or DOS terminals under Microsoft Windows....
designed PC motherboards and BIOSBIOSIn IBM PC compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS or ROM BIOS , is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface....
code for Data General for four years. He authored DJGPPDJGPPDJGPP is a development suite for 386+ IBM PC compatibles which supports DOS-enabled operating systems. It is guided by DJ Delorie, who began the project in 1989. It is a port of the popular GCC compiler, as well as mostly GNU utilities such as bash, find, tar, ls, awk, sed, and ld to DPMI...
, and currently works for Red HatRed HatRed Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
on GCCGNU Compiler CollectionThe GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
. - Jean-Louis GasséeJean-Louis GasséeJean-Louis Gassée is a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He is most famous for founding Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. After leaving Be, he became Chairman of PalmSource, Inc. in November, 2004.-1980s: Apple Computer:Gassée worked for...
was with Data General in France before moving to Apple ComputerApple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
and Be Inc.Be Inc.Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray.... - Craig MundieCraig MundieCraig James Mundie is chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. He started in its consumer platforms division in 1992, managing the production of Windows CE for hand-held and automotive systems and early console games. In 1997, Mundie oversaw the acquisition of WebTV Networks...
was a software developer at Data General. He is now Chief Technologist at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. - Mike NashMike NashMike Nash is a retired Irish sportsperson. He played hurling with his local club South Liberties and was a member of the Limerick senior inter-county team in the 1990s.-References:...
worked on AOS/VS kernel virtual terminal services for PCI and today is a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. - Ray OzzieRay OzzieRaymond "Ray" Ozzie is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010...
was a software developer at Data General. He subsequently worked for Software ArtsSoftware ArtsSoftware Arts was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc, which was published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc...
, Lotus Development, Iris AssociatesIris AssociatesIris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of...
, and Groove NetworksGroove NetworksGroove Networks was a software company based in Beverly, Massachusetts. Founded by Ray Ozzie, the creator of IBM's Lotus Notes application, the privately held company specialized in productivity software that allows multiple users to work collaboratively on computer files simultaneously.On...
. Groove Networks was acquired by MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in 2005, and Ozzie has replaced Bill Gates as chief software architect at Microsoft. - Jonathan SachsJonathan SachsJonathan Sachs was the programmer who co-founded Lotus Development Corporation with Mitch Kapor in 1982 and created the first version of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program...
co-founded Lotus Development where he authored 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
. - Christopher StoneChristopher StoneMajor Christopher Reynolds Stone, D.S.O., M.C. was the first disc jockey in the United Kingdom.He was educated at Eton College and served in the Royal Fusiliers. In 1906 Stone published a book of Sea songs and ballads and in 1923 he wrote the history of his old regiment...
founded Object Management GroupObject Management GroupObject Management Group is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling and model-based standards.- Overview :...
(created CORBAÇorbaChorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...
) and became Vice Chairman/CEO of NovellNovellNovell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
. - Mark Townsend was a manager in the Xodiac Networking group who is now an Executive VP at Skillsoft. Mark's vacation home on Cape CodCape CodCape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
received the Boston Globe's Home of the Year award in 2006. - Asher Waldfogel was a software engineer in Special Systems who later went on to found Redback NetworksRedback NetworksRedback Networks was a telecommunications equipment company, specializing in hardware and software used by ISPs to manage broadband services. In December 2006, Ericsson and Redback announced they had signed a definitive agreement under which Ericsson would acquire Redback...
, Tollbridge TechnologiesTollbridge TechnologiesTollbridge Technologies was a voice over broadband company founded in 1998 by Gary Tauss and Asher Waldfogel, cofounder of Redback Networks. Tollbridge was based in Santa Clara, California....
and PeakStreamPeakStreamPeakStream was a parallel processing software company located in Redwood Shores, California founded by Matthew Papakipos and Asher Waldfogel in April 2005 and backed by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. PeakStream released a high-performance parallel processing library targeting ATI graphics...
. - Joshua Weiss was a manager in the Xodiac Networking group who went on to co-found Prominet (bought by Lucent TechnologiesLucent TechnologiesAlcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., originally Lucent Technologies, Inc. is a French-owned technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs...
) and later was founder and CEO of Nauticus (bought by Sun MicrosystemsSun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
). - Edward ZanderEdward ZanderEdward J. Zander is an American business executive. He was CEO and Chairman of the Board of Motorola from January 2004 until January 2008, remaining as chairman until May 2008...
was product marketing manager at Data General before his positions at Apollo ComputerApollo ComputerApollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s...
, Sun MicrosystemsSun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
and MotorolaMotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
as their former CEO. - Peter Darnell was the developer of Data General Language (DGL) and went on to develop C compilers for Unix and Windows. He wrote a book on C and is the developer of the visual programming language VisSimVisSimVisSim is a visual block diagram language for simulation of dynamical systems and model based design of embedded systems. It is developed by Visual Solutions of Westford, Massachusetts....
by Visual Solutions. - Other alumni are listed in Soul of a New Machine, below.