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From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: 8 Mar 2025 08:04:01 GMT
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On Sat, 8 Mar 2025 00:21:15 -0500, c186282 wrote:

> On 3/7/25 2:23 PM, rbowman wrote:
>> On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 13:06:38 -0000 (UTC), Dan Cross wrote:
>> 
>>> DEC in the 80s and 90s had a very forward-looking vision of
>>> distributed computing; sadly they botched it on the business side.
>> 
>> Their entry into the PC business certainly was ill-conceived.
> 
> 
>    Well ... the times ... EVERYBODY had to have a PC .....
> 
>    Unfortunately the market was already saturated.

That was part of DEC's problem.  The Rainbows weren't completely 
compatible with MSDOS software. Then they tried to lock everyone into 
buying their diskettes with a proprietary format. Add to that the single-
sided siamesed drives and other quirks they were too far from what the 
market expected by then.

 
>    BTW, that page on PLCs was very interesting.

Alive and kicking. A few years ago I interviewed a fairly young guy and I 
was surprised when he had PLC programming on his resume. I'd been away 
from industrial applications for over 20 years and thought they would have 
faded away in the '90s. 

Relay logic was sort of fun. You were building state machines with relays, 
Eagle Signal electro-mechanical timers, limit switches, and so forth. I 
never did it but even more fascinating were some of the complex machines 
that were all cams, levers, gears, and springs except for the drive 
motor. 

https://www.hpmuseum.org/srw.htm

With all its sophistication it wasn't protected against an attempt to 
divide by zero. It would churn away until you pulled the plug and put it 
out of its misery.