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From: Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2025 13:16:52 -0800
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On 3/2/2025 12:39 PM, BGB wrote:
> On 3/2/2025 5:46 AM, Anton Ertl wrote:
>> BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> writes:
>>> It almost seems like they could have tried making a PDP-11 based PC.
>>
>> I dimly remember that there were efforts in that direction.  But the
>> PDP-11 does not even have the cumbersome support for more than 64KB
>> that the 8086 has (there were PDP-11s with more, but that was even
>> more cumbersome to use).
>>
> 
> I had thought it apparently used a model similar to the 65C816.
> 
> Namely, that you could address 64K code + 64K data at a time, but then 
> load a value into a special register to access different RAM banks.
> 
> Granted, no first hand experience with PDP-11.
> 
> 
>> DEC also tried their hand in the PC-like business (DEC Rainbow 100).
>> They did not succeed.  Maybe that's the decisive difference from HP:
>> They did succeed in the PC market.
>>
> 
> I guess they could have also tried competing against the Commodore 64 
> and Apple II, which were also popular around that era.
> 
> No idea how their pricing compared with the IBM PC's, but in any case, 
> those who had success were generally a lot cheaper.
> 
> 
> Well, except for the Macintosh apparently, which managed to survive with 
> its comparably higher costs.

Yes, but . . .  Its earlier, more expensive incarnation, the Lisa did 
not survive, which shows there is a limit to how much more people are 
willing to pay.  And Macintosh was initially successful as a sort of 
niche machine for "creative types", as opposed to "business users" who 
used PCs.


-- 
  - Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)