XPost: alt.folklore.computers   
   From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Thu, 7 Aug 2025 07:26:32 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:   
      
   > On 8/6/25 22:29, Thomas Koenig wrote:   
   >   
   >> That is one of the things I find astonishing - how a company like DG   
   >> grew from a kitche-table affair to the size they had.   
   >>   
   > Recent history is littered with companies like this.   
      
   DG were famously the setting for that Tracy Kidder book, “The Soul Of A   
   New Machine”, chronicling their belated and high-pressure project to enter   
   the 32-bit virtual-memory supermini market and compete with DEC’s VAX.   
      
   Looking at things with the eyes of a software guy, I found some of their   
   hardware decisions questionable. Like they thought they were very clever   
   to avoid having separate privilege modes in the processor status register   
   like the VAX did: instead, they encoded the access privilege mode in the   
   address itself.   
      
   I guess they thought that 32 address bits left plenty to spare for   
   something like this. But I think it just shortened the life of their 32-   
   bit architecture by that much more.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)