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Data General Corporation was an early
minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...
firm formed in 1968. Three of the four founders were former employees of
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
(DEC). Their first product, 1969's
Data General Nova The Nova is a series of 16-bit computing, 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units. The first model, known simply as "Nov ...
, was a
16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...
minicomputer intended to both outperform and cost less than the equivalent from DEC, the 12-bit
PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units sold during the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pi ...
. A basic Nova system cost two-thirds or less than a similar PDP-8 while running faster, offering easy expandability, being significantly smaller, and proving more reliable in the field. Combined with
Data General RDOS The Data General RDOS (''Real-time Disk Operating System'') is a real-time operating system released in 1970. The software was bundled with the company's popular Nova and Eclipse minicomputers. Overview RDOS is capable of multitasking, with ...
(DG/RDOS) and programming languages like
Data General Business Basic Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter (based on a version from MAI Basic Four) marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most bus ...
, Novas provided a multi-user platform far ahead of many contemporary systems. A series of updated Nova machines were released through the early 1970s that kept the Nova line at the front of the 16-bit mini world. The Nova was followed by the
Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...
series which offered much larger memory capacity while still being able to run Nova code without modification. The Eclipse launch was marred by production problems and it was some time before it was a reliable replacement for the tens of thousands of Novas in the market. As the mini world moved from 16-bit to 32, DG introduced the Data General Eclipse MV/8000, whose development was extensively documented in the popular 1981 book, '' The Soul of a New Machine''. Although DG's computers were successful, the introduction of the
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
in 1981 marked the beginning of the end for minicomputers, and by the end of the decade, the entire market had largely disappeared. The introduction of the
Data General/One The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in September 1984 by Data General. It was the first battery-powered laptop on the market that was fully compatible with the IBM PC, featuring a full-sized LCD capable of displaying 80×25 text ...
in 1984 did nothing to stop the erosion. In a major business pivot, in 1989 DG released the AViiON series of scalable
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
systems which spanned from desktop
workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
s to departmental servers. This scalability was managed through the use of
NUMA Numa or NUMA may refer to: * Non-uniform memory access (NUMA), in computing Places * Numa Falls, a waterfall in Kootenay National Park, Canada * 15854 Numa, a main-belt asteroid United States * Numa, Indiana * Numa, Iowa * Numa, Oklahoma * ...
, allowing a number of commodity processors to work together in a single system. Following AViiON was the CLARiiON series of
network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...
systems which became a major product line in the later 1990s. This led to a purchase by EMC, the major vendor in the storage space at that time. EMC shut down all of DG's lines except for CLARiiON, which continued sales until 2012.


History


Origin, founding and early years: Nova and SuperNova

Data General (DG) was founded by several engineers from
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
who were frustrated with DEC's management and left to form their own company. The chief founders were
Edson de Castro Edson de Castro (September 14, 1938 – September 6, 2024) was an American computer engineer and businessman, best known for being a chief founder of Data General and for designing that company's Nova series of computers. Life and career De Cast ...
, Henry Burkhardt III, and
Richard Sogge Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and ...
of Digital Equipment (DEC), and
Herbert Richman Herbert may refer to: People * Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert * Herbert (given name) * Herbert (surname) Places Antarctica * Herbert Mountains, Coats Land * Herbert Sound, Graham Land Australia * Herbert, Northern Territ ...
of
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...
. The company was founded in
Hudson, Massachusetts Hudson is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, with a total population of 20,092 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Before its incorporation as a town in 1866, Hudson was a ne ...
, in 1968. Harvey Newquist was hired from Computer Control Corporation to oversee manufacturing. Edson de Castro was the chief engineer in charge of the
PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units sold during the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pi ...
, 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 A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or ''ears'' that protrude from each side of the ...
. Many PDP-8s still operated decades later in these roles. De Castro was watching developments in manufacturing, especially more complex
printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...
s (PCBs) and
wave soldering Wave soldering is a bulk soldering process used in printed circuit board manufacturing. The circuit board is passed over a pan of molten solder in which a pump produces an upwelling of solder that looks like a standing wave. As the circuit bo ...
that suggested that the PDP-8 could be produced much more inexpensively. DEC was not interested, having turned its attention increasingly to the high-end market. Convinced he could improve the process, De Castro began work on his own low-cost 16-bit design. The result was released in 1969 by Data General as the
Nova A nova ( novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. All observed novae involve white ...
. 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 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...
, as did competing products, such as the
HP 1000 HP may refer to: Businesses, groups, organisations * HP Inc., an American technology company ** Hewlett-Packard, the predecessor to HP before the 2015 split ** Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the other company created as a result of the split * H ...
; compilers used hardware-based memory locations in lieu of a stack pointer. Designed to be rack-mounted similarly to the later PDP-8 machines, it was packaged on four PCB cards and was thus smaller in height, while also including a number of features that made it run considerably faster. Announced as "the best small computer in the world", the Nova quickly gained a following, especially in scientific and educational markets, and made the company flush with cash. DEC sued for misappropriation of its trade secrets, but this ultimately went nowhere. With the initial success of the Nova, Data General went public in the fall of 1969. The original Nova was soon followed by the faster SuperNova, which replaced the Nova's 4-bit
arithmetic logic unit In computing, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a Combinational logic, combinational digital circuit that performs arithmetic and bitwise operations on integer binary numbers. This is in contrast to a floating-point unit (FPU), which operates on ...
(ALU) with a 16-bit version that made the machine roughly four times as fast. Several variations and upgrades to the SuperNova core followed. 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$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
100 million in sales in 1975. In 1977, DG launched a 16-bit microcomputer called the microNOVA to poor commercial success. The Nova series played a very important role as instruction-set inspiration to Charles P. Thacker and others at
Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...
during their construction of the
Xerox Alto The Xerox Alto is a computer system developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1970s. It is considered one of the first workstations or personal computers, and its development pioneered many aspects of modern computing. It featu ...
.


Late 1970s to late 1980s: crisis and a short term solution

In 1974, the Nova was supplanted by their upscale 16-bit machine, the
Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...
. Based on many of the same concepts as the Nova, it added support for
virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...
and multitasking more suitable to the small office environment. 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 is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, 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 part ...
, 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.


Fountainhead

While DG was still struggling with Eclipse, in 1977, Digital announced the
VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...
series, their first
32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
minicomputer line, described as " super-minis". This coincided with the aging of DEC's 16-bit products, notably the
PDP-11 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...
, which were coming due for replacement. It appeared there was an enormous potential market for 32-bit machines, one that DG might be able to "scoop". 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", or FHP for short (Fountain Head Project). Development took place off-site so that even DG workers would not know of it. The developers were given free rein over the design and selected a system that used a writable instruction set. The idea was that the
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...
(ISA) was not fixed, programs could write their own ISA and upload it as
microcode In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions ...
to the processor's
writable control store A control store is the part of a CPU's control unit that stores the CPU's microprogram. It is usually accessed by a microsequencer. A control store implementation whose contents are unalterable is known as a Read Only Memory (ROM) or Read Only S ...
. This would allow the ISA to be tailored to the programs being run, for instance, one might upload an ISA tuned for
COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...
if the company's workload included significant numbers of COBOL programs. When Digital's
VAX-11/780 The VAX-11 is a discontinued family of 32-bit superminicomputers, running the Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) instruction set architecture (ISA), developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Development began in 1976. In ad ...
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.


Eagle

In the spring of 1978, with Fountainhead apparently in
development hell Development hell, also known as development purgatory or development limbo, is media and software industry jargon for a project, concept, or idea that remains in a stage of early development for a long time because of legal, technical, or artistic ...
, a secret
skunkworks Skunkworks or Skunk works may refer to: * Skunk Works, an official trademark for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Projects). * Skunkworks project, a project typically developed by a small ...
project was started to develop an alternative 32-bit system known as "Eagle" by a team led by Tom West. References to "the Eagle project" and "Project Eagle" co-exist. Eagle was a straightforward, 32-bit extension of the Nova-based Eclipse. It was backwards-compatible with 16-bit Eclipse applications, used the same command-line interpreter, but offered improved 32-bit performance over the VAX 11/780 while using fewer components. By late 1979, it became clear that Eagle would deliver before Fountainhead, igniting an intense
turf war A turf war is a fight over territory or resources, or may refer to: Music * ''Turf Wars'', a 2007 album by the Canadian band Daggermouth * "Turf War", a song on the 2001 album '' Filmtracks 2000'' by American composer Bill Television * '' Turf ...
within the company for constantly shrinking project funds. In the meantime, customers were abandoning 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. Ultimately, Fountainhead was cancelled and Eagle became the new MV series, with the first model, the Data General Eclipse MV/8000, announced in April 1980. The Eagle Project was the subject of
Tracy Kidder John Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945) is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his '' The Soul of a New Machine'' (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has recei ...
's
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
-winning book, '' The Soul of a New Machine'', making the MV line the best-documented computer project in recent history.


MV series

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. One of Data General's significant customers at this time was the
United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Natio ...
, which starting in the mid-1980s used DG systems installed at all levels from headquarters in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
down to individual ranger stations and fire command posts. This required equipment of high reliability and generally rugged construction that could be deployed in a wide range of places, often to be maintained and used by people with no computer background at all. The intent was to create new kinds of functional integration in an agency that had long prized its decentralized structure. Despite some tensions, the implementation was effective and the overall effects on the agency notably positive. The introduction, implementation, and effects of the DG systems in USFS were documented in a series of evaluative reports prepared in the late 1980s by the
RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...
. The MV series came in various iterations, from the MV/2000 (later MV/2500), MV/4000, MV/10000, MV/15000, MV/20000, MV/30000, MV/40000 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 A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...
was rapidly making inroads to the lower-end market segment, and the introduction of the first
workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
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 RDOS 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
UNIX System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
called
DG/UX DG/UX is a discontinued Unix operating system developed by Data General for its Eclipse MV minicomputer line, and later the AViiON workstation and server line (both Motorola 88000 and Intel IA-32-based variants). Overview DG/UX 1.00, released in ...
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 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...
, Xodiac, and
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
for networking, Fortran,
COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...
,
RPG RPG may refer to: Military * Rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon **''Ruchnoi Protivotankoviy Granatomyot'' (Russian: ''Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт''), hand-held anti-tank grenade laun ...
,
PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...
, C and
Data General Business Basic Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter (based on a version from MAI Basic Four) marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most bus ...
for programming, INFOS II and DG/DBMS for databases, and the nascent relational database software DG/SQL. Data General also offered an
office automation Office automation refers to the varied computer machinery and software used to digitally create, collect, store, manipulate, and relay office information needed for accomplishing basic tasks. Raw data storage, electronic transfer, and the manageme ...
suite named '' Comprehensive Electronic Office'' (CEO), which included a mail system, a calendar, a folder-based document store, a word processor (CEOWrite), a spreadsheet processor, and other assorted tools. All were crude by today's standards, but were revolutionary for their time. CEOWrite was also offered on the DG One Portable. Some software development from the early 1970s 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/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...
, in sharp contrast to other languages of the time, such as
BLISS BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C ...
. 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 to 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 Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) is a method for creating, maintaining, and manipulating computer files of data so that records can be retrieved sequentially or randomly by one or more keys. Indexes of key fields are maintained to achieve ...
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 A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is a high-level programming language, high-level computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each ...
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 IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online business transaction management, transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS ...
and DEC's TRAX. As with IDEA, TPMS used INFOS for information management and DG/DBMS for database management.


Xodiac

In 1979, DG introduced their Xodiac networking system. This was based on the
X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...
standard at the lower levels, and their own
application layer An application layer is an abstraction layer that specifies the shared communication protocols and interface methods used by hosts in a communications network. An ''application layer'' abstraction is specified in both the Internet Protocol Su ...
protocols on top. Because it was based on X.25, remote sites could be linked together over commercial X.25 services like
Telenet Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lin ...
in the US or
Datapac DATAPAC, or Datapac in some documents, was Canada's packet switched X.25-equivalent data network. Initial work on a data-only network started in 1972 and was announced by Bell Canada in 1974 as Dataroute. DATAPAC was implemented by adding packet swi ...
in Canada. Data General software packages supporting Xodiac included Comprehensive Electronic Office (CEO). In June 1987, Data General announced its intention to replace Xodiac with the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol suite.


Dasher terminals

Data General produced a full range of peripherals, sometimes by
rebadging In the automotive industry, rebadging (also known as badge engineering, an intentionally ironic misnomer in that little or no actual engineering takes place) is a form of market segmentation used by automobile manufacturers around the world. T ...
printers for example, but Data General's own series of CRT-based and hard-copy terminals were high quality and featured a generous number of function keys, each with the ability to send different codes, with any combination of control and shift keys, which influenced
WordPerfect WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...
design. The model 6053 Dasher 2 featured an easily tilted screen, but used many
integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
s; the smaller, lighter D100, D200 and eventually the D210 replaced it as the basic user terminal, while graphics models such as the D460 (with ANSI X3.64 compatibility) occupied the very high end of the range. Terminal emulators for the D2/D3/D100/D200/D210 (and some features of the D450/460) do exist, including the Freeware 1993 DOS program in D460.zip. Most Data General software was written specifically for their own terminals (or the terminal emulation built into the Desktop Generation DG10, but the Data General One built-in terminal emulator is not often suitable), although software using
Data General Business BASIC Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter (based on a version from MAI Basic Four) marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most bus ...
could be more flexible in terminal handling, because logging into a Business BASIC system would initiate a process whereby the terminal type would (usually) be auto-detected.


Data General/One

Data General's introduction of the
Data General/One The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in September 1984 by Data General. It was the first battery-powered laptop on the market that was fully compatible with the IBM PC, featuring a full-sized LCD capable of displaying 80×25 text ...
(DG-1) in 1984 is one of the few cases of a minicomputer company introducing a truly breakthrough PC product. Considered genuinely portable, rather than "luggable", as alternatives often were called, it was a nine-pound battery-powered
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
machine equipped with dual 3-inch diskettes, a 79-key full-stroke keyboard, 128 KB to 512 KB of RAM, and a monochrome
LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...
screen capable of either the full-sized standard 80×25 characters or full CGA graphics (640×200). The DG-1 was considered a modest advance over similar Osborne/
Kaypro Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based in Solana Beach, California, in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro ...
systems overall.


Desktop Generation

Data General also brought out a small-footprint "Desktop Generation" range, starting with the DG10 that included both Data General and
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
CPUs in a patented closely coupled arrangement, able to run
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
or
CP/M-86 CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Re ...
concurrently with DG/RDOS, with each benefiting from the hardware acceleration given by other CPU as a co-processor that would handle (for instance) screen graphics or disk operations concurrently. Other members of the Desktop Generation range, the DG20 and DG30, were aimed more at traditional commercial environments, such as multi-user COBOL systems, replacing refrigerator-sized minicomputers with toaster-sized modular microcomputers based around the microECLIPSE CPUs and some of the technology developed for the microNOVA-based "Micro Products" range such as the MP/100 and MP/200 that had struggled to find a market niche. The Single-processor version of the DG10, the DG10SP, was the entry-level machine with, like the DG20 and 30, no ability to run Intel software. Despite having some good features and having less direct competition from the flood of cheap PC compatibles, the Desktop Generation range also struggled, partly because they offered an economical way of running what was essentially "legacy software" while the future was clearly either slightly cheaper Personal Computers or slightly more expensive "super minicomputers" such as the MV and VAX computers.


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,
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
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-1980s, 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 In economics, engineering, business management and marketing the price–performance ratio is often written as cost–performance, cost–benefit or capability/price (C/P), refers to a product's ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for i ...
or service contracts, but the one that ran all of the third-party software the customer 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 In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lockin, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. The use of open standards and alternati ...
", 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 at present, it certainly appeared it would be within a generation or two of
Moore's law Moore's law is the observation that the Transistor count, number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and Forecasting, projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of ...
. In 1988, two company directors put together a report showing that if the company were 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 Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
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
server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...
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 The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays ...
RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...
processor. The AViiON machines supported multi-processing, later evolving into
NUMA Numa or NUMA may refer to: * Non-uniform memory access (NUMA), in computing Places * Numa Falls, a waterfall in Kootenay National Park, Canada * 15854 Numa, a main-belt asteroid United States * Numa, Indiana * Numa, Iowa * Numa, Oklahoma * ...
-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 disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
s 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 CLARiiON line. The CLARiiON arrays, which offered
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
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 Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
,
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
and
Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
. Data General also embarked on a plan to hire storage sales specialists and to challenge the
EMC Symmetrix The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then directly attached to a computer or I/O channel, or shared on a storage area network or a local area net ...
in the wider market.


Joint venture with Soviet company

On December 12, 1989, DG and
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
software developer NPO Parma announced Perekat (Перекат, “Rolling Thunder,”) the first joint venture between an American computer company and a Soviet company. DG would provide hardware and NPO Parma the software, and Austrian companies Voest Alpine Industrieanlagenbau and their marketing group Voest Alpine Vertriebe would build the plant.


Final downturn

Despite Data General's betting the AViiON farm on the
Motorola 88000 The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays ...
, Motorola decided to end production of that CPU. The 88000 had never been very successful, and DG was the only major customer. When
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...
and
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
proposed their joint solution based on
POWER architecture Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power ISA ...
, the
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
, Motorola picked up the manufacturing contract and killed the 88000. DG quickly responded by introducing new models of the AViiON series based on a true commodity processor, the
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
series. By this time a number of other vendors, notably
Sequent Computer Systems Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) Open system (computing), open systems, innovatin ...
, 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 Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
domain-driven, small server world. This never developed enough to offset the loss of high margin server business however. Data General also targeted the explosion of the internet in the latter 1990s with the formation of the THiiN Line business unit, led by Tom West, which had a focus on creation and sale of so-called "internet appliances". The product developed was called the SiteStak web server appliance and was designed as an inexpensive website hosting product.


EMC takeover

CLARiiON was the only product line that saw continued success through the later 1990s after finding a large niche for Unix storage systems, and its sales were still strong enough to make DG a takeover target. EMC, the 800-pound gorilla in the storage market, announced in August 1999 that they would buy Data General and its assets for $1.1 billion or $19.58 a share. The acquisition was completed on October 12, 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 continued to be a major player in the market and was marketed under that name until January 2012. CLARiiON was also widely sold by Dell through a worldwide OEM deal with EMC. The Clariion and Celerra storage products evolved into EMC's unified storage platform, the VNX platform. Data General would be only one of many New England based computer companies, including the original
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
, that collapsed or were sold to larger companies after the 1980s. On the Internet, even the old Data General domain (dg.com), which contained a few EMC webpages that only mentioned the latter company in passing, was sold to the
Dollar General Dollar General Corporation is an American chain of discount stores headquartered in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. As of January 8, 2024, Dollar General operated 19,643 stores in the contiguous United States and Mexico. The company began in 1939 in ...
discount department store chain in October 2009.


Marketing

Data General exhibited a brash style of marketing and advertising, which acted to set the company in the spotlight. A memorable advertising campaign during the early 1980s Desktop Generation era, was issuance of T-shirts with the logo "We did it on a desktop". The early AViiON servers were portrayed as powerful computing in the size of a pizza box. Data General sponsored the Tyrrell Formula 1 team in the Formula 1 World Championships in
1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a n ...
,
1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. ** Spain and Portugal en ...
and
1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...
, with prominent placing on the team's
014 014 may refer to: * Argus As 014 The Argus As 014 (designated 109-014 by the Ministry of Aviation (Germany), RLM) was a pulsejet engine used on the German V-1 flying bomb of World War II, and the first model of pulsejet engine placed in mass pr ...
,
015 015 may refer to: * 015, a telephone numbers in Malaysia, telephone number code in Malaysia * ''Global Underground 015'', DJ mix album by Darren Emerson * ''The Haunting of Tram Car 015'', 2019 novella by P. Djèlí Clark * JWH-015, chemical from t ...
and DG016 cars. The DG016 used in 1987 was prefixed ''DG'' in deference to Data General.


Alumni

*
DJ Delorie A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music fes ...
designed PC motherboards and
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...
code for Data General for four years. He authored
DJGPP DJ's GNU Programming Platform (DJGPP) is a software development suite for Intel 80386-level and above, IBM PC compatibles which supports DOS operating systems. It is guided by DJ Delorie, who began the project in 1989. It is a port of the GNU ...
, and works for
Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...
on GCC. * Peter Darnell was a developer of DG/L 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 VisSim by Visual Solutions. *
Jean-Louis Gassée Jean-Louis Gassée (born 24 March 1944) is a business executive. He is best known as a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He also founded Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. After leavin ...
was with Data General in France before moving to
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...
and
Be Inc. Be Inc. was an American computer company that created and developed the BeOS and BeIA operating systems, and the BeBox personal computer. It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Inc., Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served a ...
* Ronald H. Gruner was head of Data General's Fountainhead project which competed with the MV/8000. After leaving DG he co-founded
Alliant Computer Systems Alliant Computer Systems Corporation was a computer company that designed and manufactured parallel computing systems. Together with Pyramid Technology and Sequent Computer Systems, Alliant's machines pioneered the symmetric multiprocessing market ...
along with former DG colleague Craig Mundie. *
David C. Mahoney David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damas ...
founded Banyan Systems and pioneered Local Area network technologies in late 1980s along with Novell. *
Craig Mundie Craig James Mundie (born July 1, 1949) is an American businessperson. In 1982, he co-founded Alliant Computer Systems, becoming CEO. He was later Senior Advisor to the CEO at Microsoft, after being Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Office ...
was a software developer at Data General and later became Chief Technologist at
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. *
Mike Nash Michael Nash (born 1965) is an Irish retired hurler. At club level, he played with South Liberties and at inter-county level with the Limerick senior hurling team. Career Nash played hurling at all grades as a secondary school student at ...
worked on AOS/VS kernel virtual terminal services for PCI and was a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft and is currently Vice President, Consumer PC & Solutions, Printing and Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packard Company. *
Ray Ozzie Raymond "Ray" Ozzie (born November 20, 1955) is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010. Before Microsoft, he was best known for ...
was a software developer at Data General. He subsequently worked for
Software Arts Software 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., later named VisiCorp. Software Arts also developed TK!Solver, a nume ...
,
Lotus Development Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...
,
Iris Associates Iris Associates was an American software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more en ...
, and Groove Networks. Groove Networks was acquired by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
in 2005, and Ozzie replaced Bill Gates as chief software architect at Microsoft from 2006 until 2010. *
Jonathan Sachs Jonathan Sachs (born June 25, 1947) is a 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. Sachs left Lotus in 1985 to develop photo-editing so ...
co-founded
Lotus Development Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...
where he authored 1-2-3. * Jit Saxena founded
Netezza IBM Netezza (pronounced ne-teez-a) is a subsidiary of American technology company IBM that designs and markets high-performance data warehouse appliances and advanced analytics applications for the most demanding analytic uses including enterpr ...
, search technology company *Christopher Stone founded
Object Management Group The Object Management Group (OMG®) is a computer industry Standards Development Organization (SDO), or Voluntary Consensus Standards Body (VCSB). OMG develops enterprise integration and modeling standards for a range of technologies. Busin ...
(created
CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sy ...
) and became vice chairman/CEO of
Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...
. * Asher Waldfogel was a software engineer in Special Systems (software) who later went on to found
Redback Networks Redback Networks provided hardware and software used by Internet service providers to manage broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals ...
, Tollbridge Technologies and PeakStream. * Steve Wallach cofounded
Convex Computer Convex Computer Corporation was a company that developed, manufactured and marketed vector minisupercomputers and supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the He ...
. * Joshua Weiss was a manager in the Xodiac Networking group who went on to co-found Prominet (bought by
Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the div ...
) and later was founder and CEO of Nauticus (bought by
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
). * Vernon Weiss was a manager in the portable computing group who led the development of the
Data General/One The Data General/One (DG-1) was a laptop introduced in September 1984 by Data General. It was the first battery-powered laptop on the market that was fully compatible with the IBM PC, featuring a full-sized LCD capable of displaying 80×25 text ...
, the Data General/Two, and the
Data General Walkabout The Walkabout is a family of notebook-sized laptops introduced by Data General in 1989 and discontinued in 1993. The first entry in the line, simply named the Walkabout, was a battery-powered portable terminal capable of emulating multiple proto ...
. He was later a key person in the creation of the XPS family of personal computers at Dell and was the director of the personal computing division at
Packard Bell Packard Bell is a personal computer hardware brand which originated as Packard Bell Electronics, Inc., an independent American computer company. Packard Bell Electronics was founded in Los Angeles in 1986 by Israeli-American investors who bough ...
and a product manager at
Northgate Computer Systems __NOTOC__ Northgate Computer Systems, Inc., based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, United States, was a mail-order personal computer company, founded in 1987 by Arthur "Art" Lazere. The 1990s were a golden era for mail-order PC business. Consumers w ...
. * Tom West was the manager for the MV/8000 and later projects. He was the main protagonist of the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
winning 1981
non-fiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or content (media), media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real life, real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to pre ...
book '' The Soul of a New Machine''. * Edward Zander was product marketing manager at Data General before his positions at
Apollo Computer Apollo Computer Inc. was an American technology corporation headquartered and founded in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1980 by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others. Apollo Computer developed and produced Apoll ...
,
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
and
Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
as CEO. *Wayne Rosing was hardware manager of Special Systems (hardware) who left to design the Lisa workstation for Apple. Though not a commercial success, stripped down it became the Macintosh. Rosing later went to Sun Microsystems where he was Vice President of Advanced Development, appearing on the cover of ''Fortune'' magazine. He retired as VP of Hardware at Google. *
George Woltman George Woltman (born November 10, 1957) is the founder of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed computing project researching Mersenne prime numbers using his software Prime95. He graduated from the Massachusetts Instit ...
went on to found the
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) is a collaborative project of volunteers who use freely available software to search for Mersenne prime numbers. GIMPS was founded in 1996 by George Woltman, who also wrote the Prime95 client and ...
(GIMPS) and is the author of
Prime95 Prime95, also distributed as the command-line utility mprime for FreeBSD and Linux, is a freeware application written by George Woltman. It is the official client of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a volunteer computing project ...
(which is used to search for
Mersenne Prime In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 1 ...
numbers and for hardware stress testing.)


Notes


References

*Kidder, Tracy (1981). '' The Soul of a New Machine''. Little, Brown and Company. Reprint edition July 1997 by Modern Library. .


External links


Official Website
circa 1996
SimuLogics ("dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of the Data General Nova, Eclipse, MV and compatible computers")Carl Friend's Computer Museum (has pages for over a dozen DG systems) data general facebook alumni group
{{Authority control 1968 establishments in Massachusetts 1999 disestablishments in Massachusetts 1999 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1968 American companies disestablished in 1999 Computer companies established in 1968 Computer companies disestablished in 1999 Defunct computer companies based in Massachusetts Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer systems companies Defunct software companies of the United States EMC Corporation Manufacturing companies established in 1968 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1999 Technology companies established in 1968 Technology companies disestablished in 1999