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3.4 KiB
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24 lines
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>DEC</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../D.html" title="D"/><link rel="previous" href="Death--X-of.html" title="Death, X of"/><link rel="next" href="DEC-Wars.html" title="DEC Wars"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">DEC</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Death--X-of.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><th width="60%" align="center">D</th><td width="20%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="DEC-Wars.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="DEC"/><dt xmlns="" id="DEC"><b>DEC</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/dek/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> <span class="grammar">n.</span> Commonly used abbreviation
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for Digital Equipment Corporation, later deprecated by DEC itself in favor
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of “<span class="quote">Digital</span>” and now entirely obsolete following the buyout by
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Compaq. Before the <a href="../K/killer-micro.html"><i class="glossterm">killer micro</i></a> revolution of the
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late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic with DEC's pioneering
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timesharing machines. The first of the group of cultures described by this
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lexicon nucleated around the PDP-1 (see <a href="../T/TMRC.html"><i class="glossterm">TMRC</i></a>).
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Subsequently, the PDP-6, <a href="../P/PDP-10.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-10</i></a>,
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<a href="../P/PDP-20.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-20</i></a>, <a href="../P/PDP-11.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-11</i></a> and
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<a href="../V/VAX.html"><i class="glossterm">VAX</i></a> were all foci of large and important hackerdoms,
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and DEC machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet machine
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population. DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era
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(roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace microcomputers and Unix
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early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after
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<a href="../S/silicon.html"><i class="glossterm">silicon</i></a> got cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor
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design tradition owes a major debt to the <a href="../P/PDP-11.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-11</i></a>
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instruction set, and every one of the major general-purpose microcomputer
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OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, OS/2, Windows NT) was either genetically
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descended from a DEC OS, or incubated on DEC hardware, or both.
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Accordingly, DEC was for many years still regarded with a certain wry
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affection even among many hackers too young to have grown up on DEC
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machines.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Death--X-of.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../D.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="DEC-Wars.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Death, X of<6F></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"><EFBFBD>DEC Wars</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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