Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 05/87 - checked

May 1987

I want you to imagine that it is the middle of February and that it is early in the morning. Well, its early by my standards but probably fairly ordinary by everyone else's. Anyway, I am on my way to a press conference.

I can tell that you are probably getting quite excited at this point, so I won't hold you in suspense any more. You see, I went to see the official announcement of something interesting from Digital Equipment. What do you mean, who the hell are they?

Oh, you've remembered now, have you?. That's right, they made an MS-DOS based personal computer a few years ago that so stunned the world that the company sold....well, hardly any at all. With its corporate tail between its legs DEC duly scuttled off back to the minicomputer business where it belonged and continued to do very nicely, thank you.

The thing is, what DEC announced back in February, so early in the morning, was the natural culmination of it doing just that. It took its minicomputer architecture, called (for reasons that are probably EXTREMELY interesting but unknown to me) VAX, and grew it in all directions. Today you can get absolutely enormous VAX computers and, what is more, cluster them together to make even bigger ones.

As of February, you can also get really quite dinky ones. What is more, they don't really cost a lot: around £10,000 for the entry level four-user system. Now, before you start whingeing on about this being PERSONAL Computer World and not being able to afford ten big ones, let me tell you that a growing number of you can, and what is more, do.

Small multi-user systems are getting to be extremely popular, and with good reason. They fit nicely into the work group concept that most working people understand (ie the accounts department has a system that does their work, other departments have their own systems).As the power and capabilities of the hardware, and to a lesser extent the software, increase while prices come down, so such systems become increasingly viable alternatives to either the traditional minicomputer or a random collection of PCs that may or may not be networked, at least some of the time.

It is the market that an increasing number of manufacturers have decided to have a go at, not least of which being our very own Apricot. Now there is a company that seems to have got itself back together after a near debacle at the low-end of the market. From making a loss out of trying to compete in a cut-throat sales war of cheap systems, it is looking like keeping MD Roger Foster in snazzy ties for a good while yet. The reason, a decision to junk the cheap market and make expensive, `real' multi-user machines.

What is interesting about the multi-user business is that most personal computer manufacturers and software producers have tended to dismiss it as a minority side issue. It might still seem like that to many, but I am starting to wonder whether it contains within it the seeds of the next evolution.

Even the short history of the PC has shown that the users (whether they be right or not) always want to get more power and performance out of their systems. The history of the computer business generally has also shown that they are willing to leave a safe and cozily known environment and jump into something new if the perceived advantages are good enough.

So, in this apparently minority marketplace, a company like DEC is reaching down to position a product like a juicily baited fishing line, ready to tempt users into a new and potentially very powerful upgrade path based around the 57 varieties of VAX. The other competitors coming into this market are using the Intel 80386 processor as their engine, which a fine step to take. They all have a potential weakness, however: to my way of thinking at least.

That weakness is their fundamental architecture, which is based on the ideas and concepts of the IBM-PC family, which has a time and place that is completely different from where this market is going. In the same way, much of the underlying systems software technology is based around single user, single-tasking technology that has been stretched and puffed up to fit the new applications.

Many of these manufacturers face a very specific problem. Everyone knows that IBM is going to do something, and that the something expected will probably be at the upper reaches of the existing PC range. No-one of course, really knows what this might be, mainly because IBM probably doesn't yet know itself. Both new hardware (probably 386-based) and new system software (probably Microsoft but don't bet all your pocket money on it) are in the pot and until they appear, the rest of the manufacturers are effectively stuck.

IBM could, of course, keep the market in suspended animation like this for a year or more if it tried, and there is not too much that could be done about it. This is where DEC and, for the 147th consecutive year, Unix, could play a trump card.

With everyone waiting for IBM, there is scope for a new ball-game to be developed. As every manufacturer took the IBM PC as the start point and grew their systems from there, so DEC's newest baby, the MicroVAX 2000, offers a new start point, and one with a growth path for users already mapped out. The weak point in such a game is that DEC is not going to play the open architecture rules of the PC world, so there won't be any clones. But the important bit, the applications software, could become available.

The MicroVAX, you see, can run Unix, and most of the other contenders in this business run either Unix or Microsoft's Xenix. So, in theory at least, the same applications will run on all or any of these machines. In addition, Xenix has close compatibility with MS-DOS, so PC-created data could be transported across. DEC has the VAXMate, an MS-DOS/VAX combo system. In either case, existing PC users could have an upgrade path.

So, while the world and most of the manufacturers wait for IBM and/or Microsoft to get their acts together, a workable and working alternative could be `discovered'. But then again, this has been said of Unix every year since the world began.

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