[TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?

[kevin.bowling@kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)]

I understand IBM systems history a lot better, but it looks
simplistically to me that, in business terms, DEC created or became
the brand leader for a net new market for minicomputers rather than
competing against the establish(ed, ing) market of large systems.  I'm
sure their marketers worked very hard to differentiate the systems
from large systems, precisely because they didn't want to compete with
anyone.  This is one of the most common motifs in technology business,
start with a small niche and build out.  It happened with UNIX, PCs,
networking, etc.  These things also usually follow power laws, where
only a couple companies control the market.  There are awesome plate
tectonics and associated earthquakes, disasters, and rebuilding from
ashes where markets collide, like UNIX systems taking on system of
record, transaction processing, CAD in the '80s-'90s against
mainframes, and the associated brand names tend to reshuffle (i.e. Sun
for a while).

Regards,

On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 3:25 PM, Dave Ritchie via TUHS
<tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> I think that steep educational discounts and equipment grants from Digital
> to major collages also had a major impact,
> as did the existence of DECUS that made a lot of software readily available.
>
> Best regards,
> David Ritchie