Dec
n 1: the last (12th) month of the year [syn: December, Dec]
2: (astronomy) the angular distance of a celestial body north or
to the south of the celestial equator; expressed in degrees;
used with right ascension to specify positions on the
celestial sphere [syn: declination, celestial latitude,
dec]
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DEC
/dek/, n.
n. Commonly used abbreviation for Digital Equipment Corporation, later
deprecated by DEC itself in favor of ?Digital? and now entirely obsolete
following the buyout by Compaq. Before the killer micro revolution of the
late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic with DEC's pioneering
timesharing machines. The first of the group of cultures described by this
lexicon nucleated around the PDP-1 (see TMRC). Subsequently, the PDP-6,
PDP-10, PDP-20, PDP-11 and VAX were all foci of large and important
hackerdoms, and DEC machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet
machine population. DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer
era (roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace microcomputers and
Unix early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after silicon got
cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor design tradition owes a major debt
to the PDP-11 instruction set, and every one of the major general-purpose
microcomputer OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, OS/2, Windows NT) was either
genetically descended from a DEC OS, or incubated on DEC hardware, or both.
Accordingly, DEC was for many years still regarded with a certain wry
affection even among many hackers too young to have grown up on DEC
machines.
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Digital Equipment Corporation
DEC
(DEC) A computer manufacturer and software
vendor.
Before the killer micro revolution of the late 1980s,
hackerdom was closely symbiotic with DEC's pioneering
time-sharing machines. The first of the group of hacker
cultures nucleated around the PDP-1 (see TMRC).
Subsequently, the PDP-6, PDP-10, PDP-20, PDP-11 and
VAX were all foci of large and important hackerdoms and DEC
machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet machine
population.
The first PC from DEC was a CP/M computer called Rainbow,
announced in 1981-82.
DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era
(roughly 1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace
microcomputers and Unix early cost it heavily in profits
and prestige after silicon got cheap. However, the
microprocessor design tradition owes a heavy debt to the
PDP-11 instruction set, and every one of the major
general-purpose microcomputer operating systems so far
(CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, OS/2) were either genetically
descended from a DEC OS, or incubated on DEC hardware or
both. Accordingly, DEC is still regarded with a certain wry
affection even among many hackers too young to have grown up
on DEC machines. The contrast with IBM is instructive.
Quarterly sales $3923M, profits -$1746M (Aug 1994).
DEC was taken over by Compaq Computer Corporation in 1998.
In 2002 Compaq was in turn acquired by Hewlett-Packard who
sold off parts of Digital Equipment Corporation to Intel and
absorbed the rest. The Digital logo is no longer used.
(2012-07-29)
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