DEC still strong in government / academia

From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov_at_ivan.Harhan.ORG>
Date: Sat Feb 1 17:15:01 2003

Just got my UC Irvine student applicant 2003-04 financial aid paperwork. The
picture in the booklet of a student getting his education shows a little Asian-
looking guy in front of... a DEC workstation!!! The keyboard has an
unmistakable, so dear and familiar to me LK201 or successor layout, the screen
with some graphics (of unidentifiable nature) has the authentic look of a DEC
monitor (even the d|i|g|i|t|a|l logo can be made out), and DEC-looking boxes (I
guess external CD-ROM drives) can be seen in the back. The whole thing displays
perfect harmony in DEC colors. (Can't tell, though, whether the workstation is
a VAX, MIPS, or Alpha, except that I can see it sitting under the monitor.)

When I was registering my company in the San Diego County Clerk's office in
June of last year (that's the same place where couples tie the knot on this
side of the pond) I was similarly delighted to see all the clerks typing on DEC
terminals, with DECconnect cables running around the office.

And a few years ago when I was still watching TV (happily living without a TV
for 2.5 years now) there was a program asking people to donate blood. They
showed footage of the process and my eyes were immediately caught by a VT220.

But unfortunately most libraries, a former stronghold of VMS-based catalog
servers and public DEC VT terminals, have now been lost to pee-sea-fication.

MS
Received on Sat Feb 01 2003 - 17:15:01 GMT