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Comment by qntmfred | Hacker News Reader

My daughter's favorite sweatshirt is a bit of corporate swag from Data General, which she stole from me, which I myself stole from my father who worked there beginning in the 70s and then also for EMC another decade after they acquired DG. You want a tragic tale, Data General is a tragic tale.

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I worked at DG for about 13 years. (Mostly product management on the computer systems side.) On my list of things to do is to scan "A year in development" book that was put together in about 1985 or so. I left shortly after the EMC acquisition.

DEC had such a great branding and design language. They did merch like no other! So many different things from keychains to jewelry boxes and giant "d i g i t a l" name plates. You can still find old swag on Ebay.

Wasn't "Soul of a New Machine" written about Data General?

Yes. About the MV/8000 "Eagle," which was DG's 32-bit answer to the VAX. Podcast episode about it: https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minic...

(Disclaimer: I helped with this podcast episode and was interviewed for it but it wasn't used because we were able to get enough of the people with first hand experience; I joined a few years later.)

Soul of a New Machine is a great book about DG. Was required reading in my EE degree.

Re-read it a couple years ago after reading it when it first came out. It is a great narrative of the engineering process. Even now, as I approach retirement, the idea of working long, hard hours on something that you truly believe in is made so appealing by the “kids”. The opportunities to do that are rare, you need to grab them when you can.

My Mom got let go during the 90s DG downsizing.

DG is not Digital although in the book “soul of a new machine” they infer that some of the DG engineers got a sneak peak at the Digital Vax.

On the plus side Emc still pays my mom her pension..

Scan this is before it falls to dust.

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