DEC took a giant gamble in 1977 when it kissed goodbye to its faithful PDP-11 architecture that had stood it in such good stead for 15 years, and moved over to the completely new VAX-11, which ran PDP-11 software only in a rather inefficient emulation mode: the gamble paid off triumphantly, and is the main reason why IBM is on the run today – and now we are hearing suggestions that in January 1989, the company will come out with another completely new architecture that will run old VAX programs only in an emulation mode, although new native VAXes will no doubt continue to be added right up to the year 2000 and beyond until there is insufficient demand.
