There was once a chief engineer on a computer development project which founded a new class of computer - the minicomputer.
The engineer then left his employer to found a new company to make minicomputers.
Its first product, called Nova, launched in 1969, was a big enough success to justify the company IPO-ing that same year.
Subsequent variants of the product kept the cash flowing in until, in 1975, the latest version of the product had sales of over $100 million.
However the subsequent range of computer, called Eclipse, was a flop. Deliveries were late, lawsuits were multiple.
Finally the company gambled everything on a new series, called MV, which looked like turning the company round.
But the MV was launched in 1980 - just as the minicomputer era was giving way to the microcomputer era.
For 19 years after the MV launch the company drifted south until it was sold in 1999 to EMC.
MORAL: Your Reality May Not Be Others' Reality
Torben, "The Soul of a New Machine" was not about the Eclipse, which was the 16-bit predecessor to the subject of the book, the MV Series, which started with the MV/8000 and was the VAX-11 competitor. Yes it was briefly called the MV/Eclipse during development but was never sold as such.
My lasting impression from the book was that they were underfunded due to lack of commitment from management. The team was basically a bunch of mavericks hacking in the basement and there was a chronic lack of tools for the job, to the point that they were cobbling their own circuit analyzers from old scopes and other equipment lying around. The first systems sold were built using PALs.
The way I heard the Eclipse story, David, was that a major reason it did badly was that the sales force had oversold the Novas to end user customers who didn't know what to do with them. The DG sales force tried to just go out and sell "iron", ignoring the importance of the OEMs, vertical integrators, & ISVs in providing "solutions". When they went back to sell Eclipses they were shown the unused, "useless" Novas sitting in the corner.
Although the minicomputer was doomed by the PC eventually, it took a while and don't forget that DG got cut off at the knees by Motorola's loss of enthusiasm for the 88000 - probably a bad decision by DG in the first place though.
But it was a damn good book though, wasn't it?
Be interesting to re-read it with hindsight. At the time, as a youngster, I thought the characters were heroes, but perhaps now I'd seee it nuance as Scunnerous points out...
Yes it was an excellent book - The Soul of a New Machine, El Rupester, looking at my copy recently, though, it seems dated because nowadays the excitement of engineering projects has been quite extensively documented and is understood. Back in 1981, I think it was novel to catch that kind of excitement and make it simpatico to the general reader.