Data General Eclipse: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:20, 6 January 2021

Revision as of 22:08, 29 January 2021

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The [[Data General Nova]] was intended to outperform the [[PDP-8]] while being less expensive, and in a similar fashion, the Eclipse was meant to compete against the larger [[PDP-11]] computers. It kept the simple register architecture of the Nova but added a [[stack pointer]] which the Nova lacked. The stack pointer was added back to the later Nova 3 machines in 1975 and also used on the later 32-bit [[Data General Eclipse MV/8000]]. The [[Data General AOS|AOS]] [[operating system]] was quite sophisticated, advanced compared to the PDP-11 offerings, with [[access control list]]s (ACLs) for file protection.

Production problems with the Eclipse led to a rash of lawsuits in the late 1970s, after new versions of the machine were pre-ordered by many DG customers and then never arrived.<ref name="kidder-2000">{{cite book |title=The Soul of a New Machine |last=Kidder |first=Tracy |author-link=Tracy Kidder |year=2000 |origyearorig-year=1981 |chapter=1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/soulofnewmachin000kidd/page/26 26] |publisher=[[Back Bay Books]] |isbn=0-316-49197-7 |title-link=The Soul of a New Machine}}</ref> After over a year of waiting, some decided to sue the company, while others simply cancelled their orders and went elsewhere.<ref name="kidder-2000"/> It appeared that the Eclipse was originally intended to replace the Nova outright, also evidenced by the fact that the Nova 3 series released at the same time was phased out the next year. However, strong continuing demand resulted in the Nova 4, perhaps as a result of the continuing problems with the Eclipse.

== Facts ==