All’s very definitely well that ends well for Digital Equipment Corp in Eastern Europe, where, the Wall Street Journal reports, the company has a big head start in marketing VAXes because so many were illegally diverted there during the Cold War, and so many more clones were built locally: no-one has any ambition to build anything much bigger than a personal computer in the former Comecon countries these days unless it is done in a joint venture with the originator, but in a sidelight that reveals an unexpected seam of wry humour in a company usually regarded as embodying dour New England Puritanism, the Journal records that the Maynarder used to inscribe the microprocessor chips at the heart of the VAX with the legend – in Cyrillic script – VAX for those that care enough to steal the very best.
