DEC Professional (computer)
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The Professional 325 (PRO-325), Professional 350 (PRO-350) were PDP-11 compatible microcomputers introduced in 1982 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as high-end competitors to the IBM PC. Like the similar Rainbow-100 and DECmate-II (also introduced at that time), they used the LK201 keyboard and used 400kB single-sided quad-density floppy disk drives and offered a choice of color or monochrome monitors.
Unfortunately for DEC, none of the three would be favorably received, when the industry instead standardized on Intel 8088-based IBM PC compatibles which were all binary program compatible. The PDP-11 architecture was not modified beyond its 16-bit 64kB memory addressing limitations at a time when most PCs were being sold with 1MB of memory or more, with address extension slated only for expensive advanced VAX timesharing system. The PDP-11 also lacked a base of small business microcomputer software, compared to MS-DOS, where most CP/M applications (see the Rainbow 100) were easily ported to the similar 8088 chip and MS-DOS operating system. It was never accepted as an office personal computer, or as a scientific workstation, where the market was also headed to Intel 8086 or Motorola 68000-based computers. The failure of DEC to gain a foothold in PCs would be the beginning of the end of the computer industry in New England as nearly all computer manufacturers located there were focused on minicomputers, from DEC to Data General, Wang, Prime, Computervision and Honeywell.
[edit] Technical specifications
The PRO-325 and -350 used the new LSI-11/23 chipset to create a single-board PDP-11.
The default PRO-3xx operating system was DEC's Professional Operating System or P/OS, a modified version of RSX-11M. Other available operating systems included DEC RT-11, VenturCom Venix, and 2.9BSD Unix.
Later, the Professional 380 (PRO-380) was introduced using the much faster J11 chip set. A PRO-380 with the Real-Time Interface option was used as the console on high-end VAX-8800 family systems.
