Data General was started by some deserters from
Digital back in the
1960s. There was a lot of hostility about it at the time; years later, the president of
Digital was still fuming, by some accounts.
Back in the day, Data General made
minicomputers, and they basically lived and died with that market, just like
Digital did, but with less success when times were good. And they seem to have outlived
Digital as an independent entity, by a few years anyhow.
Data General positioned themselves as the "
badasses" of the
minicomputer market. They were fiercely competitive and relatively cheap. Things turned sour when
Digital introduced the
VAX: Data General had no
32-bit machine to compete with it, and they took far too long to
get one out the door. By the time they did, they'd gotten killed in the market. The journalist
Tracy Kidder wrote a classic book about the the
32-bit "fend-off-the-VAX" project at Data General:
The Soul of a New Machine.
The Soul of a New Machine is most of what Data General is remembered for. They were a footnote. But bear this in mind: The founders still got rich.