Editing Data General (section)

===Fountainhead===
While DG was still struggling with Eclipse, in 1977, Digital announced the [[VAX]] series, their first [[32-bit]] minicomputer line,<ref>{{cite web|title=VAX 11/780|url=https://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=20&t=3|quote=The VAX 11/780 was introduced on 25 October 1977 at the Digital Equipment Corporation's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. It was the first member of the VAX family.|access-date=13 March 2022}}</ref> described as "[[Superminicomputer|super-minis]]". This coincided with the aging of DEC's 16-bit products, notably the [[PDP-11]], which were coming due for replacement. It appeared there was an enormous potential market for 32-bit machines, one that DG might be able to "scoop".

Data General immediately launched their own 32-bit effort in 1976 to build what they called the "world's best 32-bit machine", known internally as the "Fountainhead Project", or FHP for short (Fountain Head Project). Development took place off-site so that even DG workers would not know of it. The developers were given free rein over the design and selected a system that used a writable instruction set. The idea was that the [[instruction set architecture]] (ISA) was not fixed, programs could write their own ISA and upload it as [[microcode]] to the processor's [[Control store|writable control store]]. This would allow the ISA to be tailored to the programs being run, for instance, one might upload an ISA tuned for [[COBOL]] if the company's workload included significant numbers of COBOL programs.

When Digital's [[VAX-11/780]] was shipped in February 1978, however, Fountainhead was not yet ready to deliver a machine, due mainly to problems in project management. DG's customers left quickly for the VAX world.

====Eagle====
[[Image:Tom West taken on Nov 21, 2009.jpg|thumb|right|Tom West (as seen in 2009)]]
In the spring of 1978, with Fountainhead apparently in [[development hell]], a secret [[Skunkworks project|skunkworks]] project was started to develop an alternative 32-bit system known as "Eagle" by a team led by [[Tom West]]. References to "the Eagle project" and "Project Eagle" co-exist.<ref name=ObitWest/> Eagle was a straightforward, 32-bit extension of the Nova-based Eclipse. It was backwards-compatible with 16-bit Eclipse applications, used the same command-line interpreter, but offered improved 32-bit performance over the VAX 11/780 while using fewer components.

By late 1979, it became clear that Eagle would deliver before Fountainhead, igniting an intense [[wikt:turf war|turf war]] within the company for constantly shrinking project funds. In the meantime, customers were abandoning Data General in droves, driven not only by the delivery problems with the original Eclipse, including very serious quality control and customer service problems, but also the power and versatility of Digital's new VAX line. Ultimately, Fountainhead was cancelled and Eagle became the new MV series, with the first model, the [[Data General Eclipse MV/8000]], announced in April 1980.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/330/eagle.html#timeline |title= CPSC 3300: The Soul of a New Machine}}</ref>

The Eagle Project was the subject of [[Tracy Kidder]]'s [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning book, ''[[The Soul of a New Machine]]'', making the MV line the best-documented computer project in recent history.