The DECmate was Digital Equipment Corporation's word processor. It was strictly text-based (no GUI or graphics), menu driven, and simple for office workers to learn and use. The original DECmate (the DECmate I) was packaged in a VT100 terminal cabinet. The DECmate II were packaged like the DEC Rainbow 100 microcomputer; the III and III+ had the same keyboard and monitor as the Rainbow (and VT220) but a larger system unit. All were based internally on the 12-bit DEC PDP-8 (implemented by Intersil and/or Harris as the 6120 single-chip microprocessor), but later models also had Z80 or 8088 coprocessors, allowing them to also run CP/M or DOS. The underlying PDP-8 operating system was OS/278, but users could see only the WPS (Word Processing System) application. DECmates were found in administrative offices all over Columbia University from 1980 until the mid-1990s. Kermit programs developed here and elsewhere allowed them to log in to the central IBM and DEC mainframes and the departmental VAX/VMS systems through their serial ports via modem, PACX, or Rolm dataphone and have interactive sessions and upload and download files.

The DECmate II was introduced in 1982 together with the Pro/350 (PDP-11 desktop) and the Rainbow (IBM PC competitor). That was the year that DEC hoped to take the corporate world by storm with its 3-pronged desktop strategy. The DECmate and Rainbow did quite well, but were overwhelmed by the IBM PC within a few years. The Pro/350 (and later Pro/380) was a disaster, but at Columbia (where we received a truckload of 380s, as well as Rainbows, in a big equipment grant), we ported 2.9BSD to them for our first public networked Unix workstation lab.