Pathworks

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PATHWORKS (copyright requires all letters capitalized) was the trade name used by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts for a series of programs that eased the interoperation of Digital's minicomputers and servers with personal computers. It was available for both PC and Mac systems, with support for MS-DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows on the PC.^[1] Before it was named PATHWORKS, it was known as PCSA (Personal Computing Systems Architecture).

PATHWORKS server ran on OpenVMS and Ultrix (and later Digital UNIX) and enabled a system or cluster to act as a file and print server for client IBM PC compatible and Macintosh workstations. A version of PATHWORKS server for OS/2 was also available, allowing a PC with OS/2 to act as a server to other PCs.^[2] PATHWORKS server was derived from LanMan/X, the portable version of OS/2 LAN Manager.^[3]

PATHWORKS was one of DEC's most successful products ever. Analysis of sales showed that on average, each PATHWORKS license brought in at least $3,000 USD in server revenue (server HW, SW, storage, printers, networking, and services), so it was a major driver for DEC's revenue in the mid and late 1980s.

Later versions of PATHWORKS were known as Advanced Server for OpenVMS (or Advanced Sever for Unix for Tru64). Advanced Server was replaced on OpenVMS by Samba at the time of the porting of VMS to Itanium.^[3] This was due to the amount of effort required to keep Advanced Server compatible with new versions of Windows and the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.