[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[Richard B. Gilbert]

JF Mezei wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 
>> I can not see why the VMS engineers would do that.
> 
> Because they love their work ?
> 
> Why did some engineers design the DS10L out of a midnight hack ? Once it
> was done, Compaq liked it and sold tousands of them in high profile uses
> (genome project).
> 
> Also, consider the highly theoretical/speculative scenario when VMS
> engineers learned that VMS was to be canned with IA64 and that the date
> was coming soon. Consider that high end folks at HP were heard saying a
> VMS port to 8086 was not possible or too expensive (excuse).
> 

Did you ever consider that, just maybe, it's NOT feasible to port VMS to 
an 80x86 architecture?  Recall that VMS and the VAX architecture were 
designed together and that decisions were made regarding what would be 
done in software and what would be done in hardware!

I'm sure that the Alpha architecture was designed with the intention of 
supporting both VMS and Unix.  The 80X86 architecture was designed for a 
micro-computer/personal-computer that would run PC-DOS/MS-DOS.  The 
80x86 architecture has been a howling success and just about everyone 
has used one at one time or another.  It will not run VMS as we know it!

I'm aware that there's a VAX emulator program for the 80x86 
architecture.  As far as I'm concerned it's a toy, a curiosity.  I doubt 
that it can compete, in the performance arena with Alpha or IA64 hardware.