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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> On Apr 6, 5:01 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Fortunately these days in this picture we're not stuck with classic
> x86 architecture. We're talking about its next generation successor,
> the AMD64 architecture, which just happens to have succeeded in being
> remarkably compatible (transparently so, in the vast majority of
> cases) with classic x86 when it needs to be, whilst also behaving like
> a real 64bit architecture when *that* is what's needed.
> 
> As for x86 systems hardware: it's already been pointed out that the
> innards of any reasonably modern low-end Alpha (from any AlphaStation
> onward) were remarkably PC-like in terms of chips and functionalities,

The Alpha was intended to be able to run Windows.  AFAIK few people ever 
did but the possibility was there!