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

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Apr 7, 3:38 pm, Michael Austin <maus... at firstdbasource.com> wrote:
> Bob Koehler wrote:
> >  Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> >> johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> >>> 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!
>
> >    The Alpha was designed to be OS neuteral.  It still is.
>
> And if would dig back through the cobwebs in your brains you would
> recall that Alpha was the PRIMARY development platform for WNT from it's
> inception in early 91/92 until the late 90's (98/99 timeframe IIRC - my
> cobwebs fog things up too).
>
> And there were lots of people in the early '90s that did run W-NT on
> Windows. One of the 2100's I owned for a long time was initially a WNT
> box. (Never while I owned it though :) as I immediately dumped it and
> installed VMS.)

In the early days of Windows NT, it was a multi-platform OS, with
versions for x86 and Alpha and MIPS and PowerPC.

Some early NT Alphas did well in some specific applications, eg
PostScript to raster image conversion for high end imagesetters in the
print industry - NT Alphas ran existing Windows apps a whole lot
faster than than the competition did.

But in the general market, Alpha was hindered by at least two major
factors, one technical which was duly fixed (the lack of byte
operations in EV4 did get fixed in due course). And another one leads
right back to Palmer and Gates; remember the Gates quote "Bob, you can
be Larry's friend or you can be my friend" (slightly paraphrased).

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/10/business/digital-employees-tell-of-threats-by-gates-over-product.html

Palmer foolishly took Gates seriously, perhaps not realising that
Gates would soon drop what little NT/Alpha support had actually
existed (about as much as exists today for Itanium - an OS, bits of an
IDE, some server bits), and not realising that MS would soon sign a
deal with HP for "premier class services" when DEC had seemingly
already been promised exclusivity on a similar deal.

Not much later, DEC HQ were made another promise which turned out to
be a p.o.s - in the Intel/DEC patent settlement, "drop your
unaffordable Alpha stuff and we (Intel) will supply you the world's
first and best and cheapest (because of volume) industry standard
64bit chips". Well, it turns out it was AMD that got to define
"industry standard 64bit" at an affordable price, and HP-UX and VMS
are duly looking a little bit more vulnerable than they otherwise
would be.