[Info-vax] VMS on a PC

[JF Mezei]

Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:

>> 1. Ported VMS to the PC/Intel Server platform;
> 
> And lose out on hardware sales?


my guess is that should VMS ever be ported to the 8086, it would require
an EFI based  64 bit 8086 system. They already have EFI for VMS, and
there are some EFI based 8086  systems around. Porting costs would be
far less if they can re-use the EFI stuff (probably vastly unchanged)
instead of supporting the primitive BIOS.

And since VMS has very limited hardware support (video, no sound anymore
etc), only a subset of 8086 based servers/computers would support VMS.

Think of the cost savings and increased opportunities if HP got rid of
that IA64 boat anchor and focused on 8086 based systems. Enterprise
systems could be EFI based while consumer ones would continue to be BIOS
based.

There is however a big difference between having a proof of
concept/midnight hack and having a productized version of VMS on 8086
sold/supported by HP.  Until HP/Intel announce they are finally putting
IA64 out of its misery and focusing on commodity industry standard
architecture, HP isn't going to allow an 8086 based VMS to come out.