[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[FredK]

"JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote in message 
news:00bb899d$0$27930$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com...
> FredK wrote:
>
>> Upgrade the VAX code?  Support multiple code streams?  During that long 
>> span
>> of bad VAX performance internally DEC had changed focus from VMS to UNIX 
>> and
>> Windows.  As had many, many 3rd parties.
>
> I was under the impression that the shift to windows occured later
> during Palmer's era when he threw in the towel and started to sell the
> company away.
>
> Back in 1991-1992, Windows was still at DOS/Windows 3.1 with limited
> networking, and word processing that even DECwrite could compete
> against. Microsoft didn't have a decent email system.
>
> I can understand Digital having given up on office desktops by
> 1991/1992, but for the rest, the focus on Windows came later.

When the VAX ran out of gas, the strategists at DEC decided that UNIX/RISC 
would be the next big thing.  "Windows" wasn't really that much in the 
picture for this scenerio - since they were thinking servers and technical 
desktops - not "consumer" computers.

However, during this period the layered product software development groups 
were told that they should act like a software business that wasn't tied to 
an OS or HW architecture and you saw most of them create UNIX and Windows 
versions of many of their products and many lose focus or even abandon new 
versions for VMS.

Windows certainly didn't seem to me to be a focus for the design of Alpha at 
least when it started, but by the time the first *systems* were being 
introduced it had become an area of intense interest by former DEC'ies at 
Microsoft and then current employees at DECwest - and became an active area 
of new interest inside DEC - the fact that MS had a MIPS based port of 
Windows showed it was possible.  Certainly it was an evolution in thinking - 
otherwise we never would have had the SRM vs AlphaBIOS debacle. - or the 
lack of byte/word access.