[Info-vax] OT: Arun Kishan

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:

> 
> Lets not forget that for a company such as HP, it isn't just the chip
> that is different, but also the systems.
> 

I don't get it why people believe in x86 as being the saviour.
I can't remember any ailing OS ever having risen from
the ashes by switching to x86 (or any other hardware platform).
An OS has to survive by its own virtue.
BeOS for example was cool when it ran on PPC boxen.
Switched to x86 and went under.
Data General's DG/UX ran on 88k, switched to x86 and went under.
Etc, etc.

It's not just that some code has to run natively on x86,
the hardware built around it is at least as important.
Look at OS/2 for example, it's x86 right from the start,
but listening to the respective NGs it's pretty hard to find
current x86 hardware to run it, in particular the coolest one,
i.e. net- and notebooks. The same is true for
Linux until very recently, when it became commercially
interesting to offer netbooks with Linux rather than Windoze,
i.e. to avoid the M$ tax on top of hardware costing $1xx.
So even if (!) HP would bother to port VMS to x86,
it'll most likely run on proprietary HP x86 boxen only,
and in this case you're not much better off than with
proprietary Itanics.