[Info-vax] Did Ken Olsen kill Alpha?

[Neil Rieck]

On Oct 14, 8:52 pm, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Phillip Helbig---undress to reply schrieb:
>
> > Here's a blast from the past:
>
> >    http://www.businessweek.com/1997/17/b3524142.htm
>
> Yep, it wasn't all Palmer's fault.
> In fact it was mostly Olsen's fault.
> (had posted this link already a week ago, btw)

Olsen left DEC in 1992 and Alpha was released in1992 so I find it hard
to believe that Olsen would take any of the blame. Now it is true that
Olsen found it incredible that the VAX architecture could be shrunk to
a chip (MicroVAX). Also, books like "DEC is dead, long live DEC"
indicate that Olsen was listening more to his VPs when he was part of
the decision to kill PRISM in 1988 (which led to Cutler, and a subset
of DEC employees, to migrate over to Microsoft) in favor of
development of Aquarius (VAX 9000).

Now think about it for a moment, the chip that became Alpha was kept
alive by someone from 1988 to 1992 and only conspiracy theorists
believe this group was run without the knowledge of upper management.

IMHO, investors were ticked off (after two quarterly losses) so
thought they could get more money by carving up, then selling off,
pieces of DEC than sticking with the status quo.

As to information in the 1997 article, why would Intel or Compaq ever
consider a chip other than x86? People in the PC business were very
proud of the fact that their latest x86 machines could still boot and
run the earliest x86 software. IBM, on the other hand, was (quietly)
on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1990s (saved by Louis Gerstner). I
wonder if the people who were so willing to cut up DEC would have done
so had they known about the true health of IBM.

NSR
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/dave_cutler-prism-mica-emerald-etc.html