[Info-vax] AltaVista background information

[JF Mezei]

Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Would be interesting to see the timeline and facts that supports this. 
> The Alpha was only released at the same time as Olsen left. For Olsen to 
> have affected this, the negotiations with Apple must have been going on 
> before the Alpha was announced, and possibly not even ready.


Did some reading on Wikipedia....


First PowerPC Mac was in 1994.  But the architecture was developped by
the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola).

AIM started in 1991. However, IBM had developed the Power architecture
in the 1980s.

When Apple got on board with IBM, it also brought in Motorola (its then
current supplier of chips) to be a second source of PowerPC and offer
some compatibility in terms of board designs.

21064 (EV4) was publically announced in feb 1992 and volume shipments in
Sept 1992.

Bob GQ Palmer was named President and CEO in June 1992.

In 1992, Alpha chips were sold at $1560 in volume shipments. So i really
doubt Apple would have been interested.

Since Apple was on the lookout for a new chip in 1991 or earlier, it
would have dealt with Olsen. I'd have to reread the "DEC is ded, long
live DEC" book to find out the exact timing of when Olsen agreed to go
with what would become Alpha after the failure of the 9000.

I am of the belief that once Olsen realised that vax 9000 was dead, he
would have adopted Alpha and not wanted it to fail. However, his
attitude towards high prices may have been what scuttled any possible
deal with Apple.

I have also heard that under Palmer, there had been many potential
customers for capacity of his Hudson FAB, but Palmer refused their
business, prefering to keep the Hudson FAB underused just in case the
Alpha chip suddently became popular.  Such potential customers included
AMD. They woudln't have used Hudson to build Alpha, they would have used
to it to build other chips.

But as a result of this policy, Hudson remained grossly underused and
lost oodles of money.



So yes, the rumoured Apple-DEC negotiations about Alpha would have
happened with Olsen, and by the time Bob GQ Palmer came in, Apple had
already engaged with IBM/Motorola for PowerPC.



Note that by 1994, the price of Alpha chips had dropped to about $500.