[Info-vax] Did Ken Olsen kill Alpha?

[Michael Kraemer]

Bob Koehler schrieb:
> In article <j7qf7f$alv$1 at solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:
> 
> 
>>The whole DECstation line was rather successful
>>in the technical computing segment,
>>but DEC treated it like a stop gap measure and it withered
>>away as soon as the Alpha hype set in.
> 
> 
>    I can't really blame DEC for not wanting to bet it's future on an SGI
>    product. 

Mips wasn't an SGI product, but an independent fabless chip firm.

> I don't think anyone was surprised when SGI bought MIPS.

Because DEC didn't want it but rather burned their money
in a fruitless endeavour called Alpha.

>    Meanwhile Ultrix-MIPS was "just another UNIX" in a market already
>    dominated by Sun and others.  When we got Ultrix-MIPS, our customers
>    complained that anything from DEC wasn't a "real UNIX".

You obviously live in a different part of the universe.
The people I know of didn't give a damn about what's a "real UNIX".
As long as it was *IX and had good price performance.
That's what DEC's Mips line had, if one put everything together,
hardware, OS, apps (compilers). Istr it also beat the Sparcs of that
era in raw performance.
In particular DEC lovers liked the idea to stay with the same
company when going from VMS to UNIX: same GUI, same apps (DECwrite etc),
even the same keyboard, but much more bang for the buck.

In hindsight, the Mips line was one of DEC's smartest moves.
Too bad they blew it.