[Info-vax] Alpha Personal Workstation question

[Michael Kraemer]

Paul Sture schrieb:

> I am pretty sure price was an issue, even through to the XP900 / XP1000 
> era.  The PWS systems (and later XP replacements) we had at work only had 
> 128 MB RAM and we were told that upgrading either was cost prohibitive.

I found Alphas with less than 128MB almost unusable,
at least with "modern" software, i.e. Tru64 >4.x
and associated gfx apps.
At the latest in the 2000s it should have been possible
to offer those boxes with an amount of RAM which somehow
reflects the capabilities of the 64bit CPU inside.
At least there should have been an upgrade option > 4GB.

> It's pity because the second hand PWS 600au with 512 MB I had at home 
> brought CDE up almost instantaneously when compared with the systems at 
> work.

Yep, because nowadays even a hobbyist can afford RAM in the multi-GB
region, but alas, most Alphas don't support so much RAM.

> https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

That's even the "real" CDE which has been open sourced.