[Info-vax] OpenVMS.Org quick pool

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2012-08-20 21:36:07 +0000, David Froble said:
> 
>> Bob Koehler wrote:
>>> In article <k0otgd$tju$1 at dont-email.me>, David Froble 
>>> <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> A good question is, "is an emulated Alpha surperior to an emulated 
>>>> VAX?", all else being equal?  I'd be interested to know.
>>>
>>> Only in that DEC made the stupid decision to split the source pool
>>> when they went from VAX to Alpha, so many features were never ported
>>> back to VAXen, and there are some that require 64 bit.
> 
> There was vastly more involved with that source-pool pool-split, and 
> several of us did a large pile of work resynchronizing the tools and 
> related after the dust finally settled.    But the pool-split happened.
> 
> And why would there be a whole pile of effort expended back-porting 
> stuff to VAX?  That architecture was deemed to be on the way out, just 
> as soon as the Alpha systems were released.  Whether a task is 
> technically feasible collides - once again - with business 
> considerations and the financial feasibility of the task.
> 
>> Seems like nobody wants to answer the question that was asked ....
> 
> Is chocolate pie superior to apple pie?
> 
> Without some idea of the requirements, there's no answer to that question.
> 
> Alpha is arguably a simpler architecture than VAX.  VAX doesn't use IEEE 
> floating point, which means the emulator has to deal with that 
> bit-shuffling.  But then various Alpha applications were built with VAX 
> floating point.  Most any target platform is 64-bit these days, so 
> that's not much of a difference.  simh is available and BSD-licended and 
> free.  The Alpha system emulators aren't.  Some applications are written 
> for VAX.  Some are written for Alpha.  But all things probably aren't 
> equal.  Apple pie?  Or Chocolate Pie?  What's your preference?  Or would 
> you prefer a port and a native implementation of your pie?
> 
> 

None of the above.  I simply wondered which architecture was more (or less) 
amenable to emulation.  Never asked about code split, applications, 32 vs 64 
bits, or even the OS.

Prefers peach pie ..