[Info-vax] 433AU workstation for sale

[John Wallace]

On Jan 10, 6:44 pm, Kenneth Fairfield <ken.fairfi... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 10, 2012 10:15:59 AM UTC-8, Kari Uusimäki wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>
>
> > Most probably the OSF/1 (< V4.0) does not run on a PWS 433au, because it
> > was released much later than the OSF/1 versions. At V4.0 the DEC unix
> > was renamed DigitalUnix. IIRC the PWS 433au was initially delivered with
> > DigitalUnix v4.0B. All the later versions (again renamed at V5.0 to
> > Tru64unix) runs on the different PWS's.
>
> Indeed, wasn't OFS/1 (as sold by DEC) limited to the
> MIPS-based systems?  Did OSF/1 ever run on Alpha?
>
>    -Ken
>
>
>
> > Kari
>
>

The relevant section in the Wikipedia article on Tru64 UNIX says an
unsupported version of OSF/1 for MIPS-based DECstations shipped in
1992 (I think this was primarily for DEC internal use) and DEC OSF/1
for Alpha shipped to customers in 1993. I'm not definitively sure but
it certainly sounds plausible.

The article also says "Digital also strongly promoted OSF/1 for real-
time applications" but with the usual "citation needed" annotation. I
don't have anything to cite but RT stuff was part of my job back then.
I'm not sure if DEC 'heavily promoted' much globally at that time,
except maybe the benefits of "affinity" with Windows NT, but certainly
there was an emphasis on OSF/1's capabilities as a quite capable RT
UNIX. With nice manuals too (don't see that very often these days).

Have a lot of fun,
John