[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[Neil Rieck]

On Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:50:07 PM UTC-4, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> On 3/11/2012 1:12 PM, Marc Schlensog wrote:
> > On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:11:45 +0100
> > Michael Kraemer<M.Kraemer at gsi.de>  wrote:
> >
> >> Neil Rieck schrieb:
> >>
> >>> On a related note, in what universe was it correct to kill Alpha
> >>> while allowing SPARC to live?
> >>
> >> In every conceivable universe where some basic rules of economy hold.
> >> Alpha simply wasn't good enough to survive.
> >
> >
> > Brahahaha! Riiight...
> 
> I would say, instead, that the Alphas, like everything else DEC sold,
> were over priced!  Just about everyone could and did sell equipment, 
> software, and services, cheaper than DEC!
> 
> After a while, even the dumbest customer realized that, if he didn't 
> insist on that DEC label, he could get 50 to 90 percent off from DEC's 
> pricing!
> 
> I'm sure that I've mentioned the hard disk for a Rainbow had a list 
> price of $3000!  I paid $300 for a disk drive that worked perfectly.
> 
> DEC priced just about everything that way!  People are stupid but damned 
> few of them are THAT STUPID!

Can't argue with that. While Alpha seemed about ten times cheaper than VAX, it was still ridiculously high compared to other PC technology (the CPU boards aside, most of the Alpha technology was based upon COTS (commodity off the shelf) components. The same is true for OpenVMS software licenses. For a number of years we were convinced that the standard DCL prompt ($) was well chosen.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/