[Info-vax] BOINC for VMS

[John Wallace]

On Mar 15, 6:51 am, Johnny Billquist <b... at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2012-03-14 21.43, David Froble wrote:
>
>
>
> > Keith Parris wrote:
> >> On 3/13/2012 5:01 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> >>> Well, it was Olsen who was reluctant to bring Alpha to market
> >>> (if, for example, that Apple story is true).
> >>> It didn't happen until Palmer took over.
>
> >> Incorrect. The Alpha Project started in the late '80s. Olsen was
> >> removed in 1992, just before Alpha shipped.
>
> > Well, the way I remember it, Ken wanted to extend the VAX, not create a
> > new RISC processor. Regardless, on his watch the Alpha got it's start.
>
> > Frankly, while I doubt it would have matched the Alpha, I think the VAX
> > still had a lot of life to it, and with 64 bit extensions, might have
> > been interesting, and perhaps wouldn't have needed that Hudson FAB which
> > cost so much.
>
> > Note that I have no way of knowing how well such development might have
> > done, nor do I know what kind of costs might have been incurred. What I
> > do know is that the N-VAX CPU continued to sell well through the 1990s.
> > A PC killer? Who knows? If something like windows had been developed for
> > it as a user interface? Yes, I'm aware of DECwindows, and good or bad,
> > the apps for it to be a desktop user interface just weren't there. Can
> > you imagine anyone at DEC building a computer for games? Another case of
> > "stop the development", and the product is doomed to die.
>
> DEC was constantly at war with itself.
> There are/were several arcade games which used the PDP-11 as the CPU.
> They could definitely have competed way more there, except they often
> refused to sell, kicked the price up to make it unviable, or cut off
> supplies, afraid that selling CPUs would hurt their sales of larger
> systems, and big money on that end.
>
> DEC was was too scared of loosing its existing business to be able to
> get into new areas from the mid 70s and onwards.
>
>         Johnny

"DEC was constantly at war with itself."

There's something in that. The "sell up" camp at HQ saw no need to
aggressively promote the product range outside the existing
comfortable markets. The folks who could see what was going on outside
knew that DEC (eventually) had relevant and competitive products but
that aggressive promotion was needed to grow them into markets outside
the traditional DEC ones (e.g. have people with clue to promote UNIX
on Alpha to Sun users, what an amazing concept).

"DEC was was too scared of loosing its existing business to be able to
get into new areas from the mid 70s and onwards."

Yep. There were people who knew what had to be done, but there were
layers of country managers and functionaries at HQ who weren't going
to let it happen.