[Info-vax] OpenVMS I64 V8.1 "Evaluation Release"?

[Michael Kraemer]

In article
<139091463353845039.786907dennis.grevenstein-gmail.com at news.szaf.org>, Dennis
Grevenstein <dennis.grevenstein at gmail.com> writes:
> Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> wrote:
> 
> > And even if it didn't fit your expectations:
> > having a
> > "VMS Industry Standard 64"
> > on the shelf is at least worth a good laugh :-)
> 
> Well, the early Merceds were as much "industry standard" as you
> could hope for. 

That label is sort of "living proof" how HP/intel thought
they would conquer the world back then.
Although nowadays they would deny it.

> Rumor has it that there was an unreleased AIX
> port too.
 
Not just a rumour, it really existed (5.0 or so) and for a short period of
time IBM sold a few Itanics. 
Istr they even built a supercomputer with them for NCSA. 
But they were smart enough
to recognize it wouldn't become a success, 
so both hardware and software was canned.
Too bad I didn't order a copy back then, it really would be
a curiosity by now, joining the ranks of Solaris/PPC, OS2/PPC etc.

> I sometimes wonder what might have happened if AMD
> had not come up with x86_64.

That's like speculating how history would have developped 
in a parallel universe.