[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[Paul Sture]

On Wed, 02 May 2012 23:42:26 -0700, Hans Vlems wrote:

> On 2 mei, 13:38, Paul Sture <p... at sture.ch> wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 May 2012 03:21:19 -0700, Hans Vlems wrote:
>> > No, it's an EV5 manufactured in a process designed to produce the EV6
>> > generation.
>> > The EV56 is found in the Alpha Server 1200 and 4100 series, among
>> > others, and in the latter ran at its highest clockspeed of 600 MHz
>> > (IIRC).
>> > In 1998 you'd surely have been impressed (given what Intel was doing
>> > with the Pentium II and III at the time). Today it is of interest to
>> > hobbyists like me ;-)
>>
>> I bought a Pentium at the beginning of 1997 when 200 MHz was the latest
>> offering (I was advised to go for a twin cpu 133 MHz configuration
>> instead because that was substantially cheaper).
>>
>> If I have interpreted the serial number correctly, my PWS 600au was
>> made in week 9 of 1997, putting it in the same time frame as my
>> Pentium.
>>
>> Alpha was streets ahead of Intel at the time. It definitely wasn't
>> cheap though.  I did find a price of 20,000 USD for an Alpha 600au in
>> that era, but there wasn't a detailed listing of the configuration, so
>> cannot say definitively how much more expensive than the Pentium of the
>> day they were.
>>
> 
> Exactly my point Paul. The problem with US commercial thinking is that
> "better equals cheaper".
>
> Occasionally a good product demands a higher pricetag. Digital built
> quality equipment and sold it at a higher pricelevel than the
> competition. That quality allows me to run VAX systems that are 20 years
> old and these systems keep on going.

I started getting frustrated with this "better equals cheaper" thinking 
about a decade ago.  I didn't buy all my furniture from IKEA, nor did I 
buy the cheapest vehicle on four wheels.  Not the cheapest washing 
machine either: I have learned that that can be a false economy.

Why should I suddenly reverse my purchasing habits for the special case 
of computer gear?

> The same applies for Alpha systems
> and apparently we've all clearly forgotten the awe when we first saw an
> Alpha booting VMS and the speed our (VESTed!) applications ran at! I
> remember the reactions of users of a library catalogue program. It was
> written in Business Basic, an interpreted language. I had VESTed the
> interpreter and the program ran on an Alpha Server 2100/190.

Going the other way, Peter Weaver (IIRC) wrote a piece of DCL to convert 
the VMS FAQ into VMS help file format.  That ran well on Alpha, but I was 
horrified at how long it took on a VAXstation 3100.  That told me that on 
an Alpha you could probably afford to write large chunks of code in DCL 
or interpreted languages for one-off jobs, something you wouldn't have 
dreamed of on a VAX.

> On the VAX 6420 it took minutes just to display the program banner and
> even more to get a command prompt.
>
> On Alpha it was instantaneous. Users were sure the system was faulty....
> Everything worked well however and two weeks later the users were quite
> used to the new performance. The potential for Alpha in 1998 was
> enormous. Provided its owner was willing to sink a lot of money in
> continuous development and could find buying custumers willing to spend
> the money. Customers vote with their wallets and the alection was won by
> Intel's 64 bit incarnation of the Pentium line. Dirt cheap and none of
> the systems based on that technology last longer than 7 years. Hans

Also in the mid to late nineties, customers could finance a large chunk 
of their Alpha purchases by taking their old VAXen off maintenance.



-- 
Paul Sture