[Info-vax] VAXstation 4000s available on ebay

[Rich Jordan]

On Mar 31, 9:38 am, b... at server1.cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> You can't really blame
> MS for dropping Alpha support.  No one else even got into the game
> and what good is an OS with no applications?
>

Yes you can; it was microsoft that sabotaged the effort early on by
making their own Alpha portfolio "server only" with no parity in
client applications.  DEC also shares in that blame for not forcing
that issue.  Only a few of microsoft's 'client' side apps were ported
to the Alpha systems.  That automatically restricted the systems'
usability (whether the hardware was server or workstation type) and
certainly was a major factor that other software vendors had to take
into account.  Then they were slow and inconsistent with updates and
fixes also.

Somewhere I might still have a book listing native Alpha WindowsNT
software; there was quite a lot but it was all server side, expensive,
often niche, and not the kind of thing that would drive volume sales.

I ran WinNT Alpha on an AS200 for several years (before I could get a
hobby license for VMS).  It was surprising how much other software
would run using FX!32; even some nonprotected games (not-graphics-
heavy) were usable after the FX!32 optimization completed.  But the
only Alpha native software I ever bought was a CD burner package.