[Info-vax] Security and VMS, was: Re: The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of
> already5chosen--- via Info-vax
> Sent: July 24, 2018 6:20 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: already5chosen at yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Security and VMS, was: Re: The (now lost) future of
> Alpha.
> 
> On Wednesday, July 25, 2018 at 1:11:34 AM UTC+3, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 7/24/2018 5:46 PM, already5chosen at yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, July 23, 2018 at 2:30:04 AM UTC+3, Kerry Main wrote:
> > >> Feedback I heard from that DECwest individual was that while some
> > >> of the Windows NT kernel was cleaned up, and likely more since
> > >> then, for MS to do a massive re-write of all the internal macro
> > >> code would have resulted in to many past incompatibilities and
> > >> taken to long to implement. Also, they were apparently worried about
> potential performance issues.
> >
> > > WTF is "macro code" ?
> >
> > Most likely macro assembler.
> >
> > In the MS world known as MASM,
> >
> > Arne
> 
> So why Kerry called it by that strange name?
> And how he got the strange idea that it was used widely in NT kernel?
>

Let me clarify .. I was talking to one of the DECwest Engineers during one of our trips to Redmond while part of the DEC internal Windows NT Wizard program (roughly equivalent to the internal DEC/Compaq/HP OpenVMS Ambassador program). The DECwest Engineers were DEC employees who did the port of Windows NT to Alpha (not Microsoft as commonly thought). Yes, the DECwest team did work very closely with Microsoft on the post release bundling, marketing etc.

He stated that dealing with Windows 16bit (compatibility?)/32bit X86 macro code (my recollection - perhaps macro assembler?) in the kernel / other places and making this all work on 64bit Alpha HW was one of their biggest porting challenges.


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com