[HN Gopher] AXPbox Alpha Emulator
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AXPbox Alpha Emulator
Author : zdw
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-01-23 16:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jandeboevrie wrote:
| Version 1.0.0 was released just yesterday:
| https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/releases/tag/v1.0.0
|
| Code Contributions, bug reports and testing are very welcome
| mrlonglong wrote:
| es40 works just fine for me with OpenVMS, but I will take a look
| at this one to see if I can add it to my library of emulators.
| Kudos.
| jandeboevrie wrote:
| It's a fork of es40. New build system, more stable networking,
| bug fixes, but don't expect miracles just yet. 10 year old c++
| codebase is not something you magically speed up overnight
| tyingq wrote:
| I remember thinking that Alpha might eventually topple x86. At
| the time, there was no x86-64, and Linux was still buggy, so the
| RISC platforms were thriving...and Alpha was at the top. Then
| Microsoft made NT run on Alpha. All in the early to mid 90's.
| Then the 1-2 combination of the Itanium distraction followed by
| the Opteron + 64 bit Linux, and then Alpha died.
| avhception wrote:
| I got my first computer around the time that happened, a humble
| Pentium 1.
|
| It was only much, much later that I learned about Linux, then
| FreeBSD and the whole history behind UNIX, RISC machines and
| all that - at a point when it was mostly history.
|
| I even acquired some machines out of pure fascination. I got an
| IBM RS/6000, a Sun Ultra45 and a Blade 100.
|
| Still gotta get a MIPS and, especially, an Alpha machine.
|
| These machines seemed so much more serious compared to PCs, I
| was blown away when I discovered there had been 64 bit
| architectures in the mid-90s! To this day, PCs seem like toys
| to me with their gimmick-y firmware.
|
| It always left me wondering about what could have been. And
| Alpha may have been the most promising back in the day!
| spijdar wrote:
| What's more, there were 64 bit _laptops_ in the mid 90s. Not
| particularly mobile ones, but if you could tolerate a 7 pound
| behemoth, you could get a 200 MHz 64 bit SPARC processor with
| 512MB of RAM in '96/97. The AlphaBook with an Alpha
| processor that was announced in '95 comes even earlier.
| https://www.vaxbarn.com/index.php/other-bits/555-tadpole-
| alp...
|
| One thing that always strikes me about workstations and
| (especially?) these laptops is that, while the CPUs
| themselves weren't always much faster than competing Intel
| ones, they always seemed to have much better I/O options. The
| SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better
| throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends
| to how the overall system performs.
|
| A well designed workstation is more than just the sum of its
| parts. While these workstations/servers were arguably
| overpriced and it's not surprising they failed to the cheaper
| Wintel machines, they just seemed more well rounded...
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > The SCSI drives and controllers seemed to get much better
| throughput with lower CPU utilization, which pays dividends
| to how the overall system performs.
|
| Indeed - my employer at the time acquired 10 AlphaPC 164SX
| motherboards with 21164PC CPU's and after adding a nice
| amount of RAM and a nice fast Ultra2 SCSI drive they felt
| really fast. I remember running the early GNOME 1.0 desktop
| on it and it was just so responsive.
| retrac wrote:
| There is a deep irony to it. DEC basically created the
| minicomputer market by eating away at the low end of the
| mainframe industry. They would later be myopic when the same
| was done to them. They almost completely missed the PC
| revolution. They never quite grasped that the future was in
| commodity silicon and the desktop form factor.
|
| The VAX was a processor-on-a-chip by 1985, several months
| before the Intel 386 came out. A complete 32-bit machine that
| could fit in a desktop form factor. It never really happened.
| In the late 80s they would weakly pursue the high-end
| workstation market. But a cheap, mass-produced VAX was
| anathema.
|
| Alpha would follow the same pattern, and by then PCs were
| already the established architecture. It would have been too
| late to veer into the consumer market, probably.
| avhception wrote:
| It's interesting to compare this to what is happening with
| smartphones / ARM and Intel / x86.
| tyingq wrote:
| If Apple were white-labeling M1's for anyone to use, I'd
| expect full-blown panic at Intel. Intel can at least breath
| a little knowing that Apple and AWS are going to keep their
| ARM CPUs in-house.
| mech422 wrote:
| Yeah - I had high hopes for the alpha as well. I think it had
| more to do with Dec not getting price competitive with x86
| before x86_64 took off. I don't really think the Itanium
| factored into it - it always seemed more of an 'also ran' then
| a real threat.
|
| I think I might still have some Dec Multia's with Alpha 166MHgz
| out in the garage somewher. Neat lil boxes.
| bitwize wrote:
| When Compaq bought out DEC they shuttered all Alpha
| development in favor of Itanium. Continuing to develop a
| competing ISA would put them in a bad place as an Intel
| customer.
|
| All this happened before x86_64 was a thing.
| p_l wrote:
| The way it was done was so abrupt that Windows 2000 nearly
| released with Alpha version on standard CD (which would be
| AFAIK 64bit clean, unlike the older ones), but essentially
| the whole NT/alpha team (which was part of Compaq) was told
| close to RTM release "sorry, your project was closed".
|
| Later, Compaq had to restart production, and HP even had to
| introduce updated chip, because some customers, especially
| VMS, didn't want to move to _slower_ Itanium machines.
|
| I have even heard that part of Itanium's flop was how often
| older EV6 machines were running circles around new Itanium
| ones...
| tyingq wrote:
| _" I don't really think the Itanium factored into it"_
|
| There's a sibling comment that mentions Compaq putting in the
| final nail. But, my impression was that more customers might
| have switched to Alpha servers (from HP-UX, Solaris, etc) if
| they didn't think Itanium was going to win the market. It
| also gave more credibility to x86-64 by sort of confirming
| that old-school RISC was dying. Itanium did end up with a
| heavy stigma, but there was a time when many thought it would
| be the future.
| lsllc wrote:
| There's some interesting discussion of the ultimate demise
| of the Alpha here:
|
| http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/compaq_epoch.html
| mailslot wrote:
| Intel also blatantly stole patented technology from DEC. The
| Pentium onward, IIRC, ripped off entire designs. When Compaq
| eventually acquired DEC, they cancelled all of the lawsuits and
| gave Intel complete access to DEC's patents. They also gave
| Intel DEC's raced out ARM chip that they built for Apple.
| lsllc wrote:
| Interesting, worth also pointing out the SIMH project which can
| emulate the VAX, MicroMAX, PDPs etc and many others:
|
| https://github.com/simh/simh
|
| For the VMS-nostalgic, VSI now have OpenVMS running on x64 Intel
| (and in fact apparently already released it as 9.0!):
|
| https://vmssoftware.com/updates/state-of-the-port/
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(page generated 2021-01-24 23:00 UTC)