On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:19, "Steve Davidson" <jeep at scshome.net> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:11
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 02/11/2013 04:07 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug.
Frightening.
As for
speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my
Jensen's still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
I reloaded several Jensens with Digital UNIX at customer
sites. They ran rings around their previous NT installs on
the same hardware. It wasn't 4.0, though; I seem to recall
it was 3.something.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
NT 3.x was a whole different beast the NT 4.0. Video was a big change -
it moved into system space (and so did the early crashes :-)), but
performance improved. I used to run V3.5 with SQL and it booked! V4.0
I used for file, print, and email (Exchange). Often I would run most of
the BackOffice Suite (except the SNA component) and that included SMS
which was a resource hog. NT 4.0 workstation was quite fast - problem
was that few companies ported their software to the Alpha platform so
over time people had fewer and fewer reasons to use it.
Which version of Exchange?
NT 4.0 Workstation is still fast! It's much less bloated than modern windows! I still use it and Office 97.
Even Dave Cutler used the Alpha to do development on until they finally
withdrew support that is
That makes perfect sense. I am not surprised.
-Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:11
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 02/11/2013 04:07 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug.
Frightening.
As for
speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my
Jensen's still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
I reloaded several Jensens with Digital UNIX at customer
sites. They ran rings around their previous NT installs on
the same hardware. It wasn't 4.0, though; I seem to recall
it was 3.something.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
NT 3.x was a whole different beast the NT 4.0. Video was a big change -
it moved into system space (and so did the early crashes :-)), but
performance improved. I used to run V3.5 with SQL and it booked! V4.0
I used for file, print, and email (Exchange). Often I would run most of
the BackOffice Suite (except the SNA component) and that included SMS
which was a resource hog. NT 4.0 workstation was quite fast - problem
was that few companies ported their software to the Alpha platform so
over time people had fewer and fewer reasons to use it.
Even Dave Cutler used the Alpha to do development on until they finally
withdrew support that is...
-Steve
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:14, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 02/11/2013 04:11 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
The only reason it failed in the market place was what Compaq did/didn't
do with/for it. CAD/CAM on the first Alphas was amazing. Intel had
nothing that could keep up with it. Compaq did not know how to market
it and it fell into the abyss. Shame too - DEC knew how to deal with
interrupts - something that Intel still does not know how to deal with.
The people I moved off of it did so due to the almost complete lack of
software, and the instability. Their application targets were network
services. (I was with a networking company at the time)
NT 3.x was horrendously unstable iirc. I don't think the TCP/IP stack was very robust or refined in that era either.
Lack of software was however a major issue. :(
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 02/11/2013 04:11 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
The only reason it failed in the market place was what Compaq did/didn't
do with/for it. CAD/CAM on the first Alphas was amazing. Intel had
nothing that could keep up with it. Compaq did not know how to market
it and it fell into the abyss. Shame too - DEC knew how to deal with
interrupts - something that Intel still does not know how to deal with.
The people I moved off of it did so due to the almost complete lack of
software, and the instability. Their application targets were network
services. (I was with a networking company at the time)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:12, "Steve Davidson" <jeep at scshome.net> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Cory Smelosky
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:08
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:07, "Steve Davidson" <jeep at scshome.net> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:01
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 02/11/2013 03:52 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
That's frightening. They stopped pushing it as a viable
platform in
like 1994. The last place I saw it deployed (not that there were
many) was gone by 1995.
I've heard NT performance wasn't that good on early alphas,
so I see
why. ;)
That wasn't why. ;)
It boots the kernel and loads the installer with all 4
processors and all 4G RAM, even!
I am TERRIFIED.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug. As
for speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my
Jensen's still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
It's a shame I can't get the Terminal Server edition to
detect a disk controller :(
-Steve
Did you try F6 or F8 (I can't remember which for drivers) to install a
new driver at install time?
Neither. S. ;)
It was saying none of my manually specified controllers were found. Let me go try again, I poked a couple Abios settings related to Symbios compat.
-Steve
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:10, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 02/11/2013 04:07 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug.
Frightening.
As for
speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my Jensen's
still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
I reloaded several Jensens with Digital UNIX at customer sites. They
ran rings around their previous NT installs on the same hardware. It
wasn't 4.0, though; I seem to recall it was 3.something.
I'm not fond of 3.5/3.51. 4.0 would outperform them.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Cory Smelosky
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:08
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:07, "Steve Davidson" <jeep at scshome.net> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:01
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 02/11/2013 03:52 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
That's frightening. They stopped pushing it as a viable
platform in
like 1994. The last place I saw it deployed (not that there were
many) was gone by 1995.
I've heard NT performance wasn't that good on early alphas,
so I see
why. ;)
That wasn't why. ;)
It boots the kernel and loads the installer with all 4
processors and all 4G RAM, even!
I am TERRIFIED.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug. As
for speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my
Jensen's still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
It's a shame I can't get the Terminal Server edition to
detect a disk controller :(
-Steve
Did you try F6 or F8 (I can't remember which for drivers) to install a
new driver at install time?
-Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 16:02
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40
On 02/11/2013 03:58 PM, Mark Benson wrote:
That's frightening. They stopped pushing it as a viable
platform in
like 1994. The last place I saw it deployed (not that there were
many) was gone by 1995.
Either way, though, NT on Alpha was very much a "first generation
Alphas" thing, and the ES family is a "last generation
Alphas" thing.
I'd be shocked if it even came close to booting on a 21264-class
processor. ...which means I'm utterly shocked to hear of any DS20
support at all.
Well I learned something today. ;)
You know DEC, they loved supporting legacy products almost
into oblivion.
Yes, for GOOD products...NT on Alpha was an utter failure
by every metric.
I mean, when did they stop officially supporting PDP themselves?
Supporting I don't know, but the last PDP-11 to roll off
the assembly line did so on 9/30/1996. (see "good products" above)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
The only reason it failed in the market place was what Compaq did/didn't
do with/for it. CAD/CAM on the first Alphas was amazing. Intel had
nothing that could keep up with it. Compaq did not know how to market
it and it fell into the abyss. Shame too - DEC knew how to deal with
interrupts - something that Intel still does not know how to deal with.
-Steve
On 02/11/2013 04:07 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
NT 4.0 and all service packs were supported on Alpha. NT 5.0 (aka
Windows 2000) beta worked as well until Compaq pulled the plug.
Frightening.
As for
speed... The Alpha's kicked series ASS running NT. One of my Jensen's
still runs V4.0 and it cooks right along!
I reloaded several Jensens with Digital UNIX at customer sites. They
ran rings around their previous NT installs on the same hardware. It
wasn't 4.0, though; I seem to recall it was 3.something.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 11 Feb 2013, at 16:06, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 02/11/2013 04:03 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
That's frightening. They stopped pushing it as a viable platform in
like 1994. The last place I saw it deployed (not that there were many)
was gone by 1995.
I've heard NT performance wasn't that good on early alphas, so I see why. ;)
That wasn't why. ;)
Hmmm. ;)
It boots the kernel and loads the installer with all 4 processors and all 4G RAM, even!
I am TERRIFIED.
This should be comforting then: Keyboard was nonfunctional so I wasn't able to complete the install. ;)
Oh thank God.
I mean..."Gee man, I'm sorry to hear that!"
;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
