[HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-02-12 17:47, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:

On Feb 11, 2013, at 7:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

...
Speaking of IAS, it really looks cool when reading specs, but I've never touched it, and another aspect of those specs is that it looks like it would be rather slow...

IAS was basically RSX11-D with a timesharing system layered over it.   My exposure to it was in supporting Typeset-11, which originally ran on RSX11-D and in later versions moved to IAS.   For our purposes, the two were identical; we did not use the timesharing facilities of IAS at all.   I'm not sure why Typeset-11 used RSX11-D instead of -M as most of the competition did.   Perhaps history -- it may be that it predated -M.

Sounds likely. I wonder if much did happen in 11D after 11M, and even more, 11M+ were introduced. It sure looks like all focus was on the 11M family. But 11D did come before.

And yes, it was pretty heavy.   It did work well enough for what we wanted, but it did use a whole 11/70 to support an application that was less functional than what competitors did with an 11/45.   For example, Typeset-11 did not have WYSIWIG editing while the other guys did, and that was a major black mark.

Never seen TRAX in real life either, btw. What was so good about it?

Nothing.   It was one of the most spectacular failures in DEC history.   A whole new OS (well, based on RSX I believe) and new hardware designed specifically for it (VT62), canceled a week after it was first announced.

The little I've read about TRAX, I wonder how much RSX based it really was.
Also, the terminal must have been the VT61 (which I think was block-mode oriented). The VT62 is just a plain VT52 with some additional whistles. I had one for many years...

Cancelled after one week is rather spectacular, though. Do you know why? I've seen it mentioned in some documentation and so on, but never seen or heard anything of it outside of those few places. Obviously never seen or heard of anyone ever running it, or even knowing of any place where anyone have run it.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol