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> Finding software written for Win32/Alpha, though, is likely to be a challenge. As someone who actually had one of these at work[1] back in the early 90s, the
by Jaruzel 9y ago
> Finding software written for Win32/Alpha, though, is likely to be a challenge.
As someone who actually had one of these at work[1] back in the early 90s, there was hardly any software compiled for Alpha even when it was a current product. Lack of software support, was one of the reasons that WinNT Alpha never gained a foothold. Which was a shame as the Alpha hardware was pretty great.
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[1] It was the only one we had, I think we got it as a freebie as the rest of the computer room was choca full of DEC VAXs.
- randomerr 9y agoI remember a local college loved them because you could teach 3d modeling. They really weren't used for the actual modelling but rather as cheap render farms that could run at night.
- gaius 9y agothere was hardly any software compiled for Alpha even when it was a current product I ran SQL Server on NT on Alpha in the 90s, it was actually very good, but you had to treat it as a dedicated appliance rather than a general-purpose computer because as you say, there was very little software available. Then the industry took a weird meander through DEC StrongARM and now Microsoft is looking at Windows on ARM seriously again...
- youdontknowtho 9y agoIf I remember correctly there was something called FX32 that was like a dynamic transpiler from X86 to Alpha. You could run Win32 apps, and they would get faster over time as it cached translated binaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32