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Perhaps it lasted longer because you could actually buy Alpha computers from DEC with Windows NT installed. Could you ever buy MIPS or PowerPC computers from a

Perhaps it lasted longer because you could actually buy Alpha computers from DEC with Windows NT installed. Could you ever buy MIPS or PowerPC computers from a major vendor with Windows NT installed?

tyingq 7y ago
Not saying it was a raging success, but yes, you could buy MIPS machines with Windows NT installed: http://www.sensi.org/~alec/mips/acer_pica.html http://www.sensi.org/~alec/mips/acer_pica.html
- bluGill 7y ago
  Interesting. I was not aware of them at the time, while I was aware of Alpha. My impression was alpha competed well with the high end wintel systems, with a better price/performance ratio. There were no cheap alpha systems available though, nor where there laptops (only latter did I find out how power hungry alpha was), so those of us who didn't spend a lot of money or wanted a laptop didn't try alpha but those who bought better systems considered Alpha the system to get. (Note that I have always been a BSD or linux guy and don't know what the Windows world did) What is missing from your link is price.
- sterwill 7y ago
  I had never heard of the PICA-61, thanks! I owned a DEC Multia back in the late 90s, when they were already obsolete and plentiful. It had SRM firmware, not ARC, but I didn't have any interest in running NT on it anyway. Ran Linux really well and used it as my personal server for years. Later I put NetBSD on it for a short time, but I don't remember why. I remember the it frequently printing messages about unaligned memory traps to the console, but it did the job. I'm sure Microsoft was sincerely hedging their architecture with NT on MIPS/Alpha/PowerPC/i960/etc at the start, but by the time that hardware shipped with NT on it was pretty clear all the momentum wasn't leaving x86. On the 64-bit Alpha, I believe NT userspace was still 32-bit and so were all the applications. I don't remember any 64-bit Alpha NT applications ever shipping, but I admit I wasn't watching that scene very closely.
hylaride 7y ago
I'm quoting from memory, but IIRC when MS created the NT kernel they were targeting the traditional UNIX space, which is also why they natively supported POSIX(1) at the time (which hilariously was later dropped and now we're back with the Linux subsystem). At the time, Intel servers were a relative novelty so it made sense to support other architectures. In an interesting bit of history, the reason why PuTTY exists is because the creator had an Alpha NT workstation and no native telnet client with decent terminal emulation. (1) If you ever supported NT 3/4 machines and had UNIX experience, you'd have noticed a lot of early third party software on NT were direct ports of UNIX-based code. I still have dreams about dealing with Veritas on NT and saving the day because of my UNIX knowledge.
- ch_123 7y ago
  POSIX compatibility was mainly driven by FIPS 151-2, which required US government agencies to only buy operating systems which were POSIX compliant. Quite a number of proprietary operating systems during the 90s - e.g. System/390, OS/400, VMS, Non Stop, OS 2200, etc. gained POSIX compliance for the same reason. Of course, being POSIX compliant is very differnt to providing a usable Unix-style programming environment.

Perhaps it lasted longer because you could actually buy Alpha computers from DEC with Windows NT installed. Could you ever buy MIPS or PowerPC computers from a major vendor with Windows NT installed?

tyingq 7y ago

Not saying it was a raging success, but yes, you could buy MIPS machines with Windows NT installed: http://www.sensi.org/~alec/mips/acer_pica.html http://www.sensi.org/~alec/mips/acer_pica.html

bluGill 7y ago
Interesting. I was not aware of them at the time, while I was aware of Alpha. My impression was alpha competed well with the high end wintel systems, with a better price/performance ratio. There were no cheap alpha systems available though, nor where there laptops (only latter did I find out how power hungry alpha was), so those of us who didn't spend a lot of money or wanted a laptop didn't try alpha but those who bought better systems considered Alpha the system to get. (Note that I have always been a BSD or linux guy and don't know what the Windows world did) What is missing from your link is price.
sterwill 7y ago
I had never heard of the PICA-61, thanks! I owned a DEC Multia back in the late 90s, when they were already obsolete and plentiful. It had SRM firmware, not ARC, but I didn't have any interest in running NT on it anyway. Ran Linux really well and used it as my personal server for years. Later I put NetBSD on it for a short time, but I don't remember why. I remember the it frequently printing messages about unaligned memory traps to the console, but it did the job. I'm sure Microsoft was sincerely hedging their architecture with NT on MIPS/Alpha/PowerPC/i960/etc at the start, but by the time that hardware shipped with NT on it was pretty clear all the momentum wasn't leaving x86. On the 64-bit Alpha, I believe NT userspace was still 32-bit and so were all the applications. I don't remember any 64-bit Alpha NT applications ever shipping, but I admit I wasn't watching that scene very closely.

hylaride 7y ago

I'm quoting from memory, but IIRC when MS created the NT kernel they were targeting the traditional UNIX space, which is also why they natively supported POSIX(1) at the time (which hilariously was later dropped and now we're back with the Linux subsystem). At the time, Intel servers were a relative novelty so it made sense to support other architectures. In an interesting bit of history, the reason why PuTTY exists is because the creator had an Alpha NT workstation and no native telnet client with decent terminal emulation. (1) If you ever supported NT 3/4 machines and had UNIX experience, you'd have noticed a lot of early third party software on NT were direct ports of UNIX-based code. I still have dreams about dealing with Veritas on NT and saving the day because of my UNIX knowledge.

ch_123 7y ago
POSIX compatibility was mainly driven by FIPS 151-2, which required US government agencies to only buy operating systems which were POSIX compliant. Quite a number of proprietary operating systems during the 90s - e.g. System/390, OS/400, VMS, Non Stop, OS 2200, etc. gained POSIX compliance for the same reason. Of course, being POSIX compliant is very differnt to providing a usable Unix-style programming environment.