4 ms·

DEC was desperately trying to stay relevant when the "PC revolution" completely ate their lunch throughout the 90s. At the same time, Microsoft was trying to p

DEC was desperately trying to stay relevant when the "PC revolution" completely ate their lunch throughout the 90s. At the same time, Microsoft was trying to push more deeply into the "enterprise" at a time when minicomputers and the various UNIX vendors (and DECs own VMS) ruled the datacenters. Windows on AXP allowed Microsoft a place to run SQL Server on 64-bit hardware, getting a foot in the door there. It also allowed DEC to push powerful workstations into large Windows customers. But NT definitely felt sluggish on Alpha- there was a lot of room for optimization, but it was always a bit of an afterthought, vs running VMS or UNIX/OSF-1 on Alpha. That wasn't enough to save DEC, though. Alpha was an awesome platform at the time. The AlphaServer 8400 "TurboLaser" machines were insanely fast. I'm still looking for an AS 2100 "Sable" machine to restore. Source: Worked at DEC in the Windows/Alpha team.

scruffyherder 3y ago
So I have to ask, were you swept up in the Compaq merger? No doubt NT on alpha wasn't a big seller, the fact the 64bit compiler was hiding in plain sight pretyt much sums that up. But it had to be a simple sales # thing when they killed NT on Alpha? It all just seems such bad timing, especially the way Itanium flopped, But I don't think Compaq could compete with AMD and the hammer.
- p_l 3y ago
  Compaq announced complete switchover to Itanium and killing off Alpha without any warning (No Itanium chips were available then, iirc), which is how there are Windows 2000 RCs for Alpha - up until the announcement the development was progressing with assumption that Alpha would be launch platform for 2000 just like it was for NT4. Also, a lot of AMD64 tech is Alpha derived, despite Intel buying a lot of it from Compaq. I once heard a rumour that early K8 design changelog supposedly had a line about "dropping VAX floating point support from the FPU". Which would be less believable if Hammer didn't resemble EV7 with DDR2 in place of Rambus and no ethernet-based management bus.
icedchai 3y ago
I have an Alpha in my collection (DS10.) It still feels pretty snappy for a 20 year old box! I upgraded it with an SSD. Alpha was incredible at the time (late 90s...)
krylon 3y ago
I remember some PC vendors selling Alpha based workstations running NT in the mid- to late 1990s. I don't know how well they performed, but the price put them out of my range by such a wide margin I did not really care. I'd just look at the brochure and drool a little, even though in retrospect, I could not really have done anything with one of these.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of them, amirite?
  - krylon 3y ago
    At the time I was a Windows user who used his PC mainly for video games. Other than Minesweeper and Solitaire, the gaming situation on Windows for Alpha was probably not great.
- Maursault 3y ago
  > I remember some PC vendors selling Alpha based workstations running NT in the mid- to late 1990s. AGFA sold Alphas (DEC-branded) running NT4.1 in the mid-1990s along with their Apogee film imaging equipment to run their Apogee RIP software (which may have been G4-TIFF based at the time). I worked at a commercial printer as a prepress operator in 1996, and the Alpha/NT AGFA RIP just stayed on until 1998, at least that's when I moved on. The Mac workstations saw the RIP as an ordinary printer. There was never any reason to touch the RIP, it just did its thing and shot to the imagesetter. What I saw later was RAMpage equipment, an AGFA competitor, and which was 100% PDF, that separated the RIP from the shooter into two machines, both RAMpage-branded PCs.
  - krylon 3y ago
    Thanks!
  - lproven 3y ago
    There was never an "NT 4.1". Do you mean 3.1, the 1st release?
pjmlp 3y ago
Until version 6, SQL Server was a partnership with Sybase, they even shared the C API for data management. Sybase SQL Server did just fine on UNIX and 64 bit OSes, we had it running HP-UX 11 64 bit.
drewg123 3y ago
Do you have any idea what the installed base of Windows/Alpha was? This is not intended to be insulting, but I don't recall hearing of anybody actually running Windows/alpha -- in my circles, it was just a way to order a workstation w/o paying for a UNIX or VMS license. We ordered all our alphas with windows. This was because we ran FreeBSD/alpha, and didn't want to pay for the DEC UNIX license. So the first thing we'd do when we got a new box was to switch the firmware from ARC to SRM mode and install FreeBSD. I imagine lots of other places did that, but with Linux rather than FreeBSD. I do remember running Windows for a few weeks. FX!32 was really impressive, and it felt like normal x86 windows. I can't recall why I did this .. just playing with the OS, and maybe to see what it might take to get FreeBSD booting from ARC (I was one of the 2 people who did the port of FreeBSD to alpha)
- inconceivable 3y ago
  i vaguely remember attempting to install NT alpha on a dec workstation for one of my dad's friends who worked for either MSFT or digital or HP or something (he got a copy from work for eval - i think he worked in sales). it didn't work at all, and would hang after the file copy portion of the installer. i tried for an entire day but none of my usual x86 tricks applied so i just gave up.
- justin66 3y ago
  I supported a few Alpha customers in tech support in the late nineties. Our NT product was the most advanced thing we made (there were Unix and DOS versions as well) and I specifically remember a Unix admin type of guy grumpily observing on a call, "if I have to run Windows I might as well run it on a real computer." That conversation would have been shortly after the merger, but before Compaq started gradually killing everything Alpha related in favor of Itanium. Even if Compaq had a little more foresight on that particular matchup, Alpha could never have survived very long after the HP merger, I guess. HP was already building machines for PA-RISC and Itanium, and then there were the minicomputers... how many processor architectures the world was trying to forget about could one company actually support?
mosburger 3y ago
My first industry job was a co-op on the DEC Multia team. Multia was another attempt to lure people over from the VMS/Unix world by bundling an X Server and system administration software along with Windows NT. While I was there, we switched over from Alpha to Intel because the performance just wasn't there on Alpha - IIRC the 75MHz Intels blew the 233MHz Alphas out of the water. Most of us chalked it up to the fact that Microsoft wasn't super interested or able to optimize Windows to run on Alpha. As sort of a "stunt" I got the newer versions of the Multia software that were only available on Intel to run on the old Alpha Multias under a (then internal project) emulator called FX!32
- trentnelson 3y ago
  Getting performance out of Alphas usually depended heavily on the compiler, and, really, only the DEC compiler really made it shine. GCC was notoriously bad at generating optimized binaries (circa ~2.95), at least compared to compiling the same code on the DEC compiler suite. I'm sort of half surprised you're recalling an Intel 75MHz beating a 233MHz Alpha, but, sort of half not. Depends on the type of software you were running I guess. Or do you mean just the general system responsiveness? I did a lot of work on Alphas w/ Digital UNIX, then Tru64, around the 1999-2002 timeframe, and they were so much fun.
  - davidgnz 3y ago
    The Multia used the cut-down LCA4 or LCA45 (Low Cost Alpha) CPU, the 21066 or 21066A. These apparently performed worse than the more expensive EV4 or EV45 parts. Also, the compilers on Windows NT were from DEC, at least to some extent. In the NT 3.50 SDK there is a manual from DEC explaining what the compiler was - a customised Microsoft C/C++ frontend combined with a port of the GEM backend from Unix or VMS.
    - p_l 3y ago
      the 21066 chips were cache and memory bandwidth starved compared to normal EV4 setup, and IIRC many didn't have the larger cache option. Reports seem to indicate that 233MHz models effectively were about Pentium 100MHz speed in integer ops. I don't know how many EV4 systems shipped with 64bit system bus, but by 1994 AlphaStation 255 models shipped with 128bit system bus and 1MByte L2 cache, and they weren't particularly high end (I found one that was used by Best Buy to run VHS rental shop...)
formerly_proven 3y ago
Insanely fast but all descriptions of the Alpha's memory model sound insane to me, too. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283194 (I've actually wondered how this behavior was supposed to be caused by hardware and that's the first time I've heard the cache-is-split-into-independent-banks-which-are-fully-independently-connected-to-the-main-bus-and-cache-snooping-bus explanation which makes sense)

scruffyherder 3y ago

So I have to ask, were you swept up in the Compaq merger? No doubt NT on alpha wasn't a big seller, the fact the 64bit compiler was hiding in plain sight pretyt much sums that up. But it had to be a simple sales # thing when they killed NT on Alpha? It all just seems such bad timing, especially the way Itanium flopped, But I don't think Compaq could compete with AMD and the hammer.

p_l 3y ago
Compaq announced complete switchover to Itanium and killing off Alpha without any warning (No Itanium chips were available then, iirc), which is how there are Windows 2000 RCs for Alpha - up until the announcement the development was progressing with assumption that Alpha would be launch platform for 2000 just like it was for NT4. Also, a lot of AMD64 tech is Alpha derived, despite Intel buying a lot of it from Compaq. I once heard a rumour that early K8 design changelog supposedly had a line about "dropping VAX floating point support from the FPU". Which would be less believable if Hammer didn't resemble EV7 with DDR2 in place of Rambus and no ethernet-based management bus.

icedchai 3y ago

I have an Alpha in my collection (DS10.) It still feels pretty snappy for a 20 year old box! I upgraded it with an SSD. Alpha was incredible at the time (late 90s...)

krylon 3y ago

I remember some PC vendors selling Alpha based workstations running NT in the mid- to late 1990s. I don't know how well they performed, but the price put them out of my range by such a wide margin I did not really care. I'd just look at the brochure and drool a little, even though in retrospect, I could not really have done anything with one of these.

bitwize 3y ago
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of them, amirite?
- krylon 3y ago
  At the time I was a Windows user who used his PC mainly for video games. Other than Minesweeper and Solitaire, the gaming situation on Windows for Alpha was probably not great.
Maursault 3y ago
> I remember some PC vendors selling Alpha based workstations running NT in the mid- to late 1990s. AGFA sold Alphas (DEC-branded) running NT4.1 in the mid-1990s along with their Apogee film imaging equipment to run their Apogee RIP software (which may have been G4-TIFF based at the time). I worked at a commercial printer as a prepress operator in 1996, and the Alpha/NT AGFA RIP just stayed on until 1998, at least that's when I moved on. The Mac workstations saw the RIP as an ordinary printer. There was never any reason to touch the RIP, it just did its thing and shot to the imagesetter. What I saw later was RAMpage equipment, an AGFA competitor, and which was 100% PDF, that separated the RIP from the shooter into two machines, both RAMpage-branded PCs.
- krylon 3y ago
  Thanks!
- lproven 3y ago
  There was never an "NT 4.1". Do you mean 3.1, the 1st release?

pjmlp 3y ago

Until version 6, SQL Server was a partnership with Sybase, they even shared the C API for data management. Sybase SQL Server did just fine on UNIX and 64 bit OSes, we had it running HP-UX 11 64 bit.

drewg123 3y ago

Do you have any idea what the installed base of Windows/Alpha was? This is not intended to be insulting, but I don't recall hearing of anybody actually running Windows/alpha -- in my circles, it was just a way to order a workstation w/o paying for a UNIX or VMS license. We ordered all our alphas with windows. This was because we ran FreeBSD/alpha, and didn't want to pay for the DEC UNIX license. So the first thing we'd do when we got a new box was to switch the firmware from ARC to SRM mode and install FreeBSD. I imagine lots of other places did that, but with Linux rather than FreeBSD. I do remember running Windows for a few weeks. FX!32 was really impressive, and it felt like normal x86 windows. I can't recall why I did this .. just playing with the OS, and maybe to see what it might take to get FreeBSD booting from ARC (I was one of the 2 people who did the port of FreeBSD to alpha)

inconceivable 3y ago
i vaguely remember attempting to install NT alpha on a dec workstation for one of my dad's friends who worked for either MSFT or digital or HP or something (he got a copy from work for eval - i think he worked in sales). it didn't work at all, and would hang after the file copy portion of the installer. i tried for an entire day but none of my usual x86 tricks applied so i just gave up.
justin66 3y ago
I supported a few Alpha customers in tech support in the late nineties. Our NT product was the most advanced thing we made (there were Unix and DOS versions as well) and I specifically remember a Unix admin type of guy grumpily observing on a call, "if I have to run Windows I might as well run it on a real computer." That conversation would have been shortly after the merger, but before Compaq started gradually killing everything Alpha related in favor of Itanium. Even if Compaq had a little more foresight on that particular matchup, Alpha could never have survived very long after the HP merger, I guess. HP was already building machines for PA-RISC and Itanium, and then there were the minicomputers... how many processor architectures the world was trying to forget about could one company actually support?

mosburger 3y ago

My first industry job was a co-op on the DEC Multia team. Multia was another attempt to lure people over from the VMS/Unix world by bundling an X Server and system administration software along with Windows NT. While I was there, we switched over from Alpha to Intel because the performance just wasn't there on Alpha - IIRC the 75MHz Intels blew the 233MHz Alphas out of the water. Most of us chalked it up to the fact that Microsoft wasn't super interested or able to optimize Windows to run on Alpha. As sort of a "stunt" I got the newer versions of the Multia software that were only available on Intel to run on the old Alpha Multias under a (then internal project) emulator called FX!32

trentnelson 3y ago
Getting performance out of Alphas usually depended heavily on the compiler, and, really, only the DEC compiler really made it shine. GCC was notoriously bad at generating optimized binaries (circa ~2.95), at least compared to compiling the same code on the DEC compiler suite. I'm sort of half surprised you're recalling an Intel 75MHz beating a 233MHz Alpha, but, sort of half not. Depends on the type of software you were running I guess. Or do you mean just the general system responsiveness? I did a lot of work on Alphas w/ Digital UNIX, then Tru64, around the 1999-2002 timeframe, and they were so much fun.
- davidgnz 3y ago
  The Multia used the cut-down LCA4 or LCA45 (Low Cost Alpha) CPU, the 21066 or 21066A. These apparently performed worse than the more expensive EV4 or EV45 parts. Also, the compilers on Windows NT were from DEC, at least to some extent. In the NT 3.50 SDK there is a manual from DEC explaining what the compiler was - a customised Microsoft C/C++ frontend combined with a port of the GEM backend from Unix or VMS.
  - p_l 3y ago
    the 21066 chips were cache and memory bandwidth starved compared to normal EV4 setup, and IIRC many didn't have the larger cache option. Reports seem to indicate that 233MHz models effectively were about Pentium 100MHz speed in integer ops. I don't know how many EV4 systems shipped with 64bit system bus, but by 1994 AlphaStation 255 models shipped with 128bit system bus and 1MByte L2 cache, and they weren't particularly high end (I found one that was used by Best Buy to run VHS rental shop...)

formerly_proven 3y ago

Insanely fast but all descriptions of the Alpha's memory model sound insane to me, too. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283194 (I've actually wondered how this behavior was supposed to be caused by hardware and that's the first time I've heard the cache-is-split-into-independent-banks-which-are-fully-independently-connected-to-the-main-bus-and-cache-snooping-bus explanation which makes sense)