3 ms·

I remember my time using an Alpha AXP nearly 30 years ago being the fastest computer I've ever used - I imagine my current laptop is far superior in speed by or

I remember my time using an Alpha AXP nearly 30 years ago being the fastest computer I've ever used - I imagine my current laptop is far superior in speed by orders of magnitude, but the applications hadn't caught up with the CPU available. It was also probably the most reliable. We never switched off or even logged out of the machines for 6 months to a year at a time.

tgv 3y ago
We had DECstations. They were great systems for the day. Only a few years later, they were overtaken in speed and price by (IIRC) 486 systems with Linux; I think those were cheaper than the tape cartridge unit on which we got the system updates. DEC never recovered.
postmodest 3y ago
Your current _watch_ is faster than an Alpha AXP. (If you have an Apple Watch) the early ones only pushed in the low hundreds of MIPS. It's crazy to me how my whole-ass DECServer with 2x EV4's wouldn't even be a good peripheral for portable computers today, and it could run hundreds of interactive user sessions.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Our school's PDP-11/34 ( 16 bit, 128K RAM, 5 + 5 Megabyte disk drives) supported about 20 interactive users at a time. We did reduce the baud rate on the ADM-3 terminals to 1200 so the I/O buffering would smooth over some of the swapping.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    The big leap up from VMS in terms of performant concurrent users for us was when we switched to using a Sequent Symmetry, now that's another long dead system giant. Poor Dynix.
ilyt 3y ago
> but the applications hadn't caught up with the CPU available. They did. Developers just chose to use it on abstractions rather than making faster apps...
gwbas1c 3y ago
> It was also probably the most reliable. We never switched off or even logged out of the machines for 6 months to a year at a time. In 2003 or 2004 I worked with a former DEC engineer who begroaned their reliability. He claimed that their hard drive engineers got obsessed with making sure the drives would last 30 or 40 years, when they would be functionally obsolete (and replaced) in 5 years.
mistrial9 3y ago
I recall visiting the office on an email administrator at a tech firm in California. There was an important email that got "lost" somehow, and I took the opportunity to meet the person who ran the internal email system. This person was large and in-charge! in their cubicle.. I had never seen them otherwise. Once asked the guy quickly opened his window setup, I think it was some kind of VMS derivitive in the late 1990s, and searched every email sent by anyone in the company for the past year.. quickly! This was impressive to me at that time, and I remember the whole situation very well now.

tgv 3y ago

We had DECstations. They were great systems for the day. Only a few years later, they were overtaken in speed and price by (IIRC) 486 systems with Linux; I think those were cheaper than the tape cartridge unit on which we got the system updates. DEC never recovered.

postmodest 3y ago

Your current _watch_ is faster than an Alpha AXP. (If you have an Apple Watch) the early ones only pushed in the low hundreds of MIPS. It's crazy to me how my whole-ass DECServer with 2x EV4's wouldn't even be a good peripheral for portable computers today, and it could run hundreds of interactive user sessions.

mpweiher 3y ago
Our school's PDP-11/34 ( 16 bit, 128K RAM, 5 + 5 Megabyte disk drives) supported about 20 interactive users at a time. We did reduce the baud rate on the ADM-3 terminals to 1200 so the I/O buffering would smooth over some of the swapping.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  The big leap up from VMS in terms of performant concurrent users for us was when we switched to using a Sequent Symmetry, now that's another long dead system giant. Poor Dynix.

ilyt 3y ago

> but the applications hadn't caught up with the CPU available. They did. Developers just chose to use it on abstractions rather than making faster apps...

gwbas1c 3y ago

> It was also probably the most reliable. We never switched off or even logged out of the machines for 6 months to a year at a time. In 2003 or 2004 I worked with a former DEC engineer who begroaned their reliability. He claimed that their hard drive engineers got obsessed with making sure the drives would last 30 or 40 years, when they would be functionally obsolete (and replaced) in 5 years.

mistrial9 3y ago

I recall visiting the office on an email administrator at a tech firm in California. There was an important email that got "lost" somehow, and I took the opportunity to meet the person who ran the internal email system. This person was large and in-charge! in their cubicle.. I had never seen them otherwise. Once asked the guy quickly opened his window setup, I think it was some kind of VMS derivitive in the late 1990s, and searched every email sent by anyone in the company for the past year.. quickly! This was impressive to me at that time, and I remember the whole situation very well now.