#dec alpha

Hello  people, here we are again in the domain of the dark.  The tech world tyrant  on the edge of complete misery.  Delving into the underbelly of the twisted world of mediocrity so you don't have to.

It's a dirty job but someone has to negotiate the mire... So on the chopping block today...

The Grumpy Git Top 5 of Chocolate Teapots.

Chocolate Teapots in technology are machines that regardless of whether the machine still works.  They have been abandoned by even the most technical.

5.  PDAs of any form

Palm Pilots, Apple Newton and all of the Psion range.  Yes I now this blog has been looking at the Psion 5 but to be honest I really don't believe anything is currently being developed for these machines.

Sure they are available to buy but software is archaic and I doubt anyone is actively developing software.  Even the Linux community who were working on stuff abandoned their projects.

4.  The NeXT Cube & NeXT Slabs

Now I will not deny the NeXT machines were amazing looking machines.  I can see why people like them but I'm afraid that NeXTStep and OpenStep are long gone regarding current software.

You can definitely see where a lot of the Mac OS X came from but still development for these machines is long gone.

3.  Sun Micro SPARC Stations

Sun were the kings of CAD system in the eighties and nineties but although you can still get them.  They really are pretty useless.unfortunately.

Sure Solaris can still be downloaded but even Sun (Oracle) have abandoned SPARC platforms.  They won't stop you downloading the software but don't expect any support.

Even the Linux community have abandoned SPARC when Debian decides your platform is being marginalised you know the machine is effectively dead.  It seems playing with the SUN is not as easy as once was.

2.  SGI Machines

Yep as much as I like the look of Irix.  As nice as the SGI machines look aesthetically with models such as the Indigo, Indigo II and Tezro.  Thing is these machines had a lot of custom hardware so finding it will either cost you an arm and a leg, then even if you can get the hardware finding drivers is equally as difficult.

Like a lot of these machines software is very limited and to be honest while you can find some software its not exactly a large catalogue as these were marketed as pretty specialist graphics machines.

As such as they were nice to look at they are definitely in Chocolate Teapot Territory

1.  DEC Alpha systems

This one does pain me as the DEC Alpha was a processor I always wanted to run.  Obviously now they are becoming rarer every day and prices escalate every time I check.

Obviously DEC Alpha systems were primarily servers involved as data systems and graphics work.  However even if you get the hardware which is tough.  Finding Alpha software is not simple at all.

You may be able to run Windows software and using the multiple pass hardware conversion system you will eventually convert to Alpha level software. I've heard this conversion system once done is incredibly fast but to be honest I have never seen it in action so I only have the speculation of such.

Would I love to get my hands on a 21364 system.  Yes I would.  Is it a Chocolate Teapot most definitely

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Day 6 of the daily blog challenge. Now I have called these machines the Ultimate Chocolate teapot of the retro computing world but its still one machine I would love to own.

I was once offered a 21064 machine but it seemed to have a rather dubious story of its acquisition. The friend who offered it to me got it from a local taxi driver. Apparently a "fare" didn't have enough money to pay so went into his house and returned giving the driver a Power Macintosh 5100 and the DEC Alpha machine.

Both were missing certain parts such as hard drives and CD ROM drives. While these machines were working there was something about the whole story I just found too fishy for my liking.

How many taxi drivers take random computers in lieu of payment. I'm sure there is not a huge number of them about but equally that he then palmed them off to my friend as he didn't know what to do with them.

So in turn offered it to me. I was tempted to take the Alpha but I had a horrible suspicion I would probably end up on the wrong end of a stolen machine enquiry. So as much as it pained me I politely declined to take the machine.

That was the last time I ever saw or examined a DEC Alpha in the wild.

So what makes such a machine so fascinating to me. The DEC Alpha machines were on the market about the same time as the Pentium 2 machines.

The DEC was the far superior machine but equally was probably three times the price of the equivalent Intel machine.

However it just never seemed to gain traction in the desktop market so was soon forgot about as Digital decided to move the Alpha range to more server lines.

Now there was two things about the Dec Alpha what interested me was. One the Alpha well at least the 21164 upwards was one of the first true 64 bit processors on the market.

Also it was the first machine that had a built in chipset that converted x86 code into Alpha based code. Apparently it was a three step process.

Step 1 : basic functions analysed so would run slightly slower than x86.

Step 2: Second pass analyses code for more advanced code function. Apparently now same speed as x86 code.

Step 3: Third pass converts the remaining x86 code to Alpha code. Allowing the machine to run the code at native speeds much higher than the x86 base.

I don't know who true this actually was but I believe that is what they said it could do. It sounds quite fascinating.

Dave Pearman (Editor of several PC magazines) said the Mesh Alpha. When he ran Microsoft Office as the Alpha could run NT 4.0. First time it was slow to respond. Second run it was at normal x86 speed. Third time it was too fast for him to even type because the Alpha code was so fast.

I'm sure it wasn't quite that bad but it sounds fun if it does things like that.

Another thing that interested me was the Alpha has Multi Farm board which allowed you to install up to 16 Alpha processors and you could allegedly allocate the processors to certain tasks.

Once again this sounds amazing but how true that actually is . it was the first multiprocessor machine I had really heard about so how true such is I can't say as I never owned one.

Also the DEC Alpha has the MVI instructions in its design which were specific to Motion Video which is quite intriguing but once again I have no idea how much difference having such would make to your overall performance.

So most of my DEC Alpha interest is in features I can't either prove or justify if they make any use nor difference. Or if they indeed even exist in the form they claim.

Obviously DEC was sold to Compaq and ultimately HP when Compaq sold out to them.

The last mention I had of Alpha by Compaq was a machine they made called the SC1 Super Computer. It apparently used the 21364 processor and was a system aimed squarely at the video processing market.

Now I know that DEC Alpha were probably not half as exciting as I wanted them to be but that is half of the fun.

I think I would like to get hold of some form of DEC Alpha Workstation just to see if it was as interesting as it was made out to be.

Obviously price has made this a very unlikely thing as if they ever appear on Ebay (which is very few and far between) the prices are silly money.

Will I ever see the power of a 21364 DEC Alpha. As much as I would love to say so, its very unlikely.

And so the DEC Alpha remains as one of the Holy grail machines that I doubt I will ever get my hands upon and even less of a chance to own one outright.

I just like machines that are different from the norm and the DEC Alpha was definitely something that meets that criteria.

I'm sure some DEC enthusiast is sitting giggling or wanting to beat me up for my either complete misconception of the machine or going to correct me on everything I got wrong but hey-ho nothing new there.

I do know the Alpha had versions in the form of the EV8, EV9 and EV10 in planning as I think I read the white paper from the designer of the DEC Alpha systems. However he left DEC when Compaq acquired them so they never saw the light of day.

Three Fish’s consultants were among the first people on plant Earth to script HTML to create a web page, code a shopping cart CGI in Perl, configure a bank of dial-up modems with a set of round robin POTS lines and RADIUS for authentication, or harness…