If DEC did everything right, why is there no DEC now?
The fact that Intel and AMD could ramp up the speed faster than
Alpha probably was the nail in the coffin.
It was interesting to me that Windows can run on an Alpha:
https://betawiki.net/wiki/Draft:Installing_Windows_NT_on_DEC_Alpha
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at the
beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of architectures?personality?
-- development actually started, not on x86, but on MIPS. It even had
a ?personality? system, where the Win32 API was just one
that could be exposed to userland; there were plans to support others.
In the end, the portability of a proprietary OS proved too expensive
to maintain. A few non-x86 ports did ship for a while, but none lasted
for long.
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of architectures
-- development actually started, not on x86, but on MIPS.
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at the
beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of architectures
-- development actually started, not on x86, but on MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at the
beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of architectures
-- development actually started, not on x86, but on MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
In article <m2mrrzxdmf.fsf@Mac.lan>, Roman Belenov <no@spam.please>NT was designed
wrote:
Lawrence Dƒ??Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
All part of the original plan, didnƒ??t you know?
at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of
architectures -- development actually started, not on x86, but on
MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Yes. i860 was the first architecture to boot NT.
- Dan C.
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:05:10 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <m2mrrzxdmf.fsf@Mac.lan>, Roman Belenov <no@spam.please>
wrote:
Lawrence Dƒ??Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
All part of the original plan, didnƒ??t you know? NT was designed
at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of
architectures -- development actually started, not on x86, but on
MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Yes. i860 was the first architecture to boot NT.
- Dan C.
Wikipedia claims that the first architecture to boot NT was i860
emulator. They don't say what was the hardware host of the emulator.
The first boot on bare metal most likely happened on MIPS R3000.
In article <20261027201539.00001cb0@yahoo.com>,iro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:05:10 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <m2mrrzxdmf.fsf@Mac.lan>, Roman Belenov
<no@spam.please> wrote:
Lawrence D?›ƒ?ªƒ?›Olive
?ƒ?›t you know? NT was
All part of the original plan, didn?›ƒ??
designed at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a
range of architectures -- development actually started, not on
x86, but on MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Yes. i860 was the first architecture to boot NT.
- Dan C.
Wikipedia claims that the first architecture to boot NT was i860
emulator. They don't say what was the hardware host of the emulator.
The first boot on bare metal most likely happened on MIPS R3000.
Believe what you want, but I have this first-hand from an
engineer who was there.
- Dan C.
On Mon, 26 Oct 2026 22:16:43 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at the
beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of architectures
-- development actually started, not on x86, but on MIPS. It even had
a ?personality? system, where the Win32 API was just one ?personality?
that could be exposed to userland; there were plans to support others.
In the end, the portability of a proprietary OS proved too expensive
to maintain. A few non-x86 ports did ship for a while, but none lasted
for long.
Yeah, multiarchitecture NT was a neat idea, but they whiffed on some essentials, the time wasn't really right, and they never gave it quite
the effort it needed, or the marketing push. The core work of getting
it up and running on the various RISC platforms was handled well; 2k
RC1 runs as stably on Alpha as it does on a comparable P2 rig...
...but AFAIK Alpha was the only architecture they developed an x86 translation layer for ('til ARM64, decades later.) So on e.g. PPC or
MIPS you were limited to the set of applications whose developers felt
like providing a native build, which wasn't helped by the fact that M$
sold separate RISC editions of Visual Studio. (I still have the copy of
VB5 from the brief period where $EMPLOYER toyed with Alpha support.)
Moreover, they didn't provide anything like the "fat binary" formats
used by e.g. Apple or NeXT, so even shipping native builds for multiple architectures was a non-trivial thing; nor was there a shared virtual- machine platform developers could target UCSD-style, even though MS had experience with that since the first versions of Visual Basic.
(Granted, performance on VM platforms was even more lackluster in those
days, before the advent of JIT techniques etc., but a slower version of
an application is, in most cases, better than none at all.)
It's also a good question how much demand there was for cross-platform
RISC support at the time - how many Windows users *really* needed to be
on the bleeding edge of performance that bad? - but MS's attitude that
their job was done when the OS was up and running sure didn't help.
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:50:58 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <20261027201539.00001cb0@yahoo.com>,
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:05:10 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <m2mrrzxdmf.fsf@Mac.lan>, Roman Belenov
<no@spam.please> wrote:
Lawrence D?›ƒ?ªƒ?›Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
All part of the original plan, didn?›ƒ?ªƒ?›t you know? NT was
designed at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a
range of architectures -- development actually started, not on
x86, but on MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Yes. i860 was the first architecture to boot NT.
- Dan C.
Wikipedia claims that the first architecture to boot NT was i860
emulator. They don't say what was the hardware host of the emulator.
The first boot on bare metal most likely happened on MIPS R3000.
Believe what you want, but I have this first-hand from an
engineer who was there.
- Dan C.
Looked further and found this: https://x.com/davepl1968/status/2103977673425047588
Sounds like Wikipedia story is not complete.
The complete story was:
1. First boot - i860 emulator running on i386 under OS/2
2. First boot on bare metal - i860 XR. Unsatisfactory performance.
3. Boot on MIPS 3 months thereafter.
On 10/27/26 12:16, Michael S wrote:veiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:50:58 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <20261027201539.00001cb0@yahoo.com>,
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:05:10 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
In article <m2mrrzxdmf.fsf@Mac.lan>, Roman Belenov
<no@spam.please> wrote:
Lawrence D?›ƒ?ªƒ?›Oli
?ƒ?›t you know? NT was
All part of the original plan, didn?›ƒ??
designed at the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a
range of architectures -- development actually started, not on
x86, but on MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
Yes. i860 was the first architecture to boot NT.
- Dan C.
Wikipedia claims that the first architecture to boot NT was i860
emulator. They don't say what was the hardware host of the
emulator. The first boot on bare metal most likely happened on
MIPS R3000.
Believe what you want, but I have this first-hand from an
engineer who was there.
- Dan C.
Looked further and found this: https://x.com/davepl1968/status/2103977673425047588
Sounds like Wikipedia story is not complete.
The complete story was:
1. First boot - i860 emulator running on i386 under OS/2
2. First boot on bare metal - i860 XR. Unsatisfactory performance.
3. Boot on MIPS 3 months thereafter.
What would "satisfactory" performance for Windows have looked like?
Wasn't there an NT release for the PowerPC?
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
All part of the original plan, didn?t you know? NT was designed at
the beginning to be a portable OS, able to run on a range of
architectures -- development actually started, not on x86, but on
MIPS.
Wasn't it i860?
In article <11bogu0$10307$1@dont-email.me>, chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com (Chris M. Thomasson) wrote:
It was interesting to me that Windows can run on an Alpha:
https://betawiki.net/wiki/Draft:Installing_Windows_NT_on_DEC_Alpha
It worked fine. My employers supported it for several years. It had
customers because it was the fastest Windows platform, for a while.
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