Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the thinning-the-herd dept.
jacexpo069 writes: "You can find it here , however, the highlights are
HP Omnibook, HP Kayak, HP Vectra, HP Jornada and HP Netserver all being phased out. TRU64 phased out, however OpenVMS lives on. Read all the gory details in this detailed roadmap "
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to ItaniumHP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
"You mean that HP bought DEC?!?!"
"Ah, no, HP bought Compaq who had bought DEC."
"Compaq bought DEC!?!?!?!?!?"
Re:Kind of like office space
by
mrbill
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I keep telling our head admin that we need to go back and relabel our Alpha servers ilke this:
DIGITAL logo (crossed out) COMPAQ logo (crossed out) HP logo (in crayon)
Ok, I think I can answer this, though no idea if I've got it right. I started out as a winslave user, and taught myself a little programming, a little of everything. Enough, that soon I got a job as a pc tech, and have been moving up from there. About 3 years ago, I started having enough spending money to blow on dumb stuff, and found myself buying vintage computers, learning all the trivia and history. Everyone in the industry has something that they can claim credit for, but DEC's reads like something that would be hard to believe if I didn't know it to be true.
UNIX, and C, simultaneously invented on the PDP.
And for whatever reason that unix wasn't good enough, they went out and wrote their own oddball OS, that in many ways is every bit as powerful. Bizarro Unix, from a parallel dimension. I'm still not sure if it's folly or genius.
Intel gives us x86 cpu crud. DEC gave us a beatifully clean PDP cpu, which later inspires the MC68k cpu family. Not sure if they can claim credit for a Motorola chip, but deserves a mention.
DEC didn't invent ethernet either. But they had sense enough to recognize it for what it was, when Metcalfe told them about it. DEC was the "D" in the DIX alliance, after all.
They fielded their own risc CPU, for christ's sake. And not just any, but an alpha... I literally lusted after these, when I was still a winslave. (Wanted to run NT on them, but I've since wised up). Alpha. That alone should land them in the Computing Hall of Fame.
Their own networking protocol. Some of the big names can claim this, but can HP?
And you just don't know how big circuit boards can be, until you've held a unibus card in your hands...
Hell, they were around challenging IBM in the 1950's, half a century ago with the PDP series. The PDP-1 debuted at a price of $100,000 or so, a tenth of anything IBM offered.
And this is the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, mind you. There are all sorts of obtuse little technical things, that I'm not sure everyone could appreciate. Vax clustering, some funky per-thread security architectures, etc.
Then again, I could just be the proud owner of PDP-11/04, VaxStation 4000/90, DECstation 5000/120, and a mosix cluster of 2 Prioris 5100 XL's. Only need a Rainbow, and an Alphastation, and my collection will be reasonably complete.
And please, if anyone else knows something interesting, help out. I'd love to hear something I don't already know...
All that, and more, is why DEC kicked(s) ass.
RED HERRING'S open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiorina
by
IvyMike
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
Nice and Concise
by
Wanker
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Is anyone else impressed that they even posted all this information in such a short and concise manner? How many merger/aquisitions have we seen where nobody admits to letting ANY products die for fear of losing the last two customers using it?
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
Tru64 going is fine with me but it had some advanced features that Linux doesn't. As long as they're phasing it out they may as well GPL it and have some coders work on getting some of those features ported to Linux for inclusion into 2.5.xx, I mean HP actually looks like it wants to support Linux. Oh well, I doubt anything like that would ever happen.
I sit in front of a Dell commodity PC, but my X sessions are open on a six-node Alpha Cluster running VMS. It is the development cluster for the largest electronic futures and options exchange in the world. The same system is used by CBOT.
I expect are some management who would love to port the application to somthing else but it would be painful to move away from the uptime that we enjoy, the clustered file system, the distributed lock manager, journalling and so on (especially that uptime).
Production downtime is bad news and it is a very sensitive subject. We paid Digital now Compaq sh*t loads of money for support and got it. I very much hope that HP can do the same.
I don't know what happened to the main Alpha architect (Dick Sites), but many of the rest of the chip designers went over to AMD and are probably one of the reasons that they have been doing relatively well of late.
Many of the software technologies have been sold off such as RdB (non portable but oh so fast) and PolyCenter, but VMS remains.
Incidently, you forgot one major technology that was backed by Digital and that was X-windows. In those days, Digital had some of the key people working with them like Jim Gettys. Digital were also responsible for the VT100, one of the first high quality VDUs produced at a reasonable price.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
"You mean that HP bought DEC?!?!"
"Ah, no, HP bought Compaq who had bought DEC."
"Compaq bought DEC!?!?!?!?!?"
I keep telling our head admin that we need to go back and relabel our Alpha servers ilke this:
DIGITAL logo (crossed out)
COMPAQ logo (crossed out)
HP logo (in crayon)
Ok, I think I can answer this, though no idea if I've got it right. I started out as a winslave user, and taught myself a little programming, a little of everything. Enough, that soon I got a job as a pc tech, and have been moving up from there. About 3 years ago, I started having enough spending money to blow on dumb stuff, and found myself buying vintage computers, learning all the trivia and history. Everyone in the industry has something that they can claim credit for, but DEC's reads like something that would be hard to believe if I didn't know it to be true.
UNIX, and C, simultaneously invented on the PDP.
And for whatever reason that unix wasn't good enough, they went out and wrote their own oddball OS, that in many ways is every bit as powerful. Bizarro Unix, from a parallel dimension. I'm still not sure if it's folly or genius.
Intel gives us x86 cpu crud. DEC gave us a beatifully clean PDP cpu, which later inspires the MC68k cpu family. Not sure if they can claim credit for a Motorola chip, but deserves a mention.
DEC didn't invent ethernet either. But they had sense enough to recognize it for what it was, when Metcalfe told them about it. DEC was the "D" in the DIX alliance, after all.
They fielded their own risc CPU, for christ's sake. And not just any, but an alpha... I literally lusted after these, when I was still a winslave. (Wanted to run NT on them, but I've since wised up). Alpha. That alone should land them in the Computing Hall of Fame.
Their own networking protocol. Some of the big names can claim this, but can HP?
And you just don't know how big circuit boards can be, until you've held a unibus card in your hands...
Hell, they were around challenging IBM in the 1950's, half a century ago with the PDP series. The PDP-1 debuted at a price of $100,000 or so, a tenth of anything IBM offered.
And this is the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, mind you. There are all sorts of obtuse little technical things, that I'm not sure everyone could appreciate. Vax clustering, some funky per-thread security architectures, etc.
Then again, I could just be the proud owner of PDP-11/04, VaxStation 4000/90, DECstation 5000/120, and a mosix cluster of 2 Prioris 5100 XL's. Only need a Rainbow, and an Alphastation, and my collection will be reasonably complete.
And please, if anyone else knows something interesting, help out. I'd love to hear something I don't already know...
All that, and more, is why DEC kicked(s) ass.
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
Is anyone else impressed that they even posted all this information in such a short and concise manner? How many merger/aquisitions have we seen where nobody admits to letting ANY products die for fear of losing the last two customers using it?
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
Tru64 going is fine with me but it had some advanced features that Linux doesn't. As long as they're phasing it out they may as well GPL it and have some coders work on getting some of those features ported to Linux for inclusion into 2.5.xx, I mean HP actually looks like it wants to support Linux. Oh well, I doubt anything like that would ever happen.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
I expect are some management who would love to port the application to somthing else but it would be painful to move away from the uptime that we enjoy, the clustered file system, the distributed lock manager, journalling and so on (especially that uptime). Production downtime is bad news and it is a very sensitive subject. We paid Digital now Compaq sh*t loads of money for support and got it. I very much hope that HP can do the same.
I don't know what happened to the main Alpha architect (Dick Sites), but many of the rest of the chip designers went over to AMD and are probably one of the reasons that they have been doing relatively well of late.
Many of the software technologies have been sold off such as RdB (non portable but oh so fast) and PolyCenter, but VMS remains.
Incidently, you forgot one major technology that was backed by Digital and that was X-windows. In those days, Digital had some of the key people working with them like Jim Gettys. Digital were also responsible for the VT100, one of the first high quality VDUs produced at a reasonable price.