Slashdot Mirror
End In Sight For Alpha
minektur writes "news.com has an article stating that DEC ... I mean Compaq .... Uh, I mean HP has decided to EOL the once mighty Alpha architecture. Let's all take a moment of silence." I was lucky enough to have access to a 533 MHz Alpha back when the fastest Pentiums were only around 200 MHz, and the Alpha architecture earned a special place in my heart. It will be missed.
What do you think this is, Mozilla?
Then you'll see it for 29.95 on Pricewatch..and not need a fan. I can see it now.. the VIA/Cyrix Alpha DLC!
The Alpha chipset was fortold in the aincient scriptures, "I am the ALPHA" God mentioned more than once. This is where it gets interesting -- "And The OMEGA", God added. All of the core prophets prosthesized of Gods eventual metamorpheses to "OMEGA". It is widely believed now by computer industry analysts that they were referring to the coming release of the first Microsoft created CPU and chipset, named "OMEGA".
Bill Gates said at NorCON '02 that Microsofts products in the next five years would become the cornerstone of peoples mental and physical existences, again, he is referring to "OMEGA".
Perhaps this is part of the "inter-industry conspiracy." And the alpha doesn't even have analog outputs... what will they kill next?
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
Alpha's dead? I thought BSD was dead.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Damnit, I was just setting up my BeoWulf cluster of 8 Alpha's....and they EOF Alpha, damn, now I wont get ANY support for them at ALL!
Imagine telling this to a geek just back from a 15-year coma:
"HP finally decides to retire Alpha..."
"HP bought Alpha?!"
"Yeah, after they merged with Compaq, which bought DEC..."
"Compaq bought DEC????!!!!!"
And I still wonder why they dropped ULTRIX way back when. That's gotta be the coolest OS name ever.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I'm going to go and have a nice cry with my XLT 300, after finally getting linux to run on it. I love my Alpha I got mine used from a company called Great lakes computing, I know they still sell them. I got mine for $750 like 5 years ago, and with Debian on it, It Rocks Hard!! Now If you must excuse me, I need to get some kleenex "OH Hal, I have some bad news"
if they could run something other than NT/AIX
*cough* freebsd *cough*
bash$
the Beta never got released...
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
A while back we had a couple of MCSE's on our site for "job training". One of the tasks we set before them was getting a copy of MS Proxy Server running on an NT machine. Apparently they had no luck getting the "i386" install to work (the machine in question was indeed of the i386 variety), so they tried the install in the "Alpha" directory.
Of course, they got the "unsupported architecture" (or "incompatable binary" or whatever) error and called me in from the next office to see this bizarre message. I had to explain to them that the files in that directory were for the Alpha CPU and they needed to use the ones in i386.
Neither of these MCSEs had even heard of the Alpha. It truly saddened me. I think it was then that I lost what little good impressions of the MCSE certification track that I had left (which was few, trust me).
University - a box of academia nuts.
I recall a conversation with a Digital rep a few years back where he claimed his company would've marketed fried chicken as "warm dead bird". I have to agree. The Alpha was a *great* architecture that never went anywhere due to lack of marketing.
First things first, but not necessarily in that order. - Doctor Who
And HP is putting all those huevos in one basket...
if I can stack together a few cheap chips to
rival a single high performance chip, what would I do?
You'd probably fly to work on a unicorn, and eat sunshine and moonbeams for lunch, because you'd be in Fantasy Land.
(Given today's existing products and sufficiently meaningful values for 'a few', 'cheap', 'rival', and 'high performance', that is)