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End Of The Line For Alpha

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the its-a-riscy-business dept.

Scareduck writes "Infoworld reports HP has released the last iteration of the Alpha chip. I used these babies in the late 90's, and for a time, they were da bomb. Sadly, the economics weren't there, DEC management really didn't have much of a clue, and Alpha has, at long last, bit the dust. Alpha-based servers will continue to be sold through 2006, and supported through 2011. Farewell, Alpha; the world's line of chips seems to have declined to Intel and a handful of niche guys." Slashdot ran for the first 7 or 8 months off an Alpha box.

6 of 514 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sad by AKAImBatman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Doh! better colors try #2

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    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. freeshell by essreenim · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Anyone use freeshell? My mail account is a freeshell account.
    *
    As far as I know their (Unix) cluster is Alpha 64 based. Guess they'll have to switch..

  3. Better colors? Running a filtering proxy? by plover · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm running The Proxomitron, and I simply added a new filter that replaces "it . slashdot . org" with "slashdot.org" (munging required because the filter affects my preview!) So it took me a little while to figure out what your "better colors" meant, as I already had them.

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    John
  4. Re:Reminds me of CISC vs. RISC debate by stratjakt · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The debate died because there never was a debate.

    It was just zealots out crusading for their favorite buzzword or brand. Like most such "technical" debates (ATi vs nVidia, intel vs AMD, Apple vs Whoever) it was carried out by people with no real understanding of the technology.

    The "debate" typically sounded like this:

    "RISC rocks man! I don't know why anyone wouldnt use it!"

    "NAW man, you're crazy! CISC is teh SHIT! OH MAN I got this CISC chip and it can play MP3s! RISC can only do some things but not everything thats what the R means"

    "Yer such a fuckin fag! CISC is gay! Only gays use CISC!!"

    "Fuck you, yer the fag cuz only fags have RISC chips"

    "Oh ya how come the DEC machine at school is so awesome and I can play quake on it? Can you play it on your 386? Cuz RISC ROCKS!"

    "Fuck you quake is gay only fags play quake" .. ...

    You get the idea. Hop over to nvnews or rage3d and watch the fanboy debates rage over who has the greatest technology, nvidia or ati. It's funny, because none of the posters have any clues to the internals of either chip. How would they, it's all locked up as trade secrets. But, undaunted, they make brilliant comments like "ATI cards cant render shadows because they lack quadalphabileniar mapping support!"

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    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  5. Hey d00d can you help me please?! by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Help me please hack my registry to turn on quadalphabilinair mappng support so I can get shadows on my Nvidia TNT2!!!1

    thanx.

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    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  6. Re:"Niche guys"? by dleifelohcs · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    speaking of brainfucked, have you ever programmed in brainfuck?
    > Increment the pointer.
    < Decrement the pointer.
    + Increment the byte at the pointer.
    - Decrement the byte at the pointer.
    . Output the byte at the pointer.
    , Input a byte and store it in the byte at the pointer.
    [ Jump forward past the matching ] if the byte at the pointer is zero.
    ] Jump backward to the matching [ unless the byte at the pointer is zero.
    And of course, the Game of Life as implemented in Brainfuck. Complete with ASCII art sourcecode.