A Dutch company has released an Alpha emulator for Windows XP (what’s with the buzz around Alpha lately, people?). From their website: “The PersonalAlpha software lets you run your Alpha/OpenVMS software on a standard Personal Computer. Imagine running your VMS- programs on your office PC, notebook or computer at home. Develop, test and run Alpha/OpenVMS applications wherever you are. This product proves that Alpha-virtualization in software is possible and commercially available. PersonalAlpha is the 32-bit prelude to a suite of 64-bit VirtualAlpha software products that Emulators International soon will release. These solutions allow you to replace your Alpha computers without changing the applications.”
At $465 I’d be more interested in seeing Alpha support in QEmu. Though I guess I am approaching this as a tinkerer and not as someone needing production quality support.
This product proves that Alpha-virtualization in software is possible
Wow! So what is the trouble with emulation of RISC cpu on x86?
Buy and try PersonalAlpha to decide whether VirtualAlpha is a viable solution for your problem.
Hmm, did i understand them correctly?
I think $465 is too much for trying the unknown software cpu emulator (well, with couple of devices).
Buy an alpha based processor system on Ebay, that way you can run OpenVMS/Linux/xBSD/Tru64 without any problems. And they are cheaper than $465.
This cracked me up. Back in the day when I was an undergrad, we had several VaxVMS systems. If you could get an open terminal (yes, I’m old) you would still get bogged down on a loaded system.
Having a personal VMS system would have been great back then!
Fond memories of giving our VAX a viking funeral.
Hilarious ! A VMS clone running on top of another VMS clone (NT was copied^H^H^H^H^H^Hinspired on VMS).
Hehe spot on. Poor Alpha. Why are we stuck with IntelOmega.
is that alpha was murdered and it ticked people off. Alpha was a very good cpu arch…
VMS is *still* the most stable OS (arguably so). I know of a database server at the local VA hospital that has an uptime of over 15 years and guess what it runs on… VMS on Alpha. It’s too bad that MS’s muscle killed alpha and then they hired all of the lead VMS engineers
I know of a database server at the local VA hospital that has an uptime of over 15 years and guess what it runs on… VMS on Alpha.
That’s pretty interesting given that the first Alphas appeared ~14 years ago
🙂
Yeah, but he IS right that VMS rocks.
When your server violates the laws of time and space it’s time to stop tuning it.
No flame intended… but get your fact straight. ~14 years ago is very incorrect. 5.5 VAX was released in 1992 (~14 years ago)
See this page as a reference:
http://www.levitte.org/~ava/vms_hist.htmlx
I was wrong on the hardware btw, but they are running VMS, I just called my buddy.
Edited 2006-01-26 03:52
Because VMS clusters support rolling upgrades, even across CPU architectures, it is quite possible they started out 15 years ago on VAX systems and have indeed been providing continuous database service even through the migration to Alpha systems.