1 INFO-VAX	Tue, 25 Dec 2001	Volume 2001 : Issue 715       Contents:C Re: CCFC: Festive Wishes from the only bloke still in the office... 5 Changing the target (was Re: ... Alphacide both ways) * Re: Congratulations for the festive season* Re: Congratulations for the festive season* Re: Congratulations for the festive season* Re: Congratulations for the festive season* Re: Congratulations for the festive season Re: Emulation...1 Re: historical evidence of what went wrong at DEC 0 Re: HP admits it will kill VMS if merger suceeds Re: VMS 72 on MV 3100   F ----------------------------------------------------------------------  % Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 07:49:03 +0000 3 From: Polly and David Beidas <eeawdob@ntlworld.com> L Subject: Re: CCFC: Festive Wishes from the only bloke still in the office...+ Message-ID: <3C282F6F.6090507@ntlworld.com>    >  >  >> Paul, Steve, everyone.....  >   G Have a smashing Christmas. Oh, and as Steve is in the office tomorrow,  A he can remind Craig about the predictions for the Fish'eads game.    Love,  Mrs. Beidas x x x :)= (The lady with the donkey.....starring in a manger near you).    >>
 > From me too  >  > H >> Oh, and as I'm back in the office Boxing Day I hope I won't be on my  >> own!  >  >  > Probably!! >  >  >  >  > bigmac >  > aka Paul McFarland > paul@goldhawk.demon.co.uk  >    ------------------------------  % Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 13:59:19 +0100 1 From: John McLean <mcleanj@swissonline.delete.ch> > Subject: Changing the target (was Re: ... Alphacide both ways)5 Message-ID: <3C287827.3FAD9F55@swissonline.delete.ch>   $ Bill Todd wrote (in another posting)  J > No, you've given up shooting entirely and retreated to the same kinds of7 > pleading that have been so ineffective in the past.     H Don't ever try to tell me what I think or why I think it!  I am the only person who ever knows that.   D Okay, having got that out of the way, let's look at the rest of your7 statement (in the post that this response is linked to)      M > I'd suggest instead that we need to do anything we can to ensure the merger L > fails.  It's really difficult to understand why anyone could have any hopeL > for improvement if the merger goes through:  not only will HP be acquiringN > most of the Compaq management that has established a near-perfect record forJ > screwing up its enterprise assets (one might remember that at least someN > people credit similar inheritance from DEC as being responsible for Compaq'sK > problems in this area), but the combined company will be too busy merging G > for a couple of years to do much of *anything*, while the competition  > continues to gain ground.   
 Very true.   Taking your points in order   D 1. Walter Hewlett's report did a very good job of explaining why theG merger is bad for HP.  It was always going to be the first salvo and so F HP-CPQ have replied with theirs, full of interesting assumptions aboutG what they will be able to deliver and for what cost.  I very much doubt ? that their estimates will be reached and it will be left to the ' Department of Excuses to work overtime.   E 2.  Others have said privately that they see some good aspects of the H merger as well as some potentially bad aspects.  I favor your assessmentE because as you say the management team will probably not change.  The F existing VMS people (management and marketing) are the natural favoredA candidates to hold the corresponding positions in the new company ? because they, after all, know the product.  That's a big worry.   F 3.  There is a big concern about the merged company being too focussedH on activities associated with the merger.  They believe they have learntC lessons from other mergers and that is why already there are merger H teams trying to make plans.  Have they learnt the lessons well enough ? D Who knows.  Is it worth the risk ?  That's an individual answer.  AsH I've said before Dell really leapt forward in 1998 when Compaq were busy assimilating Digital.      M > If the merger were to fail and Compaq broke up into parts, there's at least L > some chance that VMS could survive.  If the merger succeeds and the resultM > causes HP to be broken up for parts a year from now, VMS's chances may well I > be zero - and even if HP struggles through, its attentions will clearly K > focus elsewhere (as evidenced by multiple statements from the HP top dogs N > about their Windows/Unix/Linux focus).  Only if the merger fails and currentJ > Compaq management gets replaced do any really new possibilities open up.  F One important thing factor is getting a re-invigorated approach to VMSH happening as soon as possible regardless of any merger that may happen. @ As you say, any delays will only see further deterioration.  TheE abandoning of the merger should cause a major reshuffle within Compaq F and while that *may* be a good thing, there are no guarantees that the situation for VMS will improve.   E What I am trying to do by my emphasis on poor marketing is to sow the 8 seeds for a positive change whichever way the game goes.  F Yes, the postings to this group about the Alpha termination by you, meF and others have apparently had some impact on VMS customers.  Sue SkonC says that she's had to work hard to reassure those customers and to D ensure that they remain as customers.  But what makes you think that3 Sue's activities have become known to management ?    G Do you think that Sue reported it to her boss, who reported to the next G level, who reported to the next, until the VP of Marketing announced to H the Compaq management team that marketing was seriously failing in theirG duty to get the message out to the customers ?  Terry Shannon described & that quite aptly as "career-limiting".  G I now think of Compaq's marketing as a filter which separates customers E from management.  If one wants to be cynical one could say that those G *controlling* the marketing ensure that any mesage arriving from either E side will be distorted before they pass it though to the other side.  C Features of VMS don't get mentioned in public statements; hell, VMS ; doesn't get mentioned in public statements period; customer 3 dissatisfaction never reaches management and so on.   H My emails to Marcello and others are designed to step over the marketingG wall and let them know what is really happening.  I want them to become A aware that the problems are not isolated but they impact a lot of F customers and impact a lot of potential sales which would produce nice> juicy income (which is what Compaq seriously needs right now).  D (You raised a question about why I expected this approach to achieveH something when other similar efforts have failed.  The answer is simple,E the economic situation has changed and there are even greater reasons : for Compaq to optimize the sales of high-income products.)  C As I said earlier, if this merger goes through then there is a good @ chance of Marcello and co. being in similar positions in the newG company.  Making them familiar with the marketing problems right now is A a way to try to improve the situation whatever the outcome of the  proposed merger.  H Even if Compaq is split up, management will be aware of some fundamental? problems and they can (hopefully) ensure they are not repeated.   E Whichever way the game goes, management will be aware of the need for 1 major improvment in the quality of the marketing      	 John McL.   H PS.  I hope that anyone with problems related to marketing will likewise> email Marcello and the others.  Let these people know just howF incompetent marketing has become and how widespread the problems are. G If you need email address for the 4 people that I emailed please let me  know.    ------------------------------    Date: 25 Dec 2001 00:22:11 -08003 From: Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> 3 Subject: Re: Congratulations for the festive season 0 Message-ID: <qhwuzbg158.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>  * peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:G > And I don't see that the size of the machine it's hosted on is really F > relevant. It's not computational resources that are saved by working' > in C as much as programmer resources.   C If you're hosting development on a large machine, you can afford to A use tools that do a lot more for you than a C compiler does.  A C C compiler will run in 64K of address space.  Most compilers for more B modern, more advanced languages will not, even though some of them- can produce code to execut on small machines.    ------------------------------  ! Date: Tue, 25 Dec 01 08:56:10 GMT  From: jmfbahciv@aol.com 3 Subject: Re: Congratulations for the festive season + Message-ID: <a09mat$3ra$1@bob.news.rcn.net>   5 In article <3C27B806.A2BF3EBD@bartek.dontspamme.net>, 6    Arthur Krewat <krewat@bartek.dontspamme.net> wrote: >Peter da Silva wrote: >>  8 >> In article <3C2781EB.FDD1CDF3@bartek.dontspamme.net>,7 >> Arthur Krewat  <krewat@bartek.dontspamme.net> wrote: , >> >In all curiosity, what would you prefer? >>  3 >> For teaching? I'd start them off with Karel the   >>Robot or Logo. Just to get= >> their brains wrapped around the whole idea of programming.    <snip more good ideas>  < I'll tell you another thing that I wish I had had.  Exposure: to how the machine does arithmetic.  Building an adder and? playing with it is an essential part of computing.  Think about ; all of those people out there who assume that computers add  exactly.  = Another thing that kiddies aren't learning about is different 9 operating systems with skills of evaluating strengths and 9 weaknesses of each.  Being able to encounter a new OS and 7 becoming a fairly good user within a day or two is also  key to computing.   ; Choosing and changing from one programming language and/or  7 operating system to another should be the equivalent of 8 one changing their clothes from doing the farm chores to dressing for the opera.    /BAH  ' Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.    ------------------------------   Date: 25 Dec 2001 13:58:37 GMT( From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)3 Subject: Re: Congratulations for the festive season 2 Message-ID: <a0a0md$2jhu$1@citadel.in.taronga.com>  0 In article <qhwuzbg158.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,5 Eric Smith  <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote: + >peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: H >> And I don't see that the size of the machine it's hosted on is reallyG >> relevant. It's not computational resources that are saved by working ( >> in C as much as programmer resources.  D >If you're hosting development on a large machine, you can afford to= >use tools that do a lot more for you than a C compiler does.   G If the application is to run in a small environment, and/or you need to F get close to the hardware, you need a system that does just about whatI a C compiler does. I've used "big" languages that cross-compiled to small 7 environments, and the runtime is always a real problem.    --  @ Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC.	      "Cave cuniculos lagana ferentes"  F "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" 	-- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)    ------------------------------   Date: 25 Dec 2001 13:56:28 GMT( From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)3 Subject: Re: Congratulations for the festive season 2 Message-ID: <a0a0ic$2jgd$1@citadel.in.taronga.com>  , In article <3C27DE1C.5B4B9171@jetnet.ab.ca>,- Ben Franchuk  <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: 8 >I have looked at Forth too, but you have no middle roadE >in programing languages ... tiny ones too small to be useful (16 bit I >FORTH) or too complex to learn ( GCC ) or just too cryptic ( INTERCAL ).   F Not all Forths are 16-bit. There's a lot of "middle ground" languages,E in any case, and I've listed a few of them above. Smalltalk, the Lisp I families, and so on. Also potentially interesting languages include Icon, / Lua, and even LiveScript/JavaScript/ECMAScript.    --  @ Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC.	      "Cave cuniculos lagana ferentes"  F "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" 	-- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)    ------------------------------  % Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 22:36:01 -0700 + From: Ben Franchuk <bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca> 3 Subject: Re: Congratulations for the festive season , Message-ID: <3C281041.31FFAA9E@jetnet.ab.ca>   Eric Smith wrote:  > , > peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:I > > And I don't see that the size of the machine it's hosted on is really H > > relevant. It's not computational resources that are saved by working) > > in C as much as programmer resources.  > E > If you're hosting development on a large machine, you can afford to C > use tools that do a lot more for you than a C compiler does.  A C E > compiler will run in 64K of address space.  Most compilers for more D > modern, more advanced languages will not, even though some of them/ > can produce code to execut on small machines.   E I consider a small machine is one with 64Kb code and 64Kb data space. . Any thing smaller is really just a controller. --  ' Ben Franchuk --- Pre-historic Cpu's --  + www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html    ------------------------------    Date: 25 Dec 2001 21:12:25 +0800, From: Paul Repacholi <prep@prep.synonet.com> Subject: Re: Emulation... - Message-ID: <87vgev4f5y.fsf@prep.synonet.com>   3 John McLean <mcleanj@swissonline.delete.ch> writes:    > "Terry C. Shannon" wrote:   C > > Ah. So they do. And HP hopes the same will be true of its Aries D > > emulator on IA64.  If what you are proposing is an FX!32 for VMSE > > (e.g. an environment that allows the execution of Wintel binaries D > > on VMS), the idea has been floated before. And subsequently sunkF > > by Compaq, for reasons which may well be valid, but are best known > > to Compaq.  $ > It may be a dumb question but ....  B > How difficult would it be to have unix programs execute in a VMSE > environment ?  If this was possible, even with considerable effort, F > then suddenly huge number applications could be run on a RAS system.  C It is very easy if you accept the restriction that it all stays 'in E the box', and that working with the rest of VMS is not needed. You do D have a few details like file name limitrs and char sets, but no real5 show stoppers. I am not promising fast here either :)   E It is when you want to share with the rest of the world that the ugly  hits real hard...    --  < Paul Repacholi                               1 Crescent Rd.,7 +61 (08) 9257-1001                           Kalamunda. @                                              West Australia 6076. Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.F EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.   ------------------------------   Date: 25 Dec 2001 13:56:33 GMT3 From: anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) : Subject: Re: historical evidence of what went wrong at DEC, Message-ID: <a0a0ih$939$2@news.tuwien.ac.at>  - In article <3C248EC8.A04EC982@hda.hydro.com>, 6  Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@hda.hydro.com> writes: >glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: @ >> With the number of transistors in a P4, you should be able toD >> do something similar to what many CISC machines do now.  That is,= >> to internally take the CISC instruction apart and generate > >> a RISC instruction stream.  The limited number of registers6 >> in x86, compared to VAX, might help balance it out. > E >A key difference between x86 and VAX is the fact that no x86 opcodes F >(with the exception of the block move) can generate a large number of >memory operations.   F Well, that was an issue in the 486 days (i.e., the time when the AlphaA was introduced), but nowadays, with OOO execution and speculation E supported by a separate retirement stage, I don't see that this makes E a big difference.  A retirement stage can retire an instruction doing A 6 memory accesses just as easily as an instruction doing only two  memory accesses, no?   Followups to comp.arch.    - anton  --  K M. Anton Ertl                    Some things have to be seen to be believed K anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen 0 http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html   ------------------------------  ! Date: Tue, 25 Dec 01 10:48:01 GMT  From: jmfbahciv@aol.com 9 Subject: Re: HP admits it will kill VMS if merger suceeds5+ Message-ID: <a09ssj$h5l$2@bob.news.rcn.net>e  + In article <3C275976.5A290D97@caltech.edu>,o+    David Mathog <mathog@caltech.edu> wrote:e >"Terry C. Shannon" wrote: <snip>  8 >The fool(s) at DEC who negotiated the original NT deal & >with Microsoft should have been taken8 >out and summarily executed - along with everybody else % >who signed off on that deal. I never + >could figure out why these idiots thought    - This (thought) was your first bad assumption.e  6 > ...that OS support without native software was worthF >having.  What kind of morons were they?  Oh yeah, I remember now, the- >kind that ran their company into the ground.0  < I never did make any sense out of this deal.  The only thing9 I could think of was that Palmer was a Gates-wanna-be and 8 his way of getting there was to make that deal.  Nothing else made sense.   /BAH  ' Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.    ------------------------------  # Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 16:49:00 GMTr From: Doc <doc@mdrconsult.com> Subject: Re: VMS 72 on MV 31000 Message-ID: <slrna2hbgg.g0a.doc@george.home.org>  / On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 17:50:11 +0000, John Laird o* <john@laird-towers.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: > B > (*)  Once they got to 80 and beyond, the later models had higherE > numbers.  The earliest versions were 30s (38s the same but a largereI > box), and then there were 40s (with larger 48 equivalents) and then (in1H > an order I cannot remember) things like 10, 20, 10e, 20e.  Usually the  > front of the case was marked !  G  Huh? I have a VS3100 m38 and a VS3100 m30. Same box, same PSU. The m30hG IDs as a KA42-A and the m38 as a KA-42-B. The m38 is slightly faster. IiF understand that the m30 and m40 are the same system board, but the m40D is an expanded enclosure, with more drive bays. Likewise the m38 and m48.   	Doc   ------------------------------   End of INFO-VAX 2001.715 ************************