31 Dec
2017
31 Dec
'17
8:47 a.m.
On 29 December 2017 at 19:54, Lawrence Stewart <stewart(a)serissa.com> wrote:
I was part of the team that built the first Alpha machine, the Alpha
Demonstration Unit, see
ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/DEC/
DTJ/DTJ803/DTJ803PF.PDF
I couldn't access this on my phone - no FTP client - so I blindly assumed
that it was DEC Technical Journal Vol. 8 no. 3. That turned out to be
completely untrue, but in a perhaps amusing way - one of the articles was
Bob Supnik discussing the reasoning behind the original development of
SIM(H), intended to preserve computing history.
As far as the article you posted - from Vol. 4 no. 3 - the idea that 35
prototypes were created in ECL and running as a multiprocessor system,
taking over 4kW not including the front end, is absolutely remarkable to
me. Does any of that original code for the front end still exist?
-Henry