maddog: Letter to InfoWorld: Linux 64-bit since 1995!

[Ted Roche]

On Jan 7, 2006, at 10:38 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:

> Whether anyone ever ran it or not (or if it even worked) is a  
> different question.  SGI was going to reinvent the company by  
> getting into bed with Microsoft.  We all know how that limerick ends.

It did run. At the Microsoft Solutions Provider consultancy I helped  
run in the nineties, we had a MIPS R4000 machine running NT. Several  
years later, I brought it to a BLU Installfest attempting to get a  
distro of Linux running on it.

> I was all gung-ho for NT 4 on Alpha, even if it only ran in 32-bit  
> mode, having used Alphas (on OSF/1) to do graphics work in a grad  
> class at Dartmouth (bitchin' fast).  The FX!32 Kool-Aid Compaq (nee  
> DEC) was selling sounded great.

Yup, I thought Microsoft had a good plan in keeping Intel on the  
straight-and-narrow and giving UNIX a run for its money with Intel- 
AMD / PowerPC / Alpha / MIPS rollouts of NT. I saw NT demoed on Alpha  
at Valinor in Manchester, and it was a snappy machine. Instead, the  
multi-platform support just turned out to be another head fake,  
causing their customers to waste a huge amount of time, resources and  
effort chasing an opportunity that Microsoft wouldn't support. It  
just amazes me the number of times that Microsoft has pulled the rug  
out from under their own customers.

Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com