🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <14336@borg.cs.unc.edu> lateiner@cs.unc.edu (Joshua Lateiner)
writes: 

>based workstations.  However, due to our budget, the best machine we
>can consider is a DEC PC 450st.  It supports daughter-card upgrades
>for the ?P5 (aka Intel 586) chip, which is a 64 bit chip, like Alpha.

>Thus my question is, will DEC make available a similar upgrade card 
>for the 450st that will enable me to plug in an Alpha chip?  If DEC
>is not planning such an upgrade, why aren't they?  With NT, the fact
>that it is not Intel compatible becomes meaningless, and I am sure I
>am not alone in desiring the option.  If DEC can sell Alpha-Ready Vax
>and Mips based workstations, why not sell Alpha-Ready Intel-based 
>workstations?

Presumably for the same reason that Formula 1 racing engines are not
available as upgrades for small hatchback family cars ;-)

Slotting a 300 Mips, 150 MFlops chip in as a 486 replacement would not make
sense. How many wait states would be required for the memory to talk to the
processor? 10?  What sort of IO bandwidth could you get over a PC bus? And
how much extra hardware would be required so the Alpha could do all that
Intel/DOS interrupt stuff to drive the other cards?

When you take the CPU out of a PC you have some memory, a disk, and a bunch
of dedicated peripherals. If the memory is way too slow, the hard disk way
too small (2 or 300Mb perhaps?) and the bus and peripherals incompatible,
you are left with a keyboard, case, and a PSU which might also be
underpowered.

The cost of an upgrade could well be more than the cost of a new machine.

If you want to develop for NY, why not get a (big, fast) PC that will do
for now and develop your code? It will be a useful exercise in familiarity
and avoiding processor dependencies.

Later, the same code should call the same API on an Alpha, just using a
different compiler. Looks like your problem is more about ensuring that the
compiler directives and other bells and whistles are compatible between the
PC C compiler and the Alpha.

Just my opinion, of course...

>	Joshua Lateiner

--
Chris Lilley
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