At 01:14 AM 10/31/2001 -0500, Chris Tribo wrote:
>on 10/30/01 5:45 PM, One Without Reason at vance@ikickass.org wrote:
>
> >
> > I was told at one time that work had begun on MIPS/VMS just before DEC's
> > abandonment of the DECstation line in favor of Alpha.  Does anyone (maybe
> > a current Compaq employee) know where in some dark corner the sources
> > might be found?
>
>     This is most likely not correct. Someone probably has VMS mixed up with
>OSF/1. DEC began developing OSF/1 on the MIPS DECstations before it's
>transference to Alpha. I have been told that MIPS support remained in the
>source tree for OSF/1 up until version 4.0a(then renamed to Digial Unix?).
>Though I have never bothered to look into it. If you search port-pmax you
>might find a thread from a year or two ago on this subject.

DEC OSF/1 1.0 was MIPS based (called Tin) while DEC OSF/1 1.2 was both Alpha
and MIPS based (called Silver).  In my past life, I actually ported software
to DEC OSF/1 1.0 from ULTRIX.

>     It is entirely possible that DEC was working on MIPS VMS, but that would
>mean that they were writing/maintaining three different operating systems
>for the same hardware platform, (MIPS) at the same time.

Well, MIPS/VMS was never even attempted.  The folks at DECwest were working
on an O/S known as OSIX which was supposed to run PRISM and MicroPRISM (the
actual ancestor of Alpha).  Eventually OSIX was cancelled when PRISM was
cancelled in favor of MIPS (and ULTRIX on MIPS).  OSIX can be considered a
more direct ancestor of NT than even VMS.

-- 
Matt Thomas               Internet:   matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry      WWW URL:    http://www.3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Cupertino, CA             Disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message