Matt Thomas <matt@3am-software.com> wrote;

> 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.

Oh, boy.  This rings my bell somehow.   In "See MIPS Run", the auther,
Dominic Sweetman scribes his own speculation on "Why is there a Supervisor
mode" in R4000 processor, an undisclosed mystery of MIPS processor.  One
of my friend, ex-MIPS Japan saleman was given R4000 technical briefing from
John Mathy at Sunnyvale MIPS Computer office.  He remembers one R4000
feature which was not in R3000 design looked strange.   Asked by him, John
answered "this (feature) is Microsoft requirement."  Now it's widely known
that NT was designed on R4000 and ported later to Pentium and other RISCes.
Then, here goes my own speculation.  The key person who compose all the
stories into a single thread is, David Cutler.   It's told that NT/ARCBIOS
source code contains his name as the auther.  It's yet to undisclosed how he
interacted with SGI.

Tohru Nishimura