Hi,

> > To make something that will be successful, it needs to be at a cost
> > comparable to a PC, and give a little more performance (its a vax, of
> > course it will!).  Let's not just cater to a select group of people, who
> > love the Vax architecture, and don't want to see it die.  Let's make
> > something that can be used by everybody, and won't cost them an arm and a
> > leg, and a third and fourth mortgage.

> I hate to do, this but somebody has to play Devil's Advocate.
> You may make something that can be used by everybody, BUT, will anybody
> (outside of VAX enthusiasts) use it? Taking an Analogy in the software world,
	
	This seems to separate out into two camps, divided along 
   bus lines. PCI vs Qbus. 
   
   	Looking at this from a semi-serious perspective, You have to ask
   what the target market/approach for NuVAX Inc. is. I can see two;
   
   1) People running VMS that have VAX specific programs not migrated to
      alpha, that need a performance boost (Sometimes the cost of code 
      migration is enormous, assuming you understand the code enough to 
      migrate it). 
      - This relies on Compaq leaving the market. (Yup, Tick) 
      - You need a running version of VMS. i.e. VMS Source code. (Uh oh)

      Minimum time to market means minimal changes to VMS. This implies
      that you need to emulate an existing VAX system closely. So no PCI.
      The easiest target would (IMHO) be one of the "busless vaxes". You
      want minimal changes so that your mods to VMS are limited to the
      early boot/SYSLOA images. This means being compatible on the device
      level with old vaxes. And no economy of scale. You need something
      quick to exploit this market. I'm dubious as to whether this is a
      large enough niche to support a company with no track record. 
      The only way to do this is to wait for Compaq to flog off the VAX 
      division, given the complexity of the support chipsets etc.. etc..

      Face it, people aren't going to buy these systems to run *BSD or 
      linux (even if Linux/VAX booted, which it doesn't yet). FreeVMS
      is even further behind than Linux/VAX. 

   2) A VAXpc. I like the microcode idea. Ive been independently toying
      with the idea of a VAXemulator in a BIOS chipset. Its cheap to play
      with (there are cheap motherboards with FLASH bios out there) There
      are VAX emulators in software that could be rommed up to give you a
      PAL code layer over a PII or StrongARM or Alpha. This is easier, but
      non-trivial. (Compare the relative thickness of the PALcode
      description in the Alpha Hardware Ref. Manual for UNIX and VMS). The
      best chip would prob. be the StrongARM, unless you want floating
      point performance in which case maybe PowerPC would be better. We
      dont need 64 bits, and byte moves are expensive on those Alphas that
      posesss them.

      Advantages of this are commodity peripherals, economy of scale, 
      reasonable performance out of the box, and swift time to market.
      
      But who would you sell this to? VMS would never run on this beast.
      or would need severe hacking to do so. VMS talking to an Intel PCI
      bridge or AGP card? Ugh. There goes the target market. 

      We could make the free unixes run on this, but why bother since they
      probably already run on the underlying native instruction set? Aside
      from being a "neat hack" of course.

      For this to work, as the world is worrying about 64 bits, it needs to
      be price comparable to the alphas/high end PC's and targetted at a
      specific market.  Unfortunately I can't think of one at the moment. 
      
      I think it unlikely that new application code would be written for 
      this, so would be aiming for the "legacy support" market, which 
      takes you back to VMS and option 1.
      
   2b) The last option is similar to 2, perhaps using Turbochannel, that 
      just basically admits that this is being done as a hack, like the 
      "freedom CPU" project, throw a design at the wall and see if anything
      sticks. If people want to buy NuVAX motherboards that fit into a 
      ATX case that they can plug a selection of cheap commodity PCI cards
      into then thats cool. Batteries not included. Some self assembly 
      required. 

      This is the open source approach rather than a "small company".
      There _are_ companies selling StrongARM and ALpha based motherboards
      that do this (Once company in the UK sells/sold a StrongARM board
      with a choice of Linux or NetBSD as the OS).


      Doing a complete system capable of running VMS would have to take
   the first approach. It also risks the fate of the BeBox, which although
   a great design, didn't quite sell enough units. To make a new VAX 
   based system you need a compelling advantage over the default. 
   "The only actively developed VMS platform" is one, although perhaps a bit
   short term. Others: A 64bit VAX processor? One that smokes an Alpha?
   (or my favourite - one with 8kb pages?). Get real. 
   
      IMHO The only way to do this is option 2b. Open source targetted 
   at some mass produced hardware, with the option of plug in PCI boards
   to do Q-BUS or what ever. "Download this file and Flash into your bios 
   to get a VAXpc! Click here for ASUS, here for TYAN, here for SOYO..."

      The worst thing is that, if, by some cosmic act of supreme
   wierdness, this became a going profit making concern, Compaq would
   probably want a slice, unless you'd worked out a firesale IP deal
   beforehand.

   I can't believe I'm seriously discussing this. I must be nuts. 
   	Time for another beer. 

		andy.
		
-- 
atp@nojunk-mssl.ucl.ac.uk             |        Dr. Andy Phillips
phillips@nojnk-isass1.solar.isas.ac.jp| Mullard Space Science Laboratory
a.phillips@nojunk-ucl.ac.uk           | "It's the late 1990s, This is a spam   
atp@nojunk-coralcay.demon.co.uk       | protected .sig. You know what to do"