At 08:46 PM 7/21/99 , Gregory McGarry wrote:
>Simon Burge wrote:
>  
> > > I was just wondering if there is a better list to discuss hardware
> > > (DECstations and the like).  And if not, I do have a question:
> > 
> > This maybe as good a place as any, especially if you're gonna install
> > NetBSD on them at some stage in the future :-)
>
>Recently I've been looking for information of the history of the
>DECstations.  Being one of the first RISC machines, they have played
>an important role in the development of the MIPS and ALPHA processors.
>DECstations also have had an interesting association with OS
>development such as Ultrix, OSF, Mach, Sprite, 4.4BSD and Windows NT.
>Some of this code now exists in NetBSD.
>
>These details are not easy to find.  What year did the models come out?
>How were the machines marketed?  Does anyone have any pointers to
>further information?  Do any ol'-timers out there want to share some
>history?

A question I can answer.  Larry Palmer, Ricky Palmer, and Richard Rodriguez
started the mips port as an advanced development project in spring 1988.
The initial part was to port ULTRIX to MIPS (initially big endian on a real
big-endian MIPS machine).  While that being done, WSE in Palo Alto was working
on the hardware (which was little-endian like the VAX).

This whole effort was known as Plan B (Plan A was Prism and MicroPrism).
Little license plate buttons with PLNB2MAX were distributed to the team.
In August 1998, Camp Palo Alto convened to finish the port of ULTRIX to 
the PMAX.  (I was there to port DECnet/ULTRIX, LAT, and DLI along with
Jeff Michaud).  This release was known as 3.0a.

I was lucky to have one of the very few PMAX'es on the east coast when I returned
to LKG (Littleton, MA) in September.  It was fun showing my new toy to VPs and
others who wondered what was going on.

How's that for a start?
-- 
Matt Thomas               Internet:   matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry      WWW URL:    http://www.3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Sunnyvale, CA             Disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message