in days of yore, there was an effort called 2080.  It was originally
called hephastus.
THe name was later changed to Jupiter.  It was also known as the KC10 -
a PDP10 CPU in 100K ECL.

Prior to the kc10 effort there were a number of attempts to create a new
10 cpu.  They were not approved for various reasons.

One neat little thing that came out of these efforts was a comparison of
the vax and the 10.
What I recall, the reason for all these lines, is the basic difference
between a fixed length instruction set machine - 10 for example,  and a
variable length instruction set machine - vax for example.

There was some consideration of just modifying the 68000 family
microcode to create a vax on a chip.
There was some consideration of using the KC10 microengines to emulate
the vax instruction set.
Some of the KC10 features were the basis for some enhancements to vax
after 1981.  Some of the ideas and concepts for KC10 found their way
into Alpha and Alpha precursors.

This discussion has all been a great and wonderful intellectual
challenge.  I am enjoying it immensely.
However, if we are all serious, we need to start with a marketing goal
and strategy.  We need to answer the following questions:
What is the target market?
What is the target schedule?
What is the likely competition?
What is the target manufacturing cost?
What is the budget for development?
What is the target development technology?
What is the budget for marketing?
What is the marketing strategy?
What is the prodcut strategy?
What is the support strategy?
What is the timetable for market penetration?
Is market dominance achievable?
What is the timetable for market dominance?
Those are the easy ones.
What is the software strategy?
assuming VMS, what are the cross licensing issues?  costs?
Will there be any new patents involved?  WIll we be willing to license
them?
and on and on.
bob

paul@chaos-hovel.demon.co.uk wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, J.S. Havard wrote:
> 
> > 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,
> x86 Linux is only *just* starting to make an impact in the desktop world,
> depsite the fact that techies have set them up as web servers all over the
> world, sometimes without telling their bosses :-) If you do decide to go the
> route of developing a new VAXen, you have to realise that its probably going to
> take over a decade before it starts to make any sort of impact :-(
> 
> Paul
> ~~~~
> 
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