Replies to post #37946 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

DEC hadn't a cash cow line of commodity CPU to cover Alpha spendings.

Actually they did. They just chose not to sell them that way.
PDP-11s would have made nice early PCs.

LOL. How much money do you think 16 bit PCs that couldn't
run windows or MacOS were going to make for DEC in the
early 1990s when it was getting Alpha established?

[mas]

actually Alpha could have been the *commodity* line if Olsen had shown more vision, anyone for an Alpha Mac ? :-)

http://www.businessweek.com/1997/17/b3524142.htm

WHY THE FASTEST CHIP DIDN'T WIN
Digital's superspeedy Alpha outraces the Pentium. But so far, it can't crack the mass market

"But even before Alpha hit the market, Digital fumbled. The company had shown off early versions of the chip at an industry conference in February, 1991, and engineers at Apple Computer Inc. were impressed. Apple was in the market for a new chip supplier, and Alpha looked promising.

In late June, John Sculley, then Apple's CEO, invited Kenneth H. Olsen, Digital's founder and president, to dinner. Sculley had a proposition: Apple's Macintosh computers were starting to run out of gas, and he wanted to do a complete redesign with Alpha at the heart of the new Macs.

But Olsen had doubts about Alpha. His unshakable faith in the VAX computer, which had turned Digital into IBM's most formidable competitor in the 1980s, made him reluctant to phase it out too soon in favor of Alpha. Olsen asked a team of Digital's top engineers to extend the computer's design for another generation--and he rejected Sculley's proposal.

A few months later, Apple announced that its new Macs would run on the PowerPC chip, a competing design by IBM and Motorola Inc. Sculley says one Digital director later told him that Digital's board was ''distressed that nothing came of these discussions and that Digital lost a great opportunity.'' The Alpha faction at Digital was crestfallen. ''Ken did not want the future of the company riding on Alpha,'' says William R. Demmer, a former vice-president of Digital's Alpha and VAX businesses who retired in 1995. Too bad. With Apple as a customer, Digital would have had 3.4% of the microprocessor market, although a distant No.2 to Intel. Olsen did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
"

p.s. and it really would have been the fastest most powerful desktop in the whole wide world, lol.

[CombJelly]

"PDP-11s would have made nice early PCs."

Does no one remember the Professional 325 and 350?

http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/pdp-11/models.html