Task for today: install Red Hat #Linux 7.2 on the #AlphaServer DS15. Took me ages to find a copy that actually boots and not crash when starting the kernel...
""Relationship of Disk Head, Disk, and Contaminants"
Graph showing a side/cutoff view of hard drive reading head over the platter, with size comparisons:
* Space between the head & platter: 100µ
* Smoke particle: 250µ
* Fingerprint smudge: no unit but it's drawn twice as big as the smoke particle
* Lint & dust: no unit either, 4 times bigger(ish) than the smudge
* Humar hair: .004"
This #Microsoft is #DEC analogy / CEO nightmare is unexpectedly making my day.
During an employee-only town hall last week, the CEO said that he was "haunted" by the story of Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer company in the early 1970s that was swiftly made obsolete by the likes of IBM after it made significant strategic errors.
Nadella explained that "some of the people who contributed to Windows NT came from a DEC lab that was laid off,"
In 1998, following the takeover by Compaq Computer Corporation, a decision was made that Microsoft would no longer support and develop Windows NT for the Alpha series computers, a decision that was seen as the beginning of the end for the Alpha series computers.
It's the reason banks still roll their systems on them and why I know the story if a #COBOL developer who literally fixed their mothers' code that was older than they are...
Same reason why #hp still has to maintain #OpenVMS & #VAX systems, as #DoD (on behalf of the #FAA) demanded them to uphold the open-ended, single-side - only cancellable contract that #DEC signed and that they inherited throigh #Compaq's acquisition of DEC, as the #ATC Systems of the U.S. runs off those machines...