Re: Apple, Jobs, and the irony of it

[Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com>]

supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) writes:
> Also, the claim that the G5 is the first PC
> 64-bit processor is also wrong.  That title
> belongs to AMD's Opteron chip which was
> released in April, several months ahead of
> the G5.

No, the 21066 "Low Cost Alpha" (LCA45) chip was the first 64-bit
processor specifically designed for use in PCs, such as the DEC Multia,
and was released in 1992 if memory serves, eleven years before the AMD
Opteron and IBM G5.  It was based on the 21064 design (the first
released Alpha chip) with an added memory controller.  The memory
controller had fairly poor performance, though.

DEC made a number of PCs using the 21066.  They could run Windows NT,
OSF1 Unix (which became Digital Unix then Tru64), and Linux.  OpenVMS
could run on some of them, though it wasn't officially supported on the
PC-class hardware and patches were needed to run it on the Multia.