Re: is Vax addressing sane today

In article <20241001190805.000014af@yahoo.com>, already5chosen@yahoo.com
(Michael S) wrote:

Did Intergraph really try to port WinNT to SPARC v8 that was
strictly BE or they were porting to emerging SPARC v9?

I found the press releases:

<http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/sun-info/sunflash/1993/Jul/55.11-Sun-Intergraph:-
SPARC-and-Windows-NT>

  PALO ALTO, Calif., July 7, 1993 -- Sun Microsystems Computer
  Corporation (SMCC) and Intergraph Corporation announced today that they
  have signed a development agreement that will accelerate delivery of
  future generations of SPARC microprocessors. In addition, Intergraph
  will port Microsoft Corporation's Windows NT operating system to future
  SPARC microprocessors.

  Under terms of the agreement, Intergraph's Advanced Processor Division
  (APD), located here, will develop high-end 64-bit SPARC microprocessors
  jointly with SMCC's SPARC Technology Business (STB).  Intergraph and
  SMCC both have the right to use these processors in their system level
  products, while STB will make these components available to the open
  market.

  As part of the agreement, APD will assume responsibility for porting
  Microsoft's Windows NT to Intergraph systems using future versions of
  SPARC processors. The APD port will support the "little-endian" byte
  ordering feature to be included in future SPARC implementations. This
  means that Windows NT itself and Windows NT applications will
  transition easily to the SPARC architecture. Solaris will continue to
  support "big-endian" byte ordering, as defined in current and future
  versions of the SPARC architecture, which to date runs more than 7500
  hardware and software solutions.

There's more, but it is clear that they were going to use little-endian
for Windows NT. At the time, Intergraph were selling their (ex-Fairchild)
Clipper CPU in Unix CAD workstations with some degree of success, so this
agreement wasn't a crazy idea. They had also ported Windows NT to Clipper,
so they had some idea of what they were about.

I discovered today that a contact who works for a product that started
life at Intergraph was working there during the relevant period. They
didn't work on this, but they're asking around for anyone who did.

It seems as if NT has only ever been little-endian.

John