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From: jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: is Vax addressing sane today
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2024 10:12 +0100 (BST)
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In article <vdg3d1$2kdqr$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

> Wasn't Windows NT supposed to be some kind of _portable_ OS? Wasn't 
> it supposed to run on big-endian architectures too, like POWER, MIPS
> and SPARC?

It did. I have no experience with Windows NT on SPARC or PowerPC, but the
OS ran fine on MIPS. It was a commercial failure, because MIPS didn't
keep up with the performance growth of x86.

PowerPC did for a while, but the company interested in NT on PowerPC was
IBM, and their hardware prices were a /lot/ higher than x86 prices. They
didn't see that as a problem, but all the potential customers did. 

John