On May 7, 2021, at 12:53 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> Back in the mid-90s, there was an outfit in Britain which made some >> laptops using Alpha processors. > > That was the Tadpole ALPHAbook. Not many of those got to the outside world. > Been watching for one for over a decade. For a period of time it was the > fastest laptop available and it was reportedly not overly unpleasant to use > (my Tadpole Viper, on the other hand, *is* unpleasant to use). > >> There was a rumor inside DECin the same time-frame about DEC engineers >> prototyping an Alpha-based laptop (which never made it to market). >> The rumor included the internal code-name... "BURNS". > > I don't doubt it!
I’ve had my eye’s out for one for more like 20+ years. I do have a Tadpole SparcBook 3GS (? something like that), that was a pretty cool system. These if I needed OpenVMS on a laptop, I’d simply run it via emulator or virtualization (not an option for Itanium). I gather that at least some development on OpenVMS 9.2 is being done on VM’s running on the developers laptops. I seem to recall that the Tadpole AlphaBook performance is roughly on par with the DEC Multia, which is to say, not very good. Though I don’t think I ever got OpenVMS running on my Multia. Zane